Mendocino County Today: Saturday, May 7, 2016

• River Mystery
• SF Restaurants
• Trump Cheated
• Coastal Commission
• First & Last
• Malenkov
• Angelo Responds
• Meaningful Change
• Trump Unbound
• Yesterday's Catch
• Pot Holes
• Sweeney Again
• Religious Holiday
• SF Whiter
• Andrea Whipple
• Manzanita Fundraiser
• Expatriate Cahill
• Grist Lawsuit
• Veepstakes
• Pluto!
• Gardens Changes
• Galavant!
• Salmon Barbecue
• Safe Harbor
• Unusual Forest
• Ex-Lax Building
• Bowie's List
• Oil Protest

NAVARRO RIVER MYSTERY

A Reader Writes: "No rainfall showing on any of Anderson Valley’s rain gauges today (at 1 p.m.), yet the Navarro River has risen just under 10% in six hours."

Which seems like a good question for a hydrologist. But until we hear from one, let's take a crack at it...

Since that little one-inch rainstorm a couple weeks ago, the level of the Navarro River has been in steady decline (from 3.58 down to 2.82 feet). Then, Friday morning, the level inexplicably rose (2.82 to 2.91, which seems more like a 3% increase, but still...). It doesn't seem like it has rained enough lately to account for this rise, so we're wondering if it might be due to the fact that the mouth of the river recently closed, which is now causing the meager flow of the river to accumulate and thus raise the level a bit.

BEYOND THE BAY AREA’S BEST 100 RESTAURANTS:

Take a Farmer to Lunch or Dinner

by Jonah Raskin

Where to eat? What to eat? And when to eat? Questions about food and eating proliferate endlessly. Each day brings new challenges, new desires and perhaps even new fears in an era of food insecurity.

To help foodies, gourmets and gourmands decide basic questions about the where, the when, and the what of fine dining, The San Francisco Chronicle has just published its 21st annual list of the top one hundred restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Not surprisingly, most of the restaurants — from Acquerello, which serves excellent Italian food, to Zuni, which offers California cuisine at its best — are located in the city itself that’s exceedingly proud of its food past.

One would expect a San Francisco newspaper to tout its own restaurants.

After all, there’s pride in proximity. But there might also be food provincialism in the Chronicle’s selections.

Even when the editors venture beyond the city’s hills and valleys their selections are predictable.

Tiny Yountville in Napa — widely known as a food destination — has six famous restaurants on the list, including Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry and Michael Chiarello’s Bottega. It would be a culinary crime to omit them, though they may not need or even want accolades anymore. Indeed, why not praise a new location, a new chef, and a bold new experiment in the culinary arts?

Not a single Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Graton, or Geyserville restaurant appears on the top 100, though the Underwood Bar and Bistro and the Willow Wood Market Café — both in the hamlet of Graton and both shaped by the genius of chef and ex-New Yorker Matthew Greenbaum — are arguably as good as any of the bistros and café on the Chronicle’s select list.

Healdsburg has three restaurants on the list: Shed Café, Madrona Manor and Bravas Bar de Tapas that’s renowned for its fried chicken — hardly a staple on tapas menus in Spain.

Americans have to have old standbys such as fried chicken and hamburgers and fries.

Sonoma and Marin, to say nothing of Mendocino and Lake, still take back seats to Napa County, and its booming tourist industry, in the established food world. If you want to make it as a chef, hunker down in a capital and not in the outback.

Curiously, the Chronicle doesn’t claim that the Bay Area has the best restaurants in the nation.

That would not only be outrageous; it would also be easily refuted. New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Miami, and Los Angeles have many of the nation’s best restaurants.

Indeed, no one single region in the U.S. has a monopoly on good cooking and good eating.

What the Chronicle does say in the preface to its list is that “No other area of the country has a more dynamic scene, and it keeps getting better.”

In the Bay Area, restaurants come and go. The restaurant scene is in near-constant upheaval. Chefs and cooks reinvent themselves again and again and adapt to new waves of thinking about food and new ways of cooking and serving.

San Francisco also has legions of Millennials with disposal incomes who are eager to spend money in restaurants and show that they have educated pallets. They drive the food juggernaut and help to create dynasties such as Zuni Café.

What the Chronicle list sadly misses more than anything else are the connections between the restaurants and the small, local farms that dot the landscape all over the Bay Area and that produce tasty vegetables all year long.

Granted, the Chronicle review of Chez Panisse offers this tidbit: “While the farm-to-table approach is common today, Chez Panisse still stands alone.” For the most part, however, the farmers, ranchers, and cheese-makers go unheralded.

That’s sad because the chefs are only as good as the vegetables, fruits, meats and the dairy products allow them to be.

The ingredients are decisive: the fresher the better.

There will always be lists of the best restaurants, and it can be fun to go up or down a list and eat at The French Laundry and Chez Panisse, if you have the money and can snag a reservation. There’s yet another factor the Chronicle doesn’t begin to consider:

It’s not where one eats that matters most, but who one eats with. Perhaps more than any single group of people — more then chefs and cooks — farmers, ranchers and the producers of artisan products, make for some of the most delightful and intelligent dinner companions. The riveting stories that they tell add to the mix of flavors in the dishes on the table.

So, next time you go to a restaurant, a café, or a bistro, think about inviting a farmer, a gardener or a cheese maker. Maybe that’s you. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy the conversation as much as the food itself, even if you have to talk to yourself.

OSCAR DE LA HOYA, the great boxer now retired, says Trump cheated during a golf game at Trump National Golf Club in LA. "Yes, I caught him,” De La Hoya said. “It was unbelievable. Donald, what he does, he tees off first, so we go off to our balls and what do we see but Donald Trump right in the middle of the fairway. He said, 'Hey look, I found my ball.' On the next hole, Trump hit into some bushes and went ahead in his cart. When the rest of the group got to the green, Trump's ball was 3 feet from the hole."

TWO MONTHS AFTER Coastal Commission Director, Charles Lester, was fired, staff abruptly changed course and recommended approval of a plan to build almost 900 new homes and a hotel near Newport Beach. Staff had recommended rejecting a larger version of the project and, four months later, Lester was outta there.

