Permanent drought measures against certain forms of water waste, President Obama will visit Hiroshima, gene-editing mosquitoes to combat the spread of disease.
It's very clear, drought regs are here to stay
Drought regulations in California are here to stay, thanks to an executive order by Governor Jerry Brown.
While the state has done a good job of conserving water, 90 percent of California is still in a drought. For more on Governor Brown's plan, Take Two spoke to Mark Cowin, director of the California Department of Water Resources.
Press the blue play button above to hear the interview.
Torrance refinery restarts, and some residents worry
ExxonMobil’s refinery in Torrance, which had been closed for over a year after an explosion that rained dust and polluted air over the surrounding area, restarted production early Tuesday morning without incident, according to company and government officials.
As part of the restart process that began at about 7 p.m. Monday, the South Coast Air Quality Management District allowed ExxonMobil a six-hour window to shut down a pollution-control system the company said it needed as a safety precaution.
As it turned out, the pollution-control system was shut down for only 2-1/2 hours, from 9 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., said South Coast AQMD spokesman Sam Atwood.
“At about 11:30 p.m. last night this pollution control device was turned back on and it will continue to operate as long as the refinery is operating,” Atwood said.
During the restart the AQMD had air pollution scientists watching air-quality monitors inside the refinery property and in the nearby neighborhoods, as well as in two vehicles driving throughout the surrounding area, Atwood said.
“During the shutdown we really didn’t come close to exceeding any health-based thresholds set by both the state and federal governments for fine particulate pollution,” Atwood said.
An AQMD hearing board in April set the requirements for the restart and said it would require ExxonMobil to pay about $5 million in penalties for air pollution violations resulting from the February 2015 blast.
ExxonMobil spokeswoman Gesuina Paras said in a statement issued Tuesday morning that the restart had been completed in compliance with the AQMD’s order.
“We can confirm the Torrance refinery completed the six-hour period per the terms of the South Coast Air Quality Management District Hearing Board Order for Abatement,'' Paras said. “We evaluate each phase of the restart sequence and continue to work with the South Coast Air Quality Management District on the stringent conditions outlined in the Order for Abatement.”
Atwood said AQMD officials will continue to monitor air quality around the refinery for at least another day, but the facility was otherwise returning to normal operations and the AQMD would return to its regular weekly inspections of the refinery's emissions.
“The other next step is to closely evaluate whether ExxonMobil was in full compliance with the order for abatement [of pollution during the restart],” Atwood said. “We didn’t observe any violations but we will make sure they were in compliance.”
Steve Goldsmith, a Torrance resident who lives near the refinery and who is a member of the Torrance Refinery Action Alliance, told KPCC's Take Two show that he and his wife did not trust the air quality during the restart and so they spent the night with a relative in Santa Monica.
Goldsmith said he and other neighbors continue to be concerned with the safety of the refinery, which he claimed is continuing to use a refining process involving hydrofluoric acid that is more dangerous than possible alternative methods.
"That ... refinery... they made some small changes in the structure—put in some automatic shut-offs and things like that—but basically they're using the same method, and they have kept the hydrofluoric acid in the process when they could have done a complete rebuild," Goldsmith said.
In response to such concerns, Atwood said, the AQMD has agreed to commission a study with a firm that has expertise in oil refineries to determine the safety of the ExxonMobil operations. Atwood said the study may be completed by the end of this year and at that time the AQMD will decide if further regulations are required for the refinery to ensure the safety of the surrounding area.
The refinery was sold to New Jersey-based oil refining company PBF Energy in September. The $527.5 million deal is expected to close soon. The 750-acre refinery has had a capacity of 155,000 barrels per day, but PBF has said it plans to increase capacity to about 900,000 barrels per
day.
Federal authorities blamed a breakdown in safety procedures for causing the 2015 explosion. State regulators likewise issued 19 citations against ExxonMobil and penalties totaling $566,600.
Mexican cartel boss El Chapo could be extradited to US
A federal judge in Mexico has paved the way for drug boss Joaquin El Chapo Guzmán to be extradited to the US. Guzmán faces charges related to his role as leader of the deadly Sinaloa Cartel.
He's escaped from authorities multiple times in the past and was captured earlier this year after a massive manhunt. The Mexican foreign ministry now must approve the move.
For more, we're joined by Octavio Rodriguez, program coordinator with the Justice In Mexico program at the University of San Diego.
The bill aiming to make schools more earthquake ready
Are you ready for the Big One?
Thomas Jordan of the Southern California Earthquake Center just recently said the San Andreas fault is "locked, loaded and ready to roll."
