Age, drought, rodents and neglect weaken California levees, heightening flood danger
LOS ANGELES — The levee breach that left an entire California town underwater this weekend is putting a spotlight on how the state’s vital flood control infrastructure is being weakened by age, drought, climate change, rodents and neglect — leaving scores of communities at risk.
On Friday night, the swollen Pajaro River burst through the worn-down levee, flooding the entire town of Pajaro and sending its roughly 3,000 residents into what officials are now estimating to be a multi-month-long exile. A second breach was reported on Monday.
For decades, the levee was ignored by the federal government — never rising to the status of a fix-worthy project — despite repeated pleas, breaches, floods and even two deaths.
“Yeah, the money wasn’t there because the prioritization wasn’t there,” said Mark Strudley, executive director of the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency. And as the communities and local government agencies begged for help and funding, the levee aged, eroded and, in some places, sank.
—Los Angeles Times
Redactions to Catholic clergy abuse report delivered to judge, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown says
BALTIMORE — Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said his office on Monday sent a judge the proposed redactions for its report on Catholic clergy sexual abuse, meeting the deadline to do so.
The redacted names, which many number more than 200, include individuals who are living, are accused of abuse, or hiding, enabling, assisting in the cover-up of abuse, or protecting abusers from the consequences of their actions, and whose identities were revealed as a result of a grand-jury subpoena, according to a statement from Brown.
Baltimore Circuit Judge Robert K. Taylor will review the proposed redactions before he gives his approval to make the report public, according to his Feb. 24 order. It is not clear how long Taylor will need to review the report before he gives the OK to release it.
The report, titled “Clergy Abuse in Maryland,” is 456 pages and reveals the extent of child sexual abuse and the subsequent cover-up within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore. The product of a four-year investigation, the report relies on diocesan documents the attorney general’s office obtained by way of a grand jury.
—The Baltimore Sun
Coming soon to Florida beaches: Massive, messy and maybe record mounds of seaweed
MIAMI — A giant blob of seaweed, spanning 5,000 miles and weighing an estimated 6.1 million tons, threatens to blanket Florida beaches and Caribbean islands with smelly piles of decaying brown goop.
Sargassum — the scientific name for the brown seaweed often found strewn across South Florida beaches — could start piling up in the Florida Keys in the next few days. Scientists expect Miami Beach to become a hot spot later in the sargassum season, which runs from March through October.
This year’s sargassum bloom is shaping up to be one of the biggest ever recorded. Since 2011, a combination of human activity and climate change has created a string of unusually large seaweed blobs. Every year for the past five years has set a new record for the biggest blob ever.
“We cannot predict whether this year will set a new record,” said Chuanmin Hu, who is part of a team of University of South Florida oceanography professors who track sargassum blooms via satellite and publish monthly bulletins on their outlook. “All we can say is this year will be another major sargassum year on the level of the average for the past five years.”
—Miami Herald
US urges Turkey to allow NATO expansion as officials set to meet
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan urged Turkey to ratify the membership bids of Sweden and Finland into NATO as pressure builds on two remaining holdouts to approve the expansion of the military alliance.
Officials from Turkey, Sweden and Finland have been trying to break an impasse that has held up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s expansion since the two Nordic countries were invited to join in June. Turkey, the only holdout besides Hungary, wants Sweden to crack down on groups Ankara considers as terrorist in exchange for agreeing to accession.
“I believe there is no reason it can’t be secured by the summit this summer for both Finland and for Sweden,” Sullivan told reporters ahead of talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s special adviser and spokesman Ibrahim Kalin in Washington on Tuesday.
The two men “will have the chance to talk about this issue as well as 127 other issues that are relevant to the U.S.-Turkey relationship,” Sullivan said.
—Bloomberg News
