By Carlos Alcalá, Sacramento Bee

Kidnap victim Jaycee Lee Dugard has produced her first public service announcement in support of the JAYC Foundation which offers support to families that have suffered abduction or other traumatic incidents.

Dugard was kidnapped by Phillip Garrido in 1991 when she was 11 and held for years in his home.

The 20-second announcement, which you can watch below, shows Dugard asking people to act when they see something wrong.

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During a two-day workshop writers can learn techniques and tools to bring their family history to life, how to create a compelling narrative and how to research family history.

“Grandma Went to Woodstock: Writing a Family History” is for anyone who has always wanted to write their family story.

The session, led by Bona Fide Books Publisher Kim Wyatt, includes lots of how-to information and time for questions. Handouts will be provided.

The Nov. 19-20 10am-2pm class is $49. Sign up online or by calling (530) 573.1513.

Bona Fide HQ is located at 1069 Magua St., No. 4, Meyers, behind the Getaway Café.

Linda Dean, from the Senior Information and Assistance Program for El Dorado County, on Nov. 15 at 3pm will provide an overview of programs and assistance available to older adults in El Dorado County.

At the conclusion of the program participants may complete a survey about what services they would like.

The meeting is at the library in South Lake Tahoe — 1000 Rufus Allen Blvd.

For additional information, call (530) 573.3185.

Time to find some outdoor gear or sell what you are done using.

The Nov. 19 Backcountry Ski and Gear Swap is being put on by Hope Valley Outdoors and Future Business Leaders of Lake Tahoe.

The swap is located at Lake Tahoe Community College from 9am-3pm that Saturday. Gear can be dropped off on Nov. 18 from 5-8pm and Nov. 19 from 7-9am.

Unsold gear must be picked up from 3-5pm Nov. 19.

Organizers are looking for: Alpine touring skis, boots and bindings; telemark skis, boots and bindings; cross country skis, boots and bindings; splitboards; skins; collapsible poles; snowshoes; snow safety gear, avalanche probes, shovels, study kits, backpacks and newer transceivers; clean and modern clothing; winter camping gear. .

For more information, contact Geoff at (530) 307.0225.

With bids coming in higher than expected, Edgewood Companies decided to rebid the Bonanza Park project in South Lake Tahoe.

People are expected to be using the Y area park in 2012. The plan is construction will start as close to May 1 as weather allows.

Bonanza Park is expected to be a reality in 2012.

Brandon Hill with Edgewood Companies told Lake Tahoe News a decision should be made this month regarding who the contractor will be. Two finalists are in the running. Originally the company had expected to spend about $200,000 on the nearly 1 acre park.

Hill said, “The dog park was scraped by the community and the council. We were happy to accommodate the desires on the majority of stakeholders.”

Amenities will include:

• large turf area

• walking path

• children’s play area and equipment

• half court basketball

• horseshoe toss

• picnic pods

• native demonstration plantings

• programable LED lighting

• low flow irrigation

• permanent BMPs to handle storm flows.

The park replaces an old hotel that has been demolished. Edgewood is building the park partly in exchange for tourist accommodation units that can be used at the future Edgewood Lodge.

— Kathryn Reed

While stars are in the sky first thing this Friday morning, there is definitely plenty of snow to shovel in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Most highways in and around the basin have some restrictions. For details, click on the state icons on the home page of Lake Tahoe News.

However, the white stuff is not enough for schools to call it a snow day.

The seasons are changing in Lake Tahoe. Photo/LTN

For those wanting to make it a powder day, Boreal is resuming operations today. It will be a couple more weeks before other Tahoe area resorts power up the lifts.

The snow that fell Nov. 3 was preceded by wicked winds, with ridge tops recording 100mph gusts.

About 4 inches fell in South Lake Tahoe, while Sierra-at-Tahoe received a foot.

The National Weather Service in Reno is calling for a 60 percent chance of snow today, mostly sun Saturday, 80 percent likelihood of snow Saturday, and sun again Monday. It will be in the 30s and 40s during the day, with overnight temps in the teens.

— Kathryn Reed

Tickets go on sale today for what officials hope will be the event to shake things up New Year’s Eve weekend – SnowGlobe Music Festival.

With thousands of people milling about the Stateline casino corridor each New Year’s Eve with nothing to do but be cold and drink, South Lake Tahoe has come up with an alternative for this crowd and anyone else.

With three main stages and nearly 50 world-class musicians, Lake Tahoe Community College is going to become a music venue Dec. 29-31.

Mirrored after the SnowBall Music Festival near Beaver Creek, SnowGlobe it Tahoe’s version of this event that this year sold out in Colorado.

No need to drive from the Stateline hotels because a shuttle service will be provided.

A limited number of reduced-cost early bird festival passes go on sale today, with the advance three-day passes on sale Nov. 9. Regular three-day passes will be for sale later – but the date had not been released.

