This was no ordinary internet blackout. For five days, the ninth largest country in the world was a black box …
I used to wonder: Is there any place where people will know my name? I’ve always hated Arvin, my uncommon ...
If California is ever going to achieve true equity, the state must require parents to give away their children …
In 1979, the year of Three Mile Island, I exposed another nuclear accident—another partial meltdown—in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. It occurred at the Santa Susana Field Lab, a reactor and rocket-testing facility in the mountains between the San Fernando and Simi Valleys.
Back then, the story was both news and history. The Field Lab opened in 1947, at the onset of the Cold War, and the reactor accident happened in 1959. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and a nuclear contractor kept it secret for 20 years, but there was no denying the evidence we revealed on local TV, discovered in AEC archives by the watchdog group Committee to Bridge the Gap.
Today, that accident is still news ...
The Ojai Valley in Ventura County is a magical place. Consider its elements: the sweet and intoxicating smell of California citrus blossoms in the spring, the open space preserved by orchards, the seasonal creeks that run free through the cultivated lands, the surrounding chaparral covered hills and mountains.
But the Ojai Valley is also a place in peril. That’s because the water source that keeps this inland Ventura hamlet thriving is nearly dry.
Lake Casitas reservoir was built in the late 1950s when decades of plentiful rain hid the true nature of California’s arid climate. Back then, the official projections for water-resources potential were pretty optimistic ...
