It’s been about 20 months since lawmakers and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger breathlessly announced a historic agreement called the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Reform Act of 2009, an ambitious plan to overhaul the state’s antiquated water system. Much has changed since then, but much more is still on the way.

Being the bearer of unwelcome news rarely makes you the most popular person in town, particularly when it comes to flood control. But it doesn’t worry David Ford, one of the most trusted figures on California’s sometimes-contentious flood control scene and a man with a knack for speaking what Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Frank Hagar once called “the truth that men prefer not to hear.”

According to Mark Jansen, Blue Diamond Growers is a 100-year-old brand that is just now reaching its potential. It’s this goal of establishing the Blue Diamond brand as the world’s No. 1 producer of almonds and almond-related products that lured the lifelong Midwesterner to California with his family late last summer.

In November, after seven years of work, the U.S. Green Building Council passed construction guidelines for health care facilities. Some local building experts say it’s too early to tell what this means for Capital Region architects and builders; others say it’s too much too late for the region.

In the 35 years Ken Ruzich has managed local levees, no water event has been more memorable than the 1986 flood that nearly toppled levees along the Yolo bypass. If it wasn’t a 100-year flood, he says, it was close enough: “It was our benchmark.”

Once a U.S. Air Force base populated by concrete buildings and gun-toting soldiers, McClellan is now an eco-friendly business park home to a menagerie of green companies.

Last year the nation watched as images of weary firefighters battling a massive inferno in the Angeles National Forest blazed across their TV screens. After starting on Aug. 26, 2009, the Station Fire went on to burn 160,577 acres, injure 22 people and kill two firefighters before it was fully contained nearly two months later.

When Californians went to the polls on Nov. 2, they did more than just select a slate of new Capitol denizens. With the eyes of the world upon them, voters emphatically rejected Proposition 23, the oil industry-backed initiative to block Assembly Bill 32, the state’s groundbreaking effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Raising cattle on the Van Vleck farm near Rancho Murieta is a legacy that has passed from father to son for more than 150 years. Now struggling to keep the family ranch, Stan Van Vleck came up with an electrifying idea: Install solar panels to boost income.

Chris Huppe spent more than a dozen years working on better ways to use the green waste from his landscape maintenance company.