Katharine Mieszkowski and Lance Williams at The Center for Investigative Reporting put a lot of the blame for a lack of transparency about water on a 1997 change in the California Public Records Act pushed by wealthy folks in the Silicon Valley who didn’t want the California Public Records Act to expose their utility usage data.   read more

Attorneys for nine growers arrested on conspiracy marijuana charges in Northern California in 2011 argued that the law they were being prosecuted under was unconstitutional because marijuana is grouped with the harshest drugs which, by definition, have “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” The judge said, “This is not the court and this is not the time. . . . The questions raised by the defense are for Congress to resolve.”   read more

The U.S. Department of Education announced it had found 947 instances of Heald's parent, Corinthian, misstating its placement rate of students after graduation, information used in recruitment that current students probably relied on in choosing the school. The department said, “Heald paid companies to hire graduates for temporary positions as short as two days, asked them to perform tasks like moving computers and organizing cables, and then counted those graduates as ‘placed in field.’ ”   read more

The DOJ exit signaled that great strides had been made in fixing civil rights abuses and generally rancid conditions in the 16 camps housing juvenile offenders. The L.A. County Auditor-Controller looked at seven of the more important 73 reforms signed off on by the feds to see if compliance had, indeed, been met. Sadly, six did not meet standards.   read more

Shortly after the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) announced its decision, President Michael Picker said that he questions whether even a record penalty can influence the highly-profitable utility to change its evil ways. “If PG&E is failing to establish a safety culture, and we continue to see more accidents and violations, what are our tools?” Picker reportedly told those attending the commission meeting.   read more

The Department of Public Health released the documents in response to a lawsuit filed in 2012, but not before the case went to the California Supreme Court. The agency argued that the info was not public record and cited a 1967 law. The high court cited a newer, more specific law that said it was.   read more

Seven officers are facing termination for recently revealed racist and homophobic text messages they sent in 2011 and 2012. An eighth has already resigned. The texts came to light last month when federal prosecutors filed a motion to keep former S.F. police Sergeant Ian Furminger in custody after his conviction in a department scandal that is still unfolding. He and another officer were convicted of taking money from the homes of drug dealers during arrests.   read more

The U.S Department of Commerce called the system “severely behind schedule” and froze a $154-million grant, which paid for 80% of the system meant to link up 80 public safety agencies and 34,000 first-responders serving 10 million people across 4,060 square miles. Such a system has been talked about since September 11, 2001, and ardently pursued for the past six years.   read more

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar ruled in San Francisco that refusing to pay for the surgery denied 51-year-old convicted killer Michelle-Lael Norsworthy (formerly Jeffrey Bryan Norsworthy) constitutionally adequate medical treatment. He issued an injunction compelling the state to provide the surgery, which could cost up to $100,000.   read more

Craig Wilson, former Delta watermaster at the Water Board, told the Sacramento Bee that Governor Brown was on the wrong track. “Ag is where the water is," he said. "Come up with a plan to cut their water use by 10%, 20%. I wouldn’t dictate to the farmers how to do it, but tell them to give us the plan that shows how you’re going to do it.”   read more

The finding is significant for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that California was fined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2012 for exceeding smog limitations. More than $100 million has been collected. The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District asked the EPA to give it an exemption from the standards because of outside influences beyond their control.   read more

“This industry is not being transparent about how much water they use," U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D- California) said. There has never been an environmental assessment of bottling at Strawberry Creek. And no government authority has ever told Nestle to cut back its operations because of the drought. That’s how public review of big corporations is conducted; it’s not that way for individual water users.   read more

The herbicide scares the hell out of a lot of environmentalists and many scientists, but got a clean bill of health from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1991, six years after its original classification as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” Now, the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) has revisited the controversial herbicide, which is used in conjunction with genetically modified crops (GMOs), and determined it “probably” causes cancer.   read more

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported this week that California nearly tripled its 2013 solar output, while noting at the same time that hydroelectric power use in the state was down 46% last year compared to the five-year average. Overall, the state’s use of renewable energy sources inched up a bit last year, but it is far below 2011, before the four-year drought kicked in and hydroelectric power was more than double the current output.   read more

The study uses 319 internal documents from the International Sugar Research Foundation from 1959-1971 that discuss how the industry manipulated the federal research funding priorities of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) U.S. National Institute of Dental Research and shaped national policy for decades to come. “These tactics are strikingly similar to what we saw in the tobacco industry in the same era,” said Glantz, who is a co-author on the sugar report.   read more

Lawyers for four Californians are seeking class-action status in a suit against 28 wineries in the state for producing, manufacturing and/or distributing “wine in California that contains inorganic arsenic in amounts far in excess of what is allowed in drinking water.” Most of the affected wines cost less than $10 a bottle and much of it sold for under $5.   read more