It’s not just toxic chemicals. Radioactive waste was also dumped off Los Angeles coast – the Los Angeles Times
For decades, a graveyard of corroding barrels has littered the seafloor just off the coast of Los Angeles. It was out of sight, out of mind — a not-so-secret secret that haunted the marine environment until a team of researchers came across them with an advanced underwater camera…Startling amounts of DDT near the barrels pointed to a little-known history of toxic pollution…but federal regulators recently determined that the manufacturer had not bothered with barrels. (Its acid waste was poured straight into the ocean instead.)…
Can Seawalls Save Us? – the New Yorker
Pacifica, California, just south of San Francisco, is the kind of beachfront community that longtime residents compare to Heaven…Pacifica embodies one of the central disagreements about rising seas. Fight or flight? Stay or go? Flight can seem unimaginable. But, if we try to fight the ocean with rock and concrete, it will cost us—and it may not work…
Lessons from California on How to Adapt to Sea Level Rise – NPR | On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti
The Pacific Ocean off the California coast could rise more than six feet by the end of this century, according to some estimates…
Guests: Rosanna Xia, environmental reporter for the LA Times. Author of “California Against the Sea: Visions for our Vanishing Coastline.”
A.R. Siders, director of the Climate Change Hub and professor on climate change adaptation at the University of Delaware.
In the face of sea level rise, can we reimagine California’s vanishing coastline? – the Los Angeles Times
Excerpted from “California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline” (available Sept. 26, 2023) by Rosanna Xia. Reprinted in the Los Angeles Times with permission from Heyday Books, © 2023.
California Against the Sea: Visions for our Vanishing Coastline – by Rosanna Xia
Along California’s 1,200-mile coastline, the overheated Pacific Ocean is rising and pressing in, imperiling both wildlife and the maritime towns and cities that 27 million people call home. In California Against the Sea, Los Angeles Times coastal reporter Rosanna Xia asks: As climate chaos threatens the places we love so fiercely, will we finally grasp our collective capacity for change?
How does sea level rise challenge modern notions of property lines? – Los Angeles Times
The (California) Coastal Act is a remarkable commitment to the public trust doctrine, which traces back to Justinian I, who declared in 533 C.E. that “the following things are natural law common to all: the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the seashore.” This notion — that certain lands should be held in trust by the government for the benefit of all people — evolved into English common law, which the United States then adopted and California later wrote into its state constitution…
History of DDT ocean dumping off L.A. coast even worse than expected, EPA finds – Los Angeles Times
After an exhaustive historical investigation into the barrels of DDT waste reportedly dumped decades ago near Catalina Island, federal regulators concluded that the toxic pollution in the deep ocean could be far worse — and far more sweeping — than what scientists anticipated.