Another delay???

Palo Alto never seems to be able to get anything done.

People are out playing golf. The golf course is hanging in there. What I don't see is the "soccer field" coming along. A lot of dirt leveled and flattened out but it is not clear how that is suppose to turn out.
As ideas go that was a bad idea - you still have the giant frog pond next to the baseball diamond.

Duh. Maybe Palo Alto can hold another design contest for a new golf course redesign :-)

This is criminal negligence on the part of the Water Board, and the radical environmentalists who are engineering this behind the scenes (including certain so-called venerated Palo Alto residents who should be ashamed of themselves.

Resident 1,

The golf course might not be a great place for kids to play soccer. The EPA has recently released a study of lead emissions at general aviation airports, and PAO is not doing very well:

0.33 ug/m^3 (San Carlos, CA)
0.17 ug/m^3 (McClelland, CA)
0.12 ug/m^3 (Palo Alto, CA)
0.09 ug/m^3 (Reid-Hillview, CA)
0.07 ug/m^3 (Gillespie, CA)
0.07 ug/m^3 (Merril, AK)
0.06 ug/m^3 (Van Nuys, CA)
0.06 ug/m^3 (Auburn, WA)
0.04 ug/m^3 (Deer Valley, AZ)
0.03 ug/m^3 (Brookhaven, NY)
0.03 ug/m^3 (Stinson, TX)
0.02 ug/m^3 (Harvey, WA)
0.01 ug/m^3 (Republic, NY)

At 0.12 ug/m^3 Palo Alto Airport is only 0.02 below the EPA's limit of 0.15 ug/m^3.

EPA Airport Lead Monitoring Program Update: Web Link

As long as this table keeps getting reposted, maybe the arithmetic should be checked.

"At 0.12 ug/m^3 Palo Alto Airport is only 0.02 below the EPA's limit of 0.15 ug/m^3."

I think the San Carlos area is affected by the giant metal breakdown operation in Redwood City Harbor. This is where fires keep breaking out unleashing toxic fumes all over the peninsula. The EPA is suppose to be working on a clean-up of that site but the CARGILL development keeps poking it's head in that cities grapple with overdevelopment - in this case the salt flats Go figure - put a housing development next to a giant hazardous waste business. What are people thinking?

As to the golf course situation that is truly weird. PA makes its money on adult leagues that play on the soccer / baseball fields - I know - I was in one. This is not about the children - it is about the adult leagues. It is time to stop catering to the soccer crowd who would level this whole city if they could - I know - I was there. PA Recreation knows that - it is their business.

Add to that the desire to have the Embarcadero Road add parking and have one lane each way. If you go to that area east of 101 there are dirt hauling trucks, car delivery trucks, large trucks with unknown delivery points. Also a lot of traffic. Guess what - there is plenty of parking for the people that work in that area. I think a lot of City of Palo Alto offices are located in that area which may be tweaking how this is all working out. Maybe they are looking for the shuttle service to take them downtown and need an excuse to pay for it. They just cannot leave well enough alone.
I am GLAD that the golf course is still open and playable. YEAH!

I will tell you what is criminal, dumping dirt all over course and destroying what course there was before getting permits to proceed with the redesign. Further grand larceny occurred when they stole the couse for yet more soccer fields for the soccer moms. The seniors in town get kicked to the curb yet again.

Hey Musical

Duh check your math :-))

There are a few levels of incompetence here, and if this were controlled by private instead of public employees, they would be out of a job. First is the water board. Are these people elected or appointed? I notice that the Chair's term expires this month. Hope she isn't running for re-election. Then there is the short-sighted city people who, as mentioned above, closed down holes and crippled the golf course without having gotten the permits to start work. Our city continues to lose money (a LOT of it)because people don't want to play there, and that will continue now through next Spring (taking bets on it happening then?). People should lose their jobs at both places.

Is it me, or is this article burying the lede? OK, golf course delayed, bummer, but the real story is the further collapse of progress on flood prevention. We have gone 16 years since the floods, we are potentially heading into an El Nino, and have made no progress on the ground at mitigating the flood risk. And now we are stuck with some petty bureaucrats dictating the future. What a gross mess.

Musical,

0.15 ug/m^3 is a fail, and the resolution of the measurement is 0.01, but if you want to quibble about the math to distract from the issue, we can call it 0.03 ug/m^3. I have provided some figures, and a link to the report, so people can do their own math, and make their own assessment.

