-Headline News

Water issues at Lake Almanor attract regional notice

By Bruce Ajari
North Lake Tahoe Bonanza

   As everyone is well aware, water is becoming a highly sought-after commodity. It is crucial to our local fisheries. With Lake Tahoe soon to drop below its natural rim for a second time, we all know what the Truckee River is looking like these days.
   A recent trip north to Lake Almanor exposed me to a huge water issue that the local community is facing up there.
   As part of a dam's Federal Energy Regulatory Commission re-licensing plan for Lake Almanor, the State Water Quality Control Board is requiring consideration for lowering the temperature of the North Fork of the Feather River about 40 miles downstream between Rock Creek and Cresta dams.
    A water temperature of 68 degrees (20 degrees Celsius) is being sought during the summer months as part of the plan. This is to enhance water temperatures for trout.

Sierra Chemical has record of similar accidents

Joshua Sebold
Staff Writer
11/11/2009

   It appears Sierra Chemical, the company whose driver mixed the wrong chemicals at Sierra Pacific Industries’ Quincy site, a mistake that led to a Hazmat situation and injured four people, has experienced similar incidents leading to the release of chlorine gas into a populated area on multiple occasions.
   Records show that last Monday’s incident was at least the third in the company’s history of creating a chlorine gas leak by accidentally mixing the wrong chemicals.
    The SPI incident, which sent four people to the emergency room and left one of them in the hospital for an overnight stay, might have been the least appalling as the other two occurred at swimming pools.
   Press releases from the Environmental Protection Agency and Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office detail these previous incidents.

California water wars shadow Plumas County

Linda Satchwell
Staff Writer
11/11/2009

   The California state Legislature passed its comprehensive water package in a night session that ended in the early morning hours Nov. 4.
   According to proponents, the package will allow for clean, reliable water for Californians. Plumas County’s representatives, Senator Dave Cox and Assemblyman Dan Logue, both voted against the package. Brian Morris, manager of the Plumas County Water Conservation District, said the legislation would pose significant problems for Plumas County.
    “Folks here are completely outnumbered by the Bay Area and Los Angeles,” he said. It’s a “one size fits all” package that, in certain ways, doesn’t fit Plumas County.
   One particular aspect of the package of four water policy bills that concerned Morris is a requirement for groundwater monitoring, which charts whether groundwater is being used in a sustainable manner.

Solid waste: Should county go with the flow?

Delaine Fragnoli
Managing Editor
11/11/2009

County supervisors waded once more into the topic of solid waste at their Tuesday, Nov. 3, meeting and emerged more than an hour later with a less than clean course of action.
After one failed motion, they eventually passed a second motion, on a 3-2 vote, to not modify the county’s existing ordinances on self-hauling until after they had seen a management audit (approved earlier in the session) of the county’s two solid waste franchisees. But they did direct staff to start looking at allowing self-hauling of construction or demolition debris.

Sierra Pacific Power to sell Portola, Loyalton assets

Diana Jorgenson
Portola Editor
11/11/2009

Sierra Pacific Power, now called Nevada Energy, filed with the California Public Utilities Commission to sell its California electrical service assets to California Pacific Electric Oct. 20. Among the assets, Portola and Loyalton electrical customers will find themselves under new ownership.
Plumas Sierra Rural Electric Cooperative would like to purchase the electrical service base in the two towns, and General Manager Bob Marshall appeared before the city council Oct. 28 to enlist the city’s support in his efforts and to encourage the city to list its primary concerns and present them to the CPUC during the comment period.

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Shannon Morrow
Sports Editor
11/18/2009

The Feather River College men’s and women’s soccer teams each took first place in the Golden Valley Conference and earned a berth...