SoCal's Metropolitan Water District may pay upfront for a second water tunnel, Dodgers come together to help Puerto Rico, LA's forgotten environmentalist.
Dodgers step up to the plate for new homes in Puerto Rico
Baseball season opens tonight, with the LA Dodgers taking on used-to-be-archrival San Francisco Giants.
The Dodgers closed out spring training with a win in the "Freeway Series" against the Angels -- which ended a bit early after a sewage leak seeped onto the field.
If you rewind six months ago, back when the Dodgers were barreling their way toward the playoffs, player Kike Hernandez will tell you that his heart and mind were 3,000 miles away.
His home of Puerto Rico was being pummeled by successive hurricanes - Irma, then Maria. Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed.
Today, many in Puerto Rico are still without permanent shelter, electricity or steady access to clean water.
Hernandez and his fiancee, Mariana Vicente, have been doing some work off the field, raising money to build homes in Puerto Rico with Habitat for Humanity.
The Dodgers stepped up to the plate, as well -- with a $2 million donation to Hernandez's efforts.
Mark Walter and the Los Angeles Dodgers pledge to help rebuild Puerto Rico with $2 million donation.
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) March 27, 2018
🔗: https://t.co/knRP2TghA3 pic.twitter.com/xEQpyYH7Z3
Returning to Puerto Rico
It only took me a drive from the airport to the house where I grew up to just be completely heartbroken. To go back home two months after the storm hit and to see the condition that the island was still in was really hard for me. You see all the pictures, you see all the videos, you hear everything that's going on, and you talk to your families and they tell you everything. But it's not until you actually go there and see and get to know what the situation is like. And the amount of trash, the island not being as green as it used to be– it was just hard.
Baseball a refuge from the storm
I feel like baseball is a blessing for me. Out of the 24 hours of the day, those were three or four hours that my mind wasn't back home. As soon as the game was over or right before the game started, it was just hard to see everything that was going on. It was a very helpless feeling being here and not being able to do anything so, for us to be able to come up with this whole project and be able to give something back, it means the world to me. I know how helpless I felt when it hit and I couldn't do anything about it because my obligation was to be here, and there was nothing I could do.
We're at a loss of words from what is happening to our home in #PuertoRico Please help support, every bit counts. 🙏🏼https://t.co/nUopnfmIL8
— Enrique Hernández (@kikehndez) September 22, 2017
Working with Habitat for Humanity
To have the satisfaction of putting $2.2 million into building thousands of home is that much bigger to me. To put a roof over families that need it so badly... I think was really important.
Thirsty California: Is the cost of twin delta tunnels worth the payoff in SoCal?
It's no secret water is scarce in Southern California.
The state wants to build twin tunnels, acting as a long "straw" to bring water from Northern California to Central Valley farmers and Angelenos.
The problem is how to pay for it -- if both tunnels are built, Southern California's water district is on the hook for a total of $11 billion. So the Metropolitan Water District is debating whether to sign on for one tunnel or two.
Going all in could mean an extra $60 a year tacked onto your water bill.
Jeffrey Kightlinger is general manager of SoCal’s Metropolitan Water District, and he discussed why wants the district to pony up for the higher upfront cost.
Two tunnels, or one
These tunnels supply water to 25 million Southern Californians and over 3 million acres of farmland. To take care of both those needs, you need both tunnels. The Central Valley is a critical food supply source, for the nation and the world.
Central Valley contribution
For the urban water user, it's an increase of about $2.50 a month. No one likes rate increases, I get that, but $2.50 a month is not going to shatter anyone's budget. But in the farming community there's a smaller group of farmers spreading the cost. Then the costs jump up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it's difficult to fund [the initial cost of] construction. They don't mind paying for it once the water starts being delivered, because then they have a product to sell.
SoCal pays upfront costs
What if we fund it during construction, and then the farmers repay us upon completion? So we would be the financial mechanism to get it built, but then we would be made whole at the end of the construction period.
Protecting against drought
We used to get a big heavy snowpack that would melt slowly, and we could rely on it through the whole summer as the snowpack melted. Now we're getting rain instead of snow. All the water is coming in a matter of days, maybe weeks, not months. We have to get that water into reservoirs, so we can survive a long, hot summer.
Aurora Castillo was a feisty advocate for East LA
As women's history month comes to a close this week, we wanted to profile some women who have made their mark on L.A.'s history, like the late Aurora Castillo.
Castillo was the first person from L.A. to win the Goldman Environmental Prize, known as the Nobel Prize for environmental activism. Castillo was given the award for her leadership in the The Mothers of East L.A. (MELA), a community activist group.
When she received the award, Castillo spoke to the Goldman Environmental Prize about her devotion to her East L.A home.
The Mothers of East Los Angeles will fight like lionesses for the safety, security and welfare of their children. We send out a message that they cannot come into East Los Angeles and pollute our community and endanger the security, safety and health of our children.
Castillo was proof that age doesn't stop someone with a mission. She was in her seventies when MELA was formed to fight the construction of a prison in East L.A.
Frank Villalobos collaborated with MELA to stop the prison plan. He remembers the protest march where the group got its name.
