Tag Archives: California

U.S. Coast Guard boards ship in connection with California oil spill

(Reuters) – The U.S. Coast Guard boarded a container ship on Saturday in the Port of Long Beach that dragged its anchor close to a subsea pipeline found to be the source of an oil spill off Orange County, California, it said in a press release.

The spill released some 3,000 barrels (126,000 gallons) of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean, killing wildlife, blackening the coastline and forcing officials to close beaches south of Los Angeles.

In its statement, the Coast Guard said an investigation had determined that the MSC DANIT was involved in the anchor-dragging incident “during a heavy weather event” that impacted Long Beach and Los Angeles ports in January.

As a result, it said, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company S.A., which operates the vessel, and Dordellas Finance Corporation, the ship’s owner, have been designated by the Coast Guard as parties of interest in the investigation.

The designation allows the companies to be represented by counsel, examine and cross-examine witnesses, and call witnesses who are relevant to the investigation, the Coast Guard said.

MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Dordellas Finance Corporation could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Coast Guard said the investigation was ongoing and that “multiple pipeline scenarios” as well as additional vessels of interest continue to be investigated.

Amplify Energy, which owns the pipeline, has said it was “pulled like a bowstring” about 105 feet (32 meters) from where it should have been.

(Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

U.S. Supreme Court again protects police accused of excessive force

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday granted requests by police officers in separate cases from California and Oklahoma for legal protection under a doctrine called “qualified immunity” from lawsuits accusing them of using excessive force.

The justices overturned a lower court’s decision allowing a trial in a lawsuit against officers Josh Girdner and Brandon Vick over the fatal shooting of a hammer-wielding man in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

They also overturned a lower court’s decision to deny a request by Union City, California police officer Daniel Rivas-Villegas for qualified immunity in a lawsuit accusing him of using excessive force while handcuffing a suspect.

The brief rulings favoring the police in the two cases were unsigned, with no public dissents among the justices. They were issued in cases that were decided without oral arguments.

The qualified immunity defense protects police and other government officials from civil litigation in certain circumstances, permitting lawsuits only when an individual’s “clearly established” statutory or constitutional rights have been violated.

The decisions on Monday indicate that the justices still think lower courts are denying qualified immunity too frequently in excessive force cases involving police, having previously chided appeals courts on that issue in recent years.

Reuters in 2020 published an investigation that revealed how qualified immunity, with the Supreme Court’s continual refinements, has made it easier for police officers to kill or injure civilians with impunity.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)

Planes, fire crews tackling wildfire near Reagan ranch in California

By Brad Brooks

(Reuters) -California firefighters took advantage of a break in strong winds on Wednesday to get aircraft aloft and dump retardant on a fast-moving wildfire that was within a half mile of former President Ronald Reagan’s ranch, officials said.

A crew of roughly 1,500 firefighters have so far successfully steered the Alisal fire away from the Reagan ranch, where the former U.S. leader hosted the likes of Queen Elizabeth and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, said Andrew Madsen, a spokesman for Los Padres National Forest, where the blaze is centered.

“There are forecasts of high winds tonight, and we’re trying to get as much as we can done before then,” Madsen said.

The crews are also working to keep the fire away from a shuttered Exxon Mobil facility in Las Flores canyon, he added. The company said in an emailed statement that it was closely monitoring the fire and there were no injuries at the facilities or damages to the facilities, which have been shut since 2015.

The fire, which broke out on Monday about 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Santa Barbara in a sparsely populated corner of southern California, has grown to 15,500 acres (6,272 hectares) and remains just 5% contained, Madsen said.

Firefighters had hoped to take advantage of the lack of high winds to increase the containment line, Madsen said, but by evening they had not made any ground on the percentage.

The Alisal fire quickly grew on Tuesday amid strong winds, shutting down a section of a major highway and commuter train lines. California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Wednesday the state had secured federal funds to reimburse 75% of local and state costs related to fighting the blaze.

California is on pace to suffer more burnt acreage this year than last, the worst fire season on record when 4.2 million acres went up in flames – an area the size of Hawaii.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Additional reporting by Sabrina Valle in Houston; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Leslie Adler)

California port where spill occurred had numerous ships waiting to unload

By Jessica Resnick-Ault and Nichola Groom

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (Reuters) – Ships in record numbers have jammed the port complex near this weekend’s oil spill in California, according to port data, as investigators look into whether a ship’s anchor could have hit a pipeline to cause the leak.

