California
A new plan seeks to protect California’s coast against a rising ocean. And it doesn’t require sea walls.
Recent raging winter storms have caved in streets, wrecked piers, collapsed homes and apartment buildings, and submerged property up and down California’s coastline.
Now, as sea levels continue to rise from climate change, scientists are working on a real-world experiment that could help reduce the impacts.
At a 247-acre property near the Santa Cruz-Monterey county line, crews are planning to protect against flooding — not by trying to hold back the ocean by building bigger sea walls — but by converting flood-prone farmland into tidal wetlands. During big storms and high tides, this allows ocean waters to move inland in an orderly way instead of threatening homes and other property.
In other words, working with nature, as opposed to trying to battle the ocean’s relentless forward march.
“It’s a demonstration,” said Sarah Newkirk, executive director of the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, which is overseeing the project. “What we are doing here is applicable to other places in California, the Gulf of Mexico, and other parts of the country.”
On Wednesday, Newkirk’s non-profit environmental group closed a $13.4 million deal to buy the property, known as Beach Ranch. The bucolic farmland sits at the mouth of the Pajaro River near the crashing waves of Monterey Bay, and has flooded multiple of times over the past few generations, most recently this January, and during the previous winter.
A sprawling expanse the size of 187 football fields and covered with neat rows of lettuce, beets, broccoli and other produce, the landscape had been owned for generations by local farming families, including some with connections to major operations, such as Ocean Mist Farms, a Castroville company that is the largest artichoke grower in North America.
The land trust received funding from two state agencies, the California Coastal Conservancy and the Wildlife Conservation Board. It also raised money from Driscoll’s, a major Watsonville strawberry grower. Last month, the project received a $6 million grant from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The plan is to convert 65 flood-prone acres and the lowest quality farmland to tidal marshland similar to what existed a century or more ago, while leaving farming on the rest. Scientists from the land trust, the Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies plan to move back existing inadequate dirt levees, build tidal gates, or use other methods.
By creating wetlands, the project aims to create a buffer where flood waters can move in and settle, losing their energy, protecting other nearby farmland and property like Pajaro Dunes, a collection of adjacent oceanfront homes and condominiums.
It also will create a new estuary for birds, fish and other wildlife to help make up for oceanfront wetlands that are expected to be submerged in the coming decades.
“When it rains it gets pretty soggy out here,” Newkirk said during a recent visit. “We are trying to buy and protect habitat where it is going to be. Like Wayne Gretzky said: ‘skate to where the puck is going to be.’”
The threat of sea level rise is growing.
The 10 hottest years on Earth since modern records began in 1850 all have occurred since 2014, according to NOAA and NASA. The warming climate has caused ocean levels to rise as glaciers and polar ice sheets melt and warming seawater expands. San Francisco Bay and the ocean along California’s coast have risen 8 inches since the mid-1800s.
Recent studies by the U.S. Geological Survey and other scientific organizations estimate that the Pacific Ocean on the West Coast will rise another 1 to 2 feet by 2050 and 4 feet or more by 2100, depending on the amount of greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere in the coming years.
“This is the biggest dilemma human civilization has had to face,” said Gary Griggs, a distinguished professor of Earth Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, in an interview earlier this year. “Many of the biggest cities in the world are at sea level. Our options are very few. We have to face it. There is absolutely nothing we can do over the long term to hold back the Pacific Ocean.”
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Between $8 billion to $10 billion of existing coastal property in California is likely to be underwater by 2050, with an additional $6 billion to $10 billion at risk during high tides, according to a report in 2020 from the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.
In some cases, homes and other oceanfront buildings can be raised. Natural solutions, like offshore reefs, or jetties that stop sand from drifting down the coast, or sand replenishment, can help save beaches, but the sand often washes away in big storms. That leaves sea walls. But those are controversial, because they can cause public beaches to erode. The other option is “managed retreat,” the idea of letting the ocean move inland.
That is very controversial, however, when it involves property with existing homes and businesses, but less so for undeveloped land, like farmland that’s common along the coast, including along San Francisco Bay’s delta.
“This project is very forward thinking,” said Jess Brown, executive director of the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau. “There’s a cost of farming in areas that are getting flooded. If they can alleviate that, it’s a better solution.”
The land trust will continue to rent the rest of the property to tenant farmers. But there are challenges. Coastal California farmland is expensive. And politics and land use rules vary around the country.
“There are lessons to be learned in this example,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford University. “Can it be scaled? In many ways this is where the rubber meets the road in terms of responding and adapting to climate change.”
California
Signs of spring blooming at Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve after wet, warm winter
It’s beginning to look a lot like spring!
The warm and wet weather this winter has led to the start of a dazzling super bloom at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve.
“We had an unseasonably warm winter as well, so there’s actually a lot of growth,” said Callista Turney with California State Parks. “We’re having early wildflowers that are already at the park. So if you look at the poppy live cam, it shows a lot of orange already.”
The rain has helped the early blooms, but it’s actually the heat that accelerated the growth of the flowers.
“It will actually speed up the growth of the plants, so some of them were already blooming and that’s going to cause those blossoms to accelerate faster towards seed production. And the blossoms that are in the process of being formed, those are going to open up soon as well.”
We also sometimes see great super blooms in Death Valley National Park, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Joshua Tree and the Mojave National Preserve.