Now, one lawmaker is trying to make sure that schools, at least are quake ready. After a magnitude 6 shaker caused district-wide damage in Napa Valley in 2014.
Assemblyman Bill Dodd is behind the bill which will aim to require California classrooms to secure bookshelves and other heavy objects in case of an earthquake. He joined the show to discuss more.
To hear the full interview, click the blue play button above.
Online parenting groups: How do they differ for moms and dads?
Recently we took a look at the good, the bad and the ugly of online parenting groups.
The conversation focused mostly on online mom groups, so we wondered: what kinds of online dad groups are out there? And do dads get into the same level of drama online as moms sometimes do?
A response came back rather quickly, in the form of a tweet from @thedaddycomplex:
There are lots of online dad groups. And they, too, are full of drama. But we also talk about beer.
— The Daddy Complex (@thedaddycomplex)
@kpccalex There are lots of online dad groups. And they, too, are full of drama. But we also talk about beer.
— David Vienna (@davidvienna) April 26, 2016
So we sat down with the man behind the tweet, L.A. based father David Vienna. He blogs at The Daddy Complex and is author of the book "Calm the F*ck Down: The Only Parenting Technique You'll Ever Need."
To hear the full interview, click the blue player above.
New music from Adia Victoria, Jack DeJohnette and Leyla McCalla
If you love music, but don't have the time to keep up with what's new, you should listen to Tuesday Reviewsday. Every week our critics join our hosts in the studio to talk about what you should be listening to, in one short segment. This week, music journalist
Artist: Adia Victoria
Album: "Beyond the Bloodhounds"
Songs:"Dead Eyes," "Stuck in the South"
There weren’t many people in the concert room of the Troubadour one evening last year, most milling outside or arriving later for the headliner Hurray for the Riff Raff. But those in the room for the opening set all certainly had a question in mind: Who was that lanky, statuesque woman on stage at the Troubadour last year with the big voice, unbridled spirit and commanding presence, not to mention distinctive name?
Well, that was Adia Victoria, and when I talked with her at the merch table between sets, I found out she was from Nashville, and had but one EP of her music to sell there. So that brought another question: When would there be a full album? Working on it, she said.
Now, a bit more than a year later, here it is. And "Beyond the Bloodhounds" goes well beyond the high expectations that performance spurred. One lingering impression of her on stage was one of pure force, an artist who throws herself, particularly her voice, fully into the song — whether emoting fragilely or raging full-on. Getting that on a recording is tricky at best, but she and co-producer Roger Moutenot (who’s worked with Sleater-Kinney and Yo La Tengo, among others) made it work, whether on the momentum-building yearning "Out of Love" or the sultry-blues "Howlin’ Shame" or near-punk "Dead Eyes." "Horrible Weather" even evokes the electro-torch of Portishead.
This is dark, probing stuff, as the song titles indicate ("And Then You Die" is another). But it’s vibrant and vivid, threaded with a sense of her fighting personal and cultural bonds — she was raised in a strict Seventh Day Adventist family and the album title comes from Harriet Jacobs’ autobiographical 1861 novel "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." Comparisons are tough here. She cites early blues-jazz star Victoria Spivey, and there are hints of a southern Patti Smith here (the spoken climax of "Invisible Hand"), a folky Nina Simone. But those are fleeting images, giving way to an artist taking her own path. If one song even comes close to capturing the whole, it’s the dense, banjo-accented, swamp-Gothic climax of "Stuck in the South." Victoria Spivey by way of Flannery O’Connor? Or just Adia Victoria.
Artists: Jack DeJohnette/Ravi Coltrane/Matthew Garrison
Album: "In Movement"
Songs: "Two Jimmys," "In Movement"
In a performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival a couple of weeks ago, drummer Jack DeJohnette showed such vitality and vision in his set with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane and bassist-electronicist Matthew Garrison that it was hard to believe that not only had he first teamed with them back in 1992, but he had played with the other two’s iconic dads — John Coltrane and Jimmy Garrison — more than half a century ago.
It also showed that at 73, DeJohnette, a core member of Miles Davis’ still-startling "Bitches Brew" band, is no mere link to the past, but a continuing creative presence who is always looking forward. That is captured in full on "In Movement," the trio’s new album, surprisingly the first they’ve done together. Though there was a 20 year gap between their ’92 teaming and their next, more formal collaboration, with a series of concerts leading up to this recording.
