California News

The California Report, KQED Public Radio
  • Uncertain Future for Lake Mead and the Colorado River

    The bundle of water bills passed this week in Sacramento was designed to attack some of California's long-term worries over water supply. Mostly, the legislation addresses the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and groundwater issues. But there's another big question mark in the state's water mix: the Colorado River. It's a crucial source of water for Southern Californians and it's in trouble, too.

  • Finding Solutions for Pesticide Drift, Part 2

    The U.S. EPA is proposing new labeling guidelines for chemicals to help limit pesticide drift. The agency also said on Wednesday, it will consider a petition from farmworker and public health advocates asking to ban pesticide spraying near schools, hospitals, and child care centers. Part of the evidence in the petition comes from projects where rural residents are monitoring the air in their own neighborhoods.

San Francisco Chronicle
  • Inmates' flushing habits prove costly

    San Mateo County has agreed to pay $2.3 million to settle a lawsuit that accused county jail inmates of clogging Redwood City's sewage system by flushing clothes, sheets and other items down toilets, officials said Thursday. The settlement was reached with...

  • Ex-guard, friend guilty in Brink's slaying

    A former Brink's armored-car guard and a friend were convicted today of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of the guard's partner in Oakland in 2006. Former guard Clifton Wherry Jr., 31, and co-defendant Dwight Omar Campbell, 26, showed no reaction...

  • Blue Angels ready to roar, soar for Fleet Week

    With smoke and a roar, the Blue Angels arrived in high style Tuesday in San Francisco, the star performers in the annual Fleet Week air show that promises to rattle windows, wow thousands of spectators and annoy those whose idea of city life does not include...

Oakland Tribune
SacBee -- Bee State News
  • CalPERS trustee shows check payment for Dubai trip

    A CalPERS board member on Thursday produced a canceled check showing he paid $23,630 for a trip to London, Dubai and Hong Kong in 2006 after it was initially paid for by a Nevada businessman whose clients were seeking investments from California's giant public employee pension fund.

    Board member Charles Valdes gave The Bee a new explanation of how he paid for his Dubai trip a day after telling the newspaper he had repaid Nevada-based placement agent Alfred Villalobos in cash.

    Valdes' new explanations came an hour after CalPERS board President Rob Feckner announced that he's asked trustees to stop meeting with placement agents like Villalobos and also ordered all financial firms and their agents to stop advancing travel money to "anyone associated with CalPERS."

    "Our investment partners and their agents must honor our travel policies if they want to continue to do business with CalPERS," said Feckner, who oversees the board of the $200 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System.

    Valdes sent The Bee a copy of both sides of his canceled check by fax. Written off a Citibank super yield money market account, it was made out to Arvco Capital and dated Dec. 1, 2006. The signature of the Arvco employee who endorsed it was blacked out.

    Asked about his different explanations of how he paid for his trip, Valdes replied: "I'm 69 years old and I have the beginnings of Alzheimer's disease. I couldn't remember."

    A CalPERS spokeswoman would not comment on Valdes' medical condition.

    In a terse statement issued Thursday night, Feckner said that "in light of concerns that have emerged about placement agents," he's asked fellow trustees to stop meeting with any placement agents until an outside law firm that CalPERS hired finishes its special review of placement dealings.

    The Steptoe & Johnson review was commissioned by CalPERS after its officials discovered that Villalobos made $50 million in commissions by lining up CalPERS investment deals. It released new documents Wednesday showing the commissions actually topped $60 million.

    Placement agents are the middlemen who work to secure public pension fund investment dollars for their private equity firm clients and pocket big commissions.

    Feckner also said CalPERS will consider "additional and more formal reforms" at November board meetings, saying the matters remain a top priority for him, his board and CalPERS.

    Feckner's statement followed two reports in The Bee this week that explored dealings between Villalobos, a former CalPERS board member himself, his Arvco companies, and former CalPERS chief executive Fred Buenrostro and CalPERS trustee Valdes.

    The Bee reported that Valdes took a $15,000 trip to London, Dubai and Hong Kong in 2006 with Villalobos, who paid for all the first class travel for the journey on a personal credit card.

