A broader message is being delivered at the Amgen bike race. Photo Copyright 2017 Carolyn E. Wright

Safety beyond the riders is a mantra of Amgen bike officials this year.

On the back of the volunteers’ T-shirts it says, “If you see something, say something.”

This is the first year the Tour of California has taken to promoting this message. Volunteers at all the stages will be wearing shirts that have this on the back.

“We want to remind people you should always have your eyes open wherever you go,” Michael Roth, vice president communications for Amgen, told Lake Tahoe News. “We just thought it would be a nice friendly reminder.”

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

UC Davis engineering Professor Alex Forrest with the recovered underwater glider. Photo/UC Davis

By Kat Kerlin, UC Davis News Service

To outer space and the deep ocean, add “beneath the ice” to the list of rarely charted frontiers of science exploration.

There have been very few expeditions where robots dived beneath polar ice shelves to characterize and measure them. UC Davis engineering Professor Alexander Forrest recently returned from one of them.

Their mission? Deploy two robots, or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) — one to dive beneath the sea ice to map the bottom of the Nansen ice shelf, from which two Manhattan-sized icebergs broke last year. The other, a glider with wings named Storm Petrel, to patrol the front of the ice shelf for 10 days, looking for evidence of fresh water and capturing change over time.

When not swimming alongside polar ice, the Storm Petrel glider trades the ocean for freshwater. It’s currently settling in to its new home at Lake Tahoe. The UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center plans to deploy it in the lake early this summer. The plan is for the glider to take continuous measurements, provide real-time information to TERC’s network of instrumented buoys, chase storm events, and ultimately help round out the picture of the processes and impacts affecting Lake Tahoe.

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By Colin Lygren, KOLO-TV

Saving lives during a fire: a new technology is helping fire captains see through the smoke and reach victims faster in South Lake Tahoe.

“Basically it provides a heat signature so we are able to see potentially a person, a body, heat from a fire behind a wall, that we normally would not be able to see just by looking at something,” said Capt. Kim George with the South Lake Tahoe Fire Department. “It is really helpful to now have these in our masks.”

The concept of thermal imaging is not new. It’s being used already, but what is different now is how it is being implemented. Attached to the side of the self-contained breathing apparatus is a tiny thermal camera. When firefighters suit up, their eyes align perfectly with a corresponding tiny screen.

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The Truckee Ranger District plans to burn 80-120 acres of understory vegetation near Stampede Reservoir today. 

Crews  will be monitoring weather and fuel conditions throughout Friday. Winds are projected to be out of the southwest which should blow smoke away from communities.

The district said there are only a handful of days when weather, smoke dispersion and fuel conditions are favorable for prescribed fire so the goal is to take advantage of that window of opportunity.

Get ready to clean out your yard, attic or garage. Clean Tahoe’s annual Community Cleanup Day (aka $5 Dump Day) will be June 3 from 8am-4pm.

It’s the one day of the year El Dorado County residents may bring unwanted items to the South Tahoe Refuse transfer station at huge discounts.

Pricing details:

• $5/vehicle load for California residents ($10/truck + trailer)
• $10/load for Nevada residents
• U-Hauls and oversized trucks priced by size
• $15 for refrigerators (normally $42)
• Free disposal of e-waste
• Free document shredding provided by Iron Mountain
• No dirt, concrete, or construction material. 

The event is for residential loads only. 

As part of the event, Clean Tahoe will provide curbside pick up service of unwanted items for senior citizens and disabled residents in need. Call 530.544.4210 to schedule a pick up.

By Katie O’Reilly, Sierra

Noise pollution is typically considered an urban problem. However, new research shows that the invisible threat found in the din of human activity (also known as anthropogenic sound) is increasingly taking its toll on the natural world.

A first-of-its-kind study, released last week from scientists at Colorado State University and the National Park Service (NPS), shows that anthropogenic noise pollutes 63 percent of all U.S. protected lands—that includes city and county parks, state and national forests, and national parks, monuments, and refuges.

After culling more than a million hours of recorded data from 492 protected sites across the continental United States, researchers concluded that anthropogenic noise doubled background sound levels in most of these areas. They also detected elevated sounds in 14 percent of endangered species’ critical habits. Protected areas with the most stringent regulations, such as national parks and designated wilderness areas, suffered the least noise pollution.

