Local groups debate the value of San Diego’s electrical grid

Good Morning, I’m Debbie Cruz….it’s Thursday, March 14th.

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SDG-AND-E and the group advocating for a municipal utility system are arguing over the value of the city’s electrical grid. More on that next. But first... let’s do the headlines….

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The county board of supervisors yesterday approved the construction of 150 new sleeping cabins in Spring Valley and creating an RV parking site near Lakeside, to help homeless people get off the streets.

The sleeping cabins will be located on Jamacha Road, near the 125 freeway.

And the RV parking site will be located at the intersection of Willow Road and Ashwood Street.

Supervisors approved spending more than 23 million dollars for both projects which get their funding from the American Rescue Plan Act.

The Supervisors also accepted 10-million-dollars in state funding to help pay for the sleeping cabins.

Construction is scheduled to begin next year.

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The county is asking San Diegans to help identify ways to improve its disaster management through a survey and a webinar happening today.

The feedback will be used to create recommendations to help the community before, during and after a disaster.

The webinar will be held through Zoom at 5-30 this evening.

To register for it or to fill out the survey, check “engage dot san diego county dot gov” under the Regional Disaster Management section to find the details.

The last day to fill out the survey is Sunday.

Once the feedback is collected, it’ll be sent to the Board of Supervisors.

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The SD-SU men's basketball team is opening the 20-24 Mountain West Men's Basketball Tournament this afternoon.

They will be taking on UN-LV in the quarterfinal.

The game starts at 2-30 P-M and you can watch it on CBS Sports Network.

The winner of today’s game will advance to the semi final tomorrow (Friday), against whoever wins the game between Utah and Fresno State.

The championship game is on Saturday.

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From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now. Stay with me for more of the local news you need.

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SDG-AND-E and the group advocating for a municipal utility system are sparring over the value of the city’s electrical grid.

Environment reporter Erik Anderson says system value is important if the property changes hands.

The investor-owned utility says the value estimated by their paid consultant  is significantly higher than previous estimates.  A utility funded review puts the value at between 7.4 and 9.3 billion dollars.  SDGE’s Scott Crider says lost revenue over that time could push the cost closer to 11 billion dollars.  Scott Crider, SDG&E “When you look at the actual costs of the assets themselves, the wires, the meters and the poles that we have today.  You know, we have today.  That is a value that they would have to purchase.” Municipal power advocate Bill Powers says the utility consultant is overestimating the value of the distribution system.  The city consultant’s estimates put the value between 1.7 and 4.3 billion dollars. Erik Anderson KPBS News.

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Reporter Erik Anderson also brings us this story about the California State Parks Foundation warning that climate change is putting state parks at risk.

He says the group wants the state to invest in parks for the future.

Darren Smith, California Department of Parks and Recreation. “What we’re looking at is one of the former very dense groves of Torrey Pine trees, probably the densest in the reserve.” Local Parks official Darren Smith says the Torrey Pines State Reserve is already feeling the effects of climate change.  He says these now dead Torrey Pine trees were ravaged by a bark beetle infestation, after the conifers were weakened by years of drought and hot temperatures.  The California State Park Foundation’s Rachel Norton says Torrey Pines is just one of nearly 300 state parks that need help becoming more resilient. Rachel Norton, California State Parks Foundation “They, I think, represent what we love about California. From redwoods to beaches to deserts to mountains. And as such they’re just really important places.” The study calls for regular funding to help turn state parks into climate resilience centers. Erik Anderson KPBS News.

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Sepsis is a disease that's quite deadly and still somewhat of a mystery.

At UC-SD, doctors and med-tech engineers are trying to crack the code with new diagnostic techniques and artificial intelligence.

Sci-tech reporter Thomas Fudge has the story.

