Michelle Reynolds drives for Uber in Sacramento, and she’s lived in Sacramento for 11 years. Two years ago, she got her electric vehicle. 

“The only kind of downside would maybe be long distance road trips if it’s hard to find a charger, but I haven’t experienced a lot of that recently,” Reynolds said. “I think I’d only go electric from here on out.”

Reynolds said she averages between 300 to 500 miles a day, and her car’s range is about 280 miles. She owns a gas car as well, but she rarely uses it. 

“It’s so cheap when I charge at home,” Reynolds said. “It’s fractional for what I pay in the gas vehicle.”

Interest in electric vehicles is on the rise, according to car shopping site Edmunds. According to AAA, the average gallon of gas in Sacramento has risen to $6.10, compared to $5.05 a year ago. 

Peter Mackin is the president of SacEV, a Sacramento-based electric vehicle enthusiast group. He said that in the early days of electric vehicles, before cars like the Tesla Roadster came out in 2008, if you wanted an electric car you had to be a little more DIY.

“You had to take a gas car and rip out all the drivetrain and put in batteries and an electric motor and controllers and stuff and do it yourself,” Mackin said. “Our mission has evolved quite a bit since the beginning.” 

These days, SacEV focuses on educating and advocating for the use of electric vehicles in Sacramento. Mackin said that if you can charge at home, you can save over $1700 a year driving electric. 

“Even if you have to run an extension cord out of the garage and plug your car in that way, EV is a no-brainer,” Mackin said. “If you have to rely on public charging, it gets a little trickier.”

Victor Mendoza lives in the Bay Area, but drives his electric car to Sacramento three days a week for work. He doesn’t have a charger at home, and said that it can be difficult to navigate.

“I think time, unfortunately, is not on your side, especially if you’re busy. For me, it does require me to plan out my charges as opposed to just being at home,” Mendoza said as he was waiting to charge his car at an Electrify America charging station in the parking lot of a Target. “When I’m out here in Sacramento, though, there’s a lot of charging stations that I could use, so it’s pretty convenient in that sense.”

Charging electric vehicles takes more time than pumping gas. At public direct current fast chargers, charging an electric car to 80% can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, depending on the model of car and its range, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Most electric vehicles come with a charger that can be plugged into any standard AC wall outlet. However, these chargers, usually referred to as level 1 chargers, can take a while to charge your car, averaging between 40 and 50 hours to fully charge a battery.  

The faster level 2 home chargers, which many EV owners use, can fully charge a car between 4 to 10 hours.

Mendoza said that he’s had his electric car for nine months. When trying to get a level 2 home charger, which requires a higher voltage plug than a standard wall outlet, he ran into some issues.

“I found out after the fact that I have to do some more work because I have an older house, which did have to factor into the timing it would take to install something at home,” Mendoza said.

After getting the correct wiring installed in your home, level 2 chargers can be another cost for vehicles that are on average $5,000 - $6,000 more than their gas counterparts when purchased new. However, in Sacramento, SMUD can help cover that cost.

SMUD’s Charge@Home program can offer up to $600 of incentives to help cover costs of installing level 2 chargers. Louie Dias, a Product Services Coordinator at SMUD and an EV owner himself, said that using the level 2 chargers is the ideal way to charge.

“It’s honestly just as easy as plugging in your cell phone at night,” Dias said. “When you wake up in the morning, it’s full, it’s ready to go and to take on everything that we’re going to need it for throughout the day.”

SMUD also offers lower energy rates to EV owners and free of charge EV advisors to any SMUD customer considering switching to an electric vehicle.

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — More than 17,000 people were under evacuation orders in Southern California on Tuesday as a wildfire threatened suburban homes.

The wind-driven Sandy Fire was reported Monday in the hills above Simi Valley, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles.

By Tuesday morning, it had consumed more than two square miles (five square kilometers) of dry brush and destroyed at least one home, according to the Ventura County Fire Department.

The flames were initially pushed by gusts that topped 30 mph (48 kph), but firefighters were aided by calmer winds overnight, said department spokesperson Andrew Dowd.

“We've made a lot of progress against this fire with those improved weather conditions," Dowd said. Crews hoped to make further progress before winds increased again, he said.

The fire was 5% contained. The cause is under investigation.

Evacuation orders and warnings were still in place for several neighborhoods in Simi Valley, a city of more than 125,000 people that was shrouded in smoke as aircraft made water drops.

Meanwhile, firefighters were battling a 23-square-mile (59-square-kilometer) blaze on Santa Rosa Island, off the Southern California coast. The fire destroyed a cabin and an equipment shed and forced the evacuation of 11 National Park Service employees.

There was no containment as of Tuesday morning.

Santa Rosa, a popular destination for camping and hiking, is home to island foxes, spotted skunks and elephant seals.

Bay Area drone delivery company Zipline hopes to one day fly your burrito — and all kinds of consumer goods — right to your front porch. 

It’s already doing so in Dallas and elsewhere across the country. 

But before it can expand, Zipline’s aircraft are flying thousands of test missions above a vast Yolo County ranch near Esparto, where the Stone family has run cattle for half a century and the drones aren’t the only innovation. 

On a recent tour of the Yolo Land & Cattle Company, co-owner Casey Stone stops to gaze at Zipline’s test site. He calls it “the space center,” a hub of activity almost hidden by the ranch’s fog-cloaked foothills about 40 miles west of Sacramento. 

Dozens of white drones with flashing green and red lights take to the sky. They’re hovering over the middle of his 7,500-acre property.

Two-story tall drone docking towers wait for their return. Zipline engineers monitor their flight from the ground below. 

Stone describes the scene this way: “My analogy is when you see ‘Close Encounters [of the Third Kind]’, where they’re climbing around the mountain and they see the extraterrestrial space station there — that’s kind of what it is.” 

They might look surreal, but Zipline’s drones aren’t something out of a movie. Instead, they’re on the cutting-edge of consumer goods transportation. The company, based in South San Francisco, is in competition with tech behemoths like Amazon and Google to dominate the future of air deliveries.

A game changer for delivery

In Yolo County, Zipline’s drones operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, flying hundreds of feet above the Stone family’s green pastures and rolling hills east of Lake Berryessa.

Brothers Scott (left) and Casey Stone own and manage the 7,500-acre cattle ranch in Yolo County where Zipline tests its drone deliveries.Chris Nichols/CapRadio

Zipline’s Mike Rigby is in charge of the drone testing. 

His company believes its technology will be a game changer — one that takes millions of delivery cars and trucks off the road and replaces them with faster, cleaner electric-powered aircraft.

“As our CEO famously likes to say, ‘You don’t need a 4,000 pound vehicle to chauffeur your burrito to yah,’” Rigby says. “We can do that a lot more economically and efficiently through this aircraft.” 

Zipline drones carry up to eight pounds of goods. The company can fit everything from medicine to groceries to gardening supplies inside the six-foot-long aircraft.

But rather than touching down outside your home or office, the drones themselves stay high above. Rigby, as if he’s reading from a sci-fi script, explains what happens next: “And then the zip has a small little droid unit that comes out of the belly of the aircraft on a tether. It has its own propulsion system, as well. So, it’s kind of a sub-aircraft.”

