Updated July 11 1:10pm

The 2004 Kenworth tractor truck and trailer that hit the cyclist July 10 was driven by Richard J. Pettay, 39, of Carson City. The bike rider, 48-year-old Clarence M. Aldridge of Bakersfield, remains at Renown Medical Center in Reno with severe injuries.

Pettay did not see the bicyclist and the front of the tractor struck the rear of the bicycle. Aldridge was thrown from the bicycle inside the tunnel.

Alcohol or drugs is not a factor.

Witnesses or anyone else with more information are asked to call 775.689.4661 or email ckelly@dps.state.nv.us.

—–

A cyclist was seriously injured Thursday morning when he was struck by a truck inside Cave Rock.

The name and hometown of the man on the bike and the driver of the truck have not been released. They were heading east toward Carson City.

According to Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Dave Gibson, the man sustained life-threatening injuries. He was CareFlighted to Renown Medical Center in Reno.

More cyclists are in the area now because the annual Death Ride is this weekend.

The investigation is ongoing to determine what happened. The tunnel is narrow and a lane is not wide enough for a bike and vehicle. There is a button cyclists may push that triggers a flashing light to warn motorists there is a cyclist in the tunnel.

The 10am July 10 accident closed down Highway 50 for several hours. All lanes of traffic are now open.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Paul Elias, AP

SAN FRANCISCO — The former head of the nation’s largest public pension fund pleaded guilty Friday to bribery and fraud.

Federico Buenrostro Jr., the former chief executive of California Public Employees’ Retirement System, entered his plea in San Francisco federal court.

He acknowledged receiving paper bags and a shoe box stuffed with $200,000 in cash, casino chips and other benefits from Alfred Villalobos, a Stateline investment manager who also served on the CalPERS board in the mid-90s.

Buenrostro, CEO of CalPERS from 2002 through 2008, said he used his influence to make investment decisions beneficial to Villalobos’ clients.

Buenrostro also said he gave Villalobos access to the pension system’s confidential investment information. Further, Buenrostro said he forged letters that allowed Villalobos’ firms to earn millions of dollars in commissions for investing $3 billion in the pension fund’s money.

Aside from the cash and chips, Villalobos said paid for Buenrostro’s wedding and hosted it at his home in 2004, according to the plea agreement Buenrostro signed Friday. Buenrostro also said that Villalobos paid for first-class airfare, hotels, meals and entertainment for a business trips to Dubai, Hong Kong and Macau.

Buenrostro faces five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced in January.

Villalobos has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges and other related counts.

The state attorney general also sued Buenrostro and Villalobos along with other former pension board and staff members, alleging fraud and kickbacks at the pension board.

In a related sanction, the state’s campaign watchdog, the Fair Political Practices Commission, fined other executives and investment managers in 2011 for failing to report gifts that included food, wine and baseball and Rose Bowl tickets.

By Janet Lorin, Bloomberg

In terms of American exceptionalism, student loan debt stands out. No other country imposes the kind of costs on college and university students that the U.S. does, and nowhere else do loans cover so much of those costs.

Experts think the $1.2 trillion in outstanding education debt in the U.S. is more than that of the rest of the world combined. It’s a situation that educators, consumer advocates and members of both political parties all decry. Agreement on solutions is harder to find.

In the meantime, the level of student loans is increasingly seen not just as a burden on students, but as a drag on the nation’s economy. Young adults are delaying setting up their own households in the face of a mountain of debt while default rates rise to dangerous levels. Recent studies also show a growing economic divergence between young Americans with and without student loans.

There’s widespread agreement as to who is worst off: college dropouts. They’re stuck with debt, but without the higher earnings a degree might have brought to help pay it off.

Read the whole story

By Michael De Groote, Deseret News

If someone wants a full-time job, but can’t get one, they often will settle for a part-time job. These are the “involuntary part-time workers,” and the recent rise in their numbers has some experts worried.

The government reported that there were 288,000 new jobs added in June. That was the silver lining. Paul Davidson at USA Today wrote about the dark cloud: “The number of hours employees are working? That’s a different story. Among the few worrisome signs in (the) generally encouraging employment report was a sharp rise in the number of part-time workers who prefer full-time jobs. The total jumped by 275,000 to 7.5 million, the Labor Department said.”

