SAN JOSE — Google has pushed ahead with efforts to salvage parts of older buildings as well as rescue complete historic structures that are within the footprint of the search giant’s downtown San Jose transit village.

The tech titan has offered the public pieces of the now-shuttered Patty’s Inn, whose roots as a downtown San Jose watering hole date back to the Great Depression.

Google also offered up for salvage sections of the former Sunlite Bakery Bread Depot building and will rescue the ornate entryway to the old structure, preserving the entrance elsewhere in the company’s project footprint.

Across the street from the bakery site, the old Hellwig Iron Works at 150 South Montgomery Street is expected to be preserved and creatively reused as a key component of Google’s new Downtown West neighborhood of office buildings, homes, shops, restaurants, hotel facilities, open spaces, entertainment centers and cultural loops.

“Google taking the time and opportunity to offer salvage of older buildings is commendable,” said Bob Staedler,  principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy, a land-use consultancy. “It takes quite a bit of time and energy to make those salvage items available to the public. This effort shouldn’t be taken for granted.”

One of the numerous documents prepared in connection with the Downtown West proposal addressed Google’s plans to preserve several key buildings in the footprint of the game-changing project, where the search giant eventually intends to employ 20,000 to 25,000 tech workers.

The former Hellwig Iron Works building, constructed sometime around 1935, is one of the buildings that’s expected to be reused as it exists, although it’s likely some additions could be made to the structure.

After the ironworks closed its doors, Navlet’s Florists and a Taiko performance studio also operated in the distinctive brick building.

“150 South Montgomery Street, last occupied by San Jose Taiko, is being repurposed for adaptive reuse,” a Google spokesperson said.

It’s likely that the Hellwig Ironworks could be expanded as part of the building’s reuse, according to documents on file with city officials.

“One or more additions and adaptive reuse of the building to accommodate new arts and cultural uses” are envisioned as part of the Hellwig structure’s future, the city documents show.

Among the other historic or noteworthy buildings that are being retained, reused adaptively, or relocated:

• Kearney Pattern Works and Foundry at 40 South Montgomery Street, constructed in 1922. The historic sections of the building will be relocated about 30 feet to the south. “Once relocated, the building would be expanded and adaptively reused to accommodate new retail, cultural, arts, education, and/or other active uses,” the city report stated, with the new frontage on Montgomery Street. The non-historic portions of this building on South Autumn Street would be demolished.
• San Jose Water Works building at 374 West Santa Clara Street, constructed in 1934. The building is being preserved and renovated.
• Stephens Meat Co. “dancing pig sign.” Google removed and preserved the iconic sign that for decades was a fixture near the Diridon train station and the SAP Center. The sign, temporarily at San Jose History Park, will eventually find a permanent long-term home in the Downtown West project.
• Sunlite Bakery at 145 South Montgomery Street, constructed in 1936. Google has decided to rescue the Art Moderne-style entrance of the structure and relocate it elsewhere in the company’s new transit-oriented neighborhood.

The office building is slated to become “a cornerstone of the Downtown West neighborhood that we are developing,” Kent Walker, president of global affairs of Google owner Alphabet, said in April 2022 during a San Jose event to discuss the tech titan’s investments in the Bay Area.

The preservation of so many historic and existing prominent buildings will help Google’s new neighborhood to blend in with the existing areas on the western edges of downtown San Jose, in Staedler’s view.

“This shows a commitment to honoring the historical elements of San Jose while making way for the next evolution of the Diridon Station area,” Staedler said.

At present, Good Sam hospital accommodates 273 beds on the grounds of the healthcare organization’s campus at 2425 Samaritan Drive in southwest San Jose.

Once complete, the new campus would contain 419 beds, according to plans on file with San Jose city officials.

“HCA seeks a new planned development zoning to replace the existing zoning to address seismic retrofit requirements as required by Senate Bill 1953, to modernize hospital facilities and to improve access to comprehensive healthcare for the growing population,” Elizabeth Cobb, a senior project manager with Kimberly-Horn, a planning consultant for HCA for the hospital expansion.

The total building area at the future Good Samaritan medical complex would be slightly under 1.37 million square feet, compared with the current campus which totals 450,700 square feet, the city plans show.

That’s slightly more than three times the size of the existing campus, according to the plans filed by Good Samaritan Hospital, whose owner is Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare.

The project also envisions an interim size for the campus. In the interim phase, the Good Sam complex would total 378 beds and consist of 710,700 square feet.

The existing Good Sam complex provides 1,031 parking stalls. The proposal would eventually create a complex with 2,422 stalls.

Good Sam and HCA Healthcare want city officials to completely rezone the entire 21-acre site that accommodates the existing hospital as well as the future expansion buildings and parking facilities.