More than 3,000 barrels of oil leaked into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California over the weekend, killing wildlife, damaging sensitive environmental areas and closing beaches. Officials are investigating whether an anchor could have hit the pipeline, owned by Amplify Energy Corp of Houston.

An anchor strike is a plausible explanation, said two former Amplify employees who asked not to be named. They noted that anchor strikes have dented or scratched offshore pipelines before.

There were certainly more anchors in the area due to supply chain bottlenecks as consumer demand has rebounded from the depths of the pandemic. As of Tuesday morning, there were 63 container ships in San Pedro Bay waiting to unload at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California. On Sept. 19, a COVID-era record 97 ships were backed up.

Prior to the pandemic, there was typically no more than one container ship at anchor in the bay, according to Captain Kip Louttit of the Marine Exchange, who added that anchorages around the port have been full for the last year.

“All ships were anchored where they were supposed to be,” Louttit said of the vessel backup.

The spill closed numerous beaches and has killed wildlife in Orange County, south of Los Angeles. On Monday, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said a separate investigation is being conducted to determine the cause, and that Amplify could face civil and criminal liability.

Environmental watchdog group SkyTruth said satellite imagery from Oct. 1, the day before the spill was reported, shows cargo ships anchored near the area where the pipeline runs, according to government maps. The closest, however, was about 450 meters away from the pipeline, SkyTruth President John Amos said.

“That seems like a comfortably long distance to separate that pipeline from that ship, but one thing I don’t know is how accurate is this government data on exactly where this pipeline sits on the seafloor,” Amos said in an interview.

The pipeline runs along the ocean floor from the Elly platform, located in 255 feet of water, then heads toward port. Some sections are buried and some are above the sand.

The company and contractors patrol the pipeline by boat about once a week, with workers looking for clues of a possible spill, leak or anomaly. Chemical analysts test the product coming out of the pipeline for iron, which could indicate corrosion or metal loss in the line.

Metal devices called “smart pigs” are run through the pipeline about every three years to check for anomalies. The last such test was conducted in 2019, Amplify Energy CEO Martyn Willsher said at a news conference Monday.

Huntington Beach, about 40 miles (65 km) south of Los Angeles, had 13 square miles (34 square km) of ocean and portions of its coastline “covered in oil,” said Mayor Kim Carr. The town, which advertises itself as Surf City USA, is one of the rare places in Southern California where oil platforms are visible from the beach.

Angry residents blasted what they called a slow initial response to the spill. Already, one lawsuit has been filed against Amplify by a local DJ, Peter Moses Gutierrez Jr.

Some 23 oil and gas production facilities operate in federal waters off the California coast, according to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Amplify’s Beta Offshore unit has three, including the Elly offshore platform, where the pipeline was connected.

(Reporting by Nichola Groom, Jessica Resnick Ault, Lisa Baertlein and Daniel Trotta; Editing by David Gregorio)

Investigators probing cause of major California offshore oil spill

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (Reuters) -Federal and state investigators on Monday were probing what caused some 126,000 gallons of crude oil to leak into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California.

Huntington Beach, about 40 miles (65 km) south of Los Angeles, was hit hardest with some 13 square miles (34 square km) of ocean and portions of its coastline “covered in oil,” said Mayor Kim Carr.

The oil appeared to come from a production platform operated by Beta Offshore, a California subsidiary of Houston-based offshore crude oil producer Amplify Energy Corporation. Amplify on Monday did not immediately return a call seeking information.

Federal officials have stepped up their scrutiny of aging and idled offshore energy pipelines. Energy companies have built 40,000 miles (64,000 km) of oil and gas pipelines in federal offshore waters since the 1940s.

Regulators have failed to address the risks from idled pipelines, platforms and other infrastructure on the sea floor, the watchdog U.S. Government Accountability Office said this year.

“As pipelines age, they are more susceptible to damage from corrosion, mudslides and sea floor erosion,” GAO said.

Martyn Willsher, an Amplify executive, said on Sunday a pipeline carrying oil from the platform had been shut off and its remaining oil suctioned out. Divers were trying to determine where and why the spill occurred, he said.

