Angela Johnston

If you drive east on the Bay Bridge out of San Francisco and look down at Treasure Island, it’s hard to miss what look like enormous piles of dirt. These mounds are actually the remains of old Navy barracks, ground into pieces.

Almost everyone who flies into San Francisco or San Jose airport has seen it -- a vibrant patchwork quilt of colorful water. There, on the southern edge of the San Francisco Bay, you can see bright pinks, pumpkin oranges, neon greens and deep magentas, contrasted against the dark blues of the natural bay water. The last time KALW listener Donna Staton peered out an airplane window, she saw it, too.

The Environmental Protection Agency is one of the hardest-hit agencies in President Trump's preliminary budget. The blueprint slashes the EPA's budget by nearly one third.

Almost nothing goes to waste at Bob Giacomini’s family dairy farm north of Point Reyes Station.

If you stand on the edge of the Almaden Dam in San Jose right now, you can feel the ground violently shaking and vibrating beneath your feet. It’s the result of thousands of cubic feet of water rushing out of the reservoir, down into a creek, flowing into the bay. The water’s being released to keep the reservoir from overflowing.

California’s high-speed rail system is the biggest infrastructure project in the state. This documentary is a deep dive into the project. We check in on what’s happening right now, what challenges the project faces, and who will be impacted by it.

This is Part 2 of a four-part series about high-speed rail in California. Part 1: First Stop, Fresno. Part 2: Corn nuts and the bullet train. Part 3: Will the train be affordable?. Part 4: San Jose to San Francisco — easier said than done. Listen to the whole show: Inside High-Speed Rail.   

Kole Upton’s family has been farming in the Central Valley since 1946.

This is Part 1 of a four-part series about high-speed rail in California. Part 1: First Stop, Fresno. Part 2: Corn nuts and the bullet train. Part 3: Will the train be affordable?. Part 4: San Jose to San Francisco — easier said than done. Listen to the whole show: Inside High-Speed Rail.   

California’s high-speed rail system is the biggest infrastructure project in the state. In 2008, voters approved funding for the bullet train that would get passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in under three hours. 

This is Part of 3 a four-part series about high-speed rail in California. Part 1: First Stop, Fresno. Part 2: Corn nuts and the bullet train. Part 3: Will the train be affordable?. Part 4: San Jose to San Francisco — easier said than done. Listen to the whole show: Inside High-Speed Rail.   

High-speed rail construction is happening right now in the Central Valley, even though the project doesn’t have all the money it needs.

This week promises lots of rain for the Bay Area — but too much of a good thing can sometimes turn bad. Erosion, mudslides and flooding are a danger.

Austin Newsom is an Amtrak ticket agent at the Transbay Terminal in downtown San Francisco. On his lunch breaks, he takes walks along the Embarcadero.

“It’s really nice, and people usually, when they’re walking along the waterfront, for whatever reason they have big smiles on their faces. I think it makes people happy.”

Prop 55 has to do with income tax. Specifically, income tax for people who make a lot of money. Four years ago we passed a tax rate increase for people making more than 250,000 dollars a year. That extra money — about 7 billion dollars — has gone to education and health care. The increase is set to expire in 2018--but not if a majority of Californians vote yes on Prop 55.

Last month, four Bay Area residents were named Macarthur Award winners. That means they’re now unofficialy known as "geniuses". Each will receive more than $600,000, and can do with it what they will. That’s usually for the public good. So we all win.

This measure is all about revenue bonds. Bonds are the state’s way of borrowing money for projects that are too big to pay for all at once: big construction projects like dams, highways or bridges. Right now, the state doesn’t need voter approval to sell revenue bonds; they can just sell them to investors, regardless of the amount.

When you exit Highway 101 into East Palo Alto, there’s a construction site you just can’t miss. It’s a big, brick, three-story building with huge glass windows. By early next year this building should be home to a company, and the builders hope it’s a tech startup.

California has suffered more than 5,000 wildfires this year, and we’ve only reached the beginning of the season. Just last week, more than 10,000 firefighters were battling blazes throughout the state – fires largely fueled by already-dead, dry trees.

The California drought is now in it’s fifth year, and a recent study says it won’t be over for years to come. The study analyzed California’s mountain snowpack and found that we’d need almost four and a half more years of winter storms to escape drought conditions.  

Architecture has the power to transform. A building can make us feel joy, or sadness, powerful or weak. 

The California ballot will be crowded this November. Last week, the Secretary of State put out a list of the official initiatives –- all 17 of them. We’ll be voting on whether the state should legalize marijuana, lower the cost of pharmaceuticals, repeal the death penalty, require condoms in porn, and countless others. And the large number of measures makes the process a lot more expensive. Here’s why.

Though it may not always make the headlines, Santa Clara County has the ninth biggest homeless population in the United States.

When events like last weekend's mass shooting made the headlines, it can be hard to make sense of such a tragedy. And often times, we'll look outside of ourselves to get the perspective we need.

San Francisco voters will recognize two familiar names in the state Senate box on their primary ballots. Current City Supervisors Jane Kim and Scott Wiener are both running for District 11 representing San Francisco and northern parts of San Mateo County.

Every morning in the Tenderloin, when people all around San Francisco are starting to wake up, around 30 people gather at St. Boniface Church, waiting to go sleep. This is the story of one morning.

When people are actually comfortable enough to take an automated car out for a spin, who exactly is in charge? And, if you get into an accident, who’s held responsible?

It’s the last week of school at Bessie Carmichael Elementary on 7th and Harrison in the South of Market neighborhood. Photographer Janet Delaney and I are here to see someone we’ve been trying to get in touch with for months -- Bobbie Washington.

It’s been just over a year since undocumented immigrants in California have been able to get driver’s licenses through the AB 60 law.

In the next two weeks, more than one million people will flood into the Bay Area to celebrate Super Bowl 50.

When Deborah Bevilacqua lost her leg in a motorcycle accident ten years ago, she had to get a prosthetic leg. It’s been functional she says, but it’s not pretty.

If you took walk along the Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay on a typical winter weekend, it would be buzzing with activity.