WORLD BEE DAY – May 20

Bees are essential to California’s agriculture and ecosystems. Did you know that California is home to 1,600 species of bees? While you might think of bees being social, most are solitary species.

CDFA, through its Pollinator Habitat Program, does several things to support these pollinators. But what can YOU do?

🌻 Plant Native Plants: Use resources like Calscape (https://www.calscape.org/) to find native plants suited to your area.

🏡 Create Bee Habitats:

– For Ground-Nesting Bees: Provide mulch-free, well-drained, sunny soil.

– Stem-Nesting Bees: Preserve hollow stems and logs. Wait until spring to trim back dead stalks, leaving stems 8-24 inches high.

One Neglected Swimming Pool Can Produce Thousands of Mosquitoes

As the weather starts to warm, the thought of jumping into a swimming pool is becoming more enticing; however, not all swimming pools are in good condition making them a threat to public health, as well as an eye sore. Mosquitoes can develop from eggs to biting adults in very little standing water. Hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes can come from just one neglected swimming pool putting an entire neighborhood at risk of mosquito-borne diseases including West Nile virus (WNV). What can you do about an unmaintained swimming pool in your neighborhood? If you live in Contra Costa County, you can report that pool to the Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District (District).

How to Report a Neglected Swimming Pool to the District?

To report a neglected swimming pool or hot tub, call (925) 685-9301 or click here. Anonymous reports are accepted.

What Happens After I’ve Reported a Neglected Swimming Pool to the District?

If you are a neighbor, once you have reported a neglected swimming pool to the District, there is nothing more you need to do. Due to privacy requirements, we cannot share specific details about what District employees do on the property with anyone other than the residents responsible for the pool.

In a typical situation, after a neighbor reports a neglected swimming pool to the District:

The District will send letters requesting access to the pool or confirmation that it is not producing mosquitoes.

If the resident thinks the pool is in good condition, the letter directs the resident to take a picture that shows both the letter AND the swimming pool clearly and then send the picture back to the District.

If the resident does not respond to the letters, a District employee will attempt to contact the resident at home two times to request access to the swimming pool to inspect it.

If there is no answer at the time of the employee’s visits, a door tag will be left on the door with further instructions.

If the resident does not follow the instructions on the second door tag or provide access for an inspection, a final notice is mailed to the resident.

If no resolution is obtained after the final notice, a judge can issue a warrant providing access to the swimming pool for a District inspection.

If the District employee finds evidence of young mosquitoes in the water, the employee may place mosquitofish in the swimming pool to eat the young mosquitoes before they grow into biting adults. Depending upon the life stage of the developing mosquitoes present, the District employee may also treat the pool in an appropriate way to protect public health.

It is important to know that while mosquitofish reduce the risk of mosquitoes, the fish do not clean the water. A pool may continue to look very neglected, yet it is not producing mosquitoes because the fish are hard at work.

How to Prevent Mosquito Production in a Swimming Pool or Hot Tub

1. Keep the swimming pool or hot tub in proper operating condition by cleaning, filtering, and maintaining it.
2. Request the District’s mosquitofish service. A District employee will inspect the water feature to determine whether the fish are appropriate, and if they are, the employee will place the fish in the pool or hot tub.

The bottom line is producing mosquitoes is illegal and increases the risk of mosquito-borne disease for you and your neighbors. So, whether you can keep the swimming pool in good working order, request mosquitofish, or decide to remove it or fill it in, as long as it does not produce mosquitoes you are protecting public health for yourself and your neighbors.

Sunday Reading – 05/19/24

The following links are just news items and opinions that pass my desk throughout the week. I don’t necessarily support or advocate any of the items, they are just interesting reads.

US home prices have surged 47% since the start of 2020 – Home prices have surged 47.1% since the start of 2020, easily outstripping the gains seen in recent decades.

That’s according to a recent analysis by ResiClub of the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, which showed that house prices in the 1990s and 2010s grew a respective 30.1% and 44.7%. 

On top of that, home price growth so far this decade is on the verge of surpassing all the growth seen in the 2000s. During that time period, housing prices skyrocketed 47.3%, including an 80% spike before the 2007 housing market crash.

There are a number of driving forces behind the spike in prices. 

Years of underbuilding fueled a shortage of homes in the country, a problem that was later exacerbated by the rapid rise in mortgage rates and expensive construction materials.

Available home supply remains down a stunning 34.3% from the typical amount before the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, according to a separate report published by Realtor.com.

Higher mortgage rates over the past three years have also created a “golden handcuff” effect in the housing market. Sellers who locked in a record-low mortgage rate of 3% or less during the pandemic began have been reluctant to sell, limiting supply further and leaving few options for eager would-be buyers. Read More > at Fox Business

Bay Area consumer prices hop higher as pace of inflation worsens – The inflation rate in the Bay Area as measured by consumer prices rose at a faster pace in April compared with the last several months, a disquieting sign that the bouts of elevated costs have yet to run their course.

Costs for electricity and natural gas delivered by utility behemoths such as PG&E soared skyward, the federal government reported Wednesday.

Consumer prices hopped higher by 3.8% in the Bay Area in April compared with the same month the year before, according to the report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Bay Area’s annual inflation rate of 3.8% as reported by the federal labor agency was well above the year-to-year readings for the closely watched consumer price index for the region in recent months.

Over six months going back to last October 2023, annual inflation had been averaging about 2.6%.

The last time the region’s yearly consumer price index had topped 3% was in August 2023. Read More > in The Mercury New

Overdue bills are rising with US debt delinquencies, Fed survey shows – U.S. household debt has reached a record and more borrowers are struggling to keep up.

Overall U.S. household debt rose to $17.7 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit released Tuesday. That’s an increase of $184 billion, or 1.1%, from the fourth quarter.

The data highlight the mounting financial pressures on American families in an age of elevated inflation. The persistent rise in the prices of essentials such as food and rent have strained household budgets, pushing people to borrow against their credit cards to pay for necessities.

Consumers have added $3.4 trillion in debt since the pandemic, and that increased debt bears much higher interest rates.

Total credit card debt stood at $1.12 trillion in the first quarter of 2024, according to the report. That’s down slightly from the $1.13 trillion in the fourth quarter, in line with seasonal patterns of consumers paying debt incurred over the holidays. But credit card balances are up almost 25% from the first quarter of 2020. Read More > from Bloomberg News

S.F. homelessness rises despite city spending hundreds of millions of dollars, new count shows –

Despite a massive increase in homelessness funding, San Francisco saw a 7% surge in its unhoused population over the past two years, reversing the gains shown in its last count, according to preliminary data from a one-night snapshot released Thursday.

The city counted 8,328 unhoused people across the city, which was up from 7,754 in 2022. Unsheltered homelessness, which includes people living in tents, on sidewalks and in vehicles, dipped 1%, according to city estimates.

City officials said the number of people living in tents or structures, or on the city’s sidewalks and public spaces, dropped by 13% to 2,913 — “the lowest street homelessness level in 10 years.” Meanwhile, people sleeping in vehicles spiked 37%, from 1,049 to 1,442.

There were 437 homelessness families tallied across the city, marking an alarming 94% jump since 2022. Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle

CA Pilot Program Tests Getting EV Drivers To Pay Up For Road Repairs – California is considering replacing the gas tax, which pays for the lion’s share of road repairs and other transportation projects, with a more sustainable source of funding — and they need your help testing it out.

Officials say a new system is needed as more Californians switch to fuel-efficient vehicles, which means lower gas tax revenue at the pump. Drivers of all electric cars don’t pay the tax at all — a budget drain that will grow more serious as more people ditch traditional combustion engines. Roughly 80% of road repair work is funded by gas tax revenue.

In an attempt to offset those losses, Caltrans officials say applications are open for the 2024 Road Charge Collection Pilot, in which people throughout the state can earn up to $400 for participating in the six-month program.

A road charge is a fee based on how many miles you drive, rather than a gas tax that’s based on how many gallons used.

State lawmakers passed a bill in 2014 to start studying the road charge system, and the first pilot launched a few years later, successfully testing more than 5,000 vehicles and 37 million miles.

“Instead of paying the state’s gas tax, which disproportionately impacts those who cannot afford more fuel-efficient vehicles, everyone would pay a per-mile fee for how much they use the road, regardless of what kind of car they drive,” according to the program.

Basically, the more you drive, the more you’d pay for maintenance. Read More > at LAist

Coalition files protest against Delta Conveyance water diversion application that would cause irreversible harm to Delta ecosystem and its people – A broad coalition of California tribes, nonprofits, environmental organizations, and commercial fishing groups have filed a protest with the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB), calling on the denial of the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP) Change in Point of Diversion (CPOD) Petition.

For sixty years, California politicians have proposed to divert water from the Bay-Delta and pump, tunnel, or transport it for other uses in other places throughout the state. And for sixty years, the science has demonstrated that such plans will harm fish and wildlife, communities, and people.

The current Delta Conveyance Project (“DCP,” “Tunnel,” or “Project”) proposal is no different. Pushed forward by politicians in plain contravention of the best available science, the continued drive to take more and more from the Delta—more of its water, more of its history, more of its culture—must be rejected by the State Water Resources Control Board (“State Water Board” or “Board”), so that the fate of Tribes, communities, and ecosystems are not left to the whims of political power brokers.

