Douglas County is likely to recoup much of what it spent last winter on flooding issues.
Seven projects in the Carson Valley cost more than $380,000.
Through FEMA the county could see $285,779.
Work needed to done be included clearing debris, fixing pipes and pumps, and repairs to the North Valley Wastewater Treatment Plant.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
· Sharon Romack has been hired as executive director of Valhalla Tahoe.
· Free flu shots will be given on Nov. 27 from 4-5:30pm during Bread & Broth’s weekly meal at Grace Hall in South Lake Tahoe.
· Getaway Transit, a Bay Area-based company, is starting a shuttle service to the South and North Shores of Lake Tahoe. If funding comes through, service would start in April.
· Frontier airlines on Nov. 21 will begin offering nonstop flights between Reno and Denver.
· The Bicycle Advisory Committee of the South Lake Tahoe Recreation Facilities Joint Powers Authority will meet Dec. 6 from 9-11am at City Council Chambers.
The Housing Element of the 2016 Douglas County Master Plan update is scheduled to go before the Board of Commissioners on Dec. 4, 9am in Minden.
Public comment will be taken at the meeting, while written comments will be accepted before then.
According to participants in the 2016 Master Plan survey, the Housing Element was rated as one of the top three Master Plan elements needing improvement, after Growth Management and Land Use. Several survey respondents expressed concern with the lack of diverse housing stock and the expensive housing market in Douglas County.
Included in the Housing Element is a section on affordable housing. Affordable housing in the Housing Element is defined as market rate housing as well as subsidized housing. The standard rule of thumb is that housing costs, including utilities, should not exceed 30 percent of household income.
In July, the county with the Nevada Rural Housing Authority created the Douglas County Affordable Housing Task Force. Their meetings are not open to the public.
By Associated Press
California released long-awaited rules Thursday that will govern the state’s emerging legal marijuana industry, while potentially opening the way for larger-scale cultivation that some fear could strangle small-farm growers.
The thicket of emergency regulations will allow the state to begin issuing temporary licenses for growers, distributors and sellers on Jan. 1, when recreational sales become legal.
They provide a regulatory roadmap for business operations, from licensing fees to establishing guidelines for testing, growing and distribution of marijuana in what is projected to be a $7 billion economy, the nation’s largest.
Electric rates could be going up more than 4 percent starting Jan. 1 for Liberty Utilities customers.
The company in October asked the California Public Utilities Commission for the $2,174,648 increase. The basis is because of capital projects in excess of $4 million and inflation.
The notice sent to ratepayers, which includes the California side of the basin, Truckee and Alpine county, said, Liberty “seeks recovery of the remaining capital and operating expenses associated with Liberty CalPeco’s acquisition, financing, ownership, operation and maintenance of the Luning Solar Project.”
The 4.07 percent increase includes 1.5 percent for cost of inflation.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
Lake Tahoe Community College is hosting a holiday, family movie night on Dec. 8 at 5:30pm in the Duke Theatre.
“The Polar Express” starring Tom Hanks will be on the big screen. Come dressed in cozy pajamas, then gather the family for a holiday photo with Coyote Claus.
Admission is $10 for adults, $5 for LTCC students and kids age 13 and under, and $30 for a family up to four people, includes cocoa and popcorn; additional family members $3/each. Tickets can be purchased securely online.
Bring canned foods that will be distributed to LTCC students who are in need. Any leftover contributions will then be given to Christmas Cheer.
By Rob Oldham
It’s a common misconception that baby teeth don’t matter much — after all, they’re just going to fall out anyway, right?
But the science is firm: Baby teeth are not expendable, and they have many more roles beyond “holding space” for permanent teeth.
Rob Oldham
Proper care of your child’s baby teeth can help their self-esteem, aid in speech development and promote good nutrition because they’ll be able to chew properly. Tooth decay in infants and toddlers can have a terrible impact on them later in life. Pain and infection can interrupt learning, playing and growing.
It’s also great to model proper oral health practices for kids starting at an early age.
