People in the News

UC San Diego scholar who influenced Pope Francis on climate change and a Salk Institute biologist who helps develop cancer drugs will each share the $1.3 million that comes with winning a Tang Prize, one of the newest and priciest awards in science. Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the university’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography was chosen for his decades of insights about how humans influence the world’s climate, sometimes in severe and deadly ways.

California’s two Democratic senators have committed themselves to opposing a controversial House provision that would block judicial review of the state’s WaterFix tunnel project, reprising a familiar Capitol Hill plot. These California water narratives start bubbling up in the House, and then they often, although not always, dry out in the Senate.

Residents of Compton have complained about brown, smelly water coming out of their taps for more than a year. And when officials began talking about dissolving the troubled local water district, the area’s congresswoman scheduled a town hall meeting so community members could weigh in.

Amy Haas, deputy director and general counsel of the Upper Colorado River Commission, will replace the retiring Don Ostler as the UCRC’s executive director July 1. Amy, formerly general counsel of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, has been with the commission since last year, and has a long history of working within the interstate Colorado River governance process, including playing a central role in the negotiation of the recently signed U.S.-Mexico agreement known as Minute 323. 

Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected on Friday to send President Trump a detailed legal proposal to dramatically scale back an Obama-era regulation on water pollution, according to a senior E.P.A. official familiar with the plan.

Even Scott Pruitt’s most loyal friends are starting to give up the fight. The perpetual ethics problems of the Environmental Protection Agency chief have moved some conservatives who were firmly in his camp to reconsider.

Helen Fricker is worried. She says cities throughout the world, including San Diego, could be affected by the climate change that’s unfolding in the Antarctica.

The Bureau of Land Management continues to reshuffle its top leadership, replacing acting Deputy Director of Operations Mike Nedd with a senior Interior Department official who has never worked at BLM. Richard Cardinale, Interior’s director of the business operations division in the Office of the Chief Information Officer, has moved into BLM’s deputy director of operations position, according to multiple sources who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to publicly discuss the moves.