California

"A dangerous chemical used in dry cleaning is being phased out in California, but state regulators say we may still have to live with a toxic legacy for years to come."

"Los Angeles became the largest city in the nation Wednesday to approve a ban on plastic bags at supermarket checkout lines, handing a major victory to clean-water advocates who sought to reduce the amount of trash clogging landfills, the region's waterways and the ocean."

"Kathy Omachi was eating at McDonald's in Reedley [Calif.] recently, and she counted 51 gravel trucks pass by -- all in the time she finished a hamburger and fruit smoothie. The lifelong resident of this farming town, which is southeast of Fresno and within a few miles of three rock quarries, fears that even more trucks, with their dirty exhaust, will be on the road if nearby mining is expanded."

"You may think of surfers as slackers. But in Santa Cruz, Calif., they're city council members and business owners. And they're also conservationists — who just got their piece of the central California coast named a World Surfing Reserve."

"Long before surf music topped the charts and long before surfers had crazy nicknames, surfers have been riding the waves in Santa Cruz.

On a recent day, the crowd included 'Wingnut' — also known as Robert Weaver — and other surfers. He pointed out some friends: 'There's Frosty, there's Boots, there's Fathead.'

"For a good part of its rich history, residents of unincorporated Allensworth, the first African American colony west of the Mississippi, have gone without a reliable supply of safe drinking water."

This is still the case today, where the Tulare County community's wells -- which provide water to the neighboring Colonel Allensworth State Historical Park that commemorates the area's legacy -- exceed federal levels for arsenic.

"Some worry that a water-diversion deal, sending farm irrigation water to sprawling San Diego, will spell doom for the Salton Sea – and exposure to toxins for humans and wildlife. Others say protections are in place to ensure that can't happen."

"Serious safety violations at power plants go uncorrected because regulators have never used their formal enforcement powers, the California Public Utilities Commission stated in a budget request being considered by legislators."

Harbor porpoises began disappearing from San Francisco Bay during the height of Navy ship activity there during World War II. "We don't know why they disappeared. … It's very possible that they just abandoned the place because it became too hard to feed, reproduce and raise their young," said William Keener, a co-investigator and spokesman with the nonprofit Golden Gate Cetacean Research group. "Then all of a sudden, the porpoises were back."

"SAN DIEGO — There are accusations of conspiracies, illegal secret meetings and double-dealing. Embarrassing documents and e-mails have been posted on an official Web site emblazoned with the words 'Fact vs. Fiction.' Animosities have grown so deep that the players have resorted to exchanging lengthy, caustic letters, packed with charges of lying and distortion. And it is all about water."

"The deaths of up to 20,000 migrating birds this year in a wildlife refuge near the Oregon border has renewed debate about resource management on the Klamath River, where myriad competing interests are fighting for water rights."