Tents. The first one in 2009 was a minor grounding where the ship did not even get stuck. It just brushed up against the bank in the sacramento river. Reporter but the latest incident is by no means minor. And now the board, the coast gua guard, and the ntsb are all trying to get to the bottom of it. The Lessons Learned business and you evaluate and go over it with a finetoothed comb. Reporter and we are back here live. You can see the lights of that oil tanker. It remains anchored in the bay as investigators describe it go through it with a finetoothed comb. Now, also, the ntsb has joined the effort. They have an investigator here in the bay area working in conjunction with the coast guard. Also, the coast guard tells me tonight that they conducted alcohol and drug tests on the pilo pilots. They say the results are in on the alcohol test and those results came back negative. Reporting live on treasure island, im jodi hernandez, nbc bay area news. Okay. Thank you, jodi. So why was the tanker allowed to be traveling under the bay bridge when the visibility was down to just a quarter mile . Thats the question thats at the center of some changes that could come in the wake of mondays accident. Nbc bay areas arturo santiago joins us with more. Arturo . Reporter this is a case even a prolific Watchdog Group was caught unaware. The good news is this didnt take a massive disaster to discover a critical short coming. On november 7, the 2007, this ship hit the tower and spilled more than 50,000 gallons of oil. Shortly after the disaster, a new harbor safety plan was put in place. In it were guidelines for large ships operating in reduced visibility. Nine critical maneuvering areas were identified in which ships are not allowed to set sail when visibility is reduced to less that half a mile. When the overseas reymar hit it yesterday, there was only a quarter mile visibility and a gap in the safety plan has been exposed. For example, that shipping channel from the bay bridge to the oakland astuary is covered by the restrictions. However, it looks like maybe the bay bridge itself is not part of the restrictions. Reporter the executive director of San Francisco baykeeper, and she is on the Harbor Safety Committee. She tells me the bay bridge should definitely be listed as a critical maneuvering area. It seems that theres a possibility that just a slight change to the rules will bring the bridge into a critical maneuver. Reporter making the change could take a few weeks. The Harbor Safety Committee meets thursday, and the item is not on the agenda. It will meet again next month. Until then, the investigation into how the ship hit the bridge continues as does the work to close the gap in the San Francisco harbors Committee Safety plan. It was a close call and a Good Opportunity for us to look at all of our planning and response systems. Reporter now the Harbor Safety Committee is not only going to go over those critical maneuvering areas, theyre going to review their entire harbor safety plan. Live in San Francisco, im arturo santiago, nbc bay area news. Okay. Thank you, arturo. Of course after continuing coverage of the story including raw video and pictures of the damage, you can find it all at nbcbayarea. Com. New tonight at 6 00, hospital staff called into action today when a utility failure disrupted the water supply at one of the hospital campuses in oakland. It happened around 1 00 this afternoon. Forced to call a code dry which means no use of water except for urgent patient needs. They say they have minimal disruptions to essential food, water, and supplies. Less than an hour ago that was canceled. As a precaution the Medical Center has postponed all elective surgeries for at least 24 hours. On the peninsula now, an apparent case of a driver mistaking the gas for the brake. A car crashed into a building today at palo altos town country shopping certainty. The car was pushed into one of the shops by another car which also hit two parked cars. Thankfully no one was hurt. The car did go through a storefront. It struck an Employee Entrance at the rear of the building, as you can see a. Construction crew was working. A man facing murder charges in connection with a new years day liquor store crash pled not guilty today. David morales is charged with two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. Morales lost control of his car and slammed into another car which then hit a liquor store killing two people inside. Today morales attorney called the charges too harsh and accused of prosecutor of overreaching. Told the city has a zero tolerance policy and morales is a known gang member. Governor brown is telling a federal court that enough is enough. He wants to end the years of federal oversight of californias prisons. The prison system, i should say. The governor pointed to a huge stack of books and binders. You see that to the right of him, which he says constitute 25 courtordered studies and research costing tens of millions of dollars. Brown says at some point the job is done. But i really think weve had some good people working on it and after decades of confusion and mismanagement, our prison system is under some very tough leadership. The fed stepped in after a judge found the prisons were overcrowded and lacked basic medical care. California has made significant progress and that the inmate population is down by 43,000 people since 2006. He adds california has done a lot to address the deficiencies in its prison Mental Health programs. A computer hitch is being blamed for a problem thats left tens of thousands of californians unable to use their electronic benefit card to buy food and other critical supplies this week. The problems started sunday when about 40,000 were inadvertently canceled after a software update. The state issued cards could be used at grocery stores, farmers markets, even some restaurants. The problem is expected to be fixed by the end of the day. The people who still have