By Chris Kudialis, Las Vegas Sun

In three of the first four states to start legal recreational pot sales, an increasing number of consumers are choosing bud over Budweiser.

That conclusion comes from a study by New York-based investment and research firm Cowen and Co. In Colorado, Oregon and Washington, domestic beer sales for Budweiser, Coors and Miller were down 4.4 percent from January 2015 to the end of 2016, while purchases of craft beer fell 2.4 percent. No data was available for Alaska.

How the beginning of recreational marijuana sales in Nevada affects local alcohol sales remains to be seen, as the program began just eight weeks ago.

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The 20th annual Tahoe Forest Stewardship Day is Sept. 23 from 8am-3pm.

Participants will help restore the Angora burn area by improving trails and thinning brush to protect young trees.

Then all volunteers are invited to South Tahoe Brewing Co. for a celebration.

The work ends at 1pm, with the party from 1-3pm.

The annual event is put on by the League to Save Lake Tahoe.

To get more information and to RSVP, go online.

Extraterrestrial life in the solar system? Is there life out there? If E.T. does exist, where would we find it, and what would it look like?

Those are some of the questions Tony Berendsen will answer during an astronomy talk on Oct. 3 at 6pm at the South Lake Tahoe Library.

Berendsen is an outreach astronomer, owner of Tahoe Star Tours and writes the Star Guide column for Lake Tahoe News.

The talk is free and open to all. The library is located on Rufus Allen Boulevard.

Whittell’s field is not suitable for any sports this fall. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

Before Whittell High School’s football plays its first game tonight it has already scored in the arena of community cooperation, as has Lake Tahoe Unified School District.

They are showing what it truly means to blur the state line.

Construction equipment is occupying Whittell’s gridiron as it undergoes a major transformation. It’s all dirt, a complete work zone. This means no games there this season.

“I thought about our families who would be attending games. I know it’s easier to be here at the lake than to go down off the mountain,” Principal Crespin Esquivel told Lake Tahoe News.

That’s how LTUSD got involved.

South Tahoe Middle School is going to be Whittell’s home field for this season. Games will be Sept. 8, Sept. 29, Oct. 13, Oct. 26 at 7pm. The Warriors are expected to have a good team this year. Last season they finished 9-2 and made it to the playoffs.

“We got contacted last spring to see what we could figure out and it ended up to be pretty easy. It was an amicable resolution on both sides,” Pat Harnett, STHS athletic director, told Lake Tahoe News. “They wanted to be at a consistent site. That’s why they are at the middle school. The high school site was not always available.

“There is no facility use fee. We are taking care of our neighbors.”

WHS will pay for any LTUSD personnel involved with the game.

The Warriors are able to practice at home. Photo/LTN

If a facility in LTUSD could not have been found, the Warriors would likely have ended up at Douglas High. And while that would have kept them in their same school district, going across town is more like playing at home.

The team is still able to practice at home. That upper field has grass.

What will be different at STMS is that it is artificial turf. The other thing is that the field is wider and will have to be altered. WHS plays eight-man football instead of 11. Tape has been ordered to stripe lines for their games that will be put down and taken up each night.

The goal is for the field in Zephyr Cove to be finished for the start of next season.

WHS soccer games will be played at Zephyr Cove Park this year. The track team has never had home meets.

A donation of $3 million from the Lisa and Robert Maloff Endowment Fund is paying for the football field to be completely renovated as well as the track.

“The drainage was a huge problem. It always looked like a moat out there,” Esquivel said.

Improving the water flow is a big part of the new infrastructure. While the original plan was to put in artificial turf, now sod is going to be laid. An all-weather track is coming, visitor seating and concession stand as well.

To the community,

As you have no doubt experienced, Highway 50, as you approach the Y, is again subject to extensive construction. I am sure that when this project is completed it will be an asset to our community and improve the condition of Highway 50 by providing sidewalks, bike trails, curbs and gutters.

Bruce Grego

However, I am very concerned about the time frame for this project’s completion. Has anybody considered the long-term negative impact on the local businesses in the areas affected? Has anyone interviewed or surveyed these businesses to learn of their economic suffering? There is almost nowhere for patrons to turn into these many businesses. Most of the ingress/egress to these parking lots and driveways are obscured by large pieces of construction equipment as well as other obstructions. Many have a driveway with a short-width metal plate causing vehicles to barely maneuver or enter the driveway.