That “droid unit” has your delivery inside. The goal is to gently drop your order from Chipotle, Crumbl Cookies or Wal-Mart — all Zipline partners — at the desired location. Maybe even the back of your pickup. 

Zipline drones make their deliveries by lowering down a ‘droid unit’ from the belly of the aircraft. Chris Nichols/CapRadio

But to get their deliveries just right, Zipline needs wide open testing sites. For that reason, it partners with three ranches altogether including one in Half Moon Bay and a cold weather testing site in Wyoming.

Driving in Scott Stone’s ATV up and down the Yolo County ranch’s dirt roads and open pastures, you can see why his property makes the perfect venue. 

“So this place was started back in 1976 with my dad and his partner,” he says, noting this is the company’s 50th year in operation. 

Scott and his brother Casey Stone manage the ranch. It’s dotted with majestic oaks and black angus cattle. 

“We raise cows and have babies every year,” Scott Stone says. “In October we wean the calves and then turn them back out into the mountains and the winter pasture ranches.” 

The Stone family’s commercial cattle operation produces grass-fed natural Angus beef.Chris Nichols/CapRadio

But the bucolic property is far more than just a place to raise livestock.

It’s served as a backdrop for films and TV ads. The ranch makes money off its compost production. They have a carbon sink and a real estate business. 

Scott Stone says traditional ag companies need to get creative to survive. 

That’s why the Stone family embraced Zipline when it approached them a decade ago, Stone says. Notably, the livestock don’t seem to mind the constant drone testing.

“We’ve never had any issues with any cows A) being struck by the drones or B) being bothered by them,” Scott Stone adds.

The Yolo Land & Cattle Company started in 1976. Brothers Scott (left) and Casey Stone manage the ranch near Esparto.Chris Nichols/CapRadio

Scott Stone says his family also admires Zipline's values. They were impressed with how the company got its start more than a decade ago delivering medicine to remote villages in Africa. 

He says they wanted to be part of what’s next for Zipline while ensuring his family could keep its traditional ranching operation alive by diversifying its revenue streams.

“There are so many benefits of what these folks are doing out here on so many levels,” Scott Stone says of Zipline. “It’s working hand-in-hand with agriculture. It’s not to the detriment of agriculture. It’s not to the detriment of the ranch. It’s to the benefit of mankind.” 

While Zipline perfects its deliveries across the country, the Stone ranch will be home to even more aircraft. The Yolo County planning commission last fall gave the green light for expanded testing on the property.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Data center builders don’t tell the public how much water they use, according to a new report — and the industry is encroaching into water-stressed and vulnerable communities. 

The report, by the think tank Next10 and researchers at Santa Clara University, finds that planned data centers — the ganglia of artificial intelligence — are spreading to regions reliant on overtapped groundwater and strained surface water, with potentially major effects in the Central and Imperial Valleys. 

But, reinforcing previous studies, the researchers found that a patchwork of state, federal and local policies allow data center operators to avoid publicly disclosing their actual water use. 

California lawmakers tried to address this last year, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure. Now, the Legislature is trying again, with bills mandating disclosures about water use and planning. 

Paired with California’s precarious water supplies, Raicu said, “it’s just not a good combination.” 

Shaolei Ren, an expert on the environmental impacts of AI at UC Riverside who was not involved in the study, said the findings point to a much broader problem. 

“Limited publicly available information about data center water use makes it difficult for communities, water providers, and researchers to have meaningful public discussions and responsibly assess power-water trade-offs,” Ren said in an email. 

Murky water use 

Few environmental impact reports for California’s data centers were publicly available online, the researchers found. 

Raicu and co-author Iris Stewart-Frey, a professor of environmental science, went looking for the reports, meant to assess and disclose a project’s impacts for both nature and people under the landmark California Environmental Quality Act. 

They found almost none. The ones they did find were largely for facilities in the city of Santa Clara. 

Through interviews with planning officials, they discovered that projects can slip through with little environmental review if they fall under certain size or water use thresholds, or if they meet a city or county’s criteria for other approval pathways. These include something called ministerial approval, which requires planning agencies to approve a project that meets local zoning and other standards. 

Even for data centers that undergo more stringent environmental scrutiny, the researchers found that documentation is rarely available to the public. 

In the few cases the planning documents were posted publicly, the information — on the data center’s owner or operator, size, type of cooling system, the amount of water used, whether it’s recycled or potable — was often “missing, contradictory, or vague,” the report said. 

The researchers said they contacted water providers in areas where data centers cluster, seeking usage data. None responded. 

A shift to vulnerable regions

California’s data centers mostly cluster in the south San Francisco Bay Area and the city of Los Angeles, with smaller concentrations in Sacramento and San Diego. 

But the report noted large, planned projects in rural and less affluent regions — like in Santa Clara County’s Gilroy, as well as in the heavily agricultural Imperial Valley. 

“They need a bunch of cheap land,” Raicu. “If we’re not careful, they will end up being pitched, very convincingly, to communities that have real needs — without enough attention being paid to the water part.”

Khara Boender, director of state policy for the  Data Center Coalition, which has opposed bills mandating more granular water use reporting, said in an email the industry is “committed to being a good neighbor.” 

Boender argues that data centers collectively “used significantly less water than other essential industries in 2025, including the agriculture, power, food and beverage, and semiconductor sectors,” but the coalition offers no data to back that up.

Collective use matters less than local impacts in a state where each community has its own mix of water supplies and strains, according to a previous study published by a team at UC Berkeley. 

Whether data centers use a lot or a little water relative to agriculture or other industries, “what matters most is the scale of new local use compared to available local supply,” the Berkeley team concluded earlier this year. “Unfortunately, this picture is clouded by data deficiencies.” 

In this week’s report, the Santa Clara University team drilled into those local supplies and community vulnerabilities to anticipated expansion. 

“We’re at the brink of this happening in California,” Stewart-Frey, the environmental scientist, said. Her report, she added, isn’t advocating against data centers. But “communities should know what they’re getting themselves into.” 

Debates over proposed data centers are erupting in a Kern County desert community with dwindling groundwater and in the hot Imperial Valley drawing from the strained Colorado River. 

Monterey Park residents in the San Gabriel Valley successfully opposed one data center project over environmental concerns and inadequate information and secured an upcoming vote on a citywide ban. 

In a letter to city officials, a representative for the developer dismissed opponents as  “rage-baiting an uninformed mob to pressure your decisionmaking.” 

Raicu pushed back. “If those communities are uninformed about the issue — whose fault is that? Who should be informing the people so that you don’t have this kind of pushback, if there is no need for it?” 

New laws v. Big Tech

Last year, Assemblymember Diane Papan, a Democrat from San Mateo, authored a bill requiring data center operators to report estimated or actual water use to their water supplier when seeking or renewing a business license or permit.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure amid industry pressure, saying he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements about operational details on this sector without understanding the full impact on businesses and the consumers of their technology.” 

Now Papan is trying again with two bills. One largely reprises last year’s measure, with additional reporting required to the city and county. The other would bar local governments from approving new or expanded data centers unless the developer discloses information about their water use and plans. 

It would also set other requirements — like prohibiting development in overdrafted groundwater basins, like in the San Joaquin Valley, unless state water managers okay it. 

“You cannot manage what you have not and cannot measure,” Papan said. “The public likes transparency, and they should.” 

