David Duel didn’t think he’d have to lay off 45 of his 52 employees.
But that’s what the 23-year-old and his two partners, Sean Neman, 23, and Kevin Refoud, 25, did in April after their company, ReGreen, didn’t receive $900,000 for water efficiency work from an incentive program run by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
“In every sense, we’ve had to downsize our company,” said Duel in a barren office so new that fresh paint scent was still in the air.
The incentive program provides rebates to customers and vendors such as ReGreen, which installs water-efficient devices, including toilets and washing machines, for clients.
Mar Vista has been chosen by Los Angeles officials to be part of a pilot project designed to save rainwater.
The Rainfall Harvesting initiative will provide free assistance to residents and commercial businesses willing to collect rainwater for storage and use in irrigating their private property.
Marine rescue centers in California are struggling to keep up with the number of distressed sea lions up and down the coast. The marine mammals are malnourished and some are injured. Scientists believe an El Nino weather pattern is bringing warm water currents to the California coast, depleting the sea lions' food supply.
Photo: Volunteers Marjorie Boor, left, and Katie Pofahl rescue a sea lion pup stranded on the rocks in San Francisco Bay. Credit: Dave Getzschman / For The Times
Ten homes in Huntington Beach were evacuated Monday when discarded oxygen canisters began exploding outside an elementary school. No one was injured, but one canister flew over houses and landed on a nearby street, Deputy Fire Marshal Jeff Lopez said.
According to Lopez, the incident began about 2:40 p.m. when a trash pickup truck operated by Rainbow Disposal Co. was pulling up to the Ralph E. Hawes Elementary School on Yellowstone Drive in Huntington Beach. The driver smelled smoke and heard an explosion, prompting him to dump his trash load in the school's parking lot. Lopez said he does not believe summer school was in session at the time.
Eventually, three more oxygen canisters exploded. Emergency crews arrived from the Huntington Beach fire and police departments, as well as the Orange County Sheriff's Department's bomb squad. They ordered the evacuation of 10 nearby homes and began looking through the debris for any more canisters. Eventually, one unexploded canister was found, and the bomb squad detonated it, Lopez said.
He said the canisters apparently were taken from outside the home of a Huntington Beach man who uses them for medical reasons. “It's assumed that somebody came and swiped them from the doorstep," Lopez said, "but nothing’s confirmed there.”
Once crews determined that there were no more unexploded canisters, the evacuation order was lifted about 7:40 p.m.
Lopez said the cause of the explosions was under investigation, but it appeared likely that something else in the truck began burning, and the heat set off the pressurized canisters.
Today is the 50th anniversary of America's first nuclear meltdown accident, which occurred at the Atomics International field laboratory in the Santa Susana Mountains.
Federal regulators and former lab workers will gather at the Aerospace Cancer Museum of Education in Chatsworth to commemorate the event. The group will provide an update of recent developments, including the Environmental Protection Agency's plans to spend $40 million in stimulus funds on a comprehensive radioactive survey of the nuclear site.
Some neighborhood council members on the Westside are saying there is too much development planned for the area and that such projects could cause a drain on water supplies. They are recommending that high-density projects be reexamined to consider the consequences of drought conditions.
They say that because the city government has moved to Phase III of the municipal water ordinance that includes mandatory conservation measures, high-density projects should be reexamined, scaled back or have water agencies and planners include the effects and consequences of the drought.
Westchester resident David Coffin thinks that city leaders have not taken the water shortage into account regarding large-scale development, and he disagrees with those who suggest that state laws that direct cities and counties to request that developers obtain a water assessment prior to approval are sufficient.
“They are relying on water management plans that are four years old,” said Coffin, a member of the Neighborhood Council of Westchester-Playa.
A former Lynwood high school principal has been arrested on suspicion of molesting three students at the school and another in the Whittier area.
Jonas Silverio, 40, was taken into custody Wednesday afternoon by sheriff’s detectives at LAX after flying in from the Philippines. He allegedly fled to that country in May and returned Wednesday, unaware that a warrant had been issued for his arrest.