Channel 9 shows up and Channel 9 was floored with that image of them [the protesters] coming with the Virgin of Guadalupe in the the front and the mariachis playing in the front. They were just blown away and said, 'Who are those women?' And so out of the clear blue sky we said, 'Well, these are the Mothers of East L.A.'
Castillo was a key leader for MELA, often speaking to press and acting as a coordinator to ensure presence at protests and events.
She [Castillo] would sit there and call, say, we have a meeting, we have a march, we have a press conference, we have whatever. She would make sure that there would be a population there. The segment she was always after was mothers, women. She didn't mind men but she wanted always the women in the front.
Villalobos said Castillo was feisty and unafraid of an argument, and she also was a devout Catholic and well-respected throughout the community.
After stopping construction of the prison, Castillo and MELA battled against a toxic waste incinerator and a hazardous waste treatment plant being built in the area. After Castillo's death, MELA continued to fight for the East L.A. community.
For her years of dedication to preserving the environment for her East L.A. neighbors and their children, Castillo was nominated for the Goldman Environmental Prize by Villalobos and MELA members. She won the award in 1995 and passed away three years later at age 84.
Harley takes new approach to jump-start flagging sales
The motorcycle industry is in a slump. Between the Great Recession and right now bike sales have fallen by half.
But the industry's biggest, and longest-lasting player --Harley-Davidson -- has an ambitious plan to turn things around by partnering with So Cal's EagleRider.
Duncan Wilkinson loves motorcycles.
"I love the engine," says the 54-year-old Brit, who was in Marina del Rey picking up a bike he recently bought at Bartels' Harley-Davidson. "Jumping on a Harley, I love the torque.
The problem is there aren't as many people like Wilkinson as there used to be. You know, guys -- and gals -- who like to kick it in gear and twist the grip. Sales of new motorcycles today have stalled at half of their 2006 peak.
That's a problem for companies like Harley-Davidson, which makes about half of all motorcycles sold in the US.
"Our strategic objective is to grow 2 million new Harley-Davidson riders in the US over the next ten years," says Steve St. Thomas, Harley-Davidson's manager of U.S. market development.
Harley has a road map for getting those new riders. This year, it won't be just about selling motorcycles but renting them and offering tours through a new partnership with EagleRider, based in Hawthorne.
"A well-run and nationwide rental program can create a bridge to ownership," St. Thomas says.
And there's just one way to do that.
"Get butts on bikes," says EagleRider co-founder and CEO, Chris McIntyre.
EagleRider hopes to get a lot more backsides into the saddle this year by planting rental locations inside Harley-Davidson dealerships. The company is already well established. It opened its doors in 1994 and now operates 55 independent locations throughout the country.
It rents bikes from more than 20 different motorcycle makers - from BMW to Honda to Triumph, but, he says, "Still to this day, I would say 80-plus percent of the demand is Harley-Davidson.
So the two outfits are joining forces.
This year, EagleRider locations will triple with a presence in 100 Harley shops
"we integrate our stores into Harley-Davidson dealerships, very similar to you walk into a Chevy dealership and see an Enterprise location," McIntyre says. "The beauty for us is it's more dots on a map."
Five of those dots will be in SoCal. So you can rent Harleys from their dealerships in Lancaster and Santa Clarita just north of L.A., south of the city in San Marcos and San Diego, and at Bartels' Harley-Davidson in Marina del Rey.
You can check that one out now by walking up to the second floor.
"We're not quite finished with the full decoration," Glenn Bartels says, as he walks through a space filled with helmets and jackets but little in the way of decor. "We have to do the wall back here still."
Since January, when his family's dealership first started renting bikes through EagleRider, business has at least doubled or tripled, Bartels says.
Being able to rent brand-new, high-interest bikes is one of the big advantages of the new partnership, Bartels says.
At Noon on a Tuesday, he had already rented four that day. All of them were the new 2018 Fat Boy with its oversize wheels and throbbing 107 cubic inch engine.
This business model is actually a re-do for Harley-Davidson. A recent attempt didn't really take off. One drawback is that it wasn't possible to rent a bike at one dealership and return it to another.
But with dozens of Harley dealers criss-crossing the country renting bikes through EagleRider, now you can.
"Take a boomer," says Harley's St. Thomas. "If they wanted to go on a touring rally, they had to have a lot of free time.
Meaning, they needed to either ride or ship their bike to wherever the rally was happening, then ride or ship the bike back.
"Now through our partnership with EagleRider, you can fly out, rent a bike, do the touring rally and fly home."
That scenario is one way Harley hopes to keep baby boomers in the sport longer, because boomers have long been the bread and butter of motorcycling, but they're beginning to age out. And millennials aren't replacing them.
"The typical assessment of the millenials is that they don't want to own something," St. Thomas says. "They want the experience."
Thus renting, which Harley hopes will lead to the rebirth of a flagging industry and be a gateway to motorcycle ownership.
just like it was for customer Duncan Wilkinson, who was picking up his bike at the Bartels' dealership earlier.
"When I used to live here years ago, I rented on a regular basis actually," Wilkinson says. "Just rent a Road King and go up to Ojai, but this time round I thought it's almost as cheap to buy so I bought."
Whether two million or more people will join him, that's the kind of revolution that Harley wants to hear.