badbrainstorm

joined 1 year ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

OMG, Voyager is SO much better! Not sure why I hadn't tried it

[–] badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Just melt down sugar and inject it. Or, freebase

[–] badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

That goes hard!

[–] badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (3 children)

My bad, but good to know. The Jerboa app is almost all I use currently since I'm without a computer ATM. Do any of the apps do better with search?

[–] badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (6 children)

It does suck, that even within the apps or sites themselves, the search only gives communities.

Like, not being able to search for specific issues, people, or any other topic already posted even within your own instance is my biggest issue with Lemmy not being a sufficient replacement.

Like Reddit was the best place on the internet to go when was stuck with a Linux issue for instance. And rarely even having to post. Just searching the issue would generally get you fixed. Then we could start copying all the invaluable information over here from our communities efforts, and could then be truly free of Reddit once and for all!

[–] badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

"Want me to leave you some DNA at the crime scene, Granny?"

[–] badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I see rich arsehole cars daily. Audi, Lamborghin, Ferarri, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Porche, etc. But 9 times out of 10, when I roll my eyes about someone driving like a piece of shit, or annoyed by their obnoxious exhaust, it's a BMW

[–] badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

Living in LA, you'd think BMW was doing great. There's an obnoxious asshole in one, endangering the lives of everyone around, everywhere you go!

[–] badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago

Infuriating bullshit, nonstop

[–] badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (7 children)
[–] badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Depends on what you're into. It's kinda like discord, in that it has a lot of servers for specific communities/apps/games, etc.

I used it mostly for pirating cause it was always blazing fast compared to torrenting.

Libera.chat, IRCNet, Undernet, Rizon, EFNet are the biggest networks I can think of off my head. Each has like 5000 to 20000 channels!

[–] badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

IRC will never die! I mean, it probably will eventually. It's still fairly popular with Linux users, and even stil preinstalled on some distros

 

SAN FRANCISCO -- California lawmakers are urging Governor Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would allow rental car companies to use GPS technology sooner to find stolen rental cars faster.

San Francisco leaders say this would also prevent the cars from being used for theft and trafficking.

When a rental car isn't returned on time, as California state law stands today, companies are required to wait 72 hours to use GPS to find it.

"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense," Matt Haney, a California Assemblymember said.

Haney authored a bill that would shorten the window down to 24 hours instead.

And now, he's urging Governor Newsom to sign the bill.

"Many of these rental cars, when they're stolen, are actually used in other crimes," he said. "Someone doesn't want to use their own car in a crime because it can be traced so they take a rental car, they steal it and they go commit other crimes."

He claims over the past three years, rental car companies have reported a 266% increase in rental car thefts.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins says those stolen rental cars are frequently used to commit other crimes like organized retail theft.

"Often times, they are driving vehicles through the front doors of business stores, they're not driving their own vehicles through those doors. They're driving stolen rental cars because they don't mind damaging those cars," Jenkins said.

She claims cutting the time down will make it easier for police to do their jobs.

"Once that car is entered into the system as stolen, we will have another technological way to make sure that SFPD can do what it needs to, to pull over that car and make an arrest in that situation if necessary," she said.

"This information officers will be using to immediately apprehend suspects," Derrick Jackson, the acting San Francisco Deputy Police Chief said.

Jackson says if the change is made, it would also make the city's 400 newly installed license plate readers more effective.

"With the ability to better track stolen rental vehicles, we can be more effective in identifying criminal suspects and continue to keep driving down crime," he said.

Governor Newsom has until the end of September to sign or veto the bill.

 

When officers of the state Department of Cannabis Control swooped in on a neighborhood in the Bay Area city of Antioch this spring, they found what they were looking for — about $1 million in illegal marijuana — and one surprise.

One of the three houses they raided was owned by an officer of the Oakland Police Department.

In an email, the department confirmed that it “is aware of the allegations made against one of our members and is cooperating with outside law enforcement agencies on the case.”

The officer was placed on administrative leave April 30, and the matter is under investigation, the statement said.

Citing an ongoing personnel matter, the Police Department declined to name the officer.

CNN, which first reported the raid, identified the officer as Samson Liu, 38.

Real estate records show that a Samson Liu purchased a 2,800-square-foot house in Antioch in 2020 for $608,000.

The raid highlights the extent of illegal pot operations and the recent entry of Chinese organized crime into the industry that California voters legalized in 2016, the cannabis control agency told the news outlet. Law enforcement officials said the operations were sophisticated and coordinated and showed evidence of “the Chinese criminal syndicate” but declined to further elaborate due to ongoing investigations.

The agency did not immediately respond Tuesday to The Times’ request for comment.

A recent investigation by the Los Angeles Times looked at another facet of illegal cannabis in California. Based on confidential state records, public files, online sales and social networks, The Times found that in the last three years, the use of contraband pesticides on cannabis farms has spread across California.

Such pesticides have shown up now in at least six California counties, at both illegal and licensed growing operations. The poisons were present on half of 25 illegal farms in Siskiyou County raided by a state task force during a July 2023 sting operation that saw three officers require medical treatment after suffering exposure.

In a continuing investigation, The Times found chemicals tied to cancer, liver failure, thyroid disease and genetic and neurologic harm in marijuana sold in licensed dispensaries.

Links:cnn [[[[LATimes](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-06-14/california-doesnt-test-legal-weed-for-pesticides-so-we-did)](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-06-14/a-new-threat-to-cannabis-safety-smuggled-pesticides)](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-08-30/how-is-michigan-selling-more-weed-than-california)](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-07-17/cannabis-firearms-seized-illegal-grow-sites-california-state-parks)

 

L.A. Redditors might revile its price (anywhere from $15 to $24 per pound), but once you’ve tasted the sweet, fragrant flesh of Harry’s Berries, you’ll quickly understand why they’re the most expensive strawberries in Southern California. The certified organic family farm in Oxnard grows delicate, flavorful strawberry varieties and only picks them at peak ripeness, shortening shelf life but maximizing flavor. Available at farmers’ markets and upscale grocery stores, they’re favored by many of L.A.’s best chefs.

Now, fourth-generation farmer Molly Gean (daughter of the farm’s namesake, Harry Iwamoto) and her husband Rick are retiring. (Don’t worry: They’re leaving Harry’s Berries in the hands of their adult children and a few of their grandchildren.) In honor of their decades of hard work, A.O.C. is hosting a retirement bash for the Geans complete with a slew of one-night-only Harry’s Berries specials at the restaurant’s Brentwood location on Thursday, September 26.

For Harry’s Berries superfans, it’s a chance to meet the Geans personally as well feast on the farm’s peak season produce, which includes tomatoes and beans as well as strawberries. (While the strawberries are available year-round, they’re generally more plentiful in the summer months.) “This is our moment to pay tribute to an epic lifetime of farming and good food,” chef Suzanne Goin said via press release. “Please join us as we celebrate Molly and Rick!”

Highlights of the one-night-only specials include a spinach and strawberry salad with dandelion, ricotta salata and candied pecans; Alaskan halibut with haricots verts, Santa Barbara pistachios and Harry’s Berries; hanger steak with last-of-the-summer tomatoes and black olive chimichurri; and a strawberry ice cream sandwich with sugar cookies and bittersweet chocolate.

All of the dishes will be available alongside A.O.C. Brentwood’s regular à la carte menu. Dinner reservations for September 26 are available on OpenTable.

 

Metro's TAP-to-Exit pilot program at its North Hollywood B Line station expanded to all 10 end-of-line stations Tuesday, beginning with the E-Line's Downtown Santa Monica station.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (KABC) -- Metro has officially expanded its program aimed at reducing fare evasion and boosting rider safety.

Metro's TAP-to-Exit pilot program at its North Hollywood B Line station expanded to all 10 end-of-line stations Tuesday, beginning with the E-Line's Downtown Santa Monica station.

"What we've seen, statistically, is that about 90% of the people that commit a crime on the system did not have a tap card, did not pay their fare," said Carlos Rico, Metro's Senior Manager for System Security and Law Enforcement. "So this is a proactive tool for us to be able to address crime on the system."

The goal is to help reduce fare evasion and increase safety for riders.

"In less than two months, the North Hollywood station pilot transformed behavior along the 14 B-Line stations with reported crime and other issues (fights, drug use and graffiti) having dropped by more than 40% on the Transit Watch app," said Metro in a statement.

According to an ongoing survey of North Hollywood riders, 91% said the pilot program "made the station feel cleaner" and 86% said it made them feel safer.

How does the TAP-to-Exit pilot program work? All Metro riders are required to tap a fare card to board a bus or train.

The Tap to Exit policy requires that riders tap their fare cards again to exit the Metro rail station, providing another assurance that every rider is paying the fare, according to the transit agency. The program was originally launched in May.

Metro officials previously described the Tap to Exit policy as an effort to boost compliance with fare requirements. The education period will last until Tuesday, Sept. 10, after which citations could be issued for those who evade fare.

Those who don't tap will automatically have the fare taken from their TAP card when they tap out.

