"Lead battery recycling is a crucial but dirty business. As a plant outside Los Angeles seeks to renew its operating permit, the community pushes back."

"After years of analysis and debate, California regulators have adopted a nation-leading drinking water standard for hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen found in water supplies across the state."

"Brimming with wildlife and offering panoramic views of San Francisco Bay, César Chávez Park welcomes visitors who might never suspect this stretch of shoreline was built atop a municipal landfill. But beneath the sprawling grasslands and charming hiking trails, decomposing waste continues to generate methane gas."

"Over the past year, California regulators have kneecapped small-scale solar needed to hit the state’s climate goals. These lawmakers are trying to bring it back."

"More than 80 years ago, a beautiful butterfly called Xerces Blue that once fluttered among San Francisco’s coastal dunes went extinct as stately homes, museums and parks ate up its habitat, marking the first butterfly species in the United States to disappear due to human development."

"Earlier this spring, California dairy farmers noted a puzzling drop in milk production in Texas, New Mexico, Idaho, Ohio, Kansas and Michigan. Weeks later, news broke that several herds in these states, as well as North Carolina, had been diagnosed with avian influenza — the same strain that has devastated bird populations across the globe and shown a troubling ability to jump to mammals."

"President Biden plans to expand the perimeters of two national monuments in California, protecting mountains and meadows in a remote area between Napa and Mendocino as well as a rugged stretch east of Los Angeles, two people familiar with the administration’s plans said Thursday."

"Federal fishery managers voted Wednesday to cancel all commercial and recreational salmon fishing off the coast of California for the second year in a row, and only the fourth time in state history, because of dwindling stocks."

"With their roaring diesel engines, tugboats push, pull and guide much larger vessels into port and out to sea. They are small but mighty — and incredibly dirty, spewing huge amounts of toxic exhaust and planet-warming emissions every year. Now, however, the humble harbor craft is going electric."