The West Basin Municipal Water District (West Basin), a member of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, is the water wholesale agency proudly serving the South Bay region. Working in partnership with the SBCCOG’s South Bay Environmental Service Center (SBESC), it works to ensure water reliability in both wet [...]
A tiny home village has opened in Torrance to temporarily shelter people experiencing homelessness until they can be connected to a home of their own. From left: SBCCOG Administrative Officer Lara Gerges, SBCCOG Analyst Laurie Jacobs, analyst; SBCCOG Executive Director Jacki Bacharach; Los Angeles County 4th District Supervisor Janice [...]
Contributed by: City of Torrance Human Resources, Learning and Development, and Economic Development The Great Resignation describes the higher-than-usual number of employees voluntarily leaving their jobs starting in late 2020 following COVID-19 shutdowns. A Pew Research survey found the top reasons U.S. workers quit were low pay (63%), no opportunities [...]
In 2018, West Carson resident Cynthia Babich was conducting door-to-door outreach in her neighborhood. She was working to inform the community about upcoming meetings to solicit input on a proposed park project for a community with zero acres of park space. She knocked on a door at a home adjacent [...]
When Jonathan Pacheco Bell conducted zoning enforcement for the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning from 2006 to 2020, he frequently encountered homeowners who had built smaller, detached residential dwellings, known as accessory dwelling units (ADUs), on the same lot as their single-family homes. Often these units, nicknamed “granny [...]
West Basin Municipal Water District has installed more than 80 water bottle filling stations in or on the premises of public facilities throughout its service area through grant programs. In doing so, an estimated 110,000 plastic water bottles annually have been removed from the local waste stream.
By D. Damon Willens Ten years ago, if someone had mentioned the word “drones,” one would have thought about far-away wars and unmanned aircraft firing missiles at unsuspecting targets. Yet only a few years later, drones have become a part of everyday life for millions of people. Hobbyists, commercial users [...]
Students took home kits that included LED light bulbs, efficient-flow showerheads and faucet aerators. Third and fourth-grade classrooms from Towne Avenue Elementary School in Carson received two separate grants, totaling $2,000 for their participation in a program to help their families become more energy-efficient at home. Through the [...]
A worker walks through a completed portion of the tunnel. A modern tunnel boring machine (TBM) named Rachel has been quietly building an 18-foot diameter, 7-milelong tunnel from Carson to San Pedro. This tunnel will convey cleaned water from the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts’ largest wastewater treatment [...]
On February 18, 2015, two workers suffered minor injuries and debris was dispersed into the surrounding community following an explosion in the gasoline processing unit at the ExxonMobil Refinery in Torrance. The incident brought to light the need to change the way communication is coordinated during community disasters. “There were [...]
