California

"The Obama administration and California officials are expected to announce a landmark agreement Wednesday to tear down four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, bypassing Congress to restore a major salmon fishery on the Oregon border."

"As Southern California continues to battle the nation’s worst smog, most members of a powerful regional panel that enforces air pollution regulations can breathe relatively easily. Nine of the 13 members of the South Coast Air Quality Management District live close to the ocean in Los Angeles or Orange counties, where ozone, the hallmark pollutant of summer smog, exceeds federal health standards fewer than 10 days a year."

"A California judge ruled Wednesday that the Port of Los Angeles and a national railroad company failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of a $500-million freight yard they want to build next to low-income, mostly minority neighborhoods."

"Federal officials are proposing to give Nestle a new five-year permit to bottle water on federal land in drought-ridden California."

"The leader of the state Senate said Tuesday that he will push to reverse efforts by the Southern California air quality board to adopt pollution rules friendlier to industry, saying swift action is needed to prevent a rollback of environmental gains."

The sewage that flows from Southern California may contain deadly, antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Instead of removing them, the sewage collection and treatment system may offer a "luxury hotel" where the superbugs can proliferate before sewage is released to the Pacific.

"Hundreds of open pits containing toxic waste produced by oil and gas drilling are threatening groundwater in California, and regulators have failed to protect drinking and irrigation water supplies from the danger, an environmental watchdog group concludes in a report set to be released Monday."

"It was like a sequel to a bad movie. One month after I watched the California Coastal Commission whack the executive whose career was devoted to preserving and assuring equal access to the state's greatest treasure, I went to Diamond Bar on Friday to watch another massacre. This time the target was a man with more than three decades of experience fighting smog and improving public health in a region with some of the dirtiest air in the nation."

"Government scientists say there’s a simple explanation for the surge in starving sea lion pups along the Southern California coast: Their mothers can’t find enough nutritious food."