Astronomers have discovered a distant white dwarf with an Earth-like planet in an orbit just beyond where Mars is in our solar system. Earth could end up in such an orbit circling a white dwarf in about 8 billion years, if, like this exoplanet, it can survive the sun's red giant phase on its way to becoming a white dwarf. Image credit: Adam Makarenko. BERKELEY, Calif. — The discovery of an Earth-like planet 4,000 light years away in the Milky Way galaxy provides a preview of one possible fate for our planet billions of years in the future, when the sun has turned into a white dwarf, and a blasted and frozen Earth has migrated beyond the orbit of Mars.
This distant planetary system, identified by University of California, Berkeley, astronomers after observations with the Keck 10-meter telescope in Hawaii, looks very similar to expectations for the sun-Earth system: it consists of a white dwarf about half the mass of the sun and an Earth-size companion in an orbit twice as large as Earth’s today.
That is likely to be Earth’s fate. The sun will eventually inflate like a balloon larger than Earth's orbit today, engulfing Mercury and Venus in the process. As the star expands to become a red giant, its decreasing mass will force planets to migrate to more distant orbits, offering Earth a slim opportunity to survive farther from the sun.
Eventually, the outer layers of the red giant will be blown away to leave behind a dense white dwarf no larger than a planet, but with the mass of a star. If Earth has survived by then, it will probably end up in an orbit twice its current size.
The discovery, published Thursday in the journal Nature Astronomy, tells scientists about the evolution of main sequence stars, like the sun, through the red giant phase to a white dwarf, and how it affects the planets around them.
Some studies suggest that for the sun, this process could begin in about 1 billion years, eventually vaporizing Earth's oceans and doubling Earth's orbital radius — if the expanding star doesn't engulf our planet first.
Eventually, about 8 billion years from now, the sun's outer layers will have dispersed to leave behind a dense, glowing ball — a white dwarf — that is about half the mass of the sun, but smaller in size than Earth.
“We do not currently have a consensus whether Earth could avoid being engulfed by the red giant sun in 6 billion years,” said study leader Keming Zhang, a former doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, who is now an Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego. “In any case, planet Earth will only be habitable for around another billion years, at which point Earth's oceans would be vaporized by runaway greenhouse effect — long before the risk of getting swallowed by the red giant.”
The planetary system provides one example of a planet that did survive, though it is far outside the habitable zone of the dim white dwarf and unlikely to harbor life. It may have had habitable conditions at some point, when its host was still a sun-like star.
“Whether life can survive on Earth through that (red giant) period is unknown. But certainly the most important thing is that Earth isn't swallowed by the sun when it becomes a red giant,” said Jessica Lu, associate professor and chair of astronomy at UC Berkeley. “This system that Keming's found is an example of a planet — probably an Earth-like planet originally on a similar orbit to Earth — that survived its host star's red giant phase.”
Microlensing makes star brighten a thousandfold
The far-away planetary system, located near the bulge at the center of our galaxy, came to astronomers' attention in 2020 when it passed in front of a more distant star and magnified that star's light by a factor of 1,000. The gravity of the system acted like a lens to focus and amplify the light from the background star.
The team that discovered this “microlensing event” dubbed it KMT-2020-BLG-0414 because it was detected by the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network in the Southern Hemisphere. The magnification of the background star — also in the Milky Way, but about 25,000 light years from Earth — was still only a pinprick of light.
Nevertheless, its variation in intensity over about two months allowed the team to estimate that the system included a star about half the mass of the sun, a planet about the mass of Earth and a very large planet about 17 times the mass of Jupiter — likely a brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs are failed stars, with a mass just shy of that required to ignite fusion in the core.
The analysis also concluded that the Earth-like planet was between 1 and 2 astronomical units from the star — that is, about twice the distance between the Earth and sun. It was unclear what kind of star the host was because its light was lost in the glare of the magnified background star and a few nearby stars.
