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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012

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PERFECT PLACE TO PLAYThe Rancho Mirage City Council considers plansfor expansion on land near Whitewater Park. B1

RAMOSLEAVESBrad Ramosresigns fromforce. B1

OPENSEATSchoolboard hope-fuls answerquestions.B3

PALM SPRINGS — For Cali-fornia tomeet the challenge ofglobal competition, it needs a“low-carbon, green-growtheconomy,” driven by its ambi-tious greenhouse gas reduc-tion goals and the grassrootsefforts of local governments.

ThemessageLt.Gov.GavinNewsombrought to the South-ernCaliforniaEnergySummitThursday inPalmSpringswasone the audience of severalhundred local and state offi-cials and green business lead-ers were hungry to hear.

“Wehave here inCaliforniasomethingunique—that is thewill to step up where the U.S.walked away. All we’re doingis rolling greenhouse gasemissions to 1990 levels by2020. The opportunity thatsets forth for all of you is ex-traordinary,” he said.

“Green energy is the fu-ture, today and tomorrow, forthis part of the state. We mustinvest in the future.”

Some of that investmentcould come from the state’s

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom touts renewable development at forumBy K KaufmannThe Desert Sun

Michael Lucas of ALL LED demonstrates alternatives to high energy consumption lights at the SouthernCalifornia Energy Summit Thursday at the Palm Springs Convention Center. OMAR ORNELAS/THE DESERT SUN

Investing in green energySOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ENERGY SUMMIT

LIVE COVERAGEFollow renewable energy reporter K Kaufmann, @kkaufmann on Twitter, throughout the two-day summit.Please see ENERGY, A6

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WASHINGTON — RepublicanMittRomneywas fieryandhav-ing fun. President Barack Oba-ma came off as the professorwithout much pop.

AndwhileDemocrats grudg-inglyconcededthatRomneydidwell in Wednesday’s first presi-dential debate, what matters iswhetherhechanged thedynam-ic of a race that he appeared tobe losing.

The best answers will comeover the next few days: Did thedebate help Romney close hispolling deficit in a must-winstate such as Ohio? Or pullahead in Florida, Virginia or theother toss-up states where Oba-ma holds a slender lead?

The judging is best done inview of what Obama and Rom-ney set out to do.

By that measure, Romneymay not have changed thegame, buthe sureplayed itwell.Obama avoided any gaffes butlooked surprisingly lacklusterat times.

‘47%’ notmentionedAndhekept in his pocket one

of the strongest weapons of hispolitical arsenal, Romney’s se-cretly videotaped remarks todonors that “47 percent” ofAmericans see themselves asentitled victims and that hecould not persuade them to“take personal responsibilityand care for their lives.”

The president never men-tioned it over the 90-minute de-bate, even thoughhe talks aboutit daily in his campaigning.

The president’s biggest trou-ble seemed to be that he gotcaught up in exactly what hewanted to avoid — engagingRomney time and again on thechallenger’s accusations in-stead of turning each answer

ELECTION2012

Romneydominatesas Obamaplays safeImpact unclear inkey states like OhioBy Ben FellerAssociated Press

Please see DEBATE, A7

ward recovery — as well as afew possible surprises.

Speaker Susan Harvey, forinstance, may dispel any mis-conceptions that landsaleshaveall but dried up in the valleyover the past year.

“That’s absolutely far fromthe truth,” said Harvey, princi-pal with Palm Desert-basedDesert Pacific Properties.

When commercial real es-tate experts gather in RanchoMirage this morning for an an-nual conference, there will betalk of how the recession-belea-guered Coachella Valley mar-ket’s double-digit vacancy ratesare edging ever so slowly to-

“There were 7,667 acres soldand 938 residential lots, an in-creaseof25percent”during thepast 12 months that ended inSeptember.

Investors looking to gener-ate revenue streams by buyingbuildings at less than the re-placement cost to build themshelled out $1 million or moreeachformorethan200commer-

cial properties across thevalleylast year, said Kathleen How-ard, executive vice president ofNAI Capital in Palm Desert.

Harvey and Howard areamong speakers and panelistsslated for theninthannualCom-mercialRealEstate InvestmentForumfrom7to11:30a.m. today

Real estate experts convene to offer industry insightsByMike PerraultThe Desert Sun

IN CASE YOUMISSED ITA Desert Sun iSun Investigation tooka closer look at Coachella Valleycommercial real estate vacancies ofabout 1,000 storefronts. The desert’svacancy rate is 18.2 percent.Read the stories and check out aninteractive database of those 1,000storefronts at mydesert.com/va-canciesPlease see PROPERTY, A7

The heat and high humidity that besieged the Coachella Val-ley this summer had area date farmers worried. Strong windsanda fierce rainstorm that struckover a two-dayperiod inmid-September prematurely blew dates off the branches and intoclothbagscovering thebushels of fruit hanging fromdatepalmtrees at Hadley Date Gardens in Thermal.