Silverio is accused of molesting at least two members of the girls’ volleyball team at Lynwood’s Firebaugh High School, said L.A. County Sheriff’s Sgt. Dan Scott. He’s been charged with 17 counts of committing lewd acts upon a child and is being held on $1 million bail.
He resigned his position at Firebaugh High in early May after sheriff detectives began investigating the molestation allegations. The incidents allegedly occurred in 2001 and 2005. In addition to being principal, Silverio was the school’s volleyball coach.
Scott said their investigation is ongoing and that detectives are checking allegations that go back as far as 1996. Detectives from the Special Victims Bureau learned of the victim in Whittier/ Santa Fe Springs area during the investigation, Scott said.
Investigators are asking that anyone with information about Silverio conduct contact them at (866) 247-5877.
Santa Monica will reduce by half the number of taxicabs operating in the city in an effort to curb traffic congestion and pollution. A law dictating the reduction was approved June 30 by the City Council.
Under the law approved unanimously by the council, the city would grant franchises to only those companies with at least 25 cabs and cap the total number of cabs at 250. That would limit the number of companies that would qualify to eight, although smaller companies can band together to form a franchise.
To qualify, franchised companies must have a centralized dispatching system, hire trained drivers who are proficient in English and maintain newer fleets. Preference will be given to companies that are locally based, have fuel-efficient fleets and offer vouchers to seniors and the disabled.
Photo: Taxis on Santa Monica Boulevard in Santa Monica. The city is trying to
figure out to regulate an over-abundance of taxis. Credit: Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times
The city of Santa Monica has approved an ordinance making it easier to install solar panels in commercial and apartment buildings. But the plan approved Tuesday has drawn the ire of some residents who say the power-saving panels could prove to be unsightly, according to the Lookout News.
The ordinance allows solar energy systems that “meet objective development standards” to be approved without a public hearing and also allows them to encroach into setback areas and extend above current height limits.
“What this does is that it streamlines and removes many of the codes,” said Mayor Ken Genser, adding that he “hopes [the process] will go much more quickly.”
Photo: Installers from Borrego Solar attach solar tiles to conventional roof tiles on a home in Los Altos, California.
In collaboration with agencies in Japan, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has put together a topographical map that covers 99% of the Earth's land mass, a more complete map than was previously available.
"We've got everything except a very small part of the South Pole and the North Pole," said JPL's Michael Abrams, the U.S. science team leader for the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission Reflection Radiometer project, also known as ASTER. "We're able to cover Alaska, Greenland, northern Asia and Antarctica."
The resolution is so clear that you can plainly see Dodger Stadium and other landmarks in pictures of Los Angeles.
The most complete previous set of topographical data, collected by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission in 2000, included about 80% of the Earth's landmass. Because the space shuttle had a limited orbit, the radar-imaging device missed land masses above 60 degrees north and 57 degrees south in latitude.
ASTER, which started collected images in visible and infrared light nine years ago, rides aboard Terra, a satellite that is part of NASA's Earth Observing System. Its orbit enables it to collect images up to 83 degrees north and 83 degrees south in latitude and also gives it a better angle to collect data in steep mountain areas, Abrams said. The infrared instrument also collects more thermal data than previously available, he said.
The ASTER images are meant to complement the radar images, Abrams emphasized. The shuttle radar instrument has some pictures ASTER could not get because radar can penetrate clouds, which perpetually obscure some tropical areas from ASTER's sight.
Scientists recently realized they had more than 1 million scenes, enough to create a global topographic map, Abrams said. The data was released Monday, free to the public. ASTER's images have a resolution down to 50 feet, which is enough to detect houses, but not so fine as to see the shape of the house or what people are doing in the house, he said.
Scientists have already used the satellite instrument to calculate changes in the width and height of glaciers, but Abrams said he could also see a host of commercial uses for the new data. He said cellphone companies could use the new maps to scout sight lines for new transmission towers and Google could probably easily incorporate the new data into its maps.