Officials deployed 2,050 feet (625 meters) of protective booms, which help contain and slow the oil flows, and about 3,150 gallons had been recovered on Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen and Gene Blevins; Editing by Howard Goller)

California to require COVID-19 vaccines for schoolchildren, governor says

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) -California will become the first U.S. state to mandate statewide COVID-19 vaccinations for schoolchildren as early as January, Governor Gavin Newsom said on Friday.

But first the U.S. Food and Drug Administration must fully approve inoculations for their age groups, he said.

The Democrat made the announcement at a news briefing as the United States remains a few hundred deaths shy of 700,000 COVID-19 deaths.

Several large school districts in California, the most populous U.S. state, already mandate COVID-19 vaccines for some students.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s largest, requires them for children over the age of 12, for whom the FDA has authorized their emergency use.

Public schools in San Diego will require vaccines for students over the age of 16 in December, and in Hoboken, New Jersey, students must be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing for the virus.

Newsom’s new policy would add COVID-19 to the list of ailments against which children must be vaccinated to attend public or private schools.

Public health officials say the state’s strict COVID-19 public health orders helped to slow the transmission of the virus in recent weeks.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Additional reporting by Anurag Maan; Editing by Howard Goller)

Wake up and smell the coffee … made in the United States

By Marcelo Teixeira

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Farmer David Armstrong recently finished planting what is likely the most challenging crop his family has ever cultivated since his ancestors started farming in 1865 – 20,000 coffee trees.

Except Armstrong is not in the tropics of Central America – he is in Ventura, California, just 60 miles (97 km) away from downtown Los Angeles.

“I guess now I can say I am a coffee farmer!” he said, after planting the last seedlings of high-quality varieties of arabica coffee long cultivated in sweltering equatorial climates.

Coffee is largely produced in the Coffee Belt, located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, where countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia and Vietnam have provided the best climate for coffee trees, which need constant heat to survive.

Climate change is altering temperatures around the globe. That is harming crops in numerous locales, but opening up possibilities in other regions. That includes California and Florida, where farmers and researchers are looking at growing coffee.

Armstrong recently joined a group of farmers taking part in the largest-ever coffee growing endeavor in the United States. The nation is the world’s largest consumer of the beverage but produces just 0.01% of the global coffee crop – and that was all in Hawaii, one of only two U.S. states with a tropical climate, along with southern Florida.

Traditional producers of coffee such as Colombia, Brazil and Vietnam have suffered from the impact of extreme heat and changing rain patterns. Botanists and researchers are looking to plant hardier crop varieties for some of those nations’ coffee growing regions.

Top producer Brazil is going through the worst drought in over 90 years. That was compounded by a series of unexpected frosts, which damaged about 10% of the trees, hurting coffee production this year and next.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

“We are getting to 100,000 trees,” said Jay Ruskey, founder and chief executive of Frinj Coffee, a company that offers farmers interested in coffee growing a partnership package including seedlings, post-harvest processing and marketing.

Ruskey says he started trial planting of coffee in California many years ago but told few about it. He said he only “came out of the closet as a coffee farmer” in 2014, when Coffee Review, a publication that evaluates the best coffees every crop year, reviewed his coffee, giving his batch of caturra arabica coffee a score of 91 points out of 100.

Frinj is still a small coffee company targeting high-end specialty buyers. Frinj sells bags of 5 ounces (140 grams) for $80 each on its website. As a comparison, 8-ounce packages of Starbucks Reserve, the top-quality coffee sold by the U.S. chain, sell for $35 each. Frinj produced 2,000 pounds (907 kg) of dry coffee this year from eight farms.

“We are still young, still growing in terms of farms, post-harvest capabilities,” said Ruskey. “We are trying to keep the price high, and we are selling everything we produce.” The venture is already profitable,” he said.

The company has been growing slowly since, with Armstrong’s 7,000-acre (2,833-hectare) Smith Hobson Ranch one of the latest, and largest, to partner with Ruskey.

“I have no experience in coffee,” said Armstrong, who typically grows citrus fruits and avocados, among other crops.

To boost his chances of success, he installed a new irrigation system to increase water use efficiency and has planted the trees away from parts of the ranch that have been hit by frosts in the past.

Coffee uses 20% less water than most fruit and nut trees, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Water has become scarce in California after recent droughts and forest fires. Many farmers are switching crops to deal with limits on water use.

