Tag Archive for: Los Angeles Times

As Climate Change Threatens California, Officials Seek ‘Sustainable Insurance’

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Joseph Serna

California regulators are teaming up with the United Nations to develop “sustainable insurance” guidelines that would help address climate-change-related disasters such as coastal flooding and larger wildfires — the first such partnership of its kind between the international organization and a U.S. state, officials announced Tuesday. After a roundtable discussion at UCLA with lawmakers, state Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara announced that his agency would work with officials from the U.N. Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative over the next year to develop a plan to confront California’s climate risks, which are manifold.

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After 800,000-Gallon Spill, Chevron Site Is Still Leaking Oil

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Piper McDaniel

On the same day Sen. Dianne Feinstein chastised Chevron Corp. for keeping an 800,000-gallon spill outside Bakersfield “under wraps,” California officials confirmed Thursday that the site was once again seeping a hazardous mix of oil and water. The new leakage occurred in a surface expression vent in the Cymric oil field, near the Kern County town of McKittrick, according to the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources. The vent is one of the locations where three previous leaks released about 800,000 gallons of oil and water.

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Salmon Study May Foil Trump’s Plan To Boost Water Deliveries To Central Valley Farms

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Bettina Boxall

Federal biologists worked frantically this year to meet a deadline to assess the environmental impacts of Trump administration plans to send more water to Central Valley farmers.

But the biologists’ conclusion — that increased deliveries would harm endangered Chinook salmon and other imperiled fish — would foil those plans. Two days after it was submitted, a regional federal official assembled a new review team to improve the documents.

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California’s Coast Is Disappearing, And The Debate Over What To Do About It Is In Full Swing

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Diya Chacko

Even as quakes, wildfires and drought have taken up most of our focus, the slow-moving disaster of rising seas has paralyzed Californians, and left us with “both too much and not enough time” to act, as environment reporter Rosanna Xia wrote in a special report examining sea level rise and the future of California’s disappearing coastline. The report, read by more than half a million people since it was published online and in print on Sunday, laid out our limited options in a future where certain areas of California will almost certainly be submerged. Cities such as San Francisco, Pacifica, Imperial Beach and many more are already dealing with the ocean at their doorstep.

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Few of Trump’s Environmental Claims Stand Up To Scrutiny

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Anna M. Phillips

President Trump on Monday held himself out as a leader in the fight to protect America’s air and water, despite two years of policies that have weakened environmental regulations.

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How Did California’s Rainfall Season Measure Up? Good, But Not Great

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Paul Duginski

Sunday is the end of the 2018-19 rainfall season in California, and you may have heard that the season’s precipitation totals were extraordinary. The figures show that the season was good — above normal — but not in the top 20% of wettest seasons. With the exception of a brief, early-June heat wave, Southern California has been relatively cool and moist with a thick marine layer through most of the month. The heat wave was more pronounced in Northern California, where the Bay Area experienced record heat, and those records will lift the state to warmer-than-average status for June 2019.

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Beach Pollution Surges After Massive Wildfires And Heavy Rains, Report Finds

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Hannah Fry

If there was one upside to the severe drought that plagued California for seven years, it was how the lack of rain and dirty runoff improved beach water quality. But ocean pollution has surged once again at some Southern California beaches because of an unusually wet winter and the effects of the massive Woolsey fire, which added pollutants and worsened runoff. The findings, contained the annual Heal the Bay report card, underscore how much ocean water quality is tied to other environmental factors.

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Court Throws Out Federal Approval Of Cadiz Water Pipeline

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Bettina Boxall

A federal judge has struck down Trump administration decisions that cleared the way for Cadiz Inc. to build a water pipeline across public land in the California desert. The ruling is a blow to the company’s decades-long effort to pump groundwater from beneath its desert property 200 miles east of Los Angeles and sell it to urban Southern California. Cadiz wants to use an existing railroad right of way across federal land to pipe supplies from its proposed well field to the Colorado River Aqueduct. In 2015, during the Obama administration, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said Cadiz couldn’t use the right of way and would therefore have to obtain federal permission to run the proposed pipeline across surrounding federal land.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom Abandons Water Tax, Rejects Some New Spending In California Budget Deal

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby John Myers

Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders announced Sunday the broad outlines of a new state budget, one that provides a boost for California’s low-income adults and children but excludes a controversial tax to pay for clean water in distressed communities. The details of key parts of the agreement were unveiled during a late afternoon hearing in which legislators from both houses met to approve the proposal. Though it does not signal the end of the budget process — legislators cited numerous places where the plan includes placeholder language, thus leaving the details to be determined later — the action brought to an end principal budget negotiations at the state Capitol, the first for Newsom since taking office this year.

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California Has Too Much Solar Power. That Might Be Good For Ratepayers

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Sammy Roth

California set two renewable energy records last week: the most solar power ever flowing on the state’s main electric grid, and the most solar power ever taken offline because it wasn’t needed. There’s no contradiction: As California utilities buy more and more solar power as part of the state’s quest to confront climate change, supply and demand are increasingly out of sync. The state’s fleet of solar farms and rooftop panels frequently generate more electricity than Californians use during the middle of the day — a phenomenon that has sent lawmakers and some climate advocates scrambling to find ways to save the extra sunlight rather than let it go to waste.

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