Five SoCal Must-Reads: 80 Megachurches in L.A. and O.C. Counties

A big picture look at the region:

• The highway with the highest number of crashes in California is found in Lompoc. A one mile section of Highway 1 on the northern edge of the city has had 200 collisions over a three year period, reports Central Coast News.
• It's Orange County Republican Darrell Issa vs. the California Air Resources Board. He says the group deliberately attempted to "mislead Congress and obstruct an official investigation" in response to an inquiry "probing negotiations toward a new national fuel economy standard," says KQED's Climate Watch.
• "Los Angeles and Orange counties have nearly 80 megachurches. They range in congregation size from 2,000 to 25,000 and include all races and ethnicities. In all, they claim over 350,000 congregants," says Richard Flory of USC's Center for Religion and Civic Culture at Zócalo in an essay about the culture of these institutions.
• There's lots of talk in Kern County about a collision in Oildale last Saturday when two pedestrians were struck and killed by a Sheriff's Deputy on route to a call. The Bakersfield Californian asks what can be learned from the tragedy.
• One of the smallest oil drilling companies operating in the Santa Barbara Channel wants to expand, but it also "has accrued the most violations of basic operating procedures of any company working in the channel," according to the Ventura County Star.

Photo by cyan79 via KCET's Southern California Flickr Pool.