In its final phase, the project would add a medical office building totaling 200,000 square feet.

The expansion project is being undertaken largely to comply with the requirements of SB 1953 which obliges all hospital buildings to meet certain seismic safety requirements by a deadline.

Among other key changes that would arise from this proposal, once the expansion is complete:

• The existing main building would no longer provide general acute care services by Jan. 1, 2030.
• The women’s and children’s center may continue to provide general acute care services after Jan. 1, 2030.
• An existing daycare center totaling 7,000 square feet would no longer exist on site after the expansion is complete.

“Reconfiguration of Good Samaritan Hospital needs to consider and evaluate expansion options of the diagnostic and treatment functions, new medical offices and backfilling the existing main hospital building with ancillary support services so as to provide for a comprehensive healthcare campus,” HCA and Good Sam stated in the planning documents.

The hospital rooms in the new main medical center are likely to be considerably larger than the existing rooms.

“Currently, Good Samaritan Hospital does not have any private patient rooms,” Good Sam and HCA stated in the planning documents. “Today, private patient rooms are the norm and are now recommended” in the Facility Guidelines Institute recommendations for the design and construction of healthcare facilities.

In addition to private and bigger rooms at hospitals, operating rooms, as well as diagnostic and treatment departments, have become larger, the planning documents stated.

The project’s initial phase would be the expansion of the diagnostic and treatment functions, and to shift some support services to the existing main hospital building, the planning documents state.

Construction of the first phase of the expansion should be complete by 2029, according to the proposal.

“The proposed improvements are necessary to allow HCA to continue providing high-quality care to the community,” Cobb wrote in the project overview.

The new schedule was a response to the thousands of emails pouring in, as people were anxious, confused and needed help making sense of their financial choices in a highly uncertain time.

Those early inquiries morphed into a different type of question than I had previously never received in the dozen years of hosting a personal finance show: Is this really how I want to live? To answer, I would walk listeners through a series of probing questions to help them understand the options that existed.

These conversations prompted me to write a book, The Great Money Reset, a “guide to getting real and building your best life,” which will be available on January 24. Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing snippets of the book to help you kick-start your personal transition, to break through whatever is holding you back and to help you thrive.

I open the book with a universal fact: To reset to a new place, you have to understand where you are today. In addition to tallying up what you have saved and any obligations that you have accumulated, you also need a detailed understanding of your spending habits.

I continue to be surprised at how many people discount the idea of focusing on consumption and/or are too ashamed about their spending habits to examine what’s really going on behind the behavior. Here’s an excerpt of one of my favorite chapters of The Great Money Reset:

“You might think you must blow your life savings to make a big change. Maybe not. People from all walks of life are rethinking their consumption habits. You can do the same, with an eye toward reducing expenses and directing those resources toward your dreams…

“There’s a powerful secret to achieving your dreams that I’ve been applying for some time, with considerable success. For the price of this book, I’m happy to let you in on it. It’s a behavioral strategy that’s simple, easy to apply, and guaranteed to work. Anyone can use it to feel more empowered financially, irrespective of where they live, how much they earn, or what they do for a living. So, are you ready? The secret to achieving your dreams is . . . spend less.

“Rather than arriving at ironclad judgments about any particular consumption choice, it’s most helpful simply to become more mindful of how we’re spending our hard-earned money and how it makes us feel.

“Uncovering our spending rules isn’t straightforward — it leads us into the complex netherworld that is our emotions. Here are some questions I recommend asking to help you understand your consumer behavior and the underlying psychology as completely as possible:

“Question #1: What do I really need in my life, and what do I only think I need?

“Many of us create rules premised on the idea that we require certain goods or services to be happy and healthy. We all must make purchases corresponding to the lower rungs of the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs — food, water, a safe place to live, heat, healthcare, and so on. When it comes to higher-order needs such as our need to feel connected to others or our need to be creative and feel self-actualized, our required purchases become less obvious.”

Jill Schlesinger, CFP, is a CBS News business analyst. A former options trader and CIO of an investment advisory firm, she welcomes comments and questions at askjill@jillonmoney.com. Check her website at www.jillonmoney.com.

Capitola has been a storm target since its early days as the privately owned “Camp Capitola” seaside resort, long before its incorporation as a city in 1949. And the wharf that lost a 40-foot section Jan. 5? It’s been there before. And not just once.

