"More than 1,000 sea lions have gathered at San Francisco’s Pier 39 this spring, the largest herd in at least 15 years. Mounds of floppy, delightfully ungraceful marine mammals have plopped themselves on to rafts along the city’s pier, displaying themselves to the thousands of tourists who pass by the area each day."
"Environmentalists warn that a California Democrat’s bill “drives a bulldozer” through the state’s new law that protects imperiled Joshua trees from commercial development. But the lawmaker says his impoverished desert region desperately needs the economic boost."
"Giant pumps hum inside a warehouse-like building, pushing water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta into the California Aqueduct, where it travels more than 400 miles south to the taps of over half the state’s population."
"President Joe Biden will add a combined 120,000 acres Thursday to a pair of national monuments in California at a White House ceremony, the administration announced."
Hundreds of hydropower dams in the United States will see their licenses expiring in the next decade, generating years-long federal relicensing processes. That prospect calls for close local and regional coverage of the complicated balance between renewable energy needs with negative environmental impacts. The latest TipSheet explains the licensing process and the dam backstory, along with a dozen story ideas and reporting resources.
Meet SEJ member Erin Stone! Before coming to LAist in late 2021, Erin covered topics such as mental health, domestic violence and environmental issues for newspapers in Texas, Arizona and northern California. She turned her focus to climate coverage after reporting on the devastating impacts of rising sea levels on communities in the remote Sundarbans islands in India.
"California will conclude a two-year investigation into Exxon and the fossil fuel industry's role in causing global plastic pollution by summer and decide if it will file a lawsuit against oil giant, its attorney general told Reuters on Monday."
"Lead battery recycling is a crucial but dirty business. As a plant outside Los Angeles seeks to renew its operating permit, the community pushes back."
As human roadways sprawl across a global network, the planet’s other living things have not only found the vehicles that travel them among the world’s deadliest weapons but also that road noise, the impassable divisions of the landscape and more have massive implications for nature. BookShelf reviews Ben Goldfarb’s eye-opening new book, “Crossings,” and the realities of road ecology.
"After years of analysis and debate, California regulators have adopted a nation-leading drinking water standard for hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen found in water supplies across the state."
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