Daily Business Report-Oct. 1, 2018
Kyocera International Inc. headquarters in Kearny Mesa. (Photo courtesy of Kyocera)
Water Authority presents Kyocera
with Water Innovation & Efficiency Award
Company cut water demand by nearly 20 percent at San Diego facility
The San Diego County Water Authority presented its 2018 Water Innovation & Efficiency Award to Kyocera for reducing its annual water use by more than 6 million gallons at its San Diego facility, a decrease of nearly 20 percent since 2014.
The award marks the Water Authority’s inaugural effort to recognize water-efficiency investments among the region’s top manufacturing companies in conjunction with the Industrial Environmental Association. The 2018 Water Innovation & Efficiency Award was announced at the IEA’s 34th Annual Environmental Conference at the San Diego Convention Center.
“Water is our most precious natural resource, and it’s so rewarding to see major employers like Kyocera redouble their efforts to use – and re-use – water efficiently,” said Jim Madaffer, vice chair of the Water Authority’s Board of Directors. “Corporate leadership like this, coupled with investments in water supply reliability, will help sustain our thriving economy and unparalleled quality of life.”
Headquartered in San Diego, Kyocera’s North American operations were established in 1971. Today, the company employs about 625 people locally and manufactures high-tech products such as ceramic semiconductor packages and microelectronic devices at its San Diego plant.
Kyocera has been investing in water-use efficiency at its local plant since 2000, with a marked increase in savings since 2014. Recent water savings result from:
• Converting to a closed-loop cooling system that uses water multiple times instead of once
• Re-using water from plating operations to cool its onsite cogeneration plant
• Installing water meters for production groups and making them accountable for water use
• Adding flow regulators to fine-tune the amount of water delivered for manufacturing processes
• Replenishing plating tanks only when necessary instead of continuously
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Water Authority pilot desal project
blocked by State Lands Commission
The San Diego County Water Authority said it is closing down work on a potential seawater desalination plant at U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton due to extraordinary permitting hurdles and related costs created by the State Lands Commission staff, along with the decreased potential that the plant will be needed in coming decades.
For the past three years, the Water Authority has been developing a small-scale pilot facility to assess seawater intake and treatment technologies at Camp Pendleton, with grant funding from state and federal agencies. The resulting study would have been the first in California to investigate an innovative subsurface intake technology for ocean water.
However, staff at the State Lands Commission insisted that the Water Authority go above and beyond statutory and regulatory permitting requirements, adding a projected $626,000 to the pilot project cost and making it financially infeasible. The proposed pilot project would have treated up to 20 gallons of seawater per minute, providing valuable data statewide.
In a letter to State Lands Commission Chair Betty Yee, Maureen Stapleton, Water Authority general manager, said the result of its staff decision “will have a significant chilling effect on innovation and research of new technology to support environmentallly sensitive, new water supplies for California.”
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Study shows global warming costing
U.S. economy about $250 billion per year
For the first time, researchers have developed a data set quantifying what the social cost of carbon—the measure of the economic harm from carbon dioxide emissions—will be for the globe’s nearly 200 countries, and the results are surprising. Although much previous research has focused on how rich countries benefit from the fossil fuel economy, while damages accrue primarily to the developing world, the top three countries with the most to lose from climate change are the United States, India and Saudi Arabia—three major world powers. The world’s largest CO2 emitter, China, also places in the top five countries with the highest losses.
The findings, which appear in Nature Climate Change, estimate country-level contributions to the social cost of carbon (SCC) using recent climate model projections, empirical climate-driven economic damage estimations and socioeconomic forecasts. The country-level SCC for the U.S. alone is estimated to be about $50 per ton – higher than the global value used in most regulatory impact analyses. This means that the nearly five billion metric tons of CO2 the U.S. emits each year is costing the U.S. economy about $250 billion.
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Rady Children’s Hospital
Launches ‘Project Baby Bear’
Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego is launching Project Baby Bear, the first California State funded program to offer rapid whole genome sequencing (WGS) for critically-ill newborns.