THE FIRST & LAST OF EVERYTHING

The first fine dawn of life on earth

The first cry of man in the first light

The first firefly flickering at night

The first song of love and forty cries of despair

The first voyage of Vikings westward

The first sighting of the New World

from the crow's nest of a Spanish galleon

The first Pale Face meeting the first native American

The first Dutch trader in Mannahatta

The first settler on the first frontier

The first Home Sweet Home so dear

The first wagon train westward

The first sighting of the Pacific by Lewis & Clark

The first cry of "Mark, twain!" on the Mississippi

The first desegregation by Huck & Jim on a raft at night

The first buffalo-head nickel and the last buffalo

The first barbed-wire fence and the last of the open range

The last cowboy on the last frontier

The first skyscraper in America
The first home run hit at Yankee Stadium

The first ballpark hotdog with mustard

The last War To End All Wars

The last Wobbly and the last Catholic Anarchist

The last living member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

The last bohemian in a beret
The last homespun politician and the first stolen election

The first plane to hit the first Twin Tower

The birth of a vast national paranoia

The first President to become an international criminal

for crimes against humanity

making America a terrorist state

The dark dawn of American corporate fascism

The next-to-last free speech radio

The next-to-last independent newspaper raising hell

The next-to-last independent bookstore with a mind of its own

The next-to-last lefty looking for Obama Nirvana

The first fine day of the Wall Street Occupation

to set forth upon this continent a new nation!

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A RUSSIAN-BORN GANJAPRENEUR named Malenkov was arrested and I asked a few people if he was related to the former Soviet premier, and not one person had heard of Georgi M., Stalin’s successor, Khruschev’s predecessor. It’s good to have a memory, but it’s lonely.

— Fred Gardner

ANGELO RETURNS FIRE

Mendocino County CEO Carmel Angelo recently issued responses to grand jury reports involving Proposition 172 funds and county record handling.

The grand jury said the county’s current method of budgeting for Proposition 172, which is designed to fund public safety entities, is not transparent to the public and the county itself.

The grand jury also alleged dollars may not be allocated correctly by the Auditor-Controller, and that the Auditor-Controller has failed to update the “Maintenance of Effort Calculation” annually as required.

Angelo said the county’s current method for budgeting the Proposition funds complies with state law and is identified in the county’s annual budget under Budget Unit 1000, line item No. 821510. She did agree, however, that the county and Auditor-Controller will work on a more transparent process that will clearly identify the four public safety departments that receive the funding through a separate line item starting with the 2016-17 fiscal year budget.

As far as the misappropriation of funds, Angelo reiterated Proposition 172 funds are deposited into Budget Unit 1000 line item No. 821510 for county nondepartmental revenues.

Funds are then distributed to eligible municipalities around the county, with the remaining balance being allocated to the county’s four public safety departments.

Angelo disagreed with the grand jury’s claim that the Auditor-Controller hasn’t been following state law in which an annual Maintenance of Effort calculation is required for the funds.

CEO Response To For The Record: Management In Mendocino County Government

Angelo agreed with most of the grand jury’s assessment that the county has improved the way it releases records to the public, and that front desk staff at the county’s departments have been adequately trained to handle requests under the California Public Records Act. A public records liaison has also been assigned to each county department.

A new public records portal, called NextRequest, is also being utilized where the public can request and receive county documents online.

The grand jury questioned in its report, however, why the Executive Office responded late to a test Public Records Act request, even though it was only overdue by one day.

Angelo agreed that the particular requester seeking county information under the PRA should have been notified that the request was going to take longer than 10 days, but further clarified that in this particular instance, the request became due on a county holiday, thus the delay.

Angelo said clarification has since been made to staff that if the request due date falls on a weekend or holiday, that request must be completed on the business day prior to the weekend or holiday, so as to not violate the terms under the state PRA law.

The grand jury also alleged in its records report that the county is not in compliance with records retention schedules, particularly in destroying old records.

Angelo disagreed with that assessment and said the county has a records management guide across the board that governs “the inventory of county records and the development of records retention schedules.”

The records management guide also complies with a California law section “which governs the retention and disposition of records by counties in the state and references several authoritative sources on records management,” she said.

Angelo also disagreed with the grand jury that future litigation and audits would occur if the county didn’t have a process for destroying obsolete records, as they would still be subject to availability under PRA request.

The grand jury recommended that the county offer one centralized location for inactive records, which would relieve storage pressure among municipalities.

Angelo disagreed that such an option would work based on Mendocino County’s large size, as one location would not be feasible.

In 2014, the Executive Office began a document imaging project designed to convert paper records to digital media, which Angelo said will make accessing public records more efficient, and will reduce the need for physical record storage space. The Executive Office also anticipates expanding the records management and document imaging effort in fiscal year 2016-17.

Angelo said the recommendation by the grand jury to operate a centralized county records center needs further analysis.

The full list of grand jury reports and responses can be found online at http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/grandjury/gj15-16.htm.

TAKE, say, the Bernie Sanders campaign, which I think is important, impressive. He’s doing good and courageous things. He’s organizing a lot of people. That campaign ought to be directed to sustaining a popular movement that will use the election as a kind of an incentive and then go on, and unfortunately it’s not. When the election’s over, the movement is going to die. And that’s a serious error. The only thing that’s going to ever bring about any meaningful change is ongoing, dedicated, popular movements that don’t pay attention to the election cycle.

— Noam Chomsky

A READER WRITES: Dated, but Classic Taibbi!

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-20160224

CATCH OF THE DAY, May 6, 2016

ELLIOTT BROOKS, Caspar. DUI, resisting, bad registration, probation revocation.

ANDREW CANN, Branscomb. DUI, suspended license.

MARK CORSON, Fort Bragg. Drunk in public, probation revocation.

JOHN DOYLE, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

ROCKY DUMAN, Ukiah. Escape, false ID, resisting, parole violation.

JAY JACKSON, Ukiah, Controlled substance, forgery, receiving stolen property, possession of tear gas, false impersonation, conspiracy, parole violation.

LEANNA JASPER, Fort Bragg. Domestic assault.

BENJAMIN KEATOR, Redwood Valley. Community supervision violation, failure to appear.

JOEL KIMBALL, Ukiah. Drunk in public

JORDAN MAGDALENO, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

NATHAN MARRUFO, Stewarts Point/Ukiah. Shoplifting, defrauding innkeeper, vandalism, petty theft, resisting.

DANNY RAY, Fresno/Ukiah. Petty theft, probation revocation.