[Updated at 8:50 a.m.: According to NASA, the cost to produce the instrument was $800,000, with the U.S. space agency contributing half.]
--Jia-Rui Chong
Photo: Los Angeles from space. Credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For a high-resolution image of the Los Angeles area and other topographical images, click here
Thousands of visitors have flocked to the Huntington Botanical Gardens today to see the brief bloom of a corpse flower, a plant famous for its rotting smell and its rare flowering, which happens once every few years or more.
The last time the corpse flower bloomed at the gardens in San Marino was in 2002, and the last time before that was in 1999 -- the first recorded bloom in California's history. Many have been monitoring the Huntington flower's progression in recent days. Once the bloom was announced Tuesday at 2 p.m., the deluge began.
If you want to see it, act quickly. The flower has begun to close. Its petals, which were outstretched this morning, are now ruffled, said Lisa Blackburn, a spokeswoman for the gardens. The flower will close in the next day or two, and botanists do not know when it will bloom again.
“It’s a very brief and very beautiful and very smelly moment at the same time,” Blackburn said. “It might be done for the next decade.”
The flower is native to the rain forests of Sumatra island, in western Indonesia, and though it is nicknamed the corpse flower because of its smell, its shape inspired its official name: Amorphophallus titanum, which roughly translates to "large, shapeless phallus," Blackburn said.
A judge has ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and
National Marine Fisheries violated the Endangered Species Act in their
biological opinions for managing four Southern California forests
covering 3.2 million acres.
In her ruling on a lawsuit brought by a coalition of environmental
groups, Judge Marilyn Patel of the U.S. District Court of Northern
California said the opinions failed to include protective measures such
as monitoring systems required to determine the effects of land-use
decisions on endangered plants and animals in the Los Angeles,
Cleveland, Los Padres and San Bernardino forests.
Environmentalists praised Patel’s determination as an important
victory for 40 threatened and endangered species, including the
California condor and steelhead trout.
Read the rest at Greenspace, The Times' environmental blog.
A California gray whale on its way to Alaska has chosen a channel in Marina del Rey as a rest stop, and marine officials are warning boaters to be extra cautious.
The whale, estimated to be more than 20 feet long, has been swimming and diving in the channel for almost a week now, said Peter Wallerstein, a spokesman for Marine Animal Rescue.
“It’s looking healthy, it’s swimming and diving,” he said.
Although the whale has made its way into the open sea in recent days, it keeps returning to the channel, Wallerstein said.
California gray whales can grow up to 46 feet long and weigh up to 40 tons. Each winter they make their way south to the warm waters off Baja California. From February to May, they migrate to northern Alaska.
“This one is probably a straggler,” Wallerstein said. “Some just take a little longer [to migrate] than others.”
Faced with another year of drought, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is offering customers a cash incentive to replace their grass lawns with drought-tolerant plants.
The Residential Drought Resistant Landscape Incentive Program will credit single-family residential customers $1 for each square foot of turf removed and replaced with drought-tolerant plants, mulch and water-permeable hardscapes, DWP officials said in a statement today.
New landscaping plans must be approved by the DWP before they are implemented and evidence of installation must be provided to receive the rebate, the statement said. DWP staff will visit customers’ homes before and after the work has been done to confirm how much grass has been replaced.
The State Lands Commission lashed out today at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempt to reverse its rejection of the first new oil drilling in California waters since 1969.
Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, the three-member panel's chair, called the governor's proposal "a naked power-grab." At a contentious hearing in Santa Monica, the commission passed a resolution urging legislators not to go along with Schwarzenegger's plan, which would revive a drilling project off the Santa Barbara County coast that the commission killed in January.
A
final warning to all you lawn aficionados and green thumbs: Los
Angeles' mandatory water conservation restrictions — aimed at reducing
the city's water use by 15% — begin today.
That means residents can use their sprinklers only on Mondays and
Thursdays, and customers who don't cut their water use could face
higher utility bills.
Details on the shortage rate are a bit complex. To determine how to
avoid higher rates, customers can call the DWP at (800) DIAL-DWP or log
into their account at the DWP website to determine their water
allotment. The agency has posted all the details here.
