Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018

• Complex Updates
• Grateful Cowboy
• Larry Smith
• Local Fires
• Smart Prevention
• Burchett's Death
• Tree Fellers
• Masonic Hall
• PV Project
• Little Dog
• AV Broadband
• Reith Book
• Food Bank
• Rental Dearth
• Elk Day
• Tricky Questions
• Nurse Note
• Housing Shortage
• Director Schultz
• Lake Trash
• Libby's Menu
• Care-A-Van Manchester
• 128 Crash
• Wasting Disease
• Yesterday's Catch
• Offense Budget
• Winners Losers
• Mall Chimps
• Mad
• Mental Shackles
• Religious Organizations
• Not Truth
• Gardenpalooza

THE RANCH FIRE HAD GROWN TO OVER 351,000 ACRES as of Monday night. Containment is estimated at 74% and the Forest Service currently estimates “full containment” for September 1, 2018. Temperature dips and slight increases in humidity over the area are expected to allow containment to increase a little faster on Tuesday.

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CALFIRE'S MENDOCINO COMPLEX UPDATE (Tuesday 7am): 404,532 acres; 74% containment; 4 firefighter injuries, 1 fatality.

"Overnight, the Ranch Fire continued to burn through portions of grass, timber and brush in the steep terrain in northern portions of the fire area. Fire activity is expected to increase in the later part of the afternoon as smoke clears. Additionally, fire activity is expected to decrease in the later evenings due to increased humidity and lower temperatures. Over 9 miles of firing occurred last night on the northern portion of the Ranch Fire. Firing operations will continue as weather conditions permit. The southern portion of the fire remains in patrol status as crews continue with suppression repair and mop up. The River Fire had no movement. Suppression repair along with patrol will continue on the River Fire."

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U.S. FOREST SERVICE UPDATE (Tuesday morning)

WILLOWS, Calif. — The Mendocino Complex (comprised of the Ranch and River fires) is being managed by the United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service and CAL FIRE under unified command. Starting Wednesday, California Interagency Incident Management Team 3 will assume command of the western zone of the Ranch Fire. CAL FIRE Team 2 will continue to manage the eastern zone of the Ranch Fire.

Ranch Fire: The Ranch Fire was under an inversion most of Monday which limited fire growth. Early in the evening the inversion began to lift and the fire became more active. The fire grew approximately 6,000 acres in the last twenty-four hours. The fire is now estimated at 355,612 acres and 67 percent contained. The decrease in containment is due to the fire’s movement to the east across the dozer line Sunday afternoon. This illustrates the difficult challenge that firefighters face when the fire aligns with fuels, topography and weather and spreads at extreme rates.

On Monday, crews improved the lines along Brushy Camp and Noel Ridges and from Lake Pillsbury to Little Round Mountain. Hand firing was conducted in the early evening and throughout the night along the line from Cabbage Patch to Swan Valley just north of Pillsbury Lake. Hand firing was also conducted along approximately nine miles of line along Brushy Camp Ridge from Sheetiron Mountain toward Little Round Mountain to strengthen the northern fireline. Engines patrolled and looked for hot spots in the Rice Fork Summer Homes and Pillsbury Lake areas. An additional dozer line was added in the Bonnie View/Happy Camp area.

Tuesday, crews will hold the lines that were conducted last night and look for opportunities to extend the strategic firing operation if conditions are favorable. Engines will patrol and look for hot spots in the Rice Fork Summer Homes and Pillsbury Lake areas. This area remains under a mandatory evacuation order. Crews will continue preparing to defend the homes in Bonnie View/Happy Camp.

Air tankers and helicopters will be used to support the firefighters on the ground and slow the fire’s progress as smoke conditions allow.

There are areas that the fire has burned through that are extremely important to many people. Letts Lake is a great example of one of these areas. When it is safe to do so, these areas will be assessed and the information made available to the public. The northern half of the Mendocino National Forest remains open. The forest areas around Plaskett Meadows and Hammerhorn Lake are open for all normal recreation activities. The Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness is also available for recreation. Forest Highway 7 remains open. Hunters are reminded that the fire area is closed to hunting. For a specific closure map, please see the forest’s web page at fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd591718.pdf

River Fire: The River Fire is 48,920 acres and 100 percent contained.

Fire Area Weather: The forecast shows temperatures in the high-80s with light winds. A coastal marine layer will bring cooler temperatures and higher humidity.

Smoke: Tuesday, s moke impacts will be slightly less in communities near the Ranch Fire. This includes Ukiah, Willits, and Covelo, Potter Valley and communities surrounding Clear Lake. Light late afternoon winds will move the smoke away from these communities and further north.

Below is the link to the smoke forecast for today: wildlandfiresmoke.net/outlooks/MendocinoNationalForest-SacramentoValleyArea

(Photo by Carol Hester)

MEMORIAL FOR LARRY SMITH

There will be a memorial for Larry Smith this Saturday, August 25th, 2018, at 11:00AM at the Evergreen Cemetery in Boonville. All are welcome.

A SMALL WILDLAND FIRE that broke out on Comptche-Ukiah Road on the Coast end of the old road was quickly extinguished by local firefighters a little after 5pm Friday, but not before spooking the local scanner brigades who, like all of us in the outback, live in a state of perpetual fire-fear these endlessly dry days. By 5:30 a Coast firefighter reported to Howard Forest that they were mopping up and responding units could be canceled.

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SO FAR this fraught fire season our volunteers and CalFire, reinforced by inmate crews, managed to efficiently stifle two fires that could easily have blown up into full disasters if it weren’t from the fast and effective local response to them. Both the Octopus Mountain blaze and the Farrer fire on Rays Road in Philo coulda, woulda, shoulda been a lot worse than they were. (Still no announcement as to how these two fires started.)

SMART PREVENTION

Editor,

If California continues to pour most of its resources into firefighting instead of prevention, the fires in this state will grow more catastrophic each year. We need a bold shift in priorities. I have two suggestions that might make a real difference.

