"The first thing Nalleli Cobo wanted to do when she heard the oil well in her South Los Angeles neighborhood was shutting down was scream. ... Cobo grew up breathing foul-smelling, toxic emissions from an oil production site just 30 feet from her home."
"West Coast fishery managers have officially recommended the cancellation of California salmon fishing season this year. Thursday, the Pacific Fishery Management Council announced its decision to close commercial and recreational salmon fishing in California and most of Oregon until next spring to conserve the dwindling Chinook salmon population."
The push to replace gas-guzzling vehicles with electric-powered alternatives is hitting significant speed bumps. The existing supply of lithium for batteries can’t keep up with demand, and new mining proposals often face opposition from area residents worried about local impacts. Radio reporter David Boraks has been covering one such conflict in North Carolina. He shares his insights and reporting tips.
"California’s wet and wintry start to the year has resulted in perhaps the deepest snowpack recorded in more than 70 years, officials said Monday."
"California lawmakers on Monday approved the nation’s first penalty for price gouging at the pump, voting to give regulators the power to punish oil companies for profiting from the type of gas price spikes that plagued the nation’s most populous state last summer."
"Thousands of acres of cropland have been inundated in this heavily farmed swath of the San Joaquin Valley. And the water just keeps rising."
"First it was the eerie images of barrels leaking on the seafloor not far from Catalina Island. Then the shocking realization that the nation's largest manufacturer of DDT had once used the ocean as a huge dumping ground—and that as many as half a million barrels of its acid waste had been poured straight into the water."
"As drought dried up rivers that carry California’s newly hatched Chinook salmon to the ocean, state officials in recent years resorted to loading up the fish by the millions onto trucks and barges to take them to the Pacific."
"A big-wave surfer at Mavericks is essentially an ocean sensor. Grant Washburn can tell you the approximate depth of the seafloor beneath him, the size of a 40-foot wave and the wind speed blowing foam off the peak, all based on the crescendo in his nervous system."
"An unusually virulent type of toxoplasmosis is killing California sea otters — and may pose an eventual public health threat to other marine animals and to humans, a new study has found."
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