North of the Bay Area lie two significant bodies of water: the mighty Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. And where they converge, there’s a unique and expansive inland river delta. The delta is crucial for California--it supplies drinking water for about 25 million people, and irrigates one of the...
Economic Edge
West Oakland has a long industrial history. In the 1940s the neighborhood was made a center for shipbuilding with the construction of the Oakland Army Base and Naval Supply Center. Since then, recycling companies, a postal service distribution center and other heavy industries have joined the...
By some estimates, more than half the residents of San Francisco's Chinatown live in Single Room Occupancy buildings, or SROs. Whole families live in one-room apartments, sleeping in bunk beds. The rooms don’t have bathrooms or kitchens. Instead, tenants use communal facilities, or cook in their...
This story is about something we can probably all relate to: not wanting to throw something away. Maybe it’s a baseball card collection, or a garage full of unread National Geographic magazines. But when the need to acquire and keep things crosses a certain threshold, it’s known as hoarding. It's a...
Property descriptions have always been their own genre of creative writing, but in recent years something new has appeared amid this flowering of adjectives and abbreviations. Now, along with Realtorese like “half bath,” “huge upside,” and “junior five,” you’re likely to find some reference to a...
Politics Blogs
California’s official state symbols tell a story of a place of natural wealth and pioneering spirit, not to mention exploitable natural resources.
For example, there’s the redwood tree—a reminder of rugged coastlines and peaceful mountains. Then there’s the state mineral, gold, which tells of the...
Images of suffocating, oil-drenched fish continue to pour in from the Gulf Coast, and while it’s easy to be moved to sympathy by the images, there’s a little-spoken irony behind the sentiment: we fully intended to kill these fish anyway.
Humans have a hunger for seafood, and it’s not hard to...
The global bottled water industry is worth tens of billions of dollars, and a new book is highly critical of it. It's called "Bottled & Sold," and it’s by Peter Gleick. He is co-founder of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland. He's also a...
By Genett Mills-Miller
"Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get." - Robert Heinlein.
Spring in the Bay Area caught residents and visitors off guard with an early June Gloom - wetter and colder weather than normal. For instance, San Francisco received nearly an inch of rain in May and...
If you’re near the Bay and you’re standing on flat land, chances are you’re standing somewhere that’s been filled and is vulnerable to sea level rise.
WILL TRAVIS: The only thing that is certain is that every time a projection comes out, it’s higher than the last one. So this is one of these things...
While the elections are grabbing headlines and our attention, California also faces longer term issues, like the fact that sea levels are rising and we live in an area surrounded by water. Many of us think it’s a problem we’ll have to deal with in the future, but rising sea levels have already...
California looks set to be the first state to ban plastic bags completely and implement charges for single-use paper bags. The bill was passed at the State Assembly this week 41-27 and looks likely to be approved by the Senate. If the bill is signed into law, shoppers who don’t bring reusable bags...
Today, a San Francisco judge ruled against a nurses strike planned for this coming Thursday. The California Nurses Association planned to walk out on their jobs with 12,000 of their colleagues in Minnesota for a one-day strike to protest stalled contract negotations. But San Francisco Superior...
American troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan face Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or traumatic brain injury that is sometimes left undiagnosed, and often under counted, when estimating the cost of the wars.
About 18.5 percent of soldiers who have returned from Afghanistan and Iraq have...
California’s bounty of fresh food has long existed side-by-side with nutritional inequality. The geographical closeness of families on opposite sides of the health divide can be startling, as is the case with Marin County and the city of Richmond. Marin sits just across the bay from poverty-...
The federal health care bill passed, but what will reform actually look like?
In March, Congress passed a federal health care bill, but it's up to the states to decide how they will implement the law. And California legislators will start discussing how to do so this week.
Policy makers will have...
by Audrey Dilling and Nancy Mullane
The nonprofit environmental organization Heal the Bay released its 20th annual report, today, evaluating water conditions along California's shorelines. The study assigns a grade of A through F to state beaches, based on levels of bacteria pollution during...
San Francisco is known for its immigration rights movement, and for its gay rights activism. For several decades, now, many in the city's gay community have been dealing with HIV/AIDS. Generally speaking, HIV/AIDS treatments consist mainly of antiretroviral drugs and medicines that boost...
First Person
The moon landing, the real one, is one of the most significant moments in human history. It happened on July 20th, 1969, when Neil Armstrong took his giant steps. Some of the people who made it possible for us to hear them happen were Bay Area residents like Diane Daniels. She sat down with...
Transportation Watch
Right now a group of cyclists are biking their way across America. Many of them are veterans wounded in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They left this weekend from San Francisco for what’s called the Sea to Shining Sea bike ride. The idea is for this group to prove to the world, and to themselves,...
Carletta Sue Kay
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