Giacomo Celi, sustainability director at Mercon Coffee Group, one of the world’s largest traders of green coffee, said the risks of cultivating coffee in new areas are high.

“It seems more logical to invest in new coffee varieties that could be grown in the same current geographies,” he said.

FLORIDA HOPES

As the climate warms in the southern United States, researchers at the University of Florida (UF) are working with a pilot plantation to see if trees will survive in that state.

Scientists have just moved seedlings of arabica coffee trees grown in a greenhouse to the open, where they will be exposed to the elements, creating the risk that plants could be killed by the cold when the winter comes.

“It is going to be the first time they will be tested,” said Diane Rowland, a lead researcher on the project.

Rowland said researchers are planting coffee trees close to citrus, an intercropping technique used in other parts of the world as larger trees help hold winds and provide shade to coffee trees.

The project, however, is about more than just coffee cultivation. Alina Zare, an artificial intelligence researcher at UF’s College of Engineering, said scientists are also trying to improve how to study plants’ root systems. That, in turn, could help in the selection of optimal coffee varieties for the region in the future.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. weather agency, annual mean temperatures were at least 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) above average for more than half the time in the long-term measuring stations across the United States’ southeastern region in 2020.

Florida experienced record heat last year, with average temperatures of 28.3 C (83 F) in July, and 16.4 C (61.6 F) in January. That is hotter than Brazil’s Varginha area in Minas Gerais state, the largest coffee-producing region in the world, which averages 22.1 C (71.8 F) in its hottest month and 16.6 C (61.9 F) in the coldest.

“With climate change, we know many areas in the world will have difficulties growing coffee because it is going to be too hot, so Florida could be an option,” Rowland said.

(Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira in New York; Editing by David Gaffen and Matthew Lewis)

Thousands displaced as wildfire threatens California’s Lake Tahoe resort area

By Sharon Bernstein

TRUCKEE, Calif. (Reuters) – Firefighters battled to protect homes on the fringe of tinder-dry forests near Lake Tahoe on Tuesday as a wildfire chased thousands of residents and tourists from the popular resort destination in California’s Sierra Nevada range.

The so-called Caldor fire, burning since mid-August in the mountains east of the state capital, Sacramento, crested a ridgeline and roared downslope toward communities at the southern end of the Tahoe basin on Monday, triggering mass evacuations.

Traffic crammed local roads as South Lake Tahoe, a town of 22,000 residents, rapidly emptied out along with several nearby villages, leaving an area normally thronged by summer vacationers largely empty – except for the smoke.

By Tuesday, the blaze had charred more than 191,000 acres (77,300 hectares) of drought-parched forests, some 14,000 acres (5,665 hectares) more than the day before, while firefighters had managed to carve containment lines around just 16% of its perimeter.

At least 669 homes and other structures were listed as destroyed on Tuesday, up nearly 200 from a day earlier, with 34,000 other buildings considered threatened, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

No deaths have been reported. Three firefighters and two civilians were injured in recent days.

As of Tuesday, nearly 4,000 personnel and a squadron of over two dozen water-dropping helicopters were assigned to the blaze, whose cause remained under investigation.

Only the Dixie fire, which has charred 771,000 acres (312,000 hectares) farther north in the Sierras, has engulfed more territory this year than Caldor.

Both fires are among nearly two dozen raging across California and scores of others elsewhere in the West, during a summer fire season shaping up as one of the most destructive on record. The blazes have been stoked by extremely hot, dry conditions that experts say are symptomatic of climate change.

More than 6,800 wildfires large and small have blackened an estimated 1.7 million acres (689,000 hectares) within California alone this season, stretching available firefighting forces and equipment dangerously thin. Cal Fire and U.S. Forest Service officials have described ferocious fire behavior seen across the region as unprecedented.

The Forest Service has closed all 18 national forests in California to the public through mid-September, an extraordinary measure the agency has taken only once before – amid last year’s catastrophic fire season. The shutdown officially begins at midnight on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Truckee, Calif; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney)

California’s Caldor fire moves closer to more heavily populated areas

(Reuters) – California’s Caldor fire moved closer to more heavily populated areas in the northern part of the state on Sunday, leading to more evacuation orders and warnings as well as road closures, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

The fire has been active for 14 days and has spread across 168,387 acres, the department added, saying it has caused evacuation orders in multiple counties.

