Travelers stranded in San Diego
Good Morning, I’m Debbie Cruz….it’s Wednesday, December 28th.>>>>
Stranded travelers could be stuck in San Diego through New Year’s More on that next. But first... let’s do the headlines….######
A policy that allowed the U-S to turn away most asylum seekers at the border during the pandemic lockdown, will remain in effect.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted a request by 19 Republican-led states to keep Title 42 in place for now–-to prevent a surge of migrants from entering the country.
Title 42 was scheduled to end December 21st after a federal judge ruled it was unlawful.
The Supreme court will hear arguments in February- about whether those G-O-P states can challenge that ruling.
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Border Patrol agents dumped migrants who were able to cross the border last week– at bus stations around the county.
Once released from custody-migrants are usually dropped off at local shelters– where people can help them get to their final destinations around the country.
But the shelters are full.
Kate Morrissey of the San Diego Union Tribune reports that it’s partly because of problems at the airport.
MIGRANTS 2A (nmw/br) :12
Because of some of those flight cancellations and delays, the shelters were not able to move people on as quickly as they normally do, and so because were staying in the shelter longer those spaces weren’t opening up for new arrivals.
Both San Diego city and county leaders have asked the federal government for resources to help newly arrived migrants.
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President Biden signed a bill yesterday-that officially renames the post office in Rolando.
It will now be known as The Susan A Davis post office, in honor of the long-serving Representative from San Diego.
Davis served in the House for 20 years. She was first elected in 2001. And left office last year.
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From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now.Stay with me for more of the local news you need.
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Travelers could be stranded in San Diego until New Year’s Day, due to problems at Southwest Airlines.
The company has canceled hundreds of flights out of Southern California, blaming bad weather and staffing issues.
Passengers report the airline is offering a one-day hotel voucher and 14 dollars for food.
KPBS reporter Gustavo Solis spoke with one passenger who could lose his job.
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Angel Garcia was supposed to be back home in Austin Texas on Christmas Day.CC 6236_01 23:55:47:27“For the past two days I’ve only had one food voucher, for $14. And so I’ve been trying to stretch that out. I’m hungry, I have no more leftover money.”Southwest Airlines gave Garcia a hotel voucher for one day. He spent another night in a car and another night in the airport.He doesn’t have any more paid time off and his boss needs him to show up to work.CC 6236_01 23:58:18:11“I think I’m probably going to lose my job over this. I’m a maintenance technician. So it’s not just my job, it’s my living situation, I work in the apartments that I live at. So if I lose my job, I lose my living situation in three days.”Southwest Airlines staff at the airport told KPBS that there probably won’t be any more tickets out of San Diego until after New Year’s Eve. Stranded passengers who tried to rent cars to drive home say most are already booked.Solis, KPBS News
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The weather in San Diego is predicted to take a turn.
Rain is in the forecast– and today’s showers are expected to continue on and off through the week.
And while most of that rain will end up as runoff-some residents are putting it to use.
Here’s KPBS North County reporter Tania Thorne with more.
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When rain is in the forecast, Encinitas resident Robin Reed-Anderson, looks forward to it. She has 4 barrels on her property that collect rainwater.“The rain water, it's great for soaking, I water my fruit trees with it.With a 1 acre property, Reed Anderson says any bit of water helps with maintaining her garden. “It keeps the runoff from going wasted and going into the ocean with pet waste or oil or something like that. But from my roof its perfect because I just use it. I save it.”She purchased the barrels from the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation inEncinitas.They try to mobilize the community to tackle the region's environmental issues.Each barrel is $95 dollars and rebates are available.TT KPBS News
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San Diego researchers working to stave off the worst impacts of global warming are looking for answers in the region’s wetlands.
In this story from April, KPBS Environment Reporter Erik Anderson says cattails could be part of the answer.
