California

"You may think of surfers as slackers. But in Santa Cruz, Calif., they're city council members and business owners. And they're also conservationists — who just got their piece of the central California coast named a World Surfing Reserve."

"Long before surf music topped the charts and long before surfers had crazy nicknames, surfers have been riding the waves in Santa Cruz.

On a recent day, the crowd included 'Wingnut' — also known as Robert Weaver — and other surfers. He pointed out some friends: 'There's Frosty, there's Boots, there's Fathead.'

"For a good part of its rich history, residents of unincorporated Allensworth, the first African American colony west of the Mississippi, have gone without a reliable supply of safe drinking water."

This is still the case today, where the Tulare County community's wells -- which provide water to the neighboring Colonel Allensworth State Historical Park that commemorates the area's legacy -- exceed federal levels for arsenic.

"Some worry that a water-diversion deal, sending farm irrigation water to sprawling San Diego, will spell doom for the Salton Sea – and exposure to toxins for humans and wildlife. Others say protections are in place to ensure that can't happen."

"Serious safety violations at power plants go uncorrected because regulators have never used their formal enforcement powers, the California Public Utilities Commission stated in a budget request being considered by legislators."

Harbor porpoises began disappearing from San Francisco Bay during the height of Navy ship activity there during World War II. "We don't know why they disappeared. … It's very possible that they just abandoned the place because it became too hard to feed, reproduce and raise their young," said William Keener, a co-investigator and spokesman with the nonprofit Golden Gate Cetacean Research group. "Then all of a sudden, the porpoises were back."

"SAN DIEGO — There are accusations of conspiracies, illegal secret meetings and double-dealing. Embarrassing documents and e-mails have been posted on an official Web site emblazoned with the words 'Fact vs. Fiction.' Animosities have grown so deep that the players have resorted to exchanging lengthy, caustic letters, packed with charges of lying and distortion. And it is all about water."

"The deaths of up to 20,000 migrating birds this year in a wildlife refuge near the Oregon border has renewed debate about resource management on the Klamath River, where myriad competing interests are fighting for water rights."

"A 1974 memo from Dow Chemical describes several chemicals in a widely used farm fumigant as 'garbage.' Today, one of those useless chemicals threatens drinking water for more than 1 million people across the San Joaquin Valley. Now linked to cancer, the toxin was waste from a plastic-making process. Chemical companies often mix such leftovers to create other products to avoid the cost of disposal, says one long-time chemical engineer."

"In a worrisome development for citrus growers in California, or anybody there who has a beloved lemon or orange tree in the yard, the citrus disease huanglongbing, or citrus greening, has been found in southeastern Los Angeles County, the California Department of Food and Agriculture reports. It's the first time the disease, one of the most serious scourges of citrus, has been reported in the state."