The Board should deny the Petition because it is unlawful and not in the public interest. The Project would cause unreasonable impacts to water quality and to fish and wildlife in the Sacramento River and San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (“Bay-Delta”) estuary, significant harm to the Bay-Delta environment, irreparable injury to tribal cultural resources and tribal beneficial uses, damage to public trust resources, further injury to already impacted coastal and inland fisheries, and a host of unacceptable adverse impacts to Delta Tribes and communities. It is also effectively a new water right application, as DWR has lost any entitlement to divert in the amount contemplated for the DCP under its 1972 permits. And it injures legal users of water, including unadjudicated reserved rights of Tribes. Read More > from Restore the Delta

Analysis: Benefits of the Delta Conveyance Project Far Exceed Costs – Today, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) released a benefit-cost analysis for the Delta Conveyance Project that finds the infrastructure modernization project would create billions of dollars in benefits for California communities, including reliable water supplies, climate change adaptation, earthquake preparedness and improved water quality.

For every $1 spent, $2.20 in benefits would be generated. The report also shows the very real cost of doing nothing, posing significant future challenges to supplying water to California communities.

“The Delta Conveyance Project passes the benefit-cost test readily, with benefits that are more than double the cost,” said Dr. David Sunding, Emeritus Professor, UC Berkeley, who led the benefit-cost analysis. “The project enables ongoing demands to be satisfied and water supply reliability to be maintained,” he said, adding “the benefits clearly justify the costs.”

As climate change and regulatory constraints cause water supplies to diminish over time, the reliability of the State Water Project infrastructure is in jeopardy, putting 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland at risk. This new benefit-cost analysis provides a compelling financial rationale for the public water agencies funding the project to be able continue to provide affordable, safe, clean and reliable water supply.

“Twenty-seven million people rely on these surface water supplies that support a $2.3 trillion economy in California.” said Karla Nemeth, Director of the California Department of Water Resources. “There is a very real cost to do nothing. It is vastly more efficient and economical to avoid declining supplies.  Water shortages, mandatory restrictions, land fallowing and job loss all impact our state and local economies. Read More > at DWR

$20 billion: The Delta tunnel’s new price tag – Gov. Gavin Newsom backs the proposed project, calling it his “number one climate resilience program” and saying he hopes to get it permitted before he leaves office. The 45-mile tunnel would transport water from the Sacramento River around the Delta to a reservoir near Livermore, the first stop on the 444-mile California Aqueduct.

The new estimate and report will help water suppliers in Southern California, the Central Coast and the Bay Area weigh whether it’s cost effective for them to buy the tunnel’s water. The state would issue revenue bonds to fund the project, then suppliers would have to pay back the costs.

Water agencies, such as the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, are expected to have all of the information they need to decide by the end of 2026, said Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources, which operates the state’s massive water system.

“The questions are how can this project be implemented, what kind of assurances can we have in the resilience it provides to the Delta and our water supply future, and at what price?” Adel Hagekhalil, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District, said in a statement. He said the cost estimate “brings us closer to understanding that equation.”

Building the tunnel could take until at least 2044, with construction expected to start around 2029 and last roughly 15 years. Read More > in The Mercury News

Red Lobster abruptly closes dozens of restaurants around US – Struggling Red Lobster is abruptly closing at least 48 of its restaurants around the country, according to a leading restaurant liquidator.

TAGeX Brands is conducting an online auction of Red Lobster kitchen equipment, furniture and other contents at restaurants closing. The auction begins Monday and continues through Thursday, according to company founder Neal Sherman.

Red Lobster locations in Sacramento, Buffalo, Orlando, Jacksonville and other cities were listed as “temporarily closed” on Red Lobster’s website, according to local news reports. On the Red Lobster website, it said the Fremont location was closed.

Red Lobster did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment. The company has around 650 locations.

Red Lobster is reportedly considering filing for bankruptcy protection. The chain has tapped a restructuring expert as its chief executive, a possible indicator of an impending bankruptcy. Read More > from CNN

There’s Not Enough Power for America’s High-Tech Ambitions – Bill Thomson needs power fast. The problem is that many of the other businesspeople racing into Georgia do too. 

Thomson heads marketing and product management at DC Blox, which in recent years built a string of data centers in midsize cities across the fast-growing Southeast. The company more recently set its sights on Atlanta—the would-be capital of the region—joining a slew of tech and industrial firms piling into the state.

Vying for a piece of one of America’s hottest markets, those businesses tend to have two things in common. One is that they represent a U.S. economy increasingly driven by advanced manufacturing, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. The other is that they promise to hoover up huge amounts of electricity.

That combination means Georgia’s success in luring this development comes with a side effect: Power is a big source of tension. The clean-energy goals of companies and governments are running up against the need for projects to break ground fast. So far, climate advocates fear the imperatives of growth mean more fossil fuels.  

Georgia’s main utility, Georgia Power, has boosted its demand projections sixteen-fold and is pushing ahead on a hotly contested plan to burn more natural gas. Critics warn it will yield higher bills and unnecessary carbon emissions for decades. Some companies are scrambling to secure bespoke renewable-energy deals to power their development. 

One major source of disruption is data centers. The facilities are ballooning in size as people spend more of their waking hours online and companies digitize everything from factory processes to fast-food drive-throughs. All that computing requires power—and for firms like DC Blox to lock it in as quickly as possible. Read More > in The Wall Street Journal

Nonprofits Are Making Billions off the Border Crisis – While the border crisis has become a major liability for President Biden, threatening his reelection chances, it’s become a huge boon to a group of nonprofits getting rich off government contracts.

Although the federally funded Unaccompanied Children Program is responsible for resettling unaccompanied migrant minors who enter the U.S., it delegates much of the task to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that run shelters in the border states of Texas, Arizona, and California.

And with the recent massive influx of unaccompanied children—a record 130,000 in 2022, the last year for which there are official stats—the coffers of these NGOs are swelling, along with the salaries of their CEOs.

The Free Press examined three of the most prominent NGOs that have benefited: Global Refuge, Southwest Key Programs, and Endeavors, Inc. These organizations have seen their combined revenue grow from $597 million in 2019 to an astonishing $2 billion by 2022, the last year for which federal disclosure documents are available. And the CEOs of all three nonprofits reap more than $500,000 each in annual compensation, with one of them—the chief executive of Southwest Key—making more than $1 million.

Some of the services NGOs provide are eyebrow-raising. For example, Endeavors uses taxpayer funds to offer migrant children “pet therapy,” “horticulture therapy,” and music therapy. In 2021 alone, Endeavors paid Christy Merrell, a music therapist, $533,000. An internal Endeavors PowerPoint obtained by America First Legal, an outfit founded by former Trump aide Stephen Miller, showed that the nonprofit conducted 1,656 “people-plant interactions” and 287 pet therapy sessions between April 2021 and March 2023.  Read More > at The Free Press

Top doctor, 57, reveals he is cancer-free a year after undergoing world-first treatment based on his own breakthrough research to beat ‘worst of the worst’ brain tumour. – An Australian doctor has revealed he has been cancer-free for a year after undergoing a world-first treatment based on his own breakthrough research.

Professor Richard Scolyer was diagnosed with ‘incurable’ grade 4 brain cancer after becoming ill in Poland last year.

This ‘worst of the worst’ type of cancer, known as glioblastoma, is so aggressive that most patients survive less than a year.

The 57-year-old underwent an experimental therapy based on his own research on melanoma, a type of cancer that starts in the skin.

On Monday, he wrote on X to say he had an MRI scan last week and there was still no sign of recurrence.

The team used a treatment based on immunotherapy, which teaches the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells. Read More > at Daily Mail

What Is Causing This? “Demographic Winter Is Coming” As Fertility Rates Plummet All Over The Globe – Fertility rates have fallen way below replacement level throughout the entire industrialized world, and this is starting to cause major problems all over the globe.  Aging populations are counting on younger generations to take care of them as they get older, but younger generations are not nearly large enough to accomplish that task.  Meanwhile, there aren’t enough qualified young workers in many fields to replace the expertise of older workers that are now retiring.  Sadly, this is just the beginning.  As I discuss in my new book entitled “Chaos”, if fertility rates continue to drop we could potentially be facing an unprecedented global population collapse in the decades ahead.  This has become so evident that even the mainstream media is starting to do stories about this.  In fact, an economist that was just interviewed by the Wall Street Journal is warning that “demographic winter is coming”…

Fertility is falling almost everywhere, for women across all levels of income, education and labor-force participation. The falling birthrates come with huge implications for the way people live, how economies grow and the standings of the world’s superpowers.

In high-income nations, fertility fell below replacement in the 1970s, and took a leg down during the pandemic. It’s dropping in developing countries, too. India surpassed China as the most populous country last year, yet its fertility is now below replacement.

“The demographic winter is coming,” said Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, an economist specializing in demographics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Here in the United States, if we want to maintain a stable population we need the fertility rate to be at 2.1 or above.

Unfortunately, our fertility rate dropped to just 1.62 last year, which was an all-time record low…

In the U.S., a short-lived pandemic baby boomlet has reversed. The total fertility rate fell to 1.62 last year, according to provisional government figures, the lowest on record.

Had fertility stayed near 2.1, where it stood in 2007, the U.S. would have welcomed an estimated 10.6 million more babies since, according to Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire.

Our native-born population has been in decline for quite some time.

The only reason why the U.S. population as a whole has not been shrinking is because of the tremendous amount of immigration that has been happening.

