Topline:
Southern California farmers are conserving a lot more Colorado River water, but that’s also causing the Salton Sea to dry up faster.
Why it matters: Since Southern California farmers agreed to a major new deal with the federal government to cut water use significantly, the Salton Sea has dropped about 10 inches and the sea has shrunk by some 3,500 acres, exposing more toxic dust from the lakebed.
Keep reading...to learn more about addressing this conservation conundrum.
Southern California farmers are conserving a lot more Colorado River water, but that’s also causing the Salton Sea to dry up faster.
That’s because the Salton Sea is filled primarily by agricultural runoff from farms in the Imperial Valley in far Southern California. Those farms have a single source of water: the Colorado River.
The Salton Sea is a landlocked, shallow lake in Riverside and Imperial counties. The lakebed has been contaminated for more than 100 years with pesticides and other chemicals that create dangerous air pollution for surrounding communities.
Balancing conservation with the impact on the Salton Sea is a long-running conundrum.
“It feels that we are responsible for conserving the Colorado River for the good of the many,” said Silvia Paz, director of grassroots group Alianza Coachella Valley, which is working to address the impacts of pollution from the Salton Sea.
“And on the flip side, I don't think it's fair that one particular community that's already an environmental justice community has to bear that responsibility — almost alone it feels like,” Paz said.
The Salton Sea is part of the massive Colorado River delta. For millennia, the area flooded periodically as the river shifted across the sandy delta region spanning across present-day Southern California, southern Arizona and northern Mexico.
Lake Cahuilla is some of the last evidence of that era of flooding before the river was controlled and diverted via dams and canals. Today, the river no longer meets the sea.
The Salton Sea as we now know it is California’s largest lake. And it's man made. It was first created back in 1905, when an irrigation canal gate failed and the river flooded into the historic lakebed of Lake Cahuilla.
Since then, the sea has been fed by agricultural runoff. Once a popular vacation destination in the 1950s, as farmers got more efficient with water use and climate change-driven heat worsened, the lake — and its tourists — has been drying up, and the lakebed has become increasingly exposed.
Researchers are finding that a naturally occurring toxin plus chemicals from farm runoff in the drying lakebed are worsening air quality and contributing to higher rates of asthma and other respiratory illness in surrounding communities.
Though it’s saltier than the ocean, the Salton Sea remains a biodiversity hotspot for fish and migratory birds.
Imperial Valley farmers in Southern California use more Colorado River water than anyone. They grow primarily hay as well as leafy greens and other produce that feeds much of the country and the world.
In August, the Imperial Irrigation District agreed to a major new deal with the federal government to cut its water use by an amount that’s more than double the amount the entire state of Nevada uses in a year. The cuts will happen through 2026.
And they're needed: Two wet years have helped, but the risk of Lake Mead reaching deadpool — meaning the water level has dropped so low that it can no longer flow downstream — remains a looming possibility. That could cut off the main water supply for tens of millions of people and farms downstream.
The first phase of this new program started this summer, and included a program where participating forage crop growers didn’t water those crops for 49 days, during the hottest part of the year. The main crop grown in the Imperial Valley is alfalfa.
In return, the Imperial Irrigation District got $589 million from the feds to pay those farmers who can then invest in more water-efficient technologies, pay workers, or otherwise invest in their farms.
The program was a success, said Tina Shields, the Imperial Irrigation District’s water manager. She said the district cut water use by about 175,000 acre-feet this summer. For comparison, the entire city of L.A. uses about 500,000 acre-feet of water every year.
The short duration of the program had little impact on the economy. If anything, it helped farmers stay in business because hay markets are bad right now — that’s a reason why so many farmers participated this summer, Shields said.
Plus, water use in the area is down in general because October has been abnormally hot, so watering would just burn crops.
Since that program ended at the end of September, the surface elevation of the Salton Sea has dropped about 10 inches and the sea shrunk by some 3,500 acres, exposing more dust from the lakebed, said Paz, whose group along with researchers from UCLA and the Pacific Institute measured the decline.
“Our communities don't have the luxury to escape the dust that is blown into the air,” Paz said. “Siloing this issue as a water-only issue leads to all these other consequences.”
