Several projects are in the pipeline that could strengthen the Port of West Sacramento as a hub of green activity as soon as 2011.

The year was 1943, the world was at war and Dick Bertolucci cruised the streets of Sacramento in his first car — a black ’33 Chevy Roadster. He was 13 and didn’t have a license.

Northern California manufacturers and distributors of everything from barrels to bottles to pesticides for the region’s wine industry are using the same juxtaposition to sum up the wine market: “up and down.”

On paper it looks like the Capital Region has the makings of a world-class clean-tech hub: access to policy makers at the Capitol, access to innovative research churning out of UC Davis, and housing that’s affordable for green-collar workers. What this equation doesn’t account for, however, is how fast California is losing its competitive edge to other states and the global economy.

This summer, the Milken Institute released its second report on manufacturing in California. Seven years the institute sounded the alarm that California was losing its manufacturing edge, the driving force for postwar prosperity from the aerospace industry through high technology. The institute said policy makers should pay attention to the state’s manufacturing decline.

Clinton “C.C.” Myers has been a hero at least three times during his life. The Rancho Cordova builder says he has built or rebuilt 1,000 bridges, but his company’s speed and efficiency in rebuilding three bridges devastated by natural disasters in the past five years has won him national acclaim.