Capitola Village, long a beloved coastal getaway for Bay Area residents and a destination for visitors from all over the world, sits along a south-facing beach on a broad cove just down the coast from Santa Cruz on Monterey Bay. A 2017 City of Capitola report notes that “significant storms, with associated damage, strike the Monterey Bay communities with a frequency of one large storm every 3 to 4 years,” and that, “This equates to a 25% to 33% chance of a large storm occurring within Capitola in a given year.” Climate change effects on the Pacific Ocean, and on Soquel Creek that flows between Capitola Village’s colorful Venetian apartments and its beachfront restaurants as it meets the ocean, “could increase the probability and intensity of flooding in Capitola,” the report says.

Capitola Historical Museum curator Deborah Osterberg dug back into the past 100 years and compiled a litany of weather-wrought catastrophes befalling the Capitola village and wharf.

In 1913, a surging ocean full of debris swept across the beach, into the village and up Capitola Avenue. “Huge waves smashed against the wharf, taking out a 200-foot section,” Osterberg said. A fisherman named Alberto Gibelli, who had gone out to the end of the wharf to secure his boats and equipment, was left stranded until a rescue boat arrived and a rope and life preserver were tossed. Gibelli “tied the rope under his arms and leapt into the ocean and he was pulled to safety,” Osterberg said.

That storm destroyed a section of the wharf in the same area as the portion washed away lasts week. According to the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, during episodes of very high surf, a sandbar develops near the Capitola Wharf in roughly the same spot. “This influences where waves will crest and unleash their force,” the museum tweeted Saturday, with photos of the damage in 1913 and 2023. “Hence, history repeating itself.”

Thirteen years later, Mother Nature struck again, with the same kind of double-whammy delivered to Capitola last week: giant waves on top of a high tide. Again, the village was flooded as far as Capitola Avenue, a block from the ocean. And as occurred last week, the Venetian apartments — the picturesque row of habitations starring today in many a social media post — suffered damage. So high were the waves that they slammed into the Hotel Capitola’s second floor. A bathhouse and boathouse with distinctive arches in its beachfront facade made it through, but its wooden dressing rooms were splintered apart.

In 1931, another major tide-and-storm combo hit, trashing vacation cabins and wiping out a newly built miniature-golf course on the waterfront esplanade.

Four years later, during another cataclysm, the ocean washed a playground off the Capitola waterfront. A historical photo shows that beside the former playground site, a wooden platform held up several beachfront businesses. Osterberg believes that platform, built in the 1920s, is the same structure that currently supports the restaurants badly damaged in last week’s storm, including Zelda’s, The Sand Bar and Paradise Beach Grill. This week, Capitola city manager Jamie Goldstein said an engineering assessment determined that the wooden platform, which sits on pilings above the sand and water, was “structurally safe” for crews to start fixing the buildings, but would require expensive repairs. Also this week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom stood on an undamaged portion of the platform and told news media the state was not “walking away” from the damage to Capitola, but he declined to specify what assistance might be forthcoming.

The Venetian apartments got slammed again in 1937.

In 1958, storm-driven seawater hit the esplanade so forcefully that it knocked the horses off a merry-go-round.

Then 25 years later, the wharf took major blows from a series of storms that broke 35 feet off its end and destroyed a 30-foot section.

Newsom and Capitola officials said this week it was too early to tally the financial damage from last week’s storm. The city lifted no-entry orders for the three waterfront restaurants most severely damaged, and restaurant owners now have crews working to rebuild. Josh Whitby, co-owner of Zelda’s, has removed the seawater, kelp and broken trees that filled his dining room after waves pushed a large beam from the wharf through the waterfront windows and wall. The beam, however, remains. “It’s probably going to end up as part of our decor,” Whitby said.

Pizza Flora, Ludwig’s, Mas Pizza and Nox Cookie Bar all have closed their doors or announced their closing in the past couple of weeks. Even Flames Eatery and Bar — a go-to breakfast spot for many downtowners who enjoyed bottomless mimosas — appears to have closed its doors on the corner of Fourth and San Fernando after more than 13 years in business. When you add other spots that never reopened after the COVID-19 pandemic started — or those like Cinebar that were lost in the Lawrence Hotel building fire two years ago — it does look a little bleak, to be honest.

(And I know BART is important to San Jose, but it would really help if VTA wasn’t displacing existing businesses like Mexico Bakery, Erik’s DeliCafe and Umbrella Salon. Couldn’t the agency have used the long-vacant Dr. Eu building on the corner of Second and Santa Clara, instead?)

But if you’ve been around downtown for the past couple of decades, you’ve probably lost lots of favorites over the years. I know I have. Fans of the arcade bar Miniboss may not remember when the corner of Second and Santa Clara was occupied by Toons nightclub. And if you go see shows at the Ritz, you might run into a Gen Xer who’ll tell you about F/X (or any of the clubs that hosted shows there in between). Like hanging out at San Pedro Square Market? Some have fond memories of when the Laundry Works was there and others of Hamburger Mary’s.

