Whittell football players likely will be playing on artificial turf in 2017. Photo/Boyd Dangtongdee

By Kathryn Reed

Track meets will again be able to be run at Whittell High School, possibly as soon as the 2017-18 school year.

A donation of $2.5 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 Douglas County School District board is being asked today to accept the donation.

“That football field and stadium have been high on our list, but we could never get to them because they are not a classroom,” Superintendent Teri White told Lake Tahoe News. “The turf if fine, but it’s not as state-of-the-art as other districts. It will be upgraded to an artificial turf football field and an all weather track.”

Drainage issues exist with the current field that will also be remedied with the funds.

Lisa Maloff has been donating millions of dollars to various South Shore entities since her husband, Bob, died in 2011. The South Shore woman gave $10 million for the Robert Maloff Center of Excellence, a health and sports performance center just behind Barton Memorial Hospital near the emergency room. The other significant donation was nearly $8 million to Lake Tahoe Community College for the university center that will bear the Maloff name.

Bob Maloff co-owned and operated Lake Tahoe Inn and Timber Cove Lodge in South Lake Tahoe. Plus, he had other significant real estate dealings. Lisa Maloff was a founding member of the Barton Hospital Auxiliary. Promoting wellness, activity, and fitness in the community have long been goals of the Maloffs, which ties in well with WHS’ plans.

Cheerleaders will be on a track that will have some give instead of compacted dirt. Photo/Boyd Dangtongdee

The current track is dirt. It’s suitable for practices, but not competition. The all weather track will allow the Warriors to actually have home events at home. The number of lanes will be dependent on final costs.

White said the artificial turf is the route most schools are going.

The current stadium is not compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act, so some of the money will go toward those improvements.

Bleachers for visitors will also be built.

If there is any money left over, a concession stand is on the wish list, too.

When it comes to maintaining the new facilities, White said it should be a wash based on watering and mowing the grass today to needing to vacuum the new field. Snow will need to be removed from the track for its longevity. With artificial turf fields having a life expectancy of 10-12 years, a replacement fund will be needed.

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Notes:

·      The July 12 board meeting starts at 3:30pm at the Lake Tahoe Visitors Center conference room in Stateline.

By Henry I. Miller, Los Angeles Times

Karma can be so cruel. Just think how many times anti-GMO activists have protested against the imaginary risks of food that has been genetically modified. Now a favorite snack of those same protesters, the sacred granola bar, has been found to pose an actual health risk.

Anti-genetic engineering campaigns are among the activities bankrolled by organizations such as the Clif Bar Family Foundation, which uses the considerable profits it receives from selling “healthy” and “natural” snack foods to denigrate the products of modern farming and extol supposedly superior organic alternatives. Like Clif Bars.

The truth is that paying the “organic tax” — the price premium associated with organic products — makes you no healthier. Recalls of organic foods amounted to 7 percent of all food units recalled in 2015, even though organic farms account for only about 1 percent of agricultural acreage. In early June, several types of Clif Bars were recalled from stores because they contained organic sunflower kernels potentially contaminated with a bacterium called listeria. Food poisoning from this nasty bug kills hundreds of Americans every year.

Read the whole story

By Associated Press

Data from the World Bank show that California’s economy was equivalent to the sixth largest in the world last year.

The World Bank’s annual rankings of countries’ gross domestic products, released on Friday, confirm an analysis published last month by the California Department of Finance.

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported last month that California’s GDP was $2.5 trillion in 2015, up 4.1 percent from a year earlier.

California saw more economic growth than the United States as a whole, which was up 2.4 percent.

But California’s rise in the global rankings comes largely at the expense of Brazil, which is struggling economically, and France, which was burdened by a weaker currency.

Only five countries produced more last year than California: the U.S., China, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom.

·       Here is the weekly Caltrans roadwork schedule for El Dorado-Tahoe.

·       There will be a meeting July 21 at 6:30pm in the Board of Supervisors’ room in Placerville about El Dorado County’s proposal to build a class I bike path from Missouri Flat Road to the town of El Dorado and a bike/pedestrian overcrossing over Missouri Flat Road connecting the proposed path to the existing class I bike path.

·       The League to Save Lake Tahoe is having Eyes on the Lake trainings July 16 from 10am-12:30pm, July 27 from 5:30-8pm, and Aug.10 from 5:30-8pm. The first and third dates are in South Lake Tahoe, the second in Tahoe City. Email savannah@keeptahoeblue.org to register or to get more info.

·       The Douglas County Public Library will show “Shaun the Sheep” (rated PG) on July 16 at 2pm in the Minden Library meeting room. The movie and popcorn are free.