EPA Airport Lead Monitoring Program Update: Web Link

Thank you, Jetman, for the clarification. It was unclear to me whether 0.15 is a pass or a fail. In a 25mph zone, I've always thought 25mph was a pass. I'm not trying to distract from the issue. If anything, a discussion of the numbers does the opposite. I'd like to understand them. Like how San Carlos at one end can have less traffic but higher numbers. And how Republic at the other end can have more traffic and almost non-existent numbers. I'm sure there will be more appropriate threads to discuss this.

Let's follow the bouncing ball here. The golf course is partially disabled so that it loses money - for a year + - and then what? Do the city "fathers" then determine that it is in the cities best interest to convert the whole thing into MORE SOCCER FIELDS? Or more baseball fields? Or worst yet there is such a clamer to build some income producing venture. Maybe expand the airport so we have commercial business? Is that what removing all of the trees was about?
This is such a set-up! You can smell it a mile away. The soccer field is still a pile of dirt.
Go to First Street in San Jose just off HWY 237. A field was converted into a soccer field within two months - it is next to the Second Harvest Food Bank Facility.
Time to determine who voted for the soccer field.

Musical - San Carlos has higher numbers because there is a hazardous waste facility in the Redwood City Harbor. It catches on fire periodically and we have long discussions as to why it is allowed to remain there. The EPA is on the case.

Is this after the 500 trees were removed????

@res1 -- plausible. San Carlos Airport is two miles from that facility, and Palo Alto Airport six miles. Ergo San Carlos should show a factor of three higher than Palo Alto if all the lead was due to Sims Metals? Or should it be inverse-square? Or take into account prevailing winds toward Palo Alto? Point is we'd need measurements at more intermediate locations or higher time-resolution to convincingly demonstrate the contribution of the metal recycling to the airport data.

Have Nercy - the conversion to a soccer field was after a building was removed - 1st Street, San Jose. All of north San Jose is in a giant building boom.
As to the PA site - I think all of the trees have been removed from what the supposed soccer site is to be - it is hard to tell - it looks more like a flood dike - maybe that is it's real purpose - it is posing as a soccer field TBD.

Resident 1,

"This is such a set-up! You can smell it a mile away".

I have to agree with you, something is getting teed-up out there. Add to the removal of the trees, the banning of the public from the boardwalks, and the neglect and closing of the nature center.

The removal of the trees is a dead give away. The first overt sign that developers had set their sights on California Avenue was the removal of all of the mature trees at taxpayer expense. Developers always want to get the trees out of the way first, to take the "tree huggers" off the chess board. If they can figure out some pretext to have the public foot the bill, and have the local government take the heat... well all the better.

Here is something else to consider. The city staff should know how to file a complete application with the Water Board. So, maybe they "accidentally on purpose" filed an incomplete application with the board because they actually WANT the project delayed, but want to be able to blame it on the Water Board?

"Palo Alto admits mistakes in negotiations with developer"
Palo Alto Weekly ~ September 4, 2014 Web Link

Looks like John Arriaga will have to find another place to dump his dirt from Stanford construction projects. And the $1,000,000 in revenue that Jim Keene was expecting will not transpire. Who's on that Water board anyway? And what ax do they have to grind?

I forgot to add that the $1,000,000 is just for tipping fees from the dirt.

This all becomes more important as to who we vote for in the next election. We appear to be lacking program management, engineering and technical skills on the current PACC. Or they are putting staff on these jobs that do not have the right skill mix. But that choice is killing us. What are the background qualifications of the staff assigned to the many projects - is it a fit?

Look at the back ground qualifications of the people running for office. Assume everyone CARES because they went down and filed the required paperwork. The people that are included in the interaction on this project may or may not be local long time residents so that qualification has no import here. The required skill mix is working many engineering projects with successful outcomes with many government agencies.

Suggest that Seelum Reddy has the right qualifications and the background experience of working government projects along side university personnel - note that UC Irvine is a top Engineering school in the system. It is also subject to State of California regulations and requirements.

You need people who can look at project and know what the risks and opportunities are - we need to assume that the opportunities are in favor of the residents of the city and the financial outcomes are predictable and positive.