    Valdes asked to take the trip to Dubai to attend an investment conference in November 2006, and it was approved by Feckner and the CalPERS board. Feckner decided that CalPERS would pay for all costs, but Valdes never submitted an expense claim for it.

    On Wednesday, Valdes said he reimbursed Villalobos in cash immediately afterward "for the entire cost of that trip – about $13,000."

    Told that the airfare alone for his trip was more than $15,000, Valdes shot back, "then I paid him more."

    Valdes says he never submitted a travel claim to CalPERS for the trip because of its cost.

    "That's why I never submitted the travel claim to CalPERS. I didn't want the system to pay for it because it cost so much," Valdes added.

    The Bee also reported that Villalobos lent his Lake Tahoe mansion to Buenrostro as the venue for the CalPERS boss's private wedding in 2004.

    Buenrostro said Villalobos picked up the tab for the affair, but that he later refunded him for most or all of the costs, without ever seeing all the receipts. Feckner said he's shared details of both reports with the outside law firm, Steptoe & Johnson, "to do a thorough examination as part of a special review."

    Kathay Feng, executive director of Common Cause California, said Feckner's announcement "is a good one, and it's a strong one and it's long overdue."

    "It's a no-brainer that individuals who are in charge of oversight ... of millions of dollars in retirement funds need to have a bright line drawn," Feng said.

  • Garamendi's congressional win leaves lieutenant governor void


    John Garamendi, left, shakes hands with regional campaign director Andrew Kim while awaiting polling results Tuesday. Garamendi. a Democrat, won the 10th Congressional District seat.

    Lt. Gov. John Garamendi will be sworn in today as the new congressman from the 10th Congressional District after winning Tuesday's special election to replace Rep. Ellen Tauscher.

    Garamendi defeated Republican David Harmer 53 percent to 42.7 percent in a district that stretches from the East Bay to Isleton and Walnut Grove in Sacramento County.

    Garamendi's chief of staff, Mona Pasquil, will serve in an acting capacity as lieutenant governor until Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's appointee is confirmed.

    Pasquil will serve an administrative function, carrying out the lieutenant governor's functions at the State Lands Commission and other panels.

    But if the governor vacates his office or leaves the state, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, would become the state's acting governor based on the state's line of succession.

    Schwarzenegger can appoint a new lieutenant governor, but the Legislature has 90 days to confirm or reject his choice. That 90-day clock would begin when the Legislature reconvenes in regular session in January. Or the governor could set the clock in motion earlier by calling his eighth special session for the purpose of confirming the lieutenant governor.

    Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that he has not decided on an appointee. Spokesman Aaron McLear said the pick is "not something we have focused on, but I'd expect we'd have something to announce in the coming days."

  • Kirkwood as alternative energy lab: Ski area joins fight against global warming


    Year-round resident Raejean Fellows' energy bill exceeded $13,000 last year. That's when the Kirkwood Meadows homeowner decided conservation and alternative energy made environmental and financial sense. After an audit, she's installed everything from light sensors to a real-time monitor called "The Energy Detective."

    Few businesses feel as threatened by global warming as the ski industry.

    And few resorts are poised to go to the same lengths – and expense – to combat it as Kirkwood and the hardy folks who make their homes in the snowy, windswept Kirkwood Meadows.

    Although only a few hundred people live year-round in Kirkwood, the community is ready to spend up to $30 million to overhaul its aging, dirty and expensive power system and reduce its contributions to global warming.

    It's an investment that makes self-interested sense for the remote, high-rent ski village about 40 miles from South Lake Tahoe, with a base elevation of more than 7,000 feet and about 500 inches of snowfall every year.

    "We represent a unique situation where the environmental goals and economic goals are similar," says Dave Likins, CEO for Mountainsprings Kirkwood, the holding company for the ski resort and its related utility company and real estate operation. "We spend so much on fossil fuels right now that alternative power sources make a lot of sense for us. And because we're in the ski industry, no one is more interested in fighting global warming than we are."