I know, I know — brushing your child’s teeth sounds about as fun as getting your own teeth drilled. But there are some tricks that can help. With babies, you can lay them in your lap with their head facing you. Or, try the two-parent, knee-to-knee configuration. With toddlers, model how fun it is to brush your teeth with games or songs. Usually you’ll need to help children brush until age 7 or 8 as they don’t have the dexterity to reach all of their teeth and do a thorough job.
Many parents aren’t aware that you can begin flossing children’s teeth as soon as teeth begin to touch. There are fun, child-friendly “flossers” available in most stores that are easier to use with young children than regular floss.
My youngest, Odette, is 15 months old and loves to brush her teeth. She’ll walk around the house showing off her toothbrush. But she’s a rarity — my other kids weren’t nearly as receptive. It can be a challenge, but it’s important. We established a “bottle, book, brush, bed” routine with our kids, as it’s important that they brush after having a bottle. Once those habits are cemented in, it becomes a lot easier.
Another thing I get a lot of questions about is fluoride. It’s been the subject of debate over the years, but we now recommend it in appropriate quantities for young children. In fact, as soon as your child’s first teeth come in, a dentist can apply a varnish to protect them. Don’t overdo the fluoride, though. Keep an eye on toddlers if they’re brushing their own teeth to make sure they only use a pea-sized amount of toothpaste, but that they’re brushing thoroughly.
Even before children grow teeth, though, it’s good practice to rub their gums with a washcloth to keep bacteria from building up. And don’t share items with your children that have been in or touched your mouth, such as cups, utensils and toothbrushes, since cavity-producing bacteria can be transferred this way.
Many people are surprised to learn that we now recommend children have their first dental appointment when they get their first tooth, or at their first birthday — whichever comes first. There are even dentists who specialize in pediatric care, if your child is fussy.
When it all comes down to it, just remember: It’s never too early.
Rob Oldham is Placer County’s public health officer.
By Barbara J. Powell, Bloomberg
U.S. Thanksgiving travel will jump to the highest level since 2005 boosted by a stronger economy, even as gasoline prices will be higher than a year earlier.
About 50.9 million Americans will journey 50 miles or more from home for the Nov. 22-Nov. 26 holiday period, the ninth consecutive increase and a 3.3 percent jump over a year earlier, AAA said in an emailed report. About 45.5 million will travel by automobile, up 3.2 percent. Air travel will rise 5 percent to nearly 4 million.
By Brian Fagan
Of the three ancient ways of obtaining food—hunting, plant foraging, and fishing—only the last remained important after the development of agriculture and livestock raising in Southwest Asia some 12,000 years ago.
Yet ancient fisher folk and their communities have almost entirely escaped scholarly study. Why? Such communities held their knowledge close to their chests and seldom gave birth to powerful monarchs or divine rulers. And they conveyed knowledge from one generation to the next by word of mouth, not writing.
That knowledge remains highly relevant today. Fishers are people who draw their living from a hard, uncontrollable world that is perfectly indifferent to their fortunes or suffering. Many of them still fish with hooks, lines, nets, and spears that are virtually unchanged since the Ice Age.
The world’s first pre-industrial communities emerged in the Eastern Mediterranean around 3100 B.C. Other states developed independently, somewhat later, in Asia and in the Americas. The entire superstructure of the pre-industrial state, whether Sumerian, Egyptian, Roman, Cambodian, or Inca, depended on powerful ideologies that propelled the efforts of thousands of anonymous laborers, who served on great estates, built temples, tombs, and public buildings, and produced the rations that fed not only the ruler but also his armies of officials. Some of the most important were the fishers, who, along with farmers, were the most vital of all food purveyors.
As city populations grew, fish became a commodity, harvested by the thousands. Fishers transported their catches to small towns and then cities, bringing fish to markets and temples. For the first time, some communities became virtually full-time fishers, bartering or selling fish in town and village markets in exchange for other necessities. Their catches were recorded and taxed. In time, too, fish became rations of standard size, issued to noble and commoner alike. The ruler and the state required hundreds, even thousands, of skilled and unskilled laborers. Their work might be a form of taxation, but the king had to support them in kind, often with fish.
