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The start of April means that California’s rainy season is coming to an end and things are looking pretty good this year, but there are some caveats. The snowpack across the Sierra Nevada and the Colorado River Basin – both critical stores of water – is hovering slightly above average, though it’s nowhere near what we saw last winter. For comparison, in 2023, the State Water Project (SWP) was able to fulfill 100 percent of water requests made by municipalities across California. This year, the SWP announced a 30 percent allocation. “Last year there was so much water we were looking for every place we could to store some water,” said John Yarborough, assistant deputy director for the SWP. A slow start to the rainy season across the Sierra could lead to decreased runoff as the dry ground beneath the snowpack sucks up what it can when everything starts to melt.
Switching to an electric heat pump water heater can save you money and help the state avoid power outages during hot summer evenings. And there’s money available for low-income homes and renters to make the switch. Heating water is typically the second-largest source of energy use in a home, behind heating and cooling air. Electric heat pump water heaters are three times more efficient than gas ones, which can help with your bill, and they can be programmed to heat water during the middle of the day when there’s an oversupply of solar power and electricity rates are the cheapest, which helps lower demand on hot summer evenings when we’re most prone to power outages.
We’ve reached a big deadline in Los Angeles County’s election cycle today: The registrar is certifying the March 5 primary.
Valverde’s death comes after the city of L.A. honored her last year with a dedicated square.
Empty nesters own more L.A. homes than millennials with kids. Here’s how some older homeowners are finding ways to spread their wealth. David Wagner reports.
From post-apocalypse classics to “mysterious and magical” graphic novels, here’s what the students at Octavia E. Butler Magnet are reading.
The Pasadena middle school Butler graduated from now shares her name. A new generation of students is connecting with the late science fiction writer’s legacy, and difficulties.
The Viet America Society, a nonprofit with ties to O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do and his 22-year-old daughter, will have more time to show what it did with millions of taxpayer dollars, the organization’s attorney told The Orange County Register. https://www.ocregister.com/2024/03/28/viet-america-society-given-more-time-by-county-to-produce-documentation-on-spending/ Makenna Sievertson reports.
For the first home game of the season, Julian Vettorazzi showed up at Dodger Stadium as he has for most of his 29 years, this time with 9-year-old son Xander in tow. They were excited to see Shohei Ohtani’s first-at bat at home. But then there was the other issue that Vettorazzi was trying to put out of his mind: a gambling scandal surrounding the world’s biggest ball player. Major League Baseball says it’ll launch an investigation after the two-way star accused his interpreter Ippei Mizuhara of stealing $4.5 million from him to pay off gambling debts.
Over half of Los Angeles County households spend more than 30% of their income on housing, making it difficult to afford health care and nutritious food. That’s according to a local health survey of thousands of Angelenos, the first since the start of the pandemic. It’s a 12% increase since the last survey in 2018.
Everyone agrees the shortage is real and damaging. Potential solutions: Incentives, requirements, even a return to public housing. David Wagner reports.
Few babies and toddlers were enrolled in early childhood development programs, which experts say can stem the negative impacts of homelessness.
A federal jury Wednesday found former Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Raymond Chan guilty of bribery, racketeering, fraud and lying to FBI investigators. He is the latest official to be convicted as a result of a widespread investigation into City Hall corruption.
The Los Angeles County Library is expanding its free naloxone clinics and doubling the number of locations from 5 to 10, officials announced Wednesday. People are able to pick up one box of the nasal spray, more commonly known as Narcan, that can quickly reverse the effects of opioid overdoses, including from heroin, fentanyl, and prescription medications.
The bottom half of Topanga Canyon has been closed for about three weeks now due to a landslide that sent rocks and dirt tumbling into the road during heavy rains on March 9. However, since then, the situation’s only gotten more dire as the earth has continued to move. “It’s really unstable and we can’t put workers underneath where boulders are still falling down,” said Jim Medina, public information officer with Caltrans district seven. Caltrans doesn’t know when the road will open back up.
A slow-moving storm system is expected to dump several inches of rain on Southern California this holiday weekend, potentially putting a damper on any Easter egg hunts and other outdoor plans. The storm is expected to pass through by Monday, but the National Weather Service (NWS) warned another one could be right behind it.
The plan would forbid UC academic departments, labs, institutes, or schools from posting political speech on their main web sites. But would allow such language on faculty pages and other website pages.
