Posts Tagged: coastal
News
The Trump administration is to opening up 1.2 million acres for oil and gas drilling across California from the Central Valley to the coast, targeting eight counties — Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, San Luis Obisbo, Santa Barbara, Tulare, and Ventura.T he plan follows an earlier move by the federal Bureau of Land Management to issue leases for oil and gas drilling on roughly 800,000 acres in 11 counties.
News
While wildfires have gotten much of the attention in California as consequences of climate change, it’s really rising sea levels that will likely wreak the most damage. With more than 25 million people living near the coast, some $150 billion worth of property is at risk.
News
After 30 years in office, Orange County Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher is facing his toughest re-election. Rohrabacher, 70, is being challenged by more than a dozen people in the June primary, including his former ally, Republican Scott Baugh.
News
More than four in 10 California adults are seriously considering moving away from their part of the state because of the cost of housing, with the highest proportion in the coastal counties and the lowest in the state’s interior. A slight majority of those recently surveyed by the Public Policy Institute of California — 55 percent — are staying put.
News
MORRO BAY, Calif. – The California Coastal Commission fired Executive Director Charles Lester late Wednesday, after several commissioners complained about a lack of communication from Lester and the staff. The action, a 7-5 vote by the 12-member commission, was taken publicly following a discussion behind closed doors.
News
For those attempting to oust Charles Lester, the executive director of the California Coastal Commission, the upcoming hearing is a referendum on his job performance. For the environmentalists who follow the commission, it’s a coup and an attempt to seize the upper hand in the power struggle between pro-development interests and an environmentalist staff that they believe has defined the commission since the reign of Peter Douglas.
News
A move to oust the executive director of the California Coastal Commission is under way, an effort that marks the most significant attempt against the commission’s ranking administrator in two decades. Commission Chair Steve Kinsey wrote a letter to Executive Director Charles Lester, saying the 12-member panel “will consider whether to dismiss you” at the commission’s February meeting.
Opinion
OPINION: A recent opinion column in Capitol Weekly (Jan. 7, “Moderate Democrats: the slaves of Big Oil?”) was not the real story of last year’s SB 350, an effort to reduce petroleum-based transportation fuels in California by 50 percent. Ironically, the real story of SB 350 is the first line of the author’s eighth paragraph: “The story of inequality in our state is not just one of economics…”
News
For decades, people living in California paid more for shelter than those in most of the rest of the country. But during the 1970s, “the gap started to widen. Between 1970 and 1980, California home prices went from 30 percent above U.S. levels to more than 80 percent higher,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office reported. Today, the average California home costs $440,000, or two-and-half-times the average price tag of $180,000 for a home across the country.
News
Under an unusual agreement reached between Senate leaders and a number of environmental groups just before the end of the legislative session, the period of time to consider the submitted list of candidates has been extended indefinitely. Such an extension is extremely rare, if not unprecedented.
A pumpjack in California's San Joaquin Valley. (Photo: Mark Geistweite, via Shutterstock)