    According to the National Ski Areas Association, the ski season has been shrinking by about one day a year, despite dramatic improvements in snow-making. One study found that by century's end, the Sierra snowpack could be just 20 percent of what it is today, with snow falling later in the season and piling up only in the highest reaches.

    In the face of those predictions, resorts around the world have plunged into the fight against global warming. To cut down on their own contribution to greenhouse gases, they've built windmill turbines, invested millions in renewable energy credits and granted discounts to skiers who carpool or drive hybrids to the slopes to ski.

    Although Kirkwood is encircled by pristine wilderness, its current power station is more reminiscent of the dark days of the industrial revolution. Kirkwood is powered by a handful of dirty, noisy diesel generators that produce the valley's peak power needs of about four megawatts.

    The resort is "off the grid" – there is no connection to large utilities like PG&E – and it's been that way since developers discovered the valley's deep, cold powdery snow about 40 years ago.

    The first power station was built to run the lifts at Kirkwood, but as cabins began springing up in the valley, the resort wired residential customers to its power system.

    Today, its generators are expensive and unreliable, exactly the kind of grimy carbon footprint that ski resorts around the world find embarrassing and try to discourage with such green advocacy programs as "Keep Winter Cool."

    Kirkwood's system is also very expensive. Because it relies on the wildly fluctuating price of diesel, utility rates at Kirkwood are usually around 40 cents per kilowatt-hour – four times the rate in the Bay Area, Likins says – and sometimes as high as $1 per kwh.

    That's just the electricity. Many residents need propane for their furnaces and hot tubs, and the price of that is also high because the fuel has to be trucked into the remote valley.

    The cost has had many residents looking at alternatives – and pushing for a broader solution that incorporates renewable energy sources.

    One of those is Raejean Fellows, who built a home at Kirkwood in 1993. Last year, Fellows' power bill was more than $13,000. With bills like that, conservation makes sense and alternative energy suddenly seems affordable, she says.

    "And it's just not environmentally friendly to be burning all that diesel in a sensitive alpine valley like this," Fellows says. "Kirkwood is a very special place, and we should be treating it better."

    Fellows had an energy audit done on her house, then set to work battening down the hatches.

    Canned lights were sealed up and replaced – "my ceiling was like Swiss cheese!" she says – and she installed insulating window shades, compact fluorescent light bulbs, weather stripping, sensors that shut off the lights in empty rooms and ceiling fans to improve the air circulation.

    She re-mortared parts of her slate floors. She even installed a device called "The Energy Detective," which tells her at any given moment just how much electricity she is using. She consults it frequently, constantly looking for devices to shut off in effort to lower the gauge.

    Kirkwood went through a similar process. In the past two years the resort has reduced its power consumption 35 percent.

    "We did all the obvious things, and then we said we have to do even better," Likins said. "We installed airlocks, timers, compact fluorescents. When we close a building for the day, we shut it down completely, so we aren't losing power because someone forgot to turn off a monitor."

    Meanwhile, Fellows helped launch a community advisory committee that has been evaluating the pros and cons of larger-scale projects for Kirkwood's 700 residences, whose number would double if the economy improves and the resort's real estate arm moves ahead with its development plans. The group has analyzed wind power, solar panel arrays, combined heat and power turbines, and geothermal heat.

    Kirkwood resort hopes to get out of the energy business in the coming years. It has signed a letter of intent to sell its utility services to the Kirkwood Meadows Public Utility District, which handles water and sewage treatment services in the valley but wants to take over the power and propane service as well.

    Although the expanded utility is expected to build an interconnection to PG&E – a 23-mile project from Kirkwood to Salt Springs that would cost up to $30 million but allow the diesel generators to be shut down – alternative energy is expected to be a big part of the resort community's future.

    "Even with interconnection, our power is still going to cost us over 35 cents a kilowatt per hour, so green technology is still an attractive proposition," Likins says.

    On its own, the resort has explored agreements with solar panel and wind turbine manufacturers, some of whom are eager to show off how effective their devices are in the harsh winter climate of Kirkwood.