To identify the type of star, Zhang and his colleagues, including UC Berkeley astronomers Jessica Lu and Joshua Bloom, looked more closely at the lensing system in 2023 using the Keck II 10-meter telescope in Hawaii, which is outfitted with adaptive optics to eliminate blur from the atmosphere.
Because they observed the system three years after the lensing event, the background star that had once been magnified 1,000 times had become faint enough that the lensing star should have been visible if it was a typical main-sequence star like the sun, Lu said.
But Zhang detected nothing in two separate Keck images.
“Our conclusions are based on ruling out the alternative scenarios, since a normal star would have been easily seen,” Zhang said. “Because the lens is both dark and low mass, we concluded that it can only be a white dwarf.”
“This is a case of where seeing nothing is actually more interesting than seeing something,” said Lu, who looks for microlensing events caused by free-floating stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way.
Finding exoplanets through microlensing
The discovery is part of a project by Zhang to more closely study microlensing events that show the presence of a planet, in order to understand what types of stars exoplanets live around.
“There is some luck involved, because you'd expect fewer than one in 10 microlensing stars with planets to be white dwarfs,” Zhang said.
The new observations also allowed Zhang and colleagues to resolve an ambiguity regarding the location of the brown dwarf.
“The original analysis showed that the brown dwarf is either in a very wide orbit, like Neptune's, or well within Mercury’s orbit. Giant planets on very small orbits are actually quite common outside the solar system,” Zhang said, referring to a class of planets called hot Jupiters. “But since we now know it is orbiting a stellar remnant, this is unlikely, as it would have been engulfed.”
The modeling ambiguity is caused by so-called microlensing degeneracy, where two distinct lensing configurations can give rise to the same lensing effect. This degeneracy is related to the one Zhang and Bloom discovered in 2022 using an AI method to analyze microlensing simulations. Zhang also applied the same AI technique to rule out alternative models for KMT-2020-BLG-0414 that may have been missed.
“Microlensing has turned into a very interesting way of studying other star systems that can't be observed and detected by the conventional means, i.e. the transit method or the radial velocity method,” Bloom said. “There is a whole set of worlds that are now opening up to us through the microlensing channel, and what's exciting is that we're on the precipice of finding exotic configurations like this.”
One purpose of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2027, is to measure light curves from microlensing events to find exoplanets, many of which will need follow up using other telescopes to identify the types of stars hosting the exoplanets.
“What is required is careful follow up with the world's best facilities, i.e. adaptive optics and the Keck Observatory, not just a day or a month later, but many, many years into the future, after the lens has moved away from the background star so you can start disambiguating what you're seeing,” Bloom said.
Zhang noted that even if Earth gets engulfed during the sun's red giant phase in a billion or so years, humanity may find a refuge in the outer solar system. Several moons of Jupiter, such as Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, and Enceladus around Saturn, appear to have frozen water oceans that will likely thaw as the outer layers of the red giant expand.
"As the sun becomes a red giant, the habitable zone will move to around Jupiter and Saturn's orbit, and many of these moons will become ocean planets," Zhang said. "I think, in that case, humanity could migrate out there."
Other co-authors are Weicheng Zang and Shude Mao of Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, who co-authored the first paper about KMT-2020-BLG-0414; former UC Berkeley doctoral student Kareem El-Badry, now an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena; Eric Agol of the University of Washington in Seattle; B. Scott Gaudi of The Ohio State University in Columbus; Quinn Konopacky of UC San Diego; Natalie LeBaron of UC Berkeley; and Sean Terry of the University of Maryland in College Park.
Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
LAKEPORT, Calif. — The city of Lakeport and Lakeport Disposal Co. have announced a Community Cleanup Day for city residents on Saturday, Oct. 12.
The fall cleanup day will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the public parking lot of the Fifth Street boat ramp in downtown Lakeport.
This event is limited to city of Lakeport residents and business owners; those dropping off trash and solid waste will be required to provide photo identification and a copy of a current city utility bill.