In May, the number of involuntary part-timers dropped 196,000, so this jump is a bit of a surprise and the highest this year, Davidson wrote.

Economist Bernard Baumohl told Davidson that the better the economy gets, employees should be putting in more time on the job. “Instead, (Baumohl) notes, the economy has been running in place this year.”

Ylan Q. Mui at the Washington Post says economists have a “gnawing fear” that the dropping unemployment rate (6.1 percent) and other good indications provide “false comfort” in light of the part-time workers numbers.

Read the whole story

This beach bear was put down. Photo/NDOW

A bear in Glenbrook was killed this week by Nevada Department of Wildlife officials.

The 3-year-old male was a threat to humans, according to Chris Healy with NDOW. It had been captured twice before — in 2011 in Carson City, last year in Glenbrook.

Officials are expecting this to be an active bear season because of the drought. Animals will be more apt to scour neighborhoods for easing pickings.

This is the first bear NDOW has put down this year. Five were killed in 2013.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Kathryn Reed

The EPA on July 8 approved a treatment to combat invasive zebra and quagga mussels in lakes, rivers, recreation areas and other open bodies of water.

Zequanox was created by Davis-based Marrone Bio Innovations. The chemical was first approved by the EPA in 2012 to be used in enclosed systems, which includes intake pipes for dams, manufacturers and golf courses.

These invasive species have crippled the Great Lakes region as well as Lake Mead in Southern Nevada, Lake Powell in Utah, and rivers in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Colorado. While they have not reached Lake Tahoe, they are a threat. These mussels are some of species that the decontamination stations are looking for before boaters are able to launch at Tahoe.

On July 9 a boat coming from Lake Mead was inspected at the Spooner Summit station. Inspectors found quagga mussels and an unidentified snail species hiding in the anchor locker.

During the Fourth of July weekend, more than 725 boats were screened for invasive species at four inspection stations surrounding the Tahoe, which is a 17 percent increase from 2013.

Since May, inspectors have intercepted 24 boats containing invasive species bound for the waters of Lake Tahoe. Eight of these boats contained invasive mussels and another four boats were carrying several different snail species.

The mussels disrupt the ecosystem and cause proliferation of toxic blue-green algae. They decrease game fish populations, which can have a serious effect on the economy. Swimmers run the risk of injury from the invasive mussels’ sharp shells, and water intakes from infested lakes and rivers used for irrigation, fire suppression and drinking water can suffer impeded or blocked flow and damage to infrastructure and equipment.

Zequanox is composed of dead cells derived from a naturally occurring soil microbe, and it controls mussels in all life stages. Unlike toxic treatments, such as potash and copper-based solutions, Zequanox is biodegradable, noncorrosive and nonvolatile. In addition, Zequanox is highly selective to control only the invasive zebra and quagga mussels, is effective in a broad range of water conditions and according to the EPA, its active ingredient has “low toxicity and presents little risk to non-target organisms.”

“The product is not damaging to aquatic life, humans or infrastructure,” Jessi DeMartini, research center coordinator with the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County, Ill., said in a statement. “Zequanox produced high mortality of the zebra mussels – reaching 97 percent at the peak of application – while native fish exposed to the product remained unharmed. After further testing we concluded there were no lasting impacts to water quality.”

DeMartini was part of two collaborative open water studies at the Deep Quarry Lake in DuPage County in 2012 and 2013.

Zequanox is applied directly into a lake or river using standard injection equipment. Treatments can occur during any time of the day while people and pets are present, and can be completed within hours.

Tahoe’s goal is to prevent the mussels from ever reaching the lake.

The Tallac Hand Crew is now the Tallac Hotshots. Photo/USFS

By Kathryn Reed

Twenty of the best firefighters in the country are now based out of South Lake Tahoe.

The Tallac Hand Crew that was created in 2001 is now the Tallac Hotshots. They went through a rigorous process to ascend to this prestigious status.

