By Dale Kasler, Sacramento Bee

California’s major reservoirs are holding 69 percent more water than a year ago, the U.S. government announced Friday, but regulators warned that drought conditions continue to plague the state.

In its annual inventory of water in storage, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said the six key reservoirs owned by the federal government’s Central Valley Project held a combined 4.9 million acre-feet of water as of Oct. 1, the beginning of the “water year” that runs through next September.

That figure compared with 2.9 million acre-feet a year earlier.

However, the reservoirs were still at just 41 percent of capacity.

Read the whole story

Lake Tahoe South Shore Chamber of Commerce in partnership with the city of South Lake Tahoe is offering a workshop entitled 60 Minute Strategic Plan: Learn How to Solve Your Strategic Issues Quickly and Make Better Decisions Faster.

The goal of the workshop is for individuals and teams to learn an innovative planning and problem-solving system that guides them to think, plan, and act creatively and decisively on strategic issues large and small. This workshop introduces attendees to a one-page, 12-step planning tool that is simple in format, quickly completed, and readily adjusted. During this workshop, participants will select a strategic issue or opportunity specific to their business that they want to resolve, establish the best imaginable outcomes for the issue and develop a plan of action that they can begin implementing immediately.

Workshop facilitator, Anne Marie Smith, is the author of “60 Minute Strategic Plan.” Each participant receives a copy of the book.

The workshop is Oct. 26, 2-5pm at the chamber office, 169 Highway 50, Stateline. For more detailed information or to register, go online.

The South Lake Tahoe Tax-Aide Program through AARP needs people to work in the volunteer-run tax preparation and assistance center.

Volunteers will be helping people in the South Lake Tahoe and surrounding area with free and individualized services.

Volunteers who provide tax preparation services work directly with the taxpayer to fill out tax returns. Volunteers who are greeters welcome taxpayers, help organize the client’s paperwork and manage the overall flow of tax preparation services.

Bilingual speakers are also needed.

Experience is not necessary.

For more information about the program or how to become a volunteer, contact Bob Niedermeier at 530.542.1733 or go online.

This year the North Lake Tahoe Ski Swap will take place at Homewood Mountain Resort’s north lot on Oct. 22 from 10am-4pm.

This is a fundraiser for North Tahoe High School.

The ski swap is being paired with Homewood’s Pumpkin Festival.

The swap features affordable winter sports gear and equipment from private sellers, as well as over a dozen vendors including established local ski shops. Admission is free, and gear purchases are handled directly between seller and buyer.

There will be pumpkins for sale, a pumpkin carving contest, pumpkin pie eating contest, pumpkin rolling, face painting, live music, food, pumpkin-inspired craft cocktails, seasonal wine and beer tastings, and more.

Individuals interested in selling their personal ski gear, or vendors interested in securing booth space should contact JT Chevallier at jtchevallier@skihomewood.com.

For more information, go online.

Publisher’s note: The following endorsement is from Lake Tahoe News after a team of seven community members gathered to discuss who should be on the South Lake Tahoe City Council.

Even with 10 candidates running for South Lake Tahoe City Council, Lake Tahoe News was left wanting something more. Maybe there isn’t that ideal, perfect candidate out there.

The two, though, who eventually rose to the top were Jason Collin and Brooke Laine. With Collin, we get someone with new ideas who is a bit of a maverick in the world of recreation. After all, recreation is what the city and the entire South Shore is hanging its economic hat on. With Laine, we get experience and someone who can jump into the job without needing a learning curve.

Jason Collin

Collin is charismatic, a community guy, a family man and someone who can be relied upon to think for himself. While we aren’t taking a stance on whether his lawsuit to stop Measure T was right or wrong, we admire that he was willing to put his neck on the line – especially while running for election. We aren’t convinced he paid for all of this on his own, but what matters is he stood up for his convictions and in a manner that was neither abusive nor confrontational in a detrimental way. At the end of the day that is the type of person we need on the council – forthright, opinionated, determined and able to stand up for his beliefs.

Brooke Laine

Laine’s enthusiasm for this town is unwavering. She was born here and has no plans to leave. On or off the council (she has served six years) she does what she believes is best for South Lake Tahoe. Our reluctance with Laine is that she represents a bit of the old guard. We need vision beyond one county; and we need the details for how to achieve those goals. She was involved in some of the redevelopment projects while on the council in the 1990s, which will serve the community well as it goes through a bit of a renaissance. However, just reading the council agenda is not enough to know what is going on in the city and elsewhere.

While we support the one South Shore concept, we hope Collin and Laine will remember they are being elected to represent South Lake Tahoe first and foremost, not the Nevada interests who support them.

Hal Cole’s departure from the council means there will be at least one new council person.

Four years ago Lake Tahoe News endorsed JoAnn Conner for council. We can’t do so this time around. In 2012, we were excited that she would be a voice for a segment of the community that wasn’t getting heard, that she would bring a perspective that was missing.

What we got instead is someone who is not able to work well with others – and that’s putting it mildly. When LTN asked her what she got out of the lawsuit she filed against the city that she didn’t have before the settlement she said the agreement answers that question. LTN has read the agreement and has written about it. All that changed is Conner can now email staff directly. This cost her more than $30,000 and the taxpayers $100,000. Her answer to how she justifies the city’s costs is that she was not a party to the decision for the city to defend itself.

