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Wednesday’s vote is widely seen to be the most competitive in Angola’s democratic history © AFP / JOHN WESSELS

Luanda (AFP), Aug 24 – Ballot counting began in Angola Wednesday after polls closed in what was widely seen as the most competitive vote in the country’s democratic history, with incumbent President Joao Lourenco squaring up against charismatic opposition leader Adalberto Costa Junior.

The election has been overshadowed by Angola’s many woes — a struggling economy, inflation, poverty and drought, compounded by the death of a former strongman president.

“All votes have been cast,” said Lucas Quilundo, a spokesman for Angola’s electoral commission after polls closed.

“We can consider that the elections were a success and took place in an exemplary manner”.

Ballot counting began on Wednesday evening © AFP / JOHN WESSELS

Results are expected within a few days. In past elections, results have been contested, in a process that can take several weeks.

The People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has ruled the oil-rich nation for nearly five decades, faced its most serious challenge since the first multi-party vote in 1992.

Eight political parties were running, but the real contest lay between the MPLA and long-standing rival and ex-rebel movement the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).

Pre-voting opinion polls suggested that support for the MPLA — which won 61 percent of the vote in 2017 elections — would dwindle, while UNITA — which has entered an electoral pact with two other parties — would make gains.

But UNITA’s inroads might not be enough to unseat Lourenco, 68, who succeeded veteran leader Jose Eduardo dos Santos five years ago.

Angola’s ruling MPLA is facing the most serious challenge since the country’s first multi-party vote in 1992 © AFP / JOHN WESSELS

Dozens of voters lined up at polling stations in the early morning, but by midday they had slowed to a trickle.

Both leading candidates — Lourenco at the capital’s Lusiada University and Costa Junior in the working-class Nova Vida district — called on the public to make their voices heard while casting their ballots.

Some stations started to close in the early evening about an hour before the scheduled time, AFP reporters said.

– ‘Closer than ever’ –

Costa Junior, 60, is popular among youth — a significant and growing voting bloc — and has pledged to “eradicate poverty” and create jobs.

Opposition leader Adalberto Costa Junior has called for ‘all ballots to be counted’ © AFP / JOHN WESSELS

Analyst Justin Pearce said the race looked “very competitive”.

“The further we’ve gotten from the civil war, the less currency… the MPLA has had,” said the history lecturer at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University.

“The outcome looks like it’s going to be closer than ever before.”

The MPLA traditionally wields a grip over the electoral process and state media in Angola, and opposition and civic groups have raised fears of voter tampering.

Incumbent President Joao Lourenco, here seen arriving to cast his ballot, urged Angolans to vote to ensure ‘it is democracy that wins’ © AFP / Julio PACHECO NTELA

In the working-class district of Cazenga, 57-year-old Miguel said he would welcome the vote’s outcome, whatever it was.

“We have to accept the results, it’s the democratic game,” he said, without giving his surname.

But Alberto Bernardo Muxibo, another voter, disagreed.

“We don’t have a real democracy. The government oppresses the people,” he said.

– Poverty and graft –

Lourenco, a Soviet-educated former general who promised a new era for Angola when he was first elected, is credited with making far-reaching reforms in one of southern Africa’s economic powerhouses.

Some 14.7 million people are registered to vote at 13,200 polling stations across the vast southern African nation © AFP / JOHN WESSELS

“The West would not mind an MPLA victory — even with concerns of vote rigging,” said Johannesburg-based analyst Marisa Lourenco said.

“Governments and companies abroad prefer stability over change”.

And little has changed for most of Angola’s 33 million people, for whom life is a daily grind.

Angola is Africa’s second largest crude producer, but the oil bonanza also nurtured corruption and nepotism under dos Santos, who died in Spain last month.

The low-key, night-time repatriation of his remains in the final leg of campaigning has added a macabre touch to the election.

Dos Santos will be buried on Sunday, which would have been his 80th birthday.

The United States commended Angola for holding a competitive vote.