According to Metro, similar tap-to-exit programs are already in place on other systems, including Bay Area Rapid Transit, Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority and Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transit Authority.

 

themarijuanaherald.com

Aug 23 2023

Legislation to legalize marijuana cafes in California has been amended in the second and ordered to a second reading.

In June the California Senate passed a bill to legalize marijuana cafes through its second reading, moving it to its third and final reading. Yesterday the Senate amended the bill and ordered it back to its second reading. The proposal has already been passed by the full Assembly, but will need to go back for one final vote if it’s passed by the Senate through a third reading, given it was amended.

Assembly Bill 374 would authorize locations where marijuana and marijuana products, as well as other food and drink products, can be purchased and consumed. The measure would also allow marijuana stores to hold live entertainment events.

The measure was approved in an overwhelming 64 to 9 vote on May 31 through the California Assembly.

According to its legislative digest, this bill would authorize a local jurisdiction “to allow for the preparation or sale of noncannabis food or beverage products, as specified, by a licensed retailer or microbusiness in the area where the consumption of cannabis is allowed, to allow for the sale of prepackaged, noncannabis-infused, nonalcoholic food and beverages by a licensed retailer, and to allow, and to sell tickets for, live musical or other performances on the premises. of a licensed retailer or microbusiness in the area where the consumption of cannabis is allowed.”

“Cannabis cafes in the Netherlands capitalize on the social experience of cannabis by offering coffee, food, and live music, all of those opportunities are currently illegal under California law,” says Assembly Member Matt Haney, the bill’s prime sponsor. “AB 374 will allow struggling cannabis businesses to diversity away from the marijuana-only ‘dispensary’ model and bring much needed tourist dollars into empty downtowns.”

Haney says “Lots of people want to enjoy legal cannabis in the company of others. And many people want to do that while sipping coffee, eating a scone, or listening to music. There’s absolutely no good reason from an economic, health, or safety standpoint that the state should make that illegal.”

Under current California law cannabis consumption lounges are not allowed to sell freshly prepared food, a rule that many call arbitrary and unnecessary. A November 2022 rules change allowed lounges to offer prepackaged food and beverages on a limited basis, but nothing freshly made or beverages ready to be consumed without opening.

Assembly Bill 374 would change this by explicitly allowing licensed marijuana consumption sites to that sell freshly made foods and beverages and host live events such as concerts and seminars. Some are dubbing this the “cannabis café” bill, as it would introduce Amsterdam-style locations that allow for marijuana to be consumed and food and beverages to be purchased such as coffee, tea and sandwiches.

The full text of Assembly Bill 374 can be found by clicking here.

themarijuanaherald.com/2023/06/california-senate-passes-bill-to-legalize-marijuana-cafes-allow-live-performances-at-marijuana-stores/

https://themarijuanaherald.com/2023/06/california-assembly-passes-bill-to-allow-marijuana-cafes/

 

www.latimes.com

Congressman nominates 27 Latino films for National Film Registry

Films by and about Latinos have often been left out of historical conversations including the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. But Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), along with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, has been trying to change that.

Castro has been working for years to help increase Latino representation in multiple industries across the U.S., including entertainment. Last week he sent a letter to Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and the National Film Preservation Board listing 27 Latino films that should be considered for this year’s selection.

The goal of the registry is to select films that showcase a variety of range and diversity of American film heritage.

“This is my attempt and the Hispanic Caucus’ attempt to celebrate their contributions so that people will rightfully see us for something other than just the stereotypes,” Castro said. “As an industry that is purported to be incredibly culturally progressive in all kinds of causes, [the entertainment industry] has in fact been regressive and detrimental to the development of new voices, and the Latino community has paid the price of that exclusion.”

Castro said that the lack of representation on the registry is harmful not only to the Latino community, but also to other marginalized groups. He said he carefully selected films that break common stereotypes placed on the Latino community.

“Given the film industry’s continued exclusion of Latinos, we must make a special effort to ensure that Latino Americans’ contributions to American filmmaking are appropriately celebrated and included in the National Film Registry,” Castro said in his letter.

Every year the registry adds 25 films from the list of nominees and in recent years has increased emphasis on films by people of color and women. Even with this increase, out of the 850 titles on the registry, only 24 of them are Latino films.

Ana-Christina Ramón, the inaugural director of the Entertainment and Media Research Initiative at UCLA, has dedicated much of her work to researching access and equity in the entertainment industry. She said that including Latino films on the list of nominees and in the registry is crucial.

“Latinx people have been living here since before it was the United States and they are part of the American experience, and so for them not to be included, I think it would be a travesty,” Ramón said.

Ramón also said it is not only about the types of diverse stories that are being told, but also who is getting the jobs to play those roles.

“These films not only tell the story about Latin culture, but they influence American culture as well,” Ramón said.

Castro said the film industry seems to be more exclusive with the diversity of its lists than the music industry because it’s “layered with more gatekeepers.”

“That’s what this work is about. It’’s a celebration of the culture, but also a reminder to Hollywood that we’re here, that our contributions matter, and that they are worthy of recognition,” Castro said.

One of the films on the Library of Congress’ nomination list is “Sleep Dealer” by director Alex Rivera, which was released in 2008. The Sundance award-winning film is a sci-fi thriller about a young man, Memo Cruz, played by Luis Fernando Peña, in near-future Mexico who tries to survive a “misguided drone attack.”

Cruz tries to find safety near the U.S.-Mexico border but finds out migrant workers are unable to cross the border. He then tries to connect his body to a robot in the U.S. to help find a better future.

For over two decades, Rivera, who is a MacArthur “Genius Grant” winner and professor at Arizona State University, has dedicated his career to telling adventurous Latino stories. He said that Latino stories are not given adequate support to be successful. He said there is no shortage of Latino stories, but the problem is that there is not enough interest in Latino stories from decision makers.

“It’s so important that someone like Rep. Castro is using his platform and his power to highlight the simple reality of our community as part of this country,” Rivera said.

The official list of films added to the registry will be announced in December.

Here are the films nominated by Castro:

“... and the Earth Did Not Swallow Him” (1994)
“Blood In Blood Out” (1993)
“Raising Victor Vargas” (2002)
“Frida” (2002)
“I Like It Like That” (1994)
“Walkout” (2006)
“Mosquita y Mari” (2012)
“The Milagro Beanfield War” (1988)
“Under the Same Moon” (2007)
“American Me” (1992)
“Tortilla Soup” (2001)
“Mi Vida Loca” (1993)
“Instructions Not Included” (2013)
“Maria Full of Grace” (2004)
“Girlfight” (2000)
“La Mission” (2010)
“Sleep Dealer” (2008)
“Alambrista!” (1977)
“Our Latin Thing” (1972)
“Cheech & Chong’s Up in Smoke” (1978)
“A Better Life” (2011)
“Gun Hill Road” (2011)
“In the Time of the Butterflies” (2001)
“Roberto Clemente” (2008)
“The Longoria Affair” (2010)

https://irle.ucla.edu/emri/

latimes.com/genius-fellows-latinx-files

asu.edu/20221027-genius-grant-fellows-launch-latino-filmmaking-lab-asus-poitier-film-school

 

www.nbclosangeles.com

The LA City Council voted Wednesday to approve a near-$1 billion package of raises and bonuses designed to improve recruiting and retention of LAPD officers, after acknowledging the new contract could limit the city's ability to fund other core services.

In a 12-to-3 vote, the council agreed to a near-13% increase in starting pay for new officers, 12% cost of living increases over four years, and a variety of bonuses and incentives that city officials said they hoped would slow the pace of existing officers' decisions to retire, resign, or transfer to other agencies.

“Our police department, just like other major city police departments, is enduring a hiring and retention crisis,” Mayor Karen Bass emailed reporters in a statement.

"I want to thank the leaders of the City Council for supporting this action and I look forward to working together to ensure that Angelenos are safe," the statement said.

An analysis provided to the council showed the new raises and bonuses, above the already-approved $3 billion LAPD budget, would cost an extra $123 million during this fiscal year.

It would increase another $75 million in 2024-2025, another $91 million in 2025-2026 and another $95 million in 2026-2027.

Each increase is on top of the previous year's, bringing the total impact to about $994 million at the end of the fourth year, not including overtime pay.

“It is unclear exactly how the city will pay for nearly $1 billion dollars in cumulative salary increases," Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, one of the three "no"' votes, said before the council meeting Wednesday.

“If we approve the contract that's coming before us today, I fear that the city is committing to another four years where we cannot deliver on the most basic municipal services that our constituents need, things like keeping the lights on, picking up trash, paving the roads, let alone serving our most vulnerable population,” she said.

Hernandez was the only council member to vote no on the overall city budget earlier this summer, citing the significant increase to police spending.

Council members Hugo Soto-Martinez and Nithya Raman also voted against the police contract, and all three said the money would be better spent on housing, social services and creating a new crisis response system for mental health and other non-violent emergencies.

During the council meeting, the city's chief administrative officer, Matthew Szabo, who negotiated the with the officers' union, acknowledged the spending on police could limit the city's ability to pay for other employees' raises or programs.