“It’s a pretty big deal and a pretty big accomplishment,” Kit Bailey, Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit fire management officer, told Lake Tahoe News.

These are the most elite firefighters. There is no higher level than this Type 1 team. They are assigned to the complex fires and work the toughest terrain in remote locations where their lives are often on the line.

Days off are rare, though things have changed since Bailey was a hotshot. In those days bosses were not as cognizant to the need for a little down time and the ability to reconnect with their families. Still, a day off may only come every 14 days.

“When I was on a hotshot crew, you’d think you are going home and you get about five miles from the station and then you get another call. You make a left turn and who knows where you will be for the next week,” Bailey said. “You can’t even expect you are going home until you walk in the front door. And that may only be for a few hours.”

Supervisors are expected to be available 24/7.

Of the 20 members, eight are full-time, year-round employees, while 12 are seasonal. The one woman is in a supervisory position. Some are graduates of the Lake Tahoe Community College Fire Academy.

While the physical strength required for the job is obvious, the mental toughness is another aspect. That isn’t something that can be taught. They have to deal with working practically around the clock in an uncontrolled environment, under conditions that are brutally hot.

Because of this it was teamwork, leadership and the administrative capabilities that were most scrutinized when the group of evaluators examined the Tallac crew.

The final test of the multiyear process to become a hotshot team was a three-day review by a cadre of Forest Service personnel.

“The biggest part is leadership and qualifications for those leaders,” Bailey said.

Nearly a day and a half was spent making sure the team had its administrative and management skills in place. This is because all of the parts and pieces of fighting a fire are complex, Bailey said. It’s so much more than putting water on fire and the muscle to do so.

Then the inspection team did a 1-on-1 leadership exercise, and went over all their equipment and vehicles.

Finally, it was time to get outside to prove their moxie. They had been given a scenario of a mock fire. They cut line for more than four hours. All that time their speed and progress was being timed and measured. Surprises were thrown at them like a spot fire crossing the line.

“There is a lot of emphasis on crew communication,” Bailey said.

Suddenly a radio is out. Now communication must be face-to-face. A power line crosses their path. Aircraft is incoming with water or retardant.

How the crew deals with these situations is being tested.

One of their own goes down, creating an incident within an incident.

Ultimately they must deploy their shelters.

They passed every test they were given.

Besides this three-day test, the Tallac crew has been peer reviewed while in the field at real fires. There are about 2,000 hotshots through the United States.

While other teams in the Lake Tahoe Basin have tried to achieve hotshot status, this is the first to successfully do so.

“It gives us a higher level of knowledge, skill and experience we can rely and depend on in basin,” Bailey said.

But like all hotshot teams, they are not solely assigned to fires in their home territory. The local crew has been working the Coleman Fire in northwest Nevada just south of the Oregon border.

“They are a national resource,” Bailey said of all hotshots.

STATELINE — A group of Whittell High and Zephyr Cove Elementary school parents, teachers and administrators is being formed to iron out differences and plan for the future.

Parents this spring have flocked to school board meetings to voice their frustrations with how Whittell is being treated. No one spoke at the July 8 meeting and only a handful of people attended it. Also at issue is the imminent proposed consolidation of the two lake schools into one K-12 institution.

Superintendent Lisa Noonan told Lake Tahoe News she hopes the panel that will be convened next month will look at immediate and long-term goals for the two Zephyr Cove schools. She wants the group to look at the master plan and see if the K-12 proposal is still valid.

It took the Douglas County school board 40 minutes Tuesday to figure out the parameters of the group.

There will be three parents, three teachers and one community member on the panel. The parents and teachers will represent the various schools at the lake, with Whittell counting as two schools because in many ways the seventh- and eighth-graders are a unit unto themselves. That is one of the divisive issues – how that block of students is treated.

Cindy Trigg and Tom Moore will represent the board at the meetings, with Teri Jamin and Ross Chichester their respective alternates.

Noonan is tasked with finding a facilitator outside the district to run the meetings.

An application will be devised for potential panel members to fill out. A group within the district will review them for substantive content, with the facilitator making the final selection of who is on the panel.