But even though it is not shrinking, the U.S. population has been rapidly getting older, and it is being projected that just six years from now seniors will actually outnumber children for the first time in our entire history… Read More > at Substack

Disney removes ‘potentially problematic’ character from park meet and greets – One of the Walt Disney Co.’s most iconic characters has been removed from Walt Disney World park meet and greets with the public, reportedly because the character was flagged as “potentially problematic” by a Disney committee.

Disney confirmed in February that Tinker Bell, a Disney icon since making her first appearance in 1953′s “Peter Pan,” had been removed from the park’s meet and greet rotation, but could still be seen flying over the park at the conclusion of the nighttime fireworks show, as well as in park parades.

In addition to park appearances, Tinker Bell has been a company mascot, featured in the opening sequence of scores of Disney movies and television shows for decades, flying towards the screen and sprinkling it with her famous pixie dust.

Meet and greets within Disney parks were discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic, but when they returned, Tinker Bell did not. Now, the signage at the Magic Kingdom’s Town Square Theatre where guests could once meet the blonde fairy has been removed, replaced by signage for Mickey Mouse, according to Inside the Magic.

While confirming the character’s absence from Magic Kingdom meet and greets, Disney did not indicate a reason for the change. However, a 2022 report by the New York Times said Disney’s “Stories Matter” team — launched to “ensure (our content) accurately represents our global audiences” — had indicated the Tinker Bell character was “potentially problematic.” Read More > at AL.

How to kill the ‘zombie’ cells that make you age – Lurking throughout your body, from your liver to your brain, are zombie-like entities known as senescent cells. They no longer divide or function as they once did, yet they resist death and spew out a noxious brew of biological signals that can slow cognition, increase frailty and weaken the immune system. Worst of all, their numbers increase as you age.

For more than a decade, researchers have been trying to see whether they can selectively destroy these cells with a variety of drugs. In a pivotal study¹ published in 2015, a team at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida, discovered that a combination of two compounds, called dasatinib and quercetin, killed senescent cells in aged mice. The treatment made the mice less frail, rejuvenated their hearts and boosted their running endurance. The finding opened the door to a new area of medicine called senolytics.

Now, fresh results from animal studies and human clinical trials have added momentum to the field. In mice and monkeys, researchers are using genetic tools to reprogram and kill senescent cells. Others are engineering senolytic immune cells. And about 20 clinical trials are ongoing. Researchers are testing new and repurposed drugs that could have senolytic properties, in the hope of combating age-related conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, lung disease and chronic kidney disease. Read More > at Nature

Swift Water Safety: Take Precautions to Stay Safe Near Fast-Moving Waterways

From Cal OES

As the weather warms up, many local lakes, rivers and streams could experience above-average water levels. 

The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) reminds all Californians about the importance of being swift-water safe. 

Melting snow flowing into waterways can add to the volume and speed of the water. This water may also be extremely cold and dangerous to swim in, even for the most experienced swimmers. 

In addition, swift water can conceal dangers lurking below the surface that you may not see, or carry debris such as tree branches that can trap you underwater. 

Through the California Fire and Rescue Mutual Aid System, Cal OES works with local government fire agencies to train highly specialized swift water teams that can respond when needed. 

There are a few steps you can take to stay safe around swift water, so a fun day out doesn’t turn into a potential emergency. 

• Never swim alone or jump in after someone who has fallen in. Always bring a friend or someone who can call for help if needed. 
• Remember, swift water from snow melt runs cold, so just a few minutes in this water can incapacitate you. 
• Most importantly, always wear a lifejacket. 

It’s best to stay out of swift water. But if you are going outdoors this summer, taking a few steps now to prepare can help ensure you, your loved ones and community remain safe. 

Partial Closures of Southbound I-680 between Alcosta Boulevard in San Ramon and I-580/I-680 Connector in Pleasanton May 17-20 and May 31-June 3, 2024

From CalTrans

Caltrans has scheduled a partial closure of southbound Interstate 680 between Alcosta Boulevard in San Ramon and the I-580/I-680 connector in Pleasanton Friday, May 17 through Monday morning, May 20, and Friday, May 31 through Monday, June 3.

In both closures, three left lanes of southbound Interstate 680 will be closed between Alcosta Boulevard in San Ramon and the I-580/I-680 Connector in Pleasanton from 9 p.m. Friday through 4 a.m. Monday morning.

Two right lanes of I-680 will remain open during both closures. However, we encourage motorists to take alternative routes to alleviate traffic congestion within the construction work zone on southbound I-680 in the cities of San Ramon and Dublin.

In addition to these closures on southbound I-680, the far-left lane (Express Lane) and left shoulder will be closed on northbound I-680 between Amador Valley Boulevard in Dublin and Alcosta Blvd in San Ramon.

Though lanes will be open, it’s best to avoid the area if possible. If you do access the freeway, **Please be aware of construction vehicles entering and exiting the construction zone and slow for the Cone Zone.**

During the closures, the contractor will replace a portion of the existing deteriorated roadway with new pavement on southbound I-680.

The work will repair deteriorating existing pavement and enhance motorist safety while reducing the number of nightly closures needed on the project. Each weekend closure will accomplish the amount of work that otherwise would require an estimated 40 nighttime closures.

In the case of rain or unanticipated developments, the closures will be rescheduled and the public will be notified.

Portable changeable message signs will be placed prior to closure advising motorists of this closure and will remain in effect throughout the weekend while work is being performed.

Northbound I-680 and I-580/I-680 interchange connector will remain open and will not be affected by the closure.

Caltrans is aware that the closures will impact the motoring public and measures are being taken to minimize inconvenience. Caltrans thanks the motoring public in advance for your patience as we work to improve I-680.

California Highway Patrol officers and message signs will be on hand to guide motorists. Detours for the closures are as follows:

1. Motorists driving west on Interstate 80 in Vacaville and Fairfield will remain on I-80 to southbound I-880.
2. Motorists on southbound I-680 near the Benicia Bridge can take I-780 west to I-80 to southbound I-880.
3. Motorists on southbound I-680 in Concord can take SR-4 to I-80 to southbound I-880.
4. Motorists on southbound I-680 in Walnut Creek can take SR-24 to I-80 to southbound I-880.
5. Full Shutdown Locations:
   1. Southbound Saint Patrick Way onramp onto southbound I-680
6. Lane Closure Locations (Not Full Closure):
   1. Three left lanes closed on southbound I-680 between Alcosta Blvd in San Ramon and I-580/I-680 connector in Dublin
   2. Far left lane (Express Lane) and left shoulder closed on northbound I-680 between Amador Valley Blvd in Dublin and Alcosta Blvd in San Ramon

For more information, please visit the Alameda County Transportation Commission website at https://bit.ly/43dKwg1.

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National Safe Boating Week – May 18-24, 2024

This week is a time to emphasize the importance of responsible boating practices and water safety awareness as boaters head out to California’s waterways during Memorial Day weekend. As boaters across the country gear up for the summer season of adventure, the U.S. Coast Guard and California State Parks’ Division of Boating and Waterways are sharing the top seven tips for safe and enjoyable boating experiences.

California Is 2024’s 9th Worst State for Animals

With nearly 3,000 native animal species and millions of pets in households across the country that rely on our support to survive, the non-profit organization SmileHub today released new reports on the Best Charities for Animals and the Best States for Animals in 2024.

In order to determine where America’s wildlife and animal companions live their best lives, SmileHub compared the animal-friendliness of all 50 states across 18 key metrics. The data set ranges from the share of pet-owning households to state land designated for parks and wildlife to vulnerability to climate change.

Animal-Friendliness of California (1=Best, 25=Avg.):

• Overall Rank: 42nd
• 33rd –Share of Pet-Owning Households
• 32nd – Veterinarians Per 1,000 Pet-Owning Households
• 40th – Share of No-Kill Shelters
• 50th – Average Monthly Pet Insurance Cost for Dogs
• 50th – Average Monthly Pet Insurance Cost for Cats
• 41st – Vulnerability to Climate Change
   

To view the full report and your state’s rank, please visit:
https://smilehub.org/blog/best-states-for-animals/107

Best & Worst Places to Start a Career in 2024 – WalletHub Study

With graduation season upon us and many employers still experiencing labor shortages, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2024’s Best & Worst Places to Start a Career, as well as expert commentary, to help recent graduates launch their careers in the right place.

WalletHub compared more than 180 U.S. cities based on 26 key indicators of career-friendliness. The data set ranges from the availability of entry-level jobs to monthly average starting salary to housing affordability.

Best Places to Start a Career		Worst Places to Start a Career
1. Atlanta, GA		173. Oxnard, CA
2. Orlando, FL		174. Jackson, MS
3. Salt Lake City, UT		175. Detroit, MI
4. Tampa, FL		176. Newark, NJ
5. Pittsburgh, PA		177. Cape Coral, FL
6. Portland, ME		178. Yonkers, NY
7. Charleston, SC		179. Santa Clarita, CA
8. Austin, TX		180. Pembroke Pines, FL
9. Miami, FL		181. Bridgeport, CT
10. Knoxville, TN		182. New York, NY

Best vs. Worst

• Austin, Texas, has the highest monthly average starting salary (adjusted for cost of living), which is three times higher than in Juneau, Alaska, the city with the lowest.
   
• Columbia, Maryland, has the highest median annual household income (adjusted for cost of living), which is 3.3 times higher than in Detroit, the city with the lowest.
   
• Oxnard, California, has the highest workforce diversity, which is 2.3 times higher than in New Haven, Connecticut, the city with the lowest.
   