[1] The state should expand the Conservation Corps by offering all high school graduates a free college education in exchange for a year of clearing underbrush and removing dead wood across the state. This would represent an investment in both the future of our rural landscape and in our youth who would gain a deep understanding of our environment as well as graduating college debt-free.

[2] Goats have proven effective at controlling underbrush. Why doesn’t the state greatly expand these herds? Some of the costs for this expansion might be defrayed by collecting the goats’ milk. California could become a world leader in the production of goat cheese.

Anthony Holdsworth

San Francisco

UTAH FIREFIGHTER IN MENDOCINO COMPLEX FIRES DIED AFTER RETARDANT DROP

pressdemocrat.com/news/8654020-181/utah-firefighter-in-mendocino-complex

OLD SCHOOL LOGGING, circa 1870.

The notches in the stump (center and right) held springboards, on which the fallers stood to make the undercut and overcut with axes. The tree to the left sprouted from the stump of the felled tree, and is now approximately 150 years old and nearly four feet in diameter.

(Marshall Newman)

ON THIS DAY in 1872 Erick Jensen Albertson died. Six years earlier, he and John Gschwend had built the Masonic Lodge Hall using local redwood. Albertson was the first worshipful master of Mendocino Lodge No. 179. While living on the beach he crafted the unique sculpture which adorns the top of the hall’s cupola. The sculpture was carved from a single piece of redwood which incorporates Father Time, a maiden, a book and a fallen column. While its exact symbolic meaning is shrouded in Masonic secrecy, a common interpretation is, “Time, patience and perseverance will accomplish all things.”

This photograph was taken by the National Park Service for the Historic American Building Survey. HABS No. CA 1801-2, c. 1933. Note the multitude of overhead wires. These were buried by 1971, when most of the town was added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Mendocino and Headlands Historic District.

(Kelley House Museum)

MENDO COUNTY STAKEHOLDERS Want To Take Over The Potter Valley Project, Which Diverts Water From The Eel; Humco Enviros Say That Spells Trouble

by Ryan Burns

Scott Dam at Lake Pillsbury, located in Mendocino National Forest, about 25 miles east of Willits, functions as a key component of the Potter Valley Project. Photo: PG&E.

Pacific Gas & Electric has owned and operated the 110-year-old Potter Valley Project since 1930, the heyday of hydroelectric dams in the United States. But now, almost a century later, demand for electricity is down, the project is no longer cost-effective, and PG&E wants out.

In May the utility company announced plans to auction off the Potter Valley Project. The auction process is scheduled to begin Sept. 3. However, PG&E also indicated that it’s open to negotiating with interested parties before the auction, and on July 31 a group of Mendocino County government interests, united as the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission (IWPC), sent PG&E a letter, initiating a discussion about simply transferring the project, rather than holding an auction.

Their interest is not in the project’s electricity-producing power. (The 9.4 megawatt hydroelectric plant produces enough to supply roughly 6,900 homes.) No, at this point in California’s history, electricity is really a secondary commodity, as Congressman Jared Huffman observed earlier this week.

“This [the Potter Valley Project] is a hydroelectric project in name, but in terms of its function it has really become more of a water project,” he told the Outpost.

Indeed, the project uses two dams and a tunnel to divert more than 20 billion gallons of Eel River water each year into the Russian River, supplying precious hydration to cities, vineyards and other agricultural interests in Lake, Mendocino and Sonoma counties.

Janet Pauli, chair of the IWPC, recently underlined the high stakes here, telling the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in no uncertain terms, “The water supply needs to be protected. It’s very serious. There’s no way around it.”

Many North Coast locals, meanwhile, argue that the project’s water diversions — along with the dams’ blockage of historic spawning habitat — have contributed to the precipitous declines of coho salmon and steelhead trout populations in the Eel River basin. Environmental groups, tribes and others have argued that the Potter Valley Project’s dams — particularly the larger Scott Dam — should be decommissioned and torn down.

With ownership of the Potter Valley Project now up for grabs, the long-simmering conflict over water use is heating up. Friends of the Eel River, perhaps the most outspoken critic of the project’s environmental impacts, worries about the prospect of a takeover by the IWPC.

“This is a bid to maintain the status quo,” said Scott Greacen, conservation director at Friends of the Eel. The IWPC, he said, brings together all of the interests that are thirstiest to maintain that status quo.

But Friends of the Eel’s biggest fear, Greacen said, is that the IWPC will pursue a non-power license for the project, abandoning energy production altogether in a gambit to evade oversight from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The agency’s requirements for hydroelectric dam projects include water quality standards and providing fish passage where feasible. Greacen thinks the IWPC may seek to bypass those rules and monetize the project’s water supply.

Asked if the IWPC would indeed seek a non-power license for the project, Pauli said, “I don’t see that happening at this point in time. … Currently we would anticipate acquiring the license for power production.”

However, at an August 7 meeting of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, Pauli admitted to skepticism about the financial viability of that model.

“Obviously we do know that if Pacific Gas & Electric Company can’t make it making power with that project, probably we can’t as well,” she said, addressing the board. Until the IWPC gets a look at PG&E’s books, revealing the project’s profits and liabilities, she said, “we really don’t know exactly how we’ll be able to move forward.”

But the stakes — and the objective — are clear. “We’re at the beginning of a project that will result in us collectively controlling and protecting our regional water supply resource,” Pauli said.

In the midst of all this maneuvering, Congressman Huffman has assembled an ad hoc group of stakeholders, including tribes, environmental groups and water interests, in hopes of finding what he calls a two-basin solution — that is, something that could work for both Eel River interests and Russian River stakeholders. The group is exploring ways to improve fish passage on the Eel while meeting the water supply needs on the Russian.

Regarding the IWPC’s overtures to PG&E Huffman said he’s “not at all surprised” that stakeholders on the Russian River side are pursuing a takeover of the Potter Valley Project. “Whether this goes anywhere remains to be seen,” he hastened to add, noting that the financial challenges would likely be daunting for “such a small agency,” considering the project’s liabilities.

