Environment

A rare snowfall has dusted the Greater Bay Area and the National Weather Service is predicting more on its way over the weekend. The agency posted a photo on Twitter today of the Santa Cruz Harbor that showed snow even landing nearby boats at sea...

In the preface to his book “California: A Fire Survey,” Stephen J. Pyne notes that the “California fire scene” has long shaped the broader American agenda. “For the national narrative the important fact is that what happened in California did not stay in California,” he...

The publicly traded company that provides Los Gatos with water recently got the go-ahead to fire up two solar power generating stations—one in Los Gatos and one in Saratoga. Together they’ll help keep about 21 tons of greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere each year,...

Home gardens and landscapes should be compatible with their respective climates. For local chaparral climates, plants that do not need much watering through the long and dry summers are appropriate. Aquatic plants are the extreme opposite. They require regular replenishment of the ponds that...

The Santa Clara County Department of Planning and Development has been preventing a homeowner in the Lexington Hills area of Los Gatos from accessing public documents needed to fix damage caused by the storm that sparked the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fire. A Department of...

A homeowner who sought an exception to new fire-safe rules recently rolled out by the State won over Planning Commissioners and was granted development approval. Despite Santa Clara County Fire Department representatives appearing in the special Zoom meeting on Nov. 21 to argue against allowing...

California State Parks has released its recovery plan for Big Basin Redwoods State Park, the oldest one in California. Nearly five years on from the CZU Lightning Complex Fire, which torched over 90% of the park and destroyed more than 900 homes in the area,...

A few months back, neighbors Maggie Contro, an 8-year-old third-grader at Daves Avenue Elementary, and Arlo Britz, a 7-year-old boy a grade below, were sweeping her home’s porch, when they realized they were doing something worth scaling. Contro had been wanting to start some kind...

Over the last decade, Valley Water has continued to spend more money on cleaning up homeless encampments around Silicon Valley. In fiscal year 2013-14, the regional water wholesaler put $786,085 into the initiative. That grew to $1.5 million just a few years later, then...

“One man’s rubbish may be another man’s treasure.” —Hector Urquhart West Valley Recycles (WVR) has an outreach team to help us learn to recycle correctly. Forget what you knew about recycling guidelines. Things have changed, and we have new laws to ensure we recycle in the most...