“Efforts to strengthen democratic institutions will provide a foundation for a safe, prosperous, healthy and inclusive future,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.

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An Ecuadorian Chef’s Eco-Regenerative Cuisine Comes to Quito

With a passionate dedication to agroforestry and sustainable tourism, Rodrigo Pacheco’s cause-based gastronomy has catapulted him into the ranks of the world’s most consequential and forward-looking chefs. On the coast in Manabi, the former contestant on Netflix’s Final Table has spent more than a decade transforming a degraded ecosystem into an edible jungle that fuels his bucket-list restaurant, , in collaboration with the neighboring eco-retreat Tanusas.

Now he’s bringing his ideals to the capital, Quito. acts as an annex to Bocavaldivia, equal parts dining room and educational space. With the help of architect Felipe Escudero, the restaurant in the city’s La Floresta neighborhood–which is undergoing a revival thanks to endeavors such as Escudero’s restoration of the Quito Contemporary Art Museum–is equipped with a transparent roof that connects patrons with the outdoors and an open-format interior where chefs employ traditional cooking techniques in a volcanic stone kitchen from the “center of earth.” On the menu: a range of artfully plated dishes made of esoteric ingredients that put the country’s biodiversity on display, from gum fruit to tocte (Colombian walnut) to roasted tree tomato. —Nate Storey

Louis Vuitton is rethinking the design of its leather ateliers with sustainability in mind.

“Sustainability in fashion doesn’t only mean sourcing green materials or embracing circularity. Factories and workshops can–and should be–eco-friendly too. Which is why Louis Vuitton is reconceiving the design of its leather ateliers with environmental impact in mind. The first in this initiative is Oratoire, a 65,000-square-foot single-story bioclimatic building in the Loir-et-Cher region of central France.” [H/T ]

A new ad watchdog is calling out celebrities for promoting misleading NFT projects.

“Since an early January flashpoint, a stumbling market, and a litany of foul play has been exposed some unsightly truths about the NFT market, leading to Truth in Advertising (TINA), a non-profit consumer advocacy group, to try to take action ahead of the slow-moving hand of the law. First up on TINA’s hit list: celebs. TINA sent out letters to 19 in total, informing the recipients that their promotion of various NFT projects are misleading, since they have a “material connection to the NFT companies they are promoting.” According to FTC law, these connections must be laid out in full in conjunction with any kind of endorsement.” [H/T ]

A London church will remove a mural that hits too close to home for Grenfell victims.

“A London church is to remove a large mural depicting a city ablaze over its entrance that has ‘acquired unfortunate connotations’ since the Grenfell Tower fire. The once-garish mural of the Last Judgment, commissioned in 1977 for St Peter’s, St Helier, in Morden, south London, was ‘never universally popular,’ according to a Church of England court ruling. The image had faded, making it difficult to see the Christ-like figure, wrote Philip Petchey, the diocesan chancellor, in his ruling on the mural’s removal.” [H/T ]

Adam Nathaniel Furman creates a colorful monument to queer people in Birmingham.

“Adam Nathaniel Furman has created a colorful structure called Babs Baldachino to coincide with the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Created as a monument to LGBTQ+ people in the city, Babs Baldachino was made for the city’s contemporary arts festival Fierce Festival and designed as a ‘queer monument to sit at the Edgbaston Reservoir,’ the festival said. Furman designed the monument to provide ‘moments of pleasure’ for visitors and to promote the presence of queer people involved in activities relating to the Commonwealth Games sports event, which held its closing ceremony on 8 August.” [H/T ]

The High Line appoints Educational Alliance’s Alan van Capelle as executive director.

“The High Line, the elevated park on the west side of Manhattan, will soon have a new Executive Director alongside a renewed focus on accountability and community voices. Alan van Capelle will be taking over the park’s leadership position from High Line co-founder and current interim director Joshua David. His appointment suggests a focus on combatting urban displacement and gentrification caused by the High Line’s popularity.” [H/T ]

OpenSea gives $100,000 to the DAO Friends with Benefits to take over its homepage.