Those liabilities, like PG&E’s financials, remain mostly hidden from public view, spelled out only in documents available to company employees and interested parties who sign a non-disclosure agreement. However, a couple of documents obtained by the Outpost reveal some of the challenges new owners of the Potter Valley Project will face.

A 2017 study from consulting engineering firm Mead & Hunt, for example, found that constructing a functional fish ladder at Scott Dam would likely cost between $55 million and $93 million. The study concluded that, “The most feasible and cost-effective fish ladder design would be challenging to build, complicated to operate, very costly, and would have uncertain effectiveness… .”

There are also seismic concerns. Not only are the two dams, like all infrastructure in California, vulnerable to future earthquakes; they’ve already been impacted. There’s a large landslide, active since the 1970s, along Scott Dam’s southeast abutment.

Perhaps more alarming, in 2016 PG&E workers discovered a “spraying leak” about halfway down the 134-foot face of Scott Dam. In a subsequent letter to FERC, PG&E’s chief dam safety engineer, David Ritzman, said, “The leak does not appear to be a dam safety issue.” Regardless, his letter noted that Scott Dam has a history of leaks and seepage, and the new spraying leak would require extensive inspections and corrective actions.

Asked about the liabilities involved, Pauli didn’t sound overly concerned. “We would have insurance for that sort of thing,” she said, regarding earthquake risk. “Beyond that,” she added, “those dams are inspected yearly by the California Department of [Water Resources Division of] Safety of Dams.”

PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno said any agency pursuing a non-power license would have to go through a licensing process very similar to the ongoing relicensing process. (The current license issued by FERC is set to expire in 2022.) The agency would also need to address the same environmental issues and would not avoid requirements for fish passage, Moreno said.

Huffman said the bureaucratic hurdles to obtaining a non-power license are substantial, and it likely wouldn’t be a viable alternative for Russian River stakeholders like the IWPC because the water rights are ancillary to hydropower production. Plus, he said, any such license transfer would inevitably involve the state water board, which would hold hearings to address fisheries and public trust issues.

”Any way you cut it, no one will be able to buy and convert [the Potter Valley Project] easily into water supply without addressing the fish passage piece,” Huffman said.

While PG&E prepares for a public auction and negotiates privately with interested agencies, Huffman’s ad hoc committee continues to pursue a two-basin solution. From the outside the prospect of compromise — from either side — looks challenging.

Russian River interests say the water diverted from the Eel and stored in Lake Pillsbury is absolutely essential to the lives and livelihoods of residents in Lake, Mendocino and Sonoma Counties.

Greacen, meanwhile, says there can be no two-basin solution unless Scott Dam is removed. The chinook habitat under the reservoir and the summer steelhead habitat behind the dam are essential to the survival of those populations, he said.

Huffman, for his part, remains optimistic. He has developed a set of principles for his ad hoc group that includes fish passage and water supply. “We’re trying to see, are there some sweet spots to do both?”

(Courtesy, LostCoastOutpost.com)

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ED NOTE: Who is Janet Pauli, the point person for the Mendo proposal?

Answer:

• mendowine.com/files/Bill%20Pauli%20Presentation.pdf
• winebusiness.com/people/?go=getPeopleArticle&dataId=94642
• yokayowineco.com
• zoominfo.com/p/Janet-Pauli/58883448

What possible private interest could Janet Pauli, chairwoman of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau — a position formerly held by Supervisor Carre Brown — have in the Potter Valley Diversion?

PS. The level of detail and distortion in the following obvious draft overkill of Diversion resolution propaganda (“the number of people who benefit directly or indirectly from the Potter Valley Project is estimated to exceed 500,000”? — maybe, but a certain few people benefit a lot more than the other 499,900) indicates that it was probably co-written by Pauli and Brown.

PPS. And Mr. Pauli has a nasty temper which flares up now and then like it did back in 2003 when even the County Ag Commissioner cited him for very bad behavior toward a pesticide application inspector (and there’s a lot more to this story than what the friendly western farm press reported): westernfarmpress.com/pesticide-use-permit-revoked-state-farm-bureau-leader

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MENDO SUPES ALL FOR BUYING THE POTTER VALLEY DIVERSION

Resolution No. 18-(Draft, For Aug. 21 Supes Meeting)

Resolution Of The Mendocino County Board Of Supervisors Regarding The Future Of The Potter Valley Project

WHEREAS, the Potter Valley Project is an inter-basin diversion of water from the upper main stem of the Eel River into the Russian River of water originating in the watersheds of Lake and Mendocino Counties; and,

WHEREAS the political boundary of Mendocino County encompasses land in both the Eel River and Russian River watersheds, thereby conferring on Mendocino County a unique role and responsibility for the protection of beneficial uses in both watersheds; and,

WHEREAS, the Notice of Appropriation of Water originating in the upper Eel River and flowing within Mendocino County was posted in July 1905 and then officially recorded as a water right by W.W. Van Arsdale in the same year for the purpose of: 1) diverting and carrying the water into Potter Valley and thereby generating electric power to the valley and beyond to Ukiah; and 2) the use of the water for irrigation in Potter Valley and other places downstream within the Russian River watershed; and,

WHEREAS, the Potter Valley Project began operation in 1908 with the completion of Cape Horn Dam which impounded water in Van Arsdale reservoir, initially operating only as a ‘run of the river’ diversion, which was changed in 1922 when Scott Dam was built, thereby forming Lake Pillsbury, which allowed winter rains and snow melt to be impounded and stored for release in the late spring, summer and fall; and,

WHEREAS, stored water in Lake Pillsbury has historically been released and diverted into the East Branch of the Russian River in the spring, summer and fall since 1922, thus providing the water supply for multiple beneficial uses from Potter Valley along the East Branch of the Russian River and thence along the Russian River in Mendocino and Sonoma Counties all the way to the sea, including diversion of said water in Sonoma County to serve beneficial uses within northern Marin County; and,

