But how exactly does heat kill? Here's the science behind what happens to the body in extreme temperatures, including the three main ways heat can shut down vital systems, as well as tips to stay safe, cool down and fend off heatstroke.

This comic was written and illustrated by Connie Hanzhang Jin, based on reporting by Maria Godoy. It was edited by Carmel Wroth and Alyson Hurt.

Copyright 2026 NPR

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The state of California is walking back protections meant to keep destructive golden mussels out of Lake Oroville, one of the largest and most important reservoirs in the state.

The move follows a new state-funded risk assessment that the invasive species poses a lower risk to the lake, which water managers say changes the state’s calculus on costly and difficult measures aimed at keeping the invaders at bay.

No state agencies or scientists have found mussels in Oroville yet. But invasive species experts say the revised policy of the Department of Water Resources increases the likelihood that golden mussels will invade Lake Oroville and hitch a ride on boats to other lakes. They disagree, though, about whether preventing such an incursion is even possible.

”California is under an epidemic of golden mussels,” said Anthony Ricciardi, a professor of biology and the director of the Bieler School of Environment at McGill University. “Like in any epidemic, you got to control the key hubs — or else the war is lost.”

Reopening Lake Oroville

California water managers first discovered golden mussels invading California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in October 2024 — marking their first detection in North America.

The voracious and rapidly spreading mussels can encrust surfaces so thoroughly that they choke off water supplies and damage dams and power plants.

They are now invading critical infrastructure in the Delta. And the very pumps, canals and aqueducts that keep water flowing to much of the state are funneling the larvae to irrigation districts and water suppliers downstream.

San Joaquin and Kern Counties have declared states of emergency, and state officials are updating key facilities along the state’s nature-defying water delivery system to reduce mussel damage.

With summer weather coming in hot, state water managers said that they are ending a program to prevent mussels and their larvae from stowing away on boats to invade Lake Oroville, one of California’s largest reservoirs.

The department now no longer requires inspections and decontamination for boats launching at Lake Oroville and nearby reservoirs — the Thermalito Forebay and the Thermalito Afterbay.

The Department of Water Resources says lakes and launches upstream in the Feather River watershed didn’t take similar precautions, raising the risk that golden mussel larvae would wash into the reservoir on river flows regardless of the boat inspections.

The cost of the inspection program for the lake was also around $7.5 million to start it up, and $6.5 million per year to continue it. Installing UV treatment to prevent mussels from settling in the pipes at powerplants downstream from Oroville, by contrast, would cost an estimated $1 million.

“We severely impacted recreation at that lake,” said Tanya Veldhuizen, special projects section manager in the California Department of Water Resources’ environmental assessment branch. “We also evaluated the risk to our infrastructure and what it would take to mitigate mussels — and that was much lower than expected.”

Cold water, fewer mussels? 

The decision reflects the findings from a new risk analysis the department commissioned for these reservoirs and related hydropower and fishery hatchery facilities, as well as for the Upper Feather River Lakes.

Conducted by a Canada-based consulting firm specializing in aquatic invasive species, the assessment reports that, while surface temperatures are warm enough for the mussels to survive in shallower water at Lake Oroville, they’re too cold lower down for the mussels to reproduce at depths greater than 60 feet below the surface.

Unlike the Delta, the waters at Lake Oroville are also low in nutrients, Veldhuizen said. Between the scarce food, cold temperatures, and water levels that drop enough to dry out mussels on the shoreline, Veldhuizen said she doesn’t expect the mussels to reach nuisance levels.

The department also expects cold water released from the reservoir will slow the growth of any larvae that reach the Feather River Fish Hatchery and the Oroville-Thermalito Complex powerplants downstream.

But Oroville’s shoreline, boats and docks remain at risk — and that’s what worries Ricciardi.

“That's where the action is. The boats will be moving them,” Ricciardi said — because boats and aquatic weeds clinging to vessels and their trailers can ferry mussels from one lake to another.

And adult mussels can actually survive even in very cold water, says Demetrio Boltovskoy, a retired researcher formerly at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council. One study in China found they can live for weeks at near-freezing temperatures.

Still, Boltovskoy said that while he isn’t specifically familiar with Lake Oroville, reducing precautions may be reasonable.

“No matter what precautionary measures you take, sooner or later it will spread,” he said. “I don't think that stopping their range expansion is actually feasible at all.”

But invasive species experts are sharply divided on the subject. That’s true especially in California.

Last year, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told CalMatters that invasions delayed translated to money saved. This year, the wildlife department directed inquiries about the new Oroville strategy to the Department of Water Resources.

“There’s so much to protect yet,” Martha Volkoff, environmental program manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Invasive Species Program, said last summer. “Yes, it’s a lot of work, but the long-term savings — to the environment and to all the other ways that it costs us — is investment well spent, even if we just delay new introductions.”

Relying on boaters: Clean, drain, dry

The responsibility now rests more heavily with boaters to ensure their boats are clean, drained and dry — especially when leaving an infested body of water, like the Delta.

If state water managers detect mussels at Lake Oroville, she said, the department will begin inspecting boats as they leave the lake.

It's a strategy already in use at other infested lakes, including Castaic and Pyramid.

Managers of other Northern California lakes told CalMatters they will continue their inspection programs, including at lakes Folsom, Tahoe and Berryessa.

Drew Gantner, manager of water resources at Solano County Water Agency, which oversees the mussel program at Lake Berryessa, called the Oroville decision concerning.

“If Lake Oroville does surrender its program and becomes infested with golden mussels it creates an increased risk for all waterbodies,” Gantner said. “At that point, any watercraft travelling to Berryessa (or anywhere else) from Lake Oroville would essentially be no different than watercraft coming from the Delta.”  

Ricciardi agreed that the stakes extend well past Oroville’s dam and downstream facilities.

“There is another thing about invasions. They often surprise you,” Ricciardi said. “Sometimes invaders don't act the way they're supposed to act.”

This story has been updated to reflect that Anthony Ricciardi did not speak about ballast water when explaining how boats can spread invasive mussels.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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California Senate Democrats want to put the brakes on a new program by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration that steers free pollution permits to oil refineries and other major polluters — and they’re using the state budget to force the issue.

In the spending proposal they released last month, the senators moved to block the program until the state funds a three-party climate deal the governor struck with the Legislature last year, an agreement they say Newsom is now breaking. They call their counterplan “Deal is a Deal,” signaling a standoff that could stretch through the summer.

“We really need to stay to the deal,” said Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes, a San Bernardino Democrat and chair of the Senate’s climate budget subcommittee.

At stake are billions of dollars earmarked for public transit, safe drinking water and affordable housing raised from climate market auctions. The Senate is also threatening to hold up many of Newsom’s own priorities, including funding for high-speed rail and wildfires, electric-car tax credits and a clean jet fuel subsidy.

At issue is a new incentive program created last month by the California Air Resources Board, which overhauled the state’s carbon market under pressure from Newsom and heavy lobbying by the oil industry. It offers free pollution permits worth as much as $4 billion to companies that pledge to invest in clean energy and efficiency initiatives, with half slated for the fossil fuel industry.

That program threatens to drain funds for a series of air quality, housing and transit programs that lawmakers and Newsom agreed to fund last year, when they extended the state’s carbon market through 2045, rebranding it “cap and invest.” The overhaul also puts up to $1 billion guaranteed to the Legislature for discretionary projects in jeopardy.

A climate bargain under threat

California’s carbon-trading program, launched in 2013, is California’s way of putting a price tag on greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change.

Last year’s late-session deal set a new pecking order for the billions of dollars the program raises by auctioning pollution permits.

Under the deal, high-speed rail gets $1 billion a year before many other climate programs are funded; another $1 billion annually is dedicated to lawmakers’ priorities.

Last in line are the programs that turn carbon-market money paid by polluters into tangible benefits for some of California’s most burdened communities: affordable housing projects near transit, cleaner buses and rail, safe drinking water, wildfire protection and neighborhood air monitoring.

Last month, following intense lobbying by the oil industry and ballooning gas prices, the air board adopted rules to cut the number of auctioned pollution permits drastically through 2030 with Newsom’s blessing. It also created a new incentive for oil and gas refineries and other industries investing in decarbonization.

“It’s unfortunate that the state of California empowers the oil industry to freak everyone out and adopt bad policies,” said Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office projects the changes could cut annual auction revenue for state climate programs from roughly $4 billion to $2 billion, which would wipe out community-focused programs.

Newsom spokesperson Anthony Martinez said the changes keep the carbon market “durable” while helping consumers and industry.

“That is not a retreat from climate leadership — it’s how California keeps leading while the federal government is retreating,” Martinez said.

Senate holds Newsom priorities hostage

Senate Democrats have countered with their own plan. It would protect the $1 billion lawmakers control, then steer as much as $2 billion to the housing, transit, clean air and drinking water programs. Newsom’s priorities would move to the back of the line, meaning if the climate fund brings in only $2 billion, Cal Fire, high-speed rail and other programs would get little or nothing.

“Why, at this time … would we take away critical funding to build affordable homes in California?” said Sen. Jesse Arreguín, an Oakland Democrat and chair of the housing committee.

Wiener said public transit should not have to fight for survival. “Every year, transit funding becomes a political football.”

Meanwhile, Assembly Democrats are mum on the rule change in their budget plan and have not proposed any alternatives.

Assemblymembers Jacqui Irwin and Cottie Petrie-Norris, Democrats who chair key climate and energy committees, have supported the air board’s plan, saying the changes reflect the Legislature’s focus on affordability, including potentially more money for Californians’ electric bills.

The governor and the Legislature have until June 30 to agree on a budget deal before the new fiscal year starts. But much of the climate funding tied up in negotiations is not bound by the deadline and can be hashed out before the legislative session wraps in September.

The Senate’s opposition is threatening to hold up many of Newsom’s priorities.

One is his January proposal to spend $200 million on electric vehicle incentives, $115 million of which would come from the climate fund. Senate Democrats have deferred negotiations on it and talks could last through the summer.

The Senate also rejected Newsom’s proposed sustainable aviation fuel tax credit, which Newsom argues would encourage the production of greener fuel and boost refinery jobs. The initiative, which would allow eligible producers to pay less into the state’s road repair funding, followed intensive lobbying by petroleum refining company Phillips 66, the only company that has publicly announced it would benefit from the credit.

Cleanup tool or polluter subsidy?

The climate funding dispute turns on the idea that California may be using its carbon market to soften the rules for some of the state’s biggest polluters.

Air regulators say the permits created through its new program, the Manufacturing Decarbonization Incentive, will go only to companies that cut their own emissions. They say the program has guardrails, including requirements to return the permits if companies fail to deliver. They argue the program will help keep refineries and other major industries in California while sustaining clean-energy investment as President Donald Trump withdraws federal support.

“The cap-and-invest program was updated to do what it was always designed to do: reduce pollution cost-effectively, protect ratepayers, and keep businesses operating in California,” Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the board, said. “The program was never designed to maximize auction revenue.”

Critics of the new program see only a subsidy for polluters that does not guarantee emissions reductions. They argue the new program could threaten California’s ability to meet its legally mandated 2030 emissions targets.

Several board members shared concerns. The overhaul passed 10-3, but only after the board required further review before the new incentive program launches.

The Senate plan would block climate-fund spending unless the Department of Finance certifies that last year’s deal can be funded. It would also stop the air board from handing out the new industrial permits unless state officials show they align with California’s climate targets, lower gasoline prices and leave enough money for threatened climate programs.

The budget fight could have political consequences for Newsom as he defends his climate record beyond California, said Katie Valenzuela, a policy advocate who focuses on environmental justice issues.

“If this (rule) goes forward and isn’t fixed, this is a huge stain on his climate legacy,” Valenzuela said. “He is showing loud and clear that the most vulnerable residents who are most impacted by climate change are not his priority.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday he is making available $46 million in voter-approved funding to help clean up cross-border pollution in the chronically contaminated Tijuana River and the New River at the California-Mexico border.

Since 2018, more than 100 billion gallons (378 billion liters) of raw sewage filled with industrial chemicals and trash have poured into the Tijuana River, according to the International Boundary and Water Commission. The United States and Mexico signed an agreement last year to clean up the longstanding problem by upgrading wastewater plants to keep up with Tijuana’s population growth and industrial waste from factories, many owned by U.S. companies.

For years, tens of thousands of people have and continue to be exposed to the sewage. During a February visit to San Diego, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said it will take a couple of years to fix one of the nation’s worst and longest-running environmental crises that affects largely low-income Latino communities.

“People in San Diego County shouldn’t have to worry about getting sick, losing access to their beaches, and living with polluted air,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in a news release.

The New River flows north across the border through the city of Calexico to the Salton Sea about 60 miles away (about 97 kilometers). The water that enters the U.S. contains raw sewage and other pollution from industrial, domestic and agricultural sources.

The funding will come from Proposition 4, a $10 billion bond measure approved in 2024 to fund water, climate, wildfire and natural resource projects across the state. At least 40% of the money is supposed to be spent on communities hardest hit by climate change and environmental pollution.

The funding will be made available as competitive grants for projects that reduce bacteria and trash, address public health issues related to the cross-border pollution and support mitigation and restoration.

The raw, foul-smelling sewage from the Tijuana River that empties into the Pacific Ocean also emits hydrogen sulfide, a toxic gas that can erode neurons in the nose and trigger asthma attacks, and cause symptoms such as headaches, nausea, cough, shortness of breath, skin and eye irritation, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its long-term health problems are only starting to be understood.

“This funding is desperately needed. Certainly every dollar we can secure to address the Tijuana River crisis is a big help,” said Phillip Musegaas, executive director of the San Diego Coastkeeper, an environmental nonprofit in Southern California. “Unfortunately, this funding is really just a small portion of what’s needed to fully address the crisis."

He added: “We need more federal funding to fix and expand the wastewater infrastructure that is now under stress and is often failing or inadequate to treat all the sewage that’s being generated.”

In Thursday's announcement, Newsom called on the Trump administration again to find a permanent fix.

“California has stepped up repeatedly, but we can’t solve a decades-long federal failure on our own," Newsom said in the release. “The Trump administration must do its part, honor its commitments, and finally deliver the lasting solutions this community deserves, and they have a moral obligation to provide.”

An update to this story clarifies that some of the money from California is also available for cleanup of the New River.

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

Forecasters announced Thursday that El Niño has officially formed and with conditions expected to intensify by winter, making the event among the largest in over 70 years.

El Niño is a phenomenon that typically occurs every two to seven years and is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific.

Conditions developed in the past month, forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.

“El Niño conditions (are) already present at this point and expected to strengthen across the Northern Hemisphere into the wintertime over the next several months,” said Ariel Cohen, a lead meteorologist with NOAA’s National Weather Service.

For months, forecasters have anticipated an El Niño event, but their confidence in the likelihood of a powerful one just increased.

There’s now a 63% chance of “very strong” conditions, meaning that tropical Pacific waters may warm above 2 degrees Celsius between November and January, according to NOAA, up from a forecast of 37% issued last month and 25% in April.

That could rank this El Niño “amongst the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950,” Cohen said.

While the odds are tilted toward wet conditions, “by no means does a significant El Niño guarantee wet conditions,” Cohen said.

Over the past half-century, there have only been three “very strong” El Niño events. They occurred in 1982-1983, 1997-1998 and 2015-16. The first two were exceptionally wet for California, but the 2015-16 event brought drier-than-normal conditions across several southwest states.

The county Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 Wednesday to defer work on a local transportation guide connected to development in unincorporated areas for a year or less.

A state law passed in 2013 mandates an analysis of vehicle miles traveled in an effort to reduce traffic, travel costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

During a Wednesday presentation, county Planning and Development Services staff said lawsuits have changed the local VMT program.

According to information from the Wednesday agenda, there have been legal changes to the state Environmental Quality Act guidelines. If a project is consistent with the county General Plan, which is a blueprint for future growth, builders may skip VMT mitigation, officials said.

The board adopted a VMT guide in 2020, but updated it two years later in response to litigation.

Supervisors also want the county to continue working with the San Diego County Association of Governments on a regional VMT program.

The county will also continue creating a sustainable land-use framework, in relation to any updates or possible changes to the General Plan, which supervisors approved in August 2011.

Supervisors in June 2024 directed staff to consider several greenhouse gas mitigation options, including a SANDAG regional model and a focused transit opportunity area.

Supervisor Jim Desmond, who suggested pausing the local VMT program, noted during Wednesday's meeting that a lot has changed since 2022.

It's "not necessary for us to continue dedicating staff (resources) to developing a local VMT mitigation at this time," said Desmond, who added he supports cooperation with SANDAG on regional efforts.

His colleague Paloma Aguirre said the Wednesday recommendations were "a good, reasonable approach."

Vice Chair Monica Montgomery Steppe said as the county must balance a dire need for more housing with environmental impacts, she understands concerns over a lack of public transportation in some supervisorial districts.

Working with SANDAG will be critical to the transit issue, as the county can partner with that agency to create best practices next year, she added.

Supervisor Joel Anderson said that just because there isn't mass transit in his district now, that doesn't mean it can't be a reality in the future.

Local Sierra Club representatives criticized the board's decision during public comment.

Peter Andersen said he was "extremely disappointed with the county's approach toward VMT."

Less than two years ago, the Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to adopt a Climate Action Plan and smart-growth alternative, which should be primary guideline, Andersen said.

"Instead, we have staff running off in another direction, and we have attorneys for the county telling us that what happened on Sept. 11, 2024 never happened," he added.

The Sierra Club wants housing, but such projects should be developed near transportation and existing infrastructure, Andersen said.

Ronald Askeland, another Sierra Club official, said "we're in the middle of a climate crisis," with vehicles and light-duty trucks causing 41% of emissions in the county.

"We need to implement the VMT alternative that this board actually passed," Askeland added.

Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer was absent during the Wednesday meeting.

The Peninsular bighorn sheep’s heavy, curved horns and front legs were trapped in the bladed, large coils.

Christina Aiello, a wildlife biologist at the Wildlands Network, found the ram last week in the Jacumba Wilderness, decomposing.

“It was pretty gruesome to see how fully wrapped up in this wire he was,” she said Tuesday.

This was the first death-by-border-wire Aiello had seen. Residents in Jacumba and Boulevard said they have also observed more wildlife wandering near their homes, some of them with lacerations, since the federal government began sealing gaps in the California-Mexico border.

Aiello said she wasn’t surprised by the ram’s death. For months, she and several other scientists and conservationists had been warning U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials about the consequences of wire fencing in natural areas.

Late last year, CBP began installing concertina wire in the Jacumba Wilderness where the animal was found. The addition of the coil fencing is part of the federal government’s larger plan to close the last remaining openings in the border wall, including in San Diego and Imperial counties, with “30-foot-high six-inch-squared diameter steel bollards” and a secondary barrier wherever possible, as well as surveillance cameras and LED lighting.

Aiello has asked CBP to remove the wire and to build animal passages on the steel U.S.-Mexico border wall that are large enough for bighorn sheep to cross. Those requests have been denied.

Conservationists have argued that without these measures in place, several species, including the endangered bighorn sheep, will be forced to travel far outside their home range in search of food and water. They said if the fencing remains in place, more protected species may die.

“If they have completed the razor wire fence, if they're doing construction on the border, you then have risks of that entanglement problem,” said Aiello. “If they leave that razor wire up, you have risks of death or interactions with construction vehicles.”

CBP declined to comment. A spokesperson deferred questions to the Joint Task Force – Southern Border, which did not respond.

In an emailed statement, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) confirmed the ram had died after getting caught in the large coils.

“CDFW has been clear with the federal government that border wall construction poses serious risks to protected wildlife, including bighorn sheep,” the statement added. “This is another tragic reminder of those concerns.”

Aiello was surprised to find the ram caught by the wire on a flat section of the Jacumba Wilderness, rather than high up in the remote area’s boulders.

“My thought here is that it actually might have just been grazing next to the fence, not even trying to jump over it,” she said. “Something as simple as just walking by with your head down and you're not paying attention, and a horn gets caught can create a very hazardous situation as the animal panics and starts to react.”

“If something so kind of mundane as walking next to the fence could lead to entrapment, I do think that the longer that fence is up, you know, the greater the risk,” Aiello added.

In Boulevard, resident Karen Parker said she has noticed more mountain lions in her community. She recently found one with noticeable lacerations on its back legs.

“Big cats have lost their habitat (since the expansion of the border wall)," she said. “(Mountain lions) have always been out here, but not like this and not this many. I put water out for them and that’s all we can do.”

On Monday, Jacumba resident Tanya Wilkins Aiau reported the death of what she believes was a wild horse that had been struck by a vehicle on Old Highway 80 near Jacumba to San Diego County Public Works officials. She said she believes the new border wall construction is pushing the horses toward busy highways.

“Because of all of the disruption, they don’t have their regular spots anymore,” she said, adding that local residents have reported two other wild horse deaths in recent months.

Aiello said she is working with state agencies and nonprofit organizations on both sides of the border to monitor wildlife movement using cameras and GPS trackers. They are also working on securing funding to install permanent water sources for animals who may lose their resources because of the border wall’s expansion.

Slightly below average temperatures will give way to a warming trend throughout San Diego County this week, the National Weather Service said Sunday.

Temperatures will reach 6 to 12 degrees above average by Tuesday, with the hottest conditions expected Thursday through Saturday, according to the NWS.

Areas of moderate heat risk are expected for the deserts.

"With the predominately onshore flow, the marine layer will stay on the deeper side into Monday morning, which will push low clouds into the valleys," the NWS said. "Starting Tuesday, the marine layer is expected to become shallower as heights start to rise."

By the end of the week, low clouds and fog are only expected along the coast.

Highs will be in the upper 70s to 80 along the coast this week, upper 70s to mid-80s in the inland valleys, mid-80s and windy in the local mountains, and upper 90s to low 100s in the deserts.

THE GREAT NICOBAR ISLAND, India — Fireflies illuminate the edge of a forest on the Great Nicobar Island as field biologist Sumit Kumar tries to find a particularly shy creature.

A soft hoot wafts through the thicket. Kumar scans the trees with his flashlight: Sitting on a branch is a rare, wide-eyed, fat Nicobarese Scops owl. It narrows its eyes into what feels like a death-glare. Kumar smiles: "When you spot them, they look at you as if to say, 'You don't belong here.'"

And he says, they're not wrong.

The Great Nicobar Island is part of an archipelago that lies deep in the Indian Ocean. Until mainland Indians started settling here a few decades ago, its humans consisted of around a thousand indigenous folks.

It's governed by India but is so distant that it takes a flight from the mainland and a 30-hour ferry ride to arrive.

The Indian government hopes to change all that.

The upcoming Great Nicobar Project is set to transform this sleepy island into a bustling township over the next three decades.

Once complete, the island will have a civilian and military airport, a transshipment port that caters to container ships, a power plant and a new town equipped to host a million tourists a year — nearly 100 times its current population.

The project will cover an area twice the size of Manhattan, and potentially feature high rises, discos, even Disneyland-like theme parks.

Environmentalists and critics have a list of concerns. They say farms, beaches and hills will be swallowed up and a million trees will be felled. They worry about the impact on endangered animals, like leatherback turtles, largest of all sea turtles, and the Nicobarese pigeon, the closest living relative of the dodo, with its distinctive fluorescent green and orange plume.

The Great Nicobar Project "sounds like an open invitation to disaster," says Manish Chandi, a scholar who has studied the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago for over two decades. "It poses a threat to a huge amount of natural resources, its biological diversity and its indigenous communities." 

Chandi argues the purported benefits of the Great Nicobar Infrastructure project reflect a flawed understanding of "development." Residents are not the primary beneficiaries, he says. "It's a model that sees money-generation as the only way forward." He says the price of that extraction isn't taken into account.

It's a tussle mirrored in many state-backed infrastructure projects across India, from a coastal road underway in the Arabian Sea that cuts through mangrove trees to an upcoming dam in the Himalayas that will decimate chunks of forests. The clamor to protect nature has grown sharper as India sees a rise in heatwaves, glacial floods and extreme rainfall in recent years. 

After some public criticism last year, the environment minister Bhupendra Yadav insisted that the project "poses no threat to the island's tribal groups, does not come in the way of any species and does not jeopardize the eco-sensitivity of the region."

Indian ministers and departments overseeing this project did not respond to NPR's emails with a list of questions about the potential negative impacts of the project.

Why this project?

The global presence of China looms over the project.

In a press release in May, the Indian government said the goal is "to enhance India's national security, strategic and defense presence, strengthen the islands' economic position, and accelerate holistic development in the region."

And more plainly, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party that governs India has described the project as a "strategic gateway to crush China" in a series of social media posts.

It says the project can also help "challenge the dominance" of China in the Indian Ocean. Analysts say the shipping blockade in the Strait of Hormuz stemming from the Iran war has lent an air of urgency.

"If we think about global choke points today, especially in light of conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, India is one of many countries that are looking to secure their own supply lines," says Nitya Labh, a maritime researcher from the think-tank Chatham House.

"The project here is a great opportunity to do that because it sits along such a major international shipping route," she says, referring to the Strait of Malacca, a narrow maritime pathway that lies between Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

In a 2023 press release, the Indian government said nearly 75% of India's maritime cargo today is handled at ports outside India. With a new project, it said, "Indian ports can save $200-220 million each year on transshipment cargo" and grab a share of the regional goods traffic.

