One-fifth of the 11,000 wells tested turned up high levels of man-made and naturally occurring contaminants that are especially troublesome when not treated at relatively small venues. The researchers said they studied data from 99% of the state’s public water systems. Around 8.9% of Californians rely on groundwater to drink, but nine out of 10 public water systems use it to some extent.   read more

A hefty 9.2% of drivers were seen using their cellphones for some form of yapping or tapping, compared to 6.6% in 2014. It hadn’t been that high since 2012, when 10.8% showed off their multi-tasking skills. Phone-to-ear increased 55%, from 1.1% to 1.7%. Talking on a hand-held device increased from 0.7% to 1.0%, manipulating a hand-held device climbed from 2.2% to 3.3% and talking with a headset or Bluetooth jumped from 2.5% to 3.3%.   read more

Nine years after a federal court took control of health care at all of California’s prisons because of deplorable conditions, Folsom State Prison has been provisionally returned to the state. Another 10 prisons are expected to be inspected by September but there is no timetable for clearance. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson has indicated he will end federal receivership once all 34 prisons are approved and remain up to par for a year.   read more

California’s Department of Justice has a backlog problem and might have trouble meeting its December 2016 deadline for confiscating weapons from people banned from gun ownership because of mental health issues. The State Auditor thinks 2022 might be a more realistic time frame considering the slow pace, and thinks things would have gone more smoothly if department officials had executed more than one of the eight recommendations she made in 2013.   read more

A lot of children from low-income homes are not seeing dentists. The California State Auditor reported in December that 56% of the 5.1 million children enrolled in Medi-Cal (California’s version of Medicaid) received dental care through the program in 2013. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) expanded the rolls of the insured but not necessarily access to doctors and dentists.   read more

New rules from California’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) last week, which affect 75% of the state’s residential electricity customers, shift costs from heavy users further down the food chain, flirt with time-of-use charges (endangering granny’s air-conditioned studio apartment in the midday heat), back off from larger egalitarian solar support and essentially de-subsidize low-income consumers.   read more

UC received a record number of freshman applications for the 11th consecutive year. Of the 103,117 Californians who applied, 60% were accepted. That’s down from 63% last year and 79% in 1999. Out of 92,324 (67%) who were admitted for fall 2015, 61,834 were Californians. These are preliminary enrollment numbers because students with multiple school acceptances still have to make a choice this summer.   read more

So how are we doing? Just as the measure of health outcomes—not the growing number of insured—will be the metric Obamacare patients will care most about, thirsty Californians will want to know how the 25% residential goal translates into a more secure water supply. Are these “the sacrifices necessary?” Or is 29% just a good sign that people are willing to suffer, without questioning the basic premise? That isn’t clear yet.   read more

The legislation will not reverse, overnight, the lax California policy on vaccination exemptions. It will almost certainly face legal challenges and could be subject to a referendum. The law doesn't take effect until 2016-17 school year and will only affect kindergartners and seventh-graders each year. Even if unchallenged, it would be half a dozen years before all K-12 students would be subject to the law.   read more

San Francisco lost some of its rights to Tuolomne River along with farmers and Pacific Gas & Electric Company in the Central Valley that tapped into the upper San Joaquin and Merced rivers. A report from the water board last week indicated that only 31% of the 9,112 curtailment orders sent to junior and senior water rights holders have been acknowledged within the seven-day statutory limit.   read more

TURN’s turnaround was prompted by the revelation in February that then-commission President Michael Peevey met privately with Edison executive Stephen Pickett in Warsaw, Poland, in March 2013 to discuss a framework for settlement without the pesky public involved. Peevey is a former president of Edison. The meeting was detailed in some of the thousands of e-mails released last year that revealed an overly close, if not illegal, relationship between the regulator and the utilities it regulated.   read more

The problem is water. It shouldn't be sloshing about in spaces around the rods. At first, the dampness was blamed on poor grouting, rainwater or wash water from above. That's not good, but not as bad as corrosive saltwater leaking in through the foundation cap below. It causes microcracks and makes steel rods brittle. Almost all of the rods have gotten wet and a fourth of them regularly get soaked.   read more

It's the eighth death, seven in the U.S. and one in Malaysia. More than 100 injuries have been reported, but there is little doubt that there are, and will be, more. The problem has existed for more than a decade, but only received attention in the last year, as recalls hit 34 million. A report from Senate Democrats said, "Takata may have prioritized profit over safety by halting global safety audits for financial reasons.”   read more

The San Jose Mercury News took a look at water usage in two Bay Area communities, separated by just 24 miles but light years apart in financial resources. The average person in the affluent Contra Costa County community of Diablo uses 345 gallons of water a day, nearly seven times the amount of a working-class Alameda County resident in San Lorenzo.   read more

The pope said, "This system seems to provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors.”   read more

“This is unprecedented in terms of the extent and magnitude of this harmful algal bloom and the warm water conditions we’re seeing offshore,” according to Vera Trainer, manager of the Marine Microbes and Toxins Program at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC) in Seattle. The algae produce toxins which are ingested by feeding shellfish, sardines, anchovies and other plankton-loving fish.   read more