“This contract represents an investment in LAPD in a significant way," Szabo said.

"It represents a very substantial financial commitment to recruiting officers and retaining officers, and, as with any major financial commitment, it will create choices in the future, and so, we’re making choices with this contract … that will be part of the competition for scarce resources," he said.

LAPD Chief Michel Moore posted a short message on social media praising the agreement.

"We cannot put a price on public safety," the message said.

"A competitive contract is one of the steps needed to keep our communities safe through retaining our current personnel, and attracting much needed new hires," it said.

Mayor Bass has said she wants to expand the size of the LAPD to 9,500 officers. At the end of June, the department had just under 9,000 officers, the lowest level in at least a decade.

The city reported earlier this year an average 20% employee vacancy rate across all departments, and unions representing workers at those other departments said many city employees were being overworked and underpaid. Many of their labor contracts will expire before the end of 2023.

 

latimes.com

The Supreme Court is being urged to weigh whether homeless people have a constitutional right to sleep on public sidewalks and camp in parks.

Judge Marsha Berzon, a senior liberal on the appeals court, cited Supreme Court decisions from the early 1960s which said that drug addicts and alcoholics may not be punished simply because they have an addiction. She said the same principle applies to the homeless.

“Just as the state may not criminalize the state of being homeless in public places,” Berzon wrote, “the state may not criminalize conduct that is an unavoidable consequence of being homeless — namely sitting, lying or sleeping on the streets.”

Four years ago, a wide array of California business groups and cities, including Los Angeles, joined appeals that urged the Supreme Court to review that ruling in a case from Boise, Idaho.

To their surprise and dismay, however, the justices turned down the appeal without a comment or dissent. They may have done so because Boise officials had repealed part of a key ordinance after losing in a lower court. The appeal may have been seen as moot.

But the non-decision left the constitutional dispute untouched, and the issue is now back before the high court in a new appeal from a small city in southern Oregon.

Grants Pass has a population of about 38,000, of whom 50 or as many 600 are homeless. Shortly after the 9th Circuit’s ruling in 2018 case from Boise, lawyers sued on behalf of several homeless people in the city who said they were harassed by police and ticketed for sleeping in a park.

In response, a federal judge ruled the city cannot enforce a strict ban on camping in its public parks, and that ruling was affirmed by the 9th Circuit in a 2-1 decision.

Writing for the majority, Judge Roslyn Silver said she was obliged to follow the circuit court’s precedent in the Boise case, which held “the 8th Amendment prohibits the imposition of criminal penalties for sitting, sleeping, or lying outside on public property for homeless individuals who cannot obtain shelter.”

That in turn launched the new appeal to the Supreme Court.

Lawyers who worked on the case are optimistic the court will take it up because the homeless problem — and its impact on cities — has gotten much worse.

Their appeal filed late Tuesday argues that the 9th Circuit’s ruling and the federal judges who have applied it “have erected a judicial roadblock preventing a comprehensive response to the growth of public encampments in the West. The consequences of inaction are dire for those living both in and near encampments: crime, fires, the reemergence of medieval diseases, environmental harm, and record levels of drug overdoses and deaths on public streets....Only this [Supreme] Court can end this misguided project of federal courts dictating homelessness policy under the banner of the 8th Amendment.”

Last month, the 9th Circuit Court’s conservatives blasted their liberal colleagues for refusing to reconsider their past rulings on the rights of the homeless.

“Homelessness is presently the defining public health and safety crisis in the western United States. California, for example, is home to half of the individuals in the entire country who are without shelter on a given night,” wrote Judge Milan Smith in a dissent joined by eight others.

“In the City of Los Angeles alone, there are roughly 70,000 homeless persons. There are stretches of the city where one cannot help but think the government has shirked its most basic responsibilities under the social contract: providing public safety and ensuring that public spaces remain open to all,” Smith wrote. “One-time public spaces like parks — many of which provide scarce outdoor space in dense, working-class neighborhoods — are filled with thousands of tents and makeshift structures, and are no longer welcoming to the broader community.”

The 9th Circuit’s active judges split 14-13 over whether to re-hear the case from Grants Pass, just short of the needed majority. But such a broad divide on the nation’s largest U.S. appeals court often appears to trigger a review by the Supreme Court.

Under the court’s rules, the lawyers who represented the homeless plaintiffs have 30 days to file a response to the appeal in City of Grants Pass vs. Johnson. If that schedule holds, the justices could decide in late fall whether to hear the case and issue a ruling early next year. scotusblog.com/cases/city-of-boise-idaho-v-martin

 

latimes.com

When Adel Hagekhalil speaks about the future of water in Southern California, he often starts by mentioning the three conduits the region depends on to bring water from hundreds of miles away: the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Colorado River Aqueduct and the California Aqueduct.

Southern California urgently needs to buttress its water resources, he says, by designing the equivalent of a “fourth aqueduct” — not another concrete artery to draw water from distant sources, but a set of projects that will harness local water supplies and help prepare for more intense extremes as temperatures continue to rise.

“The organization is going through a transformation,” Hagekhalil told employees during a recent visit to a water treatment plant. “It’s all about us adapting,” he said, and the water district must prepare for hotter and drier times as global warming continues to undermine the region’s water lifelines in the coming decades. Our climate change challenge

If the Golden State is going to lead the world toward a better, safer future, our political and business leaders — and the rest of us — will have to work harder to rewrite the California narrative. Here’s how we can push the state forward.

For Southern California to adapt, Hagekhalil said, it will need to recycle more wastewater, capture stormwater, clean up contaminated groundwater, and design new infrastructure to more nimbly transport and store water, taking advantage of wet years such as this one to prepare for longer and more severe droughts.

Whether he is ultimately able to deliver on these ambitious goals could be determined in part by the actions of the board that hired him. The MWD’s 38-member board has a history of contentious politics, and resistance to change among some leaders might slow Hagekhalil’s efforts to revamp priorities at the district, where he oversees more than 1,900 employees and more than $2.2 billion in annual spending. Adel Hagekhalil speaks at Weymouth Water Treatment Plant in La Verne.

Adel Hagekhalil, general manager of the MWD, speaks at Weymouth Water Treatment Plant in La Verne.

But Hagekhalil, who previously managed sewer systems and street services for Los Angeles, has a reputation for being an affable, diplomatic manager who isn’t afraid to take on difficult tasks and values hearing from all sides. He has made headway building alliances to advance his goals. And he also has a disarming demeanor, with a playful streak and a knack for using slogans to market his priorities.

He took the job in 2021 after a bitter debate among board members, some of whom said they saw him as too inexperienced in Western state water politics. After the board narrowly voted to hire him, Hagekhalil sought to emphasize unity, and began wearing a blue lapel pin with the slogan “We Are One.”

He regularly hands out the pins to board members, employees and others.

“I’m a believer in branding,” Hagekhalil said. “And I believe that I probably am pretty good at doing it.”

Tracy Quinn, an MWD board member and chief executive of the environmental group Heal the Bay, said she thinks Hagekhalil is succeeding in bringing people together around a vision of holistic water solutions.

“Adel is a convener,” Quinn said. “It’s been really impressive to watch him do what he’s known for: building a bigger tent, bringing people in, getting buy-in.”

Hagekhalil earns $465,000 a year as general manager. The 58-year-old engineer regularly talks with top state leaders and members of Congress. He has built rapport with environmental activists by joining them in virtual meetings to hear their concerns about the climate crisis, conservation efforts and proposed infrastructure projects. Adel Hagekhalil listens during a meeting at the Diemer Water Treatment Plant.

Hagekhalil’s openness to listening is a welcome change and a sign that he is trying to take the MWD in a new direction, says Charming Evelyn, who chairs the Sierra Club’s water committee in Southern California.

Adel Hagekhalil, wearing glasses and a large gray suit, shakes hands with a man wearing a red T shirt while at a presentation

Hagekhalil, who has a reputation for being an affable, diplomatic manager. greets employees during a safety fair at the Diemer Water Treatment Plant in Yorba Linda.

His openness to listening is a welcome change and a sign that he is trying to take the agency in a new direction, said Charming Evelyn, who chairs the Sierra Club’s water committee in Southern California. She said she sees him as a “people pleaser,” who knows what each camp wants to hear and is careful not to antagonize anyone while trying to strike a balance.

“He is walking a tightrope,” Evelyn said, “trying to please the folks that have been there a very, very long time, that don’t like change, and trying to see how he can implement change in increments.”

She said she expects Hagekhalil’s campaign will be a difficult test, a “rough road.”

Hagekhalil is optimistic.

“I think it’s a great opportunity to really reshape the future and build the infrastructure for the next hundred years,” he said. “Time is not on our side. We cannot act with anything less than urgency.”

Hagekhalil said California’s current water challenges demand ambitious innovations on the scale of the works planned more than a century ago by William Mulholland, who led L.A.’s water department and oversaw the construction of the aqueduct that took water from the Eastern Sierra and enabled the rise of Los Angeles. Now, he said, Southern California needs a new “Mulholland moment,” but one based on a new ethic of developing solutions to withstand climate change. Adel Hagekhalil addresses employees during a safety fair at the Diemer Water Treatment Plant.