“It’s definitely a rare occurrence because we don’t always have the right conditions. It’s gotta be the weather, the wind, the rain, all coming together,” said Katie Tilford, Director of Development and Communications with the Theodore Payne Foundation.
If it continues to stay unseasonably warm, we’ll see a shorter bloom. The key to a longer season is milder weather.
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California
Republican governor candidate Chad Bianco says he’s the ‘antithesis to California state government’
We are counting down to the California governor’s race. Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County, is one of the two biggest names running on the Republican ticket.
In a one-on-one interview with Eyewitness News political reporter Josh Haskell, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said, “I am the antithesis to California state government because I am going to take a nuclear bomb into that building and absolutely destroy everything that they do to us behind closed doors.”
Although he’s been elected by the voters twice, Bianco says he’s not a politician — which is why he believes his campaign for California governor is resonating, as reflected in the polls.
“President Trump, in one year, from 2025 when he took over, until now, did absolutely nothing to harm California. What’s harming California is 30 years of Democrat one-party rule that have created an environment here that no one can live in anymore. They’ve only been successful here in California because we vote D no matter what. You vote D or die. I mean, that’s it. Charles Manson would be elected in California if he was the only Democrat on the ballot,” Bianco said.
Bianco isn’t the only conservative Republican running for governor, and according to polling, he’s neck-and-neck with former Fox News host Steve Hilton.
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Leading in some polls in the wide-open California Governor’s race as the June primary creeps closer is Republican and former Fox News host Steve Hilton.
“Steve has no chance of winning in November. The Democrats know that I’m going to win in November, and so they have to do everything they can to keep me out of that,” Bianco said.
When asked about the affordability crisis in the state, Bianco said, “Almost the entire issue of affordability in California is because of regulation, excessive regulation imposed by government. Every single regulation can be signed away with the governor’s signature.”
“It is a drug and alcohol addiction problem that, and a mental health problem,” he said about the homelessness crisis. “Every single bit of money that is going to these nonprofits that say ‘homeless,’ zero money. You’re getting absolutely nothing. I can’t tell you that we would end what we see in the homeless situation within a year, but I guarantee you we would never see it again after two years.”
When challenged on that prediction, pointing to how the state doesn’t have the facilities to treat the number of people living on our streets, Bianco responded, “We have been conditioned to believe that buildings take five years to build. It takes 90 days or less to build a house, but in California, it takes three to five years because the government won’t allow it. The regulations that are destroying this state are going to be removed with me as the governor.”
Bianco also said California jails shouldn’t have to play the role of treatment facilities.
Although he says he supports the Trump administration and wants the president’s endorsement, Bianco has been traveling the state — meeting not just with Republicans, but Democrats and independents as well. He says all of our state government officials have failed.
The primary election is June 2.
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Copyright © 2026 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (FOX26) — California’s privacy watchdog has ordered PlayOn Sports to pay a $1.10 million fine and change how it handles consumer data after finding the company’s practices violated state law in ways that affected students and schools in the state.
The California Privacy Protection Agency Board issued the decision following a settlement reached by CalPrivacy’s Enforcement Division.
The decision is the first by the board to address privacy violations involving students and California schools.
Schools across the country use PlayOn Sports’ GoFan platform to sell digital tickets to high school sporting events, theater performances, and homecoming and prom dances, with attendees presenting tickets at the door on their mobile phones.
Schools also use PlayOn Sports’ platforms for other sports-related activities, including attending games, streaming them online, and looking up statistics about teams and players.
In California, about 1,400 schools contract with PlayOn Sports for these services.
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GoFan is also the official ticketing platform for the California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports.
According to the board’s decision, PlayOn Sports used tracking technologies to collect personal information and deliver targeted advertisements to ticketholders and others using its services.
The company allegedly required Californians to click “agree” to tracking technologies before they could use their tickets or view PlayOn Sports websites, without providing a sufficient opt-out option.
“Students trying to go to prom or a high school football game shouldn’t have to leave their privacy rights at the door,” said Michael Macko, CalPrivacy’s head of enforcement. “You couldn’t attend these events without showing your ticket, and you couldn’t show your ticket without being tracked for advertising. California’s privacy law does not work that way. Businesses must ensure they offer lawful ways for Californians to opt-out, particularly with captive audiences.”
The decision also describes students as a uniquely vulnerable population and warns that targeted advertising systems can subject students to profiling that can follow them for years, expose them to manipulative or harmful content, and develop sensitive inferences about their lives.
Instead of providing its own opt-out method, PlayOn Sports directed students and other users to opt out through the Network Advertising Initiative and the Digital Advertising Alliance, which the decision said violated the company’s responsibility to provide its own way for consumers to opt out. The company also allegedly failed to recognize opt-out preference signals and did not provide Californians with sufficient notice of its privacy practices.
“We are committed to making it as easy as possible for all Californians — from high school students to older adults, and everyone in between — to make the choice of whether they want to be tracked or not,” said Tom Kemp, CalPrivacy’s executive director. “Californians can opt-out with covered businesses, and they can sign up for the newly launched DROP system to request that data brokers delete their personal information.”
Beyond the $1.10 million fine, the board’s order requires PlayOn Sports to conduct risk assessments, provide disclosures that are easy to read and understand, and implement proper opt-out methods.
The order also requires the company to comply with California’s privacy law prohibiting the selling or sharing of personal information of consumers between 13 and 16 without their affirmative opt-in consent.
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