California

"Southern California laid miles of pipe and tunneled through mountains to import water. But it also built a storm drain system to quickly get rid of rainfall. The contradiction played out again this week."

"The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta would become a "national heritage area" and receive federal funding and planning oversight under a controversial provision slipped into a massive spending bill that died a sudden death Thursday night."

"The cap-and-trade system will limit emissions from 600 major industrial plants in the state, starting in 2012. Firms could buy pollution offsets from timber companies that preserve carbon in forests."

"A federal judge yesterday threw out a federal scientific study that forms the basis for protecting the delta smelt in California's sprawling Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta."

"California regulators approved a pesticide Wednesday for use by fruit and vegetable growers despite heavy opposition from environmental and farmworker groups that cited its links to cancer."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday levied a $300,000 fine against a toxic waste dump near a Central California farming community plagued by birth defects for failing to properly manage carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs."

In California, recyclers are sending the discarded electronic devices they can not profitably reclaim toxic materials from to foreign countries -- where workers pick them apart by hand and are exposed to harmful substances.

"LOS ANGELES — This auto-obsessed city — a place where people love their cars almost as much as they hate the traffic — has embarked on the biggest expansion of its mass transit system in decades, an effort to change the way people navigate its sprawling and clogged streets and freeways."