Her total lack of remorsefulness is appalling.

Being on the City Council is not a game. It is not a popularity contest. It should neither be a way to curry favor from the public or other public agencies, nor be used to enhance one’s own business.

There are serious matters the city takes up each month. We need serious people who see the big picture. We need people who will work as a team. This doesn’t mean we advocate for 5-0 votes. Disagreements are fine. It’s how one goes about disagreeing that matters.

No matter what happens with the two tax initiatives, the council is going to have to be diligent in how it spends those dollars or creative in coming up with other revenue sources to accomplish its goals.

Finances, development deals, environmental issues, roads and tourism – those are just a handful of the issues that regularly come before the council. Collin and Laine have the ability to understand the complexities, the time needed to do the job, the ability to work with the other three council members and most of all the ability to make decisions for the greater good of South Lake Tahoe, the South Shore and the Lake Tahoe Basin.

—–

Why we said no to the others:

·      For candidates Patrick Jarett, Trey Riddle, John Shearer and Bob Topel we believe they would benefit from joining a city commission to further their knowledge base before running for council again.

·      It is an ethical decision not to endorse Danny McLaughlin. No one in the media, even someone working in ad sales, should ever be in an elected office.

·      Ted Long has proven himself untrustworthy in the past. He will say just the right thing to potentially get elected, but his record as a councilmember here and elsewhere are reasons enough to say no.

·      Tami Wallace, while she has experience on the Planning Commission, clearly doesn’t have a grasp of how the city really works. She touted experiences as a spouse of an elected official as her own in her answers to Lake Tahoe News’ questions. She wants to return to the fundamentals of when the city was born – to focus on police, fire and snow removal. We need someone with vision who is living in the 21st century, not the 20th.

By Reno Gazette-Journal

Just when it seemed like undercover police cars couldn’t get any stealthier, along comes this.

After adding red- and blue-emergency lights inside the front visors of unmarked police cars, Ford said Monday it is introducing rear emergency lights that are built into the spoiler.

The system means that in states where officers in unmarked cruisers are allowed to pull over speeders, it may be harder to recognize their vehicles — until those lights go on.

Read the whole story

A bear caught Oct. 9 in Incline Village by the Nevada Department of Wildlife was released this morning near the Mount Rose Summit.

NDOW was attempting to trap a bear that had caused damage to a building in an attempt to reach the area underneath the structure, according to wildlife biologist Carl Lackey.

“I’m confident that this is not the bear we were looking for,” Lackey said in a statement. The one caught was a 3- to 4-year-old male.

Lackey said bears are not ready to hibernate, but will be searching out places where they could eventually hibernate — such as crawl space.

Bears are also eating more in preparation for winter. Daily calorie intake can go from 3,000 to 25,000.

By Daniel Rothberg, Las Vegas Sun

On a trip to Great Basin National Park, UNLV geoscience Professor Matt Lachniet says that rainfall many millennia ago formed lakes in the desolate basins lining this strip of rural highway. Between the towns of Pioche and Panaca, we stop at Cathedral Gorge, where a multimillion-year dance of erosion and tectonics forged a slender canyon fringed with clay-colored spires.

Closer to Great Basin, Lachniet’s grad student cuts left off an access road, down a 20-foot slope to an unspectacular oval-shaped depression in the land. This thirsty patch of earth was a lake 12,000 years ago, its ridges still marked by the force of ancient waves.

“This is like a van Gogh painting to me,” Lachniet says.

Water’s past forms the foundation of his research, including his climate studies inside Nevada caves. On a hot September day at his UNLV lab, he’d explained why, pointing to a table holding dozens of bisected stalagmites, the spikes that ascend against gravity from a cave’s floor. The delicate lines in the stone resemble tree rings. Cut a stalagmite in half, Lachniet said, and you find layers dating thousands of years, the echo of minerals left behind by water.

Read the whole story

Publisher’s note: This letter was sent to the Placer County Board of Supervisors.

Dear Board of Supervisors,

I am submitting this article for the record for the Martis Valley West Parcel Specific Plan as further evidence that the MVWPSP FEIR did not into take in consideration the threat of wildland urban interface. A CalFire representative was consulted by Planning Commissioner [Wayne] Nader who had extensive conversations about the location and the problematic terrain and ability to adequately protect and evacuate the public among other issues when a fire erupts.

Note the attached article brings forth the 10 most expensive fires in the West’s history. Six of the 10 fires are in California in locations that are similar forested areas much like the proposed MVWPSP.

Ellie Waller, Tahoe Vista

Updated Oct. 13: The USFS will not be burning this week.

The Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team, which includes federal, state and local fire and land management agencies in the Lake Tahoe Basin, will begin their fall prescribed fire operations this week.

If conditions are favorable, the Forest Service may conduct prescribed fire operations beginning Oct. 11 around Big Meadow near Luther Pass.

Each prescribed fire operation follows a prescribed fire burn plan, which considers temperature, humidity, wind, moisture of the vegetation, and conditions for the dispersal of smoke.  This information is used to decide when and where to burn.  The TFFT will give as much advance notice as possible before burning, but some operations may be conducted on short notice.

Smoke from prescribed fire operations is normal and may continue for several days after an ignition depending on the project size and environmental conditions.