On some days there are no “left turns” off of Highway 50 to enter the driveways to businesses, and more recently, no right turns to moving traffic. It is evident that traffic to these businesses has been reduced. How can any business hope to have any commercial activity when construction is occurring in front of their property making accessibility extremely difficult and uninviting? How many seasons of invasive construction on Highway 50 must we be asked to endure? Have we forgotten that the summer season is the primary source of income for many businesses in our community?

Since the beginning of this summer season, it is not uncommon to find only three or four construction workers on the entire construction site; despite this fact, large areas of traffic lanes are coned off, clogging up traffic. During other times, the crew is no more than a dozen workers or so at a time. There is no reason that the construction staff could not be increased by three- or fourfold in order to complete these projects at a much greater pace. In fact, had these projects been properly staffed, this work could have been completed in 30-45 days in most areas.

In addition, I do not understand why the contractor does not complete one side of the highway before tearing up the other side of the highway. I suspect the contractor, under his contract with Caltrans, has the entire summer to complete these projects without regard to the impact upon the local businesses, as well as, the general impression it leaves with our visitors. It’s a mess.

Is this the pattern we are to expect when Caltrans constructs the roundabout in Meyers? How about the Echo Summit bridge project that will shutdown our main transportation artery for two summers? Does anybody in authority care?

To add insult to injury, except for some minor efforts to fill in some of the cracks and holes, Highway 50 is still very broken up from the winter, not to mention all the damage caused by the natural gas company during their pipe relocation project. You would think with lanes being closed down for these projects, using a separate construction crew to patch holes and smooth out the Highway would be a good use of resources.

Have our local officials been involved during the contract negotiations with Caltrans and the contractors to ensure that the work would be completed expeditiously, minimizing the impact upon small businesses and all others using the highway? Where are our local government officials now to protect our community and it’s businesses?

It seems all too often our city is more interested in the anticipation of new development rather than the impacts such development has upon existing businesses and residents of our community. Can we forget the damages our community experienced with Project 3, (the hole). Or the projected damages upon housing and businesses that our community will experience with the proposed construction of the loop road.

These projects on Highway 50 have taken too long and have occurred to often. There needs to be a clear timeline for completion with adequate and well staffed construction crews so that we stop injuring our local businesses and the community that relies on our road system on a daily basis.

Bruce Grego, South Lake Tahoe

By Mike Higdon, Reno Gazette-Journal

Actress Sofia Vergara and fellow cast members of “Modern Family” have been hanging out around Lake Tahoe the last two days, according to Instagram posts. Some of their Instagram posts say they are shooting an episode on the water.

“Modern Family” is a faux-documentary comedy of three generations living and interacting with each other in suburban Los Angeles. 

In the show, actors Vergara and Ed O’Neill play an intergenerational and interracial couple. Actors Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson play a gay couple with an adopted Vietnamese daughter and actors Julie Bowen and Ty Burrell play a traditional couple with three children.

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Garlic gardening — that will be the topic of a talk at the South Lake Tahoe Library on Sept. 30 at 1pm.

This is for anyone who has ever considered growing garlic in a garden in Tahoe.

UCCE Master Gardeners of Lake Tahoe is putting on this free workshop to show how garlic can be grown at the lake. Participants will receive instruction on cultivation techniques, and history/background on the plant.

Everyone will leave with free garlic for their gardens.

Canals in the Tahoe Keys are plagued by blue-green algae. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

A toxic algae bloom is covering a large swath of the Tahoe Keys, prompting a warning to people to be wary of the water.

Officials with the Tahoe Keys have known about the blue-green algae since Aug. 11. Warnings, though, did not start until Aug. 23.

For such a big problem, the caution signs are very tiny.

“It’s in different locations in the west lagoons,” Kirk Wooldridge, general manager for the Tahoe Keys Property Management Association, told Lake Tahoe News. “It’s in various degrees in different areas. It depends on sunlight, current and depth.”

Some warning signs are in Spanish, but most are just in English. Photo/Kathryn Reed

On Wednesday the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board encouraged signs be posted alerting people to the danger. Driving by it is near impossible to see them, but out with a dog is a different story.

“The level tested at Tahoe Keys did not show a high danger level. It was at the much lower caution level,” Doug Smith with Lahontan told Lake Tahoe News.