BRIAN SCHATZLEIN, Fort Bragg. Domestic assault, controlled substance, probation revocation.

TYLER SHIVELY, Willits. Under influence, probation revocation.

SOLUTION to Mendo’s “pot-holes”?

HERE COMES THE $5 MILLION HIGHWAY 20 TRANSFER STATION NOBODY NEEDS OR WANTS

Caspar JPA of County of Mendocino and City of Fort Bragg

c/o Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority
3200 Taylor Drive
Ukiah, CA 95482

Contact: Mike Sweeney, General Manager

NOTICE OF AVAILABILITY AND NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING AND REQUEST FOR COMMENTS ON THE REVISED DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORT FOR THE CENTRAL COAST TRANSFER STATION PROJECT

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Caspar Joint Powers Authority (JPA) of the County of Mendocino and City of Fort Bragg, as Lead Agency, has completed a Revised Draft Environmental Impact Report (Revised Draft EIR) for public review and comment for the Central Coast Transfer Station project pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).The Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority (MSWMA) is the representing partner agency of the Caspar JPA.

Applicant: Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority(MSWMA)

State Clearinghouse Number: 2014012058

AVAILABILITY OF DOCUMENT: Public review and written comments on the Draft EIR are invited. The document is available for review at the following locations:

1) MSWMA office, 3200 Taylor Drive, Ukiah, CA 95482

2) Fort Bragg City Hall, 416 N. Franklin Street, Fort Bragg, CA 95482

3) Fort Bragg Library, 499 E. Laurel Street, Fort Bragg, CA 95482

4) MSWMA website at: http://mendorecycle.org/

PUBLIC REVIEW AND COMMENT PERIOD: State law requires a minimum 45 day public review period for the Revised Draft EIR. The public review period begins on May 11, 2016 and ends June 24, 2016 at 5:00 p.m. All comments must be submitted to the MSWMA within this time period.

Pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15088.5(f)(2), new public comment on this Revised Draft EIR shall be limited to the chapters or portions of the EIR which have been revised and recirculated (i.e., chapters 2.0, 3.1, 3.3, 3.4, 3.9 and 4.0). In other words, the partial recirculation of the Revised Draft EIR is not an opportunity to re-submit comments or add additional comments on previously published topics left unchanged in the Revised Draft EIR.

Comments may be provided in writing, by email or orally at a public hearing or meeting. All comments received by the close of the comment period will be responded to in writing in the Final EIR. The Final EIR must be completed and certified by the Caspar JPA before a decision can be made on the proposed project.

Written comments may be submitted to: Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority, 3200 Taylor Drive, Ukiah, CA 95482, Attention Mike Sweeney, General Manager: sweeney@pacific.net. Telephone (707) 468-9710, Fax (707) 462-3517.

PUBLIC HEARING: A public hearing is scheduled for purposes of receiving public comments on the Draft EIR on June 16, 2016 at or after 6:00 p.m. at the Fort Bragg Town Hall, 363 N. Main Street, Fort Bragg, California.

PROJECT LOCATION: The proposed project site for the new transfer station is located in unincorporated Mendocino County approximately 3.5 miles southeast of downtown Fort Bragg. The site lies within the Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) at 30075 State Route 20 and includes a portion of Assessor’s Parcel Number (APN) 019-150-05.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The project is the construction and operation of a municipal solid waste transfer station serving the incorporated City of Fort Bragg and the surrounding unincorporated coastal area of Mendocino County extending from the town of Westport to the Navarro River. The proposed transfer station location is within a 17-acre portion of JDSF (APN 019-150-05), adjacent to State Route (SR) 20, at 30075 SR 20, Fort Bragg, California, and is 3.0 miles east of the intersection of State Highway 1 and SR 20.

CEQA STATUS: The Revised Draft EIR has been prepared consistent with CEQA (Public Resources Code [PRC] Section 21000 et seq.) and the State CEQA Guidelines (California Code of Regulations [CCR] Title 14, Section 15000 et seq.). The project could result in significant impacts and mitigation measures have been proposed to reduce the significance of impacts to a less than significant level in the areas of: air quality and odor, biological resources, cultural resources, geology and soils, hydrology and water quality, and transportation. All other resource categories were deemed to be less than significant or have no impact. The project site is not on any of the lists of hazardous waste sites enumerated under Governmental Code Section 65962.5.

The original Draft EIR was issued in February, 2015. The Revised Draft EIR modifies the following chapters: Project Description, Aesthetics, Air Quality & Odor, Biological Resources, Hydrology & Water Quality, and Alternatives Description & Analysis, and adds an Appendix L Bishop Pine Mitigation Plan. All other chapters of the original Draft EIR are unaltered and are incorporated by reference into the Revised Draft EIR.

LOUIS HITS THE ROAD

Eve of Destruction

Hi AVA,

“And behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; *and* every living that is in the earth shall die.”

(Genesis 6:17)

It has rained almost every day for two weeks. Many of my friends attribute the deluge to my disbelief and blasphemy.

I am worn out from the weather and am prepared to acquiesce and repent.

Tomorrow I will board a flight to Mecca and will visit the Kabah. I will submit to ritual ablution and circle the Kabah intoning prayers in Arabic, fulfilling all requisites of Hajj.

From Mecca, I will fly to Jerusalem and the Wailing Wall. I will stand before the Wall, bobbing my head like a penguin, intoning prayers, weeping over the destruction of the temples, and imploring the Jewish god with four or five names not to permit the same to happen to New Jersey. Christie is punishment enough for our sins.

From Jerusalem I will fly to Mount Parnassus, Delphi, and the Oracle of Apollo, offering sacrifices to the Pantheon clique and especially to Athena, who has always frightened me.

Then to Rome and the Pope whose ring, feet, and ass I will kiss in exchange for a special custom-designed indulgence that delivers people from a punishment on Earth, not Hell or Purgatory.

Perhaps I will stop in Mexico to make a deal with The Virgin of Guadalupe and to see if the influence of the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas extend to the weather on the east coast of estados unidos.

If things work out well, I may well make another trip in November requesting intervention on the behalf of Jill Stein.

