Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has appointed Rick Frank, executive director of the California Center for Environmental Law and Policy (CCELP), and former California Assemblyman Phil Isenberg ’67 to a special panel charged with developing a strategic plan to sustain and manage California’s delta.
The seven-member Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force was created as part of legislation signed by the governor last September in response to the Lower Jones Tract levee failure and findings that indicate a heightened chance of a major earthquake in or near the Delta sometime within the next 50 years. The panel will focus on issues related to sustainable ecosystems, land use, transportation, utilities, water supply uses, recreation, and flood management in the delta, which provides drinking water to 23 million Californians and irrigation to seven million acres of state agricultural land.
Frank is the former chief deputy attorney general for legal affairs at the California Department of Justice. He joined the law school in 2006 following a 30-year career in California government, and is an expert in environmental law, land use, energy issues, and property rights.
Isenberg is president of Isenberg/O’Haren Government Relation. He served in the California State Assembly from 1982 to 1996, where he was a member of the Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee. Prior to his legislative career, Isenberg served as mayor of Sacramento from 1975 to 1982.
In addition to Frank and Isenberg, task force panel members include Monica Florian, a planning executive from Huntington Beach; Thomas McKernan, chief executive officer of the Automobile Club of Southern California and Auto Club Enterprises; Sunne Wright McPeak, president and chief executive officer of the California Emerging Technology Fund; William Reilly, an investment company executive and former administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and UC Berkeley civil and environmental engineering professor Raymond Seed.