Category: California

By Chas Smith / Beach Grit / December 30, 2024

Pier pressure to become a thing of the past?

Everyone knows, I think, that California’s coolest surfers generally congregate around the Golden State’s many piers. Bobbing below the fisherpeople in Pismo, shooting the pilings in Huntington, getting all rad in Ocean Beach etc. Pier Rats, as they are reverentially called, thrive off the high stakes of visibility. One thing to bog a top turn whilst out at a local beachbreak. Quite another thing to do whilst under the discerning eyes of tens, if not hundreds, of inland tourists.

By Miranda Ceja / Patch / Dec 24 — 26, 2024

Heads up, Golden State drivers: a handful of new laws come into effect starting Jan. 1, 2025 that will impact the way you drive your vehicle.

From insurance claims to car break-ins — to parking restrictions and license requirements, here’s the run-down on new driving laws impacting Californians for the New Year.

Locked Door Loophole Gets Squashed

This year, a loophole in California criminal code — which defined burglary to include “entering a vehicle when the doors are locked with the intent to commit grand or petit larceny or a felony.”

By Chris Lindahl / San Diego Patch / Dec.26, 2024

Here are over 17 new laws taking effect in 2025:

Property Crime and Retail Theft Package

A package of ten laws signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom amount to what the governor’s office called “the most significant legislation to crack down on property crime in modern California history.”

The laws kicking in on Jan. 1 will create stricter penalties for retail and property theft, mandate sentencing enhancements for large-scale operations, make it easier for people to be charged with felonies if they stole items in multiple counties, and allow police officers to arrest someone for shoplifting with probable cause even if the officer did not witness the act themselves.

By Kat Schuster / San Diego Patch / Dec 18 — 19, 2024

Applications for California’s e-bike incentive program opened this week to encourage residents to reduce their carbon footprint and improve their physical health.
The state is offering vouchers of up to $2,000 to go toward the purchase of a new electric bike and any accessories needed, such as a helmet and a bike lock.

E-bikes, equipped with electric motors to assist with pedaling, have become a popular choice for commuters looking to improve their health while reducing time spent in a vehicle. Because the rider still pedals, e-bikes offer physical activity benefits while also minimizing some of the challenges associated with commuting on a traditional bike.

By Rachel Dobkin / Newsweek / Aug. 28, 2024

United States wildlife officials finalized a plan in late August to kill a little over 450,000 invasive owls from the Pacific Northwest.

In a plan by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to significantly boost efforts to get rid of barred owls crowding out native owls in forests along the upper West Coast, trained shooters will target the invasive species over a period of 30 years across a maximum of about 23,000 square miles in California, Oregon and Washington.

U.S. officials hope to kill up to 452,000 barred owls, which in effect will stop the decline of northern spotted owls, a federally protected threatened species, and California spotted owls. California spotted owls were proposed for federal protection last year and a decision is still pending.

By Ben Mondy / Surfer / December 16, 2024

In the 11th Century, King Canute united the kingdoms of England, Denmark and Norway into what was known as the North Sea Empire. It was an incredible feat. Especially, as he was known as Cnut at the time.

However, he is remembered for setting his throne by the shore and commanding the incoming tide to halt. As the two-footers washed around his shins, he declared to his courtiers: “Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless … heaven, earth and sea obey eternal laws.”

Old Cnut has been forever linked with the futility of trying to stop the tides using his supernatural powers, even if he was trying to teach his fawning courtiers the opposite. Roughly 1,000 years later, his lesson could be applied to the continued building of seawalls to combat erosion.

“Seawalls damage virtually every beach they are built on. If they are built on eroding beaches – and they are rarely built anywhere else – they eventually destroy the beach.” That was Cornelia Dean, the Science Editor of the New York Times, in her book “Against the Tide, The Battle of America’s Beaches.” And that was in 1999.

By Tom Fudge / KPBS / Dec. 12, 2024

San Diego County’s nuclear power plant, San Onofre, was closed more than 10 years ago. But the Diablo Canyon plant is still open and cranking out 18,000 gigawatts a year.

The contract for the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant was set to expire by the end of next year. But a bill passed two years ago by the legislature has kept it open an additional five years, closing one reactor in 2029 and the other in 2030. The plant, near San Luis Obispo, generates nearly 10% of California’s total energy. But critics say it’s actually giving the state too much energy, especially in the spring when hydropower production is at its highest.

Local Union Calls It a Victory for Consumers and Workers

By Alina Selyukh / NPR KPBS / December 10, 2024

Kroger and Albertsons saw their $24.6 billion merger blocked on Tuesday by judges in two separate cases, one brought by federal regulators and the other by the Washington state attorney general.

What would be the biggest grocery merger in U.S. history is now in legal peril after over two years of delays. The companies could choose to continue their legal appeals or abandon the deal. They await another ruling in a third lawsuit in Colorado.

The outlook for America is very dismal if Trump carries through on his threats to deport millions of undocumented people – which he made again this week in a TV interview.

Specifically, California’s agriculture will close down if the people who pick the vegetables and fruits are removed from the fields. And, notably, the costs of those foods will skyrocket, even if offset by the missing mouths of those deported.

Since the pandemic, foreign-born workers have taken positions in such sectors as construction, agriculture, technology and health care, fields where domestic labor supply has been a challenge for those looking to hire. Immigrant workers made up 18.6% of the workforce last year, a new record, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

From 2021 to 2023, 1 in 3 workers in California were immigrants, according to the California Budget & Policy Center. Certain sectors, such as agriculture, are closely watching developments on immigration plans, as the industry has increasingly relied on H-2A workers on temporary visas to fill roles in production.

Plus, there would be a ripple effects from deportation, such as the closure of farms in the state and the reliance on importing food from overseas due to a dwindling labor force. That means higher costs to the consumer.

By Ella Boyd / The Inertia / November 25, 2024

When San Clemente’s Measure BB failed to pass by less than 3 percent of the vote, I began to wonder: what are the pros and cons of sand replenishment on surfing?

Measure BB was a ballot initiative that proposed a half-cent sales tax increase to fund sand replenishment for various beaches, battle coastline erosion, and maintain the Beach Trail and pier. Since research points to almost 70 percent of California’s beaches disappearing by 2100, surely there must be reasons people oppose sand replenishment besides the minute change to their sales tax.

To seek answers, I reached out to San Diego Surfrider Executive Committee member Tom Cook. Tom is a researcher with an MS in Physical Oceanography with over 20 years of experience in coastal ocean current and wave observations. He’s been involved with Surfrider since the late 1990s, starting with revitalizing the South Florida (now Miami) chapter to address beach litter and coastal erosion. After moving to San Diego in the mid-2000s, he co-chaired the Beach Preservation Committee and led efforts like Surf Spot monitoring during SANDAG’s 2012 Regional Beach Sand Project II.

My first question for Cook was simply: what are the pros and cons of sand replenishment as it pertains to surfers? Without beating around the bush, Cook said, “traditional coastal management practices are rarely aligned with surfing interests.”

The following letter to the editor in today’s Los Angeles Times (Nov. 21) caught our attention. The editors put a headline on it of “The reality of single-family blocks” and magnified the letter itself.

Once again, it is being suggested that those who own and live in single-family homes are wealthy and white.

Times of San Diego

A racist term for a Native American woman will be removed from nearly three dozen geographic features and place names on California lands, the state Natural Resources Agency announced Friday.

Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022 signed a bill into law that bans use of the word “squaw” in future place names and ordered the agency to rename all places that used the slur, including on streets, bridges, public buildings and cemeteries, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.