There's been a massive outcry against this project for years — from former bureaucrats, the political opposition Indian National Congress party, academics and indigenous communities. They accuse the government of downplaying its ecological impact and overstating its economic and security benefits. Some have also filed lawsuits.

Others, like Abhijit Singh, a former Indian naval officer and expert on maritime affairs, have questioned the government's claims.

"This strategic and commercial gain that we are talking about seems to me a bit notional," says Singh. "But the damage to the environment is going to be very real."

Singh says India already has military infrastructure in the region to counter Chinese threats. He adds, a transshipment port only makes sense if it can lure shipping companies from their current stopovers in Singapore and Sri Lanka.

"A transshipment port does not just come up in a vacuum. It requires a logistical network. The big problem with Nicobar is that it is over 700 miles away from the Indian mainland. That means the markets and cargo production centers are quite far off from the transshipment port."

India's ruling party has bristled at criticism of the project.

In April, the country's political opposition leader Rahul Gandhi described it as the "biggest scam and gravest crime" against nature and "indigenous communities" during a visit to the island.

Days later, the ruling party accused him of sabotaging the project on behalf of China and George Soros, echoing widespread antisemitic conspiracy theories that the billionaire Jewish philanthropist seeks to subvert popular rule.

And many fear reprisals from the government for speaking out.

Nearly a dozen environmentalists, think tanks, public officials and residents declined to comment when NPR reached out, or they requested anonymity. Some said they worried about their ability to obtain funding for their projects or obtain access to the island if they publicly criticize the project.

But India's ruling party has promised the project would bring new roads, power, internet and more than 50,000 jobs to the island. The interior minister Amit Shah promised in a speech earlier this year that "in a decade, this region will draw the most tourists in the world."

For many islanders, that is a major incentive.

Two populations: Settlers and islanders 

On a recent spring afternoon, around two hundred men and women sit in neat rows at the community hall in Gandhi Nagar, a settlement built by mainland Indians when they migrated to the island five decades ago. A dozen bureaucrats had flown down for the public hearing scheduled this afternoon. They sit behind a small table, looking somber.

At the five-hour public hearing, residents ask for guarantees: jobs, houses, farmland and a hefty payout, not the pittance they say they're being offered and that the government confirms: a dollar-and-a-half per square meter of their land.

"We're no ordinary people," says an elderly man with a long white beard, who did not give his name during the public hearing. From the 1970s, he says, the government shipped hundreds of Indian citizens from the mainland to build roads and tend to farms, and to act as India's eyes and ears against Burmese poachers and foreign powers. They lived through earthquakes and diseases, staying put even when the deadly tsunami of 2004 devastated the island. "Had we run away, the Chinese flag would've fluttered on Great Nicobar," the man says. The crowd cheers.

But for the indigenous communities, the threat is existential.

Around a hundred members of the hunter-gatherer Shompen tribe live in the Great Nicobar's rainforests. The Indian government forbids outsiders from most contact with the tribe because their bodies aren't immune to modern day diseases. In the past, thousands of the indigenous Great Andamanese people living in the region died after contact with British colonizers led to an epidemic of measles and syphilis. The nonprofit conservation group Survival International, which focuses on the rights of indigenous people, says massive tourism risks contact between the island's indigenous tribe and outside visitors.

The Indian government insists that the safeguards are in place, and the rights of the Shompen will "not be affected adversely." But anthropologist Vishvajit Pandya, who interacted with the Shompen people as part of an official study in 2019, told NPR that the project's official maps he has studied include areas they're known to inhabit.

To prevent interactions with outsiders, the government's environmental impact report proposed using barbed wire to fence off areas Shompen communities are known to inhabit.

The island's other indigenous folk — the Nicobarese — are also worried. They do have contact with outsiders and have spoken to reporters, including NPR.

For generations, around a thousand Nicobarese people have lived in coastal villages. It was a simple life, says chief Barnabas Manju. "We fished in the sea, got honey from forests, squeezed oil from coconuts."

The 2004 tsunami wrecked their thatched-roof homes near the coast and forced them to relief camps in the island's administrative center. Manju says Indian officials had promised to help them return when things got better. That never happened.

Over syrupy tea and biscuits, Manju and his three deputies recalled how the lives of his community members have fundamentally changed. They now labor on building sites for money and sleep in tin sheds instead of the thatched-roof homes in their village. Their diet includes processed food. They buy fish and coconuts from the market instead of doing their own hunting and gathering for free.

Four years ago, Manju says, officials told him about the Great Nicobar project. "They had brought with them a consent letter. They didn't even give me time to read it — and just asked me to sign."

Manju says they promised him the project wouldn't impact their ancestral lands. When he saw the project's maps later, he realized part of the port would be built over his community's ancestral lands.

But Manju says what keeps them going is faith.

Every Sunday, they pray at their church, then ask for blessings for everyone: friends and family, island officials and India's prime minister.

Manju says he will lead his people back to their thatched-roof homes in their villages one day. And when that happens, he hopes officials understand why it was so important to them: "Because a country's development shouldn't come at the cost of its people's identity."

Leesha K Nair is a freelance journalist from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, focusing on intersecting themes of environment, climate, mental health and Indigenous issues.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Early results from Tuesday’s primary election show voters in El Centro and Westmoreland overwhelmingly rejected Carlos Duran’s bid for the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors. Instead, they voted to reelect incumbent director Alex Cardenas, who has served in the role since 2018.

As of Friday morning, Cardenas had over 1,700 votes, nearly double Duran’s total of approximately 900 votes. In a phone call, Cardenas said he saw the results as a sign that voters valued experience, ethics and transparency.

“The voters and the rate payers and water users spoke loud and clear,” Cardenas said. “They want a transparent government that doesn't placate to special interests.”

IID is the primary provider of power and water in the region. The utility delivers electricity to more than 160,000 customers throughout the Imperial and Coachella Valleys.

The agency also oversees the generations-old claims of Imperial Valley farmers to water from the Colorado River and is currently engaged in urgent talks over the river basin’s future.

Duran’s defeat was a blow for Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing (IVCM), the Huntington Beach-based developer backing his campaign.

The company is trying to build a 950,000-square-foot artificial intelligence data center complex in the Imperial Valley. It had spent $30,000 to support Duran, a local journalist and online personality who had previously worked for the company as a spokesperson.

Cardenas, by comparison, raised around $20,000 from a mix of small donors, farmers and loans from himself.

The coalition of residents who oppose data center development in the Imperial Valley celebrated Duran’s defeat. Francisco Leal said Duran had sharply criticized IID’s current leaders but hadn’t explained his own plans.

“He drilled really hard on just bashing and talking bad about his opponent,” said Leal, a resident of the City of Imperial and a lead organizer of the coalition, known as NIMBY Imperial. “When he should have been campaigning on ways to improve and do good things for the community.”

Duran did not respond to an interview request.

The race for IID’s Division 1 seat has become one of the most prominent examples of how the nationwide data center boom and surging opposition have emerged as a driving political force in the Imperial Valley this year.

Developers such as IVCM have looked to the Valley for its energy infrastructure and availability of industrial land. Late last year, IVCM Chief Executive Officer Sebastian Rucci told KPBS he also hoped to provide tax revenue and some jobs for the region, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in California.

But IVCM needs the utility to agree to provide energy to get their project up and running. In March, Rucci told KPBS that Duran would support their plans if elected.

“In my view Carlos Duran is an excellent candidate,” Rucci said in an email. “He is not running to spare the data center of its obligations, on the contrary, he has my blessing to secure every voluntary improvement from our project.”

Duran’s candidacy, however, alarmed many Imperial Valley residents who have deep concerns about the proposed data center, which could need nearly double the amount of power that the entire county used in 2024 and 750,000 gallons of water per day.

The company has prioritized speed in its efforts to build its massive AI computing complex between the cities of Imperial and El Centro, designing it to avoid an in-depth environmental analysis.

Rucci did not respond to an interview request Thursday.

Some other utility officials said they were excited and relieved by the results. Earlier this year, IID Chairwoman Karin Eugenio said she saw Duran’s campaign as an open bid for political power in the Imperial Valley.

“I was terrified,” Eugenio told KPBS Thursday. “What that would do to the integrity of our board and how that could compromise the safety of our county.”

Eugenio, an outspoken critic of IVCM’s data center project, was also up for reelection this week. She currently holds a strong lead over her opponent, Eric Rodriguez.

County officials announced May 28 the launch of the Tijuana River Sewage Crisis Economic Impact Study. It poses questions about how pollution in the river and beach closures have affected local businesses, employment, property values, tourism and school attendance.

The survey has four different versions: for business owners, residents, people who have recently visited the area, and those who work for local community organizations.

Questions for business owners include whether employees have missed work because of health impacts related to the pollution, whether they have struggled to attract new workers or customers and how much revenue they have lost because of the crisis.

Diana Santana is a Nestor resident who manages several properties in Imperial Beach. She said that the pollution is forcing tenants out of the area. It’s evident when driving through the neighborhoods, she said.

“If you drive around Imperial Beach, there (are) so many for rent signs everywhere,” she said. “This smell is driving people out. Since 2014, I have not had this many vacancies. Right now, we have over 14 vacancies… We're entering summer and that's usually when we don't have any vacancies.”

Most of what the county has learned about local economic losses has been anecdotal. A previous survey the county conducted in 2023 also sought to get a pulse on the economic impacts on small businesses in Imperial Beach.

That survey got responses from about 60 businesses. They indicated that several lost at least $100,000 in annual revenue. Some laid off employees and most said they would have trouble staying in business if conditions did not improve. The report concluded that a “full scope of economic impacts” was necessary, but it was not followed up on. It also mentioned that businesses could seek short-term relief through grant opportunities, but it's unclear whether any were ever found.

The new economic survey is designed to capture that “full scope” of impacts. According to the survey’s website, the survey “is just one part of the process and will be considered alongside other research, data, and community input.”

It’s also part of a broader county effort to measure public damages from the pollution crisis and bring relief to residents. Last year, the county Board of Supervisors directed county staff to study economic impacts and the potential health consequences of long-term exposure to cross-border pollution.

In a statement, the county said, “the findings will help guide future funding and long-term solutions.” It did not specify what kinds of solutions, but funding could support additional efforts, such as purchasing more air purifiers for residents and permanently addressing a hot spot of airborne sewage pollution in the Tijuana River Valley.

The survey will remain open for about four weeks, and findings will be published this fall, the county said.

The garden in one Clairemont home’s front yard tells you a serious green thumb lives here.

But when you walk into the backyard, the tableau opens up into an undersea masterpiece.

Longtime resident Carol Kent is the creative force behind the landlocked bit of sea scenery.

After looking around, it would be fair to call Kent a master gardener. But she demurred, saying, “No, it’s not fair.”

But anyone who would take a stubby succulent called a ghostie and put lacy Spanish Moss below it to make a jellyfish, well, some people might say that creation could only come from the mind of a master gardener.

The inspiration for all of this dates back decades, to when Kent captained a scuba-diving boat. She also did a lot of snorkeling during those years.

“And I had 15 years of incredible stories out on the ocean and the sea," Kent said. "It's just, I'm so lucky to have done that.”

Visiting this garden is like snorkeling on dry land — and it’s drought-tolerant!

“If we have normal rain, I don’t have to water for six months," Kent said. "But in the height of the summer, I might water once a week.”

There is so much to see in this garden of wonder. An impressive variety of plants and other little surprises await visitors around every twist and turn. One species got special attention on a recent Clairemont Garden Tour.

“They don’t usually turn red. In fact, the fellow I bought it from is a specialist, and he has never seen one like this… It’s an Agave Impresa and it is impressive,” said Kent with a chuckle.

It’s not just plants that make this garden. There are also inanimate objects that help conjure the undersea look.

“I took a class to learn how to make ceramic fish and so they’re a pretty recent addition,” Kent said, pointing to some orange fish with blue spots, made to look just like Garibaldi.

When looking for plants on land that resembled undersea varieties, Kent kept an open mind about selecting species that had changed from their original look. She referenced one odd-looking succulent, “And then it mutates into that form where it’s very, very crusted… so it looks like coral.”

But it's the ceramics that are a favorite with the younger set.

“And you have your little turtle family here… the kids love to play with that," Kent said. "The grandkids come and the neighborhood kids come.”

It’s not all seascape. The largest plant here is very un-oceanic; an avocado tree.

“We love avocados, guacamole, so when we have good years, we have an avocado a day,” Kent said of her fruit-bearing tree.

Apart from the pleasure that comes with having a place like this to escape to, Kent loves to talk about an unexpected benefit that’s come with this garden.

“About once a month, I give away a truckload of succulents because they grow a lot faster than you think," she said. "So I meet a lot of people through that and I have friends that I’ve met by giving away plants and we do things together. It’s great.”

Kent is now on the verge of downsizing this garden. It’s a lot of work, and a surfing injury she sustained years ago means the physical process of tending it is painful.

But she was not wistful about the downsizing.

“I’m kind of a ‘now’ person. So, I feel really good having done this and as it changes it’ll be really great," Kent said. "And it’s documented so I can always go back and look at it.”

And she's right about that. It’ll live on the internet forever.

Kent laughed and smiled at that sentiment as she looked out over her marine masterpiece.

The U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, or IBWC, said that’s because a 10-mile pipeline in Tijuana, dubbed the Parallel Gravity Line, collapsed Friday night.

The line is supposed to transport wastewater to the San Antonio de los Buenos plant in Baja California, which is designed to divert flows from the Tijuana River by treating 18 million gallons per day before releasing them into the Pacific Ocean.

Instead, the raw flows have been entering the river. According to IBWC data, flows in the river spiked from 10 million gallons on Friday to 34 million gallons on Sunday.

It’s likely the jump in water pollution also pushed hydrogen sulfide levels above state and federal thresholds over the weekend, triggering air quality alerts from the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District. The alerts warn the public to limit their time outdoors and to seek medical care if symptoms such as asthma or other breathing issues worsen.

On Monday, the IBWC did not respond to an interview request. The agency acknowledged in a news release Sunday that residents near the river “may notice increased wastewater flows in the Tijuana River Channel along with stronger odors.”

The IBWC also said that the Parallel Gravity Line has ruptured twice over the past two weeks. That’s been frustrating for residents and environmental advocates pushing for solutions. Among them is Patrick McDonough, senior attorney for San Diego Coastkeeper.

“Unfortunately, we routinely receive email updates about ruptures or damage to infrastructure in the Tijuana wastewater system that leads to these high flows or spill events that then impacts the water in the estuary,” he said.

Repeated infrastructure failures are, in part, what has prompted Coastkeeper to file a complaint in January against Mexico with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, an organization established by Canada, Mexico and the U.S. that works to protect the North American environment.

McDonough said the organization has accepted its petition and is now seeking a response from Mexico by the end of July. He hopes that Mexico will release an analysis of the status of Tijuana’s wastewater system that it has already conducted.

“We just want the full, complete picture of what the status of the problem is, and also then how the Mexican federal government and its respective agencies could solve these issues,” he said.

Mexican officials said they expect emergency repairs to take several days.

The Tijuana River sewage crisis is a multi-faceted problem, with environmental, public health and political challenges to overcome.

It can all feel overwhelming, not only for the people experiencing the crisis, but also for those wanting to help.

Enter Sarah Federman’s Peace Studies students. She teaches conflict resolution at the University of San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, and this spring semester, she taught her class on the ongoing cross-border sewage crisis.

“We're a school of peace studies, so you might think, well, it's not a war, right?" she said. "But we study conflict resolution and how to get different groups to work together across differences to solve a problem.”

Before they could get people working together, the students had to identify a need. They started with a visit to the Tijuana River Valley, where they saw firsthand how the seasonal river, located near homes, schools and recreational areas, flows year-round with a mix of untreated wastewater, trash and toxic chemicals.

They also spoke with scientists tracking those chemical contaminants.

They reviewed studies and data identifying chemical compounds found in the river, including methamphetamine, octinoxate, a UV filter used in sunscreen, and Dibenzylamine, a compound used in tire manufacturing.

That’s when the students said they identified a need.

“We found a lot of fragmented data,” said Elise Free, a USD student who supported Federman’s class. “We found a lot of very dense scientific reports. And so, our next goal was to create a document that made all of that legible.”

They wanted to create a chemical index that the public could use to better understand where the chemicals were coming from and what dangers they pose to their health. Such a resource could also help lawmakers and the businesses releasing the pollutants, they thought.

“Understanding what's in the water and what's in the sediment is one of the first steps we can take to figuring out what actually needs to be done to treat the water and to prevent it from getting worse,” Free said.

Meanwhile, Maria Ortiz, who took Federman’s course, began reaching out to elected officials, government agencies and nonprofit organizations, informing them about the index they were developing and offering it as a resource for their efforts to address the cross-border problem.

For Ortiz, grabbing decision makers’ attention was important. The sewage crisis has impacted her family for years. As South County residents, Imperial Beach is the family’s closest shoreline.

“Learning about the actual chemicals and where they’re coming from, it makes me sad because I have an elderly mother,” Ortiz said. “She enjoyed walking on the beach and we can’t do that with her anymore.”

The students said they plan to collaborate with business students at USD and share their index with businesses releasing chemicals into the Tijuana River to help prevent further pollution.

“We found that actually, Peace and Justice students are like an amazing bridge between the data and the legislators, the data and the public, the data and the businesses,” Federman said.

This month, the San Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit challenging the supervisors’ April decision to allow several parcels of land to be joined together so the project can be built.

The suit, filed in Imperial County Superior Court, alleges that the supervisors are taking a fragmented approach to approving the nearly one-million-square-foot project, which could obscure its true environmental impact. The suit alleges that this violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

The “county is trying to avoid environmental review by breaking the project down into small pieces and approving them piecemeal,” Sierra Club attorney Kathryn Pettit told KPBS in a statement. “That’s classic segmentation, which is absolutely prohibited under CEQA.”

The environmental group also accused the county of other procedural infractions, including overriding the planning commission before it had a chance to make a formal decision.

Imperial County officials did not respond to a request for comment.

The Sierra Club has around 1,000 members in the Imperial Valley and has been active there for years.

The organization’s legal challenge comes as a separate lawsuit over the data center project, brought by the City of Imperial, could be headed to trial as soon as next month. Local officials there have also argued that the project needs to undergo a full environmental analysis.

Since it came into public view last winter, the planned data center complex has become a source of intense controversy across the Imperial Valley.

The project would be located next to several residential neighborhoods in the cities of Imperial and El Centro and is intended to serve one of the so-called hyperscale AI companies, which include Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft.

The giant air-conditioned warehouse packed with computer chips could need more power than the entire County of Imperial used last year, along with 750,000 gallons of water per day, according to the project’s developers. It would also include a large battery system and a bank of natural gas generators for backup power.

The developer, a brand-new Huntington Beach-based company called Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing (IVCM), argues the data center complex will bring a burst of construction work, along with new tax revenue and some longer-term jobs.

The company has said in court filings that it stands to make billions of dollars on the facility. They are trying to build it as fast as possible, including by designing it to avoid an in-depth environmental review.

Across the Valley, though, a fierce coalition of neighbors, environmental advocates and local officials has united to fight the project.

Many residents worry the data center complex will strain the valley’s water and power supply and pollute the surrounding neighborhoods. Because county officials have not yet analyzed the project through a formal environmental review, neighbors said they will not find out about those impacts until they are already underway.

Other data center projects are also facing pushback in the Coachella Valley to the north, which also relies on the Imperial Valley’s public utility for power.

Mark West, the director of the Sierra Club’s San Diego chapter, said the group did not entirely oppose the data center. But he said their intent was to force Imperial County to undertake an in-depth environmental analysis of the project.

“We just want to make sure that, when they are built, that all of the environmental impacts that they're having are analyzed and mitigated,” West said. “It's the same with the warehouse or a housing development.”

Their ultimate goal, West said, was to make sure that the county and the developers were taking community feedback into consideration.

The last time the Sierra Club took the Imperial County government to court was in 1999.

That year, the environmental group sued the county over the expansion of a gypsum manufacturing plant and quarry between El Centro and Ocotillo. Gypsum is a soft mineral, often appearing clear or white, that’s commonly used in drywall.

The Sierra Club and the county were in litigation over that case for two decades, finally reaching a settlement in 2019.

The environmental group has also intervened in higher courts on behalf of the county.

In 2001, the environmental law firm Earthjustice sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of the Sierra Club, accusing federal officials of unjustly waiving stronger clean air protections in parts of the Imperial Valley.

A federal appeals court eventually ordered the EPA to reclassify the Imperial Valley as “serious” for particle pollution.

The Sierra Club is currently engaged in a separate lawsuit against the Imperial Irrigation District, the Valley’s power and water agency.

The group has accused the utility of entering a Colorado River conservation deal, it said, would put communities around the Salton Sea in greater danger of breathing in toxic, chemical-laden dust.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Communities living with one of the most severe pollution problems in California could see immediate relief if San Diego leaders can get a key Tijuana River project out of the gate.

While millions of gallons of untreated sewage enter the river on a regular basis, one road crossing, known as the Saturn Boulevard hot spot, is the source of most airborne pollution from the river.

As the U.S. and Mexico pursue a combined $800 million in upgrades to wastewater facilities on both sides of the border, local governments are working on a smaller fix to that chokepoint that could improve conditions as soon as next year, officials said.

San Diego leaders are trying to secure about $25 million to repair the road crossing at Saturn Boulevard, where sewage-tainted water is forced through outdated culverts that spew hydrogen sulfide gas and other toxins throughout south San Diego.

Fixing the hot spot can “mitigate the turbulence in that area, which will mitigate the emissions that basically rocket aerosols into the air,” said San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre, who has spearheaded efforts to clean up the river.

But they’re still trying to nail down a funding source for the project.

Sewage pollution from the cross-border river has plagued Imperial Beach, Coronado and other parts of southern San Diego for decades. The threat rose as the Tijuana population grew and wastewater plants on both sides of the border failed, spilling hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage into the ocean in recent years.

San Diegans have long known that raw sewage in the ocean is a hazard to swimmers and surfers, and local beaches have been closed for years. Then in 2024, researchers with UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography discovered that the pollution wasn’t just fouling the water. It was also contaminating the air.

The river emits airborne chemicals including hydrogen sulfide gas, which cause respiratory problems and other ailments among people in neighboring communities.

Residents experience asthma, stomach problems, skin rashes and headaches, even without going in the water. Parents are wary about letting children play outside. Local schools enforce “rainy day schedules” to keep students inside when air quality worsens.

Researchers traced the air pollution to the Saturn Boulevard hot spot. It’s a culvert set along a rural road near the Tijuana River. The structure, which includes several large concrete pipes, was built decades ago to divert flood waters from neighboring farm fields. When it rains, water trickles across the road and gushes through the pipes, creating mounds of foam and spraying contaminants into the air.

San Diego County officials are trying to secure money to fix that. They estimate it will cost about $25 million to re-engineer the site in order to control the flow of floodwater and prevent it from releasing toxic gas and airborne particles.

There are several parallel tracks to funding the project, but none of them is certain.

One is a pot of money in Proposition 4, the $10 billion climate bond measure that California voters approved in 2024. It includes about $50 million for border projects on the Tijuana River in San Diego and New River in Imperial County.

Although it passed two years ago, the funds haven’t been released because of administrative procedures that slowed their disbursement. This year state Sen. David Alvarez, a San Diego Democrat, introduced legislation to waive some red tape and speed up funding through the bond measure.

With the money now available, the State Water Resources Board will accept grant applications for the funds this summer between June and August, and then score and award them by early next year, said Jennifer Toney, a senior engineer with the State Water Resources Control Board. Local governments and nonprofits working on those rivers are eligible to apply.

The board could award up to $20 million for construction such as the Saturn Boulevard project, Conty said. But it faces competition from other possible Tijuana River efforts such as sediment removal, trash capture and others, as well as proposed projects on the New River, Toney said.

On a separate track, state lawmakers have submitted a request in this year’s state budget for $23 million to cover most of the Saturn Boulevard construction. If that’s approved it could free bond money for other border river projects.

A third possible funding source is a proposed half-cent county sales tax, entitled “Protect San Diego County Health and Safety Act,” which goes to voters in November. It could generate $360 million per year, with about $80 million of that earmarked for Tijuana River improvements.

The measure calls for up to 22.5% of tax revenue to be spent on environmental mitigation to address “the toxic sewage crisis in the Tijuana Valley.” But it doesn’t spell out specific projects such as the Saturn Boulevard site, KPBS reported.

In the meantime, an even quicker temporary solution expected to cost $2.5 million could be in place by this time next year. The temporary fix will extend the existing pipes and transfer the flowing water downstream through an enclosed system, County Public Works Director Marisa Barrie stated in an email to CalMatters. That will reduce the churn that causes pollutants to become aerosolized.

“The team evaluated infrastructure mitigation options at the Saturn Boulevard hot spot and agreed to move forward with a short-term solution that will offer tangible immediate benefits,” Barrie stated.

Design, environmental analysis, and permitting for that project is in the works now, Barrie said. It should take about three months to construct, and county officials hope to complete it by March, 2027, before nesting season for birds in the area.

