The first of two reports, based on data from NASA's two Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, said 21 of the world's 37 largest aquifers were losing more water than gaining and 16 were in positive territory. The eight worst were classified as overstressed and another five were considered “extremely” or “highly stressed.” All 13 were losing water rapidly, but the eight worst weren’t replenishing any of the supply.   read more

The State Auditor issued a scathing report this week about the plight of Medi-Cal patients after passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) greatly expanded their numbers the past two years. The audit found that California’s Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) still can’t say how many doctors in the state accept Medi-Cal patients, despite requirements that insurance providers maintain adequate physician networks, and complaints from patients and their advocates that they have not.   read more

The state telegraphed it was coming for months, but on Friday the State Water Resources Control Board sent out notices to 114 owners holding 276 senior rights that access to flowing water in the Sacramento River basin, the San Joaquin River basin and Delta is curtailed until further notice. The San Jose Mercury News said they use 1.2 million acre feet of water a year, around twice what Los Angeles residents use.   read more

Unnamed L.A. officials cited a new report by the city’s Department of Water and Power (DWP) that electricity could be obtained cheaper from other sources, but also expressed concerns about bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and the wisdom of building a disruptive solar plant just one mile from the Mojave National Preserve.   read more

The PUC undertook its own review of the e-mails, and 80 e-mailers, and determined no one still working there had committed an offense deserving of suspension or firing. PUC Executive Director Timothy Sullivan wrote to employees on May 27 that 54 individuals required no “corrective action” and the rest would be handled, because it is a personnel matter, without public comment.   read more

The worst was Covered California, but Community Colleges, the Department of Human Resources (CalHR) and the Franchise Tax Board were all found to be profoundly deficient. Covered California had 55 website pages with distinct violations out of 57 reviewed. More than 300 serious violations were found on the website and some content was “totally inaccessible” to users.   read more

The “emergency” action was taken in response to a public uproar over the widespread use of traffic fines and attached secondary fees to fund basic court functions. Many of the Superior Courts regard the charges as budgetary necessities in light of massive cutbacks by the state and mismanagement of the judiciary’s limited resources. That isn’t changing. They will continue.   read more

The question is: What constitutes an emergency? The county Department of Planning and Development is expected to decide that within days and Energy Division Director Kevin Drude told the Santa Barbara Independent that the permits would be granted if the situation was deemed a threat to public health or essential public services. That scares critics like Environmental Defense Center chief counsel Linda Krol, who said, “We’re coming out of one disaster; we don’t want to walk into another.”   read more

The draft report touches on possible reasons why very few problems, relatively speaking, were found: “These factors include: insufficient pre- and post-fracturing data on the quality of drinking water resources; the paucity of long-term systematic studies; the presence of other sources of contamination precluding a definitive link between hydraulic fracturing activities and impact; and the inaccessibility of some information on hydraulic fracturing activities and potential impacts.”   read more

Two dozen environmental groups sent a letter to the governor protesting his decision: “The damage that has occurred to date is unacceptable—more than 40 miles of the coast fouled with oil, at least 80 dead birds and 45 dead marine mammals, two popular State Parks closed and 138 square miles closed to fishing. Now is the time when we need the greatest possible protections for the coastal environment, not a weakening of California’s signature coastal protection law.”   read more

Water agencies have won the same level of confidentiality about their pumping activities that the law accords residential and commercial users. That 1997 law, passed six years after the media publicly shamed Silicon Valley water users during a drought, made the information private. “We’re going to finally regulate and monitor groundwater, and we’re going to keep it all secret,” James Wheaton, legal director of the Oakland-based Environmental Law Foundation, told CIR.   read more

Fines ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 were meted out to medical centers in nine counties for incidents including the improper administering of medication tubes, surgical materials left behind in a patient and a burned baby. Some of the cases are old—one dates back to 2011—but have only recently been closed.   read more

Los Angeles County is served by 228 government and private community water systems. Seventy-five percent of them suffer from at least one vulnerability sufficient to put its users at risk. That includes “dependency on a single type of water source, local groundwater contamination, small size, or a projected increase in extreme heat days over the coming decades.”   read more

So far, the deal affects only about 1,000 farmers with riparian water rights—direct access to running water in streams and rivers. In exchange for farmers fallowing 25% of their fields or using 25% less water, the state agrees not to do the unthinkable and challenge their senior water rights before the growing season is over. Not every farmer in the area is expected to sign up for the deal, so that fight might still be coming if the state tries to cut them back―or off.   read more

The association took a neutral stance on Senate Bill 128, which would make it legal for doctors to prescribe lethal medication to terminally-ill patients. The bill, mirrored on Oregon’s law, establishes procedures for requesting aid-in-dying drugs and provides immunity from civil or criminal liability to those who assist terminal patients in good faith.   read more

The Santa Barbara Independent said the Coast Guard cited Plains All American Pipeline (PAAP) of Texas as estimating that 21,000 gallons of oil gushed out of its broken 24-inch pipeline onshore, flowed into a culvert, made its way to a storm drain and dumped out in the ocean. But the company said on its website late into the evening that “at this time, the amount of released oil is unknown.”   read more