For more information, go online.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

• Jen Huntley, who spends part of her time in Reno and part at a family cabin in Twin Bridges, has published her first book – “The Making of Yosemite”.

• National Ski Areas Association says Vail and Heavenly have the best Skier Safety Week Programs.

• The 18th annual Boys and Girls Club of Lake Tahoe Golf Tournament raised $39,614 during the Oct. 17 event at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course. Funds will support various programs for area youth.

• With Veterans Day approaching, it’s not just the men and women who deserve recognition. Reckless redefines what a war horse really is.

• The Springmeyer family, who owns the Highway 50 property where the decades-old amusement park was in South Lake Tahoe, has had the structures disassembled to avoid liability issues.

Publisher’s note: The following letter to Jack Clarke, chairman of the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, received final approval Nov. 1 from the South Lake Tahoe City Council and is being reprinted with permission.

Dear Mr. Clarke:

This letter is being sent on behalf of the three Lake Tahoe Basin jurisdictions to request that Lahontan extend any consideration regarding NPDES permits until after January 2012. Specifically, we further request that your board also direct staff to defer circulation of a public draft permit consistent with the same time frame.

El Dorado County, Placer County and the city of South Lake Tahoe are making this joint request in order to ensure we have the time necessary to address several unresolved complex issues. Those issues include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Assess whether a TMDL-focused permit that provides more flexibility than what the current draft permit allows would better meet both local jurisdiction and Regional Board needs, especially with regard to the monetary challenges of meeting all current draft permit requirements;

• Outline realistic implementation goals, given the demonstrated significant shortfall in funding availability in comparison with current cost estimates;

• Address the imbalance of regulatory authority and level of enforcement of the Lahontan regulations on the California side of the Tahoe basin as compared to the federal/state stormwater regulatory and enforcement framework on the Nevada side of the Tahoe basin;

• Provide ample opportunity to review EPA input to date, including scheduling meetings to develop a common understanding between multi-jurisdictional technical staff, executives and elected officials;

• Lahontan staff response on recent local jurisdiction comments to draft permit such as registering catchments in areas where capital projects are not planned;

• Better define TRPA’s role in regulation and implementation, including BMP enforcement and potential delegation of some BMP regulation that originates with TRPA;

• Identify roles and responsibilities of other agencies for project implementation, maintenance and monitoring, including large state and federal landholders.

We sincerely appreciate your consideration of our request and look forward to working with you and your staff in addressing our issues and concerns as the analysis process progresses.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Montgomery, Placer County district 5 supervisor

Norma Santiago, El Dorado County district 5 supervisor

Claire Fortier, South Lake Tahoe mayor pro tem

By Leslie Kaufman, New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — From the cotton field in rural India to the local rag bin, a typical pair of blue jeans consumes 919 gallons of water during its life cycle, Levi Strauss & Company says, or enough to fill about 15 spa-size bathtubs. That includes the water that goes into irrigating the cotton crop, stitching the jeans together and washing them scores of times at home.

The company wants to reduce that number any way it can, and not just to project environmental responsibility. It fears that water shortages caused by climate change may jeopardize the company’s very existence in the coming decades by making cotton too expensive or scarce.

So to protect its bottom line, Levi Strauss has helped underwrite and champion a nonprofit program that teaches farmers in India, Pakistan, Brazil and West and Central Africa the latest irrigation and rainwater-capture techniques. It has introduced a brand featuring stone-washed denim smoothed with rocks but no water. It is sewing tags into all of its jeans urging customers to wash less and use only cold water.

To customers seeking further advice, Levi Strauss suggests washing jeans rarely, if at all — the theory being that putting them in the freezer will kill germs that cause them to smell.

Conservation worries are not limited to the clothing giants: food and beverage conglomerates, tobacco companies and metal and mining companies are all starting to reckon with their heavy dependence on water. Pepsico, for example, has embraced a method of sanitizing plastic bottles with purified air instead of water at a plant in Georgia. For its Frito-Lay brands, it has identified drought-resistant potato strains that it provides to farmers along with a soil-monitoring method so that crops are watered only when necessary.

The Carbon Disclosure Project, a group that monitors corporations’ greenhouse gas emissions, recently added water security to its priorities. Of the 150 companies that responded last year to a questionnaire that it sent to the world’s largest corporations, nearly 40 percent reported that water problems had already resulted in “detrimental impacts” to their businesses.

The threat of water shortages was brought home to Levi Strauss last year when floods in Pakistan and parched fields in China destroyed cotton crops and sent prices soaring. Roughly two pounds of cotton go into every pair of jeans that the company manufactures. Although scientists are wary of linking specific extreme weather events to climate change, recent increases in floods and droughts are in line with patterns that experts have long projected would result from global warming. The general rule of thumb is that wet regions will get wetter and dry regions will become even more arid.

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