“OpenSea is turning over its homepage on Friday to feature works by what may be the hottest DAO to date. Friends With Benefits, founded in 2020 by Trevor McFedries, ‘a DJ, entrepreneur, and aspiring basketball star,’ is debuting 10 new commissioned artworks as part of a project called The Flock. The artists and DAO members include artists Andrew Benson, Ayaka Ohira, Case Simmons, Ezra Miller, Niall Ashley, Nic Hamilton, Petra Cortright, Sarah Zucker, Tyler Givens, and Vivian Fu. OpenSea put up $100,000 to commission the NFT art, split equally among the artists.” [H/T ]

Today’s attractive distractions:

Archaeologists unearth an near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Athleisure and shapewear owe a thing or two to Olivia Newton-John’s “.”

The latest trend in restaurant merch? Scented candles that smell like .

Lego launches a series of celebrations worldwide to ring in its .

Borrowing a page from the  campaign, which unsuccessfully attempted earlier this year to qualify a water funding initiative for the November 2022 ballot, Governor Newsom announced a new water supply strategy on August 11.

Perhaps with the presidency in mind, or perhaps because he really means it, Newsom’s remarks were surprisingly accommodating towards those of us who have been fighting for more water supply infrastructure.

For example, Newsom said “We have a renewed sense of urgency to address this issue head on, but we do so from a multiplicity of perspectives and ways. Not just from a scarcity mindset – so much of the water conversation in this state has been about conservation – but that is a relatively small component of the overall strategy we are introducing here today. What we are focusing on is creating more water, moving away from a scarcity mindset to one of abundance.”

This shift in emphasis, if it is genuine, cannot come a moment too soon. Over the past decade, total water diversions for cities, farms, and to maintain ecosystems totaled 75 million acre feet per year. Every primary source for all this water is imperiled.

California’s reservoirs, most of which are in-stream, cannot be used to store water from early season storms, such as the deluge that fell in December 2021. If early season storms are allowed to fill these reservoirs, should a late-season storm hit the state, there would be no reservoir capacity left to buffer the runoff and prevent flooding. But during droughts, when an adequate Sierra snowpack fails to develop in order to deliver snowmelt well into the summer months, and no late-season rainstorms inundate the state, summer arrives and the reservoirs are empty.

Groundwater pumping, averaging 18.7 million acre-feet per year, has withdrawn water faster than it can be replenished with percolating runoff. To restore aquifers as a sustainable source of water storage and supply, from now on total annual withdrawals are going to need to be less than the annual amount of natural recharge.

The water California imports via the Colorado Aqueduct, nearly 5 million acre-feet per year, depends on Colorado River runoff that is stored in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which are both at lower levels than they’ve been since those massive reservoirs were first built and filled up.

This is a serious but manageable problem. Save more water in the reservoirs. Change the rules so farmers can sell to urban water agencies their water allocations during drought years without losing their permanent water rights. And build more water supply infrastructure.

Newsom’s just released water supply strategy describes how the projects he’s proposing will create “about 7 million acre feet” of new water per year, but analysis shows that’s not quite true.

The biggest part of Newsom’s new water strategy is to “expand storage above and below ground.” This accounts for 4 million acre feet out of the 7 million acre feet total. But this is misleading, as noted in the footnote on page 3 of the 16 page document, which reads, “Additional storage capacity does not equate to a similar volume of new water supply.”

Indeed it does not. Reservoirs are never completely emptied, and, especially in the case of in-stream reservoirs, they are rarely filled to capacity. As for below-ground storage in aquifers, they can only fill slowly through large spreading basins to capture floodwater in rural areas or via percolation ponds in urban areas, which means water can only be withdrawn from them at the rate water can be injected into them. The so-called “yield” of reservoirs and aquifers is usually, at best, only about one-third of their total storage capacity. These storage projects therefore will not contribute 4 million acre feet per year, but are more likely to add around 1.5 million acre feet.

Nonetheless, if Newsom can pull off these storage projects it will be a huge accomplishment. But how?