Participants are asked to follow these guidelines:
• Stay in their vehicle while Lakeport Disposal staff unloads materials. • Two visits maximum per each city of Lakeport address.
Acceptable materials: Household trash; televisions; appliances (stoves, washers, dryers, dishwashers and water heaters); electronic waste; mattresses; household furniture; unusable clothes, blankets, towels; and similar materials.
Not acceptable: Refrigerators, hot tubs/spas, air conditioners, construction debris, used tires and household hazardous waste.
For more details, please see the city’s website, www.cityoflakeport.com, or contact Lakeport Disposal at 707-263-6080.
“Nemo.” Photo courtesy of Clearlake Animal Control. CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control has more new dogs in the shelter this week in need of new homes.
The shelter has 40 adoptable dogs listed on its website.
This week’s dogs include “Nemo,” a male Chihuahua mix with a short white coat.
The shelter is located at 6820 Old Highway 53. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
For more information, call the shelter at 707-762-6227, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., visit Clearlake Animal Control on Facebook or on the city’s website.
This week’s adoptable dogs are featured below.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
California students will learn about the impact on California Native Americans during the Spanish Colonization and Gold Rush Eras in California public schools after Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed AB 1821.
Assemblymember James C. Ramos (D-San Bernardino), the first and only California Native American elected to the Legislature, authored the bill.
It was one of seven tribal-related measures Newsom approved on Friday, which was California Native American Day.
“I am pleased that Gov. Newsom approved AB 1821; it is another step forward in the path toward writing a new chapter in the state’s relationship to California tribes,” Ramos said. “For far too long California’s First People and their history have been ignored or misrepresented. Classroom instruction about Spanish Colonization and Gold Rush periods fails to include the loss of life, enslavement, starvation, illness and violence inflicted upon California Native Americans.”
“We thank Assemblymember Ramos for authoring AB 1821 to ensure that a more complete and accurate history of our state is taught,” said Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians Chairman Isaiah Vivanco. “Any teaching of the Spanish colonization and Gold Rush eras should include the impact on California’s Native Americans. During those devastating periods, Native Americans endured great loss of life, enslavement, and other perils. Those truths are often absent from instruction about California’s history and the nation’s westward expansion. Omitting this history erases the truth of Native Americans’ presence on this land and through silence perpetuates the injustices of those eras. That is why AB 1821 is an important step in the telling of our state’s history and its First People.”
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who co-sponsored AB 1821, said he was proud to see the bill become law.
“This legislation will help ensure curriculum on California’s Spanish Mission and Gold Rush eras accurately captures the treatment and impact of Native Americans during these significant eras in state history. This initiative supports California’s diverse students to be seen, heard, and understood in their instructional materials, and to foster a deeper appreciation for our Native communities’ history and cultures,” Thurmond said.
“AB 1821 will create a more relevant and accurate curriculum when students learn about the Spanish colonization and Gold Rush periods in California’s history. We are thankful Governor Newsom has signed this bill into law so that California students can learn the true history and culture of tribes during those periods,” said Chairwoman Lynn Valbuena of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians.
Late last year, a poll released by the Institute of Governmental Studies showed strong support to require California schools to incorporate teaching about Native American tribes’ history and culture. An overwhelming 80% of respondents were in support of a requirement such as AB 1821.
AB 1821 is cosponsored by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. A partial list of other supporters include California Teachers Association, California State PTA, California Tribal Business Alliance, Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians and Tule River Tribe.
Other Ramos tribal bills signed included:
• AB 81 reinforces California protections for Native American families and the Indian Child Welfare Act • AB 1284 encourages the Natural Resources Agency, and its departments, boards, conservancies, and commissions, to enter into cogovernance and comanagement agreements with federally recognized tribes • AB 1863 requires California Highway Patrol (CHP) to state reasons for denying request for a Feather Alert, a public notification system used when Native Americans are missing and overseen by the CHP • AB 2108 requires county social workers and others to immediately notify parents, guardians, legal counsel and other pertinent adults when a foster child is missing. • AB 2348 revises and strengthens California’s Feather Alert, requiring law enforcement agencies to respond within 24 hours of a request, and also allowing for tribal governments to directly communicate with the State. • AB 2695 requires specified entities reporting criminal record data to the Department of Justice to disaggregate the data based on whether incidents took place in Indian country.
