Teri Ellen Westra says Little Basin emergency routes aren’t nearly enough.
Articles by Jessica Lyons Hardcastle
Santa Cruz’s First ‘Passive House’
Midori Haus is a perfect model of efficiency
The Spring-Summer Fashion Cheat Sheet
Women wear the pants this season. OK, so they also wear flirty lace dresses and bold, Aztec warrior princess necklaces. But first: pants, big pants. From full, fluid trousers to high-waist flare jeans, the spring/summer 2011 silhouette is long and loose. It has a powerful, in-control attitude, helped by its natural pairing with tall wedge platforms, which add height and length. Stovepipes and jeggings, begone!
Health & Fitness: The Mattress Gym
Getting out of bed can be the worst part of the day. Whether pulling away from a lover’s sexy wake-up call or sleep’s cozy cocoon, sometimes it’s all downhill after leaving the sheets. New research says it’s more than an annoyance, though. It can be downright dangerous to your health.
Kids’ Theater Program Launches
It’s not easy being Ugly. That’s “Ugly” as in “duckling,” the “aesthetically challenged farmyard fowl” rejected by everyone except for his mama in Honk!, the musical adaptation of the famous story in which a young swan finds himself rejected by a family of ducks.
New Photos Raise Old Questions About Hatchery
Last month, while at the Buena Vista landfill, Kelly Luker saw a white Cal-Cruz Hatcheries truck dumping mounds of fluffy yellowish material. Remembering that Cal-Cruz had been in the news earlier in the year, she pulled out her camera phone and moved closer to take pictures. “I walked up to get a better view, though I had a pretty good idea what it was,” Luker says. “Looking closer, I saw little chick eyes staring out of mangled heads and pieces of feet and beak scattered about. You can’t see something like that and eat chicken again.”
Watching Our Salt Intake
According to statistics from the city of Santa Cruz and the Soquel Creek Water District, it requires approximately 1.4 to 2.1 kilowatt hours per thousand gallons (kWh/kgal) to collect, treat and distribute the traditional water supply—that’s surface water and groundwater—for the city and the water district.
Why Fish Biologists Are Plugging for Desal
During a rainy year—that is, a good year for fish—adult steelhead salmon swim in from the ocean and up the San Lorenzo River between December and March to lay their eggs in gravel on the river bottom. After hatching in early spring, the juvenile fish linger in the river for at least a year (and sometimes two or three), feeding and maturing. When they’re finally ready, the smolt, or teenage steelhead, head downstream into a lagoon, a sort of all-you-can-eat buffet for oceanbound young salmon.
Watsonville Nurses Stonewalled Again
Relations between Watsonville Community Hospital nurses and hospital management have been ailing since January, when the two parties entered into contract negotiations. Things heated up in October, when a one-day walkout turned into a three-day lockout and strike. Talks were slated to start back up Dec. 10, with a bargaining day that the hospital offered nurses shortly after the strike. But days away from the planned meeting, the situation needs life support.
Groups Take Aim at Strawberry Pesticide
As California moves towards approving the carcinogenic pesticide methyl iodide, a coalition of farmworker, children’s health and environmental groups on Tuesday asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to ban the fumigant and set the stage to take their plea to Gov.-elect Jerry Brown should the current administration ignore them.
