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Where Food Waste Goes In Southern California

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The newly expanded compressed natural gas facility sourced from food waste in Carson. (Erin Stone/LAist)

Here are the morning’s top stories on Tuesday, December 17, 2024…

  • The holidays are a time where we tend to eat a lot of food, and throw a lot out. Americans throw away about four pounds of waste per day, higher than anywhere in the world. But where does all that food waste go?
  • California Resources Corporation and Aera Energy joined forces to become the state’s largest oil company. But a new investigation from KVPR and Inside Climate News finds that the merger could leave taxpayers on the hook for millions.
  • A Bay Area lawmaker wants California to rescind its calls for a constitutional convention and has introduced legislation to do so.

Put Food Waste In Plastic Bags? We Found Out Why

When you drive on the 134 Freeway, between Glendale and Pasadena, you may have admired the mountains opposite the view of downtown L.A. Well, that mountain is actually a landfill, Scholl Canyon Landfill. Since 1961, that landfill has grown with L.A. County’s waste — officials say it only has a few years of capacity left. About 500 trucks a day dump everything from trash to food waste there. Americans throw away about four pounds of trash per day — higher than anywhere in the world.

At the top of the landfill, workers pick through green waste spread across the ground, getting rid of plastic and other contaminants. “ There’s not automated magic to some of this handling of waste,” said Michael Chee, a spokesperson for L.A. County Sanitation Districts. “There are actually people in here digging and separating and pulling plastic out.” A worker tosses a whole bag of raw chicken into a dumpster that’s half full of bagged food waste. Nearby, a coyote sneaks some nibbles from food waste not yet collected.

The workers are also grabbing bags of food waste to put in a separate dumpster. This is why cities such as Pasadena ask residents to separate their food waste in bags — ideally bags you already have, like bread bags, carrot bags or potato sacks, said Gabriel Silva, environmental programs manager with the city. Silva said the bagging helps them more easily separate the food waste from the yard waste because they’re going to different places. The yard waste will be composted and the food waste will be turned into fuel.

As A Major California Oil Producer Eyes Carbon Storage, Thousands Of Idle Wells Await Cleanup

At the start of 2020, California Resources Corp., one of the state’s largest oil and gas producers, was in financial trouble. The firm’s stock price had plunged, and its credit rating was in junk bond territory. Then the pandemic struck, roiling international oil markets. A few months later, in July 2020, CRC and nearly two dozen of its subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy, citing the “unprecedented market conditions.” The company was nearly $5 billion in debt.

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The day after the filing, two environmental groups, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, raising concerns that CRC might use its bankruptcy proceedings to avoid cleaning up the thousands of oil wells it owned or operated. Oil and gas wells can leak pollutants into the air and groundwater, including planet-warming methane. The letter warned that California taxpayers could be on the hook for CRC’s cleanup costs if the company went out of business or was able to avoid its environmental obligations.

CRC bounced back quickly, though, leaving behind most of its debt when it emerged from bankruptcy in October 2020. Since then, its stock price has quadrupled, and in July, it completed a $2.1 billion merger with another California oil company, Aera Energy. In addition to cementing its role as the state’s largest oil producer, CRC says the deal will help make it more competitive as it expands into a growing industry: carbon removal and storage.

But the merger has also substantially increased the liabilities that worried environmentalists: Companies affiliated with CRC, including Aera and CRC subsidiaries, are now responsible for cleaning up more than 11,000—or nearly a third—of the state’s idle wells. Those wells could become California’s burden. In an April filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, CRC said the projected cost to clean up the companies’ wells was more than $1 billion. The firms have set aside $114.7 million in the form of bonds to partially cover those costs, records obtained by Inside Climate News and KVPR show.

State Senator Calls To Rescind Constitutional Convention

State Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco wants California to rescind its calls for a constitutional convention and has introduced legislation to do so.

Democrats in California have called for a constitutional convention to enact policies like federal gun control laws or a guaranteed right to abortion access. But Wiener says with 2025 bringing Donald Trump into the White House, and putting Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress, it’s more likely a convention would result in Americans losing legal protections and liberties.

Two-thirds of state legislatures, or 34 states, would have to call for a convention, and 38 states would have to ratify any changes to the constitution. Currently, 28 states have calls out for a convention, including California.

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