In its review, the federal government found the new agreement with the Imperial Irrigation District, or IID, would have no significant new environmental impacts to the Salton Sea and surrounding communities. But many people in the area disagree.
“The reality is that, for our communities, it's not a negligible impact,” Paz said. “This is a cumulative impact to the conditions that we're already suffering.”
Research has shown that asthma rates and other respiratory diseases are far higher than average among communities near the Salton Sea.
Those impacts are why the Sierra Club recently sued the IID about the conservation deal. The organization says the district did not do a proper environmental review of the impacts to the Salton Sea and nearby communities.
“We believe that they should be paying the bill for some of the impacts,” said Richard Miller, director of the Sierra Club’s San Diego chapter.
The IID argues it's already done it's part to address the issues caused by a drying Salton Sea. Shields said the district only agreed to this recent round of additional conservation efforts because they negotiated that $250 million in federal dollars would go towards accelerating the state’s Salton Sea efforts.
“That funding is conditioned on IID implementing these additional conservation efforts,” Shields said. “So we up front took care of the Salton Sea from our perspective.”
But it’s the state that is primarily responsible for addressing the pollution impacts of a shrinking Salton Sea. They are behind on their 10-year plan, which aims to restore nearly 30,000 acres by 2028 of exposed lakebed to native desert habitat and man-made ponds that support endangered fish, migratory birds and reducing pollution.
In recent years, restoration efforts have accelerated, in large part thanks to that $250 million in funding from the Biden-Harris Administration, said Miguel Hernandez, a spokesperson for the state’s Salton Sea Management project, in a statement to LAist.
He wrote that, so far, the state has completed more than 2,000 acres of habitat restoration and dust control, with some 6,500 acres currently under construction and major construction complete for a 4,100-acre conservation area — additional federal funding is helping to expand that project by 750 acres.
See a map of completed and ongoing Salton Sea restoration projects here.
“IID is doing the right thing conserving water to stabilize the Colorado River, and our federal partners stepped up to provide funding for this water conservation and for California’s ongoing projects at the Sea to reduce dust emissions and restore habitat,” Hernandez wrote.
But Paz said the sea is shrinking faster than projects are being built to cover the exposed lakebed.
“We need to balance this out. They need to move a lot faster,” Paz said.
Everyone agrees the ongoing restoration efforts are key to addressing the impacts of a shrinking Salton Sea. But balancing necessary conservation with the impacts of that conservation can seem like an impossible problem to solve.
“It’s the rock and a hard place,” said Shields. “As we get more efficient, the downside is the Salton Sea has less water. It's a tough thing with an inland body of water that has no outlet and the only inlet is receiving drainage water from the adjacent areas. So it's a balancing act to keep everybody happy.”
It’s the rock and a hard place.
Shields continued: “But if the Colorado River crashes, that's not something you just fix the next year,” So we're going to do everything we can to ensure that our communities have a reliable and safe water supply. And it may be that there are impacts to the Salton Sea, but without the Colorado River, there would be no Salton Sea.”
Paz said she supports and understands the conservation needs, but that means that policymakers and water managers need to think more holistically about the mitigation efforts.
“If this is the only way, we need to broaden how we think about how we’re protecting and preparing our communities,” Paz said.
She said accelerating the state's restoration projects is essential, plus funding for air filters and weatherizing more homes, particularly mobile homes that house farmworkers, for which funding is lacking, she said.
But Paz said mitigation for conservation impacts to the Salton Sea could go beyond direct impacts, to improving general quality of life, especially as desert communities face some of the quickest accelerating impacts of the climate crisis.
One example? A new plan envisioned by the community and supported by local governments to build a commuter rail line connecting all the Coachella Valley communities, that will also add green space, shade and an emergency shelter to help communities ride out disasters and excessive heat.
“We’re talking about being very mindful of how our built environment is being developed to address the needs that we have, particularly when it comes to climate resilience,” Paz said.
She added that funding from Proposition 4, which is on the November ballot, would help speed up some existing efforts.
“We're very hopeful that Proposition 4 gets support statewide and that that funding will become available,” Paz said. (Update: Voters did indeed pass that proposition).
