VOLUME 46, ISSUE 50
THURSDAY, MAY 2, 2013
Cinco de Drinko
Starting Fresh
What to do This Weekend
A.S. vp elects speak out
section , Page 7
section, Page 4
www.ucsdguardian.org
on to the big dance
tritons to face hawaii section, Page 12
local
City Begins Water Purification Initiative With the plan, the San Diego City Council intends to produce 40 percent of the city’s water. BY aleksandra konstantinovic
associate news editor
photo by brian monroe /Guardian
campus
Mayor Filner Speaks About Social Justice and San Diego Plans San Diego mayor Bob Filner came to Thurgood Marshall College on Wednesday night for an hour-long discussion about local issues. BY mekala neelakantan
S
an Diego Mayor Bob Filner visited UCSD’s Thurgood Marshall College last night to speak about social activism, education and future plans for San Diego. Approximately 20 people — including students, faculty and alumni — attended the event in the Oceanview Lounge, organized by Marshall College Operations Specialist Sarah Ruth Turner. Local documentary filmmaker and activist Frank Capri, also in attendance, approached Turner to put together the event as part of his
news editor
ongoing documentary project about nonviolence, “I Refuse to Kill.” The event began with an introduction by Capri, who spoke about Filner’s experience as a civil rights Freedom Rider in the 1960s. As an engineering student at Cornell University, Filner was arrested in Mississippi for participating in the Freedom Rides and was incarcerated for 60 days until the Supreme Court of the United States overturned his case and those of other activists. “You have demonstrated through your life and through your
See mayor, page 3
uc system
Assembly Bill Would Make State-Funded Research Public The bill mandates that research be submitted to the California State Library, supported by UC with reservations. BY Andrew Doolittle
staff writer A bill heard in the California Assembly on Wednesday would require state-funded research, including that from universities, to be publicly accessible online for free no later than one year after publication. Assembly Bill 609, or the California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act, introduced by Assemblyman Brian Nestande (R-Palm Desert), also mandates that research be submit-
ted to the state agencies granting the research funds and to the California State Library. “I think one of the overarching goals we’re trying to achieve is that California is always trying to be on the cutting edge of things, like technology,” Nestande’s legislative director Nanette Farag said. “In order to get at that level, we need to have access to that information. It would make sense that taxpayers have access to information that their tax dollars have paid for.” The bill was supported by several institutions, including the University
of California, but with reservations. The bill’s original six-month mandate was amended to 12 months after UC administrators argued it would comply with the federal 12-month policy and be more beneficial for publishers to achieve revenue needs. “UC believes that a 12-month embargo period will facilitate publication in leading scholarly journals, which may reject manuscripts for which the permissible embargo is only six months,” UC legislative director Adrian Diaz wrote in a letter to Nestande. “Scholars at the University of California have a
vested interest in ensuring that their work reaches the widest possible audience, including members of the public whose tax dollars support the University’s research.” However, the UC administration also argued that both the UC system and the California State University system should be explicitly excluded from the bill’s definition of state agencies, partly due to the fact that they routinely fund their own research grants. AB 609 now includes an amendment that See bills, page 3
The San Diego City Council approved new water purification plans intended to produce up to 40 percent of the city’s current water usage. The council gave city staff 90 days to develop a plan that will fully implement water purification in the city. The decision was made after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that the California Department of Public Health failed to spend $455 million in federal funds to improve the quality of drinking water. The State Water Resources Control Board estimates that over half of California’s population relies on drinking water contaminated by arsenic, nitrates and other agricultural pollutants. Public health officials also attributed the plans to an American Rivers ranking that placed the Colorado River at the top of its “Most Endangered Rivers in America” list. “Last week the Colorado River was named the most endangered river in the county, yet this is the main source of our drinking water,” San Diego Coastkeeper’s waterkeeper and Water Reliability Coalition Co-Chair Jill Witkowski said in a press release. “It’s monumental for the city of San Diego to take this huge step toward producing our own safe drinking water to relieve our dependence on the Colorado.” The water purification project is based on the city’s previous demonstration project built to determine if wastewater could be turned into safe drinking water. Quality tests at the plant showed that the treated water was on par with state and federal standards. Construction may begin on a full-scale $370 million facility to turn wastewater into drinking water. The purification plant could supply up to 88 million of the 200 million gallons of water that the city uses every day. Initially, the plant would produce about 15 million gallons, or about 8 percent of the city’s current usage. The city is also considering easing municipal code restrictions on basic household water recycling systems. The small-scale systems allow houses to redirect recycled graywater from showers and clothes washers towards lawn and garden irrigation. Advocates of recycling graywater claim that its use can cut household water consumption in half. Currently, San Francisco and Santa Barbara permit the use of these systems.
readers can contact ALEKSANDRA KONSTANTINOVIC
ALKONSTA@ucsd.edu