Both bills cleared a key legislative chokepoint this week but face staunch opposition from the tech industry and business groups. 

“If they run out of water, guess what happens? And they can’t cool their systems — are they going to succeed?” Papan said. “To which I say, help us help you.”

By Alejandra Reyes-Velarde, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California just gave plastic producers until 2032 to make all their packaging recyclable or compostable — the most ambitious deadline in the country. Advocates say it doesn't go far enough. Producers say it goes too far. At least one of them is threatening to sue.

The sweeping regulations, finalized at the start of the month, put producers in a bind that has no obvious solution. Plastic clamshell containers, for instance, protect berries from being crushed and keep them fresher, longer until they reach a refrigerator. Plastic producers say there’s simply no substitute — yet under the new rules, they’ll have to find one. 

Last week, two environmental groups — the Natural Resources Defense Council and Californians Against Waste — said they plan to take California to court. Their argument: the state's rules actually break the law by allowing recycling methods that create a lot of toxic waste, and by letting some plastics slip through the rules entirely. On the other side, plastic manufacturers say the rules go too far and will make products more expensive for shoppers.

Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from coastal Los Angeles County who authored the plastic waste law, said the program still “massively moves the needle on this really major problem” — even if the process was messy. “This was the product of a compromise, and it was not perfect, and everybody walked away from the table, you know, unhappy about various aspects,” Allen said.

“California is the United States, but 30 years in the future,” said Joe Árvai,  director of the University of Southern California’s Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. “What's happening now is emblematic of trends that we are seeing worldwide … and the U.S. needs to adapt in the way that those countries are adapting in order to remain globally competitive.”

Less plastic, more recycling 

For decades, the burden of reducing, reusing and recycling plastic waste has fallen on consumers. Once a consumer buys a product, they decide what happens to it — whether it ends up in the garbage can or the recycling blue bin — and their tax dollars fund recycling systems we have today.  

In 2022, California’s landmark Senate Bill 54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, shifted that responsibility to businesses. The regulations outline what materials are covered by the law and who counts as a “producer” of plastic waste.  

The new regulations are a huge milestone, said Anja Brandon, director of U.S. plastics policy for the Ocean Conservancy. “There's plenty more steps on this journey, but I'm just really excited that we are going to start making real progress,” she said. 

The law applies to plastic food service ware and almost all single-use packaging — from the plastic wrap around large pallets of products shipped to retailers to a tube of toothpaste and the cardboard box around it.  

Our broken recycling system

Most of the plastic packaging Californians throw away isn't recycled — and that’s not your fault as a consumer.

For decades, the revolving green arrows symbol has urged consumers tp do a better job of reducing, reusing and recycling. But the system itself started out broken, and got worse.  

When people toss items into recycling bins, workers at recycling centers sort through them. Contaminated items — like a peanut butter tub with residue still inside — go straight to the landfill. Manufacturers buy clean, valuable materials like water bottles and detergent tubs and turn them into new products.

But a slew of other trash isn't valuable enough to sell. It ends up in landfills, too.

In 2021, the plastic recycling rate was only 6% nationwide, according to a report by the advocacy group Beyond Plastics. That’s down from 8% in 2018, partly because China and other countries that used to buy our trash have stopped doing so. In California, most plastic packaging types are recycled at strikingly low rates, according to a 2025 CalRecycle report: Even milk jugs and detergent bottles, among the most commonly recycled plastics, reached only 19%, while most others came in at single digits or below.

To carry out the law, the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery appointed the Circular Action Alliance, a nonprofit that helps states carry out extended producer responsibility mandates, as the organizing body for producers. The alliance is responsible for coming up with  a plan to meet the law’s goals. 

Producers — defined as companies that make more than $1 million in sales and produce products packaged in plastic or own brands under which those products are sold — must join the organization and pay fees to fund waste management. They can meet the law's requirements by using less plastic, finding alternative materials, or investing in recycling infrastructure.

“The biggest challenge is the scale and coordination required to modernize a complex recycling system across a state as large and diverse as California,” said Sheila Estaniel, a spokesperson for the Circular Action Alliance, in an email. 

California’s requirement that businesses reduce single-use plastic altogether makes it one of the strongest plastic waste laws in the country. It also goes further than other similar laws because it requires plastic producers to pay $5 billion over a decade to address the environmental damage their products have caused to communities — though the state doesn’t expect to start distributing those funds until 2027 at the earliest.

Watered down rules

The plastic waste rules have had a rocky road to implementation. 

In 2024, CalRecycle developed a first draft of regulations detailing what plastic the law covers and what producers must do. The draft expired before CalRecycle finalized it. In 2025, Gov. Gavin Newsom directed regulators to rewrite the rules — a move that some advocates say say food and agriculture lobbyists pushed for.

The result was a second draft that carved out a broad exclusion for plastics used for food and agriculture purposes, covering products under the jurisdiction of the FDA and USDA, such as packaging for fresh produce and supplements. Advocates said the exclusion gutted the law.

“Governor Newsom was clear when he asked CalRecycle to restart these regulations that they should work to minimize costs for small businesses and families — while ensuring California’s bold recycling law can achieve the critical goal of cutting plastic pollution,” said Anthony Martinez, a spokesperson for the governor. “That’s exactly what these draft regulations do.” 

CalRecycle submitted that draft to the Office of Administrative Law in August 2025, but withdrew it to make changes that narrowed that exclusion. Regulators ultimately excluded only plastic that federal law requires for food safety — walking back a broader carve-out that advocates said would have gutted the law.

Advocates gear up to sue 

Not all plastics follow the same rules — and advocates object to the state’s two-track system.

Some materials with unique technical challenges can apply for exemptions, but must meet specific criteria to qualify.  

Others, like plastic that federal law requires for food safety, escape the rules entirely once producers complete an application to CalRecycle — no timeline, no obligations.

Mirna Hernandez shops at Superior Groceries in Victorville on Aug. 16, 2024.

Photo by Ted Soqui for CalMatters

“In practice, this allows exclusions to remain in effect …even for notices that ultimately fail — creating strong incentives to submit weak or legally unsupported claims simply to delay (and effectively filibuster) compliance,” wrote Tony Hackett, a policy associate for Californians Against Waste in a public comment letter to the department. 

Advocates raise a second concern: the regulations allow certain waste polluting technologies — ones the law specifically excluded because they generate significant quantities of hazardous waste — to count as recycling, as long as they have a hazardous waste permit.

These technologies include chemical recycling processes that the oil industry has long promoted as a solution to plastic pollution — a claim California's attorney general says is deliberately misleading. Rob Bonta has sued ExxonMobil alleging the company misled the public about recycling’s potential to address the plastic crisis.  

“These regulations ignore explicit limits on recycling technologies and create permanent escape hatches the law never authorized,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste, in a statement. 

Rhonalyn Cabello, a CalRecycle spokesperson, said the agency does not comment on pending or potential litigation.  

Sen. Allen agreed the regulations fall short. 

“We feel that the regulations as presented don't maintain some of the core agreements that were made in the passage of the bill,” he said. When there’s too many exclusions, he said, companies are “basically forcing everybody else to pay and getting away scot free.” 

Set up to fail?