All the best,

Louis Bedrock, Roselle, New Jersey

THE CHANGING FACE OF SAN FRANCISCO

UPDATE FROM THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION
of Mendocino County - May 6, 2016

An Extraordinary Ordinary Person

by Susanne Norgard, CEO

In our all-too-brief lifetimes, some people have the ability to rise above the mundane and focus on the things that truly make a difference. In their often quiet ways, they are extraordinary people who touch many lives. Andrea Whipple, who passed away this year, was one of those people.

Andrea was a Community Foundation regional advisor from Covelo for over a decade. When I recently went to Covelo with two Community Foundation board members to present grant checks, we also had the opportunity to reflect on Andrea's many contributions with Jim Russ, Paula Fugman, and John Marshall.

According to Paula, a retired teacher who worked with Andrea for many years, Andrea was a "true citizen, practical and generous." Paula noted, "She was not a 'schmoozer.' She liked to get down to the business at hand. She had no time for clothing or worrying about small things. She had a favorite blue cotton shirt that she wore almost every day. In fact, it was buried with her."

What Andrea did have time for was her profession of education. In Covelo she was at times superintendent, principal, teacher, and even bus driver. "She knew all the bus routes," Jim recounts. "So if a driver called in sick at 5:30 am, Andrea was able to drive that route." The depth of her dedication was reflected when she continued teaching up until the week before she died and was still grading papers on the day of her passing. "The kids were her priority," Paula said. "She wanted to see them 'walk' (graduate) and she was going to do everything she could to make that happen."

Jim, who is director of Round Valley Indian Health Center, remembers Andrea as a problem solver. "She would say, 'Let's not point fingers, let's just solve the problem.'" He recalls working closely with Andrea when he was the director of the community-based education center. "It used to be when kids were kicked out of a classroom, they would just wander the streets. Andrea said, 'We're going to fix that,' and we did, by assigning them a teacher of record and having them do their studies at the education center. Also, Andrea used a technique she called 'shadowing' her, whereby when students acted up they were not suspended for the day but they had to follow her around during her daily routine. After one time of 'shadowing' the superintendent, the students would behave because they did not want to do that again."

Jim remembers how he and Andrea worked closely together to keep the gym open until 10:00 at night during the summers. "It was important to us that kids had a place to go. And if there was an occasional time I forgot to lock up or turn off the gym lights, Andrea would be there at 11:00 at night in her blue over-shirt. 'It's not a problem,' was all she would say as I apologized for the oversight."

Paula reflected on Andrea's memorial service, where some of the kids spoke movingly about Andrea in the Wailaki language. "They knew and valued her, she said. John, who worked with Andrea as a regional advisor and on many community projects, added, "In a small community, it is possible to clearly see that every person can have a measurable impact for good or bad. Andrea was a force for good in our community."

The Community Foundation is privileged to work with many volunteers who contribute to their communities in profound ways. For more information, visit www.communityfound.org.

MANZANITA SERVICES semi-annual Arts and Crafts Fair and Breakfast Fundraiser will be held on Saturday, May 21, 2016 at Ukiah United Methodist Church Social Hall. Breakfast will be from 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. Breakfast includes pancakes, eggs with bacon, sausage, fruit, orange juice and coffee. Tickets for breakfast are $8.00 for adults $4.00 for children under 12. All proceeds go directly to Manzanita Services. For tickets and more information please contact Manzanita Services @ 463-0405 The Redwood Community Chorus holds its annual spring concert on May 13th and 7 p.m. and May 14th at 2 p.m. Both concerts are in the sanctuary of the beautiful Mendocino Presbyterian Church. As usual the concerts are free, but we ask for donations to help defray expenses. Attached is a brief press release. I am also attaching a photograph taken by Barbara Foote at our Fall/Christmas concert. If you want to be inspired to come hear the full concert, give a listen to the attached MP3 of "Benedictus," a wonderful piece by Brian Lewis that is on the program. I recorded it during our rehearsal this past Tuesday. Thanks for helping us get the word out,

Jim Culp, Member RCC

Volunteer Publicist

LONG-TIME TEN MILE RESIDENT, and now expatriate, Tom Cahill:

Breaking through Power

Bonjour,

My life here is nothing like that of Hemingway and the lost generation of the 20s. Being a very senior senior (79), I spend a lot of time dealing with my health. And then there is the French bureaucracy that seems to dislike even fellow French people.

As for Anna-Marie, we were originally planning to relocate here together. Whereas she changed her mind about leaving her family so far away, I charged ahead. We remain on good terms. For one thing she got me a great deal on a cruise ship to Cherbourg three years ago. And she remains my "techy." I could not be here without my iPad that I use for translating, e-mail, banking, old movies, etc. When my iPad fails, A-M has always been able to talk me through the problem.

The toxic politics of the USA is only one reason I moved here. Another is for adventure/travel of which I have lots of amazing photos. But the main reason I've moved here is for spiritual growth that has been incredibly painful.

BUT I have been making progress. I have been detaching from changing the USA and the world and have been working on changing myself.

I firmly believe that Hell is in the mind. And my periods in Hell have been getting shorter as I study such healing work as forgiveness, love, gratitude, courage, patience, etc. A great quote I discovered not long ago, I will leave you with--"Fear is a prayer, for something we don't want."

Sante (good health to you), Brother,

Tom Cahill, France

MENDOCINO COUNTY AIR DISTRICT SEEKS SUPERIOR COURT INJUNCTION AGAINST GRIST CREEK AGGREGATES ASPHALT PLANT.

Mendocino County Air Quality Management District (MCAQMD) has filed a lawsuit, on behalf of People of the State of California, against asphalt plant owner/operator Mercer-Fraser, Grist Creek Aggregates, and site owner Brian Hurt for violations of the California Health and Safety code. The complaint seeks civil penalties and an injunction against operating the plant until corrective action is taken to bring it into compliance with District, state and federal air pollution laws. The lawsuit was filed April 7, 2016 for the District by MCAQMD attorney, Terry N. Grosse, but has not been announced publicly until now.

The controversial asphalt plant, located on the banks of Outlet Creek, a main tributary of the Eel River, was fast-tracked without environmental review by the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors in March of 2015. It was given a permit by the MCAQMD on June 2nd of 2015 allowing for 500,000 tons of annual asphalt production. Since asphalt operations began late last September MCAQMD has been inundated by complaints from nearby residents overwhelmed by thick clouds of noxious fumes emitted from the plant. This exposure has caused various health problems including headaches, nausea, trouble breathing and burning eyes, nose and throat. The plant has been the subject of investigations by both the State Air Resources Board and the County Air District since beginning operations in September to fulfill a Caltrans paving contract north of Laytonville,.