• Miami and Hialeah, Florida, have the lowest unemployment rate, which is 5.9 times lower than in Detroit, the city with the highest.

To view the full report and your city’s rank, please visit: 
https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-cities-to-start-a-career/3626

May is National Wildfire Awareness Month

May is a time when the Park District and other public agencies come together to stress the importance of preparing for the upcoming wildfire season. Brush up on important wildfire season safety tips and share the news with your community. Wildfire safety remains one of the Park District’s top priorities. Fire Safety Tips.

Historic 2023 water year delivered big boost to California’s groundwater supplies

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has released the latest Semi-Annual Groundwater Conditions report, and the data show that California achieved 4.1 million acre-feet of managed groundwater recharge during Water Year 2023, which is nearly the water storage capacity of Shasta Lake. The report also details an increase in groundwater storage of 8.7 million acre-feet.

Water Year 2023 is the first year since 2019 that there has been a reported increase in groundwater storage. A significant reduction in groundwater pumping in 2023 also led to favorable groundwater conditions, including a decrease in land subsidence, or sinking of the land. Some areas that had previously experienced subsidence actually saw a rebound (uplift) in ground surface elevation from reduced pumping in the deeper aquifers and refilling of groundwater storage.

The groundwater report released today includes, for the first time, groundwater sustainability plan Annual Report data reported by local groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) across 99 groundwater basins which make up over 90 percent of the groundwater use in the State.

Groundwater is one of California’s most important natural resources and, more likely than not, groundwater is part of your life. Nearly 85 percent of Californians depend on groundwater for some portion of their water supply, and in dry years when surface water supplies are lacking, communities turn to groundwater to fulfill the needs of households, agriculture, and businesses. California’s rich and abundant ecosystems also rely on groundwater to sustain the natural plant and animal communities that make California such an exceptional place to live, work and recreate.

While the last two rainy seasons have been good news for California’s groundwater basins, there is still a lot of work to do. Long-term groundwater storage remains in a deficit of nearly 40 million acre-feet over the past two decades, due in part to years of pumping out more water than has been replenished. It would take nearly five consecutive above average, not just average, water years like 2023 to fill that gap. California needs to replenish what nature provides by expanding groundwater recharge projects, upgrading water infrastructure, and modernizing our water distribution system through projects like the Delta Conveyance Project, to be able to move water during high flows to maximize storage. Read More > from the California Department of Water Resources

Sunday Reading – 05/12/24

The following links are just news items and opinions that pass my desk throughout the week. I don’t necessarily support or advocate any of the items, they are just interesting reads.

California approves big, controversial change to electricity bills. Here are the details – Millions of Californians will see changes in their utility bills in the coming years after state regulators voted Thursday to lower energy costs for some households and increase bills for others at a time of soaring utility costs.

The California Public Utilities Commission approved a two-part strategy to restructure utility bills by adding $24.15 fixed charge to residential bills while lowering per-unit rates for electricity. Low-income households will pay lower fixed charges of either $12 or $6.

The changes will go into effect in early 2026 for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers and late 2025 for customers of Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric.

…

But Severin Borenstein, an economist with UC Berkeley who published the initial research in support of fixed charges, said increases will be smaller for those impacted and be closer to 15 cents a day. He said 95% of households enrolled in low-income programs will see their bills go down. 

The plan won’t change how much utilities collect from customers through bills, but does adjust the formula for how those charges are distributed. 

“These changes would help low income customers and have a very small impact on others,” Borenstein said. Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle

Concord is nearly $40 million in the hole for Naval Weapons Station project. Here’s how they plan to get it back. – Transforming an abandoned military base into a massive $6 billion, mixed-use community is no simple task — and Concord has the $40 million bill to prove it.

For nearly two decades, the city has attempted to revitalize the former Concord Naval Weapons Station into tens of thousands of homes and millions of square-feet of schools, offices, shops and restaurants.

But that vision had only racked up nearly $40 million in expenses by the end of 2023 — with almost nothing to show for it. The project is on its third developer, specific plans have not been finalized, construction timelines remain unclear and the U.S. Navy still technically owns the 2,300-acre site.

The project has been a boon for consultants who help in-house staff draft a slew of environmental studies, conceptual renderings, legal contracts and other permitting admin required before any shovels can break ground. While compensation for that work started in October of 2005, delays tied to the pandemic and the city’s decision to abandon problematic agreements with previous developers have since exacerbated those debts.

Despite the long list of expenditures, Concord officials are confident that the city’s coffers will be spared from those past (and future) debts.

That’s because Brookfield Properties — the third and current developer of the Naval Weapons Station — has committed to fully reimbursing the city for all project costs. Read More > in The Mercury News

Will California voters decide tax limits in November? It’s up to the Supreme Court – The California Supreme Court will decide in the coming weeks whether to remove a sweeping anti-tax measure from the November ballot, blocking an effort to increase the requirements for implementing taxes, fees and other government charges in the state before voters have a chance to weigh in.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Legislature and others sued last fall to stop the business community-sponsored initiative, arguing that it amounts to an illegal attempt to revise the California Constitution and would impair essential government functions.

With a June 27 deadline to set the ballot for the November election, the court must rule soon about whether to allow the proposed measure, formally known as the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act, to proceed.

The proposed initiative would broadly make it more challenging to raise taxes in California, including by also increasing the margin to pass a voter-initiated special tax at the local level, to two-thirds from a simple majority.

Other consequential provisions — which could upend the operation of California government at every level — would restrict how officials can calculate the cost of fees that fund public services and programs and reclassify some of those charges as taxes. That would prohibit administrative agencies from setting these levies, requiring the Legislature or local governments to turn to the voters to adjust them.

Proponents say their initiative is a necessary crackdown on loopholes created by legislators and court rulings that weakened previous voter-approved tax accountability measures and allowed an unelected administrative bureaucracy to flourish. It has been heavily supported by the real estate industry and a private ambulance company, which frequently battle local governments over taxes, fees and assessments to fund public services.

But since it secured its eligibility more than a year ago, Democratic politicians, organized labor and other opponents have worked feverishly to undermine the initiative and toss it from the ballot.

In addition to the lawsuit, legislators voted in the final weeks of session last summer to put a competing measure on the ballot that would flip the California Business Roundtable initiative’s own higher standards against it, requiring that changes to the threshold for approving state and local taxes pass by that same margin. That would mean it needed to secure two-thirds support from the electorate, rather than a simple majority, a high hurdle for a statewide measure. Read More > at CalMatters

California wine is in serious trouble – The entire $55 billion California wine industry is, like the wine industry worldwide, experiencing an unprecedented downturn right now. No sector is immune — not the luxury tier, not the big conglomerates, not the upstart natural wines. Wine consumption fell 8.7% in 2023, according to leading industry analyst the Gomberg Fredrikson Report, a sobering reversal for an industry that had, for a quarter-century, taken annual growth for granted.

This year could be the breaking point, with many industry figures predicting “a good-sized house cleaning,” as put by Ian Brand, owner of I. Brand & Family Winery in Monterey County. 

“A lot of brands are dead but they don’t even know it right now,” echoed Michael Honig, president of Honig Vineyard & Winery in Napa Valley. 

An extinction-level event has not come to pass — yet. But regardless of the winery survival rate, it’s become clear in 2024 that the nature of the California wine industry has fundamentally changed. After decades of unfettered growth beginning in the 1990s, wine consumption started to flatten around 2018. Now, following what appeared to be a spike during the pandemic, it’s in dramatic decline.

No single factor is responsible for California wine’s present predicament. Millennials and Gen Zers aren’t drinking as much alcohol as older generations. Hard seltzer and canned cocktails have stolen market share. The current medical consensus suggests that alcohol is unequivocally bad for human health. (Beer and spirits sales are struggling, too.)  Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle

Rattlesnake advisory issued for Bay Area parks as the reptiles become ‘more active’ – The East Bay Regional Park District has issued a rattlesnake advisory for inland parts of the Bay Area, and with temperatures expected to increase as much as 40 degrees throughout the region in the coming days, sightings are even more likely as the slithering reptiles emerge from their winter hibernation and bask in the heat.

“Rattlesnakes are more active in warm weather, which can lead to more encounters with humans and dogs, especially along trails and roads,” the news release read. “Visitors are encouraged to keep snake safety precautions in mind.” 

The venomous snakes are native to California and can be found in tall grasses, under rocks and near logs, and even swimming in the water as they hunt for prey and engage in courtship throughout the wildlands. The warning comes in the wake of rattlesnake mating season, and as their population booms, experts with Central Coast Snake Services are offering to safely relocate the animals from backyards in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, free of charge.

People who come face to face with rattlesnakes on Bay Area trails are advised to leave them alone, first and foremost. “Collecting, killing, or removing any plants or animals from the Park District is illegal,” the news release read. A rattlesnake, while typically introverted, won’t be shy about letting you know it’s there and that you’re too close — listen for the namesake buzz of their rattle. Read More > at SFGATE

Sierra Nevada site records snowiest day of the season. Yes, in May. – A weekend spring storm that drenched the San Francisco Bay Area and closed Northern California mountain highways also set a single-day snowfall record for the season on Sunday in the Sierra Nevada.

The wet weather system had mostly moved out of the state by Sunday morning, but officials warned that roads would remain slick after around two feet of snow fell in some areas of the Sierra.

“Did anyone have the snowiest day of the 2023/2024 season being in May on their winter bingo card?” the University of California’s Central Sierra Snow Lab asked on the social platform X.

