California Coastal Commission rejects plan for Poseidon desalination plant
LA Times, IAN JAMES: "After hearing hours of heated debate, the California Coastal Commission voted against a controversial plan by the company Poseidon Water to build a huge desalination plant in Huntington Beach.
Despite worsening drought and repeated calls from Gov. Gavin Newsom to tap the Pacific Ocean as a source of drinking water, commissioners voted unanimously against the plan Thursday night. The decision, which was recommended by the commission‘s staff, may end the company’s plans for the $1.4-billion plant.
In denying Poseidon a permit, the commission demonstrated its independence from the Newsom administration and also sent the message that high costs, vocal opposition and hazards such as sea-level rise can present major hurdles for large desalination plants on the California coast."
They were sick and dying in ICE custody. The agency released them, avoiding responsibility
LA Times, ANDREA CASTILLO, JIE JENNY ZOU: "Johana Medina Leon spent years advocating for the LGBTQ community and HIV awareness before fleeing the violence she faced as a transgender woman in El Salvador. The 25-year-old nurse technician had hoped to start a new life in California.
But just over a month after she was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and booked into New Mexico’s Otero County Processing Center, her health was in free-fall. She was transferred to an El Paso hospital, where she died on June 1, 2019.
Medina Leon’s name wasn’t among the nine deaths recorded by ICE that year. She had been hurriedly released from custody while hospitalized, just before succumbing to the same failures in care she had worked to prevent for others."
CSU policing practices, under scrutiny, prompt legislation
SETH SANDRONSKY, Capitol Weekly: "The forced removal of a university professor from an LA mayoral debate has prompted new legislation in Sacramento seeking greater public involvement in CSU’s policing policies.
Police officers physically ejected Cal State LA Professor Melina Abdullah from an LA mayoral debate in the University Student Union Theater on May 1. The Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs and League of Women Voters of Greater LA sponsored the private event at a public university.
Capitol Weekly contacted both groups for a comment on Abdullah’s removal from the debate. The PBI declined to comment, instead referring a reporter to Cal State LA’s public affairs office. It did not reply to multiple requests for a comment.
The Chronicle, SAM WHITING: ""The town of Atherton will consider allowing the construction of townhomes for the first time in the 99-year history of the exclusive Peninsula commuter community as it struggles to meet a state mandate to add housing.
In an interview with The Chronicle Wednesday, Atherton Mayor Rick DeGolia said that rezoning of the town would allow for construction of as many as 10 units to a one-acre parcel.
“The way to get to the numbers the state is requiring is to add townhomes,” DeGolia said."
Report shows Foster Farms tried to bully Merced County to keep plant open amid COVID
GILLIAN BRASSIL, SacBee: "Major meatpacking companies, including the San Joaquin Valley’s Foster Farms, worked with Trump administration officials to keep workers in unsafe conditions at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a congressional report released on Thursday.
The 61-page report shows that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees meat and poultry processing, worked with leaders of meatpacking companies to keep workers on the job by evading local and state regulations established during the pandemic.
“This coordinated campaign prioritized industry production over the health of workers and communities, and contributed to tens of thousands of workers becoming ill, hundreds of workers dying, and the virus spreading throughout surrounding areas,” said Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. “The shameful conduct of corporate executives pursuing profit at any cost during a crisis and government officials eager to do their bidding regardless of resulting harm to the public must never be repeated.”
Cal Poly Humboldt has seen declining enrollment for years. Is the name change helping?
ANDREW SHEELER, SacBee: "What’s in a name? When it comes to Cal Poly Humboldt, which rebranded to include the polytechnic designation earlier this year, university officials are hoping the answer is “More students.”
Thus far, it looks like they might be right.
As of early May, enrollment for the fall 2022 term is up 7% from the previous year, according to Cal Poly Humboldt spokeswoman Aileen Yoo. The university anticipates that there could be as many as 6,280 new and continuing students this fall."
