Ring of Fires

Alissa, Godfrey, and guest co-host Loraine Lundquist track local wildfires, an oil spill, and a leaking tank of methyl methacrylate in Garden Grove. LA Mayor Karen Bass fires her heat officer and other climate champions flee the administration. Then: LA’s Capital Infrastructure Program has finally been launched! How it would transform the city budget process, which just concluded. LA Podcast is seeking a part-time Digital Producer! Work with our small but mighty team on show notes, social media, and other digital assets for our weekly local news roundup. Go here for the full description and interest form Several fires continue to burn in Southern California, wreaking havoc on air quality The Sandy Fire may have been caused by a tractor doing brush clearance; the Santa Rosa Island Fire was started when a shipwrecked sailor set off an emergency flare Although the Sandy Fire is close to the Santa Susana Nation Laboratory, the site does not pose a threat. In fact, the Woolsey Fire, which literally started on the campus, burned about 80 percent of the site already, and out of 360 samples taken three weeks after the fire, only 3% showed high activities of radioactive isotopes Meanwhile, about 40,000 people were evacuated in Garden Grove due to a leak in a 7,000-gallon tank of methyl methacrylate, the chemical used to make plexiglass, that could potentially explode at the GKN Aerospace facility. The evacuation zone is so large because they don’t know which way the wind will blow the gas And a crude oil pipeline was severed in East LA by utility crews, spewing 2,500 gallons of oil into the LA River Sammy Roth broke the news that LA Mayor Karen Bass fired her heat officer, Marta Segura. This — and the departure of other environmental leaders — is calling this administration’s climate commitment into question, as the mayor releases an unambitious climate plan LA’s rankings in the Trust for Public Land’s annual ParkScore report has dropped to 93 out of 100, much to Alissa’s dismay Different ballots are also due June 2 — for property owners to raise the streetlight assessments that haven’t been increased since the 1990s Both these problems would be addressed if LA had a Capital Infrastructure Program (CIP) allowing the city to budget for improvements, service, and maintenance five years at a time, instead of just one — and the CIP was finally released! Alissa writes about the CIP, why it’s just focused on Olympics related projects for now, and how these basic changes could help restore infrastructural trust in the city There are ten proposed recommendations for the CIP, many of which would