The lawsuit outlines eight different ways in which the Defendants failed to comply with District Rules, California Health and Safety Code, and the Permit conditions. Permit violations include: operating equipment without a permit, excess fugitive emissions from a variety of different sources, excessive visual emissions, and pubic nuisance. The lawsuit describes Defendants as acting "negligently, with callous indifference, and/or intentionally in their continued willful operation of the facilities for more than 6 months, which caused the release of air contaminants endangering residents in nearby homes, employees and the public in general."

Permit violation fines currently amount to over $170,000. According to the lawsuit, representatives of Mercer-Fraser and Grist Creek Aggregates refused significantly reduced penalty fees and walked out during meetings to negotiate resolution of the violations. Mercer-Fraser currently has a five year lease to operate an asphalt plant at the Grist Creek Aggregates site.

For information, updates or questions, please contact: Lyn Talkovsky with Friends of Outlet Creek: lyn@twinberry.net - Cell PH: 707-621-3214

Jay Duret is a San Francisco based writer and illustrator. More of his work can be seen at www.jayduret.com

PLUTO

Pluto is a happy go lucky dog looking for a best friend. Pluto greets all visitors with a friendly, goofy, wiggley welcome. In addition to being friendly and playful, Pluto is energetic and needs an active home where he gets daily exercise as well as mental stimulation and affection. He is a large boy and needs room to stretch out and run.

Like many shepherds, Pluto is a talker and has all sorts of things to say. He needs some work on leash manners, so a guardian comfortable with large dogs and training would be great. If you are looking for a friendly, life long companion, come down to the shelter and meet Pluto today! Pluto is a German Shepherd X, 91 lbs, 2 years old and neutered--so he is ready to go home ASAP. You can see all of the shelter's dog and cat guests at

www.mendoanimalshelter.com.

NO AIG IN 2016

FORT BRAGG, CA‚ May 6, 2016. — Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens has announced that the annual fundraising event, Art in the Gardens, will not be held this summer. The decision was not made lightly or without considerable deliberation.

The Board of Directors made the decision at a critical time of transition for the Gardens‚ transition in leadership, challenges maintaining an aging infrastructure, and contract negotiations with Mendocino Coast Recreation and Park District. While many of the Gardens annual happenings have become beloved community events, their primary purpose is to generate income that is essential to keeping the Gardens open to the public 362 days a year. Over the years, Art in the Gardens has become increasingly more complex, shifting from a volunteer-driven event to a staff-run event. All of these issues culminated in the need to postpone Art in the Gardens.

The Board is happy to announce that it has selected a new Executive Director, Dr. Molly Barker, who will begin in July. The Gardens is reaching completion on the first phase of its comprehensive water system renovation project which will reduce water usage in the Entry Garden by one-third. Trail work to patch the aging chip-seal pathways is ongoing. Initial contract negotiation meetings with Mendocino Coast Recreation and Park District have confirmed the value of the Gardens to all.

Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens is a precious asset to the local community, the coast, and the entire region. Preserving and supporting this resource is important both to those who visit the Gardens and the local economy. As a non-profit public botanical garden, funding is derived from memberships, admissions, grants, earned income (from the store, nursery, and seasonal cafe), weddings, and a handful of fundraising events both large and small.

Work has already begun to revitalize Art in the Gardens for the future. The intent is to develop a resoundingly successful Art in the Gardens program with brilliant art, live music, art in action, great food, wine, and beer that also nets funds for the Gardens. In the meantime, the Gardens is inviting the community to visit and enjoy the Gardens and all it has to offer. As part of a collaboration with the Arts Council of Mendocino County, new sculptures will surprise and delight. The cafe, store, and nursery are accessible without entrance fees. Accessibility to all is a major priority; one can always earn a membership through volunteer work. A visit to the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens is a great way to experience the best of Mendocino County all in one location.

Roxanne Golnar
Marketing Coordinator, Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens
marketing@gardenbythesea.org
707-964-4352 ext. 22

GALAVANT — one-year old neutered male.

Galavant is a white, black and brown somewhat shy and timid boy who is in desperate need of some love, affection, and a home out of the shelter. Though he is quiet and reserved upon first meeting him, Galavant will warm up if you spend some time lounging around and petting him. He is one of the shelter's longest-term residents and is looking for a home with no other cats, as he prefers to be alone. Also--only older children or adults, please. If you have a quiet, peaceful, and love-filled home for Galavant please stop by the Ukiah Shelter Cat Colony room and visit with him today. Check out the shelter's website for all cat and dog guests: www.mendoanimalshelter.com.

CELEBRATE 45 YEARS OF SAVING — and eating salmon on July 2

The World’s Largest Salmon Barbecue in Fort Bragg’s Noyo Harbor on Saturday July 2 is more than just a day of free live music, a plate of salmon and trimmings and great microbrews and local wines.

The 45^th annual event, which benefits the Salmon Restoration Association, funds key educational efforts and watershed work in the campaign to save flagging king and silver salmon populations. It also funds key educational programs, such as the SONAR program at Mendocino High School.

A $30 ticket buys a giant plate of salmon, salad, corn on the cob and garlic bread, along with live music and dancing. There is award-winning microbrew from North Coast Brewing, fair trade coffee from Thanksgiving Coffee and Barefoot wines. Cowlicks ice cream is served. The wild caught salmon is prepared with a special marinade. This year the fish served will all be locally caught- by fishermen operation out of Noyo Harbor.

Fireworks happen over the Noyo River and ocean after the barbecue, as soon as it is dark. There are many other Mendocino Coast events to enjoy on the 4th of July weekend, including the world-famous and often wacky Mendocino Village parade at noon on July 4., The World’s Largest Salmon Barbecue provides shuttle service from the Mendocino College parking lot to South Noyo Harbor from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. in South Noyo Harbor.

Hundreds of volunteers make the barbecue possible each year with dozens provided by each service club, including the Fort Bragg Rotary Club, the Fort Bragg Soroptimist Club and the Fort Bragg Knights of Columbus. Business like Harvest Market, Fort Bragg Feed and Pet, North Coast Brewing, Thanksgiving Coffee and many others contribute.

