The city asked the state nicely earlier in the year to include it in a program that lets Northern California entities get away with just 4% cuts because they are taking their water from surface sources, like rivers that are going to dump their contents in the sea if not snatched. That didn’t happen. Riverside gets its water from underground, not the surface, and that’s a critical difference to the state.   read more

Fifty-two years ago, an aerospace company in El Cajon, near San Diego, received permission from the county to store its toxic waste in an impervious sump, but no one apparently bothered to ask how the storage unit was constructed. Its predecessors on the property had already been stashing waste water underground for a couple decades. The sump was found to be constructed with a concrete base and redwood walls, which did not contain the 7,000 gallons of waste poured into it monthly.   read more

CalHFA Board Chairman Matthew Jacobs is using the controversial 1986 Ellis Act to kick out 17 tenants from four rent-regulated building, according to CityWatch, in a move that has become standard operating procedure for apartment-building flippers and developers. CalHFA provides financial assistance for poor and working-class first-time home buyers and participates in the rental market through loans to developers building multifamily housing.   read more

Chief Gregg Suhr said his department just finished clearing a big backlog back to 2003, and is still trying to recover from scandalously bad behavior in the crime lab that put 1,400 criminal cases at risk in March. The chief noted that the 10-year statute of limitations had passed on the hundreds of cases tied to the rape kits and said the lab’s limited resources should be directed at cases that can still be prosecuted. The D.A.’s office disagreed.   read more

California has agreed to pursue a single-drug solution to its vexing problem. But first, the state must wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in an Oklahoma case where the three-drug method is on trial. A decision is expected later this month. Then the state has 120 days to propose its solution. Whichever way the high court rules, more lawsuits are expected over any California proposal.   read more

The state Assembly passed legislation last week that would give an official nod to a practice explicitly illegal in the other 49 states, but unofficially tolerated in California. Under the law, motorcyclists could drive between lanes as long as they were traveling under 50 mph and don’t exceed the speed of cars by 15 mph. Lane-splitting is a time-honored tradition on California roads, with unofficial guidelines approved of by the California Highway Patrol (CHP).   read more

Only 5.8% of the women in San Francisco are African American, but they are 45.5% of all the female arrests in the city, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. That continues a disparity that increased dramatically in the 1980s before leveling off around 2008. Black arrests per 100,000 women is 13.4 times the rate of non-blacks, compared to a 4.1 in 1980. But, surprisingly, those numbers are not telling a tale of increased black female crime. Just the opposite is true.   read more

The California Department of Justice (DOJ) suggests that in order to make sense of the information in the wiretap report, its elaborate, multi-page tables “should be read in conjunction with one another to evaluate the impact intercepts have on public safety.” Good luck with that. The department released the report as a locked PDF, a file format that reduces the ability to analyze the data in alternative formats. No copying and pasting into an Excel spreadsheet.   read more

Myrna Arias of Bakersfield sued her employer (pdf) in Kern County Superior Court, claiming she was fired two weeks after turning off a company-required GPS app that tracked her movements during off-hours. Arias likened the app to a parolee's ankle bracelet, called it illegal and asked for $500,000 compensation.   read more

“I'm a little disappointed industry did not represent themselves,” committee member Dr. Bryce Mays said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I think they may have data critical to our thinking in terms of reaching a decision, and they chose not to.” They probably didn't want to hear panel member Dr. Irving Nachamkin say, “We have heard enough data to say these devices are not safe using current conditions.”   read more

The department's action was triggered by an SEC complaint filed against the operator of more than 135 schools in 39 states, with enrollment of 57,000, just days before. The SEC charged that ITT “engaged in a fraudulent scheme and course of business and made various false and misleading statements and omissions to defraud ITT's investors by concealing the extraordinary failure of two off-balance-sheet student loan programs, and the looming effect of that failure on ITT's financial condition.”   read more

State Senator Fran Pavley, the author of legislation requiring the report, told the Times the agency didn’t hint at a problem until the deadline passed. “The department's failure to comply with the law is another example of poor management and lax regulation of the oil and gas industry that has implications for California's economy and the public health,” she said. “The public—during a serious drought—needs to know where this water comes from and where it's going.”   read more

Two of the accidents occurred while the driver controlled the car (it can switch back and forth) and all four were the fault of the other driver. AP got the story first, but details are TK because the California Department of Vehicles (DMV) can’t give them out and the companies are selective in their talking points. DMV said there were four accidents, but nothing else. No information on locations or details on the accidents.   read more

The city recently reiterated its commitment to keeping the lake. But things change. In 2008—dry times, but before this current drought began—U-T San Diego asked city officials if they would consider not pumping drinking water into the lake. They said only if the situation got worse and the city entered a Stage 2 water emergency. It’s been Stage 2 since October 2014.   read more

Crystal Geyser is planning to open a new bottling plant near Mount Shasta’s glaciers in Siskiyou County, where it will tap into an aquifer that feeds the Sacramento River, a major source of water for the state. Residents worried that the plant would exacerbate damage from the state’s mandated 25% water cuts, but also wanted to know what could be done about truck traffic, effluent generation and power needs. The answer was: not much.   read more

Neighbors who have been battling the cement plant for decades agree on the seriousness of the offenses, but weren’t thrilled with Lehigh’s punishment. “The penalty is too small when you consider this facility has been using Permanente Creek as its personal sewer for mining waste and toxic runoff for more than 80 years,” Paula Wallis, a neighbor whose property backs up to the creek, told the San Francisco Chronicle.   read more