‘Zero COVID deaths’: Why officials are pushing Paxlovid to defang the coronavirus
The Chronicle, CATHERIN HO: "When Martha Smith came down with a cough that turned out to be COVID in late April, she figured she’d be able to get Paxlovid, the antiviral pill that’s now in increasingly ample supply at many pharmacies, pretty quickly.
“I thought it was going to be easy,” said Smith, who lives in Oakland. “We’ve been at this for two years, surely we’ve developed some processes around this.”
Instead, Smith spent the next two days on the phone, speaking to multiple doctors and CVS locations before tracking down the Pfizer drug at a pharmacy in Oakland. All the while, the clock was ticking because she began the process three days into her symptoms and Paxlovid must be started within the first five days of onset to properly do its job."
Are four-year colleges worth the cost? More Californians question the value of a degree
ALEXANDRA YOON-HENDRICKS, SacBee: "Three in four state residents say a four-year college degree is valuable, but many are skeptical about whether higher education will pay off with better opportunities and economic success, according to a new statewide poll.
Instead, state residents are viewing community colleges, technical schools, apprenticeships and vocational training as attractive alternative pathways to a successful career, according to a California Community Poll released Monday. About 84% of Californians polled said the education options were valuable. Overall, about two-thirds of Californians said that getting a four-year college degree wasn’t the only pathway to a successful and profitable career.
While about 53% of state residents said higher education can help people access better opportunities and financial success like in the past, about 45% said that wasn’t true anymore, or was never true."
Signs of success in California campaign to keep monarch butterflies from disappearing
The Chronicle, TARA DUGGAN: "Three biologists crouched among the milkweed plants, combing through the thin green leaves as if braiding hair. They were looking for tiny white eggs or chubby, yellow-striped caterpillars: signs of the Western monarch butterfly.
Their work was part of a $1.2 million state-funded project to rescue the Western monarch, which until recently seemed to have almost disappeared from California. A year ago, the conservation organization River Partners planted 30,000 milkweeds and other flowering native species in eight locations to restore habitat, mostly in Central California. The biologists’ goal that day at Dos Rios Ranch Preserve, a restored floodplain on a former dairy ranch in Modesto, was to see if the project is working.
“It’s definitely making a difference,” said Angela Laws, conservation biologist at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, a partner in the project. “Monarchs are spotty where they show up. So just because we don’t find any today doesn’t mean they’re not going to use this habitat.”"
Wind, embers and defensible space: The science of destruction in Laguna Niguel
LA Times, TONY BRISCOE, ALEX WIGGLESWORTH, HANNAH FRY, PAUL DUGINSKI: "The weather conditions were unremarkable for coastal Orange County, and even a bit pleasant: Mild temperatures, relatively moist air and a seasonal onshore breeze.
But when firefighters struggled to contain a 50-by-50-foot brush fire on a sere hillside in Laguna Niguel on Wednesday afternoon, officials grew concerned. Within a few hours, multiple homes were ablaze and spewing hot embers as the Coastal fire chewed methodically through an upscale development overlooking the Pacific Ocean. By the time the fire’s spread slowed, at least 20 homes had been destroyed, many of them overlooking the canyon where the fire began.
The sudden and severe destruction has left many to wonder just how such a fire could erupt amid mundane conditions. Yet experts say that preliminary reports suggest the devastation was due to an unlucky combination of factors. Moderate winds, steep terrain and drought-ravaged vegetation worked together to drive flames into a community where homes had been constructed before fire-hardening building codes took effect."
Russian commanders taking risks under growing pressure, report says; Ukraine puts soldier on trial
LA Times, LAURA KING: "As fighting rages in eastern Ukraine, Russian commanders are under growing pressure to make battlefield gains even if it means taking risks that can backfire, a British military intelligence assessment said Friday.
The assessment cited widely viewed video of Russian armored vehicles destroyed during an attempted river crossing, which was posted online by Ukraine’s military. The images could not be independently verified.
Meanwhile, Russian forces on Friday aimed a punishing new barrage at areas in the country’s north, east and south, including bombardment of a final Ukrainian redoubt in the shattered southern port of Mariupol."