    Winter is typically the worst time to generate renewable power – solar panels get covered with snow and windmill blades ice up and lose efficiency – but that's exactly when Kirkwood needs the power to run its lifts. The resort has talked with a number of companies that say their technology will work in that snowy high country.

    "They're eager to show what they can do," Likins says. "They say, 'If we can do it there, we can do it anywhere.' "


    Dave Likins, CEO for Mountainsprings Kirkwood, is leading the $30 million overhaul of its dirty, costly power system.

    Recycling is in, and energy use is down 35 percent at Kirkwood.

San Jose Mercury News
Los Angeles Times
  • Backers of Malibu septic ban rode wave of surfers' testimony

    Malibu board riders' tales of illness due to pollution helped spur regional water officials to prohibit new tanks.

    One after another, surfers young and older trooped to the microphone to recount their encounters with the polluted waves off Malibu's Surfrider Beach.


  • California cities act to ban cat declawing

    L.A. is among those rushing to prohibit the practice before a state law backed by a group of vets says they can't.

    The law of unintended consequences has seldom been more clearly illustrated than by the catfight unfolding from San Francisco to Los Angeles.


  • Most California voters don't plan to get swine flu vaccine, Times/USC poll finds

    Though 70% overall think the vaccine is safe, blacks and Latinos are more wary of it.

    As concern spreads about H1N1 flu, a new survey of California voters found that while most consider the vaccine safe, a majority had no plans to get vaccinated. The poll also found that blacks and Latinos are far more likely than other groups to say they believe the vaccine could be unsafe.


San Diego Union-Tribune
  • Man shot in back outside Chula Vista bar

    A man was shot in the back outside the On the Rocks bar in Chula Vista early Saturday morning in an apparent gang-related attack, police said.

  • Double murderer gets 2 life terms

    Dennis Potts knew a lot about computers and cell phones, but it may have been his technological savvy that led to his undoing, a San Diego judge said yesterday before sentencing the double murderer to life in prison.

  • Things looking up for old dam

    Workers are excavating the base of the San Vicente Dam and using high-pressure water to scrape off its face in the first phase of a $588 million project to raise the 66-year-old structure.

Fresno Bee
KPCC, Southern California Public Radio
  • "In Their Boots" documentary series looks at the impact of war

    The recent shootings at the Army base at Fort Hood, Texas raise many questions about the psychological effect of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on soldiers. That's also the focus of the new documentary series "In Their Boots."

  • Hello Kitty turns 35!

    This fall marks the 35th birthday of one of Japan's beloved pop icons - Hello Kitty. The Royal/T Cafe in Culver City is throwing her a huge birthday bash complete with Hello Kitty-shaped food, Hello Kitty-themed household items and art work inspired by the tiny white feline.

  • Thousands attend free H1N1 clinic in Monterey Park

    Free H1N1 vaccine clinics across Los Angeles County are on the calendar through Thanksgiving, 2009, but thousands of people in Monterey Park aren't putting it off. The free clinic line stretched around Barnes Park on Thursday and took some people four hours to get inoculated.

KPBS, San Diego Public Radio
  • Cinema en tu Idioma Presents a Trio of IFC Films

    The San Diego Latino Film Festival?s monthly screening program Cinema en tu Idioma tests the notion that you can?t have too much of a good thing by presenting a trio of Spanish language films (screening now through November 12 at the UltraStar Mission Valley Theaters) from around the globe: Spain?s ?Fermat?s Room,? Colombia?s ?Perro Com Perro,? and Mexico?s ?Voy a Explotar.?

  • VA In San Diego Addresses Shooting At Fort Hood

    Therapists at the VA Medical Center in La Jolla are responding to questions about how a trained psychiatrist could have been responsible for the shooting at Fort Hood Army base.

  • NOVA: Becoming Human: Birth Of Humanity -Part 2

    Part 2, ?Birth of Humanity,? investigates the first skeleton that really looks like us?"Turkana Boy"?an astonishingly complete specimen of Homo erectus found by the famous Leakey team in Kenya. These early humans are thought to have developed key innovations that helped them thrive, including hunting large prey, the use of fire, and extensive social bonds.

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