There are already some new bright spots downtown. Sunday morning, a line of cars was illegally parked on South First Street as their drivers dashed into EggHead Sando Cafe, a new breakfast hit. Scratch Cookery is dishing out hot chicken sandwiches in Fountain Alley, and the new Little Wine House in Little Italy is generating some raves despite only being open a few weeks. Newcomers Mama Kin in SoFA and Dr. Funk in San Pedro Square are drawing good crowds, too.

Alex Stettinski, who took over as CEO of the San Jose Downtown Association in November, has spent the past 25 years working in downtowns in Los Angeles and Reno, and he’s still optimistic about San Jose’s future despite the challenges.

“I know downtowns all over the country. That’s been my passion and my bread and butter for many years,” he said. “COVID has played a number on our downtowns that I haven’t seen, and you hate to see any small business close. But I’m also an optimist, and I have a world view that the pendulum always swings and the status quo is never as dire as it looks like.”

People are still interested in coming downtown, he said, and did so a lot during the holiday season. But the slow pace of workers returning to downtown offices may signal a transition for how downtown does business. Places cater to residents and people working from home — restaurants with a strong takeout or delivery presence, for example — may be better suited to thrive right now.

“I think the workforce will come back, and there will be more residents,” said Stettinski, who also lives downtown. “That will change the entire fabric of downtown. These are all things to look forward to in the future.”

PARK PLACES: Any plans you may have had for a New Year’s hike through Alum Rock Park are going to have to wait a bit longer. San Jose’s majestic park has been closed since the storms that battered the area at the end of 2022, and the trails have suffered some damage.

Daniel Lazo, the spokesperson for the city’s Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services Department, says the park is closed indefinitely for public safety, but the area is being monitored and maintenance and repairs are taking place as necessary. “Once Alum Rock is deemed safe to be used, it will be reopened for public use,” Lazo said.

One more casualty of the storms was the Hollywood-style letters spelling out “Alum Rock” at the Penintencia Creek Road entrance. No telling when that selfie-spot attraction will make a comeback.

By the way, many trails in Santa Clara County’s parks system are also closed because of the weather. You can check www.parkhere.org or call 408-355-2200 (press 3) for updated information.

TIME FOR A CHANGE: They say elections have consequences, and the 2022 elections in San Jose led, in part, to the closing of Foley Mortgage in Willow Glen after 65 years. Mike Foley — whose father, Gene Foley, opened his loan office on Lincoln Avenue in 1957 — announced that the company, now on Hamilton Avenue, would shut down at the end of January. Pam Foley, his wife and business partner, was re-elected to the San Jose City Council in June and started her second four-year term this month, leaving very little time for a mortgage business, he said in an email to customers.

NEW YEAR, NEW TITLES: With the change of the calendar came some changes at Jewish Family Services of Silicon Valley. Susan Frazer has taken over as CEO, succeeding Mindy Berkowitz, who retired after about 20 years in the job. Frazer’s no stranger to the organization, having served as its chief operating officer for the past couple of years.

She’ll be joined by Jason Stein — who was the top guy at the Silicon Valley Monterey Bay Council of the Boy Scouts of America for 18 years — in the role of chief development officer, and Lisa Tran is the new VP of finance and operations.

But 94% of the water that has flowed since New Year’s Eve through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a linchpin of California’s water system, has continued straight to the Pacific Ocean instead of being captured and stored in the state’s reservoirs.

Environmental regulations aimed at protecting a two-inch-long fish, the endangered Delta smelt, have required the massive state and federal pumps near Tracy to reduce pumping rates by nearly half of their full limit, sharply curbing the amount of water that can be saved for farms and cities to the south.

The move has angered Central Valley politicians of both parties along with agricultural leaders, who have been arguing for many months that someone must help farmers suffering terribly during the drought. Now they are frustrated that the state Department of Water Resources and the federal Bureau of Reclamation aren’t capturing more water amid the record rainfall.

“It’s like winning the lottery and blowing it all in Vegas,” said Jim Houston, administrator of the California Farm Bureau Federation. “You have nothing to show for it at the end of the day.”

The rules were put in place by the Trump administration in 2019 and reinforced by the Newsom administration in 2020. They also are affecting urban water supplies.

The Contra Costa Water District, which relies on Delta water, has been able to add almost no water to its largest reservoir, Los Vaqueros, in the past two weeks. Its level has gone from 48% full to 50% full. And less water has flowed into San Luis Reservoir, east of Gilroy, a major supply for the Santa Clara County Valley Water District, the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles, and others, than otherwise would have. San Luis Reservoir has gone from 34% full on Jan. 1 to 42% full on Thursday.