Adel Hagekhalil says Southern California needs a new “Mulholland moment,” but one based on a new ethic of developing solutions to withstand climate change.

:::

On a recent morning, Hagekhalil met with workers at the Robert B. Diemer Water Treatment Plant in Yorba Linda, where he spoke about the importance of workplace safety and the changes he is prioritizing. He talked about the climate adaptation plan the district is preparing to become more resilient and more self-reliant on local sources.

“What we did the last hundred years was great, but we know that the Colorado River is drying up,” Hagekhalil said. “The future is ensuring that everyone has safe, reliable water across the region, with no one left behind.”

After taking questions, Hagekhalil handed out raffle prizes, including water bottles and earbuds.

Then an employee drove him to the MWD headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. Walking into his office, he passed a wall with rows of black-and-white portraits of the 13 other men who have led the agency since its founding in 1928, followed by a color photo of Hagekhalil smiling.

He has used his office window, which overlooks the 101 Freeway, as a whiteboard of sorts, with a list of five bulleted words written in black marker on the glass: Empower. Sustain. Protect. Adapt. Partner.

Hagekhalil said he distilled his goals into these five categories, which he calls “anchors” to guide the organization. Five 'strategic priorities' written on the window of Adel Hagekhalil's office overlooking Los Angeles

Adel Hagekhalil has written his five “strategic priorities” in marker on his office window overlooking downtown Los Angeles.

In a series of meetings with managers, Hagekhalil discussed a project in the Antelope Valley that will store water underground, efforts to work with partner agencies to bank water elsewhere, and the district’s plans to rework its system to provide redundancy in areas that now rely solely on imported water from Northern California via the State Water Project.

He chatted by phone with Assemblymember Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) about a bill the district is supporting to prohibit the use of drinking water for grass that is purely decorative along roads and outside businesses.

Hagekhalil received an update on a planned project in Carson called Pure Water Southern California, which is slated to become the country’s largest wastewater recycling facility, at a cost of $5 billion to $7 billion. It’s scheduled to deliver its first water as soon as 2028, and later reach full capacity in 2032, treating 150 million gallons a day, enough to supply about half a million homes.

That recycled water is intended to help offset declines in supplies from the shrinking Colorado River — a goal that agencies in Nevada and Arizona have supported by contributing money for the planning work.

Hagekhalil said he expects the share of water that Southern California gets from imported sources, now about 50%, to shrink in the coming decades to roughly 30%. He said that will be driven by expected long-term declines in available supplies from the Colorado River and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a gap that will need to be filled with other supplies.

The district also must prepare for more of the heat-supercharged “climate whiplash” conditions that California has been experiencing, he said, including the driest three-year period on record from 2020-2022, followed by one of the wettest winters in decades.

Even with the state’s reservoirs now nearly full, Hagekhalil said it’s crucial not to lose momentum on building infrastructure projects such as the water recycling facility, because the state could soon be dealing with even more severe bouts of dryness.

Last year, the drought situation was so dire that the district imposed mandatory water restrictions in areas that depend on the State Water Project, affecting nearly 7 million people and leading to a dramatic reduction in water use. Hagekhalil said the shortages could have worsened if the drought had persisted, and he intends to prevent a repeat of — or any scenarios like — the crisis of 2017-18 in Cape Town, South Africa, when residents lined up to fill jugs as declining reservoirs approached a feared “Day Zero.”

“I don’t want people ever to be in a place where they do not have water,” Hagekhalil said. “This cannot happen here.” Stripes of color representing the rising temperatures in California between 1850 to 2020

Hagekhalil’s values and views were partly shaped by his experiences growing up during the civil war in Lebanon, where his Palestinian family lived through bloodshed, hardships and water shortages. For a time in 1982, after Israeli troops invaded, they had no running water at home, so Hagekhalil would line up to fill two jugs at a communal spigot.

“When that water came out and you filled your jugs, you’re coming home, you’d have a big smile,” Hagekhalil said. “I know what the value of water is.”

Later, as fighting raged between the Lebanese military and militia fighters in 1984, his family was living in a second-story apartment when a rocket hit, ripping through the home and exploding on the floor below, killing many neighbors. Hagekhalil, who was then 19, said he remembers his mother had him lie in a bathtub and covered him so he wouldn’t be wounded.

When the family fled to an underground shelter, Hagekhalil carried his grandmother, who was ill. He also carried two suitcases and remembers stepping past dead bodies as he fled.

After a stint living in a hotel, Hagekhalil and his parents took a cab to Syria and boarded a flight out of the country. They moved to Houston, where Hagekhalil’s older brother was living, and embraced their new home.

“Deep inside, when you go through this trauma, it stays with you. And that’s why I don’t like to see people who are traumatized,” Hagekhalil said. “I want to help people.”

He said he isn’t particularly religious, but he follows the teachings of Islam in seeking to care for others. Early in life, Hagekhalil wanted to become a doctor to help save lives. Even though he ended up studying engineering, he said he sees his current work of ensuring people have clean water as being, in a way, about saving lives.

“To me, I’m the top surgeon now,” he said with a chuckle. “So it starts from my dream of being a doctor, to now probably being a water doctor.”

Continuing with the analogy, he said he’s working to “help heal this patient that we’re dealing with because of climate change, to make it continue for the future and live long.”

Doing that requires shifting the agency’s focus from being purely a water importer to being more of a regional steward and caretaker of water, he said, “a co-op to build this reliability system for everyone.” He said the transformation also requires changing the financial model from one that depends on selling imported water to member agencies, to one that will support investments in local infrastructure.

“ ‘How are we going to pay for it’ is going to be the biggest discussion that the board should take on,” he said.

While the agency’s former leaders helped spearhead a controversial state proposal to build a water tunnel in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, Hagekhalil has taken a different approach, saying he hopes to see more analysis of the long-term water-supply benefits that the project would bring.

“We can’t put all our eggs in that one basket. In the past, everyone was focused on the delta as the solution for our future,” he said. “We need to diversify. We need to look at other options.” Hagekhalil seen from behind looking out at a circular rotunda inside a building.

Hagekhalil takes in a view of the lobby at MWD headquarters. He says he’s working to “help heal this patient that we’re dealing with because of climate change.”

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

At the same time, Hagekhalil sees one of his key tasks as addressing the organization’s internal woes, including issues of discrimination and harassment of women, which last year led to a scathing state audit showing the district failed to commit resources to properly investigate complaints of misconduct, among other failings. Hagekhalil tells his managers they are crucial in “creating this culture of inclusion.”

This isn’t the first time Hagekhalil has campaigned for change. In his previous work for the city of L.A., he led various efforts, including reducing sewer spills and experimenting with efforts to cool streets by painting pavement a light shade to reflect sunlight.

At times, he showed his playful side. In the early 2000s, when the city launched a campaign urging restaurants to stop dumping grease into sewers, Hagekhalil dressed up as a superhero called the Grease Avenger, appearing at community events wearing a blue leotard, mask and purple cape. He said the gimmick worked, helping to raise awareness.

Now, his goals are bigger and his responsibilities are weighty. But he said he’s simply building on an approach he has always taken in his work: never saying no to a difficult task.

He said his style as a manager draws on a bit of wisdom he gleaned years ago from the title of a book about stress and spirituality by Brian Luke Seaward: “Stand Like Mountain, Flow Like Water.”

Hagekhalil said he thinks about being strong to face challenges but being “flexible, adaptable and welcoming like water.”

“You can move around the challenges you’re facing, and not be stopped in that effort,” he said.

 

California produces millions of tons of hazardous waste every year — toxic detritus that can leach into groundwater or blow into the air. It’s waste that can explode, spark fires, eat through metal containers, destroy ecosystems and sicken people. It’s dangerous material that we have come to rely on and ignore — the flammable liquids used to cleanse metal parts before painting, the lead and acid in old car batteries and even the shampoos that can kill fish.

It all needs to go somewhere.

But over the past four decades, California’s facilities to manage hazardous waste have dwindled. What’s left is a tattered system of older sites with a troubling history of safety violations and polluted soil and groundwater, a CalMatters investigation has found. Many are operating on expired permits. And most are located in communities of color, often ones with high rates of poverty, despite environmental justice laws meant to ensure that the most disadvantaged don’t also face the greatest pollution exposure.

“It’s difficult to permit a new toxic facility. There’s going to be a lot of resistance to building a new one,” said Bill Magavern, the Coalition for Clean Air’s policy director, who advised on a state report in 2013 that examined California’s hazardous waste permitting process. “So the path of least resistance is keeping some of the old ones going.”

This conflict is playing out in Santa Fe Springs, a city of about 19,000 people in Los Angeles County that houses one of the state’s biggest hazardous waste treatment and recycling facilities, called Phibro-Tech. Last year, state regulators issued a draft of a new five-year permit for the company, which has been running on an expired one since 1996. Community activists and environmental groups are opposed.