Aguirre cautioned that reengineering the culvert won’t clean up the river, but will reduce its impact on neighboring communities. “That’s not the permanent solution to the entire crisis. This is something that’s within our power to tackle, working with the state, city and county of San Diego, that we know based on empirical evidence will bring some relief to residents of affected areas.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

NEAR TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Nicole Dahrouge is not a salamander. Crouched in a bog, hands searching through short grass, she states it aloud for the second time in the last hour, almost like an affirmation.

"I mean, I'm not a salamander," she says. "But if I was, I would lay eggs right there."

There's always a bit of urgency collecting frosted flatwoods salamander eggs. The tiny and secretive ground-dwelling salamander is one of the most imperiled amphibians in North America, teetering on the brink of what biologists call an "extinction vortex" — the point at which a plant or animal's population is so small that its problems start to fatally compound.

Dahrouge's job at the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy (ARC) is to keep the "frosties," as they're lovingly called, from slipping over that precipice to the point of no return; to bolster their population and buy them time to adapt to the fast-changing world.

That starts with duck-walking through clingy brush to find their eggs.

"It's just like the world's itchiest scavenger hunt interspersed with little periodic injections of serotonin when you find something fun," she says, rubber boots squelching in damp earth.

Frosted flatwoods salamander eggs require a very specific set of climatic conditions to hatch. They're laid, each fall, in ephemeral ponds; on dry mounds, like the one Dahrouge is circling, that should be inundated by winter's rains. It's an annual gamble for the salamanders. Without inundation, the eggs will dry up. And with weather patterns shifting, as the world warms, it's a wager they're less and less likely to win.

Dahrouge is trying to skew the odds. Left in the wild, the survival rate of eggs is very low. Once they hatch into aquatic larvae, their chances don't get much better. Drought aside, "everything eats them," she says. "They're just like little protein gummy bears."

So Dahrouge is trying to help get as many of them through their first phases of life as possible by raising them in captivity. It's a monumental effort. A "stop-gap," she says, with no end in sight. And it's an example of how difficult it is to recover a federally threatened or endangered species when they are already on the brink.

"Man, when we let species get to this point, it's so much effort and so much work and so much resources to get it to a point where it's back," says JJ Apodaca, ARC's executive director.

"But we either do this now or we watch them go extinct."

Few places left to live

Most of what scientists know about frosted flatwoods salamanders comes from what they're able to glean during egg-laying season. As a part of the mole salamander family, they spend most of their lives in burrows underground.

Fittingly, their color ranges from deep black to dark chocolate, their backs covered in crisscrossed and mottled white-gray lines. "Think like a dewy sparkly spiderweb laid over a black background," Dahrouge says. "They're beautiful."

In 1999, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) listed the flatwoods salamander as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. A decade later, realizing that there were actually two species of "flatwoods salamanders" that looked very similar — the reticulated flatwoods salamander and the frosted flatwoods salamander — they were split up under federal law. The reticulateds were listed as endangered, the frosties as threatened.

A status review of the frosted flatwoods salamander, published by the FWS in 2019, found that they too warranted being listed as endangered due to "declining population trends." Seven years later, the FWS still hasn't taken any action.

"Even though it hasn't officially been reclassified yet, it still gets nearly all the same protections as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act," a spokesperson for the FWS said in an email.

Advocates for the salamander say it should be uplisted to reflect the reality, noting that the Trump administration has sought to limit certain protections for threatened species.

On the ground, ecologists like Dahrouge and Apodaca are more focused on stabilizing populations and improving habitat than the salamanders' federal status.

"Policy can't go out and save a species," Apodaca says. "We, as a community, we as a society have to go out and save that species."

For both flatwoods salamanders, that means improving habitat. They live in the longleaf pine forests of the Southeastern U.S. — flat, open stands of wildfire-dependent trees, grasses and shrubs that used to cover the coastal plains from southern Virginia to east Texas.

Then came large-scale logging. Agriculture. Subdivisions. A century of fire suppression.

Today, just 3% or so of longleaf pine forest remains intact in the Southeast — made up of scattered patches that the frosties, reticulateds and other imperiled longleaf-loving animals are left clinging to.

"It's a globally imperiled ecosystem sitting on top of a global biodiversity hotspot," says Houston Chandler, science director for the nonprofit Orianne Society, which focuses on amphibian and reptile conservation. "Not a great combination."

Chandler has been working in the largest remaining stand of old-growth longleaf pine forest, on Eglin Air Force Base, to improve habitat for the reticulated flatwoods salamander by mechanically removing undergrowth and restoring wetlands.

It's brutal labor, Chandler says, often done in the heat of summer. And it requires constant maintenance. But, he says, it's also working. They have more sites occupied by reticulated flatwoods salamanders at the military installation than ever before.

But they're still vulnerable.

"It took decades and decades of fire suppression and poor habitat management and land conversion for them to become endangered in the first place," Chandler says. "So it's not going to be an overnight fix."

Raising "beefy" salamanders

Boots squelching, Dahrouge shifts to point at a cluster of frosted flatwoods salamander eggs she's found. It's a glistening glob of goo.

"My perhaps not entirely appropriate description when I'm training new people is it looks like someone hocked a loogie into the base of this plant," she says.

The eggs are maybe a couple of weeks old. The salamanders are still squiggling commas inside them. With a pocketknife and tablespoon, she loosens up the patch of dirt they sit on and scoops it from the ground. In severe drought years, like the kind the Southeast is experiencing now, they'll pull every egg cluster they can find — "a salvage," as they call it. To prevent the eggs from drying up, they're stored in plastic containers packed with damp earth and taken, miles away, to a place that's more climate-controlled.

That place just happens to be sitting in her backyard.

"This started as a woodworking shed that I built for my projects," Dahrouge says, walking through double doors into a garage-sized shack. She gestures toward a pile of unused saws, lumber and recreational equipment that's been pushed into a corner. "Now we have salamanders."

The eggs are stored until they're ready to be inundated with water and primed to hatch. Dahrouge checks on them constantly. "I'm a helicopter parent, 100 percent," she says.

The next phase requires moving them to a series of cattle tanks that line her backyard. There are dozens of them. Each is its own miniature artificial wetland — a mesocosm — built with vegetation and water that Dahrouge and her colleague, Matthew Goetz, collect from the field.

They also collect food. At least once a week, Dahrouge or Goetz goes to nearby wetlands, stirs shin-deep water and collects silty samples filled with arthropods, daphnia and other macroscopic critters the salamanders will eat. Hours more are spent picking out pinprick-size predators from the water with pipettes.

"It's very time-intensive but very necessary," Dahrouge says. "I don't know if you've ever seen a dragonfly larva, but they look like the creature from Alien and can unhinge their jaw and eat a salamander larva that's the same size as they are, so we want to save them from that fate."

The end goal is to raise as many healthy larvae and salamanders as they can, so they can be released back into the wetlands they were found in or to bolster others. In conservation circles, the technique is known as headstarting — raise an animal in captivity, release it in the wild.

The practice was used to pull the California condor back from the brink of extinction and is used for many imperiled species. It can be "hugely powerful to keep a cohort alive," says Carola Haas, an ecologist at Virginia Tech who's worked with reticulated flatwoods salamanders.

"But any time you rear something in a tank, you're selecting for captivity. And the characteristics that make you good at surviving in a tank may be the exact opposite of the characteristics that make you good at surviving in the wild," she says.

Instead, she argues, the conservation community should focus its efforts on restoring the salamanders' habitat.

"If the habitat restoration doesn't happen, nothing can persist," she says. "And that's expensive and time-consuming enough in itself."

Currently, frosted flatwoods salamanders are only known to exist in four areas. Some populations are isolated, making them vulnerable to inbreeding. All are at risk of stand-alone weather events like hurricanes, disease or drought.

With so little habitat and so few frosties left, Apodaca says, they've crossed the point where habitat preservation and restoration, alone, will not be enough to keep them from going extinct.

"In my opinion, there's zero chance this species makes it out and naturally recovers itself if we just fix the habitat," he says.

The same, he says, is true for many other imperiled amphibians and reptiles.

"We have to be, by necessity, entering into a new era of conservation that I think of as the age of implementation," he says. "There's been decades of arguments of how active we should be in intervening [in nature] … to get over the next step, we've got to do a lot more direct species interaction."

At the back corner of her erstwhile woodworking shed, Dahrouge lifts a small, glistening female frosted flatwoods salamander from a bed of moss. She normally lives in a "bog garden" that Dahrouge and Goetz built in the backyard, over the course of months, where the hope is to eventually facilitate captive breeding.

All of the captive adults have been named after stars, because the white flecks on their black stomachs look like constellations in the night sky. Andromeda, Dahrouge says, is one of her favorites. Not that she has favorites, she quickly adds.

"Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world will never see this animal," she says. "And I wish that everyone could because they're just so infinitely worth knowing."

Copyright 2026 NPR

These are some of the things Susana de la Peña and her partner, Daniel Simpson, regularly find during early morning trash cleanups in their Mountain View neighborhood.

“People think we work for the city. That’s like their first thought,” de la Peña said.

“We typically say, like, we're your neighbors, we work for you guys,” Simpson said.

Though the couple has traversed many streets in their neighborhood, they find themselves returning to a block, just east of Interstate 15, that’s home to Mountain View School and a shuttered building that once offered community wraparound services.

They said they’ve been motivated to pick up trash around the local school to protect the youngest members of their community.

“We're picking up, like I said, beer bottles and cigarette butts and just paraphernalia,” said Simpon, as children walked past him toward the school entrance. “It's like, I don't want those kids seeing that because then it ends up affecting or influencing them to do something as an adult.”

They each carry an 80-liter trash bag and, once the bags get too heavy to carry around, they know it’s time to walk home and get ready for work. Most of the trash they collect is disposed of in their own home trash bins, Simpson said. In the past, they have dropped off the rubbish at nearby landfills, he added.

“But that’s like $100 to do that and paying out of pocket was like, 'Hey, I can’t do this all the time,'” he said.

Besides the amount of trash they collect, the type of waste has been an eye-opener for de la Peña.

“It's very important that we start to realize that we waste so much,” she said. “A lot of times, most of the trash that we pick, at least 80% of it is disposable cups and plates and napkins and plastic forks. I just wonder if, instead of having to use so much, we could just start to reuse things we have.”

Cleanups, Simpson added, are also their way of helping prevent more litter from entering waterways.

“We know it’s going to rain, we know it’s going to go down to the water drains,” he said. “So, if we can just pick up the trash now before it ends up in the drain, that’s kind of like the goal.”

During their cleanups, neighbors thank them and drivers honk in support. It’s a good feeling, the couple acknowledged, but they hope their efforts will encourage more people to join them, or better yet, stop littering.

Litter is problematic all across the country. A study released last week showed that litter along roadways and waterways in the U.S. has declined 34% since 2020, meaning that every American’s share of litter fell from 152 pieces to 96. In San Diego, the nonprofit I Love A Clean San Diego and its volunteers collected more than 284,000 pounds of litter across the county in 2025.

Still, the report found, 35 billion pieces remain in all sorts of public spaces in America.

Franklin Coopersmith, deputy director of San Diego’s Environmental Services Department, acknowledged the couple’s cleaning efforts and said the city is aware that “there is absolutely a systemic problem in the city when it comes to illegal dumping and littering.”

The city prioritizes addressing illegal dumping of larger items, such as furniture, appliances and other bulky items abandoned in vacant lots or blocking streets, he said.

“With litter, it’s not that the city doesn’t care or want to do anything, but we have an obligation for what is the greatest public health and safety to address first,” Coopersmith said. “We are driving trash trucks, we are having to pay employees and benefits. What’s going to have the greatest good for the community with limited resources?”

Every year, the city responds to about 60,000 illegal dumping cases across its jurisdiction. The city responds to these cases based on fieldwork by city crews and requests that the public submit via the city’s Get It Done app.

According to the litter report, the declines are driven by several factors, including education that shapes behavior, strong local programs and enforcement. These are efforts the city is focused on expanding and which may benefit communities like Mountain View, Coopersmith said.

For example, the city is piloting a partnership with community groups that organize cleanup events. A litter pickup group in the Kensington-Talmadge area, where the program is being piloted, collects trash and places their bags at a prearranged location. City crews pick up the waste that same day at no cost to the group and dispose of it.

“Since the city does not have dedicated staffing to pick up individual pieces of litter throughout neighborhoods, these partnerships allow community members to focus on the cleanup while the city helps remove and dispose of the collected waste,” Coopersmith said.

The city plans to formalize the process for requesting city assistance so that other community groups, including those in Mountain View, can participate, he said.

Additionally, the city plans to increase the number of public trash containers in Council Districts 4, 8 and 9. Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget includes $100,000 to support illegal dumping prevention and enforcement, Coopersmith said.

On that recent morning cleanup, Simpson and de la Peña end up at their favorite spot: a staircase at the back of the school along 36th Street. The stairs were hand-painted at some point.

“It says, like, ‘Change starts here,’” Simpson said. “When it's super dirty and you clean it, it's like, that's such a beautiful thing.”

“This is like a divine moment, right,” he added. “You get here, you're like, this is me. I'm the one starting the change. … If there (were) just a few more people that were spending one hour of their day doing the same thing, how impactful can we be?”

Updated May 28, 2026 at 12:41 PM PDT

The United States is heading into the height of disaster season, with millions of people — and billions of dollars worth of property — at risk this summer from hurricanes, wildfires and flash floods.

When homes burn or flood, insurance is supposed to soften the blow. But homeowners and renters often discover what their policies actually cover only after catastrophe strikes.

With some preparation, though, you can better your odds of a smoother recovery if extreme weather hits your home.

Here are three things you can do now to make sure you're ready to deal with insurance after a disaster.

How much coverage do you have? 

First, check how much your insurance would pay out if your home is destroyed.

Ideally, it's enough to cover the cost of rebuilding. However, underinsurance is a chronic problem in the U.S., according to United Policyholders, a national consumer advocate. The group says its surveys routinely show that half of homeowners don't have enough coverage to replace their homes after a disaster.

"So check, not just with your insurance company, but if you know somebody in the building industry that can tell you what it costs per square foot these days to rebuild a house, do the math and check if you have enough coverage, because a lot of people don't," says Douglas Heller, insurance director at the Consumer Federation of America.

You should also check your deductible. That's how much money you would have to pay out of pocket if your home is damaged.

"When you increase your deductible, you can get some savings" on home insurance, Heller says. "But you are transferring the risk of a devastating storm back into your bank account and away from the insurance company."

And verify that your homeowners or renters insurance covers living expenses if you're displaced.

"Think about how much it would cost if you had to be out of your house for three weeks, six weeks, three months," Heller says.

For renters in single-family homes, make sure your landlord's home insurance is up to date.

And remember, flooding isn't covered by homeowners and renters insurance, so you need a separate policy for that. Most people who buy flood coverage do so through the National Flood Insurance Program.

Get your documents in order

Next, document your valuables. Having an up-to-date record is a big help if you have to file an insurance claim. Heller suggests using a cellphone to record a video every year of the stuff inside your home or apartment.

Marcus Coleman, vice president of community resilience strategy at United Way, also recommends storing a list of emergency contacts and any medications you need on the cloud or a thumb drive.

Having easy access to copies of your insurance policy, identification and financial information like credit and debit cards is a good idea, as well, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., an independent government agency.

"If I just have a split second, I know where to go to get what I need to be able to answer some of the questions that might come up over the next days or weeks after a disaster," Coleman says.

Keep up with property maintenance

The third thing you need to do is maintenance work around your property, such as trimming trees and clearing roofs and gutters of flammable materials, like leaves and branches.

Insurance policies don't typically state that homeowners have to do things like cut back tree limbs that hang over their house, says David Boohaker, a lawyer who represents policyholders in disputes with insurance companies. "But what it will say is, 'We don't [have] to pay you for damages due to neglect or your failure to care for your home,'" he says.

And insurers have found ways to monitor houses they insure, often without homeowners knowing. "One thing that has come up very frequently, and often it surprises consumers and they get angry about it, is the extent to which insurers are using drones now to do flyovers of property, which means they are looking for these things now," says Brendan Bridgeland, director of the Center for Insurance Research, a national consumer advocate.

In addition to routine maintenance, insurance experts point to programs in a number of states that are designed to help homeowners protect their homes from disasters. In Alabama, for example, homeowners can get insurance discounts if they install roofs that are designed to withstand high winds.

"If there is bad weather, then you [may not] have to make a claim in the first place if you have a higher building standard or higher protection for your residence," Bridgeland says.

Homeowners can contact their state's insurance department to find out if there are programs to help pay for upgrades to make houses less vulnerable to extreme weather.

And if you need help with things like disaster recovery and housing assistance, you can call 211 for information about resources in your area.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Some 50,000 residents of Garden Grove, California remain under an evacuation order Sunday as emergency response teams struggle to deal with a potentially explosive situation at a nearby aerospace manufacturing plant.

Here's the latest on what's happening at the plant, and what could yet come.

Overnight, the chemical tank appeared to have cracked

The tank, which is located in the southeastern corner of the GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove, California, holds somewhere around 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate, a highly toxic, highly flammable chemical used in the manufacturing of resins and plastics.

Late Saturday, firefighters approached the tank to "get eyes" on what was happening, TJ McGovern, interim county fire chief for the Orange County Fire Authority, said in a post on social media. "What they found was a potential crack in the tank."

A cracked tank could actually be good news, sort of

The incident at GKN Aerospace began Thursday, according to emergency responders. It remains unclear exactly what went wrong, but the chemicals in the tank began to exceed a safe temperature.

Methyl methacrylate is a clear, colorless liquid that is highly volatile and releases energy exothermically when it reacts. If that reaction occurs in a container, then it can cause a sudden pressure build up, effectively turning the container into an explosive.

That's exactly what happened at a plant in the United Kingdom in October 2009. According to one report, an explosion at a resin manufacturing site involving the chemical destroyed the factory and caused blast damage to adjacent buildings. Nobody was killed, but windows were blown out as far as 600 ft. from the blast site.

The tank in California suffered damage and had already begun to bulge outward, according to Craig Covey, the incident commander at Orange County Fire. The tank is being continuously sprayed with water to keep it cool. It sits next to two other tanks, one of which was safely drained and neutralized, and the other of which seems stable for now.

Speaking on Friday, Covey told reporters that if the damaged tank cracked, it could actually be the best outcome. While far from ideal, it would be better if the 7,000 gallons leaked out slowly rather than sparking an explosion inside the tank.

"In a weird world that's the best case scenario believe it or not," he said. "Because once it comes out it is no longer an explosive hazard."

There are still many environmental and health hazards

The company which owns the plant, GKN Aerospace, said on Sunday that it was "working around the clock to mitigate the risk of a leak."

The risks are numerous – methyl methacrylate can irritate the skin and eyes. It can also cause respiratory issues and neurological symptoms including headache and lethargy. More long-term exposure can cause lung and organ damage.

There's less information available on what the environmental impacts might be should the chemical spill, but they're unlikely to be good.

In anticipation of a possible leak, "we've created containment barriers," Covey said on Friday. Firefighters have already laid down sand and other materials to try and stem the flow of the chemical into nearby storm drains and waterways, he told reporters.

For now, residents must remain evacuated

"We know that you're out of your homes, we want to get you back, but we cannot do that until it's deemed safe," Orange County Fire Chief McGovern said in Sunday's video statement.

Residents are being evacuated to protect against both the potential of a large blast and fumes that an explosion would release. Because the fire department can't predict which way those fumes might travel, they're having to evacuate a large area around the plant.

So far, no fumes have been detected by firefighters or the Environmental Protection Agency, which has set up monitoring stations around the site.

McGovern said the reconnaissance gave him reason to hope that the newfound crack "could potentially be relieving some of the pressure in there."

"We're not there yet, but this was a step in the right direction," he said of the recent assessment of the tank. "And there could be a lot more coming shortly."

Copyright 2026 NPR

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

In the face of the nation's highest gas prices, California lawmakers approved a bill to ease restrictions on E85 conversion kits — devices that let conventional gasoline cars run on a cheaper, mostly ethanol fuel blend.

Assembly Bill 2046, dubbed the “Access to Affordable Gas Act” by its author, Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, a Stockton Democrat, advanced through the Assembly on a 59-0 vote with no debate or opposition.

The measure is the latest example of Sacramento lawmakers scrambling to respond to gas costs that have soared amidst the Iran-Israel war, which has rattled global oil markets and pushed California pump prices above $6 a gallon. It now heads to the California state Senate and would need Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval before it becomes law.

“Californians consistently pay more at the pump than drivers from other states, and gas prices are once again climbing across the state,” Ransom said on the Assembly floor Thursday. “For commuters and working families, (the proposal) offers a practical way to save money.”

If approved in its current form, the measure would exempt manufacturers of E85 converter kits from an approval process by the state’s primary climate regulator, the California Air Resources Board, which requires companies to demonstrate the devices do not increase a vehicle's emissions. The bill would leave in place a separate federal certification process run by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Members in Sacramento are looking for ways to try to reduce costs — or appear to reduce costs of driving — and so this is a way to do that,” said Aaron Smith, a UC Berkeley economist and fuels expert.

The converter kits, which cost between $800 to $1,250, according to a legislative analysis of the bill, would let drivers convert their cars to run on both gasoline and E85 fuel.

E85 is a blend of up to 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline; the share of ethanol typically is between 55% and 85%, said Smith, the Berkeley expert.

Jeff Wilkerson, government affairs manager for Pearson Fuels, the largest E85 fuel provider in the state and a bill supporter, said E85 — much of which is made from Midwest corn — is largely insulated from overseas oil shocks that drive California gas prices. The ethanol blend has sold for $2 or more less per gallon than gasoline during recent price spikes.

While E85 is typically priced lower than gasoline and can reduce petroleum dependence and carbon emissions, it delivers 20% to 30% fewer miles per gallon, according to the air board, meaning drivers only save money when E85 is priced at least 20% to 30% below gasoline.

About 1.3 million vehicles in California can currently use the fuel, which is sold at about 640 stations statewide — just 3% of the state’s more than 15,000 fuel pumps, according to the bill analysis.

Ransom said more E85 pumps would be built if the state loosened restrictions and encouraged demand for the fuel blend. She stressed that her bill would present E85 as an alternative.

“For some people, it may not be a wise choice, but at least now it’s going to be a choice,” she said.

Environmentally, the fuel is rated cleaner than regular gasoline by California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard. But that rating has critics. Smith, the Berkeley economist, said the benefits of ethanol are likely overstated. Official numbers likely understate emissions from land use as rising corn demand for ethanol pushes farmers to clear forested land.

The state’s own certification record offers a cautionary tale. Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the board, said the agency has received only five applications from companies for E85 conversion kits since 2008 and that none has cleared the certification process, which is designed to ensure modified vehicles still meet their original emissions standards. Supporters of the proposal argue the board moves slowly and its regulations are burdensome.

But loosening that standard carries its own risk, cautioned Aaron Kurz, senior consultant on the Assembly Transportation Committee, especially now.

As the federal government has stripped scientific expertise from regulatory decisions, he wrote in his analysis, “this committee should consider if the state should cede authority over an inherently scientific process and set a precedent for transferring approval authority to the federal government.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The national average for a gallon of gasoline is $4.55, according to AAA; that's a four-year high, unwelcome news for drivers as the U.S. heads into one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.

AAA estimates a record 45 million Americans will travel this weekend, despite high prices for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

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Gasoline prices have been elevated since the start of the war in Iran, and there's no sign of relief on the horizon. High prices are angering voters and straining household budgets.

In California, which has the highest gasoline prices in the nation, Gov. Gavin Newsom is openly feuding with the oil giant Chevron, discouraging Californians from filling up at its stations.

Chevron and the state have been in a tense relationship for years; Chevron moved its headquarters out of California in 2024 after complaining about state and local regulations, and is currently buying oil shipped through an offshore pipeline that California has attempted to keep shut down. In the latest salvos, Chevron has posted placards at California gas stations blaming state policies for the high prices, while Newsom's office is telling Californians they can get cheaper gas at unbranded stations.

But where does all this leave drivers? Despite high prices, most Americans are unwilling, or unable, to give up on driving. Americans have been logging more miles since the war with Iran started, according to the analytics company Arity, which tracks driving habits.

What can you do to cut costs? We asked the experts for ideas.

Drive smoothly. Pay less

The key to getting the most miles out of each gallon is driving efficiently. That means smooth acceleration, soft braking and slowing down.

Underinflated tires, heavy boxes in the back seat and an unused ski or luggage rack on the top of the vehicle can also make it less fuel efficient.

Some high-performance vehicles require premium gasoline. But if it's only recommended, you can skip it without damaging the car, according to Consumer Reports' deputy auto editor, Jonathan Linkov. "All cars, except the most esoteric supercars or older cars, can run fine on regular," said Linkov.

Are you considering going electric? 

Data suggests that higher gasoline prices have many drivers at least thinking about giving up gas-powered cars altogether.

But the data on sales isn't so clear-cut. New-EV sales are still depressed following the abrupt end of a $7,500 federal consumer tax credit last fall. It's also tax refund season, which can push up car sales of all types, compared with the previous month. CarGurus reports that used-EV sales did seem to accelerate in the month of March, and Cox Automotive reports strong prices for used EVs at wholesale auction, noting that rising gas prices "may have positively influenced demand." On the other hand, data from the sites iSeeCars.com showed no appreciable shift in used-EV sales.