Businesses claim they want to reduce plastic waste but feel trapped by conflicting state regulations and a lack of viable packaging alternatives.

The tension starts with labeling. The state’s accurate recycling labels law, Senate Bill 343, prohibits businesses from using the chasing arrows symbol to indicate recyclability unless certain criteria are met. Advocates say the restriction is necessary to avoid confusion. But businesses say it means consumers are less likely to recycle products that could be recyclable. 

“If we lose the right to use (recycling labels on) dairy cartons, our members are going to have to expand their plastic use, because that is the only other packaging type that can take a shelf stable product,” said Katie Davey, executive director of the Dairy Institute of California. 

As investments from producers flow to cities and counties under the law, Cabello said, more materials may eventually meet the labeling criteria.  

Beyond labeling, businesses say workable alternatives to plastic simply don't exist yet — and that getting there will be costly. Investments needed to meet the law’s first goal alone — a 25% reduction in single-use plastic by 2032 — could cost up to $15.4 billion, according to CalRecycle estimates.  

Kevin Kelly, the chief executive of Emerald Packaging, sells film plastic packaging to farmers, who use the plastic to bag items like salads and baby carrots. Paper packaging that could replicate plastic's ability to regulate oxygen and carbon dioxide levels — keeping produce fresh — is still in early development, he said, and mass production is decades away. 

“You have to build tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure to actually produce something at the level that would be needed to replace plastics,” Kelly said. 

Dairy illustrates the same problem. Alternatives to plastic milk packaging include refrigerated gable-top cartons, shelf-stable cartons, and glass. Each comes with tradeoffs. Glass is heavier — meaning fewer units per shipment — and clear glass exposes fresh milk to light that can degrade it. Switching packaging lines entirely would cost producers about $40 million for a single mid-size line, according to the Dairy Institute — a cost they would pass on to consumers.  

“We're deeply concerned because we know that food costs are going to increase and products are going to come off the market because there literally is not a packaging solution within the required timeframe,” Davey said. 

But USC’s Joe Árvai said producer complaints are really about the pace of change, not whether compliant packaging is possible at all. 

“Whether they like it or not, these changes are coming,” he said. “In the end, there are going to be players in the industry that are going to be better able to respond, and they will be better indemnified against the shocks than their partners and competitors.”

What happens next

The next major test comes in June, when the Circular Action Alliance must submit its plan to CalRecycle outlining how producers will meet the law's goals. 

Oregon, which passed a similar law and is also facing an industry legal challenge, offers a possible model. There, grant funding is already flowing to expand reuse and refill infrastructure — helping businesses and schools replace single-use plastic products and improve recycling access. 

“Despite the fact that there's a lawsuit in Oregon, money is moving out the door,” said the Ocean Conservancy’s Anja Brandon. She said groups like hers will closely watch the June plan.

“We'll all be waiting with bated breath” to see how producers are interpreting this and what pathways they’re laying out, she said. 

Meanwhile, advocates will be watching closely as CalRecycle begins to make decisions about who qualifies for exclusions and exemptions. The Natural Resources Defense Council is waiting for CalRecycle to post additional documents before filing its lawsuit.

“If we let this thing get derailed and turned into a Swiss cheese of exemptions and non-compliance, it will really harm our global progress on this issue,” Allen said. 

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

By Levi Sumagaysay, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

State Farm could face millions of dollars in penalties and a possible temporary suspension of its license in California as a result of hundreds of alleged law violations related to its handling of claims from the Los Angeles County fires last year. 

California’s largest individual property insurance provider “showed a troubling pattern of claims handling practices” after the fires, the state’s Insurance Department said Monday. The department is seeking a hearing into the matter, which comes after an investigation it opened into State Farm’s conduct last June.

“Our investigation found that State Farm delayed, underpaid, and buried policyholders in red tape at the worst moment of their lives,” said Ricardo Lara, the state’s insurance commissioner, in a statement.

State Farm spokesperson Sevag Sarkissian said in email that the insurance department has “distorted” the picture of the company’s response to the fires.  In an extended statement on its website, the company had some harsh words for the department over regulatory delays in the overall insurance market. The company said the department’s “threat to suspend State Farm General’s ability to serve customers over primarily administrative and procedural errors is a reckless, politically motivated attack that could ultimately cripple California’s homeowners insurance market.”

If an administrative law judge finds that the state’s 430 claims have merit, each violation is subject to up to a $5,000 penalty. Willful violations of the law are subject to penalties of up to $10,000 each. That means the company could owe about $2 million to $4.3 million. Insurers have paid billions of dollars in claims from the deadly L.A.-area fires, with State Farm saying it has paid more than $5.7 billion so far.

The insurance department opened an investigation into State Farm, which insures about a fifth of California property owners, last year after complaints from fire survivors about the company delaying and denying claims. 

“Commissioner Lara calls a $2 million fine historic,” said Joy Chen, executive Director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a group that has called for Lara to resign, in a statement. “State Farm’s parent (company) sits on $240 billion in assets. They have the money to fulfill their obligations to L.A. fire survivors.”

The insurance department’s investigation, involving 220 claims related to the fires, found violations in 52% of them, according to the accusation filed by the department Monday. They included slow and inadequate claims investigations, underpayment, multiple claims adjusters assigned and delayed communication with policyholders. In some cases, the department asked State Farm to reopen claims and correct its violations, according to the accusation.

After a hearing, which has yet to be scheduled, any ruling by the administrative law judge will be reviewed by the commissioner. The commissioner will impose penalties and decide on whether to suspend for one year the company’s certificate of authority, which is what gives it the right to sell insurance in the state. 

It’s unclear what would happen to State Farm’s customers if the company were to be suspended for a year, said Michael Soller, spokesperson for the insurance department, which has been trying to ensure that insurance companies continue to offer insurance coverage in California.

“Between the scope of the fires and the scope of this company, we’re in pretty unprecedented territory,” Soller said.

When the Station Fire roared through the Angeles National Forest in 2009, Colleen and Jason Warnesky could see it from the front porch of their Altadena, Calif., home. Eleven years later, the family witnessed the Bobcat Fire from the same spot as it became one of the largest fires in Los Angeles County history.

Their house remained standing after both close calls. So when the Eaton Fire struck more than 3 miles away in January 2025, they were certain they'd again remain unscathed.

"We couldn't imagine how it would get from all the way over there to our house," Colleen Warnesky told NPR, as she pointed to the lush mountains on a recent Sunday afternoon.

Fifteen months later, the couple is pacing around the fenced-in dirt lot that was once the site of their 1,400 sq. foot home. So far the land has been cleared of all toxins, and they're waiting on the city to approve drainage permits before construction workers can start pouring the foundation.

The Warneskys are among the dozens of families in the immediate neighborhood who have opted to rebuild with manufactured homes. They were swayed by a local program launched by city-LAB UCLA, a center founded by the University of California, Los Angeles' Architecture and Urban Design Department, which included a showcase of six prefab housing options and a guide to help navigate the process and secure financing.

The spate of wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods fueled by man-made climate change that have plagued vast swaths of the country in recent years is changing the housing industry. That's because people like the Warneskys, who are seeking to rebuild in disaster-prone regions, are searching for greater peace of mind. As a result, they're turning away from stick-builds and embracing prefabricated homes that are made using materials that are fire-resistant and can withstand extreme weather, and that are now considered standard, and are often more affordable.

