Martin Quigley, director of the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum & Botanic Garden, offers tips and tricks to help save gardens inundated with water during these historic storms.
Opinion from Community Voices
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
‘It’s undignified’: Pajaro residents march to voice frustration, call for more help
Close to 200 people marched through Pajaro on Thursday to the bridge separating the Monterey County agricultural town from Watsonville, on the Santa Cruz County side of the Pajaro River. They voiced frustrations at what they say is a slow response and lack of help after the March 11 failure of the river’s levee flooded Pajaro and left many homes damaged or uninhabitable. Here’s what Lookout’s Kevin Painchaud saw and heard.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
I will no longer help bankroll climate destruction; seniors, join me and pull money from big banks
Santa Cruz lawyer Brian Unitt admits he has “benefited from the fossil fuel economy” in his 65 years. That’s why he now wants to do his part for the future and is pulling his money from big banks — which have loaned or underwritten more than $800 billion in fossil fuel financing since 2015, he says. He closed his checking and savings and credit card accounts with companies like Chase and Bank of America and moved his money to more climate-friendly institutions. He challenges all people over 60 — who he says control up to 70% of the money in the U.S. — to do the same.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
The California Coastal Commission: It’s critically important, but it increasingly overreaches
The California Coastal Commission keeps our beaches and scenic views accessible to all, and that is a good thing, writes Lookout political columnist Mike Rotkin, who fought to pass the 1976 Coastal Act that followed the commission’s establishment. But Rotkin does wonder why the commission is weighing in on so many recent issues in Santa Cruz — from hotels to oversized vehicle parking — and suggests commissioners might be setting rules in Santa Cruz that don’t apply to other communities, including Carmel and Monterey.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
On Jack O’Neill’s 100th birthday, let’s celebrate ocean protection and education
People associate Jack O’Neill, who died in 2017 at the age of 94, with inventing the wetsuit, which allowed him and other surfers to spend more time in cold water. As we approach what would have been his 100th birthday on Monday, Tracey Weiss, executive director of O’Neill Sea Odyssey, encourages us to celebrate Jack’s role in ocean protection and education. Jack called the program, which focuses on educating youth about the ocean, his “greatest achievement.”
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Climate injustice is happening in Pajaro: It’s our moral obligation to fix the system
Climate change is here and it’s our moral obligation to act, says Sarah Newkirk, executive director of the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. We need to adapt faster to climate change, speed up federal responses, including funding and — most critically — help people affected, she says. That means assisting the people of Pajaro who have lost homes and also future income, since many are farmworkers and fields are now too flooded to work.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
We are planning commissioners: Santa Cruz can and should do better on affordable housing
Two veteran planning commissioners want Santa Cruz decision-makers to require more affordable housing. The city council, Cyndi Dawson and Sean Maxwell say, is too often more aligned with developers.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Stop the inflammatory comments at county fair board meetings; let’s ‘right the fairgrounds ship’
Misinformation is causing “the recent, inflammatory public behavior at the fair board meetings,” says longtime Santa Cruz County Fair volunteer Becky Steinbruner, who has attended meetings regularly since 2020. She insists new president Don Dietrich is doing a good job and has tough work to clean up years of neglect and lack of oversight. The fairgrounds has to follow state regulations, she writes — something she believes Dave Kegebein, the ousted fair manager and CEO, never did.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Jazmine’s story: Where did the unhoused from the Benchlands go?
Lookout has been wondering what happened to the 250-300 people who lived in Santa Cruz’s largest homeless encampment, known as the Benchlands, after the city closed it in the fall. Most are untracked and untrackable, as they didn’t utilize city services. But we kept asking and looking. In this video, Community Voices talks to Jazmine, a massage therapist, whom we interviewed in August when she lived in a tent in the Benchlands. She now lives in a small trailer in the Santa Cruz Mountains. She tells us her post-Benchlands experience, talks about what it feels like to be unhoused, how easy it is to fall and how hard it is to get back up.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Community Voices: Pajaro after the flood
In a video for Lookout’s Community Voices opinion section, photojournalist Kevin Painchaud talks to residents who have stayed behind in Pajaro after the small agricultural town was flooded when a levee along the swollen Pajaro River failed. If they leave Pajaro, to seek medicine or medical treatment, for example, they say they won’t be able to return.