The Land of the Pharaohs depended heavily on its fisher folk. Nile River catfish were easy to harvest, especially during the spring spawn, before they were gutted and dried in the tropical sun on large racks. The authorities assigned teams of fishers to catch specific quotas within set periods, especially when the flood was receding. Large seine nets provided much of the catch, deployed and hauled in by teams of villagers.
The demand was enormous. Building the Pyramids of Giza alone required thousands of people. The workers’ settlement lay close to the royal tombs. In 1991, the Egyptologist Mark Lehner excavated two bakeries, including the vats for mixing dough and a cache of the large bell-shaped pots used for baking bread. A huge mud brick building next to bakeries contained troughs, benches, and tens of thousands of tiny fish fragments in the fine ashy deposit covering the floor.
The fresh catches had to be dried and preserved immediately. Lehner believes that the fish were laid out on reed frames to dry on well-ventilated troughs and benches in a production line that provided protein for thousands of people. At its peak, the line must have employed hundreds of people and processed thousands of fish per day—precise estimates are impossible. The fishers were thus only the first stage of an infrastructure of hundreds of people needed to process and store the dried catch for later consumption. The demands of this operation must have led to large, temporary fishing villages springing up at the same general locations every flood season.
The Ancient Egyptians were not alone. Mid-19th-century travelers, who crossed the Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia after the monsoon as the water was falling, reported catfish teeming so thickly under their canoes that one could almost walk across the water on their backs. The ancestors of these large fish fed thousands of Khmer laborers as they built the nearby stupendous temples of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom in the 12th century.
On the other side of the world, along the arid North Coast of Peru, the inshore anchovy fisheries, nourished by natural upwelling from the sea bed, yielded enormous numbers of small fish that, when dried and turned into meal, made a valuable protein supplement for farmers in fertile river valleys inland, such as the great settlement at Caral, about 120 miles north of present-day Lima. Caravans of llamas carried bags of fish meal high into the Andes, where the fish became a major economic prop of the Inca empire. Tens of thousands of anchovies were netted, dried, and stored before being traded on a near-industrial scale.
Fish were major historical players in many places. Dried fish fed merchant seamen crossing the Indian Ocean from the Red Sea to India; dried cod from northern Norway was the beef jerky that sustained Norse crews as they sailed to Iceland, Greenland, and North America.
Those who caught the fish that fed pre-modern civilizations were anonymous folk, who appeared with their catches in city markets, then vanished quietly back to their small villages in the hinterland. Perhaps it was the smell of fish that clung to them, or the simple baskets, nets, and spears they used to harvest their catches that kept them isolated from the townsfolk. Perhaps they preferred to be taken for granted. But their efforts helped create, feed, and link great civilizations for thousands of years.
Centuries ago, urban populations numbered in the thousands, but the demand for fish was insatiable. Today, the silent elephant in the fishing room is an exploding global population that considers ocean fish a staple. Deep-water trawls, diesel trawlers, electronic fish finders, and factory ships with deep freezes have turned the most ancient of our ways of obtaining food into an industrial behemoth. Even remote fisheries are being decimated.
Despite large-scale fish farming, humans face the specter of losing our most ancient practice of food-gathering—and thus leaving behind an ocean that is almost fishless.
Brian Fagan is emeritus professor of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara, and author of “Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization” (Yale University Press, 2017).
By Lisa Riley Roche, Deseret News
Salt Lake City is already “ticking all the boxes” for another successful Winter Games bid, according to the head of a leading international Olympic publication.
“They’re doing all the right things,” said Ed Hula, founder and editor of the Atlanta-based “Around the Rings,” especially involving state and local government leaders in the newly formed Olympic Exploratory Committee.
The USOC has until March 31, 2018, to decide whether to advance an American city for 2026 or 2030.
A new bid process approved in July by the IOC for the 2026 Winter Games now allows for a full year of discussions with both national Olympic committees like the USOC and potential bid cities.
Denver and the Reno-Tahoe area have expressed interest in bidding for the Winter Games.