It's not surprising to see a rise in shoppers' interest before a rise in actual sales, especially for a purchase as significant as a vehicle. "What consumers are viewing on the site tends to be an earlier indicator than sales," says Kevin Roberts, the director of economic and market intelligence with CarGurus.

But analysts note that high gasoline prices do motivate shoppers to select for more fuel-efficient or entirely electric vehicles — if prices stay elevated for a long time.

An average driver can save $1,800 a year

The more you drive, the more you stand to save from switching to a battery-powered car, says Janelle London, the co-executive director of a nonprofit called Coltura, which advocates against gasoline. "Across the entire U.S., an average driver doing, say, 15,000 miles a year already is going to save $1,800 a year by switching to an electric car," London says. "But if you're talking about a big driver, somebody who does maybe 25,000 miles a year, they're going to be saving on average $3,000 a year by making the switch."

And as the cost of gas keeps rising, she says, "we're seeing the savings just skyrocket up."

Coltura has an online tool that car shoppers can use to estimate potential savings from going electric.

Those savings vary based not just on how much you drive but also on where you live, thanks to differences in the local prices of gasoline and electricity. Yale Climate Connections recently published a map comparing the price of charging with the price of gasoline, by looking at the cost of enough electricity to take you as far as 1 gallon goes in a similar gas car: In North Dakota, driving an EV is like paying less than a dollar a gallon, but in California it's more like $2.70 a gallon.

Or you can crunch your personal numbers more precisely by comparing the cost per mile using your own electricity rates, local gasoline prices and the efficiency of the gas and electric vehicles you're comparing. (The extremely lazy route? Multiply your home's cost per kilowatt-hour for electricity by 10. That's very roughly comparable to how many dollars per gallon you'd pay to fuel your car. The national average cost for home electricity is $0.17 right now, so, ballpark, that's like paying $1.70 for gasoline.)

Consider factors beyond gasoline 

If you're thinking of switching to an EV to save money, there are other factors to weigh as well. Maintenance savings can also be substantial — electric vehicles need new tires and not much else. On the other hand, insurance can be pricey. You might also weigh nonfinancial factors, like how much you value the environmental benefits of an EV or the merits of a quiet ride.

Charging is also crucial. Can you charge at home, which is far more convenient and affordable than charging at stations? If so, will you need to install a dedicated, higher-speed charger, which comes with an installation cost, or can you get by with a standard outlet?

The more you drive and the larger your vehicle is, the more likely it is you'll need to add a charger. The Environmental Protection Agency has a calculator that can help with that decision.

Could you get by without driving at all? 

Another option, of course, is to pursue alternatives to driving.

But data compiled by the app Transit shows that ridership was steady for most of March and actually dropped slightly in the week ending April 4.

That's no surprise, says Stephen Miller, the policy lead at Transit; the Easter holiday may have pulled ridership down, and gas prices have been elevated only for a few weeks. "Historically, people only make larger changes that show up as a significant shift from driving to public transit if the price of gas goes up — and stays up," he says. Year over year, transit ridership continues to increase overall, although it has yet to fully recover from the collapse in public transit use at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jerick White, who lives in Houston, bought his first e-bike in March. There were several reasons explaining why he switched from a car to two wheels, but saving on gasoline was one of them. Between the cost of the car, maintenance and gas, he says, "it just became too unbearable, unmanageable and expensive."

He hasn't calculated exactly how much money he's saving, but, he says, it's "a lot of money for sure." One important factor in his decision: White works from home now and lives close to a grocery store and other places where he needs to run errands. Biking around "is very, very reliable if you stay in a neighborhood and you work close by," he says.

If getting an EV makes the most sense for people with the longest commutes, trading out of a car entirely is for the other end of the spectrum: people who don't drive much or take a lot of short trips. Veo, the bike and scooter app, reports that its average trip length is 1.9 miles.

If it works for your lifestyle, White says, biking has benefits in addition to savings on gas. "I feel like a kid again when I'm riding it," he says. "It's very enjoyable." And: "Oh, my goodness, I can avoid the traffic."

Spend more on fuel by cutting more elsewhere

Finally, some folks are willing to spend more at the pump — but cut back elsewhere. High fuel prices were not enough to stop Julie and Vince Rossi from taking their first cross-country road trip in their new recreational vehicle. They sold their house to live in a 22,000-pound RV full time and went on their longest road trip yet, driving from Arizona to Virginia.

Diesel costs even more than gasoline — and its price has gone up faster since the war started — so to afford their now-doubled fuel budget, they're skipping the museums and amusement parks for free attractions. "If we want to continue on this lifestyle, we either look for the lowest prices or we need to cut spending somewhere else," Julie Rossi says.

A previous version of this story ran on April 7, 2026.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Sitting in a park in the Mexican border city of Tecate, Norma Meza Calles can hear the sound of border wall construction crews pulverizing boulders on Tecate Peak, about a half mile away.

To Meza, each pebble that crews chip away from those boulders is an insult to her and the rest of the Kumeyaay people. That's because the peak, which is also known as Kuchamaa Mountain, is a sacred place.

“They’re destroying it,” Meza said in Spanish.

Meza said the mountain is like a therapist for the Kumeyaay. Generations of Kumeyaay on both sides of the border have hiked up the mountain to meditate while sitting on the smooth white boulders that have been there for more than 100 million years.

As a little girl, Meza remembers seeing adults — grieving the loss of a loved one or coping with divorce — spend days in silent contemplation on some of the very same boulders that are now being ripped apart so President Donald Trump’s border wall can be extended.

“That’s where you go for a cleanse,” she said. “Because you have to release all of that sadness from your mind.”

Kuchamaa Mountain, which sits on both sides of the border, is protected in the National Register of Historic Places. Yet, this construction project was approved without the formal review typically required by the National Environmental Policy Act.

But, in the name of national security, the Trump administration has waived those reviews for multiple projects along the border.

“The Department of Homeland Security has been able to secure successfully through legal means waivers on some of these border projects, and Congress authorized multi-year funding for the border fences, which has allowed some of these projects to be fast-tracked,” said Richard Kiy, president of the Institute of the Americas.

The administration waived a similar review process for another construction project near Big Bend National Park in Texas. The project faced multiple protests this year.

Kiy worked on cross-border affairs for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration. He said the stones on Kuchamaa Mountain might have been saved had there been a review.

“That would have allowed more for public consultation,” he said. “That would’ve allowed for considerations related to the cultural significance of Mount Kuchamaa, it would’ve taken into account some of the environmental impacts including wildlife corridors.”

That said, every project has some environmental impact, and it is not accurate to believe a review would have mitigated all those impacts, Kiy added.

Nonetheless, Kiy said an extensive environmental review could’ve incentivized the federal government to come up with new building methods. For example, the Indian government has experimented with a laser fence along its border with Pakistan.

“In the 21st century, I think there are ways to explore technology solutions so that we can have a secure border but at the same time address some of the biodiversity concerns and cultural heritage concerns that exist in a place like the Tecate border,” Kiy said.

As someone who worked on border projects for the EPA, Kiy understands why the administration waived these requirements. The process can take years and derail projects. For example, he said, it took the EPA 10 years to complete its review of the CBX airport border crossing in Otay Mesa.

While there has been no environmental review on the U.S. side, several Mexico-based organizations have conducted their own.

The Rancho La Puerta Foundation, an organization that helped establish a conservation easement for Kuchamaa Mountain on the Mexican side of the border, coordinated an independent review, said Demien Vega, an institutional development coordinator with the foundation.

The 280-page study identifies several species of plants and animals that will likely be impacted by the new wall. For example, mountain lions cross from the Mexican side to the U.S. side to access their main source of water. The report also flags the risk of mudslides in Buena Vista, one of Tecate’s oldest neighborhoods, which sits at the foot of the mountain right along the border wall.

“Everything will wash down with a Super El Niño here in Tecate and this neighborhood can suffer the consequences,” Vega said.

Part of what makes the current reality so heartbreaking for the people of Tecate is they thought they’d done enough over the years to protect the mountain.

In the early 2000s, Kumeyaay representatives and Mexican conservationists worked with their U.S. counterparts to expand the environmental protections north of the border.

“Through an MOU with the Bureau of Land Management and the Forestry service, we convinced them to protect the land and we all agreed – both nations,” Vega said. “So all of the mountain is protected in terms of nature and biodiversity.”

In Mexico, the controversy surrounding the project has reached the highest levels of government.

Last month, Baja California’s Secretary of Culture formally asked the U.S. to stop detonating explosives on the mountain. When asked about it by local reporters, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her office is aware of the situation.

Back in Tecate, Meza doesn’t expect construction to stop.

She respects U.S. sovereignty and its right to defend its border. She said that section of the border can be dangerous because of drug smuggling. But she knows the border could be secured – perhaps with cameras or motion sensors — without destroying a heritage.

She views this as one more indignity in a history full of them.

“We’ve always been stepped on and discriminated against,” she said. “And we’ve resisted. The mountain will resist too.”

Crews continued working overnight to contain the smoldering remnants of a wildfire that blackened hundreds of acres in a rural area near Golden Acorn Casino, spreading perilously close to back-country neighborhoods but damaging no homes.

As of Thursday morning, the roughly 820-acre non-injury blaze west of Ribbonwood Road was about 73% contained, as of 7:30am Thursday according to Cal Fire.

The fire erupted for unknown reasons at about 1 p.m. Tuesday off the 37000 block of Tusil Road, just north of Interstate 8 in Boulevard.

Within two hours, the fast-moving flames had charred several dozen acres on the grounds of Campo Indian Reservation and were moving south toward the freeway, officials said.

The California Highway Patrol shut down a stretch of the freeway in the area as ground crews and personnel aboard air tankers and water-dropping helicopters battled the blaze.

For a time, the flames were an imminent threat to about 15 homes, according to Cal Fire. By late afternoon Tuesday, the blaze had jumped Interstate 8 in a few spots and had damaged one outbuilding and a vehicle, the agency reported.

Sheriff's deputies cleared people out of residences on both sides of the freeway in the area of Old Highway 80, officials said. A temporary shelter for the displaced was available at the casino at 1800 Golden Acorn Way, a mile or so east of the fire.

As of late Wednesday morning, some of the residents who had to vacate their homes due to the blaze had been allowed back into their neighborhoods, but many of the evacuation orders remained in effect, authorities said.

Some 178 personnel were assigned to the fire, including 25 engines, seven hand crews and two helicopters, officials reported. At least 12 additional agencies were assisting in the effort.

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

NPR is dedicating a week to stories and conversations about how communities are moving forward on climate solutions despite significant political headwinds. As the federal government halts plans to address climate change, states, cities, regions, and even neighborhoods are trying to fill the gap by cutting climate pollution and adapting to extreme weather. 

Lawns are great surfaces for throwing a football or laying out a picnic.

But turfgrass in the United States now covers an estimated 40 million acres — an area about the size of the state of Georgia — and these manicured lawns take an environmental toll.

Gas-powered yard equipment, like lawn mowers and trimmers, put out 30 million tons of air pollutants a year, the Environmental Protection Agency says.

To keep our lawns tidy and green, we also use weedkillers and fertilizers. When it rains, those chemicals escape our yards and make their way through storm drains to our lakes and rivers.

Shrinking lawns can reduce all these impacts. It can also create space for gardens that feed wildlife — great news at a time when North America has lost one-quarter of its birds and the U.S. has lost one-fifth of its butterflies.

University of Delaware entomologist Doug Tallamy has calculated that if Americans reduced their lawns by half and added native plant gardens to feed birds, butterflies and other wildlife, this would create more habitat than Yellowstone and a dozen other major national parks combined.

Interested in ditching your lawn? These tips can get you started.

1. Choose a spot where you'll kill some grass

Consider starting small, especially if you're new to gardening.

" It can be overwhelming to take on an expansive garden," says Stacia Stelk, executive director of Deep Roots KC, a group that teaches the public how and why to plant habitat gardens in the Kansas City region. " As you get more comfortable, there's always room to expand."

Replacing the whole lawn at once can lead to weed, mud and erosion problems, so it requires careful planning and more work.

A good place to remove some grass could be along a fence or sidewalk. If you have a tree in your yard, consider putting a flower bed around it. This is called a soft landing because it gives caterpillars a safe place to go after they finish feeding on your tree's leaves. There, they can make their chrysalises and cocoons among flowers and leaf litter, safe from lawnmowers, and emerge as adult butterflies and moths. Bees, fireflies and other insects will find homes there too.

2. Plan what you are going to plant

Using flowers, trees and shrubs that have existed in North America for millennia is a surefire way to turn your space into a wildlife magnet.

That's because many insects feed on specific native plants. A famous example is the monarch caterpillar's need for milkweed — it can't eat anything else.Native plants also boost insect populations, which feed birds, frogs, lizards and other animals.

To pick your specific plants, first note whether your new flower bed will be in shade or sun and what the ground is like. For example, is the soil very sandy? Is the area usually wet?

Next, find a native plant group specific to your region, because native plants for Arizona and New York are completely different. Many of these groups have online cheat sheets for picking plants. Midwesterners, for example, can check out GrowNative.org, which has sample flower bed plans and Top 10 lists of plants for different light and soil conditions.

Also know what style you're looking for. Are you looking for short groundcovers? Do you dream of a cottagecore garden with big drifts of pastel flowers? Do you want a hedge between you and your neighbors?

Finally, know your local rules: Some homeowners associations or city codes restrict tall flowers and grasses in the front yard, for example.

3. Kill your grass

There are plenty of ways to kill your grass. You can kill it by covering it with cardboard to deprive it of sunlight. You can lay down sheets of clear plastic to block light and rain while baking the grass in the sun's heat. You can rent a sod cutter or use a shovel to dig the turf out by hand. You can also use herbicide. Iowa State University has a nice guide to carrying out these options.

There's no right way to kill your grass. The best option for you will likely depend on your particular outdoor space, how much hands-on time you want to spend removing the grass and how long you're willing to wait for it to die. Smothering the grass with cardboard can take weeks or months, for example.

If you're using plastic or cardboard, there's no need to remove the grass once it's completely dead, unless you see seedheads or grass pieces that could resprout. The dead turf will decompose on its own and add organic matter to your garden.

4. Buy plants for your new garden (or look for free options)

The tricky thing about native plants is that typical garden centers often don't stock many of them. Many opt to focus on popular ornamentals such as peonies and boxwoods that originally came from other continents.

Native plant or wildlife advocacy groups often post indexes online of native plant nurseries or pop-up events where native plants will be sold.

But buying lots of plants can be expensive.

Jeffrey Popp, director of restoration at Anne Arundel Watershed Stewards Academy near Annapolis, Md., has a few tips to save money when buying plants.

First, look for places that sell plugs — small, young plants in six-packs or flats.

"You can buy native plant plugs relatively inexpensive," Popp says.

Despite being small, those plugs can grow fast. Also, some homeowners with native plant gardens will give away seedlings for free or swap plants, he says.

Try searching Facebook for local groups dedicated to native plants. This might mean a native plant society, for example, or a local chapter of Wild Ones, a group that encourages wildlife friendly gardening.

You can also start plants from seed, but this takes patience. Nurseries like Prairie Moon, a major native plant seller based in Minnesota, have detailed instructions for how to get each kind of seed to germinate.

5. Plant the plants and wait

Get them in the ground and put mulch around them. There's no need to add extra garden soil during planting if you've picked native plants suited to your soil conditions. Advice on how far to space the plants out varies depending on the plant. But basically, you'll want to space them so that once the plants mature, your flower bed is full.

" Plants want to touch each other," says Paula Diaz, a master gardener in Kansas City. "They don't want acres of mulch in between them."

This is better for you, too, because eventually you won't have to replenish mulch or pull weeds as often.

It'll take a few years to get to that point, though. Gardeners like to say that many perennials "sleep, creep, leap," meaning they won't seem to do much in their first year, will only grow a little in their second, and then will thrive in their third. (Although it's true that some species can grow faster.)

6. Watch out for weeds and dry conditions. And be sure to enjoy your new garden

As young plants grow, you'll especially have to keep an eye out for weeds and to make sure that empty spaces between plants are mulched.

You may also need to water them while they develop strong root systems. If you've chosen plants appropriate to your area, you shouldn't have to water them once they mature, except perhaps during serious dry spells.

In the winter, don't cut the plants all the way to the ground. Leave at least part of the stems because native bees nest in them. Also leave fallen leaves, because butterflies and other critters are overwintering in there.

Enjoy! Diaz has gardened with native plants for more than a decade and five of her neighbors have followed suit.

"There's always a bird that's singing or frogs that are croaking," she says. "Being able to go outside and just walk around and see life that happened because you planted what you planted — it helps your heart."

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is host of the environmental podcast Up From Dust and a reporter for Harvest Public Media.

The podcast episode was produced by Sylvie Douglis. This story was edited by Shahla Farzan, Malaka Gharib and Neela Banerjee. The visual editor is CJ Riculan.

We'd love to hear from you. Email us at LifeKit@npr.org. Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or sign up for our newsletter.

Copyright 2026 NPR

NPR is dedicating a week to stories and conversations about how local communities are moving forward on climate solutions

LONDON — Until two years ago, West London's Greenford Tube station used to flood whenever it rained heavily. The train tracks are aboveground, but the ticket office would often get inundated. Sandbags still line the corridor.

But in October 2023, a new family moved in nearby, determined to halt the water. The family members built their house from scratch with local wood and kept odd hours, sleeping all day and working only at dawn and dusk. They even put their young children to work.

The new neighbors were beavers.

The beavers are part of an unlikely effort to bring back a vanished species and help Britain adapt to a very modern problem: climate change.

Britain is famous for drizzle, but climate change is making rainfall heavier and more erratic. Places that didn't used to flood are now waterlogged. So scientists have enlisted some of the animal kingdom's best flood engineers — beavers — to help.

In West London, conservationists got a government license to resettle a family of five beavers in a 20-acre urban park near the Greenford Tube station. It used to be a golf course, with a creek running through it. Within weeks, the beavers dammed up the creek, creating a pond that holds water and stops it from spilling into the city. They also diverted the creek's flow into smaller tributaries, creating a wetland that better absorbs heavy rainfall — mitigating the risk of flooding downstream.

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"They effectively turned this site into a giant sponge that can take heavy rainfall and slowly release water back into the landscape, creating a lot more resilience for flooding," explains Sean McCormack, a local veterinarian who started the Ealing Beaver Project, named for the London borough of Ealing, where it's located.

Not only has the local Tube station stopped flooding, but the beavers have also coaxed back other species.

"By felling trees, they've also opened up the canopy, and we've seen an abundance of biodiversity," McCormack says.

Freshwater shrimp have appeared in the creek, he says, plus eight new species of birds, two types of bats and rare brown hairstreak butterflies, which lay their eggs on blackthorn branches nibbled by beavers.

The beavers have also allowed the city to scrap expensive plans to dig a reservoir and levee.

"We said the beavers can do it for a fraction of the cost, certainly more sustainably," McCormack says.

Now, joggers and teenagers stop to gawk at the beavers in action. There are guided walks and beaver safaris.

On a recent spring evening, a reddish-brown adult scampered in and out of the water, chomping on a felled willow tree. Eurasian beavers can weigh up to 65 pounds; this one was the size of a fat golden retriever.

The Ealing Beaver Project is one of dozens of sites across Britain where land managers are using beavers to restore wetlands and tame flooding.

But first, they had to bring them back from extinction.

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Reintroducing beavers to Britain for the first time in centuries

In Britain, humans hunted beavers to extinction more than 400 years ago. By the early 20th century, only about 1,200 native beavers were left in Europe and northern Asia, surviving in parts of Norway, France, Germany, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Mongolia and China. Sweden reintroduced them in the 1920s, and other countries followed — part of a broader effort to restore native species.

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By studying fossils, scientists determined that today's Norwegian beavers are genetically most similar to the beavers that lived in Britain centuries ago. So in 2009, wildlife officials relocated two Norwegian beavers to Knapdale Forest, a temperate rainforest in western Scotland. That pair, named Millie and Bjornar, became the Adam and Eve of the modern-day British beaver population. The Scottish forestry department calls them the "original beaver power couple."

"We became kind of attached to Millie and Bjornar," says Pete Creech, a forest ranger who remembers when they arrived, scrambling out of crates and splashing into a loch. He recalls their enthusiasm: "Lots of squeaking!"

Creech set up hidden cameras to capture their crepuscular (dawn and dusk) movements. Within weeks, the beavers dammed up a tiny river, creating an enormous lagoon where swans now nest.

While the United Kingdom overall is getting wetter, some areas — including parts of Scotland — are getting drier, even seeing a growing threat of wildfires. Beavers ensure this rainforest stays wet and, thus, abundant. That's especially important at a time when wetlands are disappearing, with many drained for development.

"Wetlands are one of the most biodiverse habitats in the world," Creech notes. "The U.K. has lost over 95% of its wetlands, and now we're frantically trying to put them back."

Not everyone thinks rodents are the best way to do that, though.

Conflict with farmers

Unlike in London, where they're enclosed in urban parks, beavers in Scotland went forth and multiplied, spreading onto private land. Their numbers have been boosted by beaver bombers — renegade wildlife enthusiasts who've released unlicensed beavers into areas where they might not be welcome.

"As the beaver population has expanded, we've seen more [farmers] getting concerned," says Kate Maitland, a regional representative for Scotland's National Farmers Union.

Beavers can dam up irrigation channels, flooding crops.

"It's quite devastating to see acres and acres of your land sitting underwater," Maitland says.

They can also fell centuries-old trees and collapse riverbanks, exacerbating erosion. Maitland, a farmer's daughter, says she once got the full length of her leg stuck in a beaver burrow while walking along the banks of a stream on her family's land.

The Scottish government has set up a fund to rebuild riverbanks and other beaver damage, if repairs are in the public interest. That doesn't typically cover damage to private land.

Some farmers shoot beavers, though they need a license to do so, since beavers are a protected species. It's also illegal to disassemble beaver dams or lodges that are more than two weeks old. Instead, farmers are encouraged to call wildlife officials, who trap and relocate beavers. That's where London's beavers came from.

Other farmers have learned to like the new neighbors — and even celebrate them.

Learning to live with beavers

Tom Bowser is a fifth-generation farmer in central Scotland. He has empathy for his fellow farmers: "When you're trying to grow food, the presence of a fat semiaquatic rodent who wants to raise water levels is understandably going to be unpopular!"

Bowser's farm is strewn with trees felled by beavers. Many of the tree trunks have been whittled into hourglass shapes by beavers' sharp teeth. Some of them teeter, about to fall.

He finds it fascinating.

Bowser wraps young trees in chicken wire if he wants to protect them. (In London, officials painted trunks with sand, which gets stuck in beavers' teeth.) But he has found that the benefits outweigh the costs.

A beaver dam has diverted floodwaters from his driveway, creating a pond lined with benches that's frequented by tourists. He runs spring and summer beaver-watching tours that are especially popular with children, who previously knew beavers only from fairy tales.

"We get people from all around the world coming here now!" Bowser says. "Growing up here, you didn't see any car you didn't recognize."

Beaver fever is spreading

The beaver buzz is catching. The animals have made comebacks in Italy, Portugal and the Ukrainian part of the Danube River delta. In the United States, the Methow Beaver Project releases them into fire-damaged areas of Washington state. In Idaho, NASA is helping track beavers' work.

In Britain, beavers are especially popular with land managers who are short-staffed.

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South Norwood Country Park is a 125-acre nature reserve with only one employee. Volunteers do some of the ground maintenance. They even don waders to dredge streams once a year.

"That's exactly the sort of work the beavers would do naturally," says countryside warden Ian Glover. He has applied for a license and hopes to welcome beavers in 2028 or 2029.

Like Ealing, South Norwood is on London's urban periphery. It's famous for birds, with boxes for kestrels to nest in perched atop poplars. The park's peak bird count — 177 species — goes back to 1935. But birds have been in decline across Europe.

Glover hopes beavers might help reverse that locally, by damming up streams and creating wetlands that attract more birds.

Beavers build dams and raise water levels in part to hide from predators, Glover notes. But most of their predators — including wolves and bears — have been extinct in Britain for centuries.

"Obviously they haven't gotten the memo," Glover laughs.

And these beavers have been so useful, nobody's telling them.

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Edited by Rachel Waldholz

Copyright 2026 NPR

The Tijuana Slough at the Tijuana River Mouth ranked among California's most polluted beaches, while Playa Blanca near Tijuana was listed as the state's worst beach in Heal the Bay's annual Beach Report Card released Wednesday ahead of Memorial Day weekend.

The environmental nonprofit's 2025-26 report placed the Tijuana Slough ninth on its annual "Beach Bummer" list of beaches with the poorest summer dry-weather water quality grades because of elevated bacteria levels and chronic pollution concerns.

According to Heal the Bay, Playa Blanca and the Tijuana Slough continue to be heavily impacted by transboundary wastewater flows from Baja California, although efforts are underway on both sides of the border to reduce sewage discharges and improve infrastructure.