Manufacturers are meeting that demand with innovative and safer alternatives. Many companies are designing prefab houses that can withstand category 5 hurricane winds — up to 250 mph — earthquakes, hail storms, massive snowfall and fire. Depending on customizable preferences, prices can vary from below $100 per square foot to over $500 per square foot, excluding land. But even those prices often fall under traditional on-site building costs in many parts of the country.

"We're working with Honomobo, which is one modular company out of Canada. And then the people across the way are working with another company called Bevy House. And then there's a whole set of three families on Harriet that are working with a third modular company," Warnesky said, pointing out various vacant or half-built lots in the neighborhood.

"It was a combination of factors," Warnesky said, explaining why they have opted to forgo a traditional build. After losing everything, and the stress of dealing with the seemingly endless insurance paperwork, they had decision fatigue. The idea of picking something out of a catalog that would arrive fully built seemed like a lifesaver.

"But a big part of it was also safety," Warnesky clarified. She added, "I think that we both felt early on, if there was a way to make it so that we had less to worry about if another fire happened in the future," we'd go with that.

For their own house, which will largely consist of glass, steel and concrete, the Warneskys said they bought a package that is specifically designed for a wildland urban interface environment, known as WUI. These are areas where real estate developments and infrastructure butt up against wildland vegetation.

Jason Warnesky described some of the features of the old, post-WWII-built home. It was modest but comfortable. It had a redwood deck that spanned a big section of the backyard, he said.

"I would suspect that was probably one of the first things that went up on our house," he said.

"We won't do that again," his wife added.

The building prefab business

The Manufactured Housing Institute reports that as of 2024, nearly 21 million people in the U.S. live in manufactured or mobile homes. And manufactured homes made up more than 9% of new home starts in the same year. Meanwhile, consumer prices have remained largely unchanged over the past three years, making them increasingly attractive to first-time buyers.

The same study noted that three U.S.-based companies account for about 83% of the nation's market share. Most of those sales are happening in states with nearly annual flooding, hurricane or wildfire disasters — Texas, Florida and California.

Given the escalating climate risks across the country, Harrison Langley, CEO of MDLR Brands, believes that traditional on-site building is unsustainable. His company has built single-family prefabricated homes, apartment buildings and commercial structures in the Bahamas following 2019's Hurricane Dorian and in California, Tennessee and North Carolina.

"The building materials space is run by dinosaurs," he told NPR. "The way we've been building for the last 100 years really hasn't changed. But the materials have gotten less strong. A two-by-four is no longer two-by-four. It's smaller."

The company offers manufactured kit homes as well as custom-designed projects that are built using composite structural insulated panels. Each one has a 30-minute fire rating, meaning "you could hide behind this wall without the heat coming through for 30 minutes," he explained, adding that the panels can be hardened even further by using a cement board on top of the panels. "That could give you about an hour to get out of a building," Langley added.

Another bonus is that the panels are also more elastic than a wooden frame, making the houses better capable of withstanding earthquakes. And, he said, because the panels have an exterior fiberglass layer, they can stand up to category 5 hurricane winds. (Third-party certifiers test it by shooting a two-by-four traveling at 170 mph, Langley explained.)

According to Langley, America has been on the cusp of embracing modular and prefabricated homes for some time. But, he believes, the growing ubiquity of accessory dwelling units is serving as "proof of concept" for potential clients. "People are used to seeing them now," he said.

Beyond a boxy modular style

For some people, the reluctance to embrace a modular or manufactured build has less to do with costs and more to do with style. Or a perceived absence of it.

Across the street from Colleen and Jason Warnesky are Linda and Liam Mennis. They also lost their 1940s 1,600 sq. ft. home in the Eaton Fire. Initially, they were thinking of going with a traditional stick-build home, but after a discussion with their architect, they learned they could design a customized manufactured home.

"We couldn't do a cookie-cutter house," Mennis told NPR. "We didn't want to pick something from a catalog that would look exactly like somebody else's house."

They're now working with Bevy House, whose tag line is, "The conventional home building process is broken. We're the solution." Instead of boxy structures, they take personalized architectural plans and figure out how to make them modular so they can be fabricated at their facilities and put together on site. A majority of the company's builds are installed in California, and they've worked with several fire victims.

Following the destructive 2018 Woolsey Fire in Ventura and Los Angeles counties, they built one of the first homes to receive occupancy post-fire, according to their website. It's a Spanish revival, five-bedroom, seven-bathroom, nearly 8,000-square-foot spread that features custom reclaimed beams. The project was a partial rebuild, as a large portion of the original home was lost in the fire. 

For Mennis and his wife, it was a streamlined process. After finalizing a design plan, he said, Bevy House "makes sure they can break it up into modules" in a 3-D rendering system, and they get started on production.

Prefab's past

The idea of creating aesthetically pleasing and affordable modular homes on a mass scale is not a new one. Seventy-seven years ago, famed architects and furniture designers Ray and Charles Eames, came up with a modernist blueprint for a system composed of inexpensive and off-the-shelf materials from industrial and commercial catalogs that could be easily assembled. Their own iconic home and studio space, Case Study No. 8 house, served as a model of what could be done.

Eames Demetrios, director of the Eames Office and chairman of the Eames Foundation, has revived his grandparents' dream. Together with Spanish office furniture brand Kettal, Eames Office rolled out the Eames Pavilion system last week at the Triennale di Milano exhibition in Italy. It is a modular, pre-fabricated kit that uses aluminum frames with interchangeable glass, wood, and composite panels. The initial product is only for a single room that can serve as an office or studio space. But by 2027, Demetrios said, it will expand to allow for customizable configurations of single or multi-level dwellings.

"What is wonderful about it is it isn't a copy of the Eames House," Demetrios told NPR. "It's not a facsimile. But it certainly has the spirit of it. And when you look closely, you realize that it's something that is different, which is really trying to create a system out of it."

The kits will be on the pricier side of prefabricated homes, but Demetrios said they intend to keep costs below $500 per square foot. Clients will also have options to swap out materials that may suit the building site better, he added. Because it is a modular system, Demetrios explained, "as innovations happen it is possible to include those in a more dynamic way."

He added: "I'm predicting in about five years we'll have houses that people will almost not be able to tell are from the same system. And I think that that's part of the power of it. And that's part of the opportunity of it."

Update: This story states that Sacramento County will vote to approve the Upper Westside Specific Plan on Tuesday. After publication, the county announced it expects to postpone Tuesday's scheduled vote on the Upper Westside project approval due to a board member's absence. County staff recommended delaying the item so all five board members could be present for a decision. A new date has not been announced yet.

Sacramento County’s Board of Supervisors will vote Tuesday on a housing development in the Natomas Basin that the Sacramento City Council has already formally opposed. The Upper Westside project for the past year has been the source of ongoing tension between the county and city elected leaders.

Its plans include building out 9,400 homes for about 25,000 people and creating a new community near the Sacramento International Airport, one the size of a small city. If completed, the community would stretch 2,000 acres along Garden Highway. The City Council voted 8 to 1 to oppose the development last August. It sent a formal letter urging the county not to proceed with it.