Phibro-Tech is one of only 72 permitted destinations for hazardous waste in a state that had more than 400 in the early 1980s. Shipping records show it handles as much as 23,000 tons of hazardous waste a year from some of the biggest West Coast companies, including tech giants Intel and TTM Technologies.

But Phibro-Tech is also a company with a lengthy record of violating laws meant to protect workers, the environment and its neighbors in a low-income Latino community, according to hundreds of pages of inspection reports CalMatters obtained through government databases and public records requests.

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In recent years, California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control inspectors cited Phibro-Tech for leaking containers and cracked containment barriers. They identified poorly maintained wells that might allow toxic waste to seep into the environment and they dinged the company for failing to address one area of contamination on the site in a timely manner.

Among the pollutants state regulators have documented in soil and groundwater under and near the plant are trichloroethylene and hexavalent chromium — the cancer-causing chemical made famous in the movie “Erin Brockovich.”

Other regulators also found problems in the past decade. The Los Angeles basin’s air pollution agency cited the company after its equipment released ammonia gas, which can burn lungs if inhaled. Sanitation system regulators cited the company for discharging wastewater with excess contaminants into sewers, including copper, a hazardous element that can be toxic to aquatic life.

And occupational safety regulators cited the company for unsafe working conditions. Among the more serious incidents: In 2015, a worker making $15.70 an hour slipped in a puddle of spilled acid and got second- and third-degree burns on his legs, feet and genitals, workers’ compensation case file records and inspection reports show. Last year a cracked valve sprayed hydrochloric acid in another worker’s face, leaving him with breathing problems, those documents reveal.

The company’s representatives, in meetings with CalMatters, defended Phibro-Tech’s record. They want the state to approve a new operating document and blamed many of their regulatory violations on what they deem to be an ambiguous and outdated permit. The company has entered into agreements to fix problems found during inspections, and has addressed issues on site. They said residents are in no danger from operations and that contamination on site was from other companies — the legacy of a century of industrial operations there and nearby. And they touted Phibro-Tech’s role in recycling waste that would otherwise be dumped and lead to environmental damage from mining. (Every 55 pounds of copper the company is able to recover from the waste that electronics manufacturers send them is 10,000 pounds of earth that doesn’t need to be excavated in the hunt for precious metals, they said.) A white industrial plant looms in the distance. In the foreground are homes, which don't look far from the plant.

A tower from an industrial plant is visible from the Los Nietos residential neighborhood on June 7, 2023. Part of the community abuts an industrial park in which Phibro-Tech Inc. is also located.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters) Two photos are side by side. On the left is a street-view photo of a Spanish-style house with plants along one of the walls. A mural of the Virgin Mary is on that wall, just above the shorter plants. On the right, a photo of a male street vendor with medium skin tone pushes a cart. He wears a baby blue t-shirt, black baseball hat and dark blue denim jeans.

Left: A Virgen de Guadalupe painted on a home near Norwalk Blvd. in the Los Nietos neighborhood on June 8, 2023. Right: A street vendor in Los Nietos on June 7, 2023. This part of the community abuts the industrial park where Phibro-Tech Inc. is located.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters)

But that’s little comfort to some residents of Los Nietos, in unincorporated Los Angeles County, where the nearest home is roughly 550 feet from Phibro-Tech’s warren of aging tanks and labyrinthine pipes. It’s one of the most environmentally vulnerable areas in California, according to a complicated scoring system the state devised to account for exposure to pollution and health risk because of factors such as poverty.

More than 20 sites generating hazardous waste sit within a mile of this neighborhood, including companies that do chrome plating, manufacture radiators and make batteries.

“We are not a rich people,” said Esther Rojo, whose house is a thousand feet — as the wind blows — from Phibro-Tech. “So they put all of them over here in this area.” An older woman with medium skin tone looks off-camera with a slightly worried look on her face. She has brown shoulder-length hair and wears a patterned shirt with a black and white sleeveless vest over it.

Esther Rojo at her home in the Los Nietos neighborhood on June 7, 2023.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters)

A 2015 state law was supposed to do something about that — by requiring regulators to consider the “cumulative impact” on communities when making permitting decisions. Yet officials never actually adopted the regulations that the law required. The Department of Toxic Substances Control — which refused to be interviewed for this story — is poised to finalize the draft permit for Phibro-Tech later this year.

“We don’t know what to do,” Rojo said. “(Phibro-Tech) got the money. They got the power to stay here.” California’s tattered system

The rules for handling dangerous waste date back to the 1970s, when state and federal officials began trying to define “hazardous.” That’s when they passed laws and started crafting regulations branding certain material with the label based on characteristics including ignitability (would it burst into flames?), corrosivity (could it eat through a metal container?), toxicity (are you more likely to get cancer if you’re exposed to it?) and reactivity (is it unstable and likely to explode?).

Those regulations generally require that hazardous waste go to a specially permitted facility that can treat, store or dispose of the material. But while just about everyone wants consumer products that lead to the creation of hazardous waste, no one wants that waste dumped in their backyard.

In the past 40 years, the number of California facilities that have permits to treat, store or dispose of hazardous waste has dropped by more than 80% — while the number of places that generate this waste grew by more than 70% since 2010, according to a state report released last month. Only 72 permitted facilities remain statewide to handle the waste of about 94,500 generators. As some companies turn to more sustainable practices, California’s volumes of hazardous waste have dropped a modest amount since the 1990’s, state analyses of shipping records show. For example, California shipped about 11% less hazardous waste in 2015 than it did in 1995.

Officials and experts have long recognized that there’s little political will to open new sites to take toxic material. A 2017 state report discussed California’s longstanding efforts to reduce the generation of hazardous waste because of the “difficulty in gaining consensus in the siting of new facilities.” A woman with dark skin tone looks off-camera with a slight smile. She has long braided black hair and wears sunglasses. She has on a black and white long cardigan. She is in front of a lot of plants with big leaves.

Angela Johnson Meszaros, managing attorney at Earthjustice, outside of their offices in downtown Los Angeles on June 8, 2023.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters)

It’s also expensive to try to open a new site. Permitting can take years and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for companies who also “must pay taxes and any other expenses to maintain the property throughout time the permit is being processed, despite receiving no revenue from the facility,” according to the July report.

Perhaps unsurprisingly then, roughly half the hazardous waste generated in California winds up in other states — often ones with weaker environmental regulations, according to a Department of Toxic Substances Control analysis of shipping records. (California’s standards are tougher than the federal ones. So waste considered hazardous in California can sometimes be disposed of at regular landfills in states like Arizona and Utah.) The average distance from a California hazardous waste generator to a destination facility is 500 miles, according to the July report.

CalMatters asked the Department of Toxic Substances Control when it last received a permit application from a company trying to open a business in California to store, treat or dispose of federally defined hazardous waste. “Based on a review of available information,” there doesn’t appear to have been any permit applications for a new commercial facility since the early 1980s, according to the agency.

The toxic material that stays in California goes to a relatively small collection of aging facilities, many of which have a history of regulatory violations and safety lapses, a CalMatters review of permitting and enforcement records found.

Using a list of permitted hazardous waste businesses in California and a database of shipping records, CalMatters identified 41 commercial facilities in California that received at least one shipment of hazardous waste last year. (The rest are largely a mix of military installations and operations that treat their own toxic waste before sending it to another facility, records show.) Among those 41 sites, 24 have been the subject of “corrective action” to clean contamination on their site (some tracing back to earlier owners), 29 were the subject of enforcement action by toxics regulators since 2010, and 11 are operating on expired permits.

“It can’t be that a system that’s held together at best by bubble gum and baling wire is the thing that we’re doing in a developed nation to manage hazardous waste,” said Angela Johnson Meszaros, a managing attorney with the environmental law organization Earthjustice.

State and federal law allows hazardous waste facilities to operate on an expired permit so long as they’re working to get a new one. Companies need to apply six months before the expiration date. But it takes years to process a permit. A recent state law changed that timeline and beginning in 2025 companies will need to apply two years before the expiration date. Still, that’s not always enough time to get it done.

Phibro-Tech’s permit expired in 1996 — making it the oldest so-called “continued permit” in California, state records show.

Johnson Meszaros said outdated operating documents are a safety concern and need to be overhauled “because we understand that you have to go back and look and change permits to address changes to the world around a facility.”

The reasons experts give for the permitting delays are myriad. Complicated and highly technical decisions are being made by a state department that’s long struggled with staffing and turnover, interviews with former agency employees and industry insiders, and a state report on the issue suggest. The process also can require extensive public engagement including open meetings and formal comment periods.

And environmental activists question how motivated companies are to speed the process when they can keep operating without a current permit.

Some advocates and former agency employees also say the Department of Toxic Substances Control tends to push off tough decisions. Regulators can be hesitant to deny a permit because the state needs to have a place to send its hazardous waste.

“For too much of its history (the department) bent over backward to keep facilities open even when they should have been shut down,” said Bill Magavern, who advised on a state commissioned review of the agency’s permitting process a decade ago.