problems can get replacement cards at county social service centers. San jose al fresco. It may look more like San Francisco and oakland with more places to sit outside to have a meal or a cup of coffee. The San Jose CityCouncil Voted today to create pilot programs for curb cafes known as parks. Kris sanchez joins us from city hall in san jose. Kris, these are popular when and where in san jose . Reporter well, you can expect to see them within the next year or so. They have been champing at the bit to make this a reality and even before the vote was cast today there were Business Owners who had their plans ready to go. Not a bad day for a steaming bowl of soup in san jose but most days in san jose are sunny and warm enough to step outside. Thats one of the reasons the owners of 569 want in on san joses curb cafe program to turf select parking spots. I think its a conflict between here and downtown but certainly beautify the street and Small Business as well. Reporter a few years back the city did something similar along south first street only that time the Redevelopment Agency footed the bill to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. This time businesses who want the curb cafe must pay to maintain them without a cent from the city allowing the businesses to customize the curb cafe for their own businesses. Ricardos request a simpler application process with a onetime 600 Construction Permit and a 500 sidewalk cafe permit renewable every year for 75. What we found is we could do it faster and they could do it less expensively. Ricardo says it will happen through a coalition of the willing. And if neighboring businesses are not onboard with the curb cafe or the decreased parking, it wont happen. Im kind of jealous the next door neighbor is having all this patio space and people sit there. I dont. Reporter look to San Francisco and the parklets there or oakland to see that the concept can work even in cities where parking spots are hard to come by. Theres always Second Street and san fernando. And then we have the other side and the right side. I think theres still parking available. Reporter it might take getting use d to not being able to park exactly in front of where you want to dine. During the oneyear pilot period the city will only permit five of these curb cafes, parklets, as theyre called throughout the bay area. If they work, we may see more. Kris sanchez, nbc bay area news. Okay. Thank you, kris. Tonight might not be the night to sit outside, though. Coming up, big changes just around the corner, jeff. Thats right. Some of the coldest air not only of the season but of the past year looks to arrive as we continue throughout this week. The possibility of low snow. How low that snow will go. That will be improving on wednesday. We have it all in a few minutes. And an update on jerry browns health. What hes saying about his second battle with cancer. Also . Im scott budman at the consumer show. Theyre lighter, theyre brighter. Theyre thinner and theyre on their way to your living room. Coming up a peek at the televisions of the future and why we may all look better soon. Shifting testing in california schools. Tonight a new plan to change californias standardized testing at our elementary and high schools. The state superintendent of public instruction made a new recommendation today. He wants to move from multiple choice tests to those that require students to think critically, solve problems, and show a greater depth of knowledge. A task force met for six months and came up with that recommendation. Believes the new testing will likely provide students with the realworld skills they need for college and for a career. Now its up to the state legislature which must improve the new design and issue guidelines before education officials can start rewriting the test. If they get the green light, the new exams could debut in the 201415 school year. The online courses arent getting the hit they hoped for. The university spent more than 4 million marketing new online courses. The plan was to offer uc quality courses online to anyone including those not enrolled at the school. Classes cost between 1,400 and 2,200. Only one nonuc student signed up for an online class in the past year. Another major problem, others like stanford and harvard offer many for free. You are watching one right now. Of course talking about the it tv set. The hottest ticket at the Consumer Electronics show in las vegas and our business and tech reporter scott budman to peer into the future. Do you get to sample all of the these . Is it for sale or just display . Reporter these are all samples. Theyre not for sale yet. Sort of what you will be able to buy and that goes for a lot youre about to see. The future is bright and the future is very thin if youre a television set. Theyre still big draws and theyre Getting Better. When it comes to television, we still like things big. The big screen, high resolution, you know, to impress our friends who come over to watch sports or strange reality shows. But after the big push from 3dtv turned out to be an idea whose time had not yet come, tv manufacturers changed the game a bit. Now theyre making television to improve on things we already like. Really the direction were all headed in in this show is perfecting that thin tv. Were talking now about tvs that are three credit card thin if you can believe that. Its really thin across the board. Reporter as in a better, sharper picture. At panasonic theyre showing off organic light emitting diodes, lg and samsung talk about 4k television. Give it time and well all call it a better package. This tv is super thin with the slightly curved screen so everyone can see better. Thats the best part with the fivedegree curve. It opens it up for the audience. Theres not a bad seat in the house anywhere. Reporter another trend, greener tv sets. Scoring higher ratings with environmentalists. The whole manufacturing process from supplies to from