As for the state’s plan, it’s estimated it will cost more than a billion dollars to complete the necessary habitat restoration and dust mitigation efforts.
Among other things, a large chunk of the $250 million from the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act will go towards a more than 4,000-acre restoration area to plant habitat that supports migratory birds and reduces dust pollution, said Mike Lynes, public policy director for Audubon California. Other ongoing projects are showing preliminary promise.
“We cannot lose our hope,” said Paz. “Transforming our communities takes a lot of work, but at the end of it, this is a work of hope and that is what allows us to keep envisioning and to keep trying. Because I believe that a different future is possible.”
Topline:
Forecasters say Southern California will be relatively cool and cloudy for the next few days after a summer of repeated heat waves.
The details: Highs along the coast will be in the 70s over the next few days. Inland areas of L.A. and Orange counties will get up to the 80s. The cloud cover will likely be widespread on Friday and much of Saturday, but concentrated mostly in the morning hours and along the coast.
The science: A system of low pressure air has moved into the region. Low pressure systems force air to rise, and as air rises it cools. It also eventually condenses, often forming cloud cover. Meanwhile, a deep marine layer and onshore winds are helping push those clouds farther inland.
Read on … to learn how long this reprieve from the heat will last.
Southern California is getting a dose of unseasonably cool weather — a welcome break after a series of hot, humid heat waves over the last few months.
Lower than normal temperatures are expected to stick around through the weekend.
Highs along the coast will be in the 70s over the next few days. Inland areas of L.A. and Orange counties will get up to the 80s. Even the Inland Empire is expected to peak at about 90 degrees on Friday.
The cooler temperatures are also expected to come with cloudy skies across the region.
The cloud cover will likely be widespread on Friday and much of Saturday, but concentrated mostly in the morning hours and along the coast, where skies could stay cloudy through the afternoon.
The cool, mild conditions won’t last long, though.
Forecasters say temperatures will start to tick back up on Saturday. They will stay below normal seasonal levels for a few days, but the summer heat will be back by the middle of next week.
So this weekend might be a good time to go on a hike or host that barbecue.
The cool weather is a pretty stark change.
Just a few weeks ago, the National Weather Service was issuing warnings across Southern California for extreme heat and predicting nearly record-breaking temperatures. Now, atmospheric conditions have shifted.
Much of that suffocating heat was driven by a massive system of high pressure air hovering over the Southwestern U.S.
High pressure systems trap warm air beneath them and compress it, further warming the air and preventing cooler air from displacing it.
This week, the high pressure system finally loosened its grip.
“That ridge of high pressure kind of broke down, and then a trough of low pressure developed off and along the coast of California,” said Devin Black, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
Low pressure systems force air to rise, and as air rises it cools. It also eventually condenses, often forming cloud cover.
That’s one reason behind the clouds in Southern California this week.
Meanwhile, a deep marine layer and onshore winds are helping push those clouds farther inland. Forecasters note that the low pressure system and onshore winds are also keeping humidity levels up.
Despite the cloud cover and moisture, it’s unlikely there will be much, if any, rain. Some minimal precipitation could be possible in Ventura and Santa Barbara county mountains.
The low pressure system and marine layer will start to shrink on Saturday, allowing heat-generating high pressure to move back into the region.
Topline:
Friday is the deadline set by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass for the removal of all rotting food from the Lineage Logistics cold storage facility in Boyle Heights. Bass reiterated on Thursday that all of the approximately 88 million pounds of food that had been stored inside when the facility caught fire in June is expected to be removed by Friday. But Los Angeles Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents District 14 where Lineage is located, said Thursday afternoon that the cleanup efforts will likely not meet the deadline.
Lineage appears not on pace to meet deadline: Lineage is clearing between 1% and 1.5% of food each day, according to their progress reports. This roughly aligns with the weekly goal AQMD ordered Lineage to maintain, 10% or 8.8 million pounds of food removed each week. At that pace, it is unlikely they’ll be able to remove the remaining 7% of food waste in the next 24 hours.
What happens if the deadline is not met? Bass’ executive order does not provide details on what will happen if Lineage does not meet the Friday deadline for clean up.
The deadline set by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass for the removal of all rotting food from the Lineage Logistics cold storage facility in Boyle Heights is fast approaching.
