​The ouster of Occupy L.A. left City Hall Park with dirt where once there was turf. And when ideas started coming in about what should be done to restore the landscape that adorns the symbolic center of the city, the range of opinions was something akin to those within Occupy L.A.: widely varied, with a generally progressive bent.

In gardening terms, "progressive" means less grass and more drought-tolerant and native plants. The fear, however, was that the city, bureaucratic and broke, would blow the opportunity to reboot the garden and just go with the least expensive and most traditional option: planting another flat, green sprawl. After all, grass is the cheapest to install and the easiest to maintain.

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CBS LA

The dark side of green living.

​Thank you, CBS LA, for getting to the bottom of this one.

Never has the brave new world of eco-friendly consumerism reached a conundrum so ridiculous:

Heather Patron, a resident of notoriously crunchy Studio City, tells the station that her Prius is melting in the scorching-hot sunbeams that bounce off her neighbor's energy-efficient windows. So CBS investigators whip out their trusty thermometers...

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Black Lung Lofts

​By Taylor Freitas

For Southern Californians living near freeways, in what we at LA Weekly call "Black Lung Lofts," breathing in dirty air has been a concern for years, and it's one that's been neglected by Los Angeles and federal officials.

The highly publicized Children's Health Study, released by USC in 2004, confirmed that kids living within two blocks of any freeway in Southern California contract asthma at higher levels, and some suffer lifelong lung damage.

Still, 1.2 million L.A.-area residents live within 1,000 feet of freeways, inhaling vehicle emissions and tiny particulates made up in part from tire rubber. Ignoring the studies, the L.A. City Council and the Community Redevelopment Agency keep building children's housing along freeways.

But earlier this month, three environmental organizations filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Finally! Here's the scoop:

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​The Calleguas Creek runs about 30 miles long up near Oxnard, delivering freshwater to Mugu Lagoon, a partially enclosed body of water that is home to several endangered species.

In 2005 and 2006, Ventura County contractor Thomas Staben dumped 40,000 cubic yards of harmful materials - about 2,000 dump-truck loads worth - throughout five acres of the creek. He did not have the necessary permits to do so.

Now, several years later, friends of the contaminated creek got a jolt of good news when the EPA announced today that it was penalizing Staben and making him cough up several dump-truck loads of cash.

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greenlacoalition.org

Mark Gold for Heal the Bay.

​It's hard to imagine the Los Angeles County coastline without Heal the Bay, defender of marine life and official housecleaner for our world-famous beaches/waters since 1985.

And it's hard to imagine Heal the Bay without Mark Gold, its head and heart for the last 23 years.

Though he'll remain on the organization's board of directors, Gold has decided to abandon his longtime post as Heal the Bay president for an administrative position at UCLA's Institute of Environment and Sustainability. Needless to say, his alma mater is ecstatic:

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Alissa Walker

Ducks on dredged land in Echo Park.

​If you've ever wondered what's been lurking beneath the surface of an urban watershed like Echo Park Lake, now you know.

Because of a draining and dredging project by the L.A.Bureau of Engineering, the city has come up with this list of fine, inner-city detritus which, in this case, includes two guns, one parking enforcement "boot" (gotta love that one), three boomboxes, six (six?!) skateboards and one toilet.

Here's the list (so far):

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Nanette Gonzales

Trying to keep Mulholland Drive clean

​Green signs announce that the stretch of Mulholland Drive between Laurel Canyon and Coldwater Canyon has been declared a "No Litter Zone," and for the most part, they're right. Considering the volume of traffic that passes through here, there is surprisingly little trash along this road.

That's because of Raul and Jackie.

Raul is bright, outspoken and vivacious. He's upbeat about his daily task of keeping this road clean. He's also homeless.

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sightseeingworld.com

Hollywood Boulevard's about to get some country-bumpkin competition.

​Just because we live in the biggest, brightest county on the West Coast -- famous for its neon signage, supergraphic billboards and helicopter searchlights -- doesn't mean we can't fight for our right to stargaze.

By the beginning of next year, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors is expected to pass the Dark Skies Ordinance, proposed in 2008 and given its final blessing by the Regional Planning Commission last week.

It adds outdoor lighting to a long list of neighborhood unpleasantries...

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algaebase.org

Move along, kelp-cutters.

​About 11 percent of the Southern California coastline is about to go on lockdown, thanks to somewhat controversial new Marine Protected Areas drafted by the state Department of Fish and Game. (Map of all protected SoCal waters, below.)

So what does that mean for you? Stefanie Sekich of ocean-centric org Surfrider says the law that created the areas "encourages recreation" like surfing and boating, but prohibits "all extraction of marine life." For example: fishing, diving for seafood or kelp harvesting. Also, shell collecting in tidepools -- Sekich says "anything that produces a home for another animal" is off-limits.

Still confused?

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Good bye to these hideous Westway tanks in San Pedro

​Way, way good news for folks in San Pedro living within breathable proximity of the abandoned, Westway tank farm, which the Port of L.A. will finally demolish. Locals hope that dirty industry on this fill-dirt pier will give way to beautification -- and a home for the Southern California Marine Institute.