All meetings will be open to the public and there will be a comment period at each. Noonan was hoping recommendations to the board could be finalized by November, but said it may be more appropriate to have findings delivered to the board in January when it meets at the lake.

Also at the meeting, it was stated that there is still no buyer for the former Kingsbury Middle School.

— Kathryn Reed

By Don Thompson, AP

Wasting water outdoors amid the state’s drought will begin hitting Californians in the wallet under get-tough restrictions being proposed by state regulators, with fines of up to $500 a day for overwatering front lawns or washing a car without a nozzle on the hose.

The State Water Resources Control Board next week is scheduled to consider draft emergency regulations made public Tuesday. They are intended to put teeth into conservation efforts that so far have produced disappointing results.

Most of the regulations to be considered by the board are aimed at reducing outdoor water use in cities and towns, which the board said accounts in some areas for more than half of residents’ daily water use.

The regulations would prohibit overwatering of lawns and landscaping that causes runoff onto sidewalks or streets, washing sidewalks, driveways and other hard surfaces, using a hose to wash a vehicle unless the hose has a shut-off nozzle and using drinking water in a fountain or decorative water feature unless the water is recirculated.

Violations would be infractions punishable by fines of up to $500 a day, and tickets could be written by any public employee empowered to enforce laws. While $500 is the daily maximum, most cities are likely to have a sliding scale that starts with a warning and builds for repeat violations.

“We are in a drought of historic proportions,” board Chairwoman Felicia Marcus said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “Many urban water users don’t realize how bad this drought is. They’re not seeing the communities that are actually running out of water. … They don’t see the streams and creeks running dry.”

If the board adopts the regulations after hearing comments during a July 15 public meeting in Sacramento, the rules would take effect immediately and remain in effect for nine months.

They do not target indoor water use, such as doing the laundry or dishes, although some individual cities and water districts have asked or required their users to reduce overall water consumption.

Marcus said the restrictions to be considered next week represent what the water board considers the minimal level of conservation.

“We’re not doing standards here that say you have to kill your lawn,” Marcus said. “It doesn’t mean you can’t take a shower. … It just means, think about it.”

She said the board might consider additional steps as the drought continues.

Under the proposed rules, urban water agencies would have to implement their water-shortage contingency plans to require mandatory restrictions on outdoor water use, if they have not done so already.

Water agencies without such a plan would have to act within 30 days to require their residents to restrict outdoor irrigation to no more than two days each week or take other mandatory steps to conserve the same amount of water.

Water agencies that do not comply could face fines up to $10,000 each day.

The generally obscure State Water Resources Control Board is assuming a more high-profile role during California’s drought, which has left some communities scrambling for drinking water and led to thousands of farm acres being fallowed.

The board usually regulates such things as wastewater and irrigation discharges to rivers and the ocean, as well as any activity that changes a waterway or harms water quality.

But the board’s five members, who are appointed by the governor, are acting under Gov. Jerry Brown’s emergency drought proclamation in January and a related executive order in April, as well as drought legislation he signed in March. Last week, for example, the board adopted a different set of emergency regulations that will accelerate enforcement of orders prohibiting some junior water rights holders from diverting water from rivers and streams.

The additional restrictions the board will consider next week were proposed after a recent survey of water suppliers serving 25 million Californians showed that current voluntary and mandatory conservation efforts had resulted in just a 5 percent decline in use through May. Brown is seeking a 20 percent reduction.

The survey found 30 percent of water suppliers had imposed mandatory restrictions that include limits on outdoor irrigation, washing vehicles and filling ornamental fountains and swimming pools.

Water use already was down the last three years because of dry conditions and poor economic conditions, and the survey found a significant reduction this May compared with the previous three years.

Nearly all those who responded said they had increased their conservation outreach, while 40 percent had increased their enforcement and monitoring. Two-thirds of the suppliers are requesting 20 percent water conservation, and 7 percent changed their water rates in response to the drought.

Wasting water outdoors amid the state’s drought will begin hitting Californians in the wallet under get-tough restrictions being proposed by state regulators, with fines of up to $500 a day for overwatering front lawns or washing a car without a nozzle on the hose.

