The Week in Photos: California’s wells are drying up; and migrating birds favor a San Gabriel Mountains parking lot

Hello, and welcome to this week’s selection of top stories in pictures by Los Angeles Times photographers.

A dirt parking lot in the San Gabriel Mountains has become a major flyway for migrating birds. It’s not clear why exactly this spot, in an area known as Bear Divide, has become a magnet for migrating tanagers, orioles, buntings, grosbeaks and warblers; but scientists suspect that it might have to do with a funneling effect from the topography.

Tania Romero, a Cal State Los Angeles graduate student, sets up a net at Bear Divide in the San Gabriel Mountains to catch birds for a study of their migration movements.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Romero examines the wings of a Townsend’s warbler caught in a net.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

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A terrifying hourlong rampage on Tuesday ended with a teen’s death at Westlake High School in Thousand Oaks, shattering a family and leaving the school community in mourning. Fifteen-year-old Wesley Welling was killed when a motorist linked to a stabbing and a domestic incident earlier in the day allegedly drove into a group of students intentionally.

Students at Westlake High School in Thousand Oaks comfort one another Wednesday at a street memorial for 15-year-old Wesley Welling. Officials say he was killed when a motorist intentionally plowed into a group of students.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

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Despite the boost from recent storms to California rivers and reservoirs, in the San Joaquin Valley, chronic overpumping of groundwater by agriculture has left homeowners with dry wells, and some 1,800 families still rely on state-funded water deliveries to fill household tanks. On top of dry wells, other water projects await fixes, including systems that draw from groundwater contaminated with hazardous pollutants.

Natalia Ledesma, 9, pumps drinking water from a five-gallon container at her home in Tombstone. Her family has relied on water delivered to a 2,500-gallon tank on their property since their well went dry in 2019.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Julio Morales works on a new 240-foot water well in the Tombstone community in unincorporated Fresno County.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made clear this week that he would agree to raise America’s debt ceiling for one year, but only if President Biden accepts spending cuts that would leave many of the president’s policy priorities, including responding to climate change, unfunded.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) is surrounded by reporters after leaving the House floor on Wednesday.

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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As of mid-April, 88 inmates at California State Prison Sacramento were being held in “short-term restricted housing,” which critics describe as solitary confinement. The reintroduction of a bill to end prolonged solitary confinement in California’s corrections system has reignited a contentious debate in the Legislature over using isolation as punishment.

Inmates look through their cell door’s windows in the Short-Term Restricted Housing Unit at California State Prison, Sacramento. Prisoners in the unit spend nearly all day restricted to their cells with little human contact other than with prison staff.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

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In El Salvador, men were leaving gangs and finding God as evangelical churches helped rehabilitate former gang members, including those from the L.A.-born MS-13. Then the country cracked down on gangs and police started arresting anyone who might be connected to one, emptying rehabilitation programs and filling up prisons.

Nelson Sanchez, 39, a former MS-13 gang member, takes part in a conference last month at the Community Worship Center in Gardena. In 2008 Sanchez renounced the gang and became an evangelical Christian, and later a pastor.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Francisca de Reynoza talks about her husband, the Rev. José Elvis Reynoza, a former MS-13 member who was arrested in March 2022 during El Salvador’s gang crackdown. He ministered to jailed ex-gang members seeking redemption through the church.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Ronnie Reyes, 9, and sister Everly Reyes, 6, in the one-bedroom home they share with their grandmother in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. Their father, an MS-13 gang member, is in prison. The children participate in an after-school program for at-risk youth at a church.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

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The affluent and coiffed Palm Springs faces a $2-billion reparations claim from Black and Latino families who were burned out of their homes 50 years ago during the city’s “slum clearance” to build a fantasy for rich white people.

Pearl Devers was growing up in Palm Springs’ Section 14 neighborhood in the 1950s and ‘60s when officials ran Black and Latino families out of the prime downtown land, burning their homes to clear a path for hotels and shops as the city was being sold as a playground for rich, famous and white tourists and newcomers. “We were not part of the vision, Devers said.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

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Coachella‘s Weekend 1 opened the 2023 edition of the popular, hip and lucrative Indio music festival with its most diverse lineup yet, featuring Bad Bunny, Blackpink and Frank Ocean, among others. See our guide to Coachella’s Weekend 2.

Rae Sremmurd performed during the first weekend of Coachella 2023, the wildly popular (and lucrative) music festival.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Music fans, seen through a tinted-glass installation, mingle during the first weekend of Coachella.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

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An exclusive island town might be California’s biggest violator of affordable housing law. “Coronado officials have thumbed their noses at Gov. Gavin Newsom and state regulators, calling the process ‘central planning at its worst’ and assuring residents that it will be years before the state cracks down,” writes The Times’ Liam Dillon. Meanwhile, some housekeepers at the town’s Hotel del Coronado have to endure hours-long commutes because not one of them can afford to live nearby, let alone in town.

Hotel del Coronado workers Yolanda Ramirez, left, and Myelin Soret walk to the bus stop. Ramirez, who has worked as a room attendant at the hotel for five years, has a 40-minute commute to work. Soret, a housekeeper for nine years, takes two buses from Imperial Beach to get to work — a one- to two-hour commute.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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Three years and $62,000 in medical expenses later, a musician and her caregiving partner struggle to navigate the financial, mental and physical challenges of long COVID.

Courtney Gavin of Irvine, who has been dealing with the effects of COVID-19 since March 2020, must use a motorized lift to climb the stairs in her home. Despite being largely bedridden, she was recently denied disability benefits.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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And finally, on Friday the Supreme Court ruled for the Biden administration on abortion pills, preserving legal access to mifepristone in most of the nation. The medication, one of two used in the most common method of ending early pregnancies, is the subject of a continuing legal challenge to its FDA approval in the battle over abortion access.

Krissy Shields and her daughter take a break on the steps of the Supreme Court on Friday after arranging flowers in a design as a show of support for abortion rights.

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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