A landfill gas collection site in Sunnyvale. (Photo: Michael Vi, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Reducing the amount of organic waste that is buried in California landfills is an environmental imperative. As state policy mandates, something has to be done to choke back the production of methane, the gas that is generated when table scraps, yard clippings and other organic materials decompose underground.
A California Department of Water Resources geologist measures and records a pumping water level in a production well. (Photo: John Chacon,/DWR, 2013, via California Water Blog)Analysis: California’s single most urgent water policy priority is preserving our groundwater supply. In normal years, groundwater provides one-third of our state’s urban and agricultural water. In dry years, it provides up to nearly two-thirds.
An aerial view of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.State water officials today ordered cuts in water to dozens of growers and ranchers, limiting supplies to farmers who have had rights to the water for more than a century. The cutbacks mark the first time since 1977 — also a severe drought year — that such reductions have been ordered.
The California coast along Redwood National Park, north Humboldt County, (Photo: Don Forthuber, redwoods.info)OPINION: It’s been a year since I resigned from the California Coastal Commission, and it’s time to tell a few stories of what I learned as a Coastal Commissioner. Each and every month I learned that not everything was how it seemed. My first lesson was learning that developers love farmers.