Discussions about the Natomas project have taken place since 2018. But when the city opposed it, council members argued it violates an agreement made in 2002 between the city and county to preserve land near the Sacramento River as protected agricultural open space.

Councilmember Karina Talmantes, who represents part of Natomas, has continued to push back on the project as it returns to the county for approval this week. This week, she took to social media to urge the county to delay its vote. She said the development would hurt the communities she represents. 

Councilmember Karina Talamantes opposes the development that could come near the district she represents on August 12, 2025.Tony Rodriguez/CapRadio

“The project in itself is basically the size of Galt … you are building a city the size of Galt right next to many residential neighborhoods,” she said, pointing to what she described as “many unanswered questions” about transportation, public safety and schools.

Heather Fargo was Sacramento’s mayor when the conservation plans were adopted. She said the project is moving forward without environmental concern for the protected land and road planning.

“They have no reliable source of water. They have no plans to improve the transportation issues or transportation improvements that should be done on either the Interstate 80 or the two-lane roads that connect to it,” Fargo said.

She also raised concerns about the county's prioritization of housing development. She said the county has housing projects approved elsewhere in the region that have yet to be built, and that it would stretch into the threatened Swainson’s hawk's natural habitat and nesting area. 

“The [development would] encroach into the one-mile buffer… basically wipe it out… the birds will have to move … and move closer to the airport,” Fargo said.

Supporters of the project argue the region still faces a housing shortage. They say developments like Upper Westside are needed to increase supply and bring down costs.

Ronnie Bell, who is running for the District 2 seat on the Board of Supervisors, said he backs the project. 

“Right now our number one concern has to be finding affordable homes for the people who don’t have them,” Bell said.

Bell also pushed back on concerns about the Swainson’s hawk, arguing that environmental protections should not outweigh the need for housing.

“I don't mean to sound flippant, but we have a housing crisis. So, the hawk will have to be moved. And I'm sure the hawk will be fine, Sacramento is a huge area,” Bell said. “There is ample room on those waterways for the hawk to find a new place to live and to raise its offspring.”

CapRadio reached out to County Supervisor Phil Serna, who represents the Natomas area and has previously supported the project. Serna did not respond ahead of publication. 

If approved on Tuesday, the county-led plans to build the project would move forward. Additional planning and approval from the county would be needed before construction begins. The Board of Supervisors is expected to take public comment at its 2 p.m. meeting before making a final decision.

Additional reporting contributed by CapRadio reporter, Riley Palmer.

Crude oil pumped from the depths of the Pacific Ocean is flowing for the first time in more than a decade through a pipeline that crosses California state park land after the Trump administration defied state officials to restart drilling off Santa Barbara, calling it essential to national security.

State officials call it trespassing and are asking a Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge at a hearing Monday to order Sable Offshore Corp. to stop using the pipeline — which snakes for 4 miles (6 kilometers) through a portion of Gaviota State Park — and to remove it.

The pipeline system owned by the Texas firm had been idle since one of its pipelines ruptured in 2015 and caused one of California’s worst oil spills, blackening beaches for 150 miles (240 kilometers) from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. The spill polluted a biologically rich habitat for endangered whales and sea turtles, killing scores of pelicans, seals and dolphins, and decimating the fishing industry.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright used a Cold War-era provision March 13 to direct Sable to restart production, saying shoring up domestic oil supplies is needed to lower gas prices amid the Iran war as the Islamic Republic continues to squeeze a vital shipping channel through which one-fifth of the world’s oil travels. He noted “more than 60% of the oil refined in California comes from overseas, with a significant share traveling through the Strait of Hormuz — presenting serious national security threats.”

The litigation is the latest salvo in an escalating legal battle that is testing states' power to challenge Washington’s wishes, even during wartime, as the Trump administration rolls back regulations seen as unfriendly to its plans for more coastal oil drilling.

Energy secretary says drilling needed to replace foreign oil

Until the federal intervention, Sable had been unable to sell a drop of oil as the litigation piled up to stop its operation, which includes three rigs in federal waters, offshore and onshore pipelines, and the Las Flores Canyon Processing Facility.

Opposition to the project has been fierce in Santa Barbara, where a 1969 oil spill helped give rise to the modern environmental movement after local California communities hadn’t been given any voice in decisions about offshore drilling.

“I think it's an attack not only on our democracy but also the will of the people who live here,” said youth activist Ethan Maday, 15, of the federal intervention.

A state judge last year ordered the operation stopped until Sable proved it was in compliance with state regulations. The Santa Barbara District Attorney also filed felony criminal charges against Sable, accusing it of polluting waterways and harming wildlife as it repaired the pipeline system.

Sable said it has the proper permits.

The U.S. Energy Department said Sable will help California’s in-state oil production jump by 15%, which will replace almost 1.5 million barrels of foreign crude oil each month.

But the crude pulled out by Sable is heavy and costly to refine, said Paasha Mahdavi, an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who researches the impact of oil and gas resources on governance and environmental politics. The estimated production of 50,000 barrels a day is also a drop in the bucket on the global scale and will have no impact on domestic gas supplies or prices, he said.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who has filed two lawsuits over the project, said "the U.S. already produces significantly more oil and gas than we use — it’s a completely fabricated claim intended to curry favor with the oil industry.”

The energy department and Sable did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the assertions by state officials.

Jim Flores, Sable’s chairman and chief executive officer, said April 20 that the pipeline had already produced more than 1 million barrels of oil.

“We are working tirelessly to provide American oil from American soil to consumers in California and the U.S. military,” he said.

When the Cold War-era law has been used

The administration invoked the Defense Production Act to restart the drilling. The law was signed by President Harry S. Truman during the Korean War to give the president broad authority to mobilize resources during a crisis.

Two decades ago, both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush invoked it to ensure that electricity and natural gas shippers continued supplying California utilities to cope with an energy crisis. Former President Joe Biden used it to boost crucial supplies to U.S. solar manufacturers to fight climate change.

“But it’s never been used so brazenly against a set of state regulations, not to mention state litigation,” Mahdavi said. “That’s what makes this unique and perhaps why they used it after the war started. Because under normal circumstances it really would not have made it past the courts.”

California argues it has a say over what operates on state land

The trespassing litigation is based on property rights and federal overreach, both touchstones of conservatism, said Deborah Sivas, a professor at Stanford Law School. State officials say permission to use the pipeline on state land expired in 2016, which Sable disputes.

“It’s not out in the ocean, in federal waters. This is actually on state property. We have a say on that — you can’t just override that,” Sivas said.

Sivas believes the administration’s expansion of the 1950 law is aimed at ushering in its five-year plan to give the oil industry access to new offshore areas. Courts have been leery to second-guess an emergency order from the federal government, especially amid a war, she said.

“This broad expansion of the act, where they’re saying we’re just going to preempt all of state law, we’re going to use it to just crush state law and order what we want going forward — it’s anxiety producing," Sivas said.

A few weeks after Wright's order, the Trump administration exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said lawsuits by environmentalists — who warned drilling could doom a rare whale species and harm other marine life -- threatened to hobble domestic energy supplies amid the Iran war.

The administration also approved an ultra deep-water drilling project in the Gulf of Mexico, the company’s first new oil field developed in the Gulf since the nation’s worst offshore oil spill in 2010.

