The town sat on what was, in effect, a 400,000-gallon toxic reservoir. The entire business district had to be eviscerated, along with six square blocks of homes. Unocal fought against calls for a settlement for a decade, before finally capitulating. Now it’s time for Chevron, which inherited some valuable beachfront property there when it swallowed up Unocal in 2005, to make some money.   read more

The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board levied a $60,000 penalty on Vintage Production California, LLC, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, for discharging the suspect, high-saline fracking fluids into an unlined pit near the city of Shafter in Kern County. Investigators said the discharge, over the 12-day period it knew of, posed a threat to nearby groundwater and the company had failed to get a permit to do it.   read more

Last Friday, BART officials announced that they had mistakenly agreed to a provision in the four-year contract that they had no intention of including and wanted a do-over. They blamed a “temporary employee” for the error. The union said a deal is a deal and ridiculed the agency’s contention that it had made an honest mistake.   read more

Unfortunately, the process also pulls in around 90 million sea creatures a year with it. A commission staff report said the project would “discharge effluent with salinity concentrations that are harmful to marine life, and cause adverse direct and indirect effects on wetlands. . . . Additionally, the facility site is subject to a number of significant coastal and geologic hazards, including floods, tsunami, surface fault rupture, ground movement, liquefaction, lateral soil spread, and others.”   read more

The Orange County Transportation Authority was poised last week to vote on a $1.47-billion project that could add the lanes to a 14-mile stretch of Interstate 405, but delayed a decision in the face of widespread community opposition. The transit agency estimates that northbound drivers would pay $9.91 during rush hour to traverse the entire 14 miles and $6.61 for the return trip. Assuming a five-day work week (and a month off for vacation), the cost would be $3,964.80 a year.   read more

The main sticking point was the inclusion of people in the injunction who were not given an opportunity to respond to accusations that they were members of the Orange Varrio Cypress gang. Court watchers said the ruling did not appear to attack the validity of gang injunctions in general. But John Anderson, Orange County assistant district attorney, disagreed. When the district judge ruled in May 2011, he told the Los Angeles Times, “I think it completely rewrites centuries of injunction law.”   read more

Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) filed suit (pdf) to halt the Christian prayers routinely delivered at the start of Pismo Beach city council meetings. The foundation found that all but one of the 126 prayers offered between January 1, 2008, and October 15, 2013, were “addressed to a Christian god” and all but three were from Christian clergy. Pentecostal clergy delivered 112 of the prayers.   read more

An “appalled” American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in Washington sent a letter to the Coachella Valley Unified School District demanding that the school dump the Arab, “a harmful form of ethnic stereotyping.” Although the ACD recognized the “context in which the nickname was originally selected,” it said there was no place for this behavior in the 21st Century.   read more

The city at-large was not as disenchanted with McCammack as her 7th Ward constituents, 57% of whom voted to recall her. She was viewed as an ally of entrenched political forces, although she insisted throughout the campaign that she opposed the policies that drove the city into bankruptcy. McCammack received 25.65% of the vote for mayor, followed by Davis at 23.42%.   read more

The Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens, a partner in the California Condor Recovery Program since the 1980s, announced that it treated a record 21 condors for lead poisoning in October. The birds were brought to the Gottlieb Animal Health and Conservation Center at the zoo by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “It’s scary to see so many clinically sick birds,” Dr. Curtis Eng, chief veterinarian and manager of the zoo’s condor program said.   read more

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert O’Brien denied a request for a temporary restraining order that would have shut down the factory until complaints by residents were addressed. The city filed its request after residents said they suffered headaches, burning eyes and sore throats. Around 30 residents have complained to the city. Ruby Sanchez was not one of them. She told the Associated Press, “It's like having a plate of chili peppers shoved right in your face.”   read more

Among those apprehended in the raids—which have also taken place in Santa Clara—was Gurvinder Singh, an Indian national, who had arrived in court to marry his partner, Kuldeet Kaur. He was told he was being arrested due to having entered the U.S. illegally through Mexico, in spite of the fact that he was in the middle of immigration proceedings and had never missed a court appearance.   read more

A recent report by the California State Auditor surveyed 34 courts that failed to give law enforcement authorities the names of at least 2,300 people between 2010 and 2012 who should be on a firearm prevention list because of rulings related to mental illness. Several courts told the auditor they had insufficient information to even tell how many reportable determinations of mental illness they failed to report.   read more

Supporters argued that sentencing juveniles to life terms without a chance for review was outside international law and norms. It ignored neuroscience and accepted studies of adolescence about the undeveloped state of juvenile impulse control and critical thinking, which indicate kids are more readily rehabilitated.   read more

Democrats, who overwhelmingly control both houses of the state Legislature, sent 18 gun-control measures to Governor Jerry Brown in the last session, mostly over the strident objections of Republicans. Brown signed 11 of them. At a press conference last week, GOP Assemblyman Tim Donnelly referred to the targeted lawmakers as “threats” who need to be “removed.” California is one of 19 states that lets voters remove such threats without any evidence of fraud or official misconduct.   read more

Until videos of screaming prisoners being doused with massive quantities of pepper spray surfaced in court last week, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) wasn’t considering changing its policy for handling combative prisoners. About one-third of California prisoners are mentally ill. The videos came to light in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton, where a lawsuit challenging the state’s handling of mentally ill prisoners began this month.   read more