San Benito County Sustainability Digest

The funds would help California ports expand to handle giant wind turbines and other equipment. California’s first offshore wind farms are on a fast track off Humboldt County and Morro Bay.

When wildfire smoke and extreme heat combine, they create “a synergistic effect” or an “additional burden” on people’s health, researchers say.

San Benito County planners voted 4-1 against the John Smith Landfill expansion project’s EIR, conditional use permit and General Plan amendment.

Some automakers are reducing production of electric cars and Tesla sales have dropped. Can California sustain its record pace and meet the state mandate?

As Californians increasingly feel the health effects of climate change, state leaders are adopting sweeping policies they hope will fend off the worst impacts.

Chinook and other salmon runs are collapsing. Conservation groups call it too little, too late. Plan includes dam removals and restoring river flows.

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

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.

Experts worry that the steep decline could stall the state’s battle against climate change. Solar power is critical to meeting California’s ambitious requirement to switch to carbon-free electricity.

After a presentation on the landfill project, the council unanimously agreed to oppose the recommended haul route along Hwy 25 and receive further direction about the city’s hazardous waste disposal site at a future meeting.

California farmers face challenges posed by multiple types of fruit flies. Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed spending just over $22 million to combat the spread of these flies.

New rules took effect Jan. 1 permanently protecting the most fragile deep sea corals off Southern California. Simultaneously, more than 4,500 square miles of ocean waters are now reopened to fishing after more than 20 years of closures.

Raging storms brought major damage to California’s coastline last winter. But in Half Moon Bay, a different kind of coastal upheaval is gaining momentum—one that could decide the fate of billions of dollars of property and affect hundreds of public beaches.

BenitoLink looks ahead to construction projects in the county that are expected to begin or be completed in 2024.

Dec. 28 marks the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon. Its purpose: “to protect and recover imperiled species and the ecosystems upon which they depend.”

Visitors can see the critically endangered Lord How Island stick insect, on display for the first time in North America, in a special habitat at the zoo’s Wildlife Explorers Basecamp.

The Monterey Bay region, which includes Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties, is undergoing a major demographic shift with a younger generation that is more diverse, according to Chris Benner, director of the Institute for Social Transformation at UC Santa Cruz.

A dark-sky movement to save birds from window strikes is sweeping the San Francisco Bay Area. Several cities have passed or are drafting laws restricting light pollution while making windows easier for birds to see.

Novelist Jonathan Franzen looks at how trap-neuter-release policies in feral cat colonies have troubling consequences for city residents, local wildlife and even the felines themselves.

The California Strategic Growth Council approved over $116 million in Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program grants to permanently protect 50,500 acres of croplands and rangelands, as well as lands utilized by Indigenous tribes for the cultivation of traditional resources.

Along with adding chemicals to wastewater, the city plans to rebuild part of the sewer system and replace manholes to control the odor.

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.

A small band of researchers have hatched an ambitious amphibian comeback, using foothill yellow-legged frog eggs from a creek near King City to reestablish populations within the frog’s historic range.

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.

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.

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.

The California Rangeland Trust announced the 9,400-acre Silacci Ranch's conservation was finalized, preserving the family's 140-year ranching legacy on land in Monterey and San Benito counties.

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.

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.