WHEREAS, the original water rights for what is now known as the Potter Valley Project were secured by the Eel River Power and Irrigation Company, later transferred to Snow Mountain Water and Power Company, and then transferred to Pacific Gas and Electric Company; and,

WHEREAS, the Hydropower License is regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the Potter Valley Project (FERC P-77); and,

WHEREAS, the Potter Valley Irrigation District has had a contract for a portion of the diverted water since 1926 and appropriative water rights have been subsequently granted by the California State Water Resources Control Board from the tailrace of the Potter Valley Powerhouse downstream all along the Russian River to the sea, and;

WHEREAS, since the completion of Coyote Valley Dam in 1959 the water released from the Potter Valley Project has been impounded and stored in Lake Mendocino and used for irrigation of crops, as well as domestic, municipal and industrial water supplies and has also provided significant recreational and environmental benefits, and also supports a hydroelectric project at Lake Mendocino; and,

WHEREAS, the direct and indirect economic value of this water supply annually derived from agricultural production within Mendocino County has been estimated at $775 million with additional significant economic benefits in Sonoma County; and,

WHEREAS, the number of people who benefit directly or indirectly from the Potter Valley Project is estimated to exceed 500,000; and,

WHEREAS, the current license for the Potter Valley Project required additional studies to guide future releases of stored water; and,

WHEREAS, subsequent consultations between the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Marine Fisheries Service pursuant to Section 7 of the Federal Endangered Species Act culminated in the November 26, 2002 issuance of a Biological Opinion which included a Reasonable and Prudent Alternative requiring an estimated fifteen percent reduction in the diversion; and,

WHEREAS, an unintended consequence of implementation of the aforementioned Reasonable and Prudent Alternative, produced by the National Marine Fisheries Service and incorporated into the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Final Order for the Potter Valley Project in 2004, has resulted in, on average, a fifty percent reduction of the flows diverted from the Eel River into the Russian River, far more than the agreed upon fifteen percent reduction stated in the Reasonable and Prudent Alternative, thereby causing serious impacts to water storage in Lake Mendocino; and,

WHEREAS, current operations of the Potter Valley Project assure that all minimum flows required under the Reasonable and Prudent Alternative produced by the National Marine Fisheries Service, and incorporated into the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license in 2004 for the Potter Valley Project, are constantly monitored and strictly maintained by the licensee, Pacific Gas and Electric Company; and,

WHEREAS, the impact of the Potter Valley Project on the Eel River has been, and continues to be studied resulting in extensive ongoing efforts to mitigate adverse impacts, however numerous other impacts throughout the entire Eel River watershed are known, including logging, roads, commercial fishing, illegal diversions, droughts and floods, which require mitigation; and,

WHEREAS, over the recent years of drought a Potter Valley Drought Working Group was formed by Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which included all stakeholders, to manage the water releases from water stored in Lake Pillsbury in order to maintain threatened runs of Federally listed species of anadromous fish that had come into the Eel River and become stranded due to the dry conditions; and,

WHEREAS, natural inflow upstream of Scott Dam in late summer and fall is sometimes non-existent, but releases of stored water from Lake Pillsbury assure that releases below Cape Horn Dam exceed naturally occurring flow rates, thereby benefiting fisheries in the Eel River as well as other downstream beneficial uses; and,

WHEREAS, the Federal Energy Regulatory Agency Hydropower License for the Potter Valley Project (FERC P-77) expires April 14, 2022 and the Project licensee, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, announced on May 10, 2018 its intention to sell the Project; and,

WHEREAS, the Potter Valley Project provides the water supply for communities all along the Russian River in Mendocino County, thereby supporting the agricultural economy, the quality of life, and the health of the Russian River's aquatic resources, including three species of salmonids listed as endangered or threatened, and has provided environmental benefits in the Russian River that are required under the Federal Endangered Species Act; and

WHEREAS, the State of California has strongly supported having more water storage facilities in the State with the goal of providing water supply security and reliability and water quality, and for beneficial uses including domestic, municipal, industrial and agricultural water supplies, and also to improve the health of our river systems; and,

WHEREAS, stored water from both Lake Pillsbury and Lake Mendocino support beneficial uses that are critical to the environmental and economic well-being of the counties of Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors adopts the following position statement regarding the future of the Potter Valley Project:

1. The Potter Valley Project provides a critically important segment of our water supply infrastructure, and because of this fact, the County of Mendocino supports, and will protect the continued diversion of water from the Eel River through the Potter Valley Project at the current rates, amounts and timing;
2. The County of Mendocino will continue to actively participate in the hydropower re-licensing process administered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and work in good faith with all stakeholders in both the Eel River and Russian River watersheds who share the goals of preserving historic beneficial uses while enhancing riverine conditions that will result in attaining sustainable populations of listed species of concern in both rivers;
3. The County of Mendocino supports the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission's desire to acquire the Potter Valley Project from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company and to continue producing hydroelectric power under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license conditions;
4. The County of Mendocino supports regional fisheries restoration efforts and believes that it is incumbent upon all affected stakeholders to work diligently in a collaborative process to protect our shared water and public trust resources in both the Russian and the Eel Rivers.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I wrote to Trump about not having a presidential dog, telling him that I'm available, and on short notice, too. So far, no word back. But a guy who's into gold-plated bathrooms is probably more into those tiny white fifi jobs, not the muy maho flyweight champion of Boonville!”

GOOD NEWS FROM KZYX

by Jerry Karp

It took months of sleuthing through satellite imagery and county records, bushwhacking up hillsides and consultations with landowners, but KZYX finally has installed genuinely fast broadband internet befitting a 21st century broadcaster. And as a result, Anderson Valley households and businesses have a new option for affordable high-speed internet.