As the presidential election approaches, the race is ramping up – including on social media. Although Meta reported in 2022 that only about 3% of the content on Facebook is political, Americans have already begun bracing themselves for a deluge of political news stories, ads, AI deepfakes and arguments on their feeds over the next few weeks.
Despite the tensions building on users’ digital feeds, an impending election doesn’t mean that people need to avoid social media altogether. When used wisely, social media can still be an important source for political information and an outlet to express opinions. I’ve studied how people navigate social media during elections, and I want to share three strategies to help you prepare your accounts for this election season so you can stay connected to what’s important without drowning in partisan back-and-forth.
1. Audit your feeds
While elections can be stressful, they also offer a chance to take ownership of the content that you consume online – or, as digital culture scholar Jessa Lingel says, “be your own algorithm.” Take the time to audit your social media ecosystem before November by considering the accounts that you follow and the settings that you have in place.
Social media platforms and their algorithms have inspired widespread concerns about their role in political polarization, because they enable people to isolate themselves in echo chambers that reinforce their own views. People with different political views can end up with substantially different material on their social media feeds.
While research suggests that echo chamber experiences are generally limited to highly partisan people, it is worthwhile to take a critical look at your feeds. Consider diversifying the content you see on social media, including following people whose life experiences differ from your own.
On the other side of the coin, take a breather before unfollowing people you disagree with during tense moments. While encountering political dissent online can be uncomfortable, studies demonstrate that deliberately blocking it out can contribute to polarization.
Platforms are taking steps behind the scenes, however, to limit users’ exposure to political content. For example, Meta recently implemented features that limit the amount of political content that users see on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Since earlier this year, the setting has been turned on by default. Now is a great time to double-check that your accounts’ settings reflect the content and ad personalization preferences that work best for you. If you want, you can turn the political content back on using the “content preferences” settings available through Facebook and Instagram.
2. Stay skeptical and practice stepping away
Misinformation on social media remains a constant concern during elections. This year, AI-generated images pose a particular misinformation threat, especially when they’re shared by the presidential candidates themselves.
The News Literacy Project has established a 2024 election misinformation dashboard that has already compiled over 600 examples of inaccurate viral content related to this election, which include items such as misleading memes, altered photos and videos, and out-of-context quotes.
It’s not enough to hope the platforms’ systems protect users. You should approach information about the election with a skeptical eye, especially when it sparks an emotional response from you.
One study found that people who had stronger emotional reactions to fake news headlines expressed greater intentions to comment, share or like items than those who were not emotionally moved to respond. Pay attention to your emotional reactions to the headlines and images you encounter on social media, and take time to step away, process and fact-check information using sources you know are reliable before sharing.
Especially during elections, ideals of “good citizenship” put pressure on people to stay informed about the latest political news. Social media can provide endless election updates, but just because the information is widely available doesn’t mean you need to engage with it all the time. It’s possible to stay informed while also staying in touch with the enjoyable aspects of social media, even when the election rises to the top of everyone’s minds.
Different platforms can serve different political functions, which could include helping you to set boundaries around political information. Just as you might choose to take a break from intense circumstances by taking a walk or calling a friend, you can also designate some social media spaces primarily for decompressing, while still engaging with political information on others.
This might mean joining a new platform or creating an alternative account on a platform that you already use. While people tend to turn to X, Reddit, TikTok and Facebook for politics, you can choose to curate some accounts with less focus on political content for times when you need an escape.
Regardless of how you choose to prepare your social media feeds for the election, keep in mind that feelings of stress around election time are normal. Many aspects of elections can feel out of control, but taking control of your social media feeds allows you to manage your political information diet for the better.
