Santa Cruz County News & Analysis Articles

As four aging hydroelectric dams are demolished, tribes and communities along the Klamath River wait anxiously to see what the future holds. “Once a river is dammed, is it damned forever?” experts ask.

Psychedelics are having a moment. A nationwide push to bring magic mushrooms and other psychedelics into the mainstream is gaining traction, and some Californians want in.

Under a system that has long prioritized local control for school districts. state officials now are fighting some recent board decisions regarding LGBTQ students.

The mysterious buyers of $1 billion worth of Solano County land have been revealed as a consortium of Silicon Valley billionaires who want to build a new city from scratch.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s big new experiment to push people with mental illness off the streets and into treatment starts this fall. Counties responsible for the rollout say it may end up being more modest than advertised.

Some independent California community hospitals have struggled with rising costs since the COVID-19 pandemic. Three declared bankruptcy this year, prompting the state to distribute interest-free loans.

American Medical Response has poured more than $3 million into a November 2024 initiative to raise requirements for levying taxes and fees. The company says it’s looking out for patients, but local officials say it’s about the money.

State boards are backing a bill to continue carve-outs from California’s open meetings law. An unusual coalition of good government, press, taxpayer and industry groups is fighting back.

Neighbors to one of California’s biggest hazardous waste recyclers say they’re unfairly exposed to pollution, but can California afford to lose one of the few facilities that still takes toxic waste?

U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla and the United Farm Workers union say a recent death in a tomatillo field was due to heat, but a coroner’s report doesn’t back that up.

Climate change has warmed Pacific Ocean waters, causing storms to rapidly intensify, leading to the first tropical storm watch in Southern California ever as Hurricane Hilary prepares to make landfall.

Two different state courts have ruled recently that the human noise created by future tenants in housing projects are a form of pollution that cities must address. Lawmakers and the governor are working to reverse that novel interpretation of environmental …

More California police departments are deploying body cameras. A new court ruling restricts how prosecutors can use footage of witness accounts at trial.

Three fossil fuel plants will stand by to provide emergency power for three more years despite California's mandate to switch to clean energy by 2045.

Two of the three troubled California hospitals are especially vital to their communities because they’re the only emergency providers in their rural counties. Health care chains could keep them afloat.

A recent state survey reveals 2 in 3 Black women are breadwinners; 8 in 10 worry about discrimination or mistreatment and more like Gov. Gavin Newsom than Vice President Kamala Harris.

A discrimination complaint filed by Native American tribes and environmental justice groups alleges that California has failed to protect water quality in the Bay-Delta. The EPA is investigating.

Medi-Cal and other programs are testing food prescriptions that advocates say could improve chronic conditions, lower health care costs and reduce hunger.

Travis Air Force Base in Solano County is now surrounded on three sides by a Delaware company with millions of dollars and no public record of who is behind it. And the federal government hasn’t been able to solve the …

Showing solidarity with other social classes is a prominent union strategy in the so-called “hot labor summer” sweeping California. It’s too soon to say if the inter-union activity will get employers to bargain.