The 26.4 inches of snowfall Sunday at the lab, near Donner Summit, beat the second snowiest day of the season — March 3rd — by 2.6 inches. Read More > at the Associated Press

EPA suit alleges San Francisco discharges sewage into bay and onto beaches – The federal government and the state of California sued the city of San Francisco on Wednesday over the city’s aging combined stormwater-sewer systems, which they allege can release raw sewage into the bay and onto beaches when overwhelmed during heavy rain, as first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. (SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

Federal officials said the sewage threatens aquatic life and also puts swimmers, surfers and anyone in the waters at local beaches at risk of coming into contact with pathogens and high levels of enterococci and E. coli bacteria that can cause illness if ingested.

The suit was filed Wednesday in federal court by the Department of Justice and the California attorney general, on behalf of federal and state water quality regulators. The requesting agencies are the Environmental Protection Agency, which is tasked with enforcing environmental regulation at the federal level, and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, which manages water quality for the region at the state level.

The lawsuit alleges the city is violating federal standards established in 1972 by the Clean Water Act, specifically in the way it releases excess water into waterways. It’s calling for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to operate its two combined sewer systems and three water treatment plants under the terms of its permits.

The city of San Francisco uses what’s called a combined stormwater-sewer system, which transports wastewater from homes and businesses in the same pipe as stormwater that runs off streets and roofs. Most of the time, when it rains, both the stormwater and sewage get treated before being released into waterways so that the level of toxins in the water is minimal. During severe storms, however, the flow through the pipes can exceed what the system was designed to handle. The excess — which includes both stormwater and sewage — can be released into local creeks, San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Read More > at SFGATE

California lawmakers face a ballooning budget deficit – The biggest challenge facing lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom is the state budget deficit — and it just got bigger.

Today, the Legislative Analyst’s Office projected the shortfall as $15 billion higher, or $73 billion.

The analyst’s office had pegged the 2024-25 deficit at $58 billion in January, using Newsom’s revenue estimates when he presented his initial budget proposal of $292 billion. 

On Friday, Newsom’s Department of Finance reported that preliminary General Fund cash receipts in January were $5 billion below (or nearly 20%) the governor’s budget forecast. Unless state tax revenues pick up significantly, the bigger number will make it more difficult to balance the state budget just through dipping into reserves and targeted spending cuts.

But exactly how the state can dig its way out — at least in the Assembly — remains to be seen. Speaker Robert Rivas told reporters today that the budget has been at the forefront of conversations among Assembly Democrats and that he is very concerned with the growing deficit.

But, as legislative leaders and the governor have noted, the budget deficit won’t be addressed just through oversight and cuts. It’ll also mean tougher paths for bills lawmakers introduce this year — including the return of the single-payer healthcare effort by Democratic Assemblymember Ash Kalra.

And while the governor has shot down any attempt to raise taxes or create new ones to increase state revenues, Rivas did not take a position.  Read More > at CalMatters

BART has ‘no backup plan’ if Bay Area voters reject tax measure – BART could enter a transit death spiral in less than 24 months, once the Bay Area transit agency runs out of emergency pandemic aid, and officials are pinning all their hopes for survival on voters’ approval of a 2026 tax measure.

BART officials say the tax measure is their only way forward — there is no plan B.

The regional rail agency expects to run out of the $1.9 billion in federal and state assistance by around April 2026, at which point BART projects a $35 million deficit for the 2026 fiscal year.

By fiscal 2027, the agency expects to face a $385 million deficit — about one-third of BART’s operating costs — with projected shortfalls of $377 million following in fiscal 2028 and $355 million in fiscal 2029.

Those latest budget projections, which BART’s Board of Directors planned to discuss Thursday, represent a noticeable increase from figures the agency released in late March. The rising deficits are partly due to expected declining sales tax revenues and a slower-than-anticipated ridership recovery.

BART plans to use $328 million in federal and state subsidies to balance its budget for fiscal 2025, which starts in July. The agency expects to exhaust its remaining $294 million in subsidies that state lawmakers approved last year to shrink a $329 million shortfall to $35 million in fiscal 2026, which begins July 2025. Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle

Billions of cicadas are invading the U.S. Should Californians be worried? – It is being called the Cicada-pocalypse and the Cicada-geddon.

Over the next few weeks, hundreds of billions, maybe even trillions of cicadas — grasshopper-like insects — will emerge from underground burrows all across the Midwest and the South where they have been living for as long as the past 17 years.

From Wisconsin to Mississippi, Virginia to Oklahoma, immense swarms of the somewhat creepy, red-eyed bugs will carpet trees like little 1-inch extras in a horror movie and generate ear-splitting mating sounds that have been compared to jackhammers and chainsaws. Some have already begun to come out in Georgia and other parts of the South, prompting one North Carolina county to urge the public this week to stop calling 911 asking about the racket.

Should Californians batten down the hatches? Are we in for a cicada onslaught?

Relax, scientists say. In a state marked by earthquakes, bomb cyclones, mega-droughts, fire tornadoes and atmospheric river storms, it turns out that despite having dozens of species of cicadas in the Golden State, their emergence is usually underwhelming.

“We do have cicadas in California. But they are kind of boring,” said Lynn Kimsey, a professor emeritus of entomology at UC Davis. “Our cicadas come out, but they only come out in little dribbles. So we don’t really pay much attention to them.” Read More > in The Mercury News

Painting on the Pier – At Big Break – May 12, 2024 Sun11:00 AM – 1:00 PM

BIG BREAK: Relax on the pier as we paint the scene. We find our inspiration from the waters of Big Break.Join us for a special Mother’s Day session on Sunday May 12th honoring the moms who call Big Break home.

Drop-in program, no registration.

Free Program.

Adult participation required.

Meet at the Fishing Pier

For information, call: (510) 544-3050.

What time can I see the northern lights in California this weekend?

A severe solar storm could make the ethereal Northern Lights visible across a majority of the United States –  and it’s quite possible the spectacular display will be visible in California, specifically the Bay Area. 

Seeing the auora from Northern California might be difficult, but the best chances of seeing the lights, scientists say, are Friday from 11 p.m. to Saturday at 2 a.m. in dark, rural areas without a lot of city lights or trees.

The best viewing conditions for the aurora are expected across the northern Plains and the Pacific Northwest, where mainly cloud-free conditions will lead to great views of the night sky, AccuWeather meteorologist Brian Lada said.

Draft Delta Plan Five-Year Review open for public comment

The Delta Stewardship Council has conducted another five-year review of the Delta Plan to evaluate progress in implementing its policies, recommendations, and performance measures and is now seeking public input on the findings and recommendations. 

The 2024 Five-Year Review follows up on the first Five-Year Review adopted by the Council in 2019. The new report uses established performance measures to provide a snapshot of measured progress toward Delta Plan objectives. Performance measure evaluations are organized into topic-specific “report cards” that consider the portion of each performance measure’s target achieved.

It also includes:

• an analysis of the Delta Plan’s regulatory functions and a series of recommendations, along with
• associated actions to outline how the Council and our partners can implement the Delta Plan over the next five years.

Comments received by June 10, 2024, via fiveyearreview@deltacouncil.ca.gov or the following mailing address will be considered for the final report.

Delta Stewardship Council
715 P Street, 15-300
Sacramento, CA 95814

California’s newest State Park, Dos Rios, to open June 12 in the San Joaquin Valley

This year’s California State Parks Week will kick off with the opening of the State’s newest park, Dos Rios. Named for the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers, the 1,600-acre park is located eight miles west of Modesto. It is the largest public-private floodplain restoration project in California to restore habitat for threatened and endangered wildlife. State Parks Week runs June 12–16, with the theme, “This is Where You Live.” Dos Rios Park will open Wednesday, June 12.

As a state park, Dos Rios will offer Californians opportunities to improve their mental, physical, and social well-being. Thanks to a partnership between California State Parks and the California Conservation Corps, visitors will be able to hike some areas of the property and enjoy newly built picnic tables and ramadas for the June opening. Planning for greater river access for swimming, angling, boating, and other water sports, along with trails for bicycling and other outdoor recreation activities will involve a public engagement process that includes consultation with area Tribes.

“The vision for Dos Rios is a journey into the past, revealing a lush Central Valley and a local escape – adjacent to two rivers and a wildlife refuge,” said California State Parks Director Armando Quintero. “State Parks is committed to ensuring access for all Californians as we collaboratively craft this park alongside the public, tribal partners, and stakeholders for a healthier natural environment close to home.”

In partnership with the nonprofit River Partners, the restoration of Dos Rios was a 10-year, $40 million project from 11 different funding sources from the public and private sectors. This will be the first state park created since Eastern Kern County Onyx Ranch State Vehicular Recreation Area in November 2014.

Using Genetic Identification to Find Spring-run Salmon and More

Balancing the water supply needs of millions of Californians while protecting the environment is no easy task. The Department of Water Resources is committed to using and advancing the best available science to operate the State Water Project to get water to the people who need it while protecting native fish species.

One important way DWR is doing just that is through the advanced use of genetics to identify different runs of Chinook salmon to monitor and protect the runs that are listed as threatened or endangered. Knowing which runs are present and where they are being found in the water system ultimately helps rebuild salmon populations in California. DWR has released a video showing the genetic identification process in action.

