Construction Industry

California's proposed budget contains a major provision that would weaken air pollution regulations while saving the construction industry millions of dollars. The measure, largely overlooked in a public debate focused on taxes, would delay requirements for builders to retrofit bulldozers, scrapers and other soot-spewing equipment, slashing by 17% the emissions savings that health advocates had hoped to achieve by 2014. "There are people who will die because of this delay," said Mary D.

Inside Tom W. Bogard's office, maps are everywhere. They help the highway director for the Orange County Transportation Authority see the future -- or at least where the next caution signs for construction will be posted. Over the next five years, Bogard and his counterparts in neighboring counties will act as railroad yardmasters, coordinating projects to relieve congestion so they are spaced apart and done mostly at night, so commuters can avoid delays.

California's diesel-powered bulldozers, scrapers and other heavy construction equipment must be retrofitted or replaced over the next 13 years to reduce the air pollution that sickens tens of thousands of residents every year, state regulators decided Thursday. Under tough new rules adopted by the Air Resources Board, California is the first state to make construction companies fix existing diesel-powered machines.

As the immigration debate moved into the Senate last month, Sonoma County landscaper David Penry traveled to Washington with nine other California business owners to lobby lawmakers. On Sunday, he appeared in a national television ad sponsored by a broad set of businesses, including those in the healthcare, agriculture, hospitality, retail, roofing, plumbing, amusement park and nursery fields.

*--* Real Estate Trends Month Latest Period Previous Period Year Ago Median Home Price, Resale (in thousands of dollars) Los Angeles County Feb $267.0 $259.9 $224.7 Orange County Feb 370.0 361.8 329.1 San Diego County Feb N/A 304.2 286.0 Ventura County Feb 337.4 336.0 289.5 Riverside/San Feb 165.6 157.8 141.

Legal challenges to the Long Beach Freeway project and Los Angeles International Airport expansion, as well as a court order requiring the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to improve bus service for poor and minority riders, have been put under a cloud by this week's civil rights ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. In particular, the opinion was a blow to the environmental justice movement, which had racked up some some notable victories, both locally and nationally.

A construction worker was crushed to death Friday by a 3-ton sewer pipe, the second fatal accident in about two months at a housing development being built in Stevenson Ranch. Javier Ochoa, 35, of Newhall was leveling dirt in a ditch on Pico Canyon Road west of Stevenson Ranch Parkway about 3 p.m. when the pipe, which had been hoisted into the air, slipped from its harness and tumbled into the ditch, said Lt. Larry Gump of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Santa Clarita station.

The two-story buildings known as flex-tech have grown popular as a cheaper alternative to traditional offices, allowing companies to create a campus-like environment. Technology firms and traditional office users, such as law firms and mortgage companies, have helped push up prices in that segment 10% to a record $1.55 per square foot in Orange County. In the higher-rent Irvine Spectrum business park, costs have risen to about $1.75, according to a new report by Grubb & Ellis Co.