Steve Israel was a healthy man in his early 40s when, one day, he noticed symptoms that made him think he had the flu. Then he started having trouble breathing and went to an urgent care clinic. He was then sent to the local hospital in Temecula. As things got worse, he was medevaced to the UCSD medical center. He says just before that, his wife had an ominous talk at Temecula Valley Hospital. “The medical folks there told my wife, make sure you say goodbye before he gets on the helicopter. So the way she interpreted that was, ‘We don’t know if he’s going to be alive when you get down to San Diego and when the helicopter gets there.” Israel had gotten sepsis. He says his lungs soon collapsed and his kidneys and gallbladder also failed. The thing that saved his life, at UCSD, was a machine that oxygenates the blood when your lungs no longer work. One man who played a crucial part of Steve’s story was Gabriel Wardi. He was the ER doctor who ordered the helicopter flight to UCSD, where Wardi now is director of the school’s hospital sepsis program. He says with sepsis, speed of diagnosis is a matter of life or death. “Because the earlier we catch Sepsis, and the earlier we start some of the life-saving therapies, the better people do. So now what we try to do, particularly in our emergency department, is to catch them as quickly as we can, and that way we are able to start the therapies like IV antibiotics, and give patients some fluids to kinda prevent that worsening infection.” Put simply, sepsis is an infection that gets out of control. It is often bacterial but it can be viral or caused by a fungus. Wardi says every year in the U.S. 1.7 million people get it and 270 thousand die from it. The groups of people most at risk include infants, the elderly and people with weak immune systems. At UCSD, Wardi and colleagues have created an AI system, in use at UCSD emergency departments, to spot people at high risk of sepsis. “As soon as someone checks into our triage system, our machine learning model starts to ingest data from them. What does that mean? It means their vital signs. Their comorbidities. The medications that they take at home. And it starts to generate a risk score.” If the risk score is high enough, the system sends out an alert to the emergency room staff. UCSD deep learning researcher Aaron Boussina was on the team that created the AI model. “If a patient walks into the emergency department, there’s about a five percent occurrence rate of sepsis. If you get one of these alerts, your risk is ten to 20 times higher.” But even if you identify a patient who’s likely to get sepsis, you still can’t be sure what’s causing it, and what the best treatment would be. And that’s where another new diagnostic tool comes in: It melts DNA to figure out if the sepsis pathogen is bacterial, viral or fungal. A blood sample is taken from a person, it’s placed under a microscope and heat is applied to it. Stepanie Fraley is a bioengineer, also at UCSD, who has created a new technology she calls MeltRead. Speaking in her lab, she entwines two of her fingers to mimic a double helix, and says when a DNA sample melts, that twisty double helix actually unravels. The amount of heat that requires, and the way the DNA unravels, identifies the pathogen that caused the infection. “We get a signature from that. We call it a melt signature. And so we’re able to match melting signatures from a sample to melting signatures that we’ve seen before.” She says using MeltRead instead of waiting for a blood culture saves a lot of time, taking hours not days. Again, with sepsis, time is of the essence. Fraley still awaits FDA approval to use her technology in a clinic. She and others have founded a company to commercialize MeltRead when the time comes. For all the research and the efforts to diagnose sepsis, Steve Israel still has no idea how he got it seven years ago or what kind of infection caused it. Nothing about his age of medical history made him a likely candidate. When he reflects on his experience, he thinks of the good fortune he had, having a medical team that knew about sepsis and took his condition seriously… like the physician's assistant at urgent care who called for an ambulance to send him to the hospital. “That person could have sent me home and said, ‘Here’s some medication. Here’s a breathing treatment.’ I think if that didn’t happen I would have died in my living room at home a couple hours later.” But now he’s a sepsis survivor, living in Temecula with his wife and three kids. SOQ.

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Dozens of San Diego high school students can see a little bit better today… thanks to free eye exams and a new pair of glasses.

Education reporter M.G. Perez says the eye clinic came to them on campus.

15-year-old Mariah Jordan has never had an eye exam before. “I thought I only had one bad eye…but I guess I have two Mariah is a junior at 37-ECB community school in City Heights. She and many of her classmates are getting free eye exams and a new pair of glasses. The San Diego County Office of Education partnered with VSP Vision Eyes of Hope...a nonprofit eye health company providing services to students with families who don’t have vision insurance. In many cases, they get the exam, a prescription for lenses, and new eyeglasses by the end of the school day. is coordinator of the VSP mobile eye clinic …“They’re just going through life..when they’re able to put their glasses on at the end of the day..their eyes open up …this is what the world is supposed to look like…trees have leaves!” …and students are left with plenty of smiles, too MGP KPBS News.

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That’s it for the podcast today. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. Join us again tomorrow for the day’s top stories. I’m Debbie Cruz. Thanks for listening and have a great Thursday.