ICE agents have reportedly claimed to be police officers to gain consent to enter a person’s home – a tactic that is viewed as unethical, but within the powers granted to the officers. Civil rights groups supported Kalra’s bill, looking to stymie the Trump administration’s promise to use any and all available tools to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. Many groups fear Trump will expand deportations to include all undocumented immigrants, their families and relatives.   read more

While solar is still a hot commodity, especially in California where state law compels utilities to get a third of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, there has been a decided shift from large projects to mid-size and small ones. One large project was approved in 2008, 10 in 2010 and one more in 2011, according to the California Energy Commission’s website on Large Solar Energy Projects. The site was last updated September 14, 2012.   read more

The database comes to the public courtesy of the 2005 California Safe Cosmetics Act. The act requires the producer and/or distributor to give the state a list of all cosmetic products with ingredients known or suspected of causing cancer or reproductive harm. The database currently contains 857 chemicals and can be searched by product, category, company or chemical.   read more

McCant, former president of Billionaire Catt Entertainment, was sentenced in August 2012 for defrauding around 15 investors by promising to use their money to promote rap concerts and pay them a portion of the profits. The state billed Tingle $84,000 for back taxes, which has since grown to $135,000 with interest, according to the Los Angeles Times. Tingle, who lost $1 million in the scam, says she doesn’t have the money.   read more

Infrequent trainloads of crude are being brought to refineries in Richmond and Bakersfield from North Dakota by BNSF Railway, but McClatchy said that will probably change when six new refinery locations are retooled to accept rail shipments. Five or six 80- to 100-car trains a day are envisioned hauling in 25% of California’s oil needs.   read more

Roy Paul Gressly has hauled hazardous waste around the state of California for years, putting it in places it shouldn’t be and dodging rules and regulations. Last week, he pleaded no contest in Los Angeles Superior Court to six felony violations involving storage, transportation and disposal of toxic waste. He will not be allowed to own a hazardous waste business—until his probation is over, according to a press release from the DTSC. And then, presumably, he can return to his chosen field.   read more

Early last week, teachers who have not been paid for months began to bail and students in San Bernardino, South Gate and Los Angeles realized that the for-profit trade school was in danger of closing. The campuses were shut a few days later and students started the process of recovering tuition, dealing with federal loans they had taken out and figuring out where, if anywhere, they might continue their education.   read more

No, the agency isn’t banning fracking or ordering a moratorium while it studies the effects of pumping large amounts of pressurized water, sand and toxic chemicals into the ground to reach oil otherwise inaccessible to drillers. A new regulation published Thursday by the EPA merely requires the oil companies to self-report what they have only recently been discovered doing in sensitive waters where new drilling has been banned since a devastating 1969 oil spill near Santa Barbara.   read more

O’Brien complained about not having the promised personnel to install the system. He said the project design was incomplete, new software was incompatible with existing programs, problems were deemed fixed although they were not and he was forbidden from discussing these problems with co-workers and other responsible parties.   read more

Nichols announced his resignation Thursday after three years on the job. The head of the nation’s largest public water and electric utility has been under fire since the Los Angeles Times began raising questions about the trusts he co-manages with Brian D’Arcy, leader of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, the DWP’s largest union. Nichols can’t tell investigators what happened to $40 million in the trust funds.   read more

State geologist Dave Parrish released recently-completed maps of fault lines in the city that seem to place the giant Millennium Hollywood skyscraper project, approved by the city in October, astride one of the dreaded dotted lines that mark an active earthquake fault. If that turns out to be the case, a state law that bans building on faults would be tough to get around.   read more

The department ordered that operations be suspended Wednesday at the plant near Modesto after multiple inspections found “egregious insanitary conditions” caused by an infestation of roaches. Inspectors found live roaches near the “liver tumbler/belt,” next to a faucet, in a tub “that is a direct product contact surface” and next to a sanitary dispenser box beside the ice machine.   read more

Los Angeles is “barely treading water,” the report notes in its introduction, as “continued economic decline and impending fiscal crisis” take their toll. “Los Angeles is sinking into a future in which it no longer can provide the public services to which our people’s taxes entitle them and where the promises made to public employees about a decent and secure retirement simply cannot be kept.”   read more

Wells are reportedly drying up and Lake Mendocino, its key source of water, is near an all-time low level. The North Coast set a record for dryness in 2013, with just 7.67 inches of rain in the upper reaches of the Russian River. The Ukiah Daily Journal reported that Willits City Manager Adrienne Moore told the Board of Supervisors before it declared the emergency that her city estimated it had 100 days of water supply.   read more

The city attorney alleged in his complaint that “despite frequent warnings and repeated notices of violations of environmental and health and safety laws, Allenco has refused to repair numerous defects, and ignored or defied the efforts of regulatory agencies to correct multiple deficiencies at its oil facility.”   read more

SFPD unveiled a modified selection process called “banding” for use after the first eleven vacancies were filled. Banding treats exam scores that fall within a particular range or “band” as equivalent, regardless of their exact order. Buckley and Hofmann allege that SFPD decided to use banding because it “felt a need to promote more blacks and Asians to Captain.”   read more

Brown is said to want nearly one-third of the expected $850 million in revenues from cap and trade redirected to the rail project, which had its funding sources crippled by a federal judge late last year. The market-oriented, pollution-credit-swapping program garnered the reluctant support of environmentalists, many of whom preferred a straight tax on polluters, in exchange for a promise that revenues would be used to mitigate greenhouse gases.   read more