·       Sample the Sierra hosts a selection of locally produced food, wine, beers, and spirits at this annual South Lake Tahoe farm-to-fork festival. It is Sept. 17 from noon-5pm at Bijou Community Park in South Lake Tahoe. Cost is $40. Must be 21. For more info, email amber@tahoechamber.org

By KOLO-TV

A crash on Highway 140 north of Winnemucca killed two Bureau of Land Management firefighters and sent a third to a hospital Sunday.

The driver of the BLM fire truck was 27-year-old Jacob O’Malley of Zephyr Cove, according to the BLM. The right front passenger was 22-year-old Will Hawkins of Reno. Both men died in the crash.

The passenger seated in the middle of the truck is 23-year-old Zachery McElroy of Reno. He was transported to Renown Regional Medical Center via Care Flight with non-life-threatening injuries, according to the Nevada Highway Patrol.

Read the whole story

By Sean Whaley, Las Vegas Review-Journal

CARSON CITY — Some Nevadans are pushing the federal government to transfer more public acreage to state control, but history suggests past management of these lands by those entrusted with their care was mired in corruption.

The current push for a transfer is underway because about 85 percent of Nevada is controlled by various federal agencies, primarily the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, according to the Nevada Legislature.

But if Nevada officials failed before, what guarantee is there that it won’t happen again?

The late Republican Gov. Charles Russell, in an oral history recorded in 1965-66, strongly criticized Nevada’s management of the lands the state received from the federal government when it became a state in 1864.

Read the whole story

By Jen Murphy, Wall Street Journal

Professional climber Adrian Ballinger was in phenomenal shape when he left for an expedition to Mount Everest on April 6. When he got down from the mountain May 28, he was as frail as a 90-year-old man.

A week later, at a rock-climbing gym back home in Squaw Valley, he watched his girlfriend, professional climber Emily Harrington, crank out one-arm push ups. “I was shocked when I realized I couldn’t even do one,” he recalled. “Psychologically, as a professional athlete, it’s hard to be OK with being incredibly weak.”

The 40-year-old founder and head guide of adventure-travel company Alpenglow Expeditions, Ballinger has summited Everest six times, each time as a guide and each time using supplemental oxygen. On his most recent trip, he and his climbing partner, 35-year-old Cory Richards, attempted the summit without the use of supplemental oxygen.

Ballinger got home June 4 and had less than two weeks to prepare for his next expedition. He and Harrington flew to Tanzania June 15 to lead clients on a weeklong trek to the 19,341-foot summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. “I know it sounds like a terrible idea,” Ballinger said, “but this is the only time the family could travel.”

Read the whole story

By Tom Stienstra, San Francisco Chronicle

The question is, can you fix stupid?

The answer is yes, according to the greatest director in the history of the national park service, Bill Mott. But you need a lot of people on board for the effort.

The aftermath of the Fourth of July weekend shows there is a lot of fixing to be done.

From San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, from the Sierra foothills to Mount Shasta, Stupid Syndrome is bringing California down.

Read the whole story

By Daniel Rothberg, Las Vegas Sun

A changing climate could increase the risk of large wildfires in states across the West, including Nevada, which has seen relatively mild wildfire activity in the past. That’s according to a report from nonprofit organization Climate Central, which expects Nevada will add 20 days of annual high wildfire potential by 2050, the fifth-largest increase among the 11 Western states included in the study.

Rising temperatures, increasingly parched landscapes and changes to the snowpack are contributing to the regional trend, argues the wildfire report released last month. The study, which pulled from U.S. Forest Service records and climate-change models, said fires in the West had increased in frequency and size since the 1970s. The overall season is now 105 days longer than it was then.

Nevada has relatively few large fires compared with California or Arizona, but it’s poised for an increase in potential for wildfire and associated risks, the study says.

Read the whole story

Owners of the Cal Neva Lodge had visions of returning the Crystal Bay hotel-casino to its glory days. That’s not going to happen any time soon.

With more than $27 million in debt, owner Criswell Radovan filed for bankruptcy in June.

The St. Helena-based investment firm bought the property in April 2013. They closed it the following September for what was supposed to be a $49 million remodel. The plan was to reopen in December 2014 to commemorate what would have been Frank Sinatra’s 99th birthday.

That clearly didn’t happen. The date was then pushed back a year — and that, too, didn’t happen. Work on the site stopped in December. And now the future is even more uncertain for the 10-story, 191-room property that crosses the California-Nevada state line.

Sinatra once owned the property, which first opened in 1926. At that time the Rat Pack were regulars there, as were Marilyn Monroe and members of the Kennedy clan.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report