“We had to scramble after the storm,” said owner AlbertKeck. “It was quite an ordeal.We had to take emergency actionand bring down all the dates.”

But the Hadley dates were saved (Keck’s crew dried out thefruit, keeping losses to a minimum) and the summer’s weatherextremes produced a particularly good, and potentially record-setting, date crop this season, local growers say.

“You can never second-guessmother nature,” said BobHar-rick, general manager of Oasis Date Gardens in Thermal.

Date harvesters Leticia Garcia (left) and Diana Lopez pick dates at theOasis Date Gardens in Thermal on Tuesday. JAY CALDERON/THE DESERT SUN

Summer’s extreme weather producedrecord harvest for area growers

By Denise GoolsbyThe Desert Sun

ONLINEVisit mydesert.com/video for a short look at the 2012 date harvest and my-desert.com/photos for more pictures of the Coachella Valley date scene.

Date harvest ‘in excellent shape’

Please see DATES, A6

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soon-to-start cap andtradesystem,where largebusinesses with high lev-els of greenhouse gasemissions will buy andsell carbon credits, hesaid. The revenue fromthe program, projected at$660 million to $2 billion,is earmarked for renew-able development, hesaid.

Newsom’s keynote tothe two-day summit,which continues today atthe Palm Springs Conven-tion Center, provided ahigh-energy jolt to a dayof panels and speakerstalking mostly about fa-miliar and longstandingpermitting issues forlarge-scale renewable en-ergy projects and stateand federal governmentinitiatives.

“He seems like he’s thereal thing,” saidMarkWe-ber, manager of the Coa-chella Valley EnterpriseZone, which provides in-centives for businesseslocating in a 56-milestretch of the valley fromThousand Palms to Mec-ca.

“We had a state leaderfocus on the job creationside of renewable energy;that was huge,” he said.

“I can’t think of oneline I didn’t agree with,”said JoeWallace, chief ex-ecutive of the CoachellaValley iHub, the region’s

green business incubatorin Palm Springs.

Citing Imperial Coun-ty’s staggering 29 percentunemploymentrate,New-som zeroed in on thestate’s loss of its compet-itive edge in recent years,the result of funding cutsto education and researchanda failure toappreciatethe threat from otherstates and countries thathave more aggressivelypursued economic devel-opment.

“We’re not just com-peting with cheap labor;we’re competing withcheap genius,” he said.“We have got to wake up.”

Local and nationaleconomiesdobetterwhenthey embrace green ini-tiatives, Newsom argued,pointing to the high eco-nomicgrowthofahandfulof countries that reducedtheir emissions to 1990levels under the1992Kyo-to Protocol and his ownhometown of SanFrancis-co,whichpassedamanda-tory composting lawwhile he was mayor.

“Cities are laborato-ries of innovation,” hesaid. “If you don’t like theway things look when youstand up, stand on yourhead; go local.”

JoanTaylor, chair ofSi-erra Club’s California-Ne-vada desert energy com-mittee, found Newsom’sspeech intriguing but wasdisappointed he didn’tspeak more about rooftopsolar.

“The elephant in theroomisdistributedgener-

ation,” she said, using an-other term for local, roof-top power generation.“It’s going to be too cheapnot to install and it won’tneed policy initiatives.”

Other valley businessand green tech officialssaid theregion ispoised totakeadvantageof thekindof opportunities and eco-nomic growth Newsomenvisioned.

“He’s spot on recogniz-ing the importance ofmaking sure (cap andtrade) revenues go togreen initiatives,” saidArtKimball, project coor-dinator of a green tech ca-reer academy at DesertMirage High School inThermal. “It validateswhat we’re doing; our stu-dents are graduating tojobs that are going to ex-ist.”

Thomas Flavin, CEOofthe Coachella Valley Eco-nomic Partnership, whichisworkingtodiversify theregion’s economy, agreedwith Newsom’s call for anew spirit of economiccompetitiveness.

“The Coachella Valleyis uniquely positioned tobe a leader because theCoachella Valley still hasa sense of common pur-pose,whichmeans impor-tant things can get done,”he said.

K Kaufmann covers energyand green technology andhealth care for The DesertSun and writes the GreenDesert blog. Reach her atk.kaufmann@thedesertsun.com or (760) 778-4622.

“We’re relating it to themoisture and humidity ...they’re in excellentshape.”

