The Brief

At a single-family home in the L.A. suburb of Canoga Park, installers are parading in and out of Jake Olson and Amy Ball’s house, tossing anything that uses water, and installing brand new fixtures.

Olson applied to be part of a pilot project after seeing an ad in a utility newsletter. His is one of 30 homes in Los Angeles chosen for the project. Half stay the same. The other half get free, brand new water-efficient appliances, faucets, showerheads and toilets, plus detergents and cleaning supplies optimized for low water use. In exchange, Olson has released full access to his household’s water usage data.

“I was in an apartment for 17 years and didn’t have a water bill. They paid the water and then we got this house and we were watering grass and water bills would come and I was like, ‘Wow, how is this reality? What is this life? I do not want this,'” he said.

The people looking at his data are part of an international coalition of companies, water agencies and nonprofits called 50L Home. And they have a bold claim: It’s possible to reduce water consumption to just 13 gallons per day — or 50 liters — and not feel like you’re sacrificing anything.

“We’re doing behavioral analysis, we’re looking at every end use. We’re in their homes kind of on a regular basis,” said project manager Maureen Erbeznik with the United States Green Building Council California.

The World Health Organization says each person needs a minimum of 13 gallons of water a day to meet basic needs such as drinking, bathing, washing dishes and cleaning clothes. But the average American uses more than 80 gallons of water per day. In many parts of the country, that’s simply unsustainable.

Since this project is all about seeing how little water a typical family can use while behaving typically, Ball and Olson were under strict orders not to try harder to save water. They were already trying pretty hard. They replaced their lawn with drought tolerant plants, they try to only run the dishwasher when it’s full. Although, Ball admits she tends to “luxuriate” in the shower.

“I like to turn up the heat really hot and just be in there,” she said. Olson said that with a toddler in the house, some of the only alone time they get is while showering.

One year later, the homes in the study used half as much water as the average home in Los Angeles. Olson did notice some differences in the appliances. But he said none of them were bad.

“The showerhead itself is actually two inches larger than the one that we had before. And honestly, that’s one of my favorite things that got swapped out. The water pressure is the same, if not better,” Olson said.

But that reduction still wasn’t enough to hit that 13-gallon mark. After a year, they were using about 23 gallons per person.

“Our name is definitely aspirational. There’s a lot more savings to be had. We are just getting started,” said Gregory Holliday, director of 50L Home. “We didn’t tell anybody about how to use these products. We didn’t encourage them to try to save water.”

Holliday said this study isn’t over yet. In phase two, it will introduce recycling water to get that usage number down even more.

Topline:

The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.

The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.

What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."

What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."

Every year in Santa Ana, Luis Cantabrana turns the front of his home into an elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe that draws hundreds of visitors.

Along the front of the house, the multi-colored altar is filled with lights, flowers and a stained-glass tapestry behind a sculpture of the Lady of Guadalupe. Cantabrana’s roof also is lit up with the green, white and red lights that spell out “Virgen de Guadalupe” and a cross.

Visitors are welcomed with music and the smell of roses as they celebrate the saint, but this year’s gathering comes after a dark year for immigrant communities.

Luis Cantabrana stands in front of the stunning altar he built in front of his home in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Every year, his display draws hundreds of visitors.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Why do they celebrate? 

In 1513, the Virgin Mary appeared before St. Juan Diego between Dec. 9 and Dec. 12, asking him to build a church in her honor. Her image — a brown-skinned woman wearing a green veil with her hands together in prayer and an angel at her feet — miraculously appeared on his cloak.

To celebrate in Santa Ana, worshippers gathered late-night Wednesday and in the very early hours Dec. 12 to pray the rosary, sing hymns and celebrate the saint.

Cantabrana has hosted worshippers at his home for 27 years — 17 in Santa Ana.

The altar started out small, he said, and over the years, he added a fabric background, more lights and flowers (lots and lots of flowers).

“It started with me making a promise to la Virgen de Guadalupe that while I had life and a home to build an altar, that I would do it,” Cantabrana said. “Everything you see in photos and videos is pretty, but when you come and see it live, it's more than pretty. It's beautiful.”

The Santa Ana home's elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe draws hundreds of visitors each year.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Gathering in a time of turmoil 

Many also look to the Lady of Guadalupe for protection, especially at a time when federal enforcement has rattled immigrant communities.

“People don’t want to go to work, they don’t want to take their kids to school, but the love we have for our Virgen de Guadalupe,” Cantabrana said. “We see that la Virgen de Guadalupe has a lot of power, and so we know immigration [enforcement] won’t come here.”

Margarita Lopez of Garden Grove has been visiting the altar for three years with her husband. She’s been celebrating the Virgencita since she was a young girl. Honoring the saint is as important now as ever, she said.

“We ask, and she performs miracles,” Lopez said.

Claudia Tapia, a lifelong Santa Ana resident, said the Virgin Mary represents strength.

“Right now, with everything going on, a lot of our families [have] turned and prayed to the Virgen for strength during these times,” Tapia said. “She's a very strong symbol of Mexican culture, of unity, of faith and of resilience.”

See it for yourself

The shrine will stay up into the new year on the corner of Broadway and Camile Street.

California’s unemployment agency kept paying cellphone bills for 4 1/2 years without checking whether its workers actually were using the devices.

That’s how it racked up $4.6 million in fees for mobile devices its workers were not using, according to a new state audit detailing wasteful spending at several government agencies.

The Employment Development Department’s excessive cellphone bills date to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it shifted call center employees to remote work and faced pressure to release benefits to millions of suddenly unemployed Californians.

It acquired 7,224 cellphones and wireless hotspots by December 2020. State auditors analyzed 54 months of invoices since then and found half the devices were unused for at least two years, 25% were unused for three years and 99 of them were never used at all.

The investigation, which auditors opened after receiving a tip, identified 6,285 devices that were unused for at least four consecutive months, and said the department spent $4.6 million on monthly service fees for them.

From the beginning, the department had about 2,000 more cellphones than call center employees, according to the audit. The gap widened over time after the pandemic ended and the department’s staffing returned to its normal headcount.

As of April, the audit said the department had 1,787 unemployment call center employees, but was paying monthly service fees for 5,097 mobile devices.

“Although obtaining the mobile devices during COVID-19 may have been a good idea to serve the public, continuing to pay the monthly service fees for so many unused devices, especially post-COVID-19, was wasteful,” the audit said.

Department officials told auditors they were unaware of the spending, but auditors pointed to regular invoices from Verizon that showed which phones were not being used.

“We would have expected EDD management to have reconsidered the need to pay the monthly service fees for so many devices that had no voice, message, or data usage,” the audit said.

The unemployment department began acting on the auditors’ findings in April, when it canceled service plans for 2,825 devices. It has since implemented a policy to terminate service plans for devices that go unused for 90 days.

The California state auditor highlighted the mobile devices in its regular report on “improper activities by state agencies and employees.” The audit also showed that the California Air Resources Board overpaid an employee who was on extended leave as he prepared to retire by $171,000.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.