On July 2, 2018, Krispin Scanlon-Hill of Further Reach, a local wireless internet service provider that has been weaving a web of wireless internet service provider (WISP) relays up the Mendocino coast, powered up two small dishes high on the eastern flank of Anderson Valley and began relaying high-speed bandwidth from its Mathison Peak tower near Little River Airport to the KZYX studios in Philo via a crucial relay on Navarro Vineyards property. With that switch, the station’s bandwidth jumped from 3.1 megabits per second to about 45 mps. Better still, this improvement will bring KZYX an overall cost savings of as much as $16,000 a year.

The benefits of this arrangement to the Anderson Valley community will be substantial, a direct result of the collaboration between Further Reach and Navarro Vineyard. Households and businesses with line of sight to the Philo relay can access the service, which is already serving customers in Boonville more than five miles away, along Greenwood Ridge and in other areas where the only internet choices have been satellite or dial-up.

The impact at KZYX was immediate and dramatic. Audio file download, accounting, member database, website, email and other cloud-based services essential to media operations stopped dragging and sprang to life. Calls routed over the “voice over internet protocol” or VoIP phone system supplied by Mendocino Community Network in October 2017 rang through loud and clear despite traveling 18 miles through thin air between Philo and Little River. Next, KZYX will switch over its streamer, which allows web streaming from anywhere in the world via KZYX.org. The final test will be to shift over the Tieline links that deliver live programming to the Philo broadcast center from KZYX remote studios in Fort Bragg, Willits and – as soon as possible – Ukiah.

“So many of our systems rely increasingly on high-speed internet services that simply have not been available in rural Anderson Valley,” said KZYX General Manager Jeff Parker. “The station has been struggling for years to find reliable, affordable bandwidth. In a situation common across rural America, the big providers couldn’t be bothered to serve our needs. They see no profit in small rural customers. In addition, in October 2017, our telephone company raised our rates more than 400 percent. That made a shift to internet phone service a matter of necessity. Thanks to Further Reach and Navarro Vineyards, we’ve solved that problem, and at a huge savings to the station.”

Further Reach is a non-profit company founded by UC Berkeley engineers determined to prove that even rural areas can enjoy fast, reliable and affordable internet. Navarro Vineyards saw hosting a relay on its land as a way of supporting community radio and making broadband available to many neighbors.

The relay location on Navarro Vineyards land is, indeed, a key component of the arrangement, and both Parker and Scanlon-Hill are grateful to Navarro owner Deborah Cahn for facilitating this vital connection on her property.

“Navarro Vineyards is pleased to be helping Further Reach provide fast internet access to both central and remote corners of the Anderson Valley,” Cahn said. “This access will give a larger voice to our small but vibrant community by providing faster emergency information and educational resources and an easier way to communicate with each other and with Bright Lighters.”

KZYX is consulting with Cal Fire, local fire departments, the county and other partners on ways to use the WISP links to improve emergency communications.

“The new WISP network opens the door to improved reliability of the KZYX broadcasts and important new public emergency safety services,” Parker observed, “first by providing a possible backup link between the station its primary transmitter atop Cold Springs Tower on Signal Ridge. This can keep KZYX on the air if our microwave uplink falters.”

“Further Reach looks forward to the opportunity to serve Anderson Valley,” Scanlon-Hill said. In fact, the company is now recruiting installers to mount the small dishes needed for homes and businesses to receive their signal.

Anderson Valley residents interested in learning more about Further Reach and their services can visit their website at www.furtherreach.net.

‘A SCHEDULE OF DRUGS IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH’

A Novel by Sarah Reith

(Reviewed by Kristana Arp)

When called on to sum up her previous employment experience in a job interview, Isobel Reinhardt, the protagonist of Sarah Reith’s powerful new novel, calls it a “patchwork Mendocino lifestyle.” And what a vivid and richly detailed patchwork her life turns out to be.

It is 2008. Isobel Reinhardt, is 20 something, divorced and broke. She straggles home to California after a humiliating academic adventure overseas. Where does she go to recover? Mendocino County, of course, the same place where her hippy parents retreated to after a setback many years ago.

Sarah Reith shows us her writing chops right on the very first pages, when she convinces us that painting someone’s portrait can be a dangerous enterprise. Portrait painting is the life’s work Isobel Reinhardt is called to at the end of the series of wrenching events narrated in the novel. By the end we are certain she can handle this danger with no problem at all.

Isobel’s first port of call in the novel is the rural mansion of an elegant woman who offers her lodging after picking her up hitchhiking. This woman is the first in a series of characters who are subjected to Reith’s probing and hilarious commentary. Further diversion is supplied by asides on botany, etymology, oil painting, Viking history sprinkled throughout the text.

Like many young people desperate for work, Isobel is drawn into the marijuana industry, a trade with deep roots in Mendocino County. “Some growers have strains they can trace back to seeds their grandparents smuggled out of Afghanistan in the 1960s,” Isobel tells. Growing pot is complicated business. Reith goes into all the fascinating details. There are even paeans to the pot plants themselves, whose beauty, apparently, has been gravely underappreciated.

Although the pot farmer Isobel assists generates an amazingly good product, it is a sideline for her. In the middle of the growing season she jets off to join an art project aiming to bring peace to the Middle East, leaving Isobel stranded alone with the “girls.” Although Isobel is extremely skeptical about anything woo-woo, she has what can only be called a mystical experience when she stops eating and falls into a trance-like state in which “the world throbbed with a secret significance.”

This idyll is interrupted when the farmer comes back in time for the harvest. Earlier in the novel, Isobel boasts that she is “outlaw royalty.” Her mother is a goddess-worshipping high-price prostitute and her father a circus performer turned drug kingpin who is now a federal fugitive. This legacy stands her in good stead when she is stopped for a broken taillight while ferrying coolers full of professionally-packaged bud. Isobel lounges in the back seat of the cruiser with complete sangfroid while the police figure out what to do about her missing insurance card.

Next Isobel finds herself in the same predicament facing other trimmers: she needs to get a new job. Finally, she becomes a nude art model. Her mother—the high-end hooker—is aghast. Male artists always sleep with their models, she insists. They are leering voyeurs. Painting nude models arouses them. “Why do you think they wear smocks?”