DWR leads an interagency effort, which includes California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), to calculate a Juvenile Production Estimate (JPE) for spring-run Chinook salmon, which estimates the size of the salmon population entering the Delta from upstream tributaries. Part of the interagency effort means other agencies send collected DNA from juvenile salmon to DWR. DWR’s genetic monitoring program then uses that collected DNA to determine run type, which is essential to producing an accurate Juvenile Production Estimate.

There are four different run types of Chinook salmon: spring-run, fall-run, late-fall run, and winter-run. Spring-run Chinook salmon are listed as “threatened” under the State and federal Endangered Species Acts. Fall-run and late-fall-run Chinook Salmon are a “Species of Concern” federally, while winter-run are listed as “endangered” under State and federal levels.

“All four run types look exactly the same,” said Melinda Baerwald, DWR environmental program manager. “Since we can’t tell them apart by looking at them, we have to use other methods to confirm run-type.”

Originally to determine the run-type, scientists would swab some mucus from the fish. Now, the preferred method is to clip a small portion of the dorsal fin of each fish, since it provides more DNA.

This type of DNA testing uses a specific technology called ‘SHERLOCK’ which stands for Specific High-sensitivity Enzymatic Reporter un-LOCKing. SHERLOCK was originally developed for viral diagnostics, much like the tests to detect COVID in people, but it has very recently been applied to conservation biology. Along with identifying spring-run Chinook, DWR has developed or is developing SHERLOCK tests for the three smelt species in the Delta: Delta smelt, Longfin smelt, Wakasagi; and three invasive species: nutria, zebra mussels, and quagga mussels. The development of the specific tests is done in collaboration with UC Davis.

SHERLOCK leverages another fun acronym ‘CRISPR,’ which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindromic Repeats. Since spring-run salmon have different DNA than the other salmon runs, DWR scientists use the CRISPR enzyme to distinctly detect the DNA from spring-run, winter-run, and fall-run salmon. Read More > at California Department of Water Resources

Sunday Reading – 05/05/24

The following links are just news items and opinions that pass my desk throughout the week. I don’t necessarily support or advocate any of the items, they are just interesting reads.

“The Latino Century” by Mike Madrid: An Insightful Investigation of the Shifting Latino Vote and How it Will Impact Politics and Democracy for Decades to Come -In 2020, Latinos became the second largest ethnic voting group in the country. They make up the largest plurality of residents in the most populous states in the union, as well as the fastest segment of the most important swing states in the US Electoral College. Fitting neither the stereotype of the aggrieved minority voter nor the traditional assimilating immigrant group, Latinos are challenging both political parties’ notions of race, religious beliefs, economic success, and the American dream. Given their exploding numbers—and their growing ability to determine the fate of local, state, and national elections—you’d think the two major political parties would understand Latino voters. After all, their emergence on the national scene is not a new phenomenon. But they still don’t.

Republicans, not because of their best efforts but rather despite them, are just beginning to see a movement of Latinos toward the GOP. Democrats, for the moment, still win a commanding share of the Latino vote, but that share is dwindling fast. In The Latino Century, veteran political consultant Mike Madrid uses thirty years of research and campaign experience at some of the highest levels on both sides of the aisle to address what might be the most critical questions of our time: Will the rise of Latino voters continue to foment the hyper-partisan and explosive tribalism of our age or will they usher in a new pluralism that advances the arc of social progress? How and why are both political parties so uniquely unprepared for the coming wave of Latino votes? And what must each party do to win those votes? Read More > at California City News

California’s insurance crisis is rattling the real estate market. It could impact ‘almost every sale’ – Before insurance companies started retreating from the state, home insurance was divorced from the process of searching for a home. Only after getting their offer accepted would buyers begin to look for insurance, which is required for a mortgage. Now, with the insurance market in turmoil, some sellers like Koehn are finding buyers backing out due to the high cost or unavailability of insurance. Buyers, meanwhile, are scrambling preemptively to obtain insurance, making all-cash offers or choosing not to purchase homes at all. 

“Homeowner’s insurance used to be a rounding error, depending on where you lived. It’s not that way anymore,” said David Russell, a professor of insurance at CSU Northridge.

The problems are especially acute in areas of high wildfire risk, but they have rapidly spread across the state, including the Bay Area.

In Lake County, the availability and affordability of insurance has been an issue for several years, according to Marie Wotherspoon, a real estate agent in the area. But the effects of the crisis have begun manifesting elsewhere. In San Diego, where Wotherspoon was based until last year, Foremost Insurance’s decision to stop offering condo insurance caused a number of condo owners to lose coverage, she said. Even in some coastal cities, buyers have struggled to find insurance, she said. Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle

California Tax Receipts Are Down Again as Budget Deficit Looms Large Over State’s Government – The California budget deficit for the upcoming year, which is estimated to be at least $38 billion, might be getting worse.

Gavin Newsom’s Department of Finance released a new bulletin that showed that state tax receipts had brought in disappointing revenue that was underneath expectations set by the department earlier in the year. This spells more trouble as state lawmakers are already struggling to come up with a balanced budget.    

According to the Department of Finance bulletin, California’s tax revenues as of March were $5.8 billion, or 4%, below the forecasted amount government officials were hoping for.  

Personal income tax receipts contributed to $3.4 billion of the revenue shortfall, with personal income tax payments being down $4.7 billion to forecast. Corporate tax receipts were $1.4 billion below forecast. 

The California Department of Finance reported that personal income in California has managed to increase by 4.2 percent in 2023, which was a positive change after a 0.2 percent decline in 2022.  

However, California’s income growth was less than the 5.2% average growth experienced by the rest of the United States in 2023. Read More > at Savvy Dime   

California Fast-Food Chains Are Now Serving Sticker Shock – Restaurants for months have said menu prices in California would rise as the state raised the minimum wage for fast-food workers. Now they are following through.

Consumers picking up burgers, burritos and chicken sandwiches at chains in the Golden State are grappling with prices that for months have been rising at a faster clip than in other states, according to market-research firm Datassential. 

Since September, when California moved to require large fast-food chains to bump up their minimum hourly pay to $20 in April, fast-food and fast-casual restaurants in California have increased prices by 10% overall, outpacing all other states, the firm found in an analysis of thousands of restaurants across 70 large chains.

Prices at Chick-fil-A, Domino’s, McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Jack in the Box and other fast-food chains have increased since September, the firm found. Chipotle said in an investor call Wednesday that prices at its nearly 500 California restaurants climbed 6% to 7% during the first week of April compared with last year, playing out across its menu. 

“The state isn’t making it easy,” Chipotle Chief Executive Brian Niccol said in an interview.California restaurants already hadprices in the country, according to market-research firm Revenue Management Solutions. Every month since October, California fast-food and fast-casual restaurants have raised prices across a greater percentage of their menus compared with restaurants in the rest of the country, Datassential found. Read More > in The Wall Street Journal

Long-predicted consumer pullback finally hits restaurants like Starbucks, KFC and McDonald’s – It’s finally here: the long-predicted consumer pullback.

Starbucks announced a surprise drop in same-store sales for its latest quarter, sending its shares down 17% on Wednesday. Pizza Hut and KFC also reported shrinking same-store sales. And even stalwart McDonald’s said it has adopted a “street-fighting mentality” to compete for value-minded diners.

For months, economists have been predicting that consumers would cut back on their spending in response to higher prices and interest rates. But it’s taken a while for fast-food chains to see their sales actually shrink, despite several quarters of warnings to investors that low-income consumers were weakening and other diners were trading down from pricier options.

Many restaurant companies also offered other reasons for their weak results this quarter. Starbucks said bad weather dragged its same-store sales lower. Yum Brands, the parent company of Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell, blamed January’s snowstorms and tough comparisons to a strong first quarter last year for its brands’ poor performance.

But those excuses don’t fully explain the weak quarterly results. Instead, it looks like the competition for a smaller pool of customers has grown fiercer as the diners still looking to buy a burger or cold brew become pickier with their cash. Read More > CNBC

Restaurant surcharges will soon be illegal in California – The California attorney general’s office confirmed on Tuesday that a new California law that bans junk fees will apply to surcharges at restaurants, following months of anxiety and confusion in the food industry.

Starting July 1, under SB478, California restaurants will no longer be able to charge service fees — which have become an increasingly common tool to sustain higher wages for workers as food businesses move away from tips — and must instead fold them into menu prices, the attorney general’s office said. The law applies to all fees other than taxes, the attorney general’s office said, including other surcharges restaurants use to offset costs, such as San Francisco’s ordinance requiring businesses to provide health care or credit card processing fees.

This will have dramatic consequences for California’s restaurant industry, owners said, including significant pay cuts for employees and price increases for diners. They’re worried it will unravel a movement toward more equitable pay structures in an industry that’s long struggled with wage disparities. The law could also spark a wave of lawsuits against restaurants, similar to the many disability lawsuits filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Some predicted that the disruption could be enough to convince some operators to close their restaurants entirely. 

It feels like the state “lit the fuse to this bomb” and is “standing back to see what happens,” said Tim Stannard of Bacchus Management Group, which operates Bay Area restaurants including Spruce in San Francisco and the Village Pub in Woodside. 

“It is terrifying,” he said. “We can’t pay the wages we’re paying now unless we dramatically increase prices and hope guests actually come in and pay those prices.” Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle

California electricity prices now second-highest in U.S.: ‘Everyone is getting squeezed’ – Propelled in large part by PG&E, which hiked residential electricity rates by 20% for about 16 million Californians in January, the state’s high electricity prices are second only to Hawaii, which is always an expensive outlier because of the costs of shipping oil to the far-flung archipelago.

