Sacramento County Sustainability Digest

Suppliers now have detailed steps to create a new source of drinking water. But it’s not really “toilet-to-tap.” Due to the cost, it’ll likely be only large suppliers.

Water fights have shaped California since its infancy as a state, when its abundance seemed limitless. Now, Californians are being forced to confront limitations, and the state that prides itself on creating the future is now reckoning with its past.

It takes about 90 days for organic waste to become compost at the Yolo County Central Landfill, yielding a fine, dark brown heap of compost. 
But many residents aren’t recycling their organics at all.

Officials in Kern County are proposing to build a carbon management facility that would be twice the size of Manhattan. By doing this, they would leverage federal tax credits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Eighteen California children are suing the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming it violated their constitutional rights by failing to protect them from the effects of climate change—the latest in a series of similar cases filed on behalf of children.

An estimated 100,000 pizza boxes have been removed from Yosemite’s waste stream. This is because the famed park now serves pizza on trays and puts to-go portions in compostable bags, part of a move to reduce food-related waste.

A pilot program in the Sacramento City Unified School District could help California’s emerging electric vehicle industry by preparing students for EV technician roles upon graduation.

A Cal Poly Humboldt professor is partnering with USDA researchers to study biochar, which results from heating dry plant-based materials at high temperatures without oxygen. The CO2 in the charcoal then stays in the soil for hundreds of years, rather than in the atmosphere.

A new law expanding California’s atmospheric river research program goes into effect next year. It connects flood and reservoir control operations with new technologies and strategies that can help operators accurately predict the arrival of these storms.

Private company Brightline secured a $3 billion grant through the U.S. Department of Transportation toward a 218-mile high-speed rail line from Rancho Cucamonga to Las Vegas. The line would allow people to make the trip to Sin City in a little over two hours.

An Alameda County judge ruled on Nov. 22 that the city of Oakland thwarted a proposed coal export terminal. The judge will rule if the developer who sued is entitled to $159 million in damages or moving forward with the project.

A new study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found that approximately 3,400 kilotons of lithium are located below Imperial County in Southern California. This could produce more than $7 billion in lithium carbonate annually, helping power significant numbers of electric vehicles.

The world is heating up at an unprecedented pace, new climate data shows, and leaders gathered for the COP28 conference in Dubai must get us out of “deep trouble,” UN chief António Guterres said.

2023 has broken climate records, accompanied by extreme weather which has left a trail of devastation, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

An analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy found that with expected technology advances, the Salton Sea region’s total lithium resources could produce more than 3,400 kilotons of lithium, enough to support over 375 million batteries for electric vehicles—more than the total number currently on U.S. roads.

Livestock are responsible for half of all methane emissions in California. The White House is giving $21.4 million to California Dairies and $22.8 million to Dairy Farmers of America to help change this.

Fulcrum Bioenergy, a California-based firm that seeks to turn plastics into jet fuel, has defaulted on $289 million in bond funding and put a major project on hold. This comes as several U.S. Senators wrote to the IRS urging that similar companies not receive federal tax credits.

A newly updated “plant hardiness zone map” from the Department of Agriculture has many of the nation’s gardeners rushing online, Googling what new plants they can grow in their mostly warming regions.

From the outside, it’s unremarkable: A metallic building alongside a quiet road on the outskirts of Tracy. But on its opening day, people from all over the country traveled to see it.

State and local leaders gathered in Los Angeles to celebrate a new plan that will increase access to the outdoors for all Californians, regardless of who they are or where they live.

Center for Food Safety has filed arguments seeking to revoke the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of nationwide permit 56, which authorizes industrial finfish aquaculture structures in ocean waters around the country. CFS represents a coalition of conservation, tribal, and fishing organizations.

More than 1.5 million acres of forest have been burned or scarred in California. Climbers go high in trees to grab pine cones that could help in reforestation.

Intense rains have California out of a drought less than a year after most of the state faced water shortages. A climatologist is urging wise water usage ahead of California’s next drought.

The Office of Habitat Conservation’s Restoration Center has awarded $27.8 million to bring Central California Coast coho salmon back to California rivers, funding projects by Trout Unlimited, the San Mateo and Gold Ridge Resource Conservation Districts, and the Nature Conservancy.

The USA is likely to see consistent job growth from the transition to net zero, but the gains will be unevenly distributed, shows a new analysis conducted by Imperial College London researchers and published in Nature Climate Change.

A UCLA climate scientist says California’s redwoods might not last in their current groves for another 100 years. An effort is afoot to plant redwoods elsewhere in more potentially hospitable climates, such as the Pacific Northwest.

Researchers tell LAist that half of California’s population of Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, which are endangered, died last winter due to record weather. Causes of death include avalanches, starvation and getting eaten by mountain lions after moving to lower elevations for food.

As California moves away from gas-powered technology, state officials have looked for ways to ease stress on our electrical grid. A recent California Energy Commission decision tackles the systems powering swimming pools.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law in October, SB 272 by Sen. John Laird, that requires local governments to plan for rising sea levels. It's already factoring into planning in places like Marin County.

Three dam expansion projects could increase water storage for use in the Central Valley by a whopping 304,000 acre feet. Each of the projects—located in Merced, Madera and Fresno counties—would raise existing dams, not build new ones.

China modeled some of its climate programs on policies first adopted by California. Now, California depends on the world’s most populous country for essential materials in its electric vehicle ambitions.

The US Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees air quality, allows local air regulators to strike some pollution from air-quality records, using a mostly overlooked legal tool called the exceptional events rule.