The centerpiece of these storage projects is the proposed Sites Reservoir, an off-stream colossus to be built in a dry valley west of the Sacramento River and north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The Sites proposal has endured relentless attacks by environmentalists. To appease them, the design has already been downsized from 2 million acre feet of capacity to 1.5 million acre feet. Will Sites ever get built? What about the proposed Pacheco Reservoir, a desperately needed backup to Anderson Reservoir, essential to guarantee water security to the southern counties in the San Francisco Bay Area? Environmentalists have declared war on these projects, and in California, environmentalists always win.

Newsom’s plan also calls for a doubling of the state’s desalination capacity, adding another 84,000 acre feet per year. First of all, this is a pittance. And most of the existing desalination in California comes from just one source, the Carlsbad desalination plant, which delivers 55,000 acre feet of fresh water per year from the ocean just north of San Diego.

This past May, the California Coastal Commission denied approval to build a similar large plant—after making the contractor spend over 20 years and over $100 million on permit fees and engineering submittals. After this costly setback, it is unlikely any contractor will ever again apply to build a large scale desalination plant in California.

Despite its potential to be a game changer, desalination will never add more than a small fraction of the water California needs, and nothing Newsom’s doing is trying to change that.

Newsom, to his credit, expressed exasperation that environmentalist regulations have prevented as many good projects from getting built as bad ones. Does he mean it? Here’s what he said:

“The time to get these projects completed is ridiculous. Permits take years. One of the principles of this plan is to change our permitting, address the regulatory thickets to fast track these projects, and move things forward.”

How?

The only other significant elements of Newsom’s plan are to increase urban wastewater recycling capacity, a relatively uncontroversial idea that could add a substantial 1.8 million acre feet to California’s annual water supply, and, no surprise here, another 500,000 acre feet of water savings per year via even more urban water conservation.

Altogether, Newsom’s water supply strategy will not add 7 million acre feet of annual new water. If every proposed storage facility is built, and the proposed water recycling and desalination projects are also all eventually completed, it will add about half that much.

It is premature to be cynical about this plan. But making it happen will require unprecedented compromises from California’s powerful environmentalist lobby. Here are some questions for Governor Newsom:

Are you prepared to demand revisions to the Coastal Act to fast track desalination plants at a scale that will actually make a meaningful contribution to California’s urban water supply?

Will you to fire your appointees to the Coastal Commission who vote against desalination plants?

How do you intend to revise CEQA so it can no longer be used to delay or completely derail water infrastructure proposals?

Recognizing that off-stream reservoirs are capable of storing flood water from early season storms, unlike in-stream reservoirs, are you going to use your executive authority to fund and fast-track construction of the proposed Sites Reservoir, Pacheco Reservoir, Los Padres Reservoir, and others?

Are you willing to use your executive authority to fund and fast-track the rehabilitation of the Anderson Reservoir, and the seismic retrofit and expansion of the San Luis Reservoir?

What do you intend to do to repair the California Aqueduct, the Delta Mendota Aqueduct, and the Friant-Kern Canal, in order to restore their full capacity to deliver water to agricultural and urban water agencies?

It will cost about $20 billion to build the capacity to recycle all of California’s urban wastewater. Are you ready to spend this money? Are you making sure the direct potable reuse standards will be complete early next year as promised, so cities can inject treated water right back into the water mains, and aren’t forced to build costly pipe systems to deliver treated water to aquifers?

Will you not only fight and win the battle to keep Diablo Canyon open, but also build new reactors, so Californians can have ample electric power for purposes that would include the power necessary to treat urban wastewater, desalinate seawater, and pump water to consumers?

When it comes to water supply strategy in California, these are just a few of the tough questions. We may hope Governor Newsom is prepared to go out on a limb to answer them all in the affirmative. It may even help him in his inevitable campaign for U.S. president. But so far, all we have are somewhat encouraging words and yet to be implemented half-measures.

The post Questions About Water for Governor Newsom appeared first on California Globe.

This content was originally published here.