“This happens every time we have high flows in the winter,” said Cindy Kao, imported water manager for the Santa Clara Valley Water District in San Jose, which provides water to 2 million people in Silicon Valley. “We are able to capture very little of it because of regulations to protect species.”

Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, said Friday that the state and federal governments do not have much flexibility under the law. She said the current pumping restrictions began Jan. 3 and are scheduled to end Monday.

She said the restrictions have reduced pumping by about 45,000 acre feet over the two weeks. That’s enough water for about 225,000 people a year or enough to fill Crystal Springs Reservoir south of San Francisco 80% full.

“We share the urgency to move as much water as we can during these storms,” Nemeth said. “No question. But we also have species that are hammered by the same drought conditions. And those protections are important so we can operate the system in a balanced way.”

Under the federal Endangered Species Act signed in 1973 by Richard Nixon and the state Endangered Species Act signed in 1970 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, it is illegal to kill fish or wildlife at risk of extinction.

The Delta, a vast area of marshes and sloughs between Sacramento and San Francisco Bay that is roughly the size of Yosemite National Park, is where some of California’s biggest political battles over endangered species have been fought in recent decades.

The Delta is the meeting point for the state’s two largest rivers, the Sacramento, which flows south, and the San Joaquin, which flows north. That water mixes and runs westward, eventually flowing into San Francisco Bay and out through the Golden Gate to the Pacific Ocean.

In the 1950s, the federal government built huge pumps near Tracy to send water south to farmers and cities through the Central Valley Project. In the 1960s, former California Gov. Pat Brown built even bigger pumps two miles west, near Byron, that pumps Delta water into the State Water Project, which serves 27 million people.

The pumps are enormous and over time have disrupted fish and wildlife in the Delta, including smelt and salmon, sometimes grinding them up, sometimes making sloughs run backward, and other times removing up to half the Delta’s fresh water. Once plentiful, smelt and salmon numbers crashed. This winter, only five smelt have been found in the Delta by scientists.

After Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon were listed as endangered in 1989 and Delta smelt were listed in 1993, state and federal wildlife agencies began limiting how and when the big pumps could operate. That sparked relentless lawsuits from environmental groups, farmers and urban water agencies that continue to this day.

The key rule that has limited pumping the last two weeks is called the “first flush” rule. It requires that the pumps be ratcheted down after the first big rain every winter so that migrating smelt can move westward away from the pumps. The rule was included in the Trump administration’s Delta permits in 2019, called biological opinions, and in the Newsom administration’s state rules in 2020, known as an incidental take permit.

Environmentalists say the fish are “canaries in the coal mine” that indicate the health of the Delta, the West Coast’s largest estuary. The solution, they say, is for farms and cities to use water more efficiently and develop local sources so they take less from the Delta.

“The notion that we should just let some species go extinct because they get in the way of corporate agribusiness profits, I don’t think that’s what Californians want,” said Doug Obegi, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, who noted that other reservoirs around the state are filling from the rains. “No one should have the right to kill the last Delta smelt, the last chinook salmon or the last bald eagle.”

But political leaders are angry and asking for relief.

“This is no time to be dialing back the pumps,” wrote State Sen. Melissa Hurtado and Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains, both Democrats from Bakersfield, in a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday. “After several years of drought and low reservoir levels, it only makes sense to capitalize on wet conditions”

Five Republican congressmen, led by Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, wrote to Newsom and President Biden this week. “We have a moral obligation to provide Californians any relief that is within our control,” they said. “Government regulations should not and must not deny our constituents critical water from these storms.”

An immense amount of water was moving through the Delta on Friday. The flow rate was so high that it surpassed the volume raging down the mighty Columbia River near Portland, Oregon.

At that rate, about 159,000 cubic feet per second, the Delta was carrying enough water — 316,500 acre feet a day or 1.2 million gallons every second — to fill an empty reservoir the size of Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite National Park to the top every 27 hours.

When the state and federal pumps are fully running, they can move roughly 10,800 cubic feet per second. That means they are unable to catch most of the current deluge even if maxed out. But since Jan. 1, they have averaged just 6,415 cfs per day — far less than their capacity.

Nemeth said the issue shows the need for Newsom’s $16 billion Delta tunnel project that is designed to catch more water during big storms. She said it also shows the need to construct more reservoirs to capture wet winter flows.

If rain and snow continue this winter, the current reduced pumping won’t make much difference, experts say. But if the rain stops, as it did last year, these past two weeks will loom larger.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” said Jennifer Pierre, general manager of the State Water Contractors, who said the rules need to be rewritten to allow more flexibility as climate change makes droughts and storms more volatile. “The jury’s still out. In May we’ll know if it was a big deal or not.”

