California

California Now Has Mandatory Water Conservation in Urban Areas: How Will the New Rules Affect Your Supplier? | KQED

Published

1 year ago

July 6, 2024

California Now Has Mandatory Water Conservation in Urban Areas: How Will the New Rules Affect Your Supplier? | KQED

The water board’s initial proposal — unveiled last year and estimated to cost $13.5 billion at the time — faced an onslaught of criticism from water suppliers and state analysts who called the rules too costly and difficult to achieve. In March, the state water agency revised its proposal to delay enforcement of the conservation targets and extend the timeline for tightening the water budgets based on outdoor residential use.

Individual residents won’t be regulated — only suppliers, who must meet their conservation targets or face fines or other penalties. The costs of complying through 2050 are now estimated at $4.7 billion — which is largely expected to be passed onto ratepayers — but water agencies and their customers will also save about $6.2 billion, in large part from buying less water, according to the agency’s analysis (PDF).

Water board staff estimate that through 2040, the measures will save 1.7 million acre-feet — enough to supply almost half the state’s population for a year. That’s about 73% less than the earlier proposal, which would have saved 6.3 million acre-feet through 2040, staff told CalMatters. Through 2050, the savings could reach about 3.9 million acre-feet — more than a year’s supply for the state’s entire population.

Local water providers told the board that the targets would still be difficult to meet and warned that the costs could hit lower- and fixed-income members of their communities especially hard. They urged the board to provide more technical assistance and funding. Still, many applauded the changes, which they said will soften impacts to customers and communities.

“Water suppliers will need to develop and implement new programs that require long-term customer behavior change and significant investments,” Chelsea Haines of the Association of California Water Agencies, which represents more than 450 public agencies, told CalMatters. “It’s an unprecedented approach that will require a level of commitment that we’ve never seen before.”

However, environmental groups and lawmakers say the weakened rules reduce and delay the water conservation that the drought-plagued state needs.

“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail,” said Heather Cooley, director of research at the Pacific Institute, a global water think-tank. “While surface reservoirs are full now, I think there’s a tendency to forget about water scarcity and drought.”

The authors of the bills that required mandatory conservation rules — former state Sen. Bob Hertzberg and Assemblymember Laura Friedman from Burbank — said in a March opinion piece that the water board’s changes “trample on the hard-won work that’s been done so far by allowing water utilities until 2035 or later to implement meaningful reductions.”

“The State Water Resources Control Board has decided to kick the can of California’s water future down the road at a time when we can least afford such inaction,” Friedman told CalMatters after the vote, adding that California must invest more in water efficiency or be forced to spend billions on wastewater recycling and desalination.

Water board Chairman Joaquin Esquivel said, “This is not a perfect regulation. We can never have a perfect regulation. But it is a significant one and moves us into a direction here into the future that we can all be proud of — and that is nation-leading.”

“The arc of conservation in this state has been an incredible one. Californians know that conservation is critical,” he said during the meeting. “What this creates is really a floor. And importantly, it’s not a policy in isolation.”

Although the rules were changed multiple times before they came up for a vote on Wednesday, the fundamental concept remains the same. Each local agency’s water budget is calculated from a combination of standards for indoor and outdoor water use at residences, certain commercial landscapes and losses like leaks. Other factors, such as livestock and recycled water, are also taken into account.

Suppliers must meet targets through a combination of rebates encouraging thriftier landscapes and appliances and rate changes penalizing thirstier water users.

A previous, more stringent version of the rule carried the hefty price tag of around $13.5 billion from lost revenues and the costs of funding rebates, infrastructure improvements and other conservation measures. The benefits of having to buy less water or scrounge for expensive new supplies were tallied at around $15.6 billion.

Source link

California

California warns Tesla faces 30-day sale ban for misleading use of

Published

7 hours ago

December 17, 2025

Press Room

California warns Tesla faces 30-day sale ban for misleading use of

Updated on: December 16, 2025 / 10:36 PM PST
/ CBS San Francisco

The California DMV on Tuesday said Tesla Motors faces a possible 30-day sale ban over its misleading use of the term “autopilot” in its marketing of electric vehicles.

On Nov. 20, an administrative judge ruled that Tesla Motors’ use of “autopilot ” and “full self-driving capability” was a misleading description of its “advanced driving assistant features,” and that it violated state law, the DMV said.

In their decision, the judge proposed suspending Tesla’s manufacturing and dealer license for 30 days. However, the DMV is giving Tesla 60 days to address its use of the term “autopilot” before temporarily suspending its dealer license.

“Tesla can take simple steps to pause this decision and permanently resolve this issue — steps autonomous vehicle companies and other automakers have been able to achieve in California’s nation-leading and supportive innovation marketplace,” DMV Director Steve Gordon said.

Tesla had already stopped its use of “full self-driving capability” and switched to “full self-driving (supervised)” after the DMV filed accusations against it in November 2023.