At the end the novel turns darker. Isobel is hired as an assistant caretaker for an infirm old woman who has become merely “a mass of flesh beneath a pastel comforter.” The description of the indignities of this woman’s situation may make some readers, especially older ones squeamish.

The novel then culminates with the drama of death, which sets up Isobel’s subsequent psychic rebirth. The main character in this final drama, however, is not the dying woman. It is her primary caretaker, Fiona. Fiona turns out to be in thrall to a Lake County cult leader who claims to be the reincarnation of both Jesus and the Buddha. Her eyes shine like the “headlights on the spaceship in her brain,” Isobel tells us. In other words, she is completely Looney Tunes.

Not surprisingly, Isobel begins to distrust this woman’s judgement. The closing pages of the novel find Isobel confronted with a moral dilemma. But finally the woman dies. “Thank God she is dead,” Isobel thinks. “Now she is safe.”

Such an experience inevitably leads Isobel to contemplate her own mortality—stripped of comforting illusions, although she is not a person with a lot of illusions to start with. Like Stephen Daedalus in James Joyce’s first novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Isobel turns to art as means of salvation. What kind of art? As the opening pages of the novel reveal, it is portrait painting.

(Ed Note: Sarah Reith is the lead reporter for KZYX radio in Philo.)

SIGNS OF THE TIME: The Anderson Valley Food Bank has published an urgent request for donations of money and food. Demand has outstripped the Bank's ability to provide assistance. The collection point is the Boonville Methodist Church in downtown Boonville at 13850 Highway 128. Donations can be mailed to Anderson Valley Food Bank, PO Box 692, Boonville CA 95415.

RENTALS in the Anderson Valley? Don’t even ask, although old timers will remember when you could have rented the whole town for $200 a month, Mary and Joseph themselves could find nary a manger these days.

THE ‘GREAT DAY IN ELK’ is August 25, 2018: Parade at noon, followed by afternoon carnival, food, activities and live entertainment. Barbecued Tri-tip or veggie dinner 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. benefit for the Greenwood Community Center in Elk. For more information go to www.elkweb.org or email meabloyd@gmail.com. No dogs please.

QUESTIONNAIRE OF THE WEEK from the Anderson Valley Health Center:

WE HAVE an anon letter scorching Coast Hospital from, purportedly, a former traveling nurse alleging the rude arrogance of some doctors and specific allegations that one doctor opens and closes doors by kicking them and a fat doc who sprays the entire staff bathroom: "He's so obese he can't urinate completely in the toilet in the operating room. The end result is the 30 to 40 milliliters that end up on the floor is walked in and then spread all through the OR office, hallways and operating rooms…" The complaint goes on to name names in convincing detail.

IF IT WAS SIGNED, we'd publish the indictment whole, but it isn't signed and, I'm sure you'll agree, that if you're going to smack people by name you've also got to step up with your name.

IT'S HARDLY NEWS that Coast Hospital is deeply, perhaps fatally, in debt, a debt deeper by the day with, a nurse tells us, a record 41 traveling personnel presently employed at a lot more money than resident employees would cost, an imbalance likely to continue given the scarce availability of affordable housing.

ON THE SUBJECT of shelter, especially on the Mendocino Coast, the many otherwise permanent rental units gone over to Air B&B have intensified the housing shortage. And the neo-prevalence of haute bourgeoisie Sotheby for sale signs on even ordinary houses means the whole area is going upscale, pricing out working people like nurses, hence Coast Hospital’s reliance on temps and only dithering from County leadership on the issue…

HERE’S BRENT! The Mendocino County of Board of Supervisors got off a presser last week about…. “We are pleased to announce the appointment of Brent Schultz as Planning and Building Services Director for Mendocino County. Mr. Schultz joins the County after serving as the Housing and Municipal Services Director for the City of Ontario since 2013. Mr. Schultz has a Public Administration Degree from California State University of Fullerton and a Masters of Business Administration from Chapman University. In his free time, he enjoys being with his family, traveling, or flying his airplane….”

DAN HAMBURG, the 5th District’s phantom supervisor and a man always prepared to dish up a big helping of pure smarm, commented, “Mr. Schultz brings 30 years of municipal government experience in housing, redevelopment and planning. He is enthusiastic to step into a County leadership role and has a commitment to streamlining regulatory processes that will serve our County well in the coming years.”

A READER COMMENTS on the sorry state of Lake Mendocino: "Even without the uptick in vandalism, the place is a trash heap. Broken glass everywhere along the shore and parking lots, garbage thrown everywhere, dog poo all over. It is disgusting. It is embarrassing to take out of town friends there. It could be a lot better, but it's not. Seems like folks just don't care. Sad!"

LIBBY’S MENU at Lauren’s Restaurant in Boonville, Aug. 20, 2018

PET CARE-A-VAN TUESDAY AT THE MANCHESTER COMMUNITY CENTER

Reminder: The Mendocino County Pet-Care-A-Van will be at the MCC Tuesday. Low-cost vaccinations for your cats and dogs beginning at 10 am. The Mendocino Community Center/Garcia Guild (formerly Garcia Grange) is at 43970 Crispin Road in Manchester. It is just East of Highway 1.

BLACK HONDA ACCORD CRASHES AT GOWAN’S FARM ON HWY 128 PHILO

WARNING!

The Answer to Where Is Wild Mendocino Dinner Coming From...

I am moved to write a warning regarding the Wild Mendocino Dinner (being held in Ft. Bragg), not out of concern for wildlife, but out of concern for our health. There has been a disease similar to mad cow disease that moved across the country east to west for the last 10-15 years in wild ruminants (goats, deer, elk). This is a neurological (nerve) based disease and for many years now Fish & Wildlife has banned the transport of wild-killed animals into California, allowing only the muscle meat to enter the state in an effort to keep the disease out of California. The disease is, however, here and has been for at least 10 years. Those of us who see and work with wildlife daily know that these animals don't understand state lines or borders, and have seen the disease (referred to as wasting disease) in California for many years. Hunting licenses are a big source of income for the state.

