Court: Calif entitled to new hearing on energy refunds
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SAN FRANCISCO - The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission improperly calculated how much money energy companies should be required to refund California consumers for allegedly excessive electricity costs, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
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By Larissa Van Beurden-Doust, The Tribune, San Luis Obispo, Calif.  Feb. 12--Some farmers and ranchers in San Luis Obispo County may get a refund of what they called unfair fees paid to the state.   It's unclear, however, when or how much of that money may be returned.
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By Jordan Robertson  Associated Press  SAN JOSE, Calif.
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By Therese Poletti and Nicole C. Wo, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Sep.
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California is suing the auto industry over tailpipe emissions, marking the first time a state has sought monetary damages for the impact of global warming by vehicles.
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The assembly government is taking court action to recover a grant from a dairy firm, which closed its plant last year.
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Consumers and businesses in California  will have until Jan. 8 to claim their part of a $1.1 billion  class action settlement with Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O after the  California Superior Court awarded an extension, plaintiff's  attorneys said on Thursday.
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SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 14  â Two of three former Enron traders accused of driving up energy prices during Californiaâs power crisis in 2000 and 2001 were each sentenced on Wednesday in federal court to two years of court-supervised release.
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One of California's largest utilities has pledged to return millions of dollars in performance-related bonuses awarded by the state after admitting it underreported on-the-job injuries for the last seven years.
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EPA officials told the agency's administrator that California had "compelling and extraordinary conditions" to justify a federal waiver allowing the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, according to excerpts of documents released Wednesday.
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California voters will decide next week whether to amend a New Deal-era law giving consumers the power to file suit over unfair business practices, a statute that has been used to target businesses from Philip Morris to Microsoft Corp.
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By Kevin Howe, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.  Dec. 15--SAN FRANCISCO -- A progressive increase in California American Water customers' bills was approved unanimously by the state Public Utilities Commission here Thursday.   Beginning Jan.
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By Tatiana Prophet, Daily Press, Victorville, Calif.  Feb. 14--Fo r 1 1 c i t i e s i n S a n Bernardino County, the prospect of paying a surcharge for a chemical that did not originate in their areas just doesn't seem right.
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A test case which will determine how much banks can charge their customers for going overdrawn without their permission will be heard at the High Court on Monday.
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The US Supreme Court considers if carbon dioxide is a pollutant and thereby subject to the federal Clean Air Act.
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By John Ellis, The Fresno Bee, Calif.  May 26--Environmentalists are claiming victory after a federal judge in Fresno on Friday found a key opinion on the effects of water pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta on the endangered delta smelt fish was "legally flawed." U.S.
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A California man pleaded guilty Friday to charges that he shut down the datacenter responsible for managing the state&#39;s electrical supply.Lonnie Denison, 33, is now facing as much as five years in prison and a $250,000 fine after admitting to breaking a glass cover and hitting the emergency &quot;off&quot; switch at the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) data center in Folsom, California, on April 15. By doing so, he shut off the power in the datacenter. He was formerly a contract Unix system administrator at the center.Cal-ISO is the nonprofit organization that manages California&#39;s power. By knocking these systems offline, Denison effectively cut the state off from the energy market, leaving California vulnerable to blackout conditions. No blackouts occurred, however, because the data center went down at 11:23 p.m. on a Sunday -- a time when electricity demand is typically at a lull. &quot;If this deliberate shut-off had occurred in the morning ... things would have been far more severe,&quot; wrote Matthew Amant, the California Highway Patrol officer assigned to investigate the incident, in an affidavit.It&#39;s not clear why Denison would have wanted to flip the switch on California&#39;s power, but according to U.S. attorneys, he was in a dispute with co-workers and just minutes before the incident had discovered that his computer privileges had been revoked.Prosecutors allege that he followed up the power outage by sending an e-mail bomb threat the next day to an unnamed Cal-ISO employee, saying, &quot;Hey, at one point I respected you ... you have a new kid. So this is only because of him. Get out before the timer expires. Not long now. Take care.&quot;Following this threat, Cal-ISO evacuated about 500 employees from all three of its Folsom campus buildings, transferring control of the grid to a second control center.That same day Denison spoke with a friend, admitting that he had tried to &quot;shut off the power grid,&quot; according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.The Sunday night incident knocked the data center down for about two hours, but it took 20 computer technicians about seven hours to fully restore the system. The total cost of the outage is estimated at $14,000.Denison, of Sacramento, California, is set to be sentenced on Feb. 29, 2008, in federal court.