cradle to cradle. From beginning to end. The designers considerate it, the engineers consider it and we make sure everything is easy to recycle, easy to take apart. Reporter big screen, big show. In the big picture,he tv making industry is getting a little thin. All right. Thin and big. We also have a lot of smaller gadgets that dont get a whole lot of attention but theyre cool. This you attach to your bicycle. You pedal and it generates energy. We have a lot of ultra books. You still see a lot of these hybrid laptop tablet computers. This is a digital scale. It actually connects to your smartphone and it will smile at you if you lose weight. It will frown at you if you gain weight. So technology with a little personality. We will have all sorts of gadgets over the next couple of days from here. Ill send it back to you. I dont want to be taunted by my scale any more than i need to be. Thank you, scott. It may be a boy scout recommended for the rank of eagle scout after a year of turmoil and public pressure. Back in october Ryan Andersons application for promotion was denied, as you know, by his troup leader because he admitted hes gay. His mother sent in an online petition demanding fairness for his son. He was a guest on Ellen Degeneres talk show. Now theres word that a San Francisco review board for the scouts has unanimously approved the promotion. Ryans parents are calling it a huge victory. However, the Boy Scouts National organization is still denying his application. We turn things over to our chief meteorologist, jeff ranieri. Quite literally it is freezing in many parts of the bay area tonight. It is going to be dropping down to the freezing mark again. After starting off with so much fog, visibility down to a quarter mile and less. Were seeing it improve this afternoon. Limited across san mateo, thats where well have the best chance, again, as you look at tomorrow morning for patchy fog to develop. Otherwise for today, once the fog clears out, a lot of sunshine. Temperatures even popped up into low to mid50s in the south bay. 61 and 62 currently for that daytime high in gilroy. Current numbers in the upper 40s and low 50s. Lets take you outside of that live hd sky network on this tuesday. We have the haze out here. Poor air quality. Thats all Getting Better as we head throughout the next 48 hours with some weather changes that include much colder air coming into the mix. You can see the golden gate bridge. Lets get you to the weather changes. The storm track is just off to the north. Its going to continue to swing down. It will provide a chance of some rain but most notably over the next few days, its about the coldest air of potentially the past year arriving here across the bay area. Thats going to bring not only the chance for more fog but also some showers to the north and snow levels that could go as low as 1,000 feet. Well start to see the chance of showers increasing by 2 00 p. M. Tomorrow. Not expect iing too much. The best chance of accumulating rainfall as we head throughout thursday morning, when we have the best chance of some low snow across the bay area. Not a whole lot of moisture with that storm system as it moves in. So were only looking at the a dusting from the north bay hills all the way down into the south bay. We are tracking the changes that will allow temperatures tomorrow to warm up into the low to mid50s. More coming up in just a bit. Okay, jeff, well see you shortly. Officials announcing preliminary plans to create new protections for a river that runs through the national park. The courtordered plan to protect the merced river was posted today on the parks website. It includes capping the number of daily visitors to just under 20,000 and banning new rentals. Visitors will still be able to use their own on the merced river but the specific area to avoid banks from being eroded. One unpopular change considered closing the wintertime Curry Village ice rink. The park will take Public Comment before any changes take place. It is a landmark California Law once considered untouchable, but is it time to throw out prop 13 or change it . Why lawmakers may now be able to do the unthinkable. Plus reporter san jose is looking for a new top cop by marianne favro. Ill take a look at the questions the new candidate may face. And a special delivery for team oracle. Theyre back in business [ crickets chirping ] [ traffic passing ] [ music box lullaby ] [ man on tv, indistinct ] [ lullaby continues ] [ baby coos ] [ man announcing ] millions are still exposed to the dangers. Of secondhand smoke. And some of them cant do anything about it. [ continues ] [ gasping ] as part of a heart healthy diet. Thats true. But you still have to go to the gym. The one and only, cheerios. And now. You [ giggles ] the one and only, cheerios californias prop 13, the historic tax cut initiative changed the flow of state politics. 600 billion, billion, dollars in property taxes. Okay. Thats good. Meanwhile, local governments have suffered and counted on the increasingly unreliable state fund to help them out and those funds are harder and harder to come by. Voters have balked at changing prop 13 so why is it even potentially that we could change it now . Yeah, two factors have converged here, come into play. First, annual state deficits. They have made it increasingly difficult to provide enough funds for all kinds of local Government Programs including local health, sanitation, education you name it. And being second, with the democrats enjoying that rare twothirds majority, something weve been talk iing about, may have that in the legislature, they now have the necessary twothirds vote to place the constitutional changes before the voters. Okay. No one wants their own taxes changed. They want other peoples taxes changed. So what changes could be on the table . Isnt that true . Two separate proposals would lower the approval threshold. One on transportation and the other on partial taxes back to tha