The soft, brown, wrin-kly skinned tree fruit thatis at once sweet andchewy ripened about twoweeks earlier than ex-pected this year, and theresult is a high-qualityMedjool harvest, which isalready wrapping up forthe seasonas local compa-nies ship their fruit as faras the Middle East.

InThermal, tworecordtemperature highs wereset — and another oneequaled — just since Sat-urday, capping off a sum-mer of above average

heat. But unlike farmersin the Midwest whosecorn cropswere devastat-ed by drought, the ex-tremeweatheronlyboost-ed date production.

The number of datesharvested across the val-ley is expected to be high-er than the 25 million-pound haul in 2011, ac-cording to Lorrie Cooper,manager of the Indio-based California Date Ad-ministrative Committee.

“The fruit looks reallygood,” she said. “We’rehoping to hit 26 million.”

Close to 53 millionpounds of dates were har-vested in Riverside Coun-ty in2011,an increaseof10million pounds over 2010and demand shows nosigns of slowing. Thespike was due, at least inpart, to more acreage be-

ing harvested and lastyear’s date crop was val-ued at over $41million.

Oasis Date Gardensharvests 14 different va-rieties of dates, but Med-jools account for the bulkof its business. Harrickestimates itwill shipcloseto 1½ million pounds ofdates this year, to pointsacross theglobe includingthe Netherlands, Aus-tralia,Morocco andQatar.About 40 percent of itsharvest is sold interna-tionally.

Domestically, datesare sold primarily to cus-tomers inNewYork, Flor-ida,Texas,California,Ari-zonaandNevadabut, saysHarrick.

Coachella Valley resi-dents will find his Med-jools at Jensen’s FinestFoods and Ralphs — in

clear plastic clamshellcontainers in the producedepartment.

In the Middle East, theMedjools — the largestand the moistest of all va-rieties — are consideredthe crown jewel of dates.

“We ship them duringRamadan to some of theroyal families in the Mid-dle East,” he said.

Dates, along with yo-gurtormilk, are tradition-ally one of the first foodseaten when Muslimsbreak their Ramadan fastafter sundown.

The date palm was in-troducedtoSouthernCali-fornia and Mexico by theSpaniards in the late 18thcentury, but gained aneconomic foothold in theCoachella Valley in theearly 1900s when localfarmers imported off-shoots of commercial va-rieties from Africa andthe Middle East.

“The industry reallygot a boost during WorldWar II,” Indio historianPat Laflin told TheDesert

Sun in 2011. “The militarybought a lot of dates to putin ration packages for sol-diers.”

The men who work inthe date gardens do muchof the heavy lifting work— including clamberingup the multiple-storytrees to pollinate the fruit— but the femaleworkersare entrusted with the fi-nal product.

The women workquickly — one holds around, shallow basketwhile another slides theripe fruit down long, slimstrands.

“Women are betterwith their fingers, they’remore delicate with thefruit,” Harrick said.

Once the fruit isplucked from a stand ofshort palms, the five-woman team climbs intoan enclosed platform on aforklift, and after buck-ling their harnesses, arelifted into the taller trees.They fill theirbasketsandlower the harvest to aworker below.

Once plucked, the softorbs won’t sit in the sun

for long.“We get them immedi-

ately in the freezer for aminimum of four days,”said Harrick. “It protectsthe integrity of the prod-uct and its shelf-life.”

Dates kept in a freezercan last up to a year and ahalf. In a refrigerator, thelife span drops to sixmonths. Leave them onyour kitchen counter onlyif you’re planning to con-sume them relativelyquickly.

“Each (variety of date)has its own unique taste,”said Erica Espinoza, aclerk at the Oasis giftshop. “I like mine semi-dry. They’re not as sweetso I can eat and enjoymore of them.”

She’s partial to Zahidis— she eats them straightup—butwhen it comes toMedjools, she has a littlemore fun with this fruit.

“Weput them in salads,andwe eat themwith pea-nut butter,” she said.

“It’s so sweet and thesaltiness of the peanutbutter is the perfect com-bination.”

DatesContinued from A1

EnergyContinued from A1

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at the Southern CaliforniaEnergy Summit held at the Palm Springs ConventionCenter on Thursday. OMAR ORNELAS/THE DESERT SUN

Workers sort dates by size and quality at the Oasis DateGardens in Thermal. JAY CALDERON/THE DESERT SUN

TOP 10 CROPS INRIVERSIDECOUNTY, 2011

1. Nursery stock - $200 million

2. Milk – $192 million

3. Table grapes - $118 million

4. Hay – $101million

5. Bell peppers – $85 million

6. Eggs - $82 million

7. Lemons - $75 million

8. Avocados - $60 million

9. Dates - $41million

10. Cotton - $38 million