And if your neighbor catches you using those sprinklers — on, say,
Tuesday — you might hear from the drought police. The DWP is seeking
reports of water waste at (800) DIAL-DWP or via e-mail at waterconservationteam@ladwp.com.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who already owns a Hummer fueled with vegetable oil, today touted the latest “green” addition to his fleet: a hydrogen-powered Honda FCX Clarity.
“I just got the Clarity, which is a wonderful hydrogen vehicle,” Schwarzenegger told reporters at California’s first retail station to sell both gasoline and hydrogen, in West Los Angeles. “We’re all fighting over who is driving it. My daughters want to drive it all the time and take it away from me.”
Schwarzenegger dropped by the Shell station, which opened last summer, to lend his star power to the Hydrogen Road Tour, a rally designed to highlight advances in fuel-cell technology. Seven automakers are taking part in the nine-day, 1,700-mile trip from San Diego to Vancouver, Canada.
Appearing at a West L.A. Shell hydrogen station today to highlight advances in fuel-cell technology, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger defended his proposed $5 billion in budget cuts.
“There is, basically, when it comes to revenues, a free fall right now. We don’t know where this is going to stop,” he said. “Even while we are going to negotiate the budget in June, we don’t know if that doesn’t create during that time another $3-billion deficit.
"So, for me, to at this point to be optimistic and say maybe we don’t have to make certain cuts, would be foolish. … Right now is a very difficult time, and we see that the revenues are going down and down and down. We don’t know where this thing is going to stop.”
He said "the people have spoken now" when it comes to taxes.
"They don’t want to raise taxes. That’s why they voted no on the initiative. So we are jammed into a corner and we have to now act fiscally responsible.
“Do I like it?" he continued. "It hurts me. … It is painful to know that the kinds of programs that you cut are absolutely essential to people. But when you don’t have the money, you can’t promise something to people, something you cannot afford. … Doing gimmicks, doing borrowing, all of those things are out of the question. The people made it very clear. So we have to live within our means.”
He said the budget negotiations would be challenging.
“But I think it can be done. I talk to those legislative leaders every day and I see a positive response. Everyone recognizes what the challenges are.”
He urged state lawmakers not to just take care of the budget this year and the coming year, but to think further into the future.
“It doesn’t make any sense to solve our budget problem today and knowingly have $20 billion of budget deficit again two years from now. So we've got to really get in there now and try to live within our means … and not always live in a fantasy.”
Residents of a San Bernardino neighborhood lined up to snap pictures of what appeared to be a well-fed house cat Thursday, only to find it was actually a 100-pound mountain lion.
“It was an issue of scale,” said Kevin Brennan, a wildlife biologist for the California Department of Fish and Game. “It was sitting in a big tree.”
The Department of Water Resources announced Wednesday that it would give State Water Project contractors 40% of what they requested. Although that figure remains low, it is far more than earlier allocation numbers, which started at 15% and then rose to 20% and 30%.
"Early May snow and rain improved the water supply situation enough to allow this modest expansion," said department Director Lester A. Snow. But he cautioned that the state's three-year drought was not over. "Gov. Schwarzenegger's statewide drought declaration remains in effect and all Californians must heed his call to reduce their water use," he said.
As of May 1, statewide precipitation and reservoir storage were 80% of average for the date. Runoff was 60% of the norm.
Urban Southern California gets about a third of its water from the state system, which pipes supplies south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta east of San Francisco.
State wardens subdued and captured a 250-pound male bear this morning after it was spotted running through a Quartz Hill neighborhood in the Antelope Valley.
A resident in the 4200 block of Mohave Rose Drive called deputies about 11:30 a.m. Thursday to report “a bear was running in her street,” said Sgt. Theresa Dawson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Dept.
“It was on the sidewalks and in numerous backyards,” said Ed Frommer, a longtime Quartz Hill resident and freelance cameraman, who happened to be driving near 47th Street West about 1:30 a.m. today when he noticed the commotion.