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress on Friday that the U.S. is projected to reach its debt limit on Thursday and will then resort to “extraordinary measures” to avoid default.

In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Yellen said her actions will buy time until Congress can pass legislation that will either raise the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing authority or suspend it again for a period of time.

Those measures include divesting some payments, such as contributions to federal employees’ retirement plans, in order to provide some headroom to make other payments that are deemed essential, including those for Social Security and debt instruments.

“Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability,” she said. “Indeed, in the past, even threats that the U.S. government might fail to meet its obligations have caused real harms, including the only credit rating downgrade in the history of our nation in 2011.”

Yellen said that while Treasury can’t estimate how long the extraordinary measures will allow the U.S. to continue to pay the government’s obligations, “it is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June.”

Treasury first used these measures in 1985 and has used them at least 16 times since, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog. But the extraordinary measures only work for so long, and would probably run out — and put the U.S. at risk of default.

Yellen said it is “critical that Congress act in a timely manner” to increase or suspend the debt limit.

The debate over raising the debt ceiling will almost certainly result in a political showdown between newly empowered GOP lawmakers who now control the House and President Joe Biden and Democrats, who had enjoyed one-party control of Washington for the past two years.

In an interview this week on Fox News Channel, new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy stopped short of saying House Republicans would go so far as to refuse to pass the annual spending bills needed to fund the government, as happened more than a decade ago during an earlier debt ceiling showdown in Congress.

“We’re going to look at every single dollar spent,” he said.

Past forecasts suggest a default could instantly bury the country in a deep recession, right at a moment of slowing global growth as the U.S. and much of the world face high inflation because of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As the state’s water supply shrinks from too much consumption and not enough replenishment amid climate change and long-term drought, and extreme weather brings floods, companies are paying increased attention to water, and the risks to commerce — including regulation — that arise when supply can’t meet demand.

“Water is the new carbon,” says water-resources engineer Nick Silverman, chief scientist at Bay Area water-risk analysis firm Waterplan, which counts major companies including Facebook parent Meta of Menlo Park — which, like Google, has its headquarters at close to sea level near the San Francisco Bay — among its customers.

From 2000 to 2021, California and the southwestern U.S. have seen the driest 22-year period since at least 800 A.D., “which may be a harbinger of more global warming-fueled extreme megadrought in the future,” according to a December paper in the journal Nature co-written by former NASA senior water scientist and Waterplan adviser Jay Famiglietti. “Stress on groundwater resources under these drying conditions will likely increase in the coming decades, and will be exacerbated by the need to provide more water and produce more food for a growing population.” Recent torrential storms notwithstanding, almost half of long-parched California remained under severe drought as of Jan. 10, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Waterplan uses data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, a program known as GRACE. Variations in the relative positions of the program’s pair of satellites reflect gravity’s pull, and the amount of pull can be analyzed to provide information about where water, including snow and ice, lies on and under the earth. Waterplan, headquartered in San Francisco and launched in 2020, has analyzed every watershed on Earth.

Satellite data, supplemented with information from other sources including client companies, allows Waterplan to calculate a firm’s risks related to water supply, water quality, and flooding, along with hazards associated with regulation and corporate reputation.

The Bay Area News Group asked Silverman about Waterplan’s work. His comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What types of business are affected by water risk?

A: Every type of business. It’s more like, ‘Is it direct or indirect?’ Maybe it’s a supply chain kind of issue, where it’s not your water risk where you’re located but it’s that supply chain: Where do you get your products from? We use water in so many different ways, we use if for cooling in data centers, we use it for energy generation. And of course we use it in agriculture. I’m not aware of a major economic sector that shouldn’t be concerned. Any company has water risk that they should be concerned about.

Q: How does water risk affect a business?

A: If a facility does not have access to water, let’s say, that can be either their water runs out, or water quality decreases … it’s a financial risk. The water risk itself can be translated to financial risk through some fairly simple calculations which I think can hit home for a lot of corporations. You use 100 gallons to produce 100 units of such and such, you sell each unit for this amount, you can calculate how much a gallon of water is worth.

Q: How large a market does Waterplan see in California for its services?

A: The market in California is huge. California’s economy is hugely based on water. I don’t need to tell you how important agriculture is for the state… also all the data centers out there and technology centers. Fifty percent of the state uses groundwater as a water supply, and it’s difficult to track groundwater availability and changes. A third of California’s water supply comes from snowpack. Tracking the amount of water that’s way up in the mountains, oftentimes inaccessible, and also stored deeply underground, which is really hard to track … becomes really critical in terms of California understanding its water.