As California officials fight back, the oil flows

This month, Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Donna Geck kept in place an injunction she imposed last year after the California Coastal Commission fined Sable a record $18 million for ignoring cease-and-desist orders over allegations of working without the proper permits.

Sable told the court that Wright's order supersedes all that. The U.S. Department of Justice is also asking the court to modify or end a binding federal court decree signed after the 2015 spill that gave the state the final say over the restart of the operation, the company said.

Sable said it is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in financial damage and taking legal action “to curb state and county regulatory overreach.”

Geck again ordered Sable to adhere to state and local regulations. In her ruling, she wrote that case law “strongly implies that the (Defense Production Act) order, by itself, does not permit the violation of applicable state regulatory law.”

Correction: The Tiger's Eye Abutilon Tree was misidentified as Koelreuteria Bipinnata in a previous version.

If you’re walking through Capitol Park you may notice the abundance of trees covering 40 acres, or about 12 city blocks.

Capitol Park was established in 1860 as a four-block area on L, N, 10th and 12th streets. The park expanded throughout the years adding more blocks in 1870, 1872, and 1917.

The beautification of the park began in 1869, and according to Michael Nielson, the grounds operation manager for the Department of General Services, the park houses around 850 trees from all over the world.

Nielson said the idea of Capitol Park and its conception was very unique because not only do they have California native trees established at the park, but people have the opportunity to see trees that people may never see if they’re not world travelers.

“That's not something that you see every day,” Nielson said. “So they brought pieces of the world and forms of these trees to say, ‘Hey, this is a tree that's growing in another country or even another state for that matter.’”

Nielson noted some of the trees in the park from other parts of the world and the country include a Chinese Lantern tree, a “Moon Tree” that was grown from seeds that orbited the moon during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, and some Civil War trees that came from the battlefields.

Nielson said the groundskeeper team is continually working to keep the trees healthy through proper maintenance, pruning techniques and fertilization, making sure they're giving good irrigation to the trees.

Nielsen gave CapRadio a tour of Capitol Park to showcase some of California’s native trees and trees from around the world.

Trees Native to California

Coastal Redwood tree is approximately 130 feet tall and was estimated to be planted in 1921.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio

Coastal Redwood: One of the native California trees in Capitol Park is the coastal redwood also known as the Sequoia sempervirens.

There are many planted at the park and one of the coastal redwood trees is approximately 130 feet tall and was estimated to be planted in 1921.

“It's a majestic tree, and one of the really unique things is it's a double top,” Nielson said. “One of the cool things that people have come to notice is that we have a pair of nesting hawks that return there every year, and they fly in and out of that tree. I think they've been coming in and out for about the last eight years.”

Nielson said you can see the tree from every angle on the east side of the park. 

Desert Willow is a California native species that has orchids during the warmer seasons.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio

Desert Willow: Desert Willow also known as the chilopsis linearis is a California native species at the park that has an interesting trunk with a little bit of a bend. Nielsen said his team has the tree cabled in the back to make sure it provides extra stability.

“[The tree] puts out a really nice orchid colored flower during the warmer season, and it's really cool because the hummingbirds will come and they'll draw nectar from the blossoms,” he said. “It's also an attractant for our pollinators, bees, they're flying in and out of here.”

This tree is located South of the Capitol in the Cactus Gardens.

The California Buckeye is a small tree or shrub that is native to California.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio

California Buckeye: The California Buckeye, also known as the Aesculus californica, is a small tree or shrub that is of course native to California. The one located at the park was planted about 10 years ago as a replacement, according to Nielson.

“That's one of the things that's really important to us here at the Department of General Services, is that when we do lose a specimen, we want to make sure that we go back with a very similar item, if possible,” he said. “Sometimes it may not be as easy to get something that we've lost, and so we'll go to the next closest species possible.”

The buckeye has blossoms sprouting from the tree and hummingbirds come to the Buckeye just like they do with the desert willow tree.

The tree at the park is approximately nine feet tall and about 12 feet wide, Nielsen said.

The Giant Sequoia is a species that is related to the redwood. One of the giant sequoia’s at the park is estimated to be about 85 years old.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio

Giant Sequoia: The Giant Sequoia, also known as the Sequoiadendron giganteum, is a species that is related to the redwood. One of the giant sequoia’s at the park is estimated to be about 85 years old, according to Nielson.

“We have a few of them throughout the park, and it's related to the coastal redwood, but has a little different needle, a little different texture,” he said. “If you notice how the bark has a little different look on the coastal redwood, as opposed to this little redder tone to the giant sequoia.” 

Trees from around the globe

Shiloh silver maple from Tennessee is a tree came from the battlefield from the Civil War.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio

Civil War Tree: There are a few trees in the park from where the Civil War battles were fought. One tree in particular is a Shiloh silver maple from Tennessee.

The park actually has a Civil War Memorial Grove that pays tribute to the soldiers that lost their lives. 

The tree started as a sapling that came from the Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, which resulted in a Union victory.

The olive tree at Capitol Park is the only tree that has a fence around it because people kept taking olives from it.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio

Olive Tree: The olive tree at Capitol Park is the only tree that has a fence around it. The fence went up almost 20 years ago after people kept taking the olives from it.

Nielson said the circumference of the olive tree is quite amazing.  

“If you look at the detail of the trunk and some of the cavities and the pockets and the way that it has that swirl, it was just magnificent,” he said. “So [the fence] was a way to be able to still have the tree producing some life, and still keep the trunk present for people to come and just kind of Marvel at just the way that it looks.”

The Tiger Eye Abutilon is a small tree that lantern shaped flowers hanging from the branches called Tigers eye.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio

Tiger Eye Abutilon: The Tiger Eye Abutilon is a small tree that could be treated as a shrub. What makes the tree unique is that it sometimes has red, yellow or pink flowers with red veins that are hanging from the branches that resemble Chinese lanterns.

Those lanterns are called “Tiger’s eye.”

“It's just a fabulous tree,” Nielson said. “A lot of people like to come and take a look at it. And I'm sure they take a blossom home with them once in a while, because they're really unique flowers.”

In March, wildlife researchers and members of the Yurok Tribe celebrated a potential milestone in the California condor’s return to Northern California skies.

A pair of free-flying condors were believed to have built the first nest in the large scavengers’ ancestral territory in more than 100 years, and may have been incubating their first egg. 

Known for their nearly 10-foot wingspans and dark plumage, condors are a sacred cultural and spiritual symbol for the Tribe, where they are known as “Prey-go-neesh.”

But on Thursday biologists with the Northern California Condor Restoration Program announced this egg may have met an uncertain fate.

"We were really hopeful"

The egg was believed to have been laid by a seven-year-old female condor designated A0 and named Ney-gem' ‘Ne-chween-kah, or “She carries our prayers” in the Yurok language. She took to the skies of Northern California in 2022 as part of the first cohort of condors released by the Yurok Tribe.

Researchers say after being released A0 had been spending more time with a member of the same cohort, the seven-year-old male A1 (Hlow Hoo-let, “At last we fly!”). Yurok researchers said the pair had been conducting a “nest searching” pattern for months, and believe the condors’ nest was in an old-growth redwood within Redwood National and State Parks.

Due to the isolated location researchers had to monitor the condors’ behavior, including from wing transmitters and field observations, to gain insight into the potential parents. 

