••• “Tajiguas Landfill Officially Opens Recycling, Methane-Energy Plant […] Santa Barbara County Officials Celebrate Turning Trash into Black Gold.” Photo courtesy Santa Barbara County Public Works. —Independent
••• Los Angeles County is once again requiring everyone, vaccinated or not, to wear masks indoors. (Santa Barbara County has yet to follow suit.) —Los Angeles Times
••• “Santa Barbara City Administrator Paul Casey Announces Departure Effective Sept. 10 […] Casey has led the city staff since 2015 and says he is ‘ready to move on.’ […] Casey had been well-regarded by planners, executives and members of the City Council for decades, but the past 18 months saw him face challenges and criticism on multiple fronts. […] Developers and business owners have long complained about a slow permitting process, and an adversarial planning department.” The city council will choose a successor. —Noozhawk
••• “The University of California system announced on Thursday that it will require all students, staff, and faculty to be fully vaccinated against the novel coronavirus before they will be allowed back on campus in the fall, with exemptions for medical or religious reasons.” —Noozhawk
••• “Santa Barbara County Moves to Increase Large-Scale Solar Operations […] Zoning Laws Would Need to Be Changed and Vacant Land Found.” —Independent
••• “In recent months doctors at Cottage Health are seeing an increase in stingray sting patients.” —KEYT
••• The rash of catalytic-converter thefts continues, most recently in Carpinteria. —Independent
••• From a Sierra Club article about the town of Pacific Grove: “Goleta has also sometimes called itself Butterfly Town, with some justification. Its [monarch] counts were once even higher than Pacific Grove’s—60,000 butterflies at two main local sites. This year, Goleta volunteers also counted exactly zero butterflies hanging on the area’s already drought-ravaged eucalyptus trees. And so it has gone: Counts at the mouth of Carpinteria Creek plummeted from 50,000 to 17; at Santa Barbara’s Atascadero Creek they went from 20,000 to two; and at San Luis Obispo’s Montaña de Oro State Park, from 50,000 to that loneliest number: one.”
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I remember when there were so many butterflies hanging out in the eucalyptus trees at Butterfly Beach that you could barely see the leaves and it looked like there were just branches of butterflies.
So very sad.