Placer County Environment Articles

California may soon shut down its last nuclear power plant, but Gov. Gavin Newsom who once championed the closure has had a change of heart. Federal funds may now keep the plant running.

Sometimes making the community better manifests as a better understanding of how nature works. Local birders lead the way.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Air Resources Board are boasting about California's shift to zero-emission vehicles but the reality of making it happen is daunting.

A few times a year I make my way to Sierra Valley north of Truckee for a road bike ride and am always amazed by the pastoral beauty of ranches, sagebrush and marshes that provides habitat for a range of …

Saving water is more important than ever in California, due to the region’s worst drought conditions in 1,200 years. Here are some steps you can take to help.

California can increase water savings in urban and suburban areas by 30 to 48 percent using nothing but existing technology, a new report from the Pacific Institute says.

It's a sunny, crisp, cold winter morning when Tahoe Weekly Publisher Katherine Hill and I set out to learn more about lake hydrology and human’s impacts on it. The snowshoe outing is a joint partnership Tahoe Institute of Natural Science …

Gas prices are going up. But America has long paid too little for gasoline, along with a low gas tax rate. Is it time for all of that to change?

I wasn’t surprised when the updated over-snow vehicle (OSV) plan released by the U.S. Forest Service’s Stanislaus National Forest led to a lawsuit by several snowmobile groups. After all, it took a 2011 lawsuit to force Forest Districts around the …

In spite of legal pushback on changes to snowmobile access, national forest districts in the Tahoe Sierra are moving forward with updated over-snow vehicle (OSV) management plans this year. The Tahoe Sierra encompasses portions of six Forest Service Districts – …

California’s outdated water rights laws have failed to account for the effects of climate change, says a new expert report, which makes some strong recommendations.

Thousands of miles of railroad track, including some in Santa Cruz County, now sit idle. The fate of those largely abandoned tracks has become a burning controversy.

Keep Truckee Green has added a food compost bin at Mountain Hardware on Donner Pass Road for food scraps only. The food compost bin is open year-round in the rear parking lot off Forest Lane. Bins are also available year-round …

The climate change era has created a whole new set of terms for a wide variety of storms and other weather phenomena. Here are some of the most important.

California has a new law to ban leaf blowers, which both annoy neighbors and pollute the air. Here’s why the law might not do enough, explained.

Placer County’s multiple fire districts are in a constant battle for adequate resources. Here’s what they’re doing about it, and how the county’s system works.

The pesky mosquito can be deadly as well as annoying. Here’s how local governments in California have been waging war on mosquitoes for more than a century.

LA Times staff writer Louis Sahagun reports from the front lines of the battle to preserve California’s most endangered species.

Comstock’s reporter Jennifer Junghans learns about some innovative solutions to the problem of ice on winter roads.

What do resource conservation districts protect? Pretty much everything that’s worth saving.