Focus
LOS ANGELES TIMES - May 18 California cities and towns may find themselves on a water budget in the next decade under a pair of bills approved last Thursday by the state Legislature. The measures follow Governor Jerry Brown's call to make water conservation a permanent way of life in California. Under the bills, which Brown is expected to sign, the state will set standards that will be used to create individual water budgets for the more than 400 water agencies that distribute supplies to cities and towns. The budgets will set a target for how much water a district should use in a year, taking into account such factors as the local climate, amount of irrigated landscape, and population. If an agency doesn't meet its target, the State Water Resources Control Board can start issuing conservation orders after July 1, 2026.
DEL MAR TIMES - May 22 Del Mar took a step toward addressing the potential threat of sea level rise to coastal homes and public infrastructure in the coming decades, as the City Council on Monday approved an adaptation plan. In its deliberations, the Council considered a plan for "retreat," that is, removal of homes sea walls, and other structures in the face of sea level rise, but rejected that approach in favor of such methods as beach nourishment, river channel dredging, river levees and sand replenishment. The adaptation plan will either be incorporated into the city's local coastal program, which would require approval of the California Coastal Commission, or will be made a part of the city's voter-approved community plan. In a letter to the City Council, the Coastal Commission noted that California may see a rise in ocean levels by 5 feet in the coming decades, sooner than expected, and the rise could reach 7 to 10 feet by 2100.
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE - May 22 State lawmakers, with a budget action approved by an Assembly committee this Wednesday, are seeking to commit $16 million to the cleanup of a long-overlooked source of lead contamination in neighborhoods near the former Exide Technologies battery recycling plant in Vernon: the grassy strips between sidewalks and streets. The publicly-owned stretches of land, known as parkways, are not currently included in the state’s slow-moving cleanup of southeast L.A. County yards near the shuttered facility. The funds to clean up the parkways would come from existing fees on lead-acid car batteries similar to those that were melted down at the Exide plant. If adopted, the measure would raise the cost of the taxpayer-funded cleanup project to about $200 million.
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE - May 24 Cox Communications has agreed to pay $3.3 million in civil penalties and public service fees to settle a lawsuit with the state of California accusing the company of violating state health, safety, and civil codes in its disposal of hazardous waste, including batteries, electronic devices, and aerosols, and customer records at various California facilities. The telecommunications company, which has approximately 6 million customers, was also accused of either not destroying or masking customers’ personal information when deleting their records. The settlement, announced Thursday, brings to an end a more than five-year dispute, and requires Cox to change a number of its business and training practices.
BAKERSFIELD CALIFORNIAN - May 21 Farmers receiving water from the State Water Project (SWP) can expect a bigger allocation this year than was anticipated as recently as last month, thanks to late-season precipitation. The California Department of Water Resources announced Monday that this year’s allocation has been raised to 35 percent, or 1.48 million acre-feet of water statewide. As of last month, the agency planned to distribute only 30 percent of SWP contractors’ full allocations. Monday's increase represents 212,961 acre-feet, or 69.4 billion gallons, more water than was expected to be allocated statewide.