The report's Beach Bummer rankings were:

— 1. Playa Blanca near Tijuana;

— 2. Santa Monica Pier;

— 3. Erckenbrack Park in San Mateo County;

— 4. Linda Mar Beach at San Pedro Creek in San Mateo County;

— 5. Parkside Aquatic Park in San Mateo County;

— 6. Pillar Point Harbor's Capistrano Road Beach in San Mateo County;

— 7. Pillar Point Harbor's Harbor Beach in San Mateo County;

— 8. Marlin Park in San Mateo County;

— 9. Tijuana Slough at the Tijuana River Mouth in San Diego County; and

— 10. Clam Beach County Park at Strawberry Creek in Humboldt County.

Heal the Bay said California beaches overall maintained relatively strong water quality, with 91% earning A or B grades during summer dry conditions. However, statewide wet-weather grades declined from 67% to 61% because of rainfall, stormwater runoff and aging infrastructure, according to the report.

"No one should get sick from a weekend in our waters," Heal the Bay CEO Tracy Quinn said in a statement. "These findings are a reminder that water quality isn't just a report, it's a public health issue that affects every beachgoer and river user across California."

According to the report, 21 beaches statewide earned Honor Roll status for receiving A-plus grades in all monitored weather conditions, down sharply from 62 beaches the previous year.

San Diego County beaches receiving Honor Roll recognition included Encinitas' San Elijo State Park Pipes surf break, several Carlsbad beaches, Point Loma Lighthouse, Sunset Cliffs at Ladera Street, Mission Beach at Belmont Park, Solana Beach Tide Beach Park and Cardiff State Beach.

The report urged beachgoers to avoid swimming within 72 hours after rainfall and to stay away from storm drains, river outlets and stagnant water areas.

From needles and paint to non-recyclable plastics, people accumulate all sorts of things that can't be safely disposed of or shouldn't end up in the landfill.

It can be challenging to figure out what to do with those items on your own.

Priscilla Dioquino gets it. She’s the voice on the other end of the busy Waste Free SD hotline, answering thousands of calls every year from people all over San Diego County.

“It is really rewarding to think that these people are going to be doing the correct thing and bringing (unwanted waste) to a household hazardous waste facility that I can tell them about, making them appointments or just telling them what options they have,” said Dioquino, who has been working the hotline for the past four years.

She typically searches a public database on the nonprofit’s website and lets callers know where and how to dispose of their unwanted waste. The nonprofit I Love A Clean San Diego maintains information on over 1,700 recycling, disposal and donation centers to run the hotline with support from the county and several cities.

The hotline launched in 1972, according to the nonprofit. The first calls were about Christmas tree recycling and 20 years ago, the top call was about phone book recycling. The reasons for the calls have evolved over the years, said Steve Morris, the organization’s executive director.

“What we’ve learned about waste in our 70-plus years is it has become more complicated in 2026,” he said. “If you think about the 1950s and 60s, materials that you purchased were primarily made of a few things: tin, aluminum, a little bit of paper. There really wasn't a lot of single-use plastic items. And obviously in 2026, there's any number of single-use things that are very nuanced.”

Now, most calls are about household hazardous items, with top inquiries about needles, batteries, paint and used motor oil, according to the organization. The hotline has been averaging about 4,000 calls annually.

Some questions have caught Dioquino off guard.

“I remember one of my first weeks working here, I had a person call asking if they could recycle a bowling ball,” she said. “Unfortunately, it has too many different types of plastics on it. I’ve had questions about human hair, if that could go into the organics bin, and I was surprised to find out it can. And you can put pet fur in there as well.”

On a recent Wednesday, a caller living in an unincorporated area of the county asked about disposing of liquor.

“They didn’t want to put it down their drain because they're on septic and it could damage the microbe system,” she said. “So, I had to check (with the county) if they take that household hazardous waste because that’s like an unusual request. And they do.”

Operators also get questions about recycling center locations and rules around composting and organics.

Morris said helping residents, as well as businesses, find hassle-free options for their unwanted waste has become more important today as California’s recycling and organics laws have expanded over the past several years.

“If you call the hotline today, you're going to get a different answer in a couple of weeks, because maybe a new resource became available,” he said. “Maybe there's a new law out there and they really kind of counsel everybody on what's up to date.”

In recent years, the nonprofit said it has helped keep tens of thousands of items out of crowded landfills, which are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.

For Dioquino, reducing waste is a lifestyle and she wanted to earn a living helping others do the same.

“I really liked this organization and I was like, these are my people. I really want to work here,” she said.

If you have waste disposal questions, visit wastefreesd.org.

Most people are diploid. That is, we have two sets of chromosomes — one set from each parent. But that's not always the case for other species, especially plants.

"Strawberries, for example, have eight sets of chromosomes," says Yves Van de Peer, a plant biologist at Ghent University in Belgium.

This phenomenon, called polyploidy, happens when an organism has more than two sets of chromosomes stuffed into every cell — in other words, a whole genome duplication. And it appears to allow some plant species to survive episodes of extreme environmental stress, like changes in the climate.

It wasn't obvious to biologists that polyploidy would necessarily be a good thing. In fact, having double the chromosomes can ultimately impact a species' survival, leading to its extinction. And yet, it's pretty common today, especially in plants. This forms what Van de Peer calls the polyploidy paradox. Why would so many plants possess a trait that makes them evolutionarily weaker?

In new work published in the journal Cell, Van de Peer and his colleagues suggest an answer to the puzzle. When they looked back at ancient genome duplication events in several hundred plant species, they found that they occurred during periods of turmoil over the last 150 million years — times of dramatic cooling, warming, or widespread extinction. Polyploidy may help species survive such upheavals.

Van de Peer believes he may have finally solved the paradox. "I feel like I can retire now because this is the culmination of 25 years of work," he says with a chuckle.

Clusters in time

You can think of polyploidy, says Van de Peer, as a large-scale mutational event. "Once in a while something goes wrong, and you end up basically with a new cell with twice the amount of DNA than a normal plant cell."

The species may do OK for a while, but this wholesale duplication of the genome has its baggage. More chromosomes can bog down cell division, introducing more opportunity for errors and mutations. And that can lead to other plants — with slimmer genetic loads — to outcompete them, leading to the polyploid plant's extinction.

This is why most genome duplications get lost to time. Van de Peer and his colleagues wanted to understand what accounts for the abundance of modern polyploidy and the seeming relative scarcity of it long ago.

Their first step involved gathering all 470 flowering plant genomes that have been sequenced, a mix of wild species and agricultural crops from all over the world. The research team scoured the DNA of those plants for suites of repeated genes — evidence of whole genome duplication events that occurred long ago.

"Not all the plants showed it," says Van de Peer, but some did. And the researchers used the fossil record to anchor when different plants first evolved to determine when each duplication event happened.

The results were clear. "These whole genome duplications," says Van de Peer, "they do not occur randomly. They are clustered in time."

A polyploid's superpower

In particular, the duplications clustered during episodes characterized by environmental upheaval over the last 150 million years — important cooling or warming periods, for instance.

Or, perhaps most dramatically, one such clustering happened some 66 million years ago when an asteroid collided with Earth, darkening the skies and likely wiping out the dinosaurs — and over half of all plant species.

But not, it appears, many of the polyploid plants. For all their baggage, polyploid plants actually excel at surviving environmental stress — they're a set of "hopeful monsters," as Van de Peer puts it.

Such stressors include prolonged changes in temperature or light level.

"They might be better in doing photosynthesis, for example, because they have more genes to capture the little light that is still there," he explains. "And so they have an advantage over a lot of other plant lineages where there was no whole genome duplication and they all went extinct."

In other words, polyploidy is like an insurance policy. Most of the time, plants with extra sets of chromosomes fade away. But in rare times of extreme turmoil, they win out. And their descendants, which often go on to lose those extra chromosome copies, retain evidence in their DNA of the ancient duplication event that helped their lineage survive.

"The paper really is very rigorous," says Sandra Pitta, a plant biotechnologist at CONICET, Argentina's National Scientific and Technical Research Council who wasn't involved in the study. "And it gives us a lot of hope, in a way."

That hope is due to the fact that our planet is again facing a changing climate, one that polyploid plants may well endure

These findings will also help plant breeders like Pitta. "If polyploidism helps them resist more different types of stresses," she says, "well, that is really useful to me."

Sometimes a seeming dead end can actually pay off in the future — a trick that these plants have up their green sleeves.

Copyright 2026 NPR

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One of the largest electricity producers in the U.S. could grow even bigger if a proposed merger with another power company goes through.

It comes at a time when energy demand is surging due to the AI boom and there are heightened worries about rising electricity prices.

"Anytime there's a merger there's a worry consumers might face raising rates," said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation.

NextEra Energy said on Monday it plans to acquire Dominion Energy in a roughly $67 billion deal, The merger will require both federal and state approvals, including in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Those three states would be covered by the merged company, as well as Florida.

Overall, residential electricity rates have risen 7.4% in February compared to a year earlier and in some states the spikes are worse, according to the Energy Information Administration. Rates in Virginia grew 12.2%. Higher electricity prices have attracted the attention of politicians. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger promised during her campaign to lower electricity costs and signed a bill last week to make data centers responsible for electricity costs.

NextEra sees lower prices for customers, advocates don't see it that way

John Ketchum, NextEra Energy's CEO, said in a press release that the larger scale and efficiencies gained from merging would translate "into more affordable electricity for our customers in the long run." NextEra is proposing to give Dominion Energy customers in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina $2.25 billion in bill credits over two years.

However, Shelby Green, a research and communications manager covering the Southeast region for the Energy and Policy Institute, isn't convinced. She said in the long run customers should expect their rates to go up and that's what happened after a previous merger involving NextEra Energy.

"Families and small businesses can expect to pay more in their utility bill and that's a major concern if this acquisition goes through," Green said.

NextEra responded in an email, saying that since it acquired Gulf Power in Northwest Florida in 2019 those customers are now paying 19% less in electricity today after adjusting for inflation. The company said that both NextEra and Dominion operate in different states and are subject to different rates and regulations, which would still be the case if the merger is approved.

Natural disaster damage and power-hungry AI data centers only complicates the issue

The actual size and structure of a utility is far from the only factor deciding the cost of an electric bill. Natural disasters that damage the grid and the inflated price of equipment needed to repair power lines all drive up costs for customers. With climate change the frequency of extreme weather events has gone up.

NextEra has in the past couple of years struck deals with tech giants Google and Meta to provide electricity to their data centers. Still, it's hard to predict how much more demand there will be from AI data centers in the future. If the electricity providers end up building too much infrastructure without the demand to match, customers could be stuck paying for the unused power.

That guessing game isn't an easy one. One projection says data centers will comprise a massive 16% of all U.S. power consumed in 2030, while a more conservative estimate puts it at less than 7%.

Nothing is going to happen overnight – NextEra expects the deal and review will take between 12 and 18 months to complete.

Copyright 2026 NPR

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California is considering handing oil refineries and other major polluters billions of dollars in free emission allowances just as the state says carbon reductions need to come faster than ever.

In the last six months, two refineries have closed and gas prices have topped an average of $6 a gallon as the Iran-Israel war sent oil markets into turmoil. The oil and gas sector spent $10.3 million lobbying Sacramento in the first three months of the year, according to lobbying filings, with the Western States Petroleum Association and Chevron accounting for the bulk of it.

The result is a new proposal before the California Air Resources Board that would provide as much as $4 billion in new free emission permits to companies with half slated for the fossil fuel industry in exchange for commitments to invest in clean energy.

Environmentalists warn the proposal is a giveaway to Big Oil that would weaken California's "cap-and-invest" program just as the state is relying on it to cut emissions and fund climate, housing and other programs. Anthony Martinez, a spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said the changes are necessary to keep the state’s carbon market "durable" and "affordable" amid mounting refinery closures.

The fight over California’s carbon market has exposed the political tensions at the heart of Newsom’s energy transition agenda. California is trying to preserve its climate ambitions while keeping gasoline affordable for drivers already facing the highest prices in the country. Critics say the air board’s proposal accomplishes neither goal.

"We are really concerned that this would significantly kneecap the program," said Chloe Ames, a policy adviser with NextGen Policy.

Weakening the backstop

Through California's 13-year-old carbon market, major polluting companies must buy permits for every ton of greenhouse gases they emit, with the state capping total emissions year by year. Each permit is worth real money and companies can sell the ones they don't use. The program is considered California’s climate backstop — the only state policy that sets a firm limit on greenhouse gas emissions.

At the heart of the dispute with environmentalists is a proposed subsidy program carved out of that carbon market. The air board, if it approves the proposal on May 28, would create a new pool of free pollution permits for refineries, cement plants and other big companies that pledge to invest in clean energy and efficiency projects.

The pool would be capped at 118.3 million permits — the same number the air board has said must come off the market for California to hit its 2030 climate target. Environmentalists say the proposal risks wiping out those reductions.

Berkeley energy economist Meredith Fowlie, who chairs an independent committee that oversees the carbon market, wrote in a recent analysis that the design would give qualifying refineries more free permits than they need to cover their emissions.

"One could use the word generous," Fowlie said.

Rajinder Sahota, the air board official overseeing the program, said the proposal would ensure emissions reductions. The new permits, she said, would only go to companies undertaking clean energy and efficiency projects and would be limited, temporary and rescinded if companies misuse them. The plan is meant to help keep refineries operating in California at a time of uncertainty, she added.

"We want to make sure that there's reliable, affordable fuel for California consumers while the demand persists," Sahota said.

But environmentalists say the air board has built in almost no accountability for how companies invest in those projects. Katelyn Roedner Sutter, state director for the Environmental Defense Fund, said the proposal “is based on proposed investment, not any guaranteed reduction.”

“That's a red flag,” she said.

A climate money crunch

Quarterly auction revenue for state programs could drop from roughly $4 billion a year to about $2 billion under the proposal, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office.

Sen. John Laird, the state Senate budget chair and a co-author of California's original 2006 climate law, warned at a May 6 hearing that the proposal "flies against many things we negotiated just last fall" with the governor and could put the carbon market deal "back on the table."

Not all lawmakers are critical. Assemblymembers Jacqui Irwin and Cottie Petrie-Norris, who respectively chair climate and energy committees, said the proposal “reflects the Legislature’s focus on affordability,” and urged the board to proceed “without delay.”

They pointed to an increase in the Climate Credit, the twice-yearly rebate that the carbon market funds on Californians' utility bills; a UC Santa Barbara analysis, however, found the new subsidy could shrink the credit by as much as $1.7 billion under the proposal.

A separate, bipartisan group including Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat, and Senator Suzette Valladares, a Republican, argues the purpose of the carbon market is to cut emissions, not raise money for programs.

Newsom struck an eleventh-hour deal with lawmakers last year that extended the state’s carbon market through 2045 and set the order of which state programs get auction money first.

Under that plan, California’s high-speed rail project receives $1 billion a year before many other programs. Lawmakers also carved out a $1 billion annual pool for priorities they control themselves, but Newsom in January proposed committing that money to wildfire spending and other programs.

Last in line are programs lawmakers have spent years building into California’s climate agenda: affordable housing and transit-oriented development meant to reduce driving and climate pollution, rail and bus service, wildfire resilience, clean drinking water in poor communities and neighborhood pollution monitoring.

Newsom unveiled a revised state budget on May 14 that did not reflect the potential drop in carbon market revenue. Laird, in an interview, said the administration told him the revenue drop wouldn't show up in the coming fiscal year.

Laird said he planned to "ground truth" that assessment in the weeks ahead. The hit "would still be a big hit the year after this budget year," he added.

Big Oil’s biggest target

California’s carbon market became a central focus of the oil industry’s lobbying efforts after the air board released a January proposal sharply reducing free pollution permits for industry.

Seven of the 10 highest-spending oil and gas lobbying groups in California pushed state officials on the proposal, state filings show. The petroleum association and Chevron mounted some of the industry’s most aggressive lobbying, pressing lawmakers, the governor’s office, the air board and the California Energy Commission on the plan.

The April plan raised free permits for most industries through 2030 above the January version, but deferred decisions on permits after 2030 to a future rulemaking.

Jim Stanley, a spokesman for the petroleum association, said the group has been pressing lawmakers, regulators and the governor's office about "the potential consequences of a poorly structured cap-and-invest program."

Chevron spokesman Ross Allen declined to comment beyond letters Chevron filed with the air board. Chevron initially warned the proposal threatened refinery survival in California. After last month’s revisions, the company is continuing to push for additional protections.

Zach Leary, a lobbyist for the petroleum association, said California needs to go further than even its latest proposal. He wants California to lock in a higher level of free permits permanently.

“The state is acknowledging that affordability and ambition are not getting along very well right now,” Leary said.

Eddie Ahn, executive director of Brightline Defense, oversees community air sensors in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, Mission and South of Market neighborhoods funded through the state’s community air protection program. That program is among those that could lose state money if carbon market auctions decline under the proposal.

“If the funding is cut off, then convening groups of people on a monthly basis — that goes away,” Ahn said. “It means frontline communities get disconnected from environmental policy.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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California just gave plastic producers until 2032 to make all their packaging recyclable or compostable — the most ambitious deadline in the country. Advocates say it doesn't go far enough. Producers say it goes too far. At least one of them is threatening to sue.

The sweeping regulations, finalized at the start of the month, put producers in a bind that has no obvious solution. Plastic clamshell containers, for instance, protect berries from being crushed and keep them fresher, longer until they reach a refrigerator. Plastic producers say there’s simply no substitute — yet under the new rules, they’ll have to find one.

Last week, two environmental groups — the Natural Resources Defense Council and Californians Against Waste — said they plan to take California to court. Their argument: the state's rules actually break the law by allowing recycling methods that create a lot of toxic waste, and by letting some plastics slip through the rules entirely. On the other side, plastic manufacturers say the rules go too far and will make products more expensive for shoppers.

Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from coastal Los Angeles County who authored the plastic waste law, said the program still “massively moves the needle on this really major problem” — even if the process was messy. “This was the product of a compromise, and it was not perfect, and everybody walked away from the table, you know, unhappy about various aspects,” Allen said.

“California is the United States, but 30 years in the future,” said Joe Árvai, director of the University of Southern California’s Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. “What's happening now is emblematic of trends that we are seeing worldwide … and the U.S. needs to adapt in the way that those countries are adapting in order to remain globally competitive.”

Less plastic, more recycling 

For decades, the burden of reducing, reusing and recycling plastic waste has fallen on consumers. Once a consumer buys a product, they decide what happens to it — whether it ends up in the garbage can or the recycling blue bin — and their tax dollars fund recycling systems we have today.

In 2022, California’s landmark Senate Bill 54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, shifted that responsibility to businesses. The regulations outline what materials are covered by the law and who counts as a “producer” of plastic waste.

The new regulations are a huge milestone, said Anja Brandon, director of U.S. plastics policy for the Ocean Conservancy. “There's plenty more steps on this journey, but I'm just really excited that we are going to start making real progress,” she said.

The law applies to plastic food service ware and almost all single-use packaging — from the plastic wrap around large pallets of products shipped to retailers to a tube of toothpaste and the cardboard box around it.

To carry out the law, the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery appointed the Circular Action Alliance, a nonprofit that helps states carry out extended producer responsibility mandates, as the organizing body for producers. The alliance is responsible for coming up with a plan to meet the law’s goals.

Producers — defined as companies that make more than $1 million in sales and produce products packaged in plastic or own brands under which those products are sold — must join the organization and pay fees to fund waste management. They can meet the law's requirements by using less plastic, finding alternative materials, or investing in recycling infrastructure.

“The biggest challenge is the scale and coordination required to modernize a complex recycling system across a state as large and diverse as California,” said Sheila Estaniel, a spokesperson for the Circular Action Alliance, in an email.

California’s requirement that businesses reduce single-use plastic altogether makes it one of the strongest plastic waste laws in the country. It also goes further than other similar laws because it requires plastic producers to pay $5 billion over a decade to address the environmental damage their products have caused to communities — though the state doesn’t expect to start distributing those funds until 2027 at the earliest.

Watered down rules

The plastic waste rules have had a rocky road to implementation.

In 2024, CalRecycle developed a first draft of regulations detailing what plastic the law covers and what producers must do. The draft expired before CalRecycle finalized it. In 2025, Gov. Gavin Newsom directed regulators to rewrite the rules — a move that some advocates say say food and agriculture lobbyists pushed for.

The result was a second draft that carved out a broad exclusion for plastics used for food and agriculture purposes, covering products under the jurisdiction of the FDA and USDA, such as packaging for fresh produce and supplements. Advocates said the exclusion gutted the law.

“Governor Newsom was clear when he asked CalRecycle to restart these regulations that they should work to minimize costs for small businesses and families — while ensuring California’s bold recycling law can achieve the critical goal of cutting plastic pollution,” said Anthony Martinez, a spokesperson for the governor. “That’s exactly what these draft regulations do.”

CalRecycle submitted that draft to the Office of Administrative Law in August 2025, but withdrew it to make changes that narrowed that exclusion. Regulators ultimately excluded only plastic that federal law requires for food safety — walking back a broader carve-out that advocates said would have gutted the law.

Advocates gear up to sue 

Not all plastics follow the same rules — and advocates object to the state’s two-track system.

Some materials with unique technical challenges can apply for exemptions, but must meet specific criteria to qualify.

Others, like plastic that federal law requires for food safety, escape the rules entirely once producers complete an application to CalRecycle — no timeline, no obligations.

“In practice, this allows exclusions to remain in effect …even for notices that ultimately fail — creating strong incentives to submit weak or legally unsupported claims simply to delay (and effectively filibuster) compliance,” wrote Tony Hackett, a policy associate for Californians Against Waste in a public comment letter to the department.

Advocates raise a second concern: the regulations allow certain waste polluting technologies — ones the law specifically excluded because they generate significant quantities of hazardous waste — to count as recycling, as long as they have a hazardous waste permit.

These technologies include chemical recycling processes that the oil industry has long promoted as a solution to plastic pollution — a claim California's attorney general says is deliberately misleading. Rob Bonta has sued ExxonMobil alleging the company misled the public about recycling’s potential to address the plastic crisis.

“These regulations ignore explicit limits on recycling technologies and create permanent escape hatches the law never authorized,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste, in a statement.

Rhonalyn Cabello, a CalRecycle spokesperson, said the agency does not comment on pending or potential litigation.

Sen. Allen agreed the regulations fall short.

“We feel that the regulations as presented don't maintain some of the core agreements that were made in the passage of the bill,” he said. When there’s too many exclusions, he said, companies are “basically forcing everybody else to pay and getting away scot free.”

Set up to fail?

Businesses claim they want to reduce plastic waste but feel trapped by conflicting state regulations and a lack of viable packaging alternatives.

The tension starts with labeling. The state’s accurate recycling labels law, Senate Bill 343, prohibits businesses from using the chasing arrows symbol to indicate recyclability unless certain criteria are met. Advocates say the restriction is necessary to avoid confusion. But businesses say it means consumers are less likely to recycle products that could be recyclable.

“If we lose the right to use (recycling labels on) dairy cartons, our members are going to have to expand their plastic use, because that is the only other packaging type that can take a shelf stable product,” said Katie Davey, executive director of the Dairy Institute of California.

As investments from producers flow to cities and counties under the law, Cabello said, more materials may eventually meet the labeling criteria.

Beyond labeling, businesses say workable alternatives to plastic simply don't exist yet — and that getting there will be costly. Investments needed to meet the law’s first goal alone — a 25% reduction in single-use plastic by 2032 — could cost up to $15.4 billion, according to CalRecycle estimates.

Kevin Kelly, the chief executive of Emerald Packaging, sells film plastic packaging to farmers, who use the plastic to bag items like salads and baby carrots. Paper packaging that could replicate plastic's ability to regulate oxygen and carbon dioxide levels — keeping produce fresh — is still in early development, he said, and mass production is decades away.

“You have to build tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure to actually produce something at the level that would be needed to replace plastics,” Kelly said.

Dairy illustrates the same problem. Alternatives to plastic milk packaging include refrigerated gable-top cartons, shelf-stable cartons, and glass. Each comes with tradeoffs. Glass is heavier — meaning fewer units per shipment — and clear glass exposes fresh milk to light that can degrade it. Switching packaging lines entirely would cost producers about $40 million for a single mid-size line, according to the Dairy Institute — a cost they would pass on to consumers.

“We're deeply concerned because we know that food costs are going to increase and products are going to come off the market because there literally is not a packaging solution within the required timeframe,” Davey said.

But USC’s Joe Árvai said producer complaints are really about the pace of change, not whether compliant packaging is possible at all.

“Whether they like it or not, these changes are coming,” he said. “In the end, there are going to be players in the industry that are going to be better able to respond, and they will be better indemnified against the shocks than their partners and competitors.”

What happens next

The next major test comes in June, when the Circular Action Alliance must submit its plan to CalRecycle outlining how producers will meet the law's goals.

Oregon, which passed a similar law and is also facing an industry legal challenge, offers a possible model. There, grant funding is already flowing to expand reuse and refill infrastructure — helping businesses and schools replace single-use plastic products and improve recycling access.

“Despite the fact that there's a lawsuit in Oregon, money is moving out the door,” said the Ocean Conservancy’s Anja Brandon. She said groups like hers will closely watch the June plan.

“We'll all be waiting with bated breath” to see how producers are interpreting this and what pathways they’re laying out, she said.