Q: What are the causes of water risk in California beyond consumption exceeding supply?

A: We can’t forget about water quality as aquifers deplete. Contaminants that are in those aquifers get more concentrated. You also get intrusion in a lot of places of water from the ocean. Saltwater is flowing into the groundwater.

Q: How do you assess water risk?

A: We define it as the combination of hazard exposure and vulnerability. Flooding is a really good example. What’s the probability of magnitude of a flood event? Is your facility located within a flood plain? (What is) the value of infrastructure that’s exposed? Do you have some sort of coping mechanisms if your facility gets flooded? We then break down hazard exposure and vulnerability into indicators that we can capture from hydrologic models or satellite imagery, and also facility-level information that our client provides.

A: California leads the way in water research and science but a lot of that sort of lives in academia or big institutions. There’s tremendous opportunity to connect this available science with the on-the-ground users of water, to make science accessible to the folks that need it to make informed decisions.

Name: Nick SilvermanTitle: Head of science at WaterplanAge: 44Education: PhD in regional hydroclimatology, University of Montana; master’s in engineering, University of Washington; Bachelor’s in physics and engineering, Washington and Lee UniversityFamily: Married 13 years; 8-year-old daughterBorn in: Gainesville, FloridaCity of residence: Missoula, Montana

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Five things about Nick Silverman:

1: My favorite thing to do is play in or on top of water: surfing, kayaking, stand-up paddle-boarding or just jumping into a mountain stream on a hot day.

2: I love to read all types of books, especially sci-fi.

3: I have become rather passionate about trying to hunt and harvest my own meat and fish. It has taught me invaluable lessons on land and wildlife conservation, food ethics, and humility.

4: I like to travel by foot, bike, or my pickup truck — planes not so much.

5: I view food in a very utilitarian way. I like to eat healthy things but my wife is the foodie.

Millions of chickens have gone unfed as rail disruptions delay corn shipments to a California poultry farm, according to documents that provide unique details of how one shipper has suffered from poor rail service.

Foster Farms, which processes about 1 million chickens and 12,000 turkeys every day, has said it’s had to pause some operations because of delays from Union Pacific Corp., the second-largest freight railroad in North America.

The supply issues also forced the company to shut down a plant that processes raw corn into animal feed to sell, it said in federal filings. That meant cutting off its dairy farm customers from corn meal and giving priority to its chickens, which start killing each other when they go hungry.

After a flurry of correspondence that offers unfiltered insight into shippers’ problems with rail service, the US Surface Transportations Board ordered Union Pacific on Dec. 30 to deliver more corn-laden trains to Foster Farms.

This is the second time in the past year Foster Farms has asked the rail regulator to intervene directly because of Union Pacific’s failure to deliver animal-feed trains on time. It’s also the latest in a long-simmering tussle between shippers and railroads, which have seen profits rise even as carloads dwindle.

“These service failures, which began in February 2022, have resulted in numerous instances where Foster Farms has suspended its production and distribution of feed for tens of thousands of dairy cattle and tens of millions of chickens and turkeys,” the company said in a letter to the regulatory agency.

Suppliers like Foster Farms complain they have no viable alternative to using rail and can be captive to one carrier. Disturbances to these operations could potentially risk supplies for major food retailers including Costco Wholesale Corp. and Walmart Inc., which stock Foster Farms products.

The Livingston, California-based processor, which is owned by Atlas Holdings LLC, says it is the largest chicken grower in the Western US, with about $3 billion of annual sales. It said it resorted to hauling supplies by truck, but couldn’t find enough capacity and faced soaring costs. It takes 400 trucks to handle the same amount of grain as one 100-car train.

Foster Farms declined to comment beyond statements in public filings.

“Union Pacific is working closely with Foster Farms, providing daily updates and delivering the trains addressed in the order,” the railroad said in an emailed statement. “We continue to experience significant weather delays, including washouts in California, blizzards in the Midwest and rockslides in Nevada.”

Michael Booth, an STB spokesperson, said: “The Board is reviewing all relevant information and determining if further action is necessary.”

Service Breakdown

Union Pacific has been at the forefront of a recent nationwide rail service breakdown that has plagued all carriers including Warren Buffett’s BNSF Railway Co., its closest competitor in the West, and CSX Corp. and Norfolk Southern Corp. in the East. Railroads have pointed to difficulties hiring train crews since the pandemic hit, along with usual disruptions such as weather and derailments.

