Professor Jennifer Harder is the co-director of the Water & Environmental Law program at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. Comstock’s spoke with Harder about water issues affecting the Capital Region and California.

For decades, the California water debate revolved around one metric: unimpeded flow, which is the amount of water in the river and streams. While flow is still without doubt the key issue, it is no longer the only one. 

Solar Cookers International, the world’s leading organization on solar cooking, has been based in Sacramento since 1987. SCI’s work to reduce dependency on fuelwood could have far-reaching global economic impacts.

Comstock’s spoke with Paul Towers, executive director of Community Alliance with Family Farmers, a Davis-based nonprofit dedicated to supporting family farmers and community-based agriculture, to find out how small farmers in the Capital Region are faring during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Face masks have flown off the shelves around the United States amid the coronavirus outbreak, even though experts have advised people against wearing them unless they are sick. That has triggered a shortage for farmworkers, who wear masks to avoid inhaling pesticides or field dust.

Even the special interests that helped kill a California Senate bill aimed at reforming beverage bottle recycling say the state needs to fix its broken system. And one lawmaker who voted no on the bill says he might just introduce his own. 

For many, an understanding of rural living is less about population numbers and topography and more about a sense of being.

Part of this month’s Rural Living series.

There are many benefits to living in rural areas. But doing so comes with its own challenges. PG&E’s answer to the challenges of wildfires: Shut off power — a move that has hit rural areas the hardest.

We can continue our costly, 100-year-old pattern of trying to find new water supplies, or we can choose instead to focus on smarter ways of using – and reusing – what we already have. 

Ten of the 20 most destructive wildfires in state history have occurred since 2015. These megafires fueled by hot, dry winds and climate change seemingly blanket every late summer with gray, smoky skies and a gnawing worry among Californians that the next one might take out their home.