Mendocino County Today: August 18, 2012

I'M WITH KIRK GIBSON. “Players should be suspended for a minimum of a year for their first offense, and repeat offenders should just be banned.” Kirk Gibson was a great ballplayer who never resorted to performance enhancing drugs. The Giants' Melky Cabrerra has been caught twice now, and don't tell me that the Giants didn't know before they signed him that he was suspect. Like everyone else, I wondered how he'd gone into MVP mode so fast, and I wondered why no other teams, other than the Anything Goes Boys at AT&T, were really interested in him. It used to drive me wild to be at a Giants game when Bonds came up. Forty thousand enablers on their feet cheering for a crook to knock another juice ball into McCovey Cove. Dizzzgusting. Bonds was a truly great ballplayer before he went on the juice. Post juice he hit a lot of homeruns but otherwise just lumbered around out there like any other unathletic muscle freak. He and the other juicers almost wrecked the game for me, but like the rest of hardcore fandom I kept coming back anyway.

ENOUGH CHEAP MORALIZING. I'm here to suggest that Mendocino County's leading incompetents be put on performance enhancing drugs. Let's see if this stuff really works! Let's get Paul Tichinin, Linda Thompson, Bruce Richard, and the staff of the Press Democrat on the stuff. Think of it! Tichinin might master an 8th grade vocabulary. Richard might get his buses to go places people want to go at the times they need to go to them. Thompson might begin to defend people rather than let the DA handle both ends of the case. The Press Democrat? It'll take more than testosterone, but any drug would probably help.

CRIME OF THE WEEK: At approximately 12:00 noon on Wednesday, the 15th, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office received a call from the Utah Highway Patrol that they had stopped a pickup truck on US I-80 westbound outside Salt Lake City for a traffic violation. After stopping the truck, their officers deployed a K-9 trained to detect narcotics. The K-9 indicated there were narcotics possibly in an after-market fuel tank located in the bed of the pickup truck. The officers looked in the fuel tank and located a hidden compartment containing $500,000 in US Currency. Larry Edward Treadaway, 61, of Island Mountain, Southern Humboldt County, was arrested for money laundering, transportation of contraband in a hidden compartment and conspiracy to distribute contraband, all felonies in Utah. On Treadaway's 37-acres on South Face Road, Island Mountain, Humboldt County deputies found five large green houses containing growing marijuana and outdoor growing marijuana plants. Deputies seized 1,242 growing marijuana plants approximately five feet in height, along with approximately 65 pounds of processed marijuana, 232 pounds of drying marijuana bud, 46 pounds of marijuana bud packaged for sale in one pound bags, and $10,000 in US Currency. The Sheriff’s Office will be seeking an arrest warrant through the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office for Treadaway. The charges requested will be for cultivation and possession for sale of marijuana. The United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has also been contacted and is assisting with the investigation and evaluating for possible federal charges.

TREADAWAY was apparently stopped for failing to signal before making a lane change. But his truck also had California plates and that big extra gas tank resting in the bed of the truck.

THE MENDOCINO COUNTY Environmental Health Department and the CHP said last week that a “Redwood Coast Fuels tanker hauling 1,800 gallons of diesel west on Orr Springs Road ran off the south edge of the road, rolled and hit a tree, causing 500 gallons of the fuel to spill into Ackerman Creek.”

TURNS OUT the tanker had indeed spilled 400 gallons of diesel on Wednesday, August 8th, but the fuel went into the soil on the bank of the creek, just west of Montgomery Woods, but was cleaned up before it reached the creek. Redwood Coast Fuels sent an empty truck to offload the remaining fuel from their damaged tanker and had Paulson Excavating on scene within two hours of the accident to start the clean up process under the direction of Fish and Game and Environmental Health. Paulson's crew worked through the weekend and continued Monday and Tuesday to remove the spilled diesel before any of it could reach the creek.

MENDOCINO COUNTY grape growers and vintners are re-organizing as a non-profit called Mendocino WineGrowers, Inc. to advance their interests which, as we know, reign supreme in the County. There are some 300 grape growers and at least a hundred wineries. The Mexican immigrants who make the industry possible are unorganized, and the one time they were organized with the UFW, the County's wine industry immediately counter-attacked, holding union-busting seminars and, with Roederer leading the way, decertified the Roederer local and, it is clear, circulated a kind of blacklist ensuring that pro-union field workers would not find work in Mendocino County. Many of the wine people had been organized into a sort of super-Yuppo, dues paying, association with a couple of paid staffers. This new group, you see, will be tax-exempt, a charity, because you see, they are doing so much public good.

JOIN SANCTUARY FOREST on Saturday, August 25 for our Geology of the Lost Coast hike. Consulting Geologist Kathy Moley of Pacific Watershed Associates will describe geologic processes while viewing their resulting formations along the rugged and scenic coast. Additionally, topics of conversation will include the dynamic and frequently seismic environment of north coastal California and discussions of both the short term and long term effects of earthquakes and tsunamis here on the north coast. Hikers will meet at the Sanctuary Forest office at 9am to car pool out to the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park. This Easy-Moderate hike will end at 3pm. The hike is free of charge, though donations are gladly accepted and help Sanctuary Forest offer this program year after year. For questions or clarifications, contact Marisa at marisa@sanctuaryforest.org, or call 986-1087 ext. 1#. Hope to see you there! Support from volunteers and local businesses have made this program possible for Sanctuary Forest. Local businesses that have made generous contributions are 101 Netlink, Blue Star Gas, Jangus Publishing Group, Whitethorn Winery, Charlotte’s Perennial Gardens, The Security Store, Chautauqua Natural Foods, Clover Willison Insurance Services, Hohstadt Garden Center, Pacific Watershed Associates, Roy Baker, O.D., Vallotton Enterprises, Worthy Construction, Wyckoff Plumbing, Mattole Meadows, James Friel Plumbing, Ned Hardwood Construction, Randall Sand & Gravel, Redwood Properties, Black Hand Forge, Jay Sooter’s Pure Water Spas, Pierson Building Center, Whitethorn Construction, Caffe Dolce, Mattole River Studios, and Wildberries Marketplace. Sanctuary Forest is a land trust whose mission is to conserve the Mattole River watershed and surrounding areas for wildlife habitat and aesthetic, spiritual and intrinsic values, in cooperation with our diverse community. — Marisa Formosa, Education Coordinator, Sanctuary Forest.