The bulk of the 3000 plus people who attend the World’s Largest Salmon Barbecue each year make a special trip to do so, most often from the North Bay and Sacramento Valley areas. We have repeat customers every year from Gridley, Colusa and many more small towns. The temperature may be 30 degrees cooler or more in Fort Bragg- and still warm and sunny. The event usually raises between $30,000 and $50,000 each year. The event was started in 1971 by commercial fishermen, hoping to find ways to restore salmon populations and has been a fixture in Fort Bragg ever since.

This year, a $7,500 grant got the South Fork Noyo Stream Habitat Enhancement Project started. The SRA grant provides all important cash match for that project, said Doug Kern, director of watershed restoration for the Mendocino Land Trust

“The project seeks to return salmon by creating areas where they can feed, breed and hide naturally,” said Kern. Many streams were ruined for salmon during legacy logging days, not only by the logging, but by misguided biologists who failed to understand the value of logs, pools and swals in streams. In all, 70 structures will be constructed from 160 logs on the South Fork Noyo River. The addition of these structures will enhance salmonid spawning and rearing habitat within the South Fork Noyo River watershed along this 11,198 foot section of river.

The project reach begins at the footbridge upstream of the Egg Collection Station on the Noyo River, ending just before the confluence of the South Fork Noyo River with Parlin Creek. The project reach in Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) is owned by California Department of Forestry and is managed for timber production and recreation. Being an experimental forest JDSF has been eager to assess and improve fish habitat conditions on their property and also considers the aesthetic value of their land when making decisions regarding timber harvest plans.

The placement of large woody debris structures in South Fork Noyo River will enhance salmonid production by:

Increasing the quality and quantity of rearing habitat within the project reach

Providing cover and increasing pool complexity

Increasing pool depth and frequency

Providing velocity refuge during peak winter flows for juvenile salmonids

The SRA is interested in grant applications for any project that can help with salmon restoration, including educational, watershed and other local efforts. Grant proposals will be evaluated following the barbecue.

www.salmonrestoration.org

Tickets available on website

Salmon Restoration Association
Sponsors of the World's Largest Salmon Barbecue
First Saturday every July
P.O. Box 1448
Fort Bragg, CA 95437
salmonrestoration@gmail.com

Michael Miller, Executive Director
Mendocoho@gmail.com
707 962-9141
Event Date: July 2, 2016
Event Name: World’s Largest Salmon Barbecue
Event Address: South Noyo Harbor
Event City: Fort Bragg, CA

Description:

Your $30 ticket buys a giant plate of salmon, salad, corn on the cob and garlic bread, along with live music and dancing. There is award-winning microbrew from North Coast Brewing, fair trade coffee from Thanksgiving Coffee and Barefoot wines. Cowlicks ice cream is served. The wild caught salmon is prepared with a special marinade. This year the fish served will all be locally caught- by fishermen operation out of Noyo Harbor.

Fireworks happen over the Noyo River and ocean after the barbecue, as soon as it is dark. There are many other Mendocino Coast events to enjoy on the 4th of July weekend, including the world-famous and often wacky Mendocino Village parade at noon., The World’s Largest Salmon Barbecue provides shuttle service from the Mendocino College parking lot to South Noyo Harbor from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. in South Noyo Harbor.

The 45^th annual event, which benefits the Salmon Restoration Association, funds key educational efforts and watershed work in the campaign to save flagging king and silver salmon populations. It also funds key educational programs, such as the SONAR program at Mendocino High School.

Time(s) of event: 11 AM- 6 PM

Admission: BBQ Tickets are $30 at the door or $25 in advance at the Harvest Market or Online (up until 5pm the Friday before the BBQ). Kids 12 and under $10

www.salmonrestoration.org

Contact information for the public:

Your name and contact information if we have questions: Frank Hartzell salmonrestoration@gmail.com

BRING BACK SAFE HARBOR

Lorraine and Raoul (KZYX Manager and Program Director),

Thank you very much for putting time and energy into implementing KZYX's Programming Policy, including the Program Advisory Committee (PAC). This letter is a formal request to restore the station's Safe Harbor hours pending a review of the policy by the PAC and, perhaps, the Board of Directors.

In late 2015, just before her retirement, the former Program Director announced the elimination of the "Safe Harbor" for free speech at the station. "Safe Harbor" is a period from 10:00pm to 6:00am when language that might otherwise be considered profane can be used, in accordance with Federal Communications Commission regulations. Programmers will now lose their positions if they either use such language themselves, play a recording that uses it, or allow any caller, be they members or the general public, to use such language.

This change has a chilling effect on programmers, members, and the public. Allegations that programmers have allowed profanity on their shows have been used to remove programmers whose shows encouraged dialogue with the members and the community. There are a lot of recordings - music, comedy, commentary - in which one of the "seven words" can be found. Our programmers have been able to play them freely during Safe Harbor, and our listeners have benefited. That has all been changed.

A few days ago I was listening around 10:30pm when the song "Big Old Jet Airliner" by Steve Miller came on. There is a line about "funky shit going down in the city." The programmer had to turn the volume down and up at that point. I just sighed in disappointment. If even a top 40 song has to be bleeped, how are we ever going to hear recordings that are even less restrained in their expression? The late-night programmers will have to shelve half their material. Will we never again hear George Carlin's magnificent commentary?

I do not believe that the Program Director has the authority to eliminate the Safe Harbor hours. This is not just a day-to-day administrative function. Nor is it the hiring or firing of a programmer, or even the selection of a genre or type of programming. This is the elimination of free speech during one-third of the hours of operation. That is a policy decision that cannot be made by any one person. It requires extensive discussion and feedback from the members and the public. This might be accomplished by the PAC, but any decision to eliminate the Safe Harbor would need to be confirmed by the Board of Directors, as it is a policy decision, perhaps more than any other decision that a public community radio station can make. Indeed, it is so important that it should be put to the members for a vote before our Safe Harbor for free speech is taken away from us.

Some will question that approval by the members is necessary. But I don't think anyone can question that the former Program Director acted arbitrarily and capriciously, placing her own morality and personal preferences above any group process, excluding the public, the members and even the programmers from the decision while creating an atmosphere of oppression that has diminished creativity and promoted self-censorship. That is not the mission of public community radio in Mendocino County. That is how totalitarian regimes operate. KZYX is a steward of the airwaves, not a dictator.