It's hard to imagine a more dramatic project in neglected, polluted San Pedro. Buh-bye to 136 huge storage tanks. Hello to 14 acres of land. The sad thing is, it took decades just to get here, thanks to glacial movement and narrow thinking of elected leaders like former L.A. City council members Janice Hahn and Rudy Svorinich.

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By Hillel Aron

Malibu Lagoon will be dredged and remade.

​Gentleman, start your bulldozers. Malibu Lagoon is getting a facelift.

In San Francisco Superior Court, Judge Ernest H. Goldsmith ruled against the Wetlands Defense Fund, Access For All, and the Coastal Law Enforcement Action Network in their lawsuit to stop the Malibu Lagoon restoration project.

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Cristiano Betta

​Los Angeles County did it. And so did Santa Monica. But normally enviro-crazed L.A. City Hall has been lagging when it comes to banning the bags.

This week, however, the city came a little closer to just such a ban of plastic bags at markets and stores. The L.A. Board of Public Works voted unanimously to support a ban of plastic and paper bags.

If the city went there it would join unincorporated L.A. county, Long Beach, Santa Monica and West Hollywood in banning plastic bags and might even do them one better with the paper-bag ban. But ...

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The right to plastic?

​Proposition 26 was a sneaky little devil from the start.

Shielded by the commotion of the "No on Prop. 23" activists, Big Oil slipped the less digestible (but equally harmful) Prop. 26 past the Big Green army and into law last November.

We knew the dirty-energy giants would whip it out of their magic kit sometime soon -- but this first wave of the Prop. 26 wand (first that we know of, anyway) is a little unexpected. Plastic-bag manufacturer Hilex-Poly is suing the County of Los Angeles...

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Sparkling clean truck: Los Angeles greenwashing almost worked.

​Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's controversial "clean trucks" plan to squeeze independent truckers out of the Port of Los Angeles as a favor to the Teamsters -- a green-washing plan he sold as merely a wholesome effort to reduce emissions from old trucks, has just been zapped by a federal appeals court.

Now maybe L.A. can do what Long Beach did, and create a plan for cleaner trucks that doesn't give the Teamsters even more control on the waterfront. The Natural Resources Defense Counsel Council acted as the fig leaf for all this, backing the mayor's doomed plan. City News Service reports:

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The least of the awkward.

​Oh, Los Angeles. Not only are you way too slovenly with your dead cigarette butts, but you're super awkward about the bulkier items you choose to leave lying around this great cemented city. (All too often dangerously near a storm drain, and therefore the sea, and therefore some poor baby animal's unsuspecting esophagus.) Yet somehow, we're not surprised.

Here are the 12 most awkward things that the 10,964 Coastal Cleanup Day volunteers found intertwined in 44,038 pounds of trash at 65 sites across L.A. County last Saturday. (Heal the Bay keeps a spreadsheet of oddities, because why wouldn't they?) Enjoy.

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Californians Against Waste

You did this. Now undo it.

​L.A. County has the nastiest water in all of California, and many other parts of the country, according to Heal the Bay. And it's not because annoying tourist children won't stop pissing in the ocean, or gay parties are getting too trashy up at Will Rogers:

Org spokesman Matthew King tells us that 80 percent of the 100,000-plus pounds of trash expected to be picked up throughout the county during tomorrow's Coastal Cleanup Day will have come from "inland sources... through the storm drain system."

Compared to New York or San Francisco, Los Angeles is the worst offender for storm-drain trash:

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baycitizen.org

Was Obama blinded by the wonders green jobs could do for his campaign?

​Solyndra, Inc., the NorCal solar company that just blew through a $535 million loan from the federal government and is being probed by the FBI, had a lot more to lose than the money. (Hell, what's $535 million, anymore? Just this year, President Obama blew the same on a few more border agents and some spy drones. Look how far that's gotten us.)

When Solyndra went bankrupt this summer, the company did more than fail the taxpayers and let down Obama's big eloquent PR hopes (see right) that America had the clean-energy smarts to win the future.

Nope: It gets worse. Solyndra has given Republicans just the leverage they needed...

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Chris McCorkle

Density in downtown L.A.

​Critics of over-development in L.A. are up in arms about a California law, which just needs the governor's signature to be finalized, that they argue would weaken the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and allow cities to use years- and decades-old environmental impact reports for zoning changes.

LA Neighbors United and its founder, Cary Brazeman, took out full-page ad (PDF) in the Los Angeles Times this week decrying SB 226, which is on Gov. Jerry Brown's desk awaiting his signature.

LA Neighbors says the bill was "quietly passed" by the state legislature and that it would:

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@SkotRogers

The fireball as seen above Arizona.

​No, it wasn't a flashback from that last Phish concert.

Seems like sober people saw it too: A blazing streak of light across the sky last night. No word of an invasion. But Associated Press did call it "mysterious." Unidentified Flying Object?

Not really. According to AP, Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, identified it:

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​Tap water has a bad rap these days. And in many cases, for good reason.

There's an awful lot of groundwater contamination out there.

But for those folks living in the San Gabriel Valley who - God forbid - like being able to actually drink their tap water, there was a splash of good news today ...

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