California

Fishermen like walrus-mustached Larry Collins, captain of the Autumn Gale in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, face an agonizing choice.

Local officials in Carlsbad, Calif., see salvation for their water-starved community in a huge proposed desalination plant. Poseidon Resources, the company hoping to build it, says building it won't cost taxpayers and ratepayers a dime. But tough investigative reporting shows that southern Californians would pay at least $640 million over 30 years for the project.

"The water supply of more than 2 million Californians has been exposed to harmful levels of nitrates over the past 15 years -- a time marked by lax regulatory efforts to contain the colorless and odorless contaminant, a California Watch investigation has found."

"Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has agreed to pay $27.6 million to settle allegations that it improperly handled and dumped hazardous waste at stores across California in a case that led to changes in the retailer's practices nationwide, prosecutors said Monday."

"The federal government is pressing forward with a policy that could require trees to be stripped from California levees, eliminating what shade and wildlife habitat remain along the state's rivers."

"Some 700 feet deep in the waters off California's jewel of a coastal resort, Santa Barbara, sits a group of football-field-sized asphalt domes unlike any other underwater features known to exist. About 35,000 years ago, a series of apparent undersea volcanoes deposited massive flows of petroleum 10 miles offshore. The deposits hardened into domes that were discovered recently by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and UC Santa Barbara (UCSB."

"The discovery of methane gas and benzene has transformed a 50-acre neighborhood into an environmental case study — a reminder of Southern California’s history as a center of the oil industry."