CATTAILS (sea) soq 4:19
San Diego’s Bataquitos Lagoon is sits right beside one of the region’s busiest highways, interstate fi ve. (nat) But it is the gently swaying stalks of cattails that’ve captured the interest of two researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.JN 11:00:43 – 11:00:51 “You can see how hard it is to dig out, that’s why it holds the sediment extremely well.” Joseph Noel watches his colleague Todd Michael use a small hand shovel to cut into the dirt around the base of a cattail stem. Michael lifts up a newly liberated plant.TM 11:01:04 – 11:01:12 “Yup it’s an example, it still alive so you can see a new shoot is forming.The plant’s roots are coated in a sticky black mud. The rich wet dirt is created by the constant push and pull of this coastal wetland environment. Michael says saltwater regularly flows into the estuary, pushing back or even killing the freshwater cattails. The ones that replace them grow over the dead and that replaces the sediment11:01:10 – 11:01:14 “So this is the rhizome. And its hard to see because it’s all muddy.” The rhizome is an underground stem that grows sideways, much like roots of grass found in Southern California yards. But that’s not what Noel is interested in.JN 11:05:26 – 11:05:34 “Turns out that wetland plants. Plants that have wet feet. Either like this or even fully submerged. They make a lot of suberin, particularly in their roots.”And suberin has the Salk team’s attention. Suberin is a waxy layer covering small root structures. It helps cattails regulate water. They can block salt water and allow freshwater in. Michael says the suberin covered appendages are full of carbon molecules. TM 11:26:13 – 11:26:28 “Plants are naturally carbon accumulating machines, right. They suck carbon dioxide out of the air. All this right here (he grabs the plant’s stem) all this biomass is basically just carbon.”And the carbon molecules in suberin don’t break down when the plant dies. Noel says the carbon lingers in the mucky sediment. JN 11:02:27 – 11:02:52 “You can almost see it. It’s very dark and black. So it’s full of carbon. In fact, I bet if you dug down, up to ten feet below this, depending how long this existed, it would be a huge amount of carbon that is stored.” Noel and Michael has sequenced the cattail genome and they hope to transfer the plant’s ability to make suberin into crop plants like corn and sorghum. JN 11:19:38 – 11:19:50 “With these new gene editing technologies, we really think we’re going to be able to go into these crop plants and tweak them to make them more like typha so the roots will have more of this substance.The impact could be huge. Crop plants with the modified roots could pull as much as a quarter of the planet’s excess carbon out of the air. That’s enough to have a real impact on climate change. This is a key part of the Salk Institute’s harnessing plants initiative. And Michael says cattails – or typha – have other traits that could make plants more resilient.TM 11:03:44 – 11:04:03 “Each cattail, makes 300-thousand plus seeds. If you’ve ever seen a cattail release its seeds it looks like snow. And all of those seeds have the potential to be a new stand of typha.” But the habitat that is so efficient at storing carbon, has been under assault for decades. Darren Smith is a senior environmental scientist with California State Parks. He says urbanization has eliminated 90 percent of the state’s coastal wetlands. 00:01:04 – 00:01:21“There’s been a big change with people. I think wetlands were something, almost like an oasis early on in California where you just didn’t run into fresh water very often .”And those same wetlands that are giving researchers hope about slowing climate change, are under a lot of stress. Smith says people are making it hard for the habitat to adapt.00:06:07 - 00:06:23. “We built right up to them. We build up the watersheds and we built right up to the edges of them. And so for them to do what they do, to retreat or for the water to back up and form new vegetative wetlands further upstream there’s just got to be the space to do it.” Researchers say giving the habitat that space allows scientists extra time to find other plant traits that could play a role in reducing the speed of climate change.Erik Anderson KPBS News
Coming up....Petco Park is set to host its first football game.
We’ll have that story and more, next, just after the break.
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San Diego will be abuzz with Holiday Bowl events today.
Including the Holiday Bowl Parade, which will have some new scenery this year.
This year the parade route is moving closer to the Gaslamp-starting at Petco Park and traveling west before ending at Pacific Highway.
The start time is 10 a-m–but crowds are expected to start gathering much earlier.
The Holiday Bowl took a two-year hiatus for covid-but it’s back.
And in a new venue.
KPBS REPORTER KITTY ALVARADO SAYS TODAY’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL SHOWDOWN BETWEEN OREGON AND NORTH CAROLINA WILL BE PLAYED IN A TRANSFORMED PETCO PARK.
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HOLIDAY BOWL 1 :47 SOQ
Petco Park is ready … for some football … Wednesday’s game will be the first time football teams play in San Diego’s baseball stadium. Mark Neville is the Holiday Bowl CEO. He says the nonprofit that has put on the game for almost 50 years has been hurt by going without it since 2019.For those last two years that we didn’t play we lost over 3 million dollars and as a non profit that bites … we want to be a huge contributor to the san diego economy we have donethat for 43 years over 1 billion dollars in economic impact in that time and hey we’re back Neville says the Holiday Bowl has a contract to stay at PetCo Park for years to come … Kitty Alvarado KPBS News.
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That’s it for the podcast today. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. I’m Debbie Cruz. Thanks for listening and have a great day.