Bass reiterated on Thursday to The LA Local that all of the approximately 88 million pounds of food that had been stored inside when the facility caught fire in June is expected to be removed by Friday.
City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents District 14 where Lineage is located, said in a press release Thursday afternoon that the cleanup efforts will likely not meet the deadline.
“I fully support the Mayor leveraging all the enforcement, cost-recovery, and accountability tools available to make clear that when the City establishes a public-health deadline, corporations are expected to meet it — and there are consequences when they do not,” Jurado said in the statement.
The company’s reports on the cleanup progress, similarly, have not appeared to be on pace with meeting that deadline. And some residents believe the putrid air they’ve had to live with for months will linger indefinitely despite the bureaucratic goal posts being met or moved.
Here’s what we know about the final phase of cleanup.
Soon after a fire broke out on the roof of the 500,000-square-foot cold storage facility on Los Palos Street on June 17, the managers cut the power to the two massive refrigerated rooms in the building. While firefighters took about a week to contain the blaze, the millions of pounds of food inside quickly began to rot in the summer’s heat.
Bass on June 29 issued an executive order requiring the removal of all remaining food in 45 days, or Friday, Aug. 14. Food cleanup began in early July.
Meanwhile, residents of Boyle Heights, East L.A. and several other neighboring communities who were left to deal with the putrid odors, have made more than 4,000 air quality complaints to regulators since early July.
It’s not the only deadline Lineage Logistics faces.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates air pollution in the region, issued 19 notices of violation alleging the odors created a public nuisance. Last week, the agency ordered the company to meet dozens of cleanup and air quality control standards, including enforceable requirements for food removal and full facility cleaning.
That agency set a separate deadline of weeks for the food and other material to be removed before the remaining freezer room is fully sanitized.
The freezer that was extensively damaged by fire has been cleared. The remaining freezer held the vast majority of the rotting food that has been polluting the air in nearby neighborhoods.
Lineage Logistics has for weeks reported on its website about its progress toward 100% cleanup.
Residents can get a sense of their pace for cleanup by tracking their reports:
It’s unclear how exactly Lineage is arriving at these measurements and how the city or some other agency is independently verifying this progress.
Lineage is clearing between 1% and 1.5% of food each day, according to their progress reports. This roughly aligns with the weekly goal AQMD ordered Lineage to maintain, 10% or 8.8 million pounds of food removed each week.
At that pace, it is unlikely they’ll be able to remove the remaining 7% of food waste in the next 24 hours.
Unless they significantly accelerate, this puts full food cleanup somewhere into next week. That revised timeline better aligns with the one Dominic DiCarlo, vice president of global safety and compliance for Lineage, outlined during the AQMD hearing last week.
DiCarlo added that the company expects to spend between $80 and $100 million on the cleanup and related expenses, which has been described as continuing around the clock.
Lineage did not respond to The LA Local’s request for more information about their progress toward the mayor’s deadline on Thursday.
Jurado reported Thursday that Lineage would not meet the deadline, and expressed frustration with what residents have had to deal with.
Jurado’s statement reflected this: “For nearly two months, families in Boyle Heights have lived with unbearable odors, flies and pests, truck traffic, uncertainty, and disruption to their homes, businesses, and daily lives. They were told there was a deadline, and they had every right to expect that deadline to mean something.”
Bass’ executive order does not provide details on what will happen if Lineage does not meet the Friday deadline for clean up. Her office told The LA Local that it will provide more information on Thursday about the consequences if the deadline is not met.
She is also hosting a virtual community meeting Thursday about the cleanup efforts.
Bass was among several local elected officials who had pushed AQMD to levy fines on Lineage for its air pollution violations, which it did not do. She has pushed city agencies to prevent Lineage from reconstructing the facility and continuing its business there. Local lawmakers have also introduced legislation that could increasingly regulate similar businesses in the future.
AQMD can levy penalties if Lineage does not meet its deadlines for cleanup in the coming weeks.
Residents on Prado Street were still hopeful Thursday that cleanup would be finished by the deadline.
“Ojalá,” that’s what Irma Soto said when she was asked if she believed workers would finish in time. “I hope they finish so this could all end.”
