A South Lake Tahoe man was arrested Tuesday for allegedly possessing stolen property.

Eric Beaman, 26, was arrested at a residence on Armstrong Avenue on Aug. 13, which is also where officers said they recovered items they suspect were stolen from “several vacation rental burglaries.”

Police have not bothered to say when these burglaries occurred, where they occurred, what types of times were stolen or how suspects gained entry. But they would like anyone who has had something stolen to contact them at (530) 542.6100.

And there is another suspect who got away from officers earlier Tuesday who may have something to do with a motorcycle they recovered that had been stolen in July. An arrest warrant is being sought, but officers won’t give out any information on the suspect. They said in a press release that the person’s identity “may be made public” when the warrant is issued.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Updated 5:15pm:

Power has been restored.

—-

Power is out along much of the West Shore because a tree service company dropped a tree onto a power line.

Liberty Utilities crews are on site, but have no estimated time of when the lights will come back on.

The outage occurred just before 3pm Aug. 14 and is affecting about 4,100 customers from Emerald Bay to Tahoe City.

The downed line is near the Tahoe Ski Bowl area in Homewood.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Police arrested a South Lake Tahoe man today in the stabbing death of a 57-year-old woman.

Sean-Paul Andrew MacIntire

Sean-Paul Andrew MacIntire, 32, has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Shirley Gordon. The two are related, but police aren’t saying how. They don’t even know where Gordon resided.

MacIntire’s mother, who was at the Wildwood Avenue house when the stabbing occurred, called officers to the residence Aug. 14 at 1:45am. Mother and son live there together. She is not a suspect in the crime, according to police.

Police said the victim was on the couch when she was killed.

Anyone with information is asked to call the SLTPD at (530) 542.6100 or Secret Witness at (530) 541.6800.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Barry Eberling, Fairfield Daily Republic

State Sen. Lois Wolk has proposed a $5.6 billion state water bond, one that includes no money for the controversial proposal to build twin tunnels to take water exports under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Instead, Wolk, D-Vacaville, proposes to spend $1.5 billion on safe drinking water projects, $1.8 billion on water quality and watershed projects, $1.3 billion on flood control and $1 billion for water system operations improvements such as groundwater storage and recycled water storage.

Senate Bill 42 prohibits using bond money to build or do mitigation for a new water conveyance project.

Wolk wants this $5.6 billion bond to replace the $11 billion state water bond scheduled to go before voters in 2014. The state Legislature agreed to that $11 billion bond measure in 2009.

But Wolk has long criticized the 2009 bond measure, saying items got added by the Legislature in the middle of the night to win passage. It has such items as $3 million for a Lake Tahoe water taxi. Wolk last year said her bond proposal wouldn’t be a Christmas tree or bloated.

Read the whole story

The American Fire has burned 3,050 acres in a remote area of the Tahoe National Forest.

Smoke from it is drifting east and causing irritation for some people who live in the Lake Tahoe Basin, Truckee, Reno and other locales.

Officials this morning said moderate fire behavior was observed overnight, with the north end of the fire being most active. A defensive backfire used along Deadwood Road.

The fire that started Aug. 10 is 5 percent contained.

The cause remains unknown.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Brad Plumer, Washington Post

The average Californian uses about 33 percent less electricity at home than the average American in the rest of the country. That shouldn’t be overly surprising, given the state’s mild weather.

What is surprising, though, is that California’s electricity use has basically stayed flat for the past four decades, in stark contrast with the rest of the United States.

Since 1960, household electricity use in the rest of the United States has more than tripled, climbing past 12,000 kWh per person on average (although it has plateaued of late). By contrast, in California, electricity use per capita doubled in the 1960s but then more or less stopped growing for the next four decades.

Why would that be? One popular theory is that California’s particularly aggressive green policies should get credit. Back in the 1970s, the state began adopting stringent standards to promote energy-saving appliances and home insulation. Then, in 1982, California tweaked its utility regulations, in a policy known as “decoupling.” Power companies would no longer get paid based on the number of electrons they sold. Instead, they’d have incentives to promote efficiency.

Read the whole story

By Ed Fletcher, Sacramento Bee

Concerned by a major development proposal, a group of Squaw Valley activists say they have more than enough signatures needed to start the process of turning the tiny ski resort community into the new city of Olympic Valley.

The process is expected to cost in excess of $100,000 and take at least two years.