Connection to the past are not put aside — two of the highlights are interpretive versions of Coltrane senior’s "Alabama," which opens the album, and Davis’ "Blue in Green," one of the pieces that sees DeJohnette moving to piano. The history, and genetics, are central. But both of the younger musicians has developed styles distinct from their fathers, while DeJohnette’s aesthetics are the result of evolution through his own many projects and with Keith Jarrett’s"standards" trio through the years.
Here, senses of space and atmospherics are key, Garrison’s subtle use of electronics and effects providing as much a signature to the trio sound as DeJohnette’s tuneful touch and Coltrane’s bright runs, at once wild and controlled. The interplay through a variety of tones and tempos, from the floating title piece to the stutter-funk pulse of "Two Jimmys," is seamless, the three clearly mutually inspired. So here, more than 20 years after they first played together and more than 50 years since DeJohnette played with their dads, this trio feels like something new beginning, with wonderful possibilities in front of them.
Artist: Leyla McCalla
Album: "A Day For the Hunter, A Day For the Prey"
Songs: "Les Plats Sont Tous Mis Sur La Table," "A Day For the Hunter, A Day For the Prey"
Thought on seeing Leyla McCalla’s performance at the New Orleans JazzFest a couple of weeks ago: Well, that’s the biggest Cajun fiddle you’ll ever see.
Okay, it’s a cello, if you want to get technical about it. But on a couple songs she performed from her new album, the singer-musician sounded right at home on the curvy contours of tunes rooted in the Southern Louisiana prairies, including a spirited arrangement of the flirty "Les Plats Sont Tous Mis Sur La Table" ("The Dishes Are All Set On the Table") by the late Creole fiddle great — that’s real fiddle — Canray Fontenot.
But then, playing rural folk music on her instrument (as well as on banjo and guitar) is nothing new for McCalla. For a few years she played alongside Rhiannon Giddens in the second version of Carolina Chocolate Drops, a group that reclaimed and renewed the African-American string band traditions as the core of its purpose and repertoire.
This, following up her solo debut "Vari-Colored Songs," in which she set Langston Hughes poems to music to great effect, is not the bold statement of Giddens’ solo debut from last year. But it’s a big, ambitious step nonetheless. Having moved to New Orleans a few years ago, McCalla draws on the vividly knotted cultural streams of the region, in particular spotlighting folk strains from Haiti, Creole Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta, with her singing in English and the respective French dialects. The links are strong through the history of the slave trade — Haiti and New Orleans being primary way stations in the tragic trade, and rural Louisiana a haven for escaped and freed slaves, including waves fleeing the Haitian Revolution around the turn of the 19th century. The Cajun-Creole songs (Bebe Carrier’s instrumental "Bluerunner") and the Haitian tunes (the traditional "Peze Cafe" is a highlight) are presented not as contrasts or even complements, but as made from the same cloth, in spare, earthy arrangements.
With guests including Giddens, Lost Bayou Ramblers fiddler Louis Michot, New York guitarist Marc Ribot and New Orleans clarinetist Aurora Nealand, the musical styles, though, cover a wide spectrum of the region, not just the Louisiana-Haiti Creole corridor. "Far From Your Web," one of three McCalla originals, evokes 1920s-style New Orleans jazz. "Vietnam" is an off-to-war period folk song from the catalog of late Georgie one-man-band Abner Jay. And "Little Sparrow," written by Ella Jenkins (still with us at 91), is ostensibly a children’s song, but one that reaches back through generations of the fight for civil rights.
The title song, another McCalla original (the name, a Haitian proverb she learned from the title of a Gage Averill book), serves to preface all this, it’s somber, lilting account a meditation on leaving a bad situation for an uncertain one. It was written, she’s said, with the Haitian boat people in mind, but also with thoughts to the plight of refugees around the world. It’s in that sense of flux, the place where desperation meets hope, where McCalla finds her artistic home.
Can supervised drug injection sites solve the heroin problem?
Heroin abuse in the U.S. has increased to what the Obama Administration has called epidemic levels.
According to the American Society of Addictive Medicine, around 30,000 people died from lethal drug overdoses of heroin or related opioid painkillers in 2014
To cut down on these deaths, some states are looking at one very controversial idea: drug-shoot up centers.
David Klepper is a reporter with the Associated Press and has been writing about this, he joined the show to discuss the issue.
To hear the full interview, click the blue play button above.
President Obama will visit Hiroshima - a first for a US sitting President
Today the White House announced that President Barack Obama will tour the city of Hiroshima, the site of the massive atom bomb drop near the end of World War II.
