A little more than a year after hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans into a real-life Atlantis and focused scrutiny on flood-imperiled cities nationwide, California voters will be asked this fall to spend billions to prevent a Katrina-size disaster in the heart of their own state. >>read more

The presence of ammonium perchlorate - an ingredient used in rocket fuel, military munitions and other applications - in underground aquifers is contaminating drinking water supplies in several high-growth areas around the state. >> read more

Urban sprawl has been blamed for everything from vanishing farmland and dwindling wildlife to Baby Boomer obesity. Central Valley air pollution regulators are blaming it now for much of the region's persistently dismal air quality, and they have embraced a radical fix never before tried.

Two new chapters have been written in one of California's longest-running environmental dramas. The latest installments lack the emotional wallop of earlier parts, which featured celebrities, death and torture, but may ultimately prove more significant. >>read more

The Environmental Trust, Inc., (TET) became the first land trust in the nation to declare bankruptcy in March 2005. The San Diego nonprofit organization's bankruptcy raises questions about the long-term stability of land trusts and mitigation banks. >>read more

To its supporters, the California Environmental Quality Act is a powerful mechanism for protecting air, water, wildlife, land, public health and safety. Critics, on the other hand, regard it as a powerful mechanism for mischief, allowing activists to delay or halt projects they oppose even if the activists' complaints are without merit. >>read more

Rep. Richard Pombo has been trying to revise the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) for nearly a decade, having been handed that seemingly Sisyphean task by the GOP leadership shortly after the party took control of Congress in 1994. The Tracy Republican has never made much headway in what he calls an effort to "improve"- critics typically substitute "cripple" or "gut" - one of the nation's key environmental laws. >>read more

Ten years ago, conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta were grim. Fish populations were crashing, forcing shutdowns of the giant pumps that send fresh water south from the Delta to Central Valley farms and Southern California cities. >>read more