Santa Clara County Environment Digest

The Santa Clara Valley Water District is proposing a new ordinance banning encampments along local waterways to address increasing negative impacts.

Indigenous Californians want President Biden to establish a national monument in a stretch of desert that is both an ecological wonder and a window into their cultures.

A bill to rein in a proposed monthly fee on California electric bills would let California’s largest for-profit utility companies charge customers $24 per month — with fees as low as $6 for lower-income customers — as a kind of membership fee for the power grid.

California has released 500,000 salmon into the Klamath River. As dams are removed, the fish will be some of the first to return to a free-flowing river.

The California Public Utilities Commission will consider on May 9 a new proposal that would change how Californians pay for electricity.

Water suppliers say the costs will be massive, with rates increasing for many consumers. Known as the “Erin Brockovich” chemical, hexavalent chromium is found statewide.

A coalition of timber businesses filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the embattled Pacific Gas & Electric Co., alleging $225 million in damages caused by the 2021 Dixie Fire.

A California Republican’s bill would exempt low and middle income wildfire victims from solar panels requirements on rebuilt homes that didn’t have them when they burned down.

California's reservoirs are brimming with water, and even Shasta Lake could fill up.

Highway 1 is closed indefinitely from Palo Colorado Road to Rocky Creek Bridge, the California Department of Transportation said on social media after a new landslide eroded part of the roadway.

Captains of fishing boats on the California coast are bracing for salmon fishing to be severely restricted — or possibly canceled for a second year.

As winter conditions wind down, the beginning of April is always the most important time for California's water managers to take stock of how much snow has fallen in the Sierra Nevada.
This year, something unusual happened.

The goal is to eliminate habitat competition between "invasive" owls and native owls.

As energy costs go up and awareness of the environmental footprint increases, people are turning to energy consultants for energy audits and advice.

Sieroty, of Beverly Hills, served as a state Assembly member and senator, championing disability rights and efforts to protect California's coast.

California will miss its goals unless it can increase emission reductions threefold, according to a new study.

An interview with the CEO of the popular outdoor app serving more than 60 million users worldwide.

The City Council unanimously agreed to stop enforcing its ban on gas infrastructure to comply with a recent decision by the Ninth Circuit Board of Appeals which struck down a similar prohibition on gas infrastructure in Berkeley in 2023.

Ecologists estimate that up to 14,000 sequoias have been killed in recent wildfires. The National Park Service for the first time has begun replanting some severely burned areas.

The state’s environmental tool skews which communities are designated as disadvantaged, researchers say. Some immigrant neighborhoods could be left out, while other groups are overrepresented.

A temporary lake in Death Valley National Park doubled after recent rains and is now deep enough to launch a kayak. Prior to August, ghostly Lake Manly hadn’t appeared in 19 years.

Foragers at the beaches in Half Moon Bay might be damaging the area’s reef.

A handful of super powerful tropical storms in the last decade and the prospect of more to come has a couple of experts proposing a new category of whopper hurricanes: Category 6.

The storm fed off of unusually warm waters as it grew. It also reached “bomb cyclone” status as it neared California.

Monarch butterflies have a long way to go before reaching stable population numbers.

As an underground fire burns deep within Chiquita Canyon Landfill, air regulators are raising alarms over the possible spread of toxic vapors.

What is an ARkStorm and why is everyone talking about it on social media right now?

Take a period of limited rainfall. Add heat. And you have what scientists call a “hot drought”—dry conditions made more intense by the evaporative power of hotter temperatures.

Just weeks after a deal fell through to buy the Richmond Ranch for development, county leaders are moving forward with turning the open space into a massive park.

A major housing project proposed in the East Whisman neighborhood received praise for adding more green space and affordable units, but not with some misgivings about the loss of trees and where those affordable units would go.

When Palo Alto passed an ambitious tree-protection law in 2022, it aimed to shield the city's treasured canopy from destruction. But as the council pared back the law, some called for more radical measures.

A federal appeals court has declined to reconsider its controversial April 2023 decision that mutes Los Altos’ and other cities’ attempts to require natural gas bans in new construction.