I was just reading another stream which indicated that there was suppose to be a trade to build up the playing fields in the baylands in exchange for a reduced price on the 7.7 acres in Foothill Park. So now the 7.7 acres deal is off - does that mean the supposed trade for building the playing fields in the baylands is off - thus a pile of dirt that looks suspiciously like the pile of dirt further down the road in the baylands? We have matching piles of dirt. I do not believe that many people wanted a soccer field in that area except the adult leagues that would play there.

The extent of ruination here has affected the whole flood control project and put many disputes into play with a number of government agencies. A number of deals have all collapsed on themselves. This also affects relations with Stanford on further flood control projects on the Creek since any number of "deals" probably involved trade-offs which will not come to pass. What a sorry mess.

The problem here is that we no longer know what to believe any more. We have so many unfinished projects around town and everybody in authority seems to blame somebody else. Even the Oregon Expressway work, which was done by the County, isn't finished. The Ross lights are still not switched on (should they be treated like a 4 way stop now?) and the ramps on and off 101 and Greer are full of potholes.

Mitchell Park, El Camino are both a disgrace and now it seems that the Golf Course, the athletic center, the boardwalk and interpretive center are similar situations. Even the Moonlight Run last night appears to have blocked up access to the Airport which must be bad planning, as well as the inadequate bike parking and dogs on long leashes adding to the melee I hear about in the aftermath each year.

Somehow, I have my doubts about what can be achieved. We must have a CC and a City Manager that knows how to run a city, start a project and more importantly finish it in an acceptable time frame.

@ resident 1

The pile of dirt at the landfill is a mix of topsoil and compost to meet the cities spec for the final cap off.This comes mostly from residential excavations nearby.

The other pile of dirt near the golf course is mostly from Arriaga/Stanford projects, this material is meant for the levee/golf course project.The city of Palo Alto receives tipping fees for this soil.According to Keene They have a $1,000,000 deficit due to the delay of this project due to not receiving the tipping fees.

The soil was supposed to meet a certain spec at time of bidding (3/4" minus, meaning nothing more than 3/4" inch rocks were allowed).After the bid was awarded the city did not enforce the spec. furthermore they allowed trucks to travel down Oregon expressway for an additional 50 cents a ton. None of the other bidders were offered this special consideration.

I don't know what a "tipping fee" is - can you please explain that.

I do know that excavations of raw, untreated soil - baylands pile - is not the best stuff since a lot of us live on fill. I have a map from the US Survey on the soil types from the bay upward and there is a lot of change - all of which affects how an earthquake will affect your house. The coastal range has a lot of variation as you move upward.

My other sore point is that the silt from Searsville Lake could be removed and trucked down for use in the baylands / golf course - it is salt free and should be very high quality with a lot of nutrients in it - better than excavated dirt that is untreated. That silt can also be used on the 7.7 acres that need some help to bring it up to a healthy state. I gather that the 7.7 acres needs some help. The silt is a valuable asset that is going to waste and conflicting the health of the Creek from top to bottom.

I do not know where this ends up going -I think the government flood agencies are knowledgeable about / suspect what is going on and it is creating a problem in approving any actions to assist in the bigger problem of flood control.

Gate fee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Gate fee. A gate fee (or tipping fee) is the charge levied upon a given quantity of waste received at a waste processing facility. In the case of a landfill it is generally levied to offset the cost of opening, maintaining and eventually closing the site.
Gate fee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gate_feeWikipedia

This whole event needs further comment and review of the golf course planning before starting up the activity again. The WOW factor as an excuse for some dramatic change sounds like what happened at Mitchell Park Community Center. It started in good shape financially then people started adding WOW factor changes which blew up the whole activity while in process.
We need more eyes on the golf course plan to avert a waste of dollars on unneeded stuff - TBD. We need to understand what the financial budget is for the planned activity, schedule, and who responsible. Taking out the trees as a beginning point is a waste of money if they are not in the field of play.
It looks like the baylands needs a lot more attention and review before the city staff is allowed to start tearing things up. This is game on, eyes on.
AND - if dirt was dumped then the city should be paid - no more dirt.

there are lots of good memories of playing at palo alto muni golf course. palo alto is so high-falooting now and elite that it's good to manicure this golf course. keep up the good work. just find out if you can afford the current cost of living and such. enjoy golfing