In a prepared statement the department said it “does not take into consideration the state’s hazardous waste capacity when reviewing permit applications.”

“Decisions are based on the facility’s compliance with laws and regulations, and whether operations can be conducted in a manner that is protective of public health and the environment,” the statement said.

The toxics department did deny an updated hazardous waste permit in 2020 to General Environmental Management in Rancho Cordova. It was one of four permit renewals the agency denied since 2010 but the only rejection for a commercial facility authorized to take federally defined hazardous waste, state records show. The company argued in court filings that it didn’t deserve such an “unprecedented administrative decision,” and that its services were “particularly important to Califomia’s safe and effective management of hazardous waste” because there were so few permitted commercial sites left in the state. The facility had been the site of three fires and an explosion since 2011 due to mismanagement, regulators alleged in their own legal filings.

“When your thing is literally on fire, even (the Department of Toxic Substances Control) has to acknowledge it,” said Johnson Meszaros, the Earthjustice attorney. Phibro-Tech’s troubled record An aerial view of the Phibro-Tech Inc. plant in Santa Fe Springs.

An aerial view of the Phibro-Tech Inc. plant in Santa Fe Springs on June 9, 2023. The Los Nietos neighborhood is visible in the distance.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters) Two photos are side by side. On the left is a photo of a train line leading to the Phibro-Tech Inc. plant in Santa Fe Springs. On the right is a photo of industrial tanks and equipment at the Phibro-Tech Inc. plant.

Left: A train line leads to the Phibro-Tech Inc. plant in Santa Fe Springs on June 7, 2023. Right: Industrial tanks and equipment at the Phibro-Tech plant.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters)

Phibro-Tech sits on a 4.8 acre triangle of land just inside the border of Santa Fe Springs.

The site’s industrial roots stretch back to the 1920s. It was a railroad switching station, a foundry and a chemical company before Phibro-Tech’s operations started in 1984. (The company, whose parent corporation is headquartered in New Jersey, had a different name but the fundamental control has been the same since 1984, Phibro-Tech’s attorney said.)

The company’s specialty is recycling the corrosive liquids that electronics manufacturers use to etch patterns on the surface of microchips and circuit boards. Company representatives say it’s the only site west of the Mississippi that recycles so-called “spent etchants.”

The company separates out the metals and cleans the liquid — selling the treated etching solution back to the tech industry and making copper products for manufacturers.

“If not for Phibro-Tech, the California electronics industry would need to send all of its spent etch to landfills or deep wells at a significant cost to the environment, or ship it across country, making the industry less competitive,” according to a letter from the electronics manufacturing trade group IPC to state regulators in 2017.

Phibro-Tech also takes giant bags of rust from steel mills and old metal cans from canneries and uses them to make ferric and ferrous chloride — which are used to clean drinking water and control odor at wastewater treatment plants. It recovers metals such as nickel from liquid waste and sends it to smelters. And it treats brine from water treatment operations contaminated with hexavalent chromium. Some of its operations use raw materials and aren’t regulated under the hazardous waste permit.

The California Water Service Company, a large investor-owned utility, told regulators in a letter that Phibro-Tech was a “vital service” provider.

But records show decades of problems at the site. The Department of Toxic Substances Control’s online permitting and enforcement database shows the agency’s inspectors have identified violations at 32 different inspections since 1996. In 19 of those inspections the company was cited for so-called “Class 1” violations — the most serious designation suggesting a significant threat to people or the environment.

Some of the violations were repeated through the years despite the company’s promises to change its behavior. In 1999 it committed to stop storing hazardous waste in unauthorized areas and yet inspectors found that “for at least 167 days following Respondent’s execution of the 1999 Consent Order, beginning within a week of that date, Respondent continuously stored hazardous waste outside permitted storage areas,” according to a 2003 consent order.

Enforcement records show regulators found waste stored in unauthorized areas again in 2005, 2008, 2011 and 2015.

“Phibro-Tech takes compliance very seriously,” said David Thaete, the facility’s environmental health and safety manager.

In a meeting with Phibro-Tech’s attorney, plant manager and Thaete as well as written responses to questions, company officials blamed some agency violations on ambiguities in the old permit and seemingly arbitrary or shifting enforcement.

For example, they pointed out that toxics regulators have known for years the site was treating material in certain equipment not permitted for handling hazardous waste and yet decades passed before regulators issued citations for some of those longstanding practices. (After inspectors cited the company in 2012 for operating one particular tank without a permit, the company got the tank — which had been in operation for years — permitted “and it now operates pursuant to the same procedures as before,” according to an email from the company’s attorney.)

Phibro-Tech representatives noted that after the company disputed certain violations, state officials reduced the severity of some and eliminated others from a scoring system the department created to hold troubled companies accountable. The reps also said the company has had fewer violations in recent years.

As for storing waste in unauthorized areas, a written statement from the company called the 1999 violation “a unique situation” when a competitor closed and Phibro-Tech suddenly got an influx of waste that exceeded its permitted storage capacity.

The later violations “can be considered to be ‘repeat violations’ only based on a very general characterization of storing hazardous waste in an unpermitted area, but the underlying facts do not compare,” according to the company.

It’s not just state toxics regulators who have found problems. Multiple cases of water sit in a house.

A stack of water bottles at Esther Rojo’s home, which sits near the Phibro-Tech Inc. plant, on June 7, 2023.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters)

The Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts identified 17 violations since 2015 including instances where Phibro-Tech’s wastewater had excess contaminants such as copper, and oil and grease, according to documents CalMatters obtained through a public records request. Most resulted in just a verbal warning and CalMatters found no evidence that the wastewater — which is treated before it’s released into the ocean — harmed the environment. In February, Phibro-Tech discharged nearly 7,300 gallons of wastewater with a copper concentration nearly 14 times the permitted limit, according to inspection reports. The sanitation districts didn’t issue a notice of violation for that release, which the company blamed on operator error. State toxics regulators did issue a citation.

Cal/OSHA, the agency that enforces workplace safety regulations, identified 13 violations in four inspections since 2015, its records show, though none of those violations were deemed “serious” — those that could cause a death, illness or serious injury and that the employer could have known about.

The company’s rate of worker injuries and illnesses has been worse than the industry average in recent years — more than double the average rate for hazardous waste treatment and disposal sites in 2019 — although it “has been trending downward,” according to an outside audit of Phibro-Tech that regulators required the company to file.

The company says it “takes occupational safety seriously,” rigorously trains workers and makes changes as necessary to keep them safe.

While workers can choose to leave the company, many residents nearby don’t have that choice. Neighbors to toxic waste recycler A man with medium skin tone poses for a photo, in front of the nearby plant. He is wearing a dark blue t-shirt and is holding a paper file box.

Jaime Sanchez of “Neighbors Against Phibro-Tech” near the processing plant in Santa Fe Springs on June 7, 2023.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters)

On a recent afternoon, several long-time Los Nietos residents gathered on Esther Rojo’s shaded patio to talk about the company. Sitting around a picnic table with instant coffee and pan dulce, talk often returned to the smells that come with living next to an industrial area — near hulking mystery tanks, rumbling tanker trucks and railroad cars.

Sometimes the odor that has wafted into yards and schools and bedrooms is chemical, like ammonia, and stings their throats when inhaled, they said. Sometimes, it’s like rotten eggs. It has come when kids are playing in the street on hot summer days. Parents call them inside where it becomes a game — running around, closing windows. The fortunate have air conditioners. The less fortunate sweat it out.

“Oftentimes the smells happen late in the evening or very, very early in the morning,” said Jaime Sanchez, 68, who has lived all his life in the community and is helping organize a loose collection of area residents calling themselves Neighbors Against Phibro-Tech.

Sanchez got involved in environmental activism around 2011. It was after Phibro-Tech pushed for an updated permit that would allow it to not only keep operating but also to start treating oily water in addition to the various chemicals already handled on site. His neighbor, Rojo, told him what was going on and he started attending community meetings.

“I was shocked and dismayed this was occurring in my own backyard,” Sanchez said. State regulators ultimately didn’t finalize a draft permit at the time, effectively allowing Phibro-Tech to keep operating on the expired one as the law allows.

His census tract has more of a “pollution burden” than 97% of the state, according to California’s CalEnviroScreen. That’s a tool the state developed a decade ago to begin tracking issues of environmental justice.

Sanchez’ Los Nietos neighborhood has more asthma, cardiovascular disease, unemployment and “linguistic isolation” than the majority of California, according to the scoring system. It also has greater-than-average smog, fine particles, traffic and risk from lead paint. The neighborhood scores 100 out of 100 for proximity to hazardous waste.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to blame the conditions — and certainly specific health problems — on any one company, environmental health experts say. Residents described mystery ailments, and can’t help but wonder if their industrial neighbors are to blame for what they experienced: asthma, itchy skin, rare liver cancer, a child with an autoimmune disease, a dog with seizures, dead birds. A row of blue (and one grey) semi-tankers parking on a lot.

