First the flames, now the water: The clock is ticking on the fight against soil erosion from the Rim Fire.
From the Mercury-News' Lisa Krieger: "With only weeks before the onset of storm season, the race is on to study, repair and restore the damage from the blaze that began Aug. 17, but won't be contained until Oct. 1 and will likely be fully extinguished only by winter's rain and snow."
"Soil is a big sponge and a big filter," said Rust, one of 75 experts brought in to work with the U.S. Forest Service's Burn Area Emergency Rehabilitation teams. "If water goes down the hill, there will be erosion."
"Nature will recover, but it may take a decade or two, said the rehab experts. Already, a black bear was seen eating a burned deer. Ponderosa pine cones are scattering seeds, and ferns are sprouting from firefighters' water. Ants are emerging from deep underground. Western pond turtles are scuttling through a spared meadow."
A judge in L.A. says protections for retirees' health care are similar to those of pensions.
From Calpensions' Ed Mendel: "A superior court judge overturned a freeze on retiree health care for Los Angeles city attorneys this month, citing some of the same case law that made public pensions a vested right that can only be cut if offset by a new benefit."
"The court ruling is a blow to the view that state and local governments, when looking for cost savings, may be able to make cuts in promised retiree health care that are not allowed for tamper-proof pensions."
"The debt or “unfunded liability” for retiree health care promised state and local government workers rivals pension debt. But most employers make no annual pension-like contributions to a retiree health care investment fund to help pay future costs."
Believe it or not, gasoline prices may drop sharply over the next few weeks in California -- or they may not.
From Gary Richards in the Mercury-News: "California drivers could be in for a big treat by Halloween, with gas prices dropping 40 to 45 cents thanks in part to a light hurricane season, an easing of tensions in the Middle East and refinery fixes at home."
"Gasbuddy.com experts tracked prices from mid-September through Halloween over the past decade and found prices typically fell by 23 cents a gallon across the U.S. They believe the downward trend will be repeated -- and they predict prices in California will fall by almost twice that much."
"Definitely," said Gregg Laskoski, a senior petroleum analyst with Gasbuddy.com. "You're going to see a pretty aggressive drop starting in the next weerk or two."
The operator of the trouble-plagued, now-shuttered San Onofre Nuclear power plant, says the feds have issued citations regarding the causes of the shut-down.
From the U-T's Morgan Lee: "Southern California Edison, operator of the recently retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, says it and nuclear equipment manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have been cited for failures that led to the plant's breakdown."
"The rapid degradation of recently replaced steam generators shut down the plant in January 2012. The decision was made in June to retire San Onofre."
"In a new release Sunday evening, Edison said it had been notified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that Mitsubishi received a "notice of non-conformance" for flawed computer models used in the design of replacement steam generators. The giant heat exchangers -- which serve as one barrier to radiation -- were installed at the plant in 2010 and 2011."
Speaking of Southern California, the question of who pays for what in the southward shipment of Northern California water includes a potentially larger price tag for the south state.
From the LAT's Bettina Boxall: "But the key question of precisely how the costs are divvied up between urban and agricultural users is unanswered. And hints have been dropped in recent months that to keep the project alive, urban ratepayers in the Southland may wind up paying more than their share, in effect subsidizing San Joaquin Valley agribusiness interests."
"Water officials say that is not their intention, but they will not rule out the possibility."
"I'm not saying that we'll end up there," said Roger Patterson, assistant general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a major project participant. "But I don't guarantee anything. It's a pretty fluid process, obviously."
And from our "North Carolina, Home of Andy Griffith" file comes word that the Tar Heel State was almost obliterated when the Air Force accidentally dropped an A-bomb there in 1961. Whoops.
"The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage."
"Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk."
"Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weaponsconcludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".
Gulp...