The issue does more than disrupt the natural serenity of protected places like parks, forests, and historical battlefields. According to George Wittemyer, a Colorado State University conservation biologist and one of the authors of the study, the impact of excessive noise—which has been steadily mounting since the Industrial Revolution—includes increased heart rate in humans, as well as disrupted sleep, irritability, negative cardiovascular and psychophysiological effects, and even shortened life spans. He’s not the only one to say so. The World Health Organization considers noise pollution to be an environmental burden second in scope only to air pollution.

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By Clint Purvance

Recently, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the American Health Care Act (H.R. 1628). The bill now resides in the Senate for determination and possible modification. Though we do not know if the senators will pass the American Health Care Act, Barton Health is committed to providing consistently exceptional care for our Lake Tahoe community members and visitors. 

Clint Purvance

Many of our residents rely on health care coverage from the expansion of the Affordable Care Act. Since the passage of healthcare reform, the number of residents covered by Medi-Cal has doubled. Currently, 9,500 South Tahoe residents receive Medi-Cal benefits and the area’s uninsured population has reduced from 26.2 percent in the 2012 Community Health Needs Assessment to 14.7 percent in the 2015 Community Health Needs Assessment. 

If the American Health Care Act passes and is enacted in the Senate without changes, the American Hospital Association estimates that $880 billion will be cut from Medicaid programs nationwide. This will affect more than 14 million Californians – many children, senior citizens, and low-income families – who rely on Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid, for health care services.

It is Barton Health’s commitment, in conjunction with the California Hospital Association, the American Hospital Association, and many other health care providers, to ensure health care coverage for as many individuals and families as possible.

Though changes and revisions are expected, it is important for all of us to keep a watchful eye on this bill. The American Health Care Act puts less financial strain on the federal government, while adding more pressure on states, local jurisdictions, health care organizations, and the patients and communities we serve.

Barton Health is determined to provide programs and services for all our patients. We will continue to work closely with the California Hospital Association and American Hospital Association to find a bipartisan solution that keeps as many residents insured as possible in order to support the overall health and well-being of our community. 

Clint Purvance is the CEO and president of Barton Health in South Lake Tahoe.

By Craig Giammona, Bloomberg

The American grocery store has so far been mostly immune to the ravages of online shopping and the all around apocalyptic outlook facing the nation’s retailers. But a war is coming to the staid supermarket, and that could mean more consolidation, bankruptcies, and falling prices.

An invasion is getting under way. Lidl, a German retailer known for low prices and efficient operations, is expected to start an aggressive U.S. expansion in the coming weeks that could open as many as 100 new stores across the East Coast by the summer of 2018. The company, which runs about 10,000 stores in Europe, has also set its sights on Texas, one of the most competitive grocery markets in the U.S. Analysts expect Lidl to expand to nearly $9 billion in sales by 2023.

The last thing U.S. grocers need is more cutthroat competition. As the ranks of U.S. grocery stores have swelled, food has become a way for struggling brick-and-mortar retailers such as dollar stores and pharmacies to compete for customers. Even though groceries have been somewhat insulated from online pressure, Amazon.com remains dedicated to cracking the code, finally, on fresh food.

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·      South Tahoe High School Boosters is hosting a “shred it” event at the American Legion parking lot on May 19 from noon-4pm. It is $10 per box to shred. Half of the proceeds go to the boosters.

·      Planning and problem solving for the real world is the topic of the Lake Tahoe South Shore Chamber of Commerce’s workshop on May 17 from 2-5pm. Business consultant Anne Marie Smith is the facilitator. Cost is $20 for members, $40 for others. It will be at the chamber office in Stateline. For more info, email brittani@tahoechamber.org.

·      TAMBA predicts it will be July before riding in the high country is possible. Go online for mountain bike trail conditions or to report what you know.

·      Tahoe Arts Project is having a spaghetti fundraiser at Bert’s in South Lake Tahoe on May 18 from 5:30-7:30pm. Cost is $10. For tickets, call 530.542.3632.

·      Placer County supervisors approved an ordinance that prohibits possession or consumption of alcoholic beverages at Secline and Speedboat beaches.

By Rob Miech, Las Vegas Sun

The recent spate of Arkansas executions, which included two on the same gurney, 3 1/2 hours apart — the first time in almost 17 years that any state has executed two inmates on the same day — has returned the death penalty to the forefront of national consciousness.

Waves of delays and activists’ outcries continue as the use of capital punishment has sharply declined throughout the country. Polls indicate a shrinking majority of Americans prefers to preserve the option to extinguish those found guilty of the vilest crimes in civilized society.

In Nevada, the conundrum of capital punishment is rife with subplots, starting with last year’s expensive refurbishment of a death chamber whose application is far-fetched, since drugs necessary for lethal injection aren’t available.

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