“It smells horrible,” she added as the stench emanated from the neighborhood early Thursday afternoon.
Soto said she’s been seeing more trailers picking up debris lately. Her neighbor said there appears to be more nighttime work near the facility recently.
“Who knows if they’ll finish, but they are working faster,” the neighbor said.
The post Lineage unlikely to meet deadline to clear 88 million pounds of rotting food from Boyle Heights appeared first on LA Local.
Topline:
Bolsa Chica and Huntington State Beaches reported more than 3,100 incidents of sting ray lashings so far this year, twice the number for all of 2025. The city of Huntington Beach’s 3.5-mile (5.6-kilometer) stretch of shoreline has reported more than 2,000 such incidents so far this year, more than during all last year.
Warmer waters draw stingrays: Round stingrays are found in Pacific Ocean waters from Panama to Southern California and are known to veer toward the shore when the swell is down and the water warm. In recent years, many species that feed on rays, such as sharks, sea lions and giant sea bass, have seen their populations dwindle, allowing the number of stingrays to grow, said Chris Lowe, a professor of marine biology and director of the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach.
Climate change: The ocean already has been warming because of human-caused climate change, according to meteorologists. This year has seen even more rays with a marine heat wave persisting off parts of the West Coast, marking the third time on record that such a large section of coastal waters stayed warm for so long, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Jake Hemann grabbed a board and headed out to surf. But an hour later, he wound up sitting at the lifeguard station soaking his foot in a pail of hot water alongside four other beachgoers.
It is a common scene at Bolsa Chica State Beach and some other popular beaches in Southern California where the number of people being hit by the sharp, serrated caudal barbs found on the tails of stingrays has gone up significantly from a year ago as a marine heat wave draws more stingrays — and people — to shore.
Hemann, a 31-year-old tourist from New Mexico, said he was learning to surf when he hopped off his board and landed on what he thought was a sharp stick. “It hurt pretty bad,” he said, while sinking his throbbing foot into the hottest water tolerable to ease the pain. “It was radiating up to my ankle.”
Bolsa Chica and Huntington State Beaches reported more than 3,100 incidents so far this year, twice the number for all of 2025. The city of Huntington Beach’s 3.5-mile (5.6-kilometer) stretch of shoreline has reported more than 2,000 such incidents so far this year, more than during all last year, while more than 900 stings were recorded on San Diego’s beaches during the first half of 2026, more than during the first six months of any of the past five years, lifeguard data shows.
“We’re definitely seeing an increase,” said Bryan R. Etnyre, state park superintendent in northern Orange County. “A lot of it is due to warming ocean temperatures that are consistently staying in the 60s. I don’t think there was a week all winter where we dropped below 60 this year.”
Round stingrays are found in Pacific Ocean waters from Panama to Southern California and are known to veer toward the shore when the swell is down and the water warm.
In recent years, many species that feed on rays, such as sharks, sea lions and giant sea bass, have seen their populations dwindle, causing the number of stingrays to grow, said Chris Lowe, a professor of marine biology and director of the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach.
Rays are known to prefer warmer water, such as lagoons. Females prefer these waters to reproduce, and during the summer male rays have a higher metabolism that drives them to seek out food in the invertebrates along the shore, Lowe said.
“They’re really a subtropical species that is thriving at the end of its range because of climate change,” Lowe said.
The ocean already has been warming because of human-caused climate change, according to meteorologists.
This year has seen even more rays with a marine heat wave persisting off parts of the West Coast, marking the third time on record that such a large section of coastal waters stayed warm for so long, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In June, officials confirmed the formation of an El Niño, the natural warming of parts of the central Pacific that alters weather worldwide, that is expected to grow to historic strength.
Meanwhile, more people have been heading to beaches seeking outdoor recreation since the coronavirus pandemic. And when the water is warm, they are more likely to swim.
When rays are stepped on, they instinctively flick up their tails, stinging people with venomous barbs. Lifeguards urge bathers to shuffle their feet as they enter the water as the movement often gets rays to slide out of the way without stinging.
In Southern California, lifeguards can treat 10,000 stingray injuries a year, Lowe said.
