The Weekly racks up state journalism awards.

Monterey County Weekly took top honors in several categories of California Newspaper Publishers Association's 2014 Better Newspapers Contest.

In the Agricultural Reporting category, Mark C. Anderson's cover story on Viridis Aquaculture, a Watsonville-based company with a sustainable, closed-loop veggies-and-fish operation, won first place. Here's how it opens:

Just over the hill from Monterey County hides the largest known aquaponics farm in the world.

There the fish—hundreds of them, largely sturgeon—help feed the veggies, the veggies’ roots help filter the fish water and both feed humans.

David Schmalz's cover story on the unraveling of Del Monte Manor, a federally subsidized housing project in Seaside, also took first in the Enterprise Reporting category. From that story's lede:

Many people might not know the Seaside low-income housing complex by its name. They just call it the projects. Or those who live in the neighborhood, the PJ’s. And for the younger folk in the hood, just the J’s.

Many people might not care much about the place, but they should, and here’s why: In a county desperately lacking low-income housing, Del Monte Manor is the largest such project on the Peninsula. And last November, the people who live there because they qualify for subsidized housing have been put in a state of fear and uncertainty.

Taking second place in the Environmental Reporting category was my cover piece on the endangered California condor's life-or-death struggle with lead bullets.

Sara Rubin nabbed an honorable mention for her beat reporting on the city of Del Rey Oaks, as did Mary Duan, for her cover story on the strange tale of a Monterey woman who kept her mother's corpse in a box in her kitchen.