Fish & Wildlife has a huge room-size freezer where they store confiscated/dead wildlife. It's down by the Warm Springs dam and fish hatchery near Santa Rosa. There are separate piles of mountain lions, bears, deer, etc. all neatly tagged. It's necessary to periodically clear out the evidence, and they do so either by donating it to non-profits for fundraising or incinerating it. As for where did the bear-meat offered for dinner--they are among the nuisance and/or dangerous animals trapped and killed by the county trapper--who must get a special 'depredation permit' from Fish & Wildlife before he can trap/dispatch any individual bear or lion. Several weeks ago there was a bear trapped and dispatched in Ft. Bragg. Trapping and then releasing an animal elsewhere is illegal in California. Zoos are already overloaded with animals and certainly aren't interested in the hundreds that are dispatched annually. Obviously this is never announced to the public as it always starts an uproar. However, sometimes these animals are truly dangerous to the public or ranching community, and for public safety reasons, must be removed. Unfortunately, in California it is illegal to release, and that is because everywhere else that might be appropriate habitat is already full, and the wild resident whose territory it is would quickly kill anything released there.

Ronnie James <ronnie@mcn.org>

CATCH OF THE DAY, August 20, 2018

STEPHEN BENBOW, Fort Bragg. Parole violation.

JOHN BRUNK, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

GARY BURTON, Laytonville. Domestic battery.

CESAR DELCAMPO, Ukiah. Contributing, failure to appear.

DREW ERSLAND, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

ALISIA JOAQUIN, Covelo. Battery with serious injury, conspiracy, probation revocation.

JOAQUINA JOAQUIN, Covelo. Battery with serious injury, assault with deadly weapon not a gun, conspiracy, probation revocation.

KRISTIN KUNTZ, Ukiah. DUI.

SHALOM LEWIS, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

DEBORAH MCCLOUD, Covelo. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, battery with serious injury, conspiracy, probation revocation.

BRENDA PALMER, Potter Valley. DUI-drugs&alcohol.

ESTABAN QUINONEZ, Ukiah, DUI.

JAVIER RAMIREZ, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

DAWNA SALLINEN, Westport. Domestic battery.

CHRISTINA TORRES, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

THE WHAT BUDGET?

Editor,

I am shocked at the high and rising “defense” budget, given that no country is attacking. Why not rightly call it an “offense” budget?

I cannot recall Congress passing a War Powers Act authorization for Yemen. Yet tax dollars and lives are being paid by our citizenry to bomb a bus carrying Yemeni schoolchildren. (“ ‘Independent and prompt investigation, (Press Democrat)’ ” Aug. 11). What did Yemen do to us? When will we demand that representatives pull back the reins on destructive military actions? When will representatives fund Medicare for all, repair water infrastructure, solve climate change as we need at home?

Wealthy people already enjoy the best health care, eat well and own at least one home. So while Donald Trump would increase the “offense” budget again, his family won’t pay for it. Instead you and I fund reckless destruction on an enemy yet to be named by a president who knows less about the world than my teenage daughter who attends Fort Bragg High School.

The U.S. often demands that a fraudulent election in a foreign country be redone. When will we redo our own fraudulent election? If the Electoral College chooses the president, the electors should have to be elected first.

Teri Jo Barber

Fort Bragg

THE WINNERS WILL LOSE & THE LOSERS WILL WIN

by James Kunstler

Who doesn’t want to think that they are a good human being? That they are a person of good intentions, clear conscience, fair-minded, generous, loving, and merciful? On the other hand, who wants to be a loser?

The current political predicament in the USA has America’s winners turned losers and the consequent pain of that flip-flop has propelled the new designated losers into a fury of moral indignation. The deplorable Trump insurgents were supposed to be put in their place on November 8, 2016 — stuffed back into their reeking WalMarts — but instead, their champion with his gold-plated hair-do presides over the nation in the house where Lincoln, The Roosevelts, and Hillary lived. “Winning…!” as the new president likes to tweet.

What a revoltin’ development, as Chester A. Riley used to say on “The Life of Riley” TV show back in 1955, when America was great (at least that’s the theory). Riley was an original deplorable before the concept even emerged from the murk of early pop culture. He worked in an aircraft factory somewhere in southern California, which only a few decades prior was the mecca of an earlier generations of losers: the Oakies and other Dust Bowl refugees who went west to pick fruit or get into the movies.

Chester A. Riley supported a family on that job as a wing-riveter. All the male characters in the series had been through the Second World War, but were so far removed from the horror that the audience never heard about it. That was the point: to forget all that gore and get down with the new crazes for backyard barbeque, seeing the USA in your Chevrolet, enjoying that healthful pack of Lucky Strikes in the valley of the Jolly Green Giant… double your pleasure, double your fun… and away go troubles down the drain….

As Tom Wolfe pointed out eons ago, the most overlooked feature of post-war American life was the way that the old US peasantry found themselves living higher on the hog than Louis the XVI and his court at Versailles. Hot and cold running water, all the deliciously engineered Betty Crocker cake you could eat, painless dentistry, and Yankees away games on Channel 11, with Pabst Blue Ribbon by the case! By 1960 or so, along came color TV and air-conditioning, and in places like Atlanta, St. Louis, and Little Rock, you barely had to go outside anymore, thank God! No more heat stroke, hookworm, or chiggers.

It was a helluva lot better than earlier peasant classes had it, for sure, but let’s face it: it was kind of a low-grade nirvana. And a couple of generations beyond “The Life of Riley” the whole thing has fallen apart. There are few hands-on jobs that allow a man to support a family. And what would we even mean by that? Stick the women back in kitchen and the laundry room? What a waste of human capital (even for socialists who oppose capital). The odd thing is that there is increasingly little for this class of people to do besides stand near the door of the WalMart, and if the vaunted tech entrepreneurs of this land have their way with robotics, you can be sure there would be less than nothing for them to do… except crawl off and die quietly, without leaving an odoriferous mess.