Phibro-Tech Inc. semi-tankers at the Santa Fe Springs plant on June 8, 2023.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters) Two photos are side by side. On the left is a groundwater monitoring well at Phibro-Tech Inc. in Santa Fe Spring. On the right is an air quality monitor on a fence line at Phibro-Tech Inc. in Santa Fe Spring.

Left: A groundwater monitoring well at Phibro-Tech Inc. in Santa Fe Spring on June 8, 2023. Right: An air quality monitor on a fence line at Phibro-Tech.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters)

Phibro-Tech hired consultants to conduct several health risk assessments over the years, which the company submitted to regulators. The most recent filed with the toxics department are from 2015 and analyzed both ongoing operations as well as historical contamination on site. State regulators ultimately approved the assessments, which found no “significant health risk” to workers and nearby residents, according to the agency’s online permitting information site.

Company officials said they’re often unfairly blamed for sounds and smells from other industrial sites. They’re quick to cite the example of a resident complaining about a giant tower that was actually across the street from Phibro-Tech.

“We said ‘That’s not us.’ And she said ‘Yes, it is,’” the company’s environmental attorney Zachary Walton recounted.

But regulators have documented pollution in the soil and groundwater under the site, including trichloroethylene (TCE) and hexavalent chromium, chemicals that have been linked to cancer. Advocates said the company has been slow to clean up contamination — putting the nearby community at risk and calling into question the company’s commitment to health and safety. The state toxics department cited Phibro-Tech in recent years for failing to finish remediating one contaminated area in a timely manner that it — and regulators — had known about for decades, records show. (The company did clean the area and toxics regulators are assessing the results, records and interviews show.)

Phibro-Tech officials defended the company’s record on pollution. They say the toxic material found in soil on site was from other companies or locations. Groundwater contamination is part of a plume from an old chemical company nearby that migrated across the area, they contend, adding that there’s no evidence the current operations are causing any environmental damage.

Several long-time residents of Los Nietos said they only drink bottled water, fearing contamination. The community’s drinking water, which doesn’t come from the groundwater basin beneath Phibro-Tech, meets state and federal standards for contaminants, according to water agency data. Nonetheless its drinking water scores high for contamination compared to most of the state, according to CalEnviroScreen.

“We completely understand the concerns by the community,” said David Thaete, the facility’s environmental health and safety manager. The company has cleaned up historical contamination on site and continues to regularly monitor groundwater and inspect equipment, he said. He added risk assessments “have demonstrated that the conditions of the plant are completely protective of both our workers and the surrounding community.”

But given the environmental risks in the area and the company’s history of regulatory violations, residents don’t understand how the Department of Toxic Substances Control could let Phibro-Tech keep operating. There are five schools within a mile of the company.

“The Department of Toxic Substances Control’s mandate is to protect the public. In reality they do not,” Jaime Sanchez said. “They’ve maintained the status quo.” Systemic problems for hazardous waste watchdog A row of at least seven binders on the floor.

Binders with Phibro-Tech Inc.’s permit application at the Los Nietos Library, a Los Angeles County library in Whittier, on June 9, 2023.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters)

Officials have long tried to fix systemic permitting problems at the toxics agency, including the years-long delays.

In 2013 the department hired an outside consultant to review its permitting process. According to the consultant’s report, permit renewals averaged 4.3 years — and some took far longer. The report blamed staffing issues, a lack of standardized processes, unclear criteria for denial and poor management.

“As is readily apparent, there is a tension between monitoring existing facilities to ensure the protection of public health and the environment and ensuring that these existing facilities continue to operate so as to provide adequate capacity to prevent illegal disposal of hazardous waste,” according to the consultant’s report.

Among the concerns environmental groups raised to the report’s authors: lack of a clear standard for when to revoke or deny a permit. As a result, some companies limped along in a state of limbo.

Two years after that report, lawmakers crafted legislation to improve the permitting process and strengthen criteria for approval. The resulting law required that toxics regulators consider a company’s history of violations as well as environmental justice issues that a site’s operations might pose when deciding whether to renew a permit. The law required California to adopt regulations guiding how the Department of Toxic Substances Control would do that by the beginning of 2018.

But the agency has only partially complied with the law.

It created a scoring system to analyze companies’ past violations. A company with a certain number of serious violations — often those posing a significant threat to people or the environment — now needs to submit an audit and make changes as necessary. The most troubled risk being shut down. Phibro-Tech was required to submit an audit last year after posting one of the worst scores in the state. A photo of outside of the Phibro Tech office.

The entrance to the Phibro-Tech Inc. office in Santa Fe Springs on June 8, 2023.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters)

But more than five years after the deadline, California still hasn’t adopted another major piece of the law: regulations for considering “cumulative impact” on communities in permitting decisions. That means there’s no requirement to look at just how much risk residents in a place like Los Nietos are already facing when the state is deciding whether to allow a hazardous waste site to keep operating.

“It’s been frustrating because it’s been years already,” said Grecia Orozco, staff attorney at the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, an environmental advocacy organization involved in crafting the 2015 legislation.

Why does it matter? Every single one of the 16 commercial treatment or disposal sites permitted to handle federally defined hazardous waste and that received such shipments last year abuts a community of color with a high rate of poverty, state shipping records and demographic data shows.

“They’re the ones bearing the brunt of these harms,” Orozco said.

The Department of Toxic Substances Control refused to be interviewed for this story, but did email responses to a list of written questions.

“We acknowledge that there are industrial facilities too close to homes and schools, and that historic decisions made by governments and private industry have resulted in disadvantaged communities bearing the brunt of environmental harms,” according to the agency’s prepared response. “This is not fair, and we as a State have a lot of work to do to untangle and repair the damage that has been done.”

Asked about the status of regulations to make a review of environmental justice-related factors a requirement, the agency said in its statement that it plans to have a virtual meeting this summer to get more feedback from stakeholders.

Still, the future of those regulations is unclear.

The Department of Toxic Substances Control is also in the midst of a legislatively mandated effort to craft a statewide hazardous waste management plan. Its July report, part of that process, acknowledged the requirement for regulators to consider factors including “cumulative impact” when deciding where to let hazardous waste sites operate.

“While these are important regulations, as protection of our most vulnerable communities is paramount, their potential impact on the number of permitted hazardous waste facilities is an important consideration for the Plan to further examine,” the report stated. Officials should also consider whether the additional safeguards are “justified,” according to the report. Decision near for Phibro-Tech

Last summer, the Department of Toxic Substances Control released a draft of a new five-year permit for Phibro-Tech and solicited comments from the public.

“These new permit conditions would enhance protections and make them more enforceable,” according to a department statement.

Community and environmental activists met the proposal with heavy resistance. Earthjustice is now working with Neighbors Against Phibro-Tech to oppose the permit renewal.

Among the objections Earthjustice raised in its letter to state regulators were the pollution burden the low-income Latino community already faces, the company’s history of violations, the lack of a full environmental review for the new permit and that Phibro-Tech has been “very, very slow to address” soil and groundwater contamination on site.

The Los Angeles County Public Health Department also raised concerns, calling for more cleanup of contaminated soil at Phibro-Tech and more monitoring to ensure toxic chemicals don’t leave the site.

“Periodic monitoring for migration would provide crucial data to protect community health and safety,” according to a comment letter signed by Barbara Ferrer, the department’s director.

Phibro-Tech also submitted a letter to regulators. They asked for a 10-year permit, pointing out the agency recently approved new permits of that length for two facilities with an even worse record of violations than Phibro-Tech. “This establishes a precedent that requires a similar result for Phibro-Tech,” according to a letter signed by the facility’s health and safety manager, Thaete.

The toxics department expects to make a final permit decision in December. Given the history, many people expect further delays. And no matter the decision, an appeal seems likely. A photo of the outside of multiple homes. Telephone wires connect above their roofs.

Homes in the Los Nietos community visible from Esther Rojo's backyard on June 7, 2023.

(Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters)

In the meantime, hazardous waste continues to arrive at Phibro-Tech. And Los Nietos residents continue to meet at the local library or in backyards to strategize ways to be heard.

“We will continue to fight and we will continue to challenge them,” said Jaime Sanchez, the local activist helping organize his neighbors.

He’s happy at least his adult daughter managed to get away from Phibro-Tech and has since moved to Hacienda Heights, a diverse community in unincorporated Los Angeles County.

But he learned recently that she now lives just four miles from another hazardous waste facility, the state’s last major recycler of old car batteries — Quemetco. That company has its own history of contamination and violating environmental regulations. The facility’s permit expired in 2015.

“It’s a reminder that the struggle for justice remains,” Sanchez said. How we did it

CalMatters earlier this year investigated the large volume of hazardous waste California sends to its neighbors. Roughly half the toxic detritus generated in California crosses the border — often to states with weaker environmental regulations. Some advocates and officials decried the situation and called on California to handle more of its own waste.

We wanted to understand more about the infrastructure that exists in the state and whether it’s up to the task of handling more of this toxic burden. To do that we used the Department of Toxic Substances Control’s permitting and enforcement database — called Envirostor — to research permitted hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facilities. The database shows whether sites have expired permits, have documented contamination and if toxics regulators have found violations during inspections.

