Departure of Water and Power

Alissa, Mike, and Sammy discuss the resignation of Janisse Quiñones as head of LADWP and what this will mean for LA’s clean energy goals. Then, takeaways from the first LA mayoral debate and how climate is factoring into the governor’s race. And a new baseball season means more complaints about how the Dodgers can be doing more for the community. LADWP CEO Janisse Quiñones stepped down earlier this month to return to Puerto Rico and work on modernizing the grid Sammy’s excellent story about Quiñones leaving describes the role as “one of the most important roles in global climate policy” — and she helped push forward that vision LA Mayor Karen Bass named David Hanson as interim director. He’s worked at DWP two decades, starting as an electrical mechanic The LADWP board has almost completely turned over under Bass, and, in addition, four out of five of her Fire Commissioners have also stepped down If you want to catch up on LA’s clean energy goals and all the various colors of hydrogen, listen to the last episode where Sammy joined us The LA Local: “Bass orders 60,000 streetlights to get solar upgrade in 2-year plan” Meanwhile, LA’s City Council advanced a plan to raise streetlight assessments, with ballots going out April 17 And Councilmembers Katy Yaroslavsky and Eunisses Hernandez announced their own “solar surge” A general reminder to read India Mandelkern’s excellent book: Electric Moons: A Social History of Street Lighting in Los Angeles Watch the first LA mayoral debate sponsored by Streets for All and Housing Action Coalition. It was unusually friendly turf for a candidate — one of the moderators used to work for Nithya and the other helped recruit Nithya to rum for mayor So far, only Rae Huang has a climate platform Nithya Raman is talking about parks as a neighborhood-cooling solution — and look at those Griffith Park bike lanes! Raman was also removed from the AQMD board by Bass just before she declared for mayor, and just after this bizarre vote where an AI-powered campaign bot sent 20,000 emails and helped defeat a motion to phase out gas-powered appliances (Raman voted yes, but it failed) Watch Sammy’s climate forum with governor candidates and read his take on the governor’s race Politico: “Tom Steyer’s climate pivot signals new playbook for Dems”LA Material: