California

"California lawmakers on Monday approved the nation’s first penalty for price gouging at the pump, voting to give regulators the power to punish oil companies for profiting from the type of gas price spikes that plagued the nation’s most populous state last summer."

"Thousands of acres of cropland have been inundated in this heavily farmed swath of the San Joaquin Valley. And the water just keeps rising."

"First it was the eerie images of barrels leaking on the seafloor not far from Catalina Island. Then the shocking realization that the nation's largest manufacturer of DDT had once used the ocean as a huge dumping ground—and that as many as half a million barrels of its acid waste had been poured straight into the water."

"As drought dried up rivers that carry California’s newly hatched Chinook salmon to the ocean, state officials in recent years resorted to loading up the fish by the millions onto trucks and barges to take them to the Pacific."

"A big-wave surfer at Mavericks is essentially an ocean sensor. Grant Washburn can tell you the approximate depth of the seafloor beneath him, the size of a 40-foot wave and the wind speed blowing foam off the peak, all based on the crescendo in his nervous system."

"An unusually virulent type of toxoplasmosis is killing California sea otters — and may pose an eventual public health threat to other marine animals and to humans, a new study has found."

"The EPA plans to grant California a waiver that will allow the state to phase out diesel-powered trucks, helping communities burdened by truck pollution".

"Federal regulators overseeing West Coast fisheries have effectively called off California’s entire 2023 ocean salmon fishing season, in an effort to protect fish populations that have dwindled during the ongoing drought."

"Mandatory water restrictions are being lifted for nearly 7 million people across Southern California following winter storms that have boosted reservoirs and eased the severe shortage that emerged during the state’s driest three-year period on record."

"The latest in a series of atmospheric river storms soaked California on Tuesday, bringing another deluge of rain to the already-saturated state, while a Nor'easter swirling over New York and New England prompted emergency orders and closed roads."