The $2-million Medi-Cal pilot program will provide genome testing for babies hospitalized in intensive care. Project Baby Bear will leverage rapid WGS as a first-line diagnostic test done by Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine for babies at four participating hospitals statewide.
Whole genome sequencing has been used at Rady Children’s to diagnose babies and children hospitalized in intensive care with rare diseases since July 2016, but only as part of clinical trials. As of Sept. 20, the Institute has sequenced nearly 1,200 children. More than one-third (34 percent) received a genomic diagnosis enabling physicians to make life-changing adjustments in care for 70 percent of those diagnosed.
Until the initiation of Project Baby Bear, whole genome sequencing has not been covered by insurance or Medi-Cal and was available only through clinical trials paid for by research grants or philanthropic donations.
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MiraCosta College professor
presented the 2018 Maestro Award
Maria Figueroa, co-coordinator of the MiraCosta College Puente Project and the first person of color to serve as president of the MiraCosta College Academic Senate, has received the 2018 Maestro Award from Latino Literacy Now, a nonprofit co-founded by actor and activist Edward James Olmos. The Maestro Award recognizes exemplary instructors who go above and beyond the duties of a teacher to serve as a creative mentor and activist dedicated to multicultural education.
Figueroa received the Maestro Award on Sept. 15 at the 65th Latino Book and Family Festival at MiraCosta College’s Oceanside campus.
The English professor has been teaching for more than two decades. She has spent more than half of her career as a leader with the Puente Project, a successful initiative emphasizing English composition, counseling, and mentoring to boost the numbers of disadvantaged youth who enroll in and graduate from four-year colleges and universities.
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Opponents of 2,135-home project
start petition drive to halt it
A petition drive has started to put a referendum on the March 2020 ballot to stop the development of more than 2,000 homes in the North County by Newland Sierra, which received approval last week by the county Board of Supervisors. The Committee Against Newland Sierra and Bad Development started gathering signatures on petitions on Friday.
“County Supervisors and Newland Sierra are ignoring the people of San Diego about how we want our communities to grow,” said Susan Baldwin, a community leader and former San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) regional planner. “Politicians aren’t listening, so this is how San Diegans get a say.”
The Committee Against Newland Sierra and Bad Development has 30 days to collect necessary signatures to qualify for the March 2020 ballot.
“Developers are bulldozing ahead to put more than 2,000 homes — 28,000 vehicle trips per day — into rural North County with NO freeway improvements for new traffic, NO transit, and NO affordable housing to help the housing crisis,” the committee said in a release.
The project was officially opposed by the Twin Oaks Valley Sponsor Group, Hidden Meadows Community Sponsor Group, Bonsall Community Sponsor Group, Endangered Habitats League, Sierra Club, San Diegans for Managed Growth, and numerous environmental and community groups.
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Startup founded by 2 former
Qualcomm execs raises $21 million
Local AI startup Netradyne, founded by two former Qualcomm executives, has raised $21 million in new funding to further develop its technology for commercial fleets. Founded in 2015, the company makes a sophisticated monitoring technology that can keep an eye on commercial vehicle fleets via a computerized command center that captures 360-degree video of a vehicle’s surroundings.
Read more…
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Personnel Announcements
Elise Limbaga and Tania Peña join Jacob Tyler agency
Jacob Tyler, a San Diego-based branding and digital agency, announced the addition of Elise Limbaga as account supervisor and Tania Peña as senior project manager to the team. Both Limbaga and Peña will spearhead branding and digital initiatives for Jacob Tyler clients.
With more than 12 years of experience and extensive work in biotechnology, life sciences, education, food and beverage, health care, nonprofit and technology, Limbaga brings a myriad of industry experience to Jacob Tyler. Limbaga will leverage her diverse background to deliver on brand strategy and identity development, campaign development, product marketing, and web design and development.
As a creative industry veteran, Peña has marshaled some of the world’s most recognizable brands, including Royal Caribbean, Tylenol, Kawasaki, Retin-A Micro, Bausch and Lomb and UCB Global. With more than a decade of project management experience for both creative and digital teams, Peña is an expert in directing behind-the-scenes collaborations for integrated campaigns. At Jacob Tyler, Peña will lead the execution of innovative campaigns and brand design.