Owners of Squaw Valley want to further develop the base area. Photo/LTN file

“I don’t see big obstacles once we become a town,” said Fred Ilfeld, one of the lead proponents of cityhood.

Olympic Valley might be a small town, but it’s a community filled with people who have accomplished much in their lives, said Ilfeld. He did not foresee problems electing a capable council.

Incorporation is a response to the December 2011 announcement by Squaw Valley’s owners of a proposed phased development of 101.5 acres, adding more than 1,000 lodging units and 47,000 square feet of commercial space.

Squaw CEO Andy Wirth said while his organization doesn’t have an official position on incorporation, he has concerns.

Read the whole story

By Olga Kharif, Bloomberg

In February, six students on snowshoes battled as much as 12 feet of snow to penetrate into the heart of the American River basin.

Moving through dense forests and meadows, they mounted 90 iPhone-sized machines, designed to measure everything from soil moisture to temperature and relative humidity, onto 16-foot poles that beam data to researchers like Steven Glaser, a professor at UC Berkeley.

With additional trips this summer, Glaser hopes to create the world’s largest sensor network, comprising 7,500 devices that will inform researchers and government agencies for the first time in detail how much water California has in its coffers — critical data for farmers and state planners.

Department of Water Resources customarily tests water content throughout the winter in the Sierra; now sensors can give real-time water info to officials. Photo/LTN file

The network will be among the largest tests of a new kind of sensor: one that feels as well as thinks, while using very little power — a D-cell battery can last years.

Glaser’s gadgets come equipped with silicon from Linear Technology Corp. and Cypress Semiconductor Corp. that turns them into mini-computers. They’re part of a generation of intelligent sensors whose sales may rise about 10 percent a year to reach $6.9 billion in 2018, according to Transparency Market Research.

Unlike dumb predecessors that gathered data and passed it to a central server to analyze, these devices monitor the information’s quality and perform advanced calculations.

“It’s smart cities, smart buildings, smart water,” said Susan Eustis, president of WinterGreen Research Inc. “It’s enabling a world of things. It’s going to grow unbelievably fast.”

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South Lake Tahoe City Council members did not find out about a loop road related meeting until Monday – two days before the event.

Lake Tahoe News has never been formally told about it.

And this is a public meeting.

AIM Consulting sent an email to the Citizens Review Committee on Aug. 12 reminding the members of the Aug. 14 6:30pm meeting at the chamber/LTVA meeting room in Stateline. (Dinner is included, but it’s not known if the public gets to eat. And it’s not known if this is taxpayer money feeding these committee members.) RSVP to Ciara Zanze by calling (916) 442.1168. She works for the consultant hired by the Tahoe Transportation District.

In response to an elected official’s inquiry about why there was the late notice, Alfred Knotts with TTD sent the following group email, “The formal committee members were notified well in advance and the date was selected based on their availability. We have concurrence from a vast majority of the committee members regarding their attendance. I do however concur that limited notification was sent to you and the remaining city council members yesterday in the form of a formal agenda which was developed and sent to comply with the Brown Act and NV Open Meeting Law. The agenda was also posted as required by both of these requirements.”

However, the Brown Act in California requires meetings be posted 72 hours in advance. This means the notification sent Aug. 12 did not comply with those regulations and therefore it could be seen as an illegal meeting and that any action or discussion taken would have to be stricken from the official record.

Future meetings are:

• Aug. 28, 6-8pm

• Sept. 11, 6:30-8:30pm

• Sept. 25, 6-8pm.

All meetings will be at Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority, 169 Highway 50 in Stateline. And dinner will be served at each meeting – at least for committee members.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By CBS-13

A woman and her two children shared a home with a murderer and didn’t realize it until later. Now that killer is accused of striking again.

She describes him as odd, but charming and charismatic. The worst she thought was he could have been a good con man.

Joseph Nissensohn

When cops knocked on Theresa Robertson’s door years later, she thought it was because he passed a few bad checks.

She had no idea, all those years ago, that she spent six weeks with a killer.

“I was short on rent and I needed a roommate.”

She had no way of knowing that just days before Joseph Nissensohn became her roommate in South Lake Tahoe that he murdered a 46-year-old woman in Washington.

Nissensohn is being tried on murder charges in El Dorado County Superior Court in South Lake Tahoe.

Read the whole story