Meanwhile, advocates will be watching closely as CalRecycle begins to make decisions about who qualifies for exclusions and exemptions. The Natural Resources Defense Council is waiting for CalRecycle to post additional documents before filing its lawsuit.

“If we let this thing get derailed and turned into a Swiss cheese of exemptions and non‑compliance, it will really harm our global progress on this issue,” Allen said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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Eleven weeks into the Iran war and a global energy shock, California drivers are paying the highest gas prices in the nation, an average of $6.15 a gallon this week.

The pain at the pump is colliding with California’s ambitious push away from fossil fuels, as refinery closures, supply disruptions and a deepening debate over reliance on imported oil and gas raise new questions about whether the state can keep gasoline affordable during the transition.

Here are five things to know about how Sacramento is responding to the crisis and what it could mean for prices in the months ahead.

California can see six weeks out — after that, prices could rise.

California can confidently forecast gasoline and crude oil shipments coming in through about mid-June, and supply looks stable through that window, Siva Gunda, vice chair of the California Energy Commission, told an Assembly oversight hearing last week.

After that, oil and gas will cost significantly more to secure, he said.

California can outbid the rest of the world for gasoline and crude oil, pulling shipments away from Asia and other markets. But that bidding war comes at a cost, and consumers will pay it at the pump, Gunda told the committee.

To hedge against that uncertainty, Gunda said California is negotiating long-term supply deals with Asian refiners that could lock in another three to six months of certainty.

“Liquidity, in the short-term, is okay,” Gunda said. “As we move forward, it's really about making sure more ships are coming, more marine vessels are coming.”

As refineries close, imports are filling the gap.

The Iran war has exposed California’s growing reliance on imports of both crude oil and gasoline. The state needs to import more supply as in-state refineries shut down.

Neale Mahoney, a Stanford economist, told the committee that imports can be a benefit. They add competition and lower prices, since newer overseas refineries often produce gasoline more cheaply than California's.

Other experts agree. UC Berkeley energy economist Severin Borenstein, also at the hearing, said California's resilience now depends on building out port, pipeline and storage capacity to handle imports, not on bringing new refineries online.

As the war has dragged on, California refiners have shifted crude sourcing away from the Persian Gulf toward Latin America, Alaska and Canada, Gunda said at the hearing last week. The state met about 20% of its refined-product demand through imports in the year before the war began.

“Fundamentally, we have to recognize we are going to have fewer refineries, and the solution is imports,” Borenstein said.

The oil industry says imports are the problem, not the answer.

But the oil industry is pushing back, saying that relying on increased imports is the wrong strategy. California's fuel system has been "weakened by design" by state policies pushing refiners out of the state, said Jodie Muller, president and CEO of the Western States Petroleum Association — a characterization energy economists dispute.

Because California requires that cars burn a specialized fuel blend, shipments can be tougher to source and take longer to arrive, exposing consumers to delays and volatility every time something goes wrong globally.

“Continuing to move to more and more imports will put this state at more and more risk,” Muller said last week. “If you think we are in a precarious position right now, we will continue to see more and more volatility.”

And the oil industry argues that the playing field is tilted. California refiners face some of the strictest rules in the world, the industry argues, while imported gasoline is produced under far weaker standards before it’s shipped halfway around the world. California requires importers to certify their fuels meet its standards, but the industry argues that foreign producers operate under less stringent environmental rules.

$6.50 or $7-plus? Experts can't agree.

In the end, what you feel most acutely is the price you pay at the pump. And even the experts aren't sure where things will land.

Asked what consumers should expect if the conflict drags on, Gunda said California prices will likely settle "under seven, more like $6.50." He explained that demand starts dropping once gas crosses about $5.50 a gallon, and California is already seeing drivers shift from higher-priced stations to cheaper ones.

Borenstein is less optimistic. If the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carried more than 20 million barrels of oil a day before the start of the war, stays closed another 60 days, the price of crude could climb by another $40 to $80 a barrel, he said. Each $40 increase translates into about $1 per gallon at the pump. He called that scenario plausible, and warned there's almost nothing California policy can do about it.

“Unfortunately, I think that would be a crisis,” Borenstein said. “I know we all hope that doesn't happen and that the flow of oil resumes, but the reality is we are on borrowed time as we run down inventories.”

Will high gas prices boost EV sales?

California has spent years trying to push drivers out of gas cars. Now sky-high gas prices may be sparking interest in some consumers.

EV sales in California slumped last year after the Trump administration revoked a key federal tax incentive, undercutting California’s plan to steadily replace gas-powered cars with electric ones to meet its climate goals.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is now pushing to revive some of those sales through a new state incentive under negotiation in the budget. It’s too early to know whether pain at the pump is translating into a broad rebound in EV demand. But some consumers are already making the switch.

When gas prices recently climbed past $6 a gallon in Redding, Victor Ireland said his daughter decided there was “no way” she wanted a gas-powered car after watching the family spend more than $140 on a single Sacramento round trip in their minivan.

The search wasn’t easy. EV inventories have dropped across the country since expiring federal tax credits briefly boosted demand. The family searched dealerships across the West, from Washington to Kansas, after his daughter settled on a specific model: the Fiat 500e Giorgio Armani Collector's Edition. They found a dealer in Utah that could ship the vehicle to California.

Ireland said the soaring cost of gasoline only reinforced his family’s decision. “You just charge it and go,” he said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Then, the recording of a Stejneger's beaked whale plays. UC San Diego student and percussionist Camilo Zamudio is on stage, listening with his eyes closed.

He grabs two glass jars filled with marbles and starts rubbing their textured bottoms together near a microphone. They complement the sound of the whales.

In nature, humans aren’t capable of hearing these and other marine mammal sounds because they communicate with frequencies that are too low or too high for the human ear.

A new collaboration between scientists and musicians at the Laboratory for Emerging Intelligence at UC San Diego is helping make those inaudible ocean sounds perceptible to humans. It’s called “The Inaudible Ocean,” and it premieres May 20.

“We can now hear what the world sounds like at some of the most inaccessible places to human beings,” said Lei Liang, a music professor and composer at UCSD.

Liang said the process starts by gathering audio data with a microphone designed to detect and record ocean sounds.

“We work together with Whales Acoustics Lab at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and one of their great scientists, John Hildebrand, a very renowned oceanographer, what he has done is to design this microphone that records underwater, called hydrophones,” Liang said.

The hydrophones are placed at the bottom of the ocean and record year-round, he said. After researchers retrieve the instrument, they take the data to the lab and start listening.

A lot of those sound waves range from the infrasonic, or sound waves with frequencies as low as 10Hz, to the ultrasonic, sound waves as high as 320 kHz. The typical, healthy human hearing range is between 20Hz and 20kHz.

“Our brain is, compared to some of these marine mammals, quite slow and insensitive to some of the higher frequencies and extremely fast speed sound signals,” said Liang. “The only way we can actually hear them is to slow them down. Transpose them lower so that they're brought to the human hearing range.”

For example, Liang said to imagine hearing the Arctic sea ice.

“We can hear the ice formation and all that,” he said. “But when you slow down to 1% of its original speed, it becomes a totally different world because you're hearing ice formation at the microscopic level.”

These sounds also happen on timescales humans cannot perceive, said Joshua Jones, Scripps oceanographer.

“When a beaked whale makes an echolocation, it sounds like (a) click,” he said. “The animal is hearing that click and then the return of that click off all the things that it encounters in the environment. But it happens so fast, not only we can’t hear it, but we can’t even perceive that.”

Jones and Liang said they have been spending a lot of time not only observing the ocean through sound but also thinking about what music can offer to disciplines like engineering, geology and oceanography.

“Can we do something other than just play some music in a concert hall? And I think that’s behind everything that we’re trying to do here,” said Liang.

The oceanographer and composer are working with several musicians, some of whom are professors and students at UCSD, to create the immersive musical experience. Among them is pianist Cory Smythe. At a rehearsal on Monday, he played with low and high notes as different frequencies of whale sounds played.

“The Inaudible Ocean” won’t be your typical concert, Liang said.

“This is not a kind of sit in your seat and just kind of be entertained,” he said. “You’re here to rediscover some of these things that didn't exist before. They might be there, but it's only because artists and scientists are working together now that we can finally reveal the beautiful world that there is. But, it takes a community to also appreciate that.”

The premiere of The Inaudible Ocean is scheduled for 7 p.m. on May 20 at the Conrad Prebys Music Center Concert Hall in La Jolla.

They all asked passersby one question: Would you like to stop the Tijuana River sewage crisis at the border?

They were promoting a citizens’ initiative to get a countywide half-cent sales tax on the November ballot. I asked one how it would be used on the Tijuana River.

They couldn’t point to a specific project. Probably because the “Protect San Diego County Health and Safety Act” doesn’t specifically point to one.

Fixing the persistent problem — what the Wall Street Journal called a “tsunami of raw sewage” — has become the main selling point of the tax, which could generate $360 million a year. The measure would dedicate about $80 million of it to “stop sewage flows.” If they packaged it into a bond, it could provide billions to invest immediately.

But proponents do not have a plan yet on what the county would do with the funding. A county supervisor mentioned a persistent and particularly gross and harmful area that needed immediate attention but also suggested that any hope Mexico and the U.S. federal governments would fix it are unfounded and the money should be used to ultimately divert the river entirely.

Its backers, a coalition of labor unions, a child care advocacy group among them, say this is the county’s chance to finally throw some real, dependable cash at the seemingly unsolvable sewage problem at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“When we pass this, it’ll be the first dedicated sustainable fund for the Tijuana River,” said Courtney Baltiyskyy, with Children First San Diego, an organization advocating for affordable child care – which 22 percent of the sales tax money would fund.

Baltiyskyy said sales tax proponents polled voters last fall. Voters said they were most worried about the sewage crisis. They also expressed concerns over health care, food insecurity, fire and emergency response – the other things the measure would fund.

“Voters across San Diego County are showing empathy and deeper awareness for the first time historically on this issue,” Baltiyskyy said. “It’s one of the our greatest pressing needs for health and safety.”

Balitskyy said the annual revenue could be used to pay back a bond, a big loan for expensive projects.

Reading further into the measure’s language revealed that it would be up to an appointed committee to make sure that money is being spent where the measure’s creators intended.

But so far, it’s not clear what those projects would be.

No specific Tijuana River plan 

The sales tax measure’s expenditure plan says 22.5 percent of the money should be used on “environmental mitigation and related programs in connection with the toxic crisis in the Tijuana River Valley.” Twenty percent of that must be spent on “infrastructure and engineering projects to stop sewage flows from Tijuana into the U.S.”

That could mean a lot of things. But it shouldn’t take the county long to figure it out.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency already spent about a year studying what needs to be done on both sides of the border five years ago. They put $600 million-worth of projects on a big list and prioritized them. But the feds hit a bunch of snags trying to get those done – like a huge sewage main break in Mexico in 2022, then Hurricane Hilary knocked out the United States’ main treatment plant in 2023, etc. And Congress hadn’t yet dedicated enough money to pay for most of that.

Still, both countries agreed to do those projects under a treaty signed while Joe Biden was president. Then President Donald Trump basically had Mexico re-commit to doing those things again under another agreement.

However, $80 million a year for the Tijuana River sewage problem is a lot. It’s $30 million more than the entire maintenance budget of the International Boundary and Water Commission (the federal agency charged with treating Tijuana’s sewage at the border) just a few years ago.

Raising what the border sewage problem needs by locals taxing themselves is a much easier way than how it works now.

Most of the infrastructure installed at the U.S.-Mexico border to try and prevent sewage pollution is run by the federal government, which means it takes an act of Congress to secure funds to take care of it. It took the rewriting of the North American Free Trade Agreement during President Trump’s first administration to secure $300 million back in 2020 for all cross-border water problems (and there are many). San Diego had to fight hard to get most of that dedicated to its sewage problem with Tijuana.

San Diego’s Congressional delegates had to fight again to secure more emergency money to help fix a sewage treatment plant run by the United States, which Voice of San Diego revealed had been so neglected, it didn’t really work.

Who decides where money will be spent 

The language of the sales tax measure requires the San Diego County Board of Supervisors appoint an 11-member oversight committee three months after the measure passed to oversee how the money is spent. None of the members can be elected officials. One of them must be from a community affected by the border sewage — Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, Coronado or San Ysidro.

This committee would pay for an independent auditor to evaluate whether the money is being spent according to the measure’s intent.

“These folks …make sure expenditures are in line with the will of voters and make a slate of recommendations to supervisors,” Baltiyskyy said.

The commission’s work would be directed by the county’s pollution crisis chief, a new position the county is apparently interviewing candidates for as I write this.

If the Tijuana River is ever cleaned, meaning it’s deemed safe for human recreation and is removed from the state’s list of polluted waters, the sales tax measure says that money could go to other environmental mitigation programs that protect clean water. The same would be true if the river is ever completely diverted and treated, which has been one of the options on the table for a long time – and what former Imperial Beach Mayor now Supervisor Paloma Aguirre has been talking about for years. (EPA prioritized that project last on its list.)

“First we have to prioritize the hot spot, because that is a major infrastructure fix that we’ve already invested $2.5 million in county money,” said Supervisor Paloma Aguirre in an interview Monday. “That’s an immediate thing we can bring relief to families.”

The so-called hot spot is an area in Nestor where the river spills from concrete pipes underneath a road, generating toxic air pollution.

“But of course the ultimate purpose is to eliminate toxic sludge coming through. And we can wait here another 20 years for Mexico to do it, or we can do it ourselves,” she said.

I asked Baltiyskyy if any of the money could be spent in Mexico, whose broken sewage infrastructure is the main source of the problem. The United States already spends millions of dollars on fixes to Tijuana wastewater systems as a result of the crisis (like the $13.4 million being spent on an old sewage pump in Mexico), which is typically the only way projects get done. She didn’t know whether, logistically, that could work.

“There’s enough to do on the U.S. side to use the locally-generated funding,” she said.

Across the country, wildland firefighters are staring down what could be one of the most severe fire seasons in recent history.

Among those figuring out how to prepare is the U.S. Wildland Fire Service, a brand new agency created by the Trump administration.

"We're dry and we're expecting the pace to pick up significantly here any time," said the recently appointed head of that service, Brian Fennessy, in an interview with NPR's All Things Considered host Emily Feng.

The agency is a product of an ongoing White House effort to combine all the parts of the federal government that fight fires.

"We're trying to bring on additional aircraft and bring them on early," he said. The agency is also bringing on more fire crews earlier in the year.

Some wildfire experts, like Park Williams at the University of California, Los Angeles, say they want the government to do more preventative work that could stop a major fire instead of narrowly focusing on suppressing those that ignite.

"If we don't want fires to be growing so large that they have catastrophic consequences for people and ecosystems, then the best tool we have at our disposal is large prescribed fires," Williams said.

NPR's Emily Feng spoke with Chief Fennessy to learn how his agency is preparing for the fire season ahead, and because of a new policy the Wildland Fire Service has been instructed to carry out this summer that some say prioritizes putting out fires over trying to prevent them with prescribed burns.

Listen to the full interview by clicking the blue play button above.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Lake Hodges is a San Diego landmark where people hike, bike, fish, kayak, canoe, bird watch and take photographs against the backdrop of a century-old, city-owned reservoir.

It’s also a disaster waiting to happen.

The question is whether calamity would come by flood or by fire.

An earthquake could destroy the aging dam and flood Rancho Santa Fe and other communities, so San Diego routinely releases water from the reservoir. But many residents fear less water leads to a greater threat of wildfires in an area already among the most at risk in the state.

“We have a fire opportunity that is massive, and we have now increased the ability to make that fire dramatically,” area resident PJ Lynch said.

A 2022 inspection, maintenance project and subsequent study found concrete deterioration, cracks and other issues with the 108-year-old Lake Hodges dam. California’s Division of Safety of Dams labeled it “unsatisfactory,” which, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, means it “requires immediate or emergency remedial action.”

It is the only dam in the state agency’s jurisdiction with that label. The division recommended a water level of 280 feet or below – 35 feet below the dam’s spillway – because of an “extremely high” downstream hazard where a breach is “expected to cause considerable loss of human life or would result in an inundation area with a population of 1,000 or more.”

That’s led to controlled releases of 13.5 billions of gallons of water in the last four years after heavy rains as a safeguard.

In an FAQ on its website from August 2025, the city said the reservoir is safe at its current levels.

“There is not an imminent threat of failure of Hodges Dam,” it says. “The number one priority for the City is maintaining the water level in the reservoir at a safe elevation in accordance with the state regulator to reduce downstream risk in the event of a catastrophic failure caused by a major earthquake.”

For some residents, their primary fear is fire, not flooding. The fear isn’t theoretical because fire has ripped through the area before. They say it’s not a matter of if the next fire comes but when. And they worry there will be far less water to deter, and later fight, the fire.

“We have 500 acres of dry brush,” Lynch said. “We have kindling wood on everyone’s front yard.”

Brian Caldwell said it was just one extra day that kept his house from burning down in the 2007 Witch Creek Fire.

“The fire came through and because there was a lake here, it stalled,” he said.

At the time, he and other nearby residents looked over the pedestrian bridge at a nearly full lake, which sat closer to 300 feet high. Today, the same spot overlooks acres of plants known for their flammability.

These residents have come together to form Raise Lake Hodges, a group that is pushing the city to stop releasing water from the reservoir — or at least release less.

San Diego Councilmember Marni von Wilpert, who represents the area, has raised residents’ fire concerns in written reports and at city meetings. At a meeting in January, she said she was still concerned that the Division of Safety of Dams “is likely doing its job to think about the damage that water could do to people, but no one is thinking about the damage that fire can do to people.”

“It’s very hard for me to tell my residents who’ve watched their homes burn to their foundation once before that we’re doing everything we can to keep them safe,” she said. “I just don’t know what to do because I think we’re stuck with this jurisdictional quagmire, and this agency in Sacramento that doesn’t seem to want to answer our questions.”

Advanced deterioration, unacceptable condition

The dam around Lake Hodges was built in 1918, and the city of San Diego bought the dam and reservoir in 1925. The reservoir can hold water up to 315 feet and has a shoreline of 27 miles. It has a water storage capacity of over 30,000 acre-feet. That’s the equivalent of about 10 billion gallons of water or enough to fill some 15,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Last week, the water level sat at 276 feet, which city spokesperson Jennifer McBride said was a few feet below the restriction level in order to “ensure that we won’t exceed the restriction level in the event of rain.”

In northeastern San Diego by Elfin Forest, Lake Hodges provides water to the city of San Diego and to North County’s San Dieguito Water District and Santa Fe Irrigation District. The water reaches Solana Beach, parts of Encinitas and the communities of Rancho Santa Fe and Fairbanks Ranch.

The San Diego County Water Authority has access to 20,000 acre-feet of storage space, but a spokesperson said the agency has “no plans or need to use it.”

Division of Safety of Dams manager Erik Malvic said that through an engineering study and the agency’s inspections, the dam was labeled “unsatisfactory.” It is the only one under the agency’s jurisdiction labeled as such.

“DSOD’s inspections have observed that the dam has advanced deterioration putting the dam in an unacceptable condition for normal operating conditions,” he said.

The city was poised to begin building a new dam downstream of Lake Hodges by 2029. But last year, the estimated cost of the project ballooned from $275 million to between $474 million and $697 million, and the county water authority withdrew its support for the rebuild. The city’s plan had the water authority paying half the cost with the rest split evenly among the city and the two smaller water districts. The change left the city exploring other options.

Without a path toward rebuilding the dam, the city has continued to release water out of the reservoir, with no clear path to a permanent solution for the dam.

Billions of gallons of water have been released into the ocean in the years since the dam was deemed unsatisfactory, with more set for controlled releases. It’s water that in a perfect world could be used for drinking, recreation and renewable energy.

‘The fires in L.A. changed everything’

Some residents take issue with the study and conclusions about the dam — they argue that the analysis only looked at the impacts of the dam failing instead of taking into account the likelihood it would happen.

They also question why the city began releasing water from the reservoir without conducting an environmental review that would show the effects of wildfire on wildlife and the environment.

Alexandra Berenter, the city public utilities department’s deputy director of external affairs, said the California Environmental Quality Act did not require an environmental impact report for adjusting reservoir levels for safety and regulatory compliance.

The residents argue that a fire is more likely and would be more devastating than a flood. The Lake Hodges area is one of the zones designated as a high severity fire zone, and most residents still remember the 2007 Witch Creek Fire, which killed two people and burned almost 200,000 acres and over 1,000 residences, including 365 homes in Rancho Bernardo.

“If you have a flood, you don’t wipe out the entire ecosystem,” said Paul Bernstein with Raise Lake Hodges.

Residents’ fears multiplied when they saw the fires tear through Los Angeles last year.

“The big difference is what happened in L.A.,” resident Robert Dudley said at a March San Diego City Council meeting. “The fires in L.A. have changed everything.”

The group has sought guidance from Larry Vein, who runs Pali Strong, a grassroots organization that has advocated for residents in the Pacific Palisades since the fires last year.

Vein lived through the Palisades fire and can still remember driving his 4-month-old son through Los Angeles as everything around him burned. He commends the San Diego residents, who call themselves “proactivists,” for their community advocacy because he said it is imperative to act before the fire comes.

“To not have the water resources and the equipment resources necessary, to not have the resources available to mitigate the fires and the damage they can cause, is a huge oversight,” Vein said. “You need to be prepared for a worst-case scenario.”

In the nearly 16 months since the Los Angeles fires, there has been significant backlash over the response. Mayor Karen Bass removed the fire chief in February 2025 after the chief refused to do an after action report.

Many residents there also pointed to insufficient water — in particular, the Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty for repairs at the time of the fires.

After Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered an investigation, California officials eventually concluded that there was enough water at the time of the fire, but that the water system isn’t designed to handle large-scale wildfires, according to reporting from the Los Angeles Times.

The Los Angeles Times reported that even if that reservoir had been full, the water system would have been quickly overwhelmed in fighting the fire.

Still, homeowners filed lawsuits against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, arguing it failed to adequately prepare for and respond to the fire.

The residents say that a body of water like the Hodges reservoir creates a buffer zone and cooling effect to impede or stall a fire. They want the water level of the reservoir to sit at 295 feet — enough to serve a water pump, and protect people in a fire.

Berenter, the San Diego city official, said the current water level at Lake Hodges is sufficient for the fire department and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in the event of a fire.

“SDFD and Cal Fire have assured us their equipment can access water in Hodges as well as multiple other surrounding water sources as needed,” she said. “Vegetation along the exposed shoreline and within the lakebed of the reservoir is a protected wetland under local, state, and federal regulations.”

‘Charting our best path forward’

Assemblymember Darshana Patel represents the area at the State House in Sacramento. She said that the Division of Safety of Dams looked at Lake Hodges safety issues around seismic activity, that residents are looking at it from a fire risk and that politicians have to consider both threats.

“They’re just using different lenses in their approach,” she said, “and we will have to take all of that information into consideration when we are charting our best path forward.”

Another group of concerned neighbors called Friends of Lake Hodges is also worried about the dam’s condition, but doesn’t think that the answer is as simple as raising the water level.

“We’re not engineers,” said Rhonda Farrar, the group’s president. “No, we can’t possibly say whether that’s the right thing to do.”

Farrar said she’s focused on urging those in charge to rebuild the dam because if the dam fails, there will be flooding in Rancho Santa Fe and other communities downstream of Lake Hodges.

“It would not just be immediate inundation of water to those downstream communities. It would be, every year flooding,” she said. “It would just be devastating.”

Kevin Kidd, a former diver with the city who has completed several inspections of the dam and worked with the Division of Safety of Dams, doesn’t think the dam is likely to fail.

“Like most dams I have inspected, the lower sections of the dam were in good condition with little deterioration,” he said. “I am not implying that the dam is in great shape, it is not. However, they have not provided any supportive detailed evidence to warrant dropping the level below 295 feet.”

Increased water costs

Drawing down the water also means many people throughout the county pay more for their water.

The city has released water from the reservoir on 13 separate occasions since 2022, according to a list provided to inewsource. It totaled over 41,500 acre-feet, or about 13.5 billion gallons of water.

Seth Gates, the assistant general manager of the Santa Fe Irrigation District, said that Lake Hodges was an “extremely important” source of water for his district: Prior to the city releasing water from the reservoir, it made up between 30% and 40% of the district’s water.

Whereas it previously cost $250 to treat each acre-foot, now that the district buys its water from the San Diego County Water Authority, it costs over $1,600. That meant the district had to increase water rates.

Gates said the district tried to work with the city, but after being unable to resolve the issue, the Santa Fe Irrigation District and the San Dieguito Water District filed a lawsuit against the city of San Diego in 2024. It cites breach of contract and loss of local water, among other claims. Their complaint alleges that the lack of proper maintenance of Hodges Dam resulted in an unsatisfactory rating by the Division of Safety of Dams and a mandated restricted lower lake level.

In the two years leading up to that lawsuit, the city had released over 5.5 billion gallons of the districts’ water into the ocean, equaling an approximate loss of $21 million or the equivalent of two years of water supply for the Santa Fe Irrigation and San Dieguito Water districts.

Gates said the city was negligent in its upkeep of the dam. He said a trial is slated for spring 2027.

