Of concern is potentially migrating dioxins from pentachlorophenol, a wood preservative that was used at the mill site before being banned in the mid-1980s. In response, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control has hired an engineering firm to do a new round of testing at the site.
Pacific Gas and Electric will pay to remove soil possibly tainted by century-old gas plants and investigate groundwater contamination in a San Francisco shoreline area under the terms of a deal announced Monday.
The agreement represents the third and final settlement reached in a lawsuit filed in 2014 over pollution from manufactured gas plants operated by PG&E in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
In earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic, before diagnostic testing was widely available, it was difficult for public health officials to keep track of the infection’s spread or predict where outbreaks were likely to occur. Attempts to get ahead of the coronavirus that causes the disease are still complicated by the fact that people can be infected and spread the virus even without experiencing symptoms themselves.
We’re facing another very dry year, which follows one of the driest on record for Northern California and one of the hottest on record statewide.
The 2012-16 drought caused unprecedented stress to California’s ecosystems and pushed many native species to the brink of extinction, disrupting water management throughout the state. Are we ready to manage our freshwater ecosystems through another drought?
Drought has forced several states to rethink how they use the Colorado River, but Utah is trying to figure out how to get more water out of it. Utah’s plan to build a pipeline from Lake Powell to the St. George area has raised eyebrows from the six other Colorado River Basin states. In September, those states wrote a letter reminding Utah of their history of collaboration. It concluded by saying that the pipeline could result in litigation. Utah’s response was to create a new water board.
As Colorado digs out from the recent blizzard, each heavy shovel full of snow proves the storm brought plenty of moisture. But is it enough to free the state from its drought conditions?
Russ Schumacher, the Colorado state climatologist, said the answer largely depends on location. The brunt of the storm hit east of the Continental Divide, dumping around two feet of snow in the Foothills and Eastern Plains. Meanwhile, preliminary snowfall reports show only a few inches accumulated on the Western Slope.
Construction of Escondido’s $65 million Membrane Filtration Reverse Osmosis Facility for Agriculture commenced recently, marking a milestone in the City’s goal of providing agriculture growers a high-quality irrigation supply and easing the burden on its wastewater infrastructure.
State officials estimated that California and Californians would get $150 billion. Here’s a closer look at where the money is expected to go.
Local tribes, schools and nonprofits have developed a new high school curriculum that seeks to encourage environmental advocacy through an Indigenous lens. The advocacy and water protection curriculum meets state standards in science, social studies, health, history and language arts and seeks to bolster “culturally informed education” in the classroom.
I’ve been writing a lot about the broken sewage system in Tijuana causing spills into San Diego. Part of the concern, San Diego officials told me, is that Mexico lacks a system to monitor whether businesses are dumping toxic waste into the sewer system.
That’s part of the reason why it’s risky to reuse any of that river water because, if we don’t know what’s in the water, we can’t be sure how to best treat it.