In Seal Beach, one area draws so many due to an influx of warm water from a nearby power plant it is known as “ray bay,” though lifeguards there haven’t seen much change in stings this year.
Using a 75-foot-long net, researchers swept up some 200 stingrays, each about the size of a dinner plate, on a section of the beach on a recent morning.
“There can be so many that they actually carpet the bottom, like you can’t see sand,” Lowe said. “During El Niños, we get more of them up from the south, and they come closer to shore. So this year, we’re expecting record numbers.”
Lowe said he is working with television stations to develop a stingray advisory to help reduce the number of people who get stung, and the number of rays that get squished. Rays help keep the beach healthy by feeding on small clams and aerating sediment.
Many beaches use an app to notify bathers when there are multiple stings at a location. Meanwhile, a company has developed surf booties that claim to be barb-resistant — though swimmers are urged to still tread lightly to avoid trampling the rays.
At Bolsa Chica State Beach, swimmers suffering stings to the sides of their feet and toes sat in a circle refilling their pails with hot water from a hose. Some were there more than an hour waiting for the pain to ease.
Most stings don’t require additional medical attention. If redness and swelling continue more than four or five days, there could be a medical complication such as an infection or a retained barb that can be seen on an X-ray, said Dr. Christanne Coffey, who researches the stings at University of California, San Diego Health.
Allen Lowry said he was playing with his 7-year-old grandson when he came down on something squishy. He lifted his foot and saw blood so his wife drove him to the lifeguard station for a hot water soak, which is the remedy for stings.
Lowry, 69, said he swims three times a week at another beach, and getting stung, though painful, won’t change that. He said some people in his swim group have been stung multiple times.
“Usually, once the pain you feel goes away, you feel fine the next day,” he said.
Topline:
California‘s prison system has systematically failed to protect incarcerated women from sexual abuse and harassment by guards, the U.S. Department of Justice said today.
About the findings: The federal investigation also found that California’s corrections department failed to provide victims with a safe way to report sexual abuse and harassment without retaliation. On top of that, staff who were tasked with investigating the misconduct were often themselves accused of sexual abuse or harassment.
What's next: The federal government on Thursday gave California's prison system 49 days to remediate the conditions that enabled the rampant abuse, warning that a failure to do so could result in civil litigation.
California's prison system has systematically failed to protect incarcerated women from sexual abuse and harassment by guards, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.
The federal investigation also found that California’s corrections department failed to provide victims with a safe way to report sexual abuse and harassment without retaliation. On top of that, staff who were tasked with investigating the misconduct were often themselves accused of sexual abuse or harassment.
The investigation, which began during the Biden administration, focused on two state prisons: the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino. It uncovered numerous instances where guards regularly sexually abused incarcerated women. In at least one instance, a guard was convicted of rampant abuse over roughly a decade and sentenced to 224 years in prison.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Women were told to report misconduct on an online system that wasn’t confidential and that the accused officers had access to, according to Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Dhillon said that women are “fully aware of this gap in confidentiality, and this serves as a deterrent from women reporting this misconduct.” She named at least one sergeant whose job it was to investigate misconduct who was himself sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to receiving child sexual abuse images on the job.
“The upshot of our investigation is that California’s prison system, when it comes to women, has inadequate systems in place to deter, detect, and hold accountable rampant sexual misconduct and assault on female prisoners,” Dhillon said at a news conference held in Los Angeles on Thursday.
The Associated Press in previous years exposed similar patterns of rampant abuse by federal prison staff against women held in Dublin, California, a facility that at the time was nicknamed the “rape club.” The prison was closed following the AP investigation.
The federal government on Thursday gave California's prison system 49 days to remediate the conditions that enabled the rampant abuse, warning that a failure to do so could result in civil litigation.
The measures include expanded camera coverage, enhanced confidential reporting channels and strengthened investigative protocol.U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, who was appointed by President Donald Trump as the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said California has to take action.“The State must confront the persistent failure of its own employees to prevent and address sexual abuse at these facilities,” Essayli wrote in a statement, “and the systemic breakdowns that have permitted these conditions to persist.”
An incarcerated person, or someone acting on their behalf, has several options to report alleged abuse while in custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR):