The lower water levels also means the San Diego County Water Authority cannot use a pump system it spent $208 million on. Lake Hodges is connected to the Olivenhain Reservoir through the Lake Hodges Pumped Storage Facility, which the county water authority completed in 2012. During low energy demand, water can be pumped from Lake Hodges to Olivenhain. But in order to use that pump, there needs to be 290 feet of water in Lake Hodges.

That means that the pump has sat idle in recent years.

‘Escalating and foreseeable risks’ 

The state requires an interim solution for Lake Hodges by 2029. McBride, the city spokesperson, said that the city is pursuing both interim and long-term risk reduction projects. She said the city will release more information on interim risk reduction in the next few months, and a long-term project in 2027.

The San Diego City Council recently approved two 10-year design services contracts with consultants at up to $75 million each that will support as needed repairs for all of the city’s dams. Those contracts did not include any specific plans for the Lake Hodges dam.

To protect against wildfires, the state recently allocated $1.5 million to clear 40 acres of high-risk brush near Lake Hodges dam. That’s a small portion of the total recommended area of 173 acres. Crews will need to do maintenance on the area before five years to ensure it is effective, said Walter Bishop, the city’s director of governmental affairs. For the residents, the one-time funding is not enough.

“It’s a nice measure, but it’s really not going to do anything to prevent a fire here,” Bernstein said.

On Tuesday, the San Dieguito River Park Joint Powers Authority, which is made up of elected officials, sent a letter to San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria asking the city for an interim solution of raising the water to 295 feet. The letter asks the city to provide evidence if that cannot be reached, and to engage the division of safety of dams in a “holistic, risk balanced approach.”

The letter came from an April 3 vote by the board backed by Solana Beach City Council member Jill MacDonald, Del Mar City Council member Terry Gaasterland, Escondido City Council member Consuelo Martinez, Poway City Council member Jenny Maeda, county representative Andrew Hayes and Citizens Advisory Committee member Chris Khoury.

San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer and von Wilpert are on the board but were absent for the vote.

The letter acknowledges that the city has done some work towards protecting public safety, but says it has not been enough.

It urges officials to “recognize that maintaining the reservoir at extremely low levels introduces escalating and foreseeable risks, including wildfire risk and ecological degradation.”

Editor’s note: Robert Dudley is an inewsource donor and Spotlight Club member. Their policy is to disclose when supporters are quoted in stories.

Some movies will forever change the way you look at plants.

Unsurprisingly, many of them are thrillers and science-fiction films, like Little Shop of Horrors, The Day of the Triffids, or, more recently, the mind-controlling flower freakout Little Joe. You could probably make a more sinister version of the new drama Silent Friend, which dares to suggest that the tree outside your door or the geranium on your windowsill might be studying you intently — and might even reach out, if it could, and tell you what it's thinking.

But the Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi isn't interested in scaring us. She wants us to leave this movie feeling more connected to the natural world.

Silent Friend tells three separate stories, all set in different periods across more than a century, but rooted in the same location: the University of Marburg in Germany. First, we meet a neuroscientist named Tony, played by the Hong Kong star Tony Leung Chiu-wai, who's visiting the school as a guest researcher.

It's 2020, and when COVID-19 hits, Tony is left stranded on a near-empty campus. Bored and lonely, he stumbles on some online videos featuring a French botanist, Alice, played by Léa Seydoux, and is captivated by her theory that plants have a highly developed consciousness. Inspired, Tony plans an experiment and gets in touch with Alice via Zoom to ask for her guidance.

Tony's experiment involves attaching electronic sensors to the leaves and trunk of a nearly 200-year-old ginkgo biloba tree and studying the resulting data to see what, if anything, the plant might be trying to communicate. In a way, this tree is the true protagonist of Silent Friend; it's the only character old enough to appear in all three time frames.

In the earliest story, set in 1908, an aspiring botanist named Grete, played by Luna Wedler, becomes the first female student admitted to the university. As she pursues her studies, she trains to become a photographer and develops a deeper aesthetic appreciation of the flowers, fruits and vegetables that she often finds herself shooting.

The third story is set in 1972: A young man named Hannes, played by Enzo Brumm, is tasked with looking after his roommate's prized geranium. In a primitive early version of Tony's 2020 experiment, Hannes finds himself studying and decoding the flower's responses to stimuli.

The film cuts vigorously among these three stories, wrapping them around each other like vines. There's no danger of getting lost, though, since each era has its own distinct visual style: black-and-white film for the early 20th century; warm, grainy color film for the '70s; and cool, high-def digital for 2020. Every era, Enyedi seems to be saying, has its own technological advancements.

Every era also has its own political pressures: In all three stories, the university is a place where human progress is both nurtured and threatened. Tony has to deal with pandemic isolation and paranoid campus staff. Grete must endure the profound condescension of her all-male professors and peers. And Hannes finds that even the let-it-all-hang-out spirit of the '70s, can be unexpectedly stifling.

Enyedi loves telling tales about misfits and underdogs, and infuses them with a magical sense of possibility. In 2017, she directed the Oscar-nominated romance On Body and Soul, about two slaughterhouse workers who start seeing each other in their dreams. Now, in Silent Friend, she gives us three distinct characters, all outsiders in one way or another, and all of whom use science to push beyond what can be strictly observed.

As wonderful as her three human leads are — especially Leung, who's as mesmerizing as ever in his first big European production — the filmmaker encourages us to consider a plant's point of view. She sometimes frames the actors from high above, as if the camera were perched on a branch over their heads. In one scene, Grete enjoys a cigarette break under the ginkgo biloba tree, and we see close-ups of a leaf withering on contact with the smoke.

It takes patience to see things from this perspective, to appreciate the vulnerability and beauty of a germinating seed, a budding flower, or a head of broccoli. If you let it, Silent Friend will gently open your eyes to that beauty.

Copyright 2026 NPR

LONDON — He was born before the Great Depression, came of age in World War II, and is still making wildlife documentaries.

On Friday, one of the world's most famous wildlife experts and climate campaigners, David Attenborough, turns 100. His films have brought intimate scenes of nature to hundreds of millions of viewers.

Brits call him a national hero.

"He can inform you, or make you cry at some iguanas being chased by snakes!" says Chris Dametto, commuting in central London. "He's a great storyteller, he's a great communicator, and I think the world is better place because of him."

Fans dressed in animal costumes — lions, tigers and bumble bees — gathered around a life-sized cardboard cutout of Attenborough late Thursday on London's Trafalgar Square, singing wildlife ballads — Toto's Africa, The Lion Sleeps Tonight by the Tokens — and of course, Happy Birthday. A few aspiring Attenborough lookalikes roamed the crowd.

There are also special broadcasts on BBC, a concert Friday at Royal Albert Hall, events at science museums, nature walks and tree-planting events.

Attenborough's best wildlife moments

Born in 1926 in suburban London, Attenborough collected fossils as a child, studied zoology at Cambridge, and got drafted into the Royal Navy in 1947. He had a career as a BBC manager before moving on-camera — only after someone else got ill.

He was already age 30 — though wearing what looks like a Boy Scout uniform of khaki shirt, shorts and knee socks — when in 1956, he wrestled a Burmese python into a burlap sack on TV.

"It's important to grab his tail as soon as you grab his head," he instructed the audience, after climbing a tree and sawing off a branch, on the Indonesian island of Java. "Otherwise he'll wrap his great coils around you and give you a very nasty squeeze!"

One of his most famous TV moments was when he cuddled with gorillas in Rwanda's Virunga Mountains, in 1978.

"There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know," he tells the camera.

In 1998, while filing the BBC series Life of Birds, he got pounced on by a lusty capercaille grouse in the Scottish Highlands. He also managed to fool a Patagonian woodpecker into mistaking him for a rival, and answering his call — which Attenborough faked by tapping stones on the side of a tree trunk.

He's explored mating rituals of fireflies, blue whales and Galapagos tortoises — some of whom are even older than him.

What it's like to work with Attenborough

Sharmila Choudhury was 15 when she first saw an Attenborough film in the cinema in her native India.

"That changed my world! There was this man showing me all these extraordinary creatures, from tiny protozoans to strange sea cucumbers," she recalls.

Like Attenborough, she too decided to study zoology, and went all the way to a PhD. She eventually met her teenage idol — and then got hired by him.

"One thing you notice immediately when working with David is how easily he connects with everyone, whether they're eminent scientists or a taxi driver or a field assistant," Choudhury says.

Or a hedgehog, in one case.

Last year, Choudhury produced the film Wild London in which Attenborough — then aged 99 — shimmies on his belly to get eye-to-eye with the spiny mammal.

"You know, we call him the animal whisperer! The little peregrine chick in Wild London, it was screaming its little head off, and then David said, 'Now, now,'" she recalled, in a phone interview with NPR. "And this little bird kind of leaned back, looked up at David and just seemed to know, it's going to be alright."

He has a similar effect on the British public.

Appreciation for a British icon

Even during London rush hour, commuters seemed happy to stop and talk to a reporter about Attenborough, waxing poetic about childhood memories, and his iconic half-whispered delivery.

"His voice! We connect his voice with nature and good things," says Andriana Naidoo, on her way to an appointment. "He's a good person, and at the moment, that's really rare!"

"Sunday afternoons, watching Planet Earth with my dad growing up, and Blue Planet as well!" says Liam Wall, originally from Dublin. "I actually won a cardboard cutout of David Attenborough at bingo once! So I had that in my house for like a year."

In an audio message released late Thursday, Attenborough said he's "completely overwhelmed" by birthday greetings from school groups, nursing homes and everyone in between.

Scientists have also named a species of parasitic wasp after Attenborough, to honor his 100th birthday.

"I simply can't reply to each of you separately, but I'd like to thank you all most sincerely for your kind messages," he says.

Copyright 2026 NPR

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On a call with investors last week, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth summed up his plans for oil production in four words: "Steady as she goes."

Not much about oil markets have been "steady" for the past few months. The war in Iran caused an unprecedented disruption to global oil flows, as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped to a near standstill and some production in the Persian Gulf had to shut down. Markets in Asia are facing increasingly dire shortages of fuel. Worldwide, crude oil prices have been on a roller coaster.

But some of the world's biggest oil companies, in their quarterly reports to investors, are signaling that their planned response to this upheaval is to stay the course. They're largely sticking with the production and investment plans they charted before the war began — even though producing more oil might let them profit even more off higher-than-normal prices and help bring down gasoline costs for drivers.

To market watchers, that's not shocking: When it comes to production decisions, "discipline" has been the buzzword for big oil companies for years now. That means being cautious and restrained, aiming for stable production or slow, steady growth, instead of impulsive moves. Investors have pressured companies to spit money out in dividends and stock buybacks instead of chasing ever-more oil production, and companies have been happy to oblige.

Before the war began, there was a strong market case for that restraint: The world had more oil than it needed. Global crude prices hovered between $60 and $70 for most of 2025. For consumers, that kept gasoline prices fairly low, helping bring down inflation. For producers, prices were high enough to turn a profit but not high enough to justify sending a bunch of drilling rigs out to boost production.

But what about when oil prices hover above $100 week after week, offering the temptation of far higher returns?

So far, executives say, their course remains the same.

"It is early into this conflict to be making big changes," Wirth said. "We do not know how things will be resolved … so we are not going to make rash or immediate changes."

That means they're not going to rush into new drilling projects, at least not without more confidence about oil's long-term outlook. Chasing production that's profitable only at a high oil price is risky for companies. Drill too many expensive wells when the price is high, and you won't be able to recoup those costs if the price drops later.

So Chevron's production outlook is holding steady. Other companies have sent similar signals. ExxonMobil is increasing production at the same rate it had previously planned. ConocoPhillips is "slightly" boosting production in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, but executives told investors that the change was not a major shift. Later in the year, they might adjust plans in a more meaningful way.

On an earnings call Wednesday, Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub said that in the first quarter, the company "executed as we planned."

"Long-term value is created by companies that execute consistently across cycles," she noted.

Meanwhile, a recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas polled oil executives about how much they expect U.S. production to increase in response to the Iran war and higher prices. Most expect a total increase of no more than 250,000 barrels per day this year and less than 500,000 barrels per day in 2027.

For context, between 2021 and 2025, daily U.S. production increased by more than 500,000 barrels each year on average. And either amount is a tiny fraction of the more than 10 million barrels per day missing from global markets thanks to the near closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Venezuela factor

At the start of the year, the U.S. military captured the president of Venezuela and announced the U.S. government was taking control of the sale of Venezuelan oil. Almost immediately, President Trump began calling for U.S. oil companies to invest more money in Venezuela to massively boost production. It would help lower the cost of fuel, and Trump argued it would also provide an opportunity for American companies to profit.

This spring, Venezuela's production grew by about 14% between February and March, according to the latest data from the International Energy Agency. That's significant, but far short of the huge increase Trump wants.

Initially, large companies balked at making sizable investments in Venezuela. Darren Woods, the CEO of ExxonMobil, went so far as to call the country "uninvestable."

Major oil companies vividly remember the money they lost when Venezuela forcibly renegotiated their contracts 20 years ago. They are seeking reassurances about political stability and the exact contract terms that would govern any new projects. Even Chevron, which has remained active in Venezuela, is currently more focused on recovering its previous losses than expanding to chase new profits, Wirth told investors.

Higher oil prices do create more of an incentive for new projects; Venezuelan oil is relatively expensive to produce, but at $100 a barrel, extracting it might be profitable after all. Companies are at least seriously considering the prospect. Still, significantly raising Venezuelan production would take several years.

A boost to profits 

First-quarter earnings also showcase a strange effect of rising oil prices: Some companies look like they're losing revenue, when they actually stand to gain in the long term.

ExxonMobil and Chevron both reported lower earnings than the same quarter last year, at least on paper. But that's largely an illusion of timing.

Big oil companies don't just sell oil to customers; they also trade oil on the "paper" markets, buying and selling financial instruments that are tied to future oil transactions.

You can think of this as a way to lock in prices, reducing the risk of getting caught flat-footed if prices suddenly drop. But when the reverse happens and prices suddenly spike, the transactions suddenly look like money-losers, because they've locked in a previous lower price.

Those paper losses show up on the companies' books right away.

But of course, when prices are high, the companies make much more money on their actual oil sales. Those gains will outweigh the paper losses, Woods of ExxonMobil told investors and analysts. Yet companies can't actually "book," or report, the profits from selling oil until the barrels are physically delivered. So those profits take longer to show up in their records.

"We book one half of the deal, not the other half," Woods said. "When the physicals get delivered and you actually bring those into your earnings, it will offset the paper."

That's why Exxon's earnings for the most recent quarter looked like a mere $4.2 billion, down from $7.7 billion this time last quarter. Factor in the quirk of accounting timing, and Exxon says it actually made $8.8 billion.

High oil prices are, unsurprisingly, very good for oil companies' bottom lines. But they also carry a risk. High prices drive inflation. If prices are high enough for long enough, they could crash the global economy. A recession brings down demand for everything — and that's not good for businesses, including oil companies.

So for now, their aim is to chart the steadiest course possible in a sea of volatility.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Across six locations in Indonesia, NPR spoke with locals about how nickel mining is changing the land and daily life. It's brought jobs, but also concerns about environmental damage and public health.

Learn more in this visual narrative »

More stories in this series:

• Greetings from a sea village in Indonesia, where Indigenous fishing gets help from mangroves
• In Indonesia, a fishing village replants mangrove forests one seedling at a time
• Indonesia's capital of the future faces doubts in the present
• Dirty nickel: The health costs of mining in Indonesia

Copyright 2026 NPR

On this recent Monday, the temperature is 18.95 degrees Celsius, or 66 degrees Fahrenheit.

“That’s warm,” said Torres. “Yesterday was 17.97 (degrees Celsius). But, yes, usually, we like to see around 16.” 

Torres said the average ocean surface temperature off the La Jolla coast is about 61 degrees Fahrenheit. But for months, temperatures all along the West Coast have risen 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. They’ve also been warmer deep below the surface.

“By November, all of the stations (where measurements of ocean temperatures are taken) were showing record-high temperatures, and that wasn’t consistent every single day until January,” said Melissa Carter, a biological oceanographer managing the Shore Stations program at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “In January and February, we started seeing these consistent, 90th percentile, 95th percentile, record breaking temperatures that were occurring along the coast.”

A marine heat wave is a period of unusually high ocean temperatures and they can have significant impacts on marine life as well as coastal communities and economies, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Scientists say this heat wave is raising alarms because the coastal ocean has remained warm without an El Niño at the equator.

“Normally, we only get this kind of heat wave on the coast like this during an El Niño, but we're not currently in the El Niño,” said NOAA researcher Andrew Leising. “All the warming we're seeing now is left over from basically the marine heat wave that started last year.”

He said this monthslong ocean event rivals but has not reached the level of “the blob” from 2014 to 2016. That massive heat wave resulted in a record outbreak of toxic algae that shut down crab fisheries, changed salmon migration routes and led to starving sea lions and other animals, among other ecological impacts, according to NOAA.

Now, scientists are monitoring a separate heat wave that is forming hundreds of miles off the Pacific coast. That one is part of a pattern observed over the last decade.

“Every year we seem to be getting these heat waves that start way offshore about this time of year, get bigger and get to the coast and impact us, typically get us in the late summer and fall,” said Leising. “That does seem to be something that is kind of the new normal ever since the blob.”

He’s monitoring whether the two marine heat waves will merge in the late summer or fall.

“The question will be, (if) we're going to roll right into an El Niño on top of that, which will keep the water warm in the coastal region again,” said Leising. “If that happens by next year this time, we'll probably see a lot more impacts, because at that point, the animals, especially in California, will have been exposed to this heat for not just a month or two, but almost a whole year.”

Already, the current marine heat wave has led to some noticeable wildlife impacts.

“We have been seeing an increase in the number of seabirds coming into rehabilitation facilities and washing up dead on the beaches across southern and central California for a few months now,” Tammy Russell, a marine seabird expert at Scripps, said in a statement. “Most of the birds are emaciated and have tested negative for HPAI (avian flu); therefore, we have concluded that the primary cause of this mortality event is due to starvation.”

If the ocean is warmer than normal, it can impact the food web in multiple ways, she added.

“Fish and other organisms that require cooler waters to survive can move to cooler locations (north or deeper), resulting in lower food availability in warmer regions,” said Russell. “Additionally, warmer conditions can stratify the water column, reducing the nutrient supply that reaches the surface waters and have cascading impacts on the entire food web.”

NOAA’s El Niño forecast, published this week, shows a 61% chance the weather system will form by July and persist through the end of the year. The Pacific climate pattern brings warmer sea surface temperatures, increased humidity, and a higher likelihood of a wet winter.

Nature clearly benefits human health. Research shows how trees clear the air, wetlands filter water and insects pollinate food.

But moving beyond these generalities to specifics is hard, says Thomas Timberlake, an ecologist at the University of York. Figuring out which parts of an ecosystem are most important, and how much they bolster the health of people and communities is difficult to quantify.

"Ecological systems are complex and messy," he says. Making sense of that mess to draw distinct lines from biodiversity to human nutrition takes painstaking work — tracing people's diet to individual crops and then, the pollinators that support them. But doing that work is crucial for understanding how the loss of biodiversity across the globe is affecting human health on the ground.

In Nepal, they found a picture that is both worrying, and hopeful.

In rural communities, pollinating bees and hoverflies are responsible for more than 20% of people's intake of key vitamins, and more than 40% of their income, the researchers report Wednesday in Nature. Insect decline, driven by climate change and habitat loss, could result in more hardship for people, the researchers project. But they find those losses could be reversed by simple actions to support pollinators, like planting wildflowers.

"Biodiversity isn't just about saving bees or wild animals. It's for the benefit of humans and sometimes the most vulnerable populations," says Kelvin Mulungu, an agricultural economist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Lusaka, Zambia who wasn't involved in the study. "It promotes income, it promotes nutrition, it promotes health."

Drawing connections 

In rural Nepal, almost three quarters of the population depend directly on smallholder farming, says Timberlake. These communities are surrounded by the food they grow, and the ecosystem that supports that food. That ecosystem is the insects that pollinate the plants, the soil that nourishes it.

"That link between the biodiversity around them, and their health, their nutrition, their livelihoods is very, very direct," he says, much more so than people in wealthier countries who buy their food from the grocery store.

That proximity makes these communities especially vulnerable to pollinator decline. In parts of Nepal, native honeybee populations have dropped by nearly 50% over the past decade or so, due to climate change, habitat loss and pesticide use. But that proximity also makes it easier for researchers to study the links between health and biodiversity.

To start, they tracked the diets of 776 people over the course of a year. Twice a week, researchers would visit their homes, and ask about everything people had eaten in the previous 24 hours. That allowed the researchers to figure out how much of key nutrients people were getting, and what foods those nutrients were coming from.

"So for vitamin A, how much of that is coming from carrots?," says Timberlake. "How much from beans? How much from green leafy vegetables?"

The next step was tying those nutrients to pollinators. That required collecting a lot of insects. The team surveyed the farms around these villages, noting which insects visited which plants. They even looked to see how much pollen individual bugs carried on their bodies. "It's a huge amount of work," for the team, says Timberlake.

With all that data, the team could start to measure the weight of the connections between each insect, each crop, and each human.

Those connections were strong, they found. Insects, and especially native honeybees, helped produce more than 20% of total vitamin E, vitamin A and folate intake. Insects also pollinated the crops that accounted for 44% of the farmers income.

"The magnitude of the effect surprises me" says Taylor Ricketts, an ecologist at the University of Vermont who wasn't involved in the study. He says biodiversity's impact isn't "a rounding error, it's not a little effect. It is really in the ball game in keeping people healthy."

If insect decline continues on its current trajectory, these communities could become less healthy. By 2030, vitamin A and folate intake could decline by about 7% because of fewer pollinators, the researchers estimate. A complete loss of pollinators — an unlikely scenario, but one that's played out in some areas with heavy pesticide use — could lead to an almost 50% cut in farming income, and a 20% decline in vitamin A and folate intake.

But insect declines can be reversed. "Helping bees isn't hard," says Ricketts.

Relatively simple interventions, like planting wildflowers that give extra food for insects, providing bee nesting sites, and reducing pesticides, can help insects recover. The researchers estimate such actions could raise farmer income up to 30%. Additionally, diets would improve enough to raise 9% of the population out of a nutrient deficiency.

Ricketts has minor quibbles with some of the assumptions behind these projections. For example, the researchers assume that as pollinator visits decline, crop yields drop proportionally, when the data suggests that relationship is a little more complicated. But overall, he says the picture here is clear.

"Conserving biodiversity is a public health investment. And not only a statistically significant one, but a substantial one," he says. "The effects are big."

Copyright 2026 NPR

California is investigating one of the Trump administration's deals to end an offshore wind project.

Golden State Wind was a floating offshore wind project proposed off California’s central coast. The California Energy Commission said Monday it issued an administrative subpoena to Golden State Wind.

The commission said it is seeking documents and information about the company's recent agreement with the Department of Interior to accept a payout in exchange for voluntarily abandoning its offshore wind lease.

“The Trump administration is recklessly spending billions of taxpayer dollars on backroom deals that would turn back the clock on innovation,” CEC Chair David Hochschild said in a statement. “Californians deserve immediate answers about the nature of this payout. Taxpayer dollars should be used to build a sustainable energy future, not to pay to make projects disappear.”

The Trump administration is spending nearly $2 billion to get energy companies to walk away from U.S. offshore wind projects. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said companies were sold a product that was only viable when propped up by massive taxpayer subsidies when they bid for these offshore wind leases in 2022, under former President Joe Biden.

The Republican administration adopted this strategy after federal courts thwarted President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop offshore wind development through executive action. Three agreements have been announced.

Under the first deal, made public in March, French company TotalEnergies is getting $1 billion — essentially a refund of its leases for offshore wind projects off North Carolina and New York — if it invests the money in fossil fuel projects instead. In the latest deals announced last week, the administration said Golden State Wind and Bluepoint Wind agreed to end their leases in exchange for reimbursements totaling nearly $900 million, provided they invest equally in fossil fuels.

Both Golden State and Bluepoint are co-owned by Ocean Winds, a joint venture of EDP Renewables and French energy giant Engie. Bluepoint Wind was an offshore wind project in the early stages of development off the coasts of New Jersey and New York.

When asked about the subpoena Monday, Ocean Winds said it does not comment on open or potential litigation.

This investigation sets the stage for legal action from California to safeguard renewable energy, as well as the thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of investment the state was counting on, said Eddie Ahn, executive director of Brightline Defense, an environmental justice nonprofit working to advance offshore wind in California.

A letter from California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office to Golden State Wind says the state anticipates potential litigation involving the federal government and parties to lease buyouts impacting California’s energy needs and offshore wind programs. California has invested about $100 million to support offshore wind development in order to accelerate the state's transition to clean energy and address climate change.

Democrats in Congress are investigating, too. U.S. Reps. Jared Huffman of California, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, and Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, are demanding information about TotalEnergies agreement.

On Monday, outside the San Diego County Registrar of Voters, labor unions and advocacy groups unloaded a truckload of boxes containing what they said were more than 167,000 signatures in support of the Protect San Diego County’s Health and Safety Act.

“Today’s submission of over (160,000) signatures is more than a milestone,” said Waylon Matson, cofounder of the nonprofit 4 Walls International.

