If you’re not concerned about plastics, you should be. Plastic doesn’t return harmlessly to nature. It breaks into ever smaller microplastics and nanoplastics that now appear in our food, water, air, blood, and even human brain tissue. In one major study, people whose carotid-artery plaque contained plastic particles were more likely to suffer a heart […]
Opinion
Posted inOpinion
Proactive protection
Lawsuits. Santa Maria thinks it can avoid them with a preemptive strike! But mobile home park owners around town are low-key threatening to sue over the city’s new mobile home park ordinance anyway. The new rule impacts five senior parks in the city and ensures that those parks will continue to cater to the 55-plus […]
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Central Coast citizens should come together to advocate for stricter pesticide use rules
On June 30, concerned citizens from the Oceano, Grover Beach, and Arroyo Grande communities sat down with the local ag commissioner and a representative from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR). This meeting was months in the making, and although one of the key representatives of the citizen group, Karl Kempton, had requested it […]
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Royally in the red
Guadalupe, Guadalupe, Guadalupe, what are we going to do with you? After fits and starts, false starts, and no starts, the city’s calling it quits on the Royal Theater restoration project. I think anyone’s who’s been following my sarcastic commentary on the matter probably knows that should have happened a long time ago—maybe when the […]
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Lompoc Fire Department has sounded the alarm for more than a decade and no one answered
“Deferred maintenance” is a term used to define things that need to be done but will have to wait until we can afford it. In government it usually means that they have the funds to fix the roof, but the politicians guiding the use of tax money would rather defer fixing the roof and use […]
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Nuclear should not be a part of the Central Coast’s energy future
There are many concerns about adding another 15 to 20 years to an aging Diablo Canyon nuclear plant operation, which uses radiation to boil seawater to make electricity. Sounds outdated and dangerous. Last year, Trump signed an order to allow greater radiation exposure to the public ignoring its disproportionate effect on children and women. Our […]
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No gloves
Solvang lost some of its Danish charm in a battle over one partially developed lot with nine almost-built little cottages on it. A fight over what the developer calls whimsical and how closely it resembles the permit granted to him by the city landed the two sides in court. The gloves came off, and the […]
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Cal Poly’s research helps ensure a healthy future for California strawberries
When people bring home a carton of California strawberries, they probably aren’t thinking about plant diseases, soil health, or the students spending long days collecting samples in a field. As a plant pathologist, I do. Because behind every strawberry is years of research, countless hours of fieldwork, and a shared commitment to finding better ways […]
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Diablo Canyon is preparing a massive bait and switch
As public hearings continue regarding the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, San Luis Obispo County residents must confront a terrifying reality. While regulators use rare loopholes to bypass environmental rules for a supposedly brief five-year extension—this is the bait—the truth is a multi-decade push to secure power for a surging tech sector and unpublicized AI data […]
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Accidents and malice
The news this week almost made me want to set down my feather pen and bury my head in the sand, à la my long-legged cousins. A Vandenberg Space Force Base airman died on base after the heavy equipment he was operating fell down an embankment. Airman 1st Class Cedric Eneluna was 23 years old. […]
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South County leaders know nothing about a world without fossil fuels
Imagine a world without fossil fuels; it would be dark, very few people, only foraged food, no houses, nothing but silence and emptiness. This is the world that the movers and shakers in Santa Barbara County and statewide would like to take you to. Their endless assault on the production and use of fossil fuel […]
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Vote for change: democratic socialists, progressives, independents, prairie populists
Was Dwight Eisenhower a communist? As a Republican president in 1956, he ran on a platform of expansion of Social Security; federal assistance for construction of hospitals; increased federal aid for medical care of the needy; and the creation of a Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. And an immigration policy that provided a haven […]