The department issued updated evacuation warnings for El Dorado County that include the remainder of the South Lake Tahoe Basin.

The fire is 13% contained and has damaged 39 residential, commercial and other structures while destroying over 650 such structures so far. The fire has also led to 5 injuries to firefighters and civilians, according to the department’s website.

“Today saw a significant increase in dynamic fire behavior resulting in rapid fire spread. Critical fuel conditions and the alignment of up-slope canyon winds increased extreme fire behavior in the early morning,” the department said on Sunday.

California, which typically has experienced its peak fire season in late summer and fall, is already on pace to see more of its landscape go up in flames this year than last, the worst year on record.

“The smoke from the Caldor Fire and wildfires across the west have created dangerous air quality levels for some communities,” U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said in a tweet on Sunday.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Toby Chopra)

California becomes first state to order teachers to get COVID vaccine or test

By Lisa Shumaker and Peter Szekely

(Reuters) -California on Wednesday became the first U.S. state to require that its teachers and other school staff be vaccinated or regularly tested for COVID-19, a move Governor Gavin Newsom called “a responsible step” to ensure the safety of children.

The move comes as Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s statewide ban on mask mandates hit its second legal setback after a judge in Dallas County temporarily blocked it from being enforced amid a nationwide rise in coronavirus cases.

Abbott and fellow Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida have faced defiance over their statewide orders that prevent local officials from deciding whether to require that masks be worn.

Masks have become a divisive issue, often splitting the country along political lines, despite near universal agreement among health experts that they can limit the spread of the virus.

In Tennessee, over a hundred anti-mask protesters heckled masked people, including doctors and nurses, on Tuesday in Williamson County where the school board voted earlier to require masks for elementary students.

A video with nearly 1 million views on Twitter shows the crowd surrounding a masked man as he walked to his car. Protesters yelled: “We will find you” and “We know who you are. No more masks.”

The vaccination requirement in California schools follows similar orders that applied to state employees and healthcare workers.

“We think this is a sustainable way to keeping our schools open, and to address the No. 1 anxiety that parents like myself have for young children,” Newsom said at a briefing where he was flanked by state teachers’ union officials who support the move.

Spurred by the Delta variant, the country’s coronavirus cases have spiked to their highest levels in more than six months, according to a Reuters tally. New U.S. cases have increased more than five-fold over the past month with the seven-day average hitting 118,000 on Tuesday.

In response, some California school districts have already implemented requirements that mirror those now put into effect on the state level.

The White House said last week that almost 90% of U.S. educators and school staff are vaccinated.

The U.S. government and several states, along with some hospitals, universities and a growing number of private employers, have said they require employees to get inoculated.

New York City last week become the first major U.S. city to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination at restaurants, gyms and other businesses, starting next month.

In Texas, the temporary order in Dallas issued late on Tuesday by Judge Tonya Parker allows officials in the state’s second-most populous county to require masks indoors, despite Abbott’s July order against such mandates. A hearing on Aug. 24 will determine whether to extend the temporary order.

The top elected official in Dallas County, Judge Clay Jenkins, who sought the court order issued late Tuesday, said preventative steps such as mask-wearing are needed to combat a spike in new cases of COVID-19.

“Models predict ongoing dramatic increases in cases and hospitalizations over the coming weeks that will exceed the peak earlier this year unless behavior change takes place,” he said Tuesday on Twitter.

Earlier on Tuesday, another Texas court granted an order at least until Monday that enables officials in San Antonio and Bexar Counties to require that masks be worn in public schools.

SOUTHERN EPICENTER

Oregon and Washington state are also grappling with surges in cases and hospitalizations as the outbreak spreads beyond the epicenter in the U.S. South.

Oregon Governor Kate Brown on Wednesday announced all state executive branch employees must be vaccinated, and she also reimposed a statewide indoor mask mandate.

The latest coronavirus wave is still the worst in Southern states, based on new cases and hospitalizations per capita in recent weeks.

Arkansas, Florida and Louisiana are all reporting record COVID-19 hospitalizations in recent days.

Florida’s Broward County school board on Tuesday flouted an order by DeSantis that outlaws mask requirements in the state, prompting the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to say it was considering supporting the school districts financially if DeSantis retaliates against them by withholding funds from officials’ salaries.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York and Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Editing by Frank McGurty and Rosalba O’Brien)