Officials said that its purpose would be to bolster his call for denuclearization and honor victims of the bombing, but many political opponents are critical of the announcement.
We'll talk about it with California Congressman Mark Takano, who took to the House floor in April to encourage President Obama to become the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, Japan.
Car crashes involving marijuana doubled in Washington state, AAA says
Fatal car accidents involving people who had recently used pot doubled in Washington State after the drug was legalized almost four years ago, according to a report from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety released Tuesday.
Cannabis-involved fatalities increased from 8 percent in 2013 to 17 percent in 2014, according to AAA, which used data from Washington State's Traffic Safety Commission's Fatality Analysis Reporting system to track marijuana use and traffic fatalities from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2014.
It became legal to use marijuana in Washington on December 6, 2012.
AAA combined Washington's traffic fatality data with reports from the state's toxicologist, which examined the presence and concentration of marijuana's main psychoactive ingredient, THC, in the blood of drivers who had died.
About one-third of drivers who died did not have alcohol or other drugs in their blood at the time of the fatal crash -- just THC, according to the study. Another third had detectable alcohol in addition to THC and the remainder of the THC-positive drivers had other drugs and/or alcohol in addition to THC.
The AAA study did not say that drivers with detectable THC at the time of the crash were impaired by the THC, nor did it analyze whether the driver that tested positive for THC was at fault in the crash.
"Trying to really pull apart how much is due to actually the cannabis ... still requires additional research," said Dr. Tom Marcotte, co-director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research in San Diego. "I think a number of agencies would say we really need a few years to determine whether you’re seeing a real epidemiological effect here."
Marcotte said marijuana use can impact drivers' reaction times and ability to accurately estimate time. It can also result in a reduced ability to multitask. A study in the Netherlands found that drivers with THC in their systems had a more difficult time maintaining their lane position.
Drivers who are suspected of marijuana impairment are typically assessed by law enforcement, who rely on behavioral and physiological measures, as well as blood tests.
Washington is one of several states that have so-called per se limits for marijuana-impaired driving that set specific thresholds for the amount of active THC a driver can have in his system based on a blood test. THC is measured in nanograms per milliliter of blood -- a system that's similar to measuring blood alcohol content in drunk drivers.
But blood tests for THC may not be a reliable indicator of impairment.
"People can have a low level of THC in their system but still be suffering the impaired effects of cannabis," Marcotte said. "On the other hand people can also have low levels and not be showing those effects.”
Often, blood tests require a warrant and transport of the impaired driver to a testing facility, which takes time and gives THC the chance to wear off. AAA is one of several groups calling for a two-step process to determine marijuana impairment in drivers.
AAA would like drivers to be tested for recent marijuana use. It would also like behavioral and physiological evidence to prove driver impairment from marijuana use.
Could genetically engineered mosquitos stop the Zika virus?
As the Zika virus continues to spread, scientists are looking to gene-editing technologies as a possible tool to fight the disease.
Biologists have already engineered a modified species of mosquito that they hope will help stop the spread of malaria.
Now they're turning to the Aedes aegypti species which infects people with the Zika virus and dengue fever.
The prospect of engineering a mosquito that would eradicate the disease is promising, but not without concerns of possible unintended consequences.
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- Dr. Anthony James, distinguished professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at UC Irvine
To listen to the full interview, click the blue player above.
What's beneath the surface of the 'second skin' polymer?
It sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi movie: "second skin" that can recover the properties of healthy skin and restore elasticity.
MIT researchers along with Massachusetts General Hospital, Living Proof and Olivo Labs have created a polymer that can be used for both medical and cosmetic reasons.
But is it hope or hype? For more, we turn to Gina Kolata, a medical reporter for New York Times who wrote about this new second skin.
Interview Highlights:
What is the second skin polymer?
"This is devised by material scientists at MIT and Harvard and they spent about 10 years on it. They wanted to find something that was invisible and you didn't feel it and it was breathable like skin is breathable and it was safe and it would restore the elasticity of your skin... but that's only part of it. Because they said if we have something that you could just put on your skin and it can hold a drug in place... like a cortisone cream..."
How does the second skin work, how do you put it on?
"You put this thing — it's like a lotion — you put it on, let's say, your face. Then you have to put another lotion on that sort of cross-links it, sort of links all the polymers together. They say depending on where it is and what you're doing, it lasts easily more than a day. One of the researchers said he put some on his forearm, he forgot it was even there and it was there for days. You can take it off with a special solution that dissolves it, but eventually, it also comes off by itself."
To hear the full segment, click the blue play button above.