What political commentator has failed to notice that the supposed savior of this peasant class is himself a sort of shabby version of Louis XVI, with his gilded toilet seats, brand-name pomp, and complex hair?

A happy peasantry needs a good king, and that is the role Mr. Trump seems to have cast himself in. I assume that he wants very earnestly to be considered a good person, though all his efforts to demonstrate that have been startlingly clumsy and mostly ineffective.

The one thing he has truly accomplished is driving his opponents in the overclass out of their gourds with loathing and resentment. (The term, overclass was minted, I believe by the excellent essayist Michael Lind.) It’s a wonderfully inclusive term in that it describes basically everyone who is not in the underclass — that now-dreadful realm of tattooed diabetics moiling in the war memorial auditoriums and minor league ball parks for their hero and leader to descend like Deus ex Machina in the presidential helicopter to remind them how much they’re winning.

Meanwhile, the class of former winners-turned-losers — the Silicon Valley executives, the Hollywood movers and shakers, the Brooklyn Hipsters, the Ivy League faculties, the Deep State guideline writers, the K-Street consultants, the yoga ladies of Fairfield County, Connecticut, the acolytes of Oprah Winfrey and Elizabeth Warren — resort to righteous litigation in their crusade to restore the proper order of rule in this land. When they come to power, the shining city will be at hand….

I kind of doubt it. The truth is, all current winners and losers are living in the shadow of a financial system that doesn’t really work anymore, because it doesn’t represent the reality of wealth that is no longer there. The consolation, perhaps, is that there will be plenty for all those who survive the collapse of that system to do when the time comes. But it will be in a disposition of things and of power that we can’t possibly recognize from where we stand these days.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Have you been to a mall lately? Unfortunately, retail stores and malls in particular have become the haunts of barbarous, ill-intentioned gangs of desperate, predatory wanna-be gangstas. No one with any actual money to spend cares to take the risk of actually going anywhere near one of those places. Did you see that video from several years ago taken during a riot in the food court of the Mall of America? Enraged young men were throwing chairs around shouting obscenities and attacking each other. Frankly, it looked like one of those nature programs showing rival bands of chimpanzees fighting over territory. I haven’t been back there since. I do most of my shopping safely and sedately on line. I miss going to the bookstore, of course, and I hate giving my trade to Amazon.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK

I understand your pessimism and rage at people for letting themselves get played, not just for a little while, but for decades. You know the story, multitudes listening to the race and identity horse-shit, the tranny washroom baloney and those on the other side of the political ledger smilingly accepting their destitution as “good, proud, patriotic” Americans because this is what a – cough – free and unfettered market dictates.

Yet it does appear that Kansas isn’t buying the usual Republican bull-shit anymore as the election of Trump shows, the election of Ocasio-Cortez on the Democratic side may show some unloosening of the mental shackles there.

And you also have the example of history. It took a long time but the Czar and his family really did get stuck down a mine shaft, the Chinese, Cubans, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians really did up-end their ruling regimes for better or worse. And, further back in time, the French really did a number on their own ruling aristocracy.

Hope isn’t all lost IMO. As you say, it’s going to get interesting sooner rather than later.

WHILE RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS have unofficially been the recipients of a tax-exempt status since the founding of the United States, official federal income tax exemption was granted in 1894. Today, in the United States, there are 300,000 religious congregations that pay no tax whatsoever. Which means they pay zero in federal, state, local, income, sales, and property taxes, even though together they own an estimated $600 billion in property.

Those in favor of maintaining this tax-exempt status argue “that a tax exemption keeps the government out of church finances and thus upholds the separation of church and state,” but at a time when the United States’ national debt stands at $19.3 trillion or 105% of GDP, it is time that we have all hands on deck and everyone should pay their fair share of utilizing our national resources, without any exception to religious entities...

(Democracy Chronicles)

NCO GARDENS PROJECT HOSTS GARDENPALOOZA!

Join the NCO Gardens Project for the first annual Gardenpalooza on September 8^th at Vinewood Park (Elm & Magnolia St.) in Ukiah from 11am – 3pm. This free family friendly event invites community gardeners and garden supporters to connect for a tasty and fun-filled afternoon. Gardenpalooza will feature a community potluck picnic (bring your blankets and chairs!), lawn games for all ages, children’s activities, and local garden, farm and health organizations. If you are a vendor and would like to participate please contact Lucy at lkramer@ncoinc.org for a vendor application. No alcohol will be served. Plant starts will be available by donation to jumpstart your fall and winter garden.

Community gardeners and community members alike are encouraged to bring a favorite potluck dish featuring garden fresh produce to share. Attendees will have the opportunity to taste and vote on their favorite recipes to be featured in the NCO Gardens Project’s upcoming cookbook. Please submit your potluck recipe to the Gardens Project by August 31. Recipes can be submitted by email to Lucy at lkramer@ncoinc.org, sent to 413 N State Street in Ukiah, or online: https://bit.ly/2vnOwNn.

To keep up-to-date on this event and current projects, follow NCO Gardens Project on Facebook or @gardensproject on Instagram. Donations are always accepted and appreciated through the Facebook page, the website www.gardensproject.org/donate, or by mail or in-person to the Gardens Project office at 413 N State Street, Ukiah, CA 95482. To donate lumber, tools, fencing, or any other materials for current building projects or to volunteer, contact lkramer@ncoinc.org or call (707) 467-3200 ext. 246.

The Gardens Project has been a program of NCO since 2007. NCO is the community action agency that supports Lake and Mendocino Counties as well as parts of Humboldt, Sonoma, Del Norte, and Solano Counties. This year marks NCO’s 50^th Anniversary and large picnic-style celebration will be held at Todd Grove Park in Ukiah on August 25^th. NCO was also the winner of the 2018 California Nonprofit of the Year Award. Learn more about NCO by calling (707) 467-3200 or by visiting www.ncoinc.org.