A pack of New England states have historically had some of the nation’s highest electricity prices (the federal government doesn’t track rates but rather calculates prices using customer counts, sales and revenue data) due to factors such as a shortage in natural gas pipeline capacity plus the region’s reliance on costly fossil fuels to generate electricity. 

But California has joined them in the past 10 years, leapfrogging with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire to periodically hold the title as the most expensive state for electricity usage in the lower 48. (Even though Californians pay a high amount for each unit of electricity, their total bills tend to be lower than other states in the Northeast and South due to the West Coast’s relatively temperate climate.)

East Coast residents are paying higher prices during cold winter months with Californians paying higher electricity prices for a brief period nearly every summer since 2014, likely when people must cool their homes during heat waves. 

It is unusual for Californians to pay higher prices than the East Coast in the depth of winter. This year alone, typical Northern and Central California households (which use about 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity each month) will pay over $400 more annually on their PG&E bill.

PG&E currently charges the most for electricity among California’s three investor-owned utilities with an average residential rate of $0.397 per kilowatt hour. The company’s residential electricity rates have risen more dramatically than the other utilities, jumping 128% over the last decade.  Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle

Police Officer Hiring Increased For First Year Since 2020, Survey Says – The hiring of police officers is rising for the first year since 2020, a new survey shows.

Police departments across the U.S. have struggled to remain staffed for the past few years as officers left in droves following the Defund the Police movement and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and rioting that peaked after the death of George Floyd in 2020. For the first time since the nationwide unrest and lockdowns, total staffing has increased among police agencies with some small and medium bodies reporting more sworn officers than in January 2020, according to data obtained by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF).

“For the first time since the start of the pandemic, agencies reported a year-over-year increase in total sworn staffing. Responding agencies reported hiring more sworn officers in 2023 than in any of the previous four years. Agencies saw fewer resignations in 2023 than they did in 2021 or 2022, though they still had more officers resign last year than in 2019 or 2020. And retirements dropped back down to roughly where they were in 2019 after being elevated for the previous three years,” the survey reads.

“Small and medium agencies now have more sworn officers than they had in January 2020.  In large agencies, sworn staffing slightly increased during 2023, but it is still more than 5 percent below where it was in January 2020,” the survey continues. Read More > at the Daily Caller

Ford just reported a massive loss on every electric vehicle it sold – Ford’s electric vehicle unit reported that losses soared in the first quarter to $1.3 billion, or $132,000 for each of the 10,000 vehicles it sold in the first three months of the year, helping to drag down earnings for the company overall.

Ford, like most automakers, has announced plans to shift from traditional gas-powered vehicles to EVs in coming years. But it is the only traditional automaker to break out results of its retail EV sales. And the results it reported Wednesday show another sign of the profit pressures on the EV business at Ford and other automakers.

The EV unit, which Ford calls Model e, sold 10,000 vehicles in the quarter, down 20% from the number it sold a year earlier. And its revenue plunged 84% to about $100 million, which Ford attributed mostly to price cuts for EVs across the industry. That resulted in the $1.3 billion loss before interest and taxes (EBIT), and the massive per-vehicle loss in the Model e unit.

The losses go far beyond the cost of building and selling those 10,000 cars, according to Ford. Instead the losses include hundreds of millions being spent on research and development of the next generation of EVs for Ford. Those investments are years away from paying off. Read More > at Yahoo! Finance

Is This the First AI Hate Hoax? White Principal Accused of Racism Based on Fake Audio – A pretty dramatic story out of Baltimore today which reveals what may be the first hate hoax perpetrated with the help of artificial intelligence. The principal of Pikesville High School, Eric Eiswert, was accused in January of making blatantly racist comments behind closed doors after an inflammatory audio file was posted on a popular Instagram account.

In the recording, the person speaking refers to “ungrateful Black kids who can’t test their way out of a paper bag.”

The speaker goes on to question how hard it is to get those students to meet grade-level expectations. He uses names of people who appear to be staff members and says they should not have been hired. The speaker sayshe should get rid of another person “one way or another.”

“And if I have to get one more complaint from one more Jew in this community, I’m going to join the other side,” the voice in the recording stated.

The Superintendent denounced the comments and launched an investigation. For his part, Eiswert denied having ever made the comments and a union leader immediately suggested the “recording” had actually been produced by AI. The president of the local NAACP also condemned the statements saying she was “disappointed but not surprised.”

Eiswert was apparently removed from his school and reports suggested he received threats and had police guarding his home.

But last month the Baltimore Banner revealed that experts had concluded the “recording” was AI generated:

Siwei Lyu, director of a media forensics lab at the University at Buffalo, said the audio is not particularly sophisticated. Lyu has developed technologies at the State University of New York for spotting audio and images created using artificial intelligence.

This audio is “not a challenging case for the algorithms. I believe someone just made this using an AI voice generator,” Lyu said, adding that he doesn’t believe the person who made it put a lot of effort into the task. Online voice generator tools, like one from Eleven Labs, are available to anyone and advertise their ability to instantly create audio that’s indistinguishable from human speech.

There is, however, clear evidence the audio was manipulated, Lyu said.

Today we got further confirmation of that as police arrested the man they say created that audio in an effort to get back at Eiswert for an earlier investigation. Read More > at Hot Air

The Revolution Has Begun in the UK – February 17th, 2024, was the day I became confident that childhood was going to change for the better. On that day, several people sent me an article from The Guardian, with this headline: ‘It went nuts’: Thousands join UK parents calling for smartphone-free childhood. The article described the efforts of two British women who each had children in the 7-9 age range, the age at which many British kids are given a smartphone. (In fact, 24% of British kids aged 5-7 have their own smartphone.) They could see what had happened to children who burrowed into their smartphones and never re-emerged. They didn’t want their kids to be next. So they started a WhatsApp group to find other like-minded parents who would join them in breaking the norm, resisting, and maybe even trying to create a smartphone-free childhood.

It turned out that most British parents were feeling the same fears, the same sense of being trapped, and the same desire to scream. That’s why their simple call to join their WhatsApp group “went nuts.” Clare Fernyhough and Daisy Greenwell tell their story below. I reached out to them as soon as I read the article, and together, we put on a public Zoom call for British parents on March 21. We had over one thousand people on the call, discussing the challenges we faced and the power we had to change things as our numbers swelled.

By the end of the call, it was clear: The UK reached its tipping point in February 2024. Parents are up in arms about what addictive, distracting, and omnipresent digital technology is doing to their children at home and at school. They’re not going to take it anymore. ites for British parents are Smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk, which is the site that Daisy and Clare created, and also DelaySmartphones.org.uk, created by Hannah Oertel.

American parents and parents everywhere: Let’s do it too! Let’s unite the way British parents have. Let’s change norms and laws. Let’s roll back the phone-based childhood now! For American parents, please start by signing up at our site, AnxiousGeneration.com. At the bottom of the page, you can sign up for our mailing list, and also find links to dozens of other excellent organizations, including some in Spain, France, and Australia. 

One important note about ages: In the four norms I’m promoting to roll back the phone-based childhood, norm #2 is “no smartphones before high school.” In the U.S., students generally move from middle school to high school (or secondary school) in 9th grade, around the age of 14. It is vital to keep middle school clear of phone-based life, which is why I picked high school as the best “bright line” to serve as a universal minimum age. But in the UK, age 14 falls right in the middle of their secondary school, which runs roughly from ages 12-16, so it would be terrible to flood secondary schools with phones just for the older kids. The line would not hold at 14; it would drop to 12. Therefore, in the UK (as in Spain and other countries), the bright line is after secondary school, which is around the age of 16. Daisy and Clare proposed 16 as a more ambitious minimum age, and it seems to be working. In fact, two-thirds of British parents support keeping smartphones away from children under the age of 16, according to a recent survey.

And now, here is Daisy and Clare’s story, as told by Daisy: Read More > at After Babel

Colleges Have a New Source of Protest on Their Hands: Irate Parents – Colleges already have a student revolt on their hands. Now their parents are rebelling, too.

Parents paying as much as $90,000 for their sons and daughters to attend elite universities are angry and frustrated with colleges’ responses to the Gaza protests—on both sides of the political divide. Whether their kids are protesting, counterprotesting or trying to stay out of it, parents are demanding that schools do more to keep them safe and learning.

“They are not getting the education they expected and paid for,” says Zev Gewurz, a Boston real-estate lawyer whose daughter is a senior at Barnard College in New York City. 

Parents are preparing to push back financially. They are requesting tuition refunds where classes have been canceled and contacting college counselors to ask how to get their money back. Parents are also threatening not to donate in the future. 

College officials say they are trying to keep students safe, adding security measures while also trying to respect students’ rights to demonstrate. But tensions have exploded in the past few days. Read More > in The Wall Street Journal

Do women make better physicians? New study finds patients with female doctors have a lower risk of death and hospital readmission rates. – Are patients in better hands if they’re being treated by female physicians? Yes, according to one new study. Although the positive impact was greater in female patients — particularly those who were severely ill — the research revealed that both men and women under the care of female doctors generally had a lower risk of death and lower 30-day hospital readmission rates. The study, which was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, used a nationally representative sample of more than 700,000 Medicare patients aged 65 years or older who were hospitalized during 2016 to 2019, and treated by hospitalists, who are doctors that work exclusively in hospitals.