For some students, Bad Bunny's songs have opened up new ways of seeing Puerto Rico and the United States, and possibly transformed lives.
The severe lack of family-friendly housing has millennial parents asking: Is leaving Southern California our only option? David Wagner reports.
California is considering a request by AT&T to be relieved of having to offer landline service, which is part of its obligation as a "carrier of last resort." At public hearings, many residents have expressed concerns, including seniors, lawmakers and digital equity advocates
It could become harder for Californians to get access to one of the drugs used in medication abortions, depending on how the U.S. Supreme Court rules this summer. The high court will hear arguments Tuesday in a case brought by the conservative group Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, challenging policies that expand access to the drug mifepristone.
During Ramadan, the Islamic holy month where Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, the triangle shaped, golden pastry is a must have at meals to break the fast.
For the past three weeks, Compton residents Alex and Daisy De La Rosa have been taking the city’s long-standing pothole problems into their own hands — literally. Now after more than three dozen DIY repairs, Compton officials have ordered them to stop.
For a city with the country’s second-largest Asian American population, L.A. has gone for long spells without a single Asian American on its city council. In 1985, Michael Woo became the first Asian American elected to the council and was the only one in city history until 2015, when David Ryu won a seat. In the decade since, the number of Asian Americans on the 15-member council has steadily grown to three: Kevin de Leon, Nithya Raman and John Lee. Their political ideologies and approaches vary widely, underscoring what community advocates have been yelling from the rafters for forever: Asian Americans are not a monolith. In November, voters could add a record fourth Asian American council member to the mix. The latest primary vote tallies that dropped Friday afternoon show a record three Asian American candidates are headed to the runoffs. Lawyer and community leader Grace Yoo is on track to challenge Council member Heather Hutt to represent the centrally-located Council District 10 encompassing Koreatown, Mid-City and West Adams. Yoo, who's running in second place to Hutt in the primary, advances to a run-off with the council member. If elected, Yoo would be the first Korean American woman on the council. Another run-off is happening in the 14th District in northeast L.A., which will continue to have a council member of Asian descent no matter what; the question is who. The district’s embattled council member de León https://laist.com/news/politics/kevin-de-leon-racism-scandal-election is squaring off with tenants rights lawyer Ysabel Jurado https://laist.com/news/politics/2024-election-california-primary-los-angeles-city-council-district-14-vote in a district that includes Boyle Heights, Eagle Rock, and a big chunk of downtown. Jurado, the primary’s top vote-getter, could become the city’s first council member of Filipino descent if she were to defeat de León, who identifies as Latino and Asian American, according to his campaign. The winners will join Raman and John Lee around the council dais. Those council members won re-election to their seats outright in the primary by each getting more than 50% of the vote.
Next year, California will set up trust accounts for children in low-income families who lost a parent or guardian to COVID. But before any money can be claimed, the state now has the herculean task of trying to find kids who are eligible.
Students and families can learn about funky fungus, talk to an astronomer, create space-inspired art, and might even spot their favorite Star Wars character.
The California legislature has extended the deadline to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid — better known as FAFSA — to May 2. The bill now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign.
There are nearly 600 LAUSD school buildings that may still need to be retrofitted. Trying to figure out where things stand is a mess.
Nineteen asylum seekers from Mauritania needed a place to stay, so a Latino Lutheran congregation in Bell took them in. They’ve since formed a community that transcends different languages, faiths, and cultures.
The climate crisis is so huge and overwhelming, it can be paralyzing to many of us. We all want to know that one thing that will really make the difference. But guess what? There’s an app for that. A new app, dashboard.earth https://www.dashboard.earth/, aims to help individuals shake out of that paralysis, take meaningful climate actions – and get rewarded for it. The app, which launched publicly about six months ago and is currently in beta, gamifies climate action and education, and was curated specifically for L.A. “I think at the end of the day, everybody wants to try and figure out what they can do on an individual level to make an impact either locally in their community or on the global scale,” said Kelly Shannon McNeill, associate director at the water conservation non-profit advocacy group Los Angeles Waterkeeper, which partnered with the developers to help design the app. “The goal for dashboard.earth is serving up bite-sized, really accessible, step-by-step actions that almost anybody could take regardless if they're a renter, a homeowner, etc.”