The DMV said its decision to file those accusations stretches back to Tesla’s 2021 marketing of its advanced driver assistance system. Besides the two terms, the DMV said it also took issue with the phrase, “The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long-distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat.”

“Vehicles equipped with those ADAS features could not at the time of those advertisements, and cannot now, operate as autonomous vehicles,” the DMV said.

As for the manufacturing license suspension, the DMV issued a permanent stay on that proposal.

Source link

California

Former California doctor sentenced in Matthew Perry’s overdose death

Published

19 hours ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

Former California doctor sentenced in Matthew Perry’s overdose death

LOS ANGELES — A former California doctor was sentenced to 8 months of home detention and 3 years of supervised release Tuesday after pleading guilty to ketamine distribution in connection with the fatal overdose of “Friends” star Matthew Perry.

Mark Chavez pleaded guilty in 2024 to one count of conspiring to distribute ketamine to Perry, who died at 54. Chavez appeared Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett in Los Angeles. He faced up to 10 years in prison.

He will also be required to complete 300 hours of community service and pay a $100 special assessment to the U.S. government.

“My heart goes out to the Perry family,” Chavez said outside of court after his sentencing.

Zach Brooks, a member of Chavez’s legal team, said Tuesday: “what occurred in this case was a profound departure from the life he had lived up to that point. The consequences have been severe and permanent. Mr. Chavez has lost his career, his livelihood, and professional identity that he has worked for decades to develop.”

“Looking forward, Mr. Chavez understands that accountability does not end with this sentence. He’s committed to using the rest of his life to contribute positively, to support others and to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again,” Brooks said. “While he cannot undo what occurred, he can choose how he lives his life from this moment.”

Chavez was one of five people charged in connection with Perry’s death. The TV star died of an accidental overdose and was found dead in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home in October 2023.

Chavez’s lawyer, Matthew Binninger, has previously said his client was “incredibly remorseful” and “accepting responsibility” for his patient’s overdose.

Chavez was a licensed physician in San Diego who formerly operated a ketamine clinic. Prosecutors said he sold ketamine to another doctor, Salvador Plasencia, who then distributed it to Perry.

“I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Plasencia said in a text exchange to Chavez, according to the investigators. “Lets find out.”

Earlier this month, Plasencia was sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison for his involvement in the case.

Chavez wrote “a fraudulent prescription in a patient’s name without her knowledge or consent, and lied to wholesale ketamine distributors to buy additional vials of liquid ketamine that Chavez intended to sell to Plasencia for distribution to Perry,” the indictment in the case said.

In the month before his death, the doctors provided Perry with about 20 vials of ketamine and received some $55,000 in cash, according to federal prosecutors.

Perry was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy to treat depression and anxiety, according to a coroner’s report. However, the levels of ketamine in his body at the time of his death were dangerously high, roughly the same amount used for general anesthesia during surgery. The coroner ruled his death an accident.

Before his death, Perry was open about his lengthy struggles with opioid addiction and alcohol use disorder, which he chronicled in his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.”

Katie Wall reported from Los Angeles and Daniella Silva reported from New York.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Daniella Silva is a national reporter for NBC News, focusing on immigration and education.

Source link

California

California’s first mobile 911 dispatch classroom launches in Fresno

Published

1 day ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

California’s first mobile 911 dispatch classroom launches in Fresno

FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) — A mobile classroom is giving Central Valley students a hands-on look at what it takes to answer 911 calls.

The classroom on wheels is one of only two in the nation, the first in California, and is part of the Fresno Regional Occupational Program’s dispatch pathway.

“Dispatchers are the steady heartbeat of the emergency response,” Fresno County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Michele Cantwell-Copher said during Monday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony.

California’s first mobile 911 dispatch classroom launches in Fresno (Photo: FOX26 Photojournalist Byron Solorio)

Inside the trailer, students train at real dispatch consoles designed to mimic a live dispatch center.

The program is a partnership with Fresno City College, creating a pipeline from the classroom to dispatch careers.

The curriculum is backed by California POST, or the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which sets minimum training and certification standards for law enforcement in the state.

It gives students the opportunity to practice call taking and scenario based decision making in a realistic and interactive setting,

said Michelle D., with POST.

The system uses realistic audio and artificial intelligence to recreate high-pressure simulations.

“If it’s a child that is injured, we can have the child crying in the background, so it really gives them that true, realistic first-hand experience,” said Veronica Cervantes, a Supervising Communications Dispatcher with the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.

Dispatch supervisors say programs like this one could help address a growing staffing shortage.

More people need to be in this profession. We are hurting for dispatchers

explains Matt Mendes, a Dispatch Supervisor with the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.

Officials say the job offers competitive benefits, including a starting salary of about $53,000, overtime opportunities, and the potential to earn six figures over time.

Source link