“In our opinion, female physicians may be better than male physicians at making rapport with female patients and effective communication with patients, leading to more likely agreement about advice provided,” Dr. Atsushi Miyawaki, co-author of the study and lecturer at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Medicine, tells Yahoo Life. “Also, female physicians may have fewer gender biases than male physicians in assessment of symptoms and illness against female patients, leading to the possibility to notice changes in severely ill female patients earlier.”

This isn’t the first study to find that a doctor’s gender can affect patient care. A December 2021 JAMA Surgery study found that female patients had worse outcomes when treated by male physicians, but the same wasn’t true for male patients treated by female physicians. A 2018 study found that male doctors underestimated stroke risk in female patients, while female physicians did well in assessing stroke risk in women. And a 2017 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that female physicians are more likely to adhere to clinical guidelines and evidence-based practice compared to male physicians. Read More > at Yahoo! Life

Exercising in Midlife May ‘Reverse’ Years of Inactivity, Large Study Finds – As the world’s aging population grows, and dementia, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis reach epidemic levels, people of all ages want to know how they can live healthier, not just longer, lives.

For women in their 40s and 50s, it’s not too late to take action. A study that tracked more than 11,000 women in Australia has found that midlife is a crucial time to meet physical activity guidelines of at least 150 minutes a week.

Women in the study who said they maintained those guidelines consistently over the next 15 years had better physical health scores than those women who did not.

Even participants who did not exercise regularly before middle age benefited from the new routine. In fact, at the final follow-up study, this group’s physical test scores were virtually the same as the group of women who regularly exercised before their 50s – three percentage points ahead of women who never or rarely met the exercise guidelines.

Future studies are needed to see if these physical benefits also extend to men in mid-life, but there is good reason to suspect they might. Read More > at Science Alert

A new lost generation: Disengaged, aimless, and adrift – More than a quarter of America’s school-aged children were absent from school 10 percent or more of the time last year. There’s no shortage of explanations on offer for this surge in “chronic absenteeism,” mostly blaming the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath: lockdowns; lowered expectation; health and hardship; bullying and school safety issues. Remote learning and “Zoom school” made attendance optional, which is a hard habit to break.

A letter from U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to chief state school officers a few weeks ago cited “multiple, often interconnected factors” for chronic absenteeism. High school students, he wrote, might face “competing demands such as staying home to be caregivers to younger siblings or a sick family member or working outside the home to support themselves or their families.” While that may be true for some number of students, I fear there’s a larger and even more troubling trend at work. A New York Times report, circling but not quite landing, came closer than Cardona when it suggested that “something fundamental has shifted in American childhood and the culture of school in ways that may be long lasting.” 

Since the start of the school year, I’ve been visiting schools and talking to educators about faltering school attendance and learning loss associated with the pandemic, which vaporized twenty years of achievement gains at a stroke. I’m left with a nagging sense that we’re misreading chronic absenteeism almost entirely. It fits a larger pattern of young people absenting themselves not just from school, but from life. Read More > at Fordham Institute

15 extinct giants that once roamed North America – Until the end of the last ice age, American cheetahs, enormous armadillo-like creatures and giant sloths called North America home. But it’s long puzzled scientists why these animals and other megafauna — creatures heavier than 100 pounds (45 kilograms) — went extinct about 10,000 years ago.

Rapid warming periods called interstadials and, to a lesser degree, ice-age people who hunted animals are responsible for the disappearance of the continent’s megafauna, according to a study published in 2015 in the journal Science. Other studies have placed more blame on humans, and some researchers say many factors are to blame.

Both research and the debate surrounding the reasons for the extinction of these animals will undeniably continue. In the meantime, researchers continue to find fossils of these massive creatures. Here’s a look at 15 extinct animals from the last North American ice age, and what scientists know about their lives.

1. Saber-toothed cat

The saber-toothed cat (Smilodon fatalis) lived from about 400,000 to 11,000 years ago, according to the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County. It was a big feline, weighing around 350 to 620 pounds (160 to 280 kg) and measuring an average of about 5.75 feet (1.75 meters) from its rump to its snout, not including its tail, according to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. S. fatalis was about the size of a modern African lion (Panthera leo) but with shorter and more robust limbs. Its blade-like, serrated canine teeth, or sabers, were impressively big, at nearly 7 inches (18 centimeters) long.

2. Ice age coyote

The ice age coyote (Canis latrans orcutti), also known as the Pleistocene coyote, was much larger than today’s coyotes. The ancient member of the family Canidae weighed between 33 and 55 pounds (15 to 25 kg), meaning that some were as large as some modern-day wolves (Canis lupus), a 2012 study in the journal PNAS found. Today’s coyotes (Canis latrans) weigh only around 22 to 40 pounds (10 to 18 kg), according to a statement describing the study.

Compared with today’s coyotes, the Pleistocene coyote had a thicker, deeper skull and better teeth for eating meat. These features suggest the Pleistocene canine could kill larger prey and was more carnivorous, the study found.

3. Ancient bison

The ancient bison (Bison antiquus) lived from about 240,000 to 10,000 years ago, according to the National Park Service (NPS). It was 25% larger than the modern American bison (Bison bison), at 7.5 feet (2.3 m) high, 15 feet (4.6 m) long and 3,500 pounds (1,600 kg). Its horns were also longer than those of modern bison. These herbivores are likely ancestral to American bison, according to the NPS. Read More > at Live Science

Best Charities for 2024 – SmileHub Study

Americans donated an estimated $499 billion last year, but donations are not keeping pace with inflationary pressure. With charitable giving actually down year over year after adjusting for inflation, the non-profit organization SmileHub today released its report on the Best Charities for 2024.

In order to highlight the best charities, SmileHub compared nearly 300,000 charities based on our proprietary SmileHub Rating, which evaluates organizations across five categories: financial health, management overhead, fundraising efficiency, program efficiency and transparency.

Top 20 National Charities

1. Optica	11. ASTM International
2. Aga Khan Foundation	12. MedShare
3. Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust	13. EY Foundation
4. Nationwide Children’s Hospital	14. WaterStone
5. American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)	15. Mather Foundation
6. The United States Olympic Endowment	16. Foundation Housing
7. Research to Prevent Blindness	17. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
8. Volunteers of America National Services	18. Rockefeller Family Fund
9. Veterans United Foundation	19. American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO)
10. MAP International	20. Friends of the Children

Best Charities by Category

• Animals: Friends of the Zoo of Kansas City Foundation
• Arts: Foundation for the Flint Cultural Center
• Children: Misericordia Foundation
• Community Support: Housing Catalyst
• Disaster Relief: Wesley Chapel Volunteer Fire Department
• Economic Development: Guidestream Charitable Gift Fund
• Education: Array Education
• Environmental Protection: Global Water Challenge
• Faith & Religious Support: First Presbyterian Church of Dallas Foundation
• Health & Wellness: Abington Memorial Hospital Foundation
• Homeless Support: Sacramento Steps Forward
• International Support: Interweave Solutions
• Reducing Poverty: Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP)
• Research: Kacyra Family Foundation
• Rights & Activism: Follow Your Dream Foundation
• Sports & Recreation: TaxSlayer Gator Bowl
• Veterans: Louisiana National Guard Foundation

To view the full report, please visit:
https://smilehub.org/blog/best-charities/97

Drug Use by State in 2024 – WalletHub Study

With National Prevention Week around the corner and the U.S. having spent over a trillion dollars on the “war on drugs” since the 1970s, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on the States with the Biggest Drug Problems, as well as expert commentary, to highlight the areas that stand to be most affected by drug addictions.

This study compares the 50 states and the District of Columbia in terms of 20 key metrics, ranging from arrest and overdose rates to opioid prescription use and employee drug testing laws. You can find some highlights below.

Drug Abuse & Prevention in California (1=Biggest Problem; 25=Avg.):

• Overall Rank: 37^th
• 30^th – Share of Teenagers Who Used Illicit Drugs in the Past Month
• 19^th – Share of Adults Who Used Illicit Drugs in the Past Month
• 50^th – Opioid Pain Reliever Prescriptions per 100 People
• 36^th – Drug Overdose Deaths per Capita
• 24^th – Drug Arrests per Capita
• 19^th – Share of Adults Who Couldn’t Get Treatment for Illicit Drug Use in the Past Year
• 10^th – Substance Abuse Treatment Facilities per 100,000 People (Age 12+) Using Illicit Drugs

To view the full report, please visit: 
https://wallethub.com/edu/drug-use-by-state/35150

2024’s Best & Worst States for Nurses – WalletHub Study

With National Nurses Week kicking off May 6, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2024’s Best & Worst States for Nurses, as well as expert commentary, to help nurses, especially new graduates, find the best markets for their profession.

WalletHub compared the relative attractiveness of the 50 states across 20 key metrics. The data set ranges from job openings for nurses per capita and average salaries to mandatory overtime restrictions and the quality of nursing homes.

The Nursing Market in California (1=Best; 25=Avg.):

• Overall Rank: 21^st
• 44^th – Monthly Avg. Starting Salary for Nurses (Adjusted for Cost of Living)
• 35^th – Health-Care Facilities per Capita
• 11^th – Nurses per Capita
• 43^rd – Projected Share of Elderly Population by 2030
• 48^th – Nursing-Job Openings per Capita
• 13^th – Average Annual Salary for Nurses (Adjusted for Cost of Living)
• 11^th – Share of Best Nursing Homes
• 9^th – Projected Competition by 2030
• 36^th – Avg. Number of Work Hours

For the full report, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/best-states-for-nurses/4041