“Obviously we were very excited about the potential for a viable egg, and a new chick,” said Tiana Williams-Claussen, the director of the Yurok Tribe Wildlife Department. She said the large birds were doing “what condors should do” where one parent would be incubating the egg while the other took care of its own needs, before switching.

Williams-Claussen said one of the first signs of a potential nest failure was when both A0 and A1 started showing up at a “joint feeding event” at a critical time.

“If the egg had been laid around early February, which is what we’ve been thinking, it would have hatched around early April,” she explained. “But the chick all needs full-time parental care for about a month afterward.”

“When that stopped we’re like, ‘this is probably unlikely to have happened at this point,’” Williams-Claussen said. 

In a release, researchers said there are multiple reasons behind the potential failure from an infertile egg to inadequate incubation, to hatching failure. “Even a few minutes can lead to the egg getting too chilled and not making it,” Williams-Claussen said.

She added that as new parents the pair of condors maybe were not “quite confident in what they were doing, and didn’t give it as much care in those first few days.”

Biologists said data on the nest is not conclusive yet due to the nest’s inaccessibility, and will continue observing A0 and A1’s behavior for future confirmation. Williams-Claussen also acknowledged that the first egg or two a condor pair produces are often not viable.

We were really hopeful, but not holding our breath,” she said. “They’re not quite sure what they’re doing; they’re learning as they go along and it just often doesn’t work out.”

A potential second attempt

Despite this possible failure, the Yurok team said it is not too late for A0 and A1 to try again this year. “They are still within the range of egg-laying, and chicks can hatch as late as mid-June,” Williams-Claussen said.

 She said biologists will look for signs of the condors going back into the nesting exchange pattern — one condor incubating, the other not — which could be a sign of the two trying for another egg.

The Yurok team says condors reproduce slowly, with females only laying one egg at a time and usually nesting every other year. They also tend to stay bonded with their mates for successive years, if possible.

Williams-Claussen said it could be a matter of the big scavengers learning on the fly, and that second attempts are usually more successful. “As a condor continues in their experience, they continue to grow better in protecting or nurturing that egg,” she said.

While A0 and A1 are the oldest birds released, Williams-Claussen said there are some younger ones also starting to display mating behavior. “[They’re] trying to get a foot in the door and catch the female’s interest,” she said, adding that the other female condors under their care are not quite old enough yet.

Williams-Claussen said condor A2 (Nes-kwe-chokw, “He returns”) was recently displaying to female A7 (Hey-we-chek', “I am healthy”) and she “did not immediately reject him.”

“She's too young to be actually forming a pair bond for mating, but it's clear that she's getting to an age where she's starting to think about it,” she explained.

“We may be looking at next year, another bond forming, and even if they don’t try and lay, they’ll be looking for that nest.”

There are currently 23 condors flying free over the North State after the first group was released almost four years ago. The Northern California Condor Restoration Program says it plans to continue releasing at least one cohort of birds annually for 20 years.

By Rachel Becker, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century. 

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field. 

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had —  maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs. 

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone’s anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network. 

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts. 

“It’s pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.” 

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.  

“That means we can get more work done,” he said. 

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore. 

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house. 

“In years past, I wouldn’t even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard’s completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.” 

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack. 

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.” 

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there’s layers of fuel,” Acuña said. 

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come. 

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher. 

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change. 

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.” 

Gas prices are rising fast in California with prices up more than a dollar from last month and nearly two dollars higher than the national average, according to AAA. 

Drivers at CJ Gas in Sacramento said filling up has become another strain on already tight budgets. 

Kevin Mannion stood beside his 2000 Toyota Camry, watching the total cost climb.

“It’s a V6, so it could be better, but it’s not terrible,” he said. 

Mannion had just spent $70 to fill his tank — an inconvenience, but one he said he can manage. 

“Buying gas is something I have to do anyway to go to work,” he said. “Got to spend money to make money, I guess.” 

But the impact on others is more severe.

James Delaney, 31, spent $40 filling up his Honda SUV. 

“I know a lot of people who have to make the decision whether am I going to pay my rent this week or am I going to fill up my car and stock my house full of food,” he said. “It’s coming down to a give or take between one or the other.” 

James Delaney, 31, sits in his Honda CR-V after filling up his gas tank Friday, March 20, 2026, in Sacramento.(Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio)

Delaney added that rising prices for housing, food, insurance and now gas are compounding the pressure in a state already grappling with a high cost of living.  

Why gas prices are rising 

John Trainer is a spokesperson for AAA Northern California. He said global events are playing a major role in rising gas prices, pointing to the war with Iran and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, which is a critical chokepoint for cargo trade in the Middle East. 

“Iran is a large oil-producing country no longer producing oil, and the Strait of Hormuz has 20% of the world’s energy flow through it,” he said. “It’s a massive supply chain and as that shut down, you see the supply of oil hurting, which means the price has really escalated. That is the biggest cause of what’s going on with gas prices today.” 

Trainer said seasonal factors, including warmer weather and the state-required switch to a more expensive but cleaner-burning summer fuel blend, are also pushing prices higher. He also compared the current spike to price surges seen in 2022 when California gas averages reached over $6 dollars a gallon during the pandemic recovery and the start of the war in Ukraine. 

Fueling campaign debates 

Gas prices are also shaping California’s governor’s race with two prominent Democratic candidates offering competing ideas on how to respond. 

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa rolled out a gas relief plan that — among other things — is calling for the state to provide relief payments. His proposal would send rebates to low-income families if gas prices stay above $5.50 per gallon for more than a month. 

That money would come out of the state’s general fund. When asked how he would get lawmakers to agree with his plan, given that the state is looking at a potential $18 billion shortfall next year, here’s what he said:

“It was Sacramento that created this situation in the first place,” Villaraigosa said. “It’s up to Sacramento to fix it.” 

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a fellow Democrat and candidate for governor, is taking a different approach. He wants a temporary suspension of California’s gas tax during the war with Iran — a move that would cut about 61 cents per gallon. 

“Gas prices are punishingly high and harming working families,” Mahan said. “They don’t have room in their budget to absorb these increases.” 

Both candidates have also suggested rolling back some environmental regulations they argued contribute to higher fuel costs. Villaraigosa and Mahan currently trail frontrunners in early polling with each drawing only a small share of voter support. 

Tradeoffs 

Experts say those proposals could bring relief, but not without consequences. 

Subsidies could reduce immediate costs for consumers but risk encouraging higher prices by oil companies. Meanwhile, suspending the gas tax would cut funding for road maintenance. 

Andrew Campbell is the executive director of the Haas Energy Institute at UC Berkeley. He said the broader debate is often framed as a choice between affordability and climate policy, but it doesn’t have to be. 

“A lot of the big opportunity to address energy affordability is actually finding and continuing to support smart policies that result in people getting away from fossil fuels onto more electric transportation and clean fuels,” Campbell said. 

Other experts like Ethan Elkind, a transportation researcher with UC Berkeley, argue the state might need to rethink how it funds transportation altogether. He thinks a fee based on how many miles people drive — something the legislature is already looking at — could be the solution. 

“We have to figure out a long-term solution as we wean ourselves off gasoline,” Elkind said.