Leads:
- Local congressional offices report they're being overwhelmed with calls from Californians offering to help refugees from Afghanistan. The Sacramento region is home to one of the country's largest Afghan populations. An estimated one of every nine Afghan natives in the united states lives in the Sacramento region. (Links are resource guides provided by local reps).
- Smoke from the Caldor Fire has created hazardous levels of smoke, which means the air is dangerous for everyone to breathe in the Tahoe region. IQAir ranks South Lake Tahoe as having the worst air quality in the nation, citing AQI levels air 4 times above healthy exposure levels.
- The City of Sacramento is now in a Stage Two Water Alert. Stage Two, fines for water waste will be doubled and car washing will be restricted to watering days. Residents are also being asked to voluntarily conserve water by 15% If drought conditions continue to worsen, the Urban Water Management Plan goes all the way to Stage Six, which if reached, would call on residents to conserve over half of their water usage.
- More than one million voters have already returned their ballots as the deadline to vote in California's governor's recall election approaches. That's about 5% of the ballots that were mailed out to state voters. Ballot tracker Paul Mitchell with Political Data Inc., says the ballots returned so far have been overwhelmingly from registered Democrats and that's good news for Governor Newsom. The recall election will be held in-person on September 14th.