Please immediately restore the Safe Harbor pending a review of the policy by the PAC and perhaps others. You have the authority to do so. It is in the best interests of the station and the community, rather than an projection of one persons restrictive morality.

Because this is a policy matter of great importance to the members and the community, I am copying this request to the KZYXTalk email listserve and other media.

Thank you very much for your time and attention, and for your efforts to improve the governance at KZYX. Please have faith in the members, the public, and our diversity of expression. If pubic radio in Mendocino County will not allow freedom of speech, then who will?

Sincerely,

Dennis O'Brien, Member

Ukiah

AN UNUSUAL FOREST on the northern Mendocino Coast is accessible to the public for the first time in more than 100 years.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/5573914-181/new-trail-opens-on-lost

DOES ANYONE KNOW?

From: Joy Susan Hutchinson

Very important historical question

I am currently in a Debate about a very important historical question regarding a building in the village of Mendocino.

The building is on the corner of Main and Lansing streets. In many historical photos from the 60s and 70s of people hanging out in front of this building, it is painted with a giant sign that says the Ex-Lax building.

The current debate is whether Ex-Lax was actually manufactured there or whether this is left over from a movie set. Do you know the answer? And if it is a movie, what movie?

Thanks in advance for your help in resolving this extremely important historical matter.

Joy Hutchinson

P.S. My understanding is the movie theory.

P.P.S. I anticipate a few clever jokes about this "running debate"

* * *

Eleanor Cooney replies: It played a pharmacy in the movie "Summer of '42." Kid went in to buy rubbers, great awkward scene!

* * *

Chris Hayter replies: My mother, who has been in Mendocino since the 30s, does not recollect it ever being a pharmacy. Does remember a restaurant & a shoe repair place way back when, & someone named Jordan living it the apartment behind it at one point.

DAVID BOWIE’S 100 FAVORITE BOOKS

(The CounterPunch Collection)

by Jeffrey St. Clair

Back in 2013, David Bowie posted a list of his 100 favorite books to his Facebook page. A couple of days ago a mutual friend told me that Bowie was at least partially inspired to do this after having read the lists that Alexander Cockburn and I concocted (with vicious internal debates) our of 100 favorite books: non-fiction in English, nonfiction in translation, fiction in English and fiction in translation.

This revelation came as a nice surprise, but it was not entirely shocking. Bowie had been an irregular correspondent to the CounterPunch inbox since he came across the “charming” (Bowie’s word) photo spread of Alex in drag published in Ben Sonnenberg’s Grand Street magazine many years ago.

Over a decade, we received seven or eight random notes from Bowie. Mostly he wrote to Alex, which was ironic since Cockburn was immune to Bowie’s music. I’m not sure Alex could have named more than five Bowie songs and their burgeoning pen-pal relationship didn’t inspire him to add Hunky Dory or Station to Station to his sprawling vinyl collection in Petrolia.

Still, they had a few things in common. Bowie told Alex that he was an admirer of Alex’s father, Claud Cockburn, whose novels he had read. Bowie said he particularly liked Ballantyne’s Folly, which pleased Alex because most people who wrote him about Claud’s work only mentioned that they’d read Beat the Devil (and had probably only watched the John Huston film).

Bowie said that he was particularly fond of Claud’s writing in Private Eye, the savage British political and satirical magazine, which the musician included on his list of essential reading. He also won favor by telling Alex that he’d been an avid reader of Cockburn and Ridgeway’s Press Clips column in the Village Voice, but had lost track of him after he started writing for The Nation. Then along came the Web and the vast reach of CounterPunch.

These messages never engaged explicitly in politics, either here or in Britain. Mainly the Starman’s notes, most very short and curt, referenced music, figures in the Cockburn orbit (Sally Bowles, Christopher Isherwood, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Olivia Wilde), New York in the 70s and London in 60s. A couple of terse Bowie squibs were aimed in my direction, mostly to reprove me for my writing on music (“too cruel, man, give the bands a chance”), though he did compliment me on my profile of the blues genius Willie Dixon. “Fine writing about a hard life,” he wrote.

It’s hard to get much of a fix on Bowie’s politics (about which there had been much speculation since his flirtation with the proto-fascists in the British nationalist movement) from his reading list. Ranging from the Iliad (Richmond Lattimore translation) to Spike Mulligan’s Puckoon, Bowie’s choices are eclectic but not truly eccentric. In fact, I was struck by how conventional most of the books are, one might even be tempted to say straight and stuffy. For such a quick-change artist, Bowie’s favorite writers are predominately white, male (only 12 women by my count) and fervently anti-Communist (Koestler, Burgess, Bulgakov, Wolf, Figes, Orwell twice and Ginzberg).

The list features a few old friends of CounterPunch: Greil Marcus, Ed Sanders, Howard Zinn and Julian Jaynes; a few enemies, notably Christopher Hitchens and George Orwell, who had snitched out Claud Cockburn (along side many others) to British secret police in the late 1940s; and a couple of oddities, including the ludicrous Camille Paglia and Zanoni, Bulger-Lytton’s whacko 1842 novel on the Rosicrucians.

I was thrilled to see that Lawrence Weschler’s excellent book on the Museum of Jurassic Technology made the cut, since this is one CounterPunch’s favorite museums in Los Angeles and Alex had recommended, rather cheekily, years ago that Bowie make a visit “the next time you play the Whiskey A Go-Go.” Who knows if Bowie actually ventured down Venice Blvd. to the Palms District to view the museum’s strange collection, but he apparently read the book.

Bowie’s list is perhaps most notable for what’s missing: there are very few volumes on philosophy, anthropology, architecture, fashion, design, film, economics, critical theory, art history, science fiction, horror, noir, or natural history. One might ask (Cockburn certainly would have), what about the Irish? No Beckett, no Joyce, no Flann or even Edna O’Brien? And, surprisingly for the man who wrote “Jean Genie,” there’s no Jean Genet? (Perhaps I’ve been mistaken about what that song was referencing all these years).

Still it’s a highly literate and very respectable bookshelf. Perhaps too respectable. Here at CounterPunch, we’re delighted to have played even a small part in sparking it’s creation.

1. Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
2. Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
3. Room at the Top by John Braine
4. On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
5. Kafka Was the Rage by Anatole Broyard
6. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
7. City of Night by John Rechy
8. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
9. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
10. Iliad by Homer
11. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
12. Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
13. Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
14. Inside the Whale and Other Essays by George Orwell
15. Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
16. Hall’s Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art by James A. Hall
17. David Bomberg by Richard Cork
18. Blast by Wyndham Lewis
19. Passing by Nella Larsen
20. Beyond the Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
21. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
22. In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
23. Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
24. The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
25. The Stranger by Albert Camus
26. Infants of the Spring by Wallace Thurman
27. The Quest for Christa T by Christa Wolf
28. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
29. Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
30. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
31. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
32. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
33. Herzog by Saul Bellow
34. Puckoon by Spike Milligan
35. Black Boy by Richard Wright
36. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
37. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima
38. Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
39. The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
40. McTeague by Frank Norris
41. Money by Martin Amis
42. The Outsider by Colin Wilson
43. Strange People by Frank Edwards
44. English Journey by J.B. Priestley
45. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
46. The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
47. 1984 by George Orwell
48. The Life and Times of Little Richard by Charles White
49. Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
50. Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
51. The Beano by DC Comics
52. Raw Comics Anthology edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly
53. White Noise by Don DeLillo
54. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom by Peter Guralnick
55. Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage
56. Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley
57. The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll by Charlie Gillete
58. Octobriana and the Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky
59. The Street by Ann Petry
60. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
61. Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr.
62. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
63. The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
64. Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz
65. The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
66. The Bridge by Hart Crane
67. All the Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd
68. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
69. Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
70. The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
71. Tales of Beatnik Glory by Ed Sanders
72. The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
73. Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey
74. Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich
75. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
76. The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford
77. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
78. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
79. Teenage: the Prehistory of Youth Culture by Jon Savage
80. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
81. The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
82. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
83. Viz Comics founded by Chris Donald
84. Private Eye Magazine edited by Ian Hislop
85. Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
86. The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
87. Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
88. Maldodor by Comte de Lautréamont
89. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
90. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler
91. Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
92. Transcendental Magic, Its Doctine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
93. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
94. The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
95. Inferno by Dante Alighieri
96. A Grave for a Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
97. The Insult by Rupert Thomson
98. In Between the Sheets by Ian McEwan
99. A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
100. Journey Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg

(Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His new book is Killing Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence (with JoAnn Wypijewski and Kevin Alexander Gray). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net.)

KERN CO. RESIDENTS CONDUCT CAPITOL SIT-IN TO PROTEST CENTRAL VALLEY OIL DRILLING

by Dan Bacher

Governor Jerry Brown has become infamous for spouting off about “climate change” and “green energy” at international climate conferences as he promotes environmentally destructive policies, including fracking, pollution trading and R.E.D.D. and the salmon-killing Delta Tunnels, back at home.

Three protesters from Kern County are apparently tired of Governor Brown’s green rhetoric and pro-Big Oil actions and are currently conducting a sit-in outside of Governor Jerry Brown’s offices in the State Capitol as part of “Break Free,” a global wave of actions to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

Farmers, nurses, and environmental justice activists alike traveled from California’s Central Valley to participate in this peaceful, nonviolent protest, according to a joint news release from the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPE) and 350.org.

“Around thirty residents from Kern County joined in solidarity and prayer, invoking the revolutionary spirit of Cinco De Mayo,” the groups said. “The action targeted Governor Brown, who has denied numerous requests to visit the Central Valley and address the mostly Latino and farmworker communities dealing with the health impacts of oil and gas drilling (including hydraulic fracturing).”

According to a report, Jerry Brown is now in the building and has yet to greet the residents to join them in prayer.

“Governor Brown wants the world to think he is a 'climate leader,' but here in California we know that’s not the whole story," emphasied Juan Flores, a Kern County community leader protesting at the Capitol. "Here in my town of Shafter, fracking is contaminating our water, our food, and our kids' hopes for a healthy future. Governor Brown has the authority to ban dangerous drilling and protect our communities – but so far, he’s refused to act for the people he represents."

“Governor Brown has been invited to the Valley to see the impacts of the oil industry numerous times,” said Lupe Martinez, a former United Farmworkers Union (UFW) leader who also participated in civil disobediences to pressure Governor Brown to sign the Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA) in 1975. “He needs to understand the devastating human impacts of extraction and meet this critical moment with action. His job is not to serve the oil industry, his job is to serve the people of the Central Valley and all Californians.”

“California represents itself to the world as a shining example of climate leadership, all the while we’re the third largest oil producing state in the U.S.,” said Linda Capato Jr., Fracking Campaign Coordinator at 350.org, pointing the dichotomy between the state government’s words and actions.“The actions here in California and around the globe are meant to signal that the era of fossil fuels must come to an end.”

“Jerry Brown, we welcome you to come out of your office and join the prayer,” she said.

Rebecca Kaplan, Councilmember At-Large of Oakland said, "I'm proud today to be in solidarity with the important coalition taking action to end fracking. We have learned from recent scientific reports, that climate change is happening faster and worse than previously believed.”

“We must end fracking in California. For the sake of the health of the community and for the livable future,” she concluded.

A similar protest will take place in Los Angeles on May 14, according to the environmental justice advocates. Residents from South L.A. are marching to demand that the state’s elected leaders put an end to neighborhood drilling and the oil and gas extraction threatening California’s health, communities, and climate.

“Fracking is booming in California’s low income, rural communities, who are already overburdened by poor air and water quality issues,” the news release stated. “Residents from Kern and Los Angeles counties are calling out dangerous extraction techniques that impact our water sources and climate, and Governor Brown’s lack of leadership on these climate and health issues. The Governor’s support for the oil industry and these dangerous extraction techniques are indicative of where he really stands on climate change and the communities on the frontlines.”

“California has all the creativity, technology and desire to lead the world into the future and embrace 100% clean energy. All we need now is a commitment from our leaders to achieve this goal,” the release said.

Followers are voicing their support on social media [#StandwithKern and #BreakFree2016] calling on California’s elected leaders to join in breaking free from fossil fuels, or else remain bound to the wrong side of history.

For more for information, go to www.crpe-ej.org. or 350.org.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Juan Flores, Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, crpe-ej.org, (661) 709-2292

Madeline Stano, Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, crpe-ej.org, (510) 821-4764