In today's newscast:
Update on the September 18 battery flareup
Monterey County supervisors are again asking how long clean-up at the Vistra battery plant in Moss Landing will take.
Supervisors received a verbal update about the battery energy storage location days after a flareup burned 1,300 hundred batteries on the site. Now 1,200 remain.
District 1 Supervisor Luis Alejo asked during Tuesday's board of supervisors meeting, "Is there any idea how long that process will take to remove the additional 1,200 batteries?"
“No,” was the response from Nicki Fowler with the county’s environmental health bureau.
But, she says the remaining batteries are 50 to 75 yards from the area that recently burned, "so they're not in an area that was vulnerable to additional damage or aggravation from last Friday's event."
Since the January 2025 fire that destroyed the energy storage plant, 39,000 batteries have been de-energized and removed, according to the county's department of emergency services.
Work eligibility bill for undocumented students vetoed
Gov. Gavin Newsom has once again blocked a plan to let undocumented students work on college campuses.
California’s UC, CSU, and community college systems enroll an estimated 60,000 students without legal status.
While these students can get state-backed financial aid, they’re ineligible for most federal grants and loans.
Supporters of the bill said opening up campus jobs to these students would allow them to get paychecks safely on campuses, instead of working for cash under the table.
Newsom vetoed a nearly identical bill two years ago. In this year’s veto and the earlier one, the governor expressed concern that the Trump administration would target universities if they let students work on campus.
That reporting comes from our partners at CalMatters.