He has been advocating for an end to the pollution crisis for years through his nonprofit. Now, he’s pushing for solutions through the proposed measure.

“It's a signal, a signal that communities across San Diego County are no longer willing to accept chronic pollution, beach closures, and the ongoing exposure to contaminated air and water,” he said.

The Tijuana River routinely carries a mix of untreated wastewater and industrial waste year-round. Scientists have found that pollution in the river water, which eventually reaches the Pacific Ocean, affects air quality. Pollution has worsened in recent years because of heavy rainstorms, sediment and underinvestment in wastewater infrastructure on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Local elected officials from all levels of government repeatedly lobby Congress and state lawmakers to set aside funding for projects designed to stop sewage from spilling over the border. They have successfully secured $600 million in federal funding to upgrade the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment plant, which is located north of the border and serves as a backstop for Tijuana sewage, as well as additional funds for smaller cleanup projects related to the pollution.

But supporters of the Health and Safety Act said that the crisis has gone on long enough without a steady stream of funds that could bring relief to people who live and work near the polluted river.

“This would be a huge step forward in addressing the gap in an ongoing funding source,” said Sarah Davidson, who manages the Surfrider Foundation’s Clean Border Water Now program. “Every year, Surfrider and so many other advocates have to approach Congress for funding and every other possible source of funding, the state, the county, anyone who is willing to listen and prioritize this desperate issue.”

If passed, the measure is estimated to generate about $360 million annually, of which the county Board of Supervisors would ultimately vote on how, specifically, to allocate the funds.

According to the proposal, 22.5% would be set aside for the cross-border problem. Most of that total, or no less than 20%, would need to be spent on infrastructure and engineering projects “to stop sewage flows from Tijuana” and the rest could go toward “addressing the emergency health impacts caused by the sewage crisis, and protecting local beaches, bays, and coastal waters from toxic pollution.”

Funds from the measure would also go to the following:

• 60% to make healthcare and childcare more affordable and accessible, including by funding vouchers for families to choose care and to offer health coverage for uninsured or underinsured, low-income county residents; 
• 17.5% on wildfire prevention, such as upgrading firefighting equipment and investing in more brush clearing, and to bolster crisis response services, including hiring more deputy sheriffs and improving the regional emergency 911 communications system; 
• 1.5% on administrative services, such as salaries and benefits. 
  

The measure proposes creating an 11-member citizen oversight committee to ensure the tax revenue is spent accordingly.

To qualify for the ballot, the county requires petitioners to submit more than 102,900 signatures, which it would then verify.

The proposed measure is endorsed by several labor unions and advocacy groups, such as CalFire Local 2881, the county’s workers’ union, Children First Collective San Diego and First 5 San Diego.

Gas prices in the U.S. have gone up more than 30 cents a gallon in the last week and are slated to continue rising as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed amid the Iran war.

The cost for regular gas as of Sunday is an average $4.446 — a week ago it was $4.099, according to AAA's fuel site. U.S. gas prices were an average $2.98 on Feb. 26 — two days before the war in Iran began — and a year ago, the average price of gas was $3.171, according to data from AAA.

Gas prices in the U.S. are the highest they have been since late July 2022, said the automotive group.

President Trump has promised that when the war in Iran ends, that gas prices will "drop like a rock." It is unclear when the war will end, but even when it does and the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, gas prices could still remain high, according to experts.

And prices could go up higher the longer the strait, which is a crucial route for oil and natural gas trade, stays closed, said Kevin Book, co-founder of ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm.

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"When inventories are low and you can't get oil out of the ground or out of the strait, you should expect prices to keep rising at least until demand capitulates and starts to contract," Book told NPR's Ayesha Rascoe on Weekend Edition on Sunday. "So, we may be weeks or even months, depending on how long the strait stays closed, from the peak of prices from this crisis."

Book added that it could take months for ships trapped in the Strait of Hormuz to get through, damaged facilities to be repaired, and inventories to be replenished before gas prices return to what is considered normal. And even if gas prices were to fall fast and quickly, Book predicted that the reason would "probably be a bad one, not a good one."

"It would probably be recession, undercutting demand, knocking the knees out from under the market," he said.

Between the weeks of March 20 and April 24, the Department of Energy released 17.5 million barrels of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to curb high fuel prices stemming from the war, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Seven countries within the OPEC+ group on Sunday announced they agreed to increase production by 188,000 barrels per day starting in June as a commitment to "market stability."

Higher prices at the gas pump are also impacting Americans' wallets amid a weakened U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar depreciated about 10% from early January 2025 to the end of April 2026 — with losses in the first half of 2025 being the biggest since 1973, according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley.

A weakened dollar could make it more expensive for Americans to travel abroad and increase the price of imported goods — while American exporters could see a financial boost, according to financial analysts.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Scott Boyd walks through deep mud where the Stillaguamish River empties into Puget Sound, an arm of the Pacific Ocean.

This flood-prone river mouth north of Seattle changed dramatically in October when the Stillaguamish Tribe removed two miles of earthen levee. The ridge of dirt kept the river and the tides from spreading onto nearby farmland. Once a giant excavator bit into the levee to breach it, the tribe welcomed tidewater onto the land for the first time in over a century.

"Before, it was a dairy operation, and now it's a big tidal marsh," Boyd, a Stillaguamish tribal member and fisheries manager, says while looking out at the new 230-acre wetland.

Tidal marshes are crucial nurseries for young Chinook salmon and a focal point for efforts to bring these fish back from the brink of extinction. The Stillaguamish Tribe has been buying riverfront land in its traditional territory and removing levees to turn farmland into wetland with the hope of restoring Chinook.

Boyd's tribe of about 400 people only gained federal recognition in 1976, more than a century after tribal leaders signed the Treaty of Point Elliott with the U.S. government in 1855.

"Our official reservation is pretty small, I want to say less than 100 acres," Boyd says. "And it wasn't granted to us until maybe 10 years ago."

Over the past 15 years, the Stillaguamish Tribe has purchased 2,000 acres of land for fish and wildlife habitat.

Under the 1855 treaty, the Stillaguamish and other Puget Sound tribes gave up almost all of their land but kept their rights to fish and hunt.

"It is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow to buy back the land that we essentially traded for the resource, the fish, but it's what we have to do to get things back on track," Boyd says.

What the tribe wants to get back on track is salmon.

A marsh reborn

Decades of environmental damage have left many West Coast salmon runs on the brink of extinction. Chinook salmon, the largest and most prized of salmon, is a federally threatened species in Puget Sound.

In 2025, so few Chinook salmon returned to the Stillaguamish River that the entire tribe was only allowed to catch 26 fish.

"The salmon, it has always been important to our people, to the tribe, to our way of life," Boyd says. "These habitat projects are the best bang for our buck right now."

Depending on the tide and the river level, traversing the new wetland can require anything from a small boat to tall boots.

Narrow water channels snake through the mudflats.

Whole trees, uprooted and carried downriver by recent floods, lie sideways in the mud.

A cloud of shorebirds erupts after probing the muddy ground for food. Hundreds of birds called dunlins wheel above the freshly remade landscape, moving in tight formation like a pulsing, living cloud.

"Watch these dunlins," Stillaguamish Tribe biologist Jason Griffith says. "It's a visual symphony."

The shorebirds' numbers hint at the ecological benefits this new wetland, known as zis a ba 2, could bring. Named for zis a ba, a 19th-century chief of a Stillaguamish village once located just south of the river mouth, zis a ba 2 is the second of three large marshes the tribe is restoring in the area.

"Now the river can connect to its floodplain like it hasn't in 140 years," Griffith says.

To help natural forces rebuild the marsh more quickly, restoration crews dug channels into the farmland before breaching the levee. They found old middens—piles of discarded, fire-charred clam shells—from up to 1,500 years ago, signs of long human occupation.

A changing landscape

The landscape morphed again in December, when floodwaters tore through the area, scouring some land away and delivering sediment and uprooted trees from upriver, helpful inputs for the nascent wetland.

That month, a series of intense storms deluged Washington and Oregon, causing flooding that forced thousands of people to evacuate.

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson called the December floods the costliest natural disaster in the state's history.

In April, the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved a major-disaster declaration to help people in the two states recover from that flooding, though it denied Ferguson's request for funding for projects to reduce the damage from future flooding.

Tribal officials say their habitat projects will help people as well as salmon the next time floodwaters rise.

With restored floodplains, more of the Stillaguamish River's destructive surges can spread out and dissipate before causing harm.

The Stillaguamish Tribe built a new levee last year, farther back from the river, before removing the old levee.

"By giving the river more space, we are reducing the damage and the expense to society to maintain infrastructure. It's cheaper to maintain if you stay further away," Griffith says.

'There's only so much farmland' 

Yet there are always tradeoffs with changing land use.

Along the Stillaguamish River, two groups want to grow different foods on the same land: wild salmon or farm crops.

"There's only so much farmland," Tyler Breum, a farmer from Stanwood, Wash., says. "The population of the country, of the world, it's still increasing, and they've got to get their food from somewhere."

Breum farms potatoes and seed crops a few miles north of the zis a ba wetlands.

"The levees make life in the floodplain possible," he says. "And you know, we wouldn't be able to farm or to live there without the levees."

During the December floods, Breum spent an anxious night riding his all-terrain vehicle on a levee by his farm.

"I was just out there on my four-wheeler, just riding back and forth, back and forth, I think every hour during that night, just riding the dike up and down, making sure we're okay," Breum says.

He had reason to worry. A gaping hole opened in that century-old levee, the top of which is just 2 feet wide in places, during a flood in 2021. Luckily, a duck hunter happened upon it, and repair crews patched it that night.

"The city of Stanwood could have been underwater there if it hadn't been caught as quickly as it was," Breum says.

If that levee fails, 1,100 people could be displaced, according to a Snohomish County study done in 2022.

In April, officials noticed new damage to the levee. Severe winds and exceptionally high tides had chewed into a half-mile stretch of the structure in January.

Breum has been trying to get that aging levee improved since 2010. City and tribal officials are now seeking emergency permits to repair it this summer before another winter of tides and storms knock it out.

Breum says he supports removing some levees to make room for salmon as long as farmers benefit, too.

"The people who farm down there, near where the tribe did their project, they got a brand new, world-class dike," Breum says. "I'm jealous of it when I drive by it."

 Bigger floods, taller levees

Breum and his partners tried to buy the zis a ba farmland, but they were outbid by the Stillaguamish Tribe.

"I don't hold anything against the tribe for buying land whatsoever," Breum says.

The tribe's new levee stands four feet taller than the old one.

That could help nearby farms survive the larger floods and rising seas expected with a changing climate.

The Stillaguamish Tribe has restored hundreds of acres of tidal habitat so far, but it aims for much more.

Scientists say it will take thousands of acres of restored habitat to help Puget Sound Chinook swim off the threatened-species list.

"My great-grandfather, he fished these waters, and he was able to eke out a moderate living, and that hasn't been the case for these past few generations," Scott Boyd says. "I have four young children. I'm not necessarily pushing them into fishing for a career, but it would be amazing if they could do what our ancestors used to be able to do, which was fish and live and work these waters."

Copyright 2026 NPR

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

In what Gov. Gavin Newsom hailed as a major milestone, his $20 billion Delta tunnel largely cleared another chokepoint last week — but it still faces obstacles of a different magnitude.

For more than half a century, California’s leaders have debated rerouting water around, rather than through, the network of rivers, farmland and marshes of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Newsom’s version would pipe Sacramento River water through a 45-mile bypass to a reservoir on the California Aqueduct, in an effort to shore up state supplies and send more water south.

Delta communities call the plan a water grab that would devastate one of the country’s largest estuaries and destroy towns, wildlife and generational farms. State officials and major water suppliers say it’s necessary to safeguard water for two-thirds of Californians against the threats of climate change and natural disasters.

Tasked with refereeing the fight, a state agency called the Delta Stewardship Council weighed opponents’ many challenges to the project and last week voted six-to-one to require the Department of Water Resources to address just two of them.

Newsom declared victory, saying “we are closer than ever to seeing this important piece of infrastructure completed.”

Maybe closer than ever, California water watchers say, but still far from complete. Far bigger obstacles loom: court rulings that have upended California’s financing plans, critical water rights decisions still to come from state regulators, and water agencies that have yet to decide whether the tunnel’s water will be worth the cost.

“These are all existential,” said Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “You’ve got some pretty tough hurdles ahead.”

A dying Delta

The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is the heart of California’s nature-defying water systems, where state and federal pumps send Northern California river water coursing to cities and farms in the lower half of the state.

The Delta is collapsing under the strain — wracked by algal blooms, degraded water quality and fish species spiraling towards extinction. Residents, environmentalists and the fishing industry fear that diverting freshwater through a tunnel will push it over the edge.

Voters beat back the first-generation tunnel — a peripheral canal — in the 1980s, during Gov. Jerry Brown’s first stint as governor. But governor after governor has continued the push. The canal eventually became the twin tunnels that became Newsom’s Delta Conveyance Project, which remains mired in planning.

Carrie Buckman, environmental program manager for the tunnel project at the Department of Water Resources, is optimistic that construction could start as soon as 2029 and would last around 13 years.

But with Newsom in his last year as governor, the clock is ticking. And the region’s residents continue in limbo — bracing for a project that would carve through their communities, farms and waterways.

“Nobody seems to care about the people out here on the ground,” said Duane Martin Jr., a third-generation cattleman in the Delta.

Martin, a third-generation cattleman, bought his first cows when he was 10 with money he borrowed from his grandfather. Now, his daughters' cattle graze in the pasture outside his Delta home. Photos by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters
Martin steered his pickup down country roads, along the orchards and pastures of Sacramento County. Great egrets strutted the edges of fields to snatch small, struggling creatures from the grass, and red-winged blackbirds clung to golden stalks of mustard.

Martin worries for his cattle operation. His father was a cattleman. His grandfather was a cattleman. Now a father himself, his daughters’ cattle graze in the pasture outside his home.

He’s outraged by the prospect of the truck traffic, the noise, the churn of the concrete batch plant and the roughly 200-acre pile of tunnel muck planned for land where he’s been grazing cattle for decades.

But more than that, he said, gruff beneath his Stetson, “It's the community that they're going to impact — those of us that have lived here most of our lives.”

“They're going to change the Delta area forever.”

An unending water war

The Delta's vulnerability is real: levees are at risk of crumbling under age, earthquakes and climate-fueled storms; sea level rise threatens to flood the system with too much saltwater.

For Buckman, it’s simple: As climate change makes California's swings from wet to dry more extreme, "It's about water supply."

Mount, like the water suppliers supporting the project, believes construction is inevitable. “If you don’t build it in this generation, you’ll build it in the next,” he said. “Build a tunnel, or start a very painful process of really cutting back on water supplies from the Delta.”

The costs are high; around $20.1 billion by the Department of Water Resources’ estimate, $60 to more than $100 billion, by an economic assessment commissioned by opponents.

California doesn’t yet have a way to pay for it. State water managers planned to issue revenue bonds, to be paid back by water agencies receiving water from the tunnel — and their customers.

But a trial court said that the water code did not give the Water Resources “carte blanche to do as it wishes” and the financing plan “exceeded its delegated authority.” The Third District Court of Appeal agreed, and in April, the California Supreme Court refused to review the case.

Buckman said that the department still plans to issue bonds and is figuring out its next steps.

As yet, no water agency has committed to paying for a tunnel — and no agency likely will, until the department can finance it, according to Kelley Taber, an attorney representing tunnel opponents.

The federal government and the powerful irrigation districts it supplies have already opted out, Buckman said.

The Delta community of Isleton, visible from the banks of the Sacramento River on April 1, 2025. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters “Ag, at large, cannot afford to pay for large infrastructure projects,” said Jennifer Pierre, general manager for the State Water Contractors, an association of public water agencies that receive water from California’s massive delivery system, the State Water Project. But she said the costs don’t diminish the need.

That leaves the bulk of the bill with urban water suppliers and their customers.

Metropolitan Water District, the Southern California water import giant that supplies half the state’s population, is already paying nearly half the tunnel’s planning costs — but it’s also heavily investing in local recycled water supplies.

Its board isn’t expected to vote on whether to shoulder much of the tunnel’s construction costs until 2027. No construction commitment before then means no commitment before a new governor takes office.

Meanwhile, major water rights questions remain unresolved.

State regulators are holding hearings that could last through the summer about whether to allow the Department of Water Resources to divert Sacramento River water into the proposed tunnel intakes.

Newsom has advocated for a Delta tunnel since his first days as governor. Four Newsom appointees sit on the seven-member Delta Stewardship Council that just advanced the tunnel project, minus a couple speedbumps. He has also championed unsuccessful legislative fixes to financing and other roadblocks.

The question is whether the next governor will continue the push. Pierre said they must — the need for the tunnel is clear.

Mount isn’t as sure. It will depend on the next governor’s priorities — and who they put in key leadership positions.

“Whoever they appoint, that is really where it happens,” he said. “It’s hard for me to imagine that if Brown and/or Newsom weren’t all in on this, it would have gotten this far.”

‘They’re gonna have to take it’

Martin pulls his pickup to the side of the road next to a lush pasture he leases that’s more prairie than Pacific. This is one of the next battlegrounds for the tunnel project.

In the spring and summer, Martin grazes hundreds of cows and their calves here. And in the winter, the Sacramento Area Sewer District plans to pipe recycled water onto the fields, creating seasonal feeding grounds and rest stops for the protected sandhill crane and other birds traveling the Pacific Flyway.

It’s part of the largest agricultural recycled water project in the state, Harvest Water, to provide highly treated wastewater to 16,000 acres of farmland in the region and take the pressure off local groundwater supplies.

California has already awarded more than $400 million for Harvest Water, but the funding hinges on the environmental benefits like habitat the project will provide, according to the sewer district’s Jofil Borja. It’s an ideal spot, between the Stone Lakes National Wildlife Refuge and the Cosumnes River Preserve.

And that’s where it runs up against the tunnel project. The pastures where Martin grazes his cattle and the sewer district plans to create seasonal habitat are also in the Department of Water Resources’ sights. State water managers plan to build a nearly 600-acre construction complex — with a permanent 214-acre mound of excavated tunnel materials up to 15 feet tall — right here.

“You tell me if you want to be the neighbor that lives right there, lookin’ out his front yard at this pile of muck,” Martin said, gesturing at a house across the road. Right now, its view is a sea of grass that disappears into a darker line of trees.

In refereeing the fight over this land, the Delta Stewardship Council last week ordered the Department of Water Resources to resolve its conflicts with Harvest Water over the site, or explain why that isn’t possible, the council’s staff report said.

Kelley Taber, the attorney representing the sewer district, is celebrating the mixed victory.

“I always thought that this was going to be (the department’s) Achilles heel,” Taber said. Among the “multitude of disastrous impacts to the Delta,” she said, it’s “the most obvious fatal flaw.”

Buckman disputed staff’s assessment of the siting conflict in a letter to the council, saying that the tunnel project can’t avoid the entire Harvest Water footprint, and that the habitats don’t exist yet. But, she added, the department would “work promptly” to address the issue.

If it does, to the council’s satisfaction, state water managers will still need to buy or seize the land. The landowner declined to speak on the record.

Martin expects it will be a fight — and he’s ready for it. Under eminent domain, the state can forcibly take property for a public purpose. The landowner can contest it. But he’s unlikely to stop it.

“They're gonna have to take it,” Martin said. “I've got a lot of friends that leave, but I ain't about to quit. I'm a fighter, and I'm going to stay here and fight for it to the death.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Electric vehicle batteries are a lot like people, in one important respect: They're most comfortable in temperatures around 65 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

When the weather gets much colder or hotter than that, a battery works less efficiently. It has to work harder, too, to keep the vehicle's cabin comfortable for its equally picky human occupants.

The result? Electric vehicles can't drive as far or as efficiently in extremely hot or cold weather.

AAA has been testing exactly how big an effect temperatures have on modern EV batteries. In its latest research, shared exclusively with NPR, it found that hot temperatures reduced range by an average of 8.5%. Cold weather cut vehicles' range by a whopping 39%.

AAA ran similar tests back in 2019 with a different vehicle lineup. Back then, the cold weather hit to range was approximately the same, while the high-temperature range loss was higher, 17%. The different slate of vehicles complicates direct comparison, AAA warns, but does suggest some improvements in how EVs handle the heat.

But not the cold. "There's been a lot of technology changes," says Greg Brannon, the director of automotive engineering at AAA. New battery chemistries; more efficient EV designs; fancier software. But when it comes to winter range performance, "the electric vehicles actually didn't change all that much from back in 2019."

These results show that drivers need to be prepared for their real-world range to shrink in the winter — and to a lesser extent, at the height of summer. EVs can still be practical choices in hotter or colder climates, as long as drivers adjust for predictable range loss. "It can be overcome," says Brannon. "But you have to plan for it."

A treadmill in a freezer

AAA conducts these tests at its own expense, part of a slate of research the group does into emerging vehicle technology for the benefit of auto club members. The tests are carried out at its Automotive Research Center in Los Angeles. Specifically, inside the historic headquarters of the Automobile Club of Southern California: a Spanish Revival-style building, all stucco and red tiles, built around a century-old Moreton Bay fig tree, with a courtyard filled with oranges, palm trees and fountains.

It's possibly the most picturesque place for a California driver to get a smog check. (Yes, AAA offers that here.) But it's not, at first glance, a likely spot for testing how vehicles perform in extreme temperatures, especially not on an April day in the mid-60s. (The locals complained about it as "jacket weather.")

But tucked away inside this building is a room that's heavily insulated and packed with powerful heaters and coolers. It can be cranked down to 20 degrees Fahrenheit, or up to 95.

Inside, there's enough space for a single vehicle, parked very carefully on top of two giant steel rollers — each of them 4 feet in diameter — that are hidden beneath floor level.

This is a chassis dynamometer, or "dyno" for short. "For lack of a better term, I guess it's kind of like a treadmill for a car," says Megan McKernan, who manages the research center.

For each test, the two rollers are carefully positioned to match up with the wheels of the test vehicle. Then the car is driven right on top of them, making sure the wheels touch nothing else. The vehicle is tied down with heavy, bright-pink chains, so it can't move forward off the "treadmill."

Now, it's time for Richard Gonzalez to "drive" the vehicle — without actually going anywhere. Once he gets inside and presses the accelerator, the wheels make those giant rollers turn. For hours.

This is about as fun as it sounds. Gonzalez much prefers other parts of his job, like track tests, where AAA evaluates how well cars can, say, automatically brake to avoid pedestrians. But podcasts help pass the time.

The point is to see how far the battery can go, under these controlled conditions, at a certain temperature.

Once the car's battery is drained so much that it can't maintain highway speeds, the test is over. And AAA has a new data point showing how well a certain model's battery can take cold or heat.

A small hit in the summer, a big one in the winter

EVs are not the only kinds of cars that suffer in the cold. AAA also tested hybrids this time around and found a nearly 23% average loss in fuel economy in the 20 degrees F test.

"Internal combustion engine vehicles also lose range in extreme cold weather," points out Ed Kim, the chief analyst with the research group AutoPacific, who was not involved in AAA's research. The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated a 10% to 30% drop in gas vehicle fuel economy in cold weather, depending on the type of trip. "This isn't a problem that's exclusive to EVs. This happens to basically any kind of vehicle when it gets really cold."

In some colder parts of the world, EVs have already become dominant, despite the challenge of winter range loss. Norway has the highest rate of EV adoption in the world — 98% pure battery-electric in March 2026, according to the latest numbers. And Norway is hardly balmy.

But in the U.S., it's a different story. Kim says that EVs have taken off much more in states where temperatures are warm or mild than in the chilly Midwest. State policies and charger availability also play a role, but Kim says fears about winter range — both valid concerns and misinformation-fueled myths — are a factor.

Still, Kim says even with a significant amount of range loss, many drivers in cold-weather regions would still find an EV more than sufficient for their daily needs. "How many people are actually driving more than 200 miles in a day?" he asks rhetorically.

Tips for getting the most from a battery, year-round. 

Range loss from extreme temperatures is inevitable, but EV drivers can prepare for it.

First, pick the right vehicle to battle the temperatures where you live. Some are better than others at handling cold or heat. There are several guides; the most fun comes from a Norwegian auto club that does a head-to-head test every year on a wintry mountain.

A little forward planning helps, too, Kim and Brannon both say. For an EV driver who charges at home overnight and has a typical commute, reduced winter range likely won't affect daily driving at all. But if you don't have a home charger or you're going on a long trip, factor range reduction in when you think about when and where you'll charge. And if you're fast-charging, try to do it on a battery that's been warmed up; charging is slower on a cold battery.

Brannon also recommends that drivers start their climate control while their vehicle is still plugged in. "Pre-conditioning" like that means that when you warm up the car's battery and its interior, you pull power from the grid, not your battery. That saves your vehicle's juice for your drive.

McKernan notes that if you have heated or ventilated seats, using those instead of the air conditioning or heater can be a big boost. The AC and heat are a surprisingly big draw on a vehicle's energy.

And keep your tires inflated to the manufacturer-recommended level and drive at moderate speeds. That boosts your vehicle's efficiency no matter whether it runs on gas, a giant battery or both — and no matter the temperature.

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