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Good morning. It’s Tuesday, Sept. 17.
- China releases imprisoned California pastor.
- Renewables power state through extreme heat.
- And a Sphere-like sports venue opens in Inglewood.
Statewide
1.
Five months after state water regulators imposed hefty fees on growers across a huge swathe of the San Joaquin Valley over concerns about overpumping, a judge granted an injunction against what she called “unlawful regulation.” In a scathing ruling, Kings County Superior Court Judge Kathy Ciuffini said regulators acted without transparency, “and there has been no review, analysis, or ability to challenge their conduct.” Dusty Ference, executive director of the farm bureau, called it a “monumental win.” CalMatters
2.
California’s big bet on renewable energy and battery storage paid off during the hottest summer on record, the Wall Street Journal wrote:
“As extreme heat blanketed much of the West this summer, regional power demand reached a record high of nearly 168,000 megawatts on July 10. Yet California, which has historically imported large amounts of electricity from other states during heat waves, had surplus to send elsewhere.”
3.
In January, a Southern California family hit what seemed like a dead end in a yearslong legal quest in the courts to force a Spanish museum to return a $30 million painting stolen from their ancestors by the Nazis in 1939. But on Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law designed to reunite the Jewish family with the painting, “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain” by Camille Pissarro, pictured above. It makes clear that California law requires the return of Nazi looted works to their rightful owners. L.A. Times | Politico
Northern California
4.
Tiny Hayfork, a no-stoplight town of roughly 2,000 people in rugged Trinity County, is about as remote as California gets. Its public pool has operated for decades as something of a town square. But with the city now facing a severe budget shortfall, the pool’s future depends on a last-ditch ballot initiative that would impose a new annual parcel tax of $30. In a Republican-leaning area allergic to taxes, pool supporters have been working to cultivate their neighbors’ feelings of nostalgia about the pool. “We dug that hole ourselves,” said Nancy Jackson, a longtime Hayfork resident. Politico
5.
On Aug. 30, David Ramirez, 43, entered the San Leandro home of his ex-girlfriend, Analleli Garcia-Mejia, with a camera running in his pocket. Their relationship was fraught, and he wanted evidence if things went sideways, according to investigators. They did. Garcia-Mejia shot Ramirez in the chest, killing him, then tried to destroy the camera after discovering it in his pocket, authorities said. But when the police arrived, they found the device under the kitchen sink. Garcia-Mejia now faces a murder charge. Mercury News
6.
Just a few years ago, analysts were saying that America was nearing peak natural gas. But that was before the explosive growth of artificial intelligence created enormous new power demands from its data centers. In the first six months of 2024, power producers announced plans to build more natural gas-fired capacity than they did in all of 2020, putting climate goals further out of reach. Bloomberg
Southern California
7.
China freed an Orange County pastor who served nearly 20 years behind bars on what the U.S. has said were bogus charges, the State Department announced on Monday. David Lin, 68, was detained after he entered China in 2006 and later sentenced to life in prison for fraud. He had been trying to open a Christian training center in Beijing, aggravating China’s officially atheist Communist Party. Lin’s daughter, Alice Lin, told Politico: “No words can express the joy we have — we have a lot of time to make up for.” N.Y. Times | Politico
8.
Gregory Garrabrants, the San Diego banker who has helped prop up Donald Trump’s troubled real estate empire, upset parents at his kids’ private Christian school when he railed against what he called a transgender and Marxist curriculum. The school tried to kick his family out for the banker’s “overly aggressive” behavior. Garrabrants sued and ran for the school board. Bloomberg recounted the conflict in a piece on Garrabrants’ operatic clashes with people that get in his way.
9.
Over the summer, a pair of enterprising teenagers looked into the finances of their high school’s nonprofit foundation. In a report published under the name Ravens for Transparency, they wrote that the foundation was taking significantly higher fees from student clubs than their counterparts at other schools. The principal, Brett Killeen, was outraged — by the students’ actions, not their findings. In an email to the school community, he said the boys would need to be educated on how to seek information “in a safe and legitimate manner.” S.D. Union-Tribune
10.
Disney is notoriously litigious about its intellectual property. But for nearly a century, it’s been powerless to stop a blatant rip-off of the Mickey Mouse brand by a Paraguayan company, Mickey, that sells spices, corn starch, and other products. The two Mickeys are indistinguishable. Still, the Paraguayan company has insisted it is blameless. “We didn’t take it,” said Viviana Blasco, 51, one of five siblings who run the business. “We built a brand over many years. Mickey grew in parallel to Walt Disney,” she said. N.Y. Times
11.
A new sports-focused venue in Inglewood has been likened to a smaller version of Las Vegas’ all-encompassing arena Sphere. Cosm opened in June with an 87-foot-diameter wraparound LED screen, 8K-resolution screen, and stadium seating. The writer Farley Elliott paid a visit and said the quality is so intense “that it can be staggering, almost overwhelming at times.” So too, he added, can the pain in your wallet. SFGATE
- See video of Cosm’s epic screen. 👉 @cosmlosangelesca
California archive
12.
San Francisco once had a public swimming pool so large that it was patrolled by lifeguards in rowboats.
Opened along the ocean in the summer of 1925, Fleishhacker Pool was said to be the largest outdoor pool in the world, longer than a city block at 1,000 feet and more than twice the width of the Golden Gate Bridge roadway.
The pool was spearheaded by San Francisco’s parks commissioner, Herbert Fleishhacker, a banker and passionate philanthropist who along with his brother donated $50,000 to the project. It included a pump system that drew water from the Pacific and boilers that heated the water, though only marginally.
On a typical weekend afternoon, the pool was crowded by around 1,000 swimmers, their hands stamped to prove that they paid the 25-cent entry fee (or 15 cents for kids under 12). At one end, a 10-meter diving platform offered a chance to prove one’s courage.
For all of its magnificence, Fleishhacker Pool never paid for itself. Some have noted that a giant chilly swimming pool steps from the Pacific never quite made sense. It was closed in 1971 after falling into disrepair. In 1999, the adjacent zoo took ownership and paved over the pool for parking.
Visitors to the zoo today are commonly puzzled by a peculiar ruin on the edge of the lot, a remnant of the old Mediterranean-style pool house that serves as the only remaining monument of a grand civic experiment.
- SFGATE has nice gallery of photos of Fleishhacker Pool through the years.
Correction
An earlier version of this newsletter misspelled the name of the daughter of an Orange County pastor released from prison in China. She is Alice Lin, not Alice Li.
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The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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