The State Water Resources Control Board next week is scheduled to consider draft emergency regulations made public Tuesday. They are intended to put teeth into conservation efforts that so far have produced disappointing results.

Most of the regulations to be considered by the board are aimed at reducing outdoor water use in cities and towns, which the board said accounts in some areas for more than half of residents’ daily water use.

The regulations would prohibit overwatering of lawns and landscaping that causes runoff onto sidewalks or streets, washing sidewalks, driveways and other hard surfaces, using a hose to wash a vehicle unless the hose has a shut-off nozzle and using drinking water in a fountain or decorative water feature unless the water is recirculated.

Violations would be infractions punishable by fines of up to $500 a day, and tickets could be written by any public employee empowered to enforce laws. While $500 is the daily maximum, most cities are likely to have a sliding scale that starts with a warning and builds for repeat violations.

“We are in a drought of historic proportions,” board Chairwoman Felicia Marcus said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “Many urban water users don’t realize how bad this drought is. They’re not seeing the communities that are actually running out of water. … They don’t see the streams and creeks running dry.”

If the board adopts the regulations after hearing comments during a July 15 public meeting in Sacramento, the rules would take effect immediately and remain in effect for nine months.

They do not target indoor water use, such as doing the laundry or dishes, although some individual cities and water districts have asked or required their users to reduce overall water consumption.

Marcus said the restrictions to be considered next week represent what the water board considers the minimal level of conservation.

“We’re not doing standards here that say you have to kill your lawn,” Marcus said. “It doesn’t mean you can’t take a shower. … It just means, think about it.”

She said the board might consider additional steps as the drought continues.

Under the proposed rules, urban water agencies would have to implement their water-shortage contingency plans to require mandatory restrictions on outdoor water use, if they have not done so already.

Water agencies without such a plan would have to act within 30 days to require their residents to restrict outdoor irrigation to no more than two days each week or take other mandatory steps to conserve the same amount of water.

Water agencies that do not comply could face fines up to $10,000 each day.

The generally obscure State Water Resources Control Board is assuming a more high-profile role during California’s drought, which has left some communities scrambling for drinking water and led to thousands of farm acres being fallowed.

The board usually regulates such things as wastewater and irrigation discharges to rivers and the ocean, as well as any activity that changes a waterway or harms water quality.

But the board’s five members, who are appointed by the governor, are acting under Gov. Jerry Brown’s emergency drought proclamation in January and a related executive order in April, as well as drought legislation he signed in March. Last week, for example, the board adopted a different set of emergency regulations that will accelerate enforcement of orders prohibiting some junior water rights holders from diverting water from rivers and streams.

The additional restrictions the board will consider next week were proposed after a recent survey of water suppliers serving 25 million Californians showed that current voluntary and mandatory conservation efforts had resulted in just a 5 percent decline in use through May. Brown is seeking a 20 percent reduction.

The survey found 30 percent of water suppliers had imposed mandatory restrictions that include limits on outdoor irrigation, washing vehicles and filling ornamental fountains and swimming pools.

Water use already was down the last three years because of dry conditions and poor economic conditions, and the survey found a significant reduction this May compared with the previous three years.

Nearly all those who responded said they had increased their conservation outreach, while 40 percent had increased their enforcement and monitoring. Two-thirds of the suppliers are requesting 20 percent water conservation, and 7 percent changed their water rates in response to the drought.

By Jennifer Robison, Las Vegas Review-Journal

Nevada’s housing market closed out the first half of 2014 with steady gains.

Monday numbers from the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors showed continued increases in median prices, even as sales fell, inventory improved and investment activity shrank.

The median price of a single-family resale in June was $199,900, up 14.2 percent from $175,000 in June 2013, and up 2.5 percent from $195,000 in May. That median is the highest the association has reported since September 2008, although it’s still well below a June 2006 peak of $315,000.

Association President Heidi Kasama called the market’s closing-in on a median of $200,000 “encouraging.”

The single-family median price bottomed out at $118,000 in January 2012.

The median price of existing condos and town houses surged even more, jumping 26.7 percent year over year and 6.9 percent month to month, to $109,000.

Read the whole story