California

"When he was 6 years old, Sim Bilal began to have nightmares of floods pouring through his South Los Angeles home."

"Adam Wraight pulled a blue sewage "warning" sign out of the sand near Imperial Beach Pier on Thursday morning, replacing it with the more ominous yellow and red placard telling beachgoers that waters were officially closed."

"After an exhaustive historical investigation into the barrels of DDT waste reportedly dumped decades ago near Catalina Island, federal regulators concluded that the toxic pollution in the deep ocean could be far worse — and far more sweeping — than what scientists anticipated."

"A week ago, the scenic Northern California hamlet of Klamath River was home to about 200 people and had a community center, post office and a corner grocery store. Now, after a wildfire raged through the forested region near the Oregon state line, four people are dead and the store is among the few buildings not reduced to ashes."

"Hunted for centuries for their pelts, sea otters had dwindled to near-extinction by the 1910s, leaving a population of about 1,000 worldwide and only about 50 in California, in small pockets on the Central Coast and Southern California’s Channel Islands."

"California officials on Monday announced a settlement reversing a Trump-era decision opening central California to new oil and gas drilling on public lands."

"California claims to know how much climate-warming gas is going into the air from within its borders. It’s the law: California limits climate pollution and each year the limits get stricter."

"Since Friday, the Oak fire has consumed more than 18,000 acres of the sparsely populated mountain community. And by Tuesday morning, the blaze, located near Yosemite National Park, had destroyed 41 structures and forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes."

"The water that comes out of the tap for more than 900,000 Californians is unsafe to drink and the state isn’t acting fast enough to help clean it up, state auditors said in a report released Tuesday."

"[As Californians] prepare to finalize a state climate plan that relies on CCS technology, some environmentalists are urging officials to abandon the idea. Instead of helping to wean California off fossil fuels, they say CCS will actually increase oil production."