Better infrastructure needed in California
People in Los Angeles and the rest of California will live in a
degraded environment, experiencing difficulty with simple tasks
such as plugging in a computer or commuting to work if state and
local governments do not develop the region’s infrastructure
to handle the expected doubling of the population in the next 50
years, according to a UCLA study.
But Los Angeles could become like Paris and London ““
popular, livable international cities with the infrastructure to
handle the needs of dense populations such as efficient transit
systems ““ researchers from the Center for the Study of Latino
Health and Culture at the UCLA School of Medicine found in
“Outgrowing, or Under-Investing In, Los Angeles and
California?” The report is based on data from the 2000 U.S.
Census and European sources.
“While some see that the state’s population growth
is the cause of water shortages and power outages, it is important
to see that a large part of the problem is simply an inadequate
infrastructure for the population we currently have,” said
David Hayes-Bautista, professor of medicine and director of the
center. “Many of our competitor states and cities have far
greater population densities than we do, but they also have the
infrastructure to function well. We do not.”
An analysis of the population of the city of Los Angeles shows
that the density of the 3.7 million residents is 7,873 people per
square mile. That is less than one-sixth the density of Paris,
about one fourth that of Tokyo and around one-third that of
London.
Los Angeles needs to improve its basic infrastructure,
Hayes-Bautista said, including its mass transit, roads, public
safety, public health and education, to transform it into a
flourishing densely populated city.
“Concerns about population growth need to be balanced by
concerns about infrastructure,” he said.
Senate sets water deadline
The state Senate voted Tuesday to require health officials to
set drinking water limits for chromium-6, the substance that gained
notoriety in the Julia Roberts film “Erin
Brockovich.”
The bill, by Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, would require the
state Department of Health Services to set a maximum allowable
limit for chromium-6 in drinking water by Jan. 1, 2004.
Chromium is a natural element that has two basic forms:
chromium-3, an essential nutrient, and chromium-6, a carcinogen
when inhaled. Public health agencies have not yet determined if
chromium-6 is a carcinogen when ingested, but the Department of
Health Services and Office of Environmental Health Hazard
Assessment announced in March that they would evaluate whether
chromium-6 should be regulated as a drinking water contaminant.
White abalone an endangered species
The white abalone, a tasty Southern California mollusk whose
numbers have dropped from the millions in the 1970s to perhaps a
few thousand, officially became an endangered species Tuesday.
The listing by the National Marine Fisheries Service will not
affect fishermen because the state has banned taking the species
since 1996. But environmentalists are hopeful the decision will
bring in more funding to help the abalone’s population
numbers rebound.
The decision means federal agencies must act to help keep the
white abalone from going extinct, but it may be too late to save
it, said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for
Biological Diversity, the environmental group that filed a petition
asking for the listing in 1999.
Compiled from Daily Bruin wire reports.