CalMatters also looked at shipping manifest data in a separate database called the Hazardous Waste Tracking System. The system shows the volume and type of waste permitted facilities receive. And we used a third tool, called CalEnviroScreen, that shows the pollution burden and demographic characteristics of census tracts around the state.

Combining the three tools, we were able to see where waste is going in the state, the safety concerns at those facilities, and the communities burdened with these operations.

We found the company with the oldest expired permit is close to getting a new one. To research the company, we read more than 1,000 pages of inspection reports and regulatory filings obtained from government databases and public records requests. We visited Los Nietos, the community neighboring Phibro-Tech, in June to talk to residents and toured the Santa Fe Springs facility and met with company representatives.

The numbers in the overall analysis are sure to change over time. Regulators are continuously updating the various databases — sometimes to correct errors. For example, during the course of reporting the number of permitted facilities dropped slightly and shipping data changed as new manifests were added to the system or corrected. Still, the analysis revealed that the state’s system for handling hazardous waste has a history of contamination and violations, and the communities most burdened typically have more people of color and a high percentage of residents living in poverty.

 

latimes.com

The scandal-plagued, corruption-prone Los Angeles City Council has struck again. You’d think a body that has had four members charged with corruption in three years would be eager to demonstrate its commitment to ethics and government oversight.

But last Friday, without any public discussion or reason given, the council unanimously rejected a seemingly well-qualified nominee to the Ethics Commission, which is the watchdog over the city’s elected officials.

It’s rare for the council to block a nominee to a city commission — appointments are typically approved without controversy. It’s even more unusual when the nominee has widespread support from neighborhood councils: Jamie York is a member of the Reseda Neighborhood Council and advocate for ethics and political reform who has worked in the past on political campaigns and as a fundraiser. She was nominated to the commission by City Controller Kenneth Mejia.

What makes this rejection especially galling is that the failure to fill the seat makes it impossible for the Ethics Commission to do its work, which includes enforcing campaign finance, contracting, lobbying and conflict of interest laws. The commission canceled its August meeting and will not be able to decide enforcement cases or move forward policy proposals because there are three vacancies on the five-member panel.

The mayor, city attorney, controller, council president and council president pro tempore each get to choose a commissioner, and the full council confirms the appointments. Council leadership hasn’t nominated commissioners for their two open seats (one has been open since December). Those vacancies along with York’s rejection mean the commission does not have a quorum to conduct business. The council must fill its two positions immediately.

As for the York nomination, there were no concerns raised publicly or privately with Mejia or York. At the council meeting on Friday, there no discussion, just a vote to disapprove the nomination initiated on the floor by Councilmember Monica Rodriguez and seconded by Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

In the days after the vote, some information has trickled out. On Tuesday, Council President Paul Krekorian said in a statement that he had reservations about appointing an outspoken advocate to the Ethics Commission — a quasi-judicial panel that makes enforcement decisions and metes out penalties when elected officials and candidates run afoul of ethics laws. The controller “certainly should have known that the job of an Ethics Commissioner is fundamentally different from that of an advocate,” Krekorian said.

York said she was told that organized labor groups lobbied against her appointment in part because she led the push for stronger regulations over — wait for it — lobbying by labor unions and others.

There was indeed a behind-the-scenes push from labor to oppose York, according to council staff. Asked about his vote against York at a neighborhood council meeting Monday, Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez said he didn’t support her because she opposes efforts to exempt union employees from having to register as lobbyists, Knock L.A. journalist Jon Peltz reported.

That labor groups were able to quietly kill an Ethics Commission appointment with no debate or discussion speaks to the power and influence of labor in L.A. politics, which is exactly why York and the Times editorial board oppose exempting union leaders from the more stringent lobbying disclosure rules.

If council members were concerned about York’s position on this issue, they should have aired those concerns publicly before taking the vote. Or at least given Mejia and York the opportunity to respond. Instead, the nomination was summarily tanked with no transparency.

This only builds the case for giving the Ethics Commission more independence from the politicians it’s supposed to regulate. There are too many examples of elected officials manipulating or trying to suppress the Ethics Commission. The City Council and mayor control the commission’s budget, which determines the size of its staff of investigators and enforcers. In 2018, a former Ethics Commission staffer filed a whistleblower complaint after being told by commission management that a council member had threatened to cut the department’s budget if it didn’t soften rules on gifts for politicians, according to a Times story.

The City Council can also refuse to act on the commission’s recommended changes in ethics law. The Ethics Commission has been trying for 15 years to pass revisions to the city’s lobbying law to make paid advocacy more transparent and the rules easier to enforce. The council repeatedly refused to consider the proposals, and they died.

The commission itself has recommended a dozen changes to the City Charter that would give it more independence, including setting a minimum budget so politicians can’t cut funding to pressure ethics staff. The LA Governance Reform Project, a group of political science scholars, has also recommended giving the commission power to bypass the City Council to put proposed policies on the ballot for voters to decide.

The latest controversy shows it’s time to reconsider the size and appointment process for commissioners. Other cities, such as Long Beach, have some ethics commission seats reserved for nonpolitical appointments who are not chosen and confirmed by the people they regulate.

For all the talk from City Council leaders that they’re pro-reform, incidents like this is more evidence that L.A.’s political culture is broken and needs a complete overhaul.

 

A new powerful antibiotic, isolated from bacteria that could not be studied before, seems capable to combat harmful bacteria and even multi-resistant 'superbugs'. Named Clovibactin, the antibiotic appears to kill bacteria in an unusual way, making it more difficult for bacteria to develop any resistance against it. Researchers from Utrecht University, Bonn University (Germany), the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), Northeastern University of Boston (USA), and the company NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge, USA) now share the discovery of Clovibactin and its killing mechanism in the scientific journal Cell.

Urgent need for new antibiotics

Antimicrobial resistance is a major problem for human health and researchers worldwide are looking for new solutions. "We urgently need new antibiotics to combat bacteria that become increasingly resistant to most clinically used antibiotics," says Dr. Markus Weingarth, a researcher from the Chemistry Department of Utrecht University.

However, the discovery of new antibiotics is a challenge: few new antibiotics have been introduced into the clinics over the last decades, and then they often resemble older, already known antibiotics.

"Clovibactin is different," says Weingarth. "Since Clovibactin was isolated from bacteria that could not be grown before, pathogenic bacteria have not seen such an antibiotic before and had no time to develop resistance."

Antibiotic from bacterial dark matter

Clovibactin was discovered by NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, a small US-based early-stage company, and microbiologist Prof. Kim Lewis from Northeastern University, Boston. Earlier, they developed a device that allows to grow 'bacterial dark matter', which are so-called unculturable bacteria. Intriguingly, 99% of all bacteria are 'unculturable' and could not be grown in laboratories previously, hence they could not be mined for novel antibiotics. Using the device, called iCHip, the US researchers discovered Clovibactin in a bacterium isolated from a sandy soil from North Carolina: E. terrae ssp. Carolina.

In the joint Cell publication, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals shows that Clovibactin successfully attacks a broad spectrum of bacterial pathogens. It was also successfully used to treated mice infected with the superbug Staphylococcus aureus.

A broad target spectrum

Clovibactin appears to have an unusual killing mechanism. It targets not just one, but three different precursor molecules that are all essential for the construction of the cell wall, an envelope-like structure that surrounds bacteria. This was discovered by the group of Prof. Tanja Schneider from the University of Bonn in Germany, one of the Cell paper's co-authors.

Schneider: "The multi-target attack mechanism of Clovibactin blocks bacterial cell wall synthesis simultaneously at different positions. This improves the drug's activity and substantially increases its robustness to resistance development."

A cage-like structure

How exactly Clovibactin blocks the synthesis of the bacterial cell wall was unraveled by the team of Dr. Markus Weingarth from Utrecht University. They used a special technique called solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) that allows to study Clovibactin's mechanism under similar conditions as in bacteria.

"Clovibactin wraps around the pyrophosphate like a tightly sitting glove. Like a cage that encloses its target" says Weingarth. This is was gives Clovibactin its name, which is derived from Greek word "Klouvi," which means cage. The remarkable aspect of Clovibactin's mechanism is that it only binds to the immutable pyrophosphate that is common to cell wall precursors, but it ignores that variable sugar-peptide part of the targets. "As Clovibactin only binds to the immutable, conserved part of its targets, bacteria will have a much harder time developing any resistance against it. In fact, we did not observe any resistance to Clovibactin in our studies."

Fibrils capture the targets

Clovibactin can do even more. Upon binding the target molecules, it self-assembles into large fibrils on the surface of bacterial membranes. These fibrils are stable for a long time and thereby ensure that the target molecules remain sequestered for as long as necessary to kill bacteria.

"Since these fibrils only form on bacterial membranes and not on human membranes, they are presumably also the reason why Clovibactin selectively damages bacterial cells but is not toxic to human cells," says Weingarth. "Clovibactin hence has potential for the design of improved therapeutics that kill bacterial pathogens without resistance development.."

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