A plan by a private company to build a $320-million desalination plant along the coast of northern San Diego County was approved unanimously today by the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.
Proponents say the plan could provide more than 56,000 acre-feet of drinkable water by 2012, enough to satisfy the needs of more than 100,000 families. Connecticut-based Poseidon Resources has been planning the project for a decade and navigating the complex permit process for five years.
But environmentalist activists, who believe the project would harm the coastal environment, plan to appeal to the State Water Quality Control Board and to continue at least three lawsuits aimed at blocking the project.
Under the plan, the plant would be built adjacent to the Encina power plant in Carlsbad.
The plant would turn salt water into fresh water by a reverse osmosis process. Poseidon has yet to announce its full financing plan for what is proposed to be the nation's largest such project.
San Diego County is largely devoid of groundwater, making it dependent on imported water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and, in recent years, on a complex water transfer agreement with the Imperial Irrigation District. Several suburban water districts have shown interest in buying some of the water from Poseidon.
The annual Los Angeles River clean-up has been underway all day. And the Sepulveda Basin site alone has yielded a cornucopia of trash.
“They’re digging out shopping carts,” said Shelly Backlar, executive director of Friends of the Los Angeles River. Backlar was working at the Sepulveda Basin site along with about 200 volunteers, including the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity’s Chi chapter at UCLA.
The annual clean-up was taking place at 14 sites along the 52-mile river.
“The best thing we have today is a dreadlocked Barbie,” said Backlar. A volunteer discovered the doll, its blond hair matted with vegetation, in the river and plopped the doll on top of a growing pile of interesting trash treasures.
A bluegrass band serenaded the clean-up crew. And a pair of mallard ducks as well as a bull frog were among the wildlife that made appearances.
So how do you clean up a river? This morning you can find out firsthand.
The Friends of the Los Angeles River is holding its 20th annual river cleanup starting at 9 a.m. at 14 locations along the 52-mile river from the San Fernando Valley through Pasadena to Long Beach.
The organization supplies disposable gloves, trash sacks, snacks and water. Volunteers are asked to wear clothes they don’t mind getting dirty and sturdy shoes, and bring reusable water bottles, work gloves, sunscreen and hats.
The sites where volunteers will forage for trash are all natural-bottomed, sandy areas in the river and there’s not much chance of getting wet except at the Betty Davis picnic site in Griffith Park, where water is ankle deep. In fact, going into the water is discouraged. Otherwise, “there are almost like little sand bars or islands” that you walk on, according to Shelly Backlar, executive director of the organization.
Expect all manner of trash. “We’ve had hot tubs and phone booths,” Backlar said. “It’s almost like ‘What am I going to find?’”
There will be live music at all the sites. And Backlar says it can be a pastoral experience. “You’re pulling out chip bags and 7-Eleven cups and you look up and a great blue heron will fly by.” One year, she said, “we had a seal come up into the estuary at Willow Street in Long Beach.”
They expect 4,000 volunteers this year. No word on how many seals will show.
As California struggles with drought, gardening and conservation specialists will gather today for the nation's first National Public Gardens Day to raise awareness of the importance of plant and water conservation.
More than 500 public gardens across the nation will join in the celebration and host speakers who will discuss means of maintaining beautiful landscapes while still complying with water restrictions.
In Los Angeles, National Public Gardens Day events will take place at Descanso Gardens, the Huntington Library and the Los Angeles Arboretum from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
"There's more emphasis on people taking care of their home gardens and [growing] vegetables in their home gardens," said Brinda Rees, Descanso Gardens' communications director.
"There's more attention being placed on what homeowners and businesses can do to their gardens. And we see these public gardens as a leader: Here's what we do and what we inspire you to do as well."
Besides learning about gardens and plant conservation, visitors will also have the chance to meet with conservation specialists, including Paul James, host of HGTV's "Gardening by the Yard."
The KTLA Traffic Blog provides regular updates of the Southern California traffic situation during the morning drive. This feed is live from 4 to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday.
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