There are three levels of danger for cyanobacteria, which is better known as blue-green algae. The toxicity in the canals of this South Lake Tahoe neighborhood are at the lowest level.

Still, the “caution warning” includes: humans and dogs should not come in contact with the algae or scum on the shoreline, neither people nor pets should drink the water, fish caught in the area should be cleaned with tap/bottle water before cooking, no shellfish should be eaten from these waters, and the water should not be used for cooking.

More dangerous toxic levels can cause eye irritation, skin rashes, mouth ulcers, vomiting, diarrhea, and flu-like symptoms. Two dogs in Napa County died this summer after drinking water from a pond with the algae.

“Blue-green algae naturally occur everywhere in the environment. We don’t know the exact reason why certain areas have blooms,” Smith said.

Outbreaks have been occurring throughout California this year.

Contact with the water of a large swath of the Tahoe Keys lagoons could be dangerous because of the algae bloom. Photo/Kathryn Reed

Why it goes away also isn’t known.

The plan is to continue field tests. If those have indicators that the level of toxicity is rising, it will be sent to the lab for definitive proof.

This is not something the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency or El Dorado County Environmental Health regulate.

“TRPA is aware of this concerning development and working closely with the Lahontan Water Board, who has jurisdiction on this matter, to monitor the situation and make sure that appropriate steps are taken to protect public health, safety, and the environment,” Tom Lotshaw with TRPA told Lake Tahoe News.

Copper sulfate is a proven herbicide that kills the algae. Applications have worked in other jurisdictions under Lahontan’s oversight. An emergency provision in Lahontan’s Lake Tahoe Basin Plan would allow the use, but the danger level would have to increase substantially for that option to be on the table.

It is not known if the algae can be spread by watercraft, but boat travel has not been halted. It could be that if it were to get into Lake Tahoe, it would die because of the colder water temperature.

The Keys put up a boom on a canal linking the regular homeowners with the Lighthouse Shores gated community. According to Wooldridge, it didn’t do any good. The algae went under the boom.

He did not know how deep the muck goes.

The waterway at Venice and Alpine drives looks like a holding pond for a toxic chemical plant with the eerie green color and swirls along the shore.

To the community,

Thanks to a generous donor, Temple Bat Yam hosted the Aug. 14 Bread & Broth Monday meal at St. Theresa Grace Hall.

B&B, a nonprofit, all volunteer organization, began feeding the needy of the South Shore community in 1989 as a multi-denominational food outreach program.  Throughout the past 28 years, volunteers of all faiths have supported the B&B program and Temple Bat Yam’s Adopt a Day of Nourishment dinner is a testament to the continuing support of all faiths in feeding the hungry of our community.

Joining the B&B volunteers at the Temple Bat Yam’s AAD dinner were Shelly Zimbler, Julia Schwadron, and Ed and Debra Day. B&B always looks forward to the help the sponsor volunteer crew members provide at the dinners.  

For three hours, the volunteers are packing food giveaway bags, setting up the dessert and drink table, serving the dinner guests, cleaning and putting away tables and chairs and doing all of the necessary chores to feed the 90 to 100 plus dinner guests.

“It gave me a ton of pleasure to meet members of my community and to help serve folks in need,” commented Julia Schwadron. “It made it even better to do it on my birthday.”  

Such is the dedication of many generous volunteers who provide incredible service and give back to our vulnerable neighbors. B&B thanks Temple Bat Yam and the sponsor crew members who volunteered their time to better the lives of others.

To partner with B&B as a donor or sponsor, contact me at 530.542.2876 or carolsgerard@aol.com.

Carol Gerard, Bread & Broth

By Francis Xavier, Unofficial Networks

The “masterminds” behind the great ticket voucher heist of Heavenly have been granted probation for involvement in selling the fraudulent ski passes last year in court in Minden on Aug. 21.

The thefts took place between October 2015 and March 2016. After an audit, Heavenly showed a total of 1,100 lift ticket vouchers were taken. According to court documents, 971 of the 1,100 vouchers were taken from Douglas County. Heavenly reported that only 23 legitimate vouchers were given out in 2016 but 312 had been redeemed since the start of 2016.

Ticket vouchers are usually only given to skiers when lifts break down.  The vouchers in question were being sold on Craigslist under aliases.

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