Shippers and unions say the problems began with an industrywide cost-cutting push about five years ago that slashed workforces, closed switching yards and parked locomotives. The five largest US-based rails had a 7% drop in carloads versus a decade ago. Under an efficiency strategy known as Precision Scheduled Railroading introduced in the US in 2017, the railroads revamped customer schedules and slashed costs.

“You can only cut so far and they’ve already cut more than they should have, especially as far as employees,” said Daniel Elliott, a principal with GKG Law and a former chairman of the Surface Transportation Board.

The decline in carloads over the last decade coincided with a windfall for the railroads. Net income for the five largest carriers jumped by 75% over the past 10 years. Adjusted operating profit margins rose to a record 41% in 2021 from less than 16% two decades ago.

After successful deregulation legislation in 1980 that rescued railroads from the brink of bankruptcy, carriers became more productive and improved service, allowing profits to rise as shipping rates fell. A wave of consolidation that also followed reduced the large railroads operating in the US to seven from about 40, transforming the competitive landscape.

The railroads’ power to affect service to its customers makes shippers hesitant to publicly criticize rail companies, according to trade groups. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers said in a Dec. 15 written testimony that its members are “fearful of potential backlash” and one declined to provide service information for the STB’s hearing on Union Pacific “since such testimony could be linked back to their company leaving them vulnerable to retaliation or other subtler recourse from UP.”

The Surface Transportation Board is seeking to correct the imbalance, but has limited power. In December, it called on Union Pacific to explain a spike of service-limit notices designed to alleviate network congestion.

“It’ll be interesting to watch what happens over these next couple of years and see if the railroads do take a little bit of a turn” in their strategy, Elliott said.

‘Every Minute Now Counts’

“We are about to kill millions of chickens,” said Phil Greene, vice president of Foster Farms, in a June 14 email to a Union Pacific executive. “Every minute now counts as we try to save lives. You have never put us in this situation 5 days late with no inventory and 40 to 50 million chickens to feed.”

The next day, Foster Farms filed its petition for an emergency service order. The railroad replied to the petition by accepting blame for poor service and proposed a plan to divert locomotives and crews to increase the trains. Chief Executive Officer Lance Fritz weighed in to spur action.

“Foster Farms is a vitally important Union Pacific customer. However, we have failed to provide adequate service to Foster Farms,” Fritz said in a June 16 letter to the regulator. “I am writing to convey Union Pacific’s firm and clear commitment to providing Foster Farms the service it deserves and the service we expect to provide.”

On June 17, the board unanimously granted Foster Farms’ petition, directing Union Pacific to supply the required trains and report on their status for 30 days. After the 30-day period, the board declined to extend the order. By October, Union Pacific again wasn’t providing enough trains to keep corn stocks fully replenished, Foster Farms said.

The winter storms in December exacerbated the problem and Foster Farms again had to truck in grain in attempt to feed its and customers’ livestock. This time Union Pacific blamed the weather. The board on Dec. 30 ordered the railroad to deliver five grain trains that Union Pacific said would arrive by Jan. 3.

“With the exception of one train, UP did not deliver the five trains on the schedule it represented to the Board and to Foster Farms,” the poultry producer said in a Jan. 4 letter.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has agreed to cut his pay this year after shareholders rebelled.

The world’s largest tech company said it would reduce Cook’s target pay package to $49 million, 40% lower than his target pay for 2022 and about half Cook’s $99.4 million total compensation that he was granted last year.

The vast majority of Cook’s 2022 compensation — about 75% — was tied up in company shares, with half of that dependent on share price performance.

But shareholders voted against Cook’s pay package after Apple’s stock fell nearly 27% last year. The vote is nonbinding, but the board’s compensation committee said it took the vote into consideration.

“The compensation committee balanced shareholder feedback, Apple’s exceptional performance, and a recommendation from Mr. Cook to adjust his compensation in light of the feedback received,” the company said in its annual proxy statement released Thursday.

This year, the executive’s share award target has been cut to $40 million. About $30 million, or three-quarters, of that is linked to share price performance.

Cook’s base salary of $3 million will stay the same, the company said, as well as a $6 million bonus.

The board said it believes Cook’s new pay package is “responsive to shareholder feedback, while continuing both to align pay with performance and to recognize Mr. Cook’s outstanding leadership.”

The tech boss, who has headed up Apple since 2011, is estimated to have a personal wealth of $1.7 billion, according to Forbes.

Apple’s share price, like other tech companies, plunged last year as coronavirus lockdowns shuttered some of its factories in China. Supply chain bottlenecks and fears that a global economic slowdown would crimp demand also dragged down its stock.

In January last year, the tech giant became the first publicly traded company to notch a $3 trillion market capitalization, yet has has shed nearly $1 billion of that value since.

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