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, the largest the agency has ever built for a planetary mission, will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Europa, an intriguing icy moon of Jupiter. The spacecraft’s launch period opens Thursday, Oct. 10.
Data from previous NASA missions has provided scientists with strong evidence that an enormous salty ocean lies underneath the frozen surface of the moon. Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter and conduct 49 close flybys of the moon to gather data needed to determine whether there are places below its thick frozen crust that could support life.
Here are eight things to know about the mission:
1. Europa is one of the most promising places to look for currently habitable conditions beyond Earth.
There’s scientific evidence that the ingredients for life — water, the right chemistry, and energy — may exist at Europa right now. This mission will gather the information scientists need to find out for sure. The moon may hold an internal ocean with twice the water of Earth’s oceans combined, and it may also host organic compounds and energy sources under its surface. If the mission determines that Europa is habitable, it would mean there may be more habitable worlds in our solar system and beyond than we have imagined.
2. The spacecraft will fly through one of the most punishing radiation environments in our solar system — second only to the Sun’s.
Jupiter is surrounded by a gigantic magnetic field 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s. As the field spins, it captures and accelerates charged particles, creating radiation that can damage spacecraft. Mission engineers designed a spacecraft vault to shield sensitive electronics from radiation, and they plotted orbits that will limit the time Europa Clipper spends in most radiation-heavy areas around Jupiter.
3. Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter, studying Europa while flying by the moon dozens of times.
The spacecraft will make looping orbits around Jupiter that bring it close to Europa for 49 science-dedicated flybys. On each orbit, the spacecraft will spend less than a day in Jupiter’s dangerous radiation zone near Europa before zipping back out. Two to three weeks later, it will repeat the process, making another flyby.
4. Europa Clipper features the most sophisticated suite of science instruments NASA has ever sent to the Jupiter system.
To determine if Europa is habitable, Europa Clipper must assess the moon’s interior, composition, and geology. The spacecraft carries nine science instruments and a gravity experiment that uses the telecommunications system. In order to obtain the best science during each flyby, all the science instruments will operate simultaneously on every pass. Scientists will then layer the data together to paint a full picture of the moon.
5. With antennas and solar arrays fully deployed, Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission.
The spacecraft extends 100 feet (30.5 meters) from one end to the other and about 58 feet (17.6 meters) across. That’s bigger than a basketball court, thanks in large part to the solar arrays, which need to be huge so they can collect enough sunlight while near Jupiter to power the instruments, electronics, and other subsystems.
6. It’s a long journey to Jupiter.
Jupiter is on average some 480 million miles (about 770 million kilometers) from Earth; both planets are in motion, and a spacecraft can carry only a limited amount of fuel. Mission planners are sending Europa Clipper past Mars and then Earth, using the planets’ gravity as a slingshot to add speed to the spacecraft’s trek. After journeying about 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) over 5½ years, the spacecraft will fire its engines to enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030.
7. Institutions across the U.S. and Europe have contributed to Europa Clipper.
Currently, about a thousand people work on the mission, including more than 220 scientists from both the U.S. and Europe. Since the mission was officially approved in 2015, more than 4,000 people have contributed to Europa Clipper, including teams who work for contractors and subcontractors.
8. More than 2.6 million of us are riding along with the spacecraft, bringing greetings from one water world to another.
As part of a mission campaign called “Message in a Bottle,” the spacecraft is carrying a poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, cosigned by millions of people from nearly every country in the world. Their names have been stenciled onto a microchip attached to a tantalum metal plate that seals the spacecraft’s electronics vault. The plate also features waveforms of people saying the word “water” in over 100 spoken languages.
More about Europa Clipper
Europa Clipper’s three main science objectives are to determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its interactions with the ocean below, to investigate its composition, and to characterize its geology.
The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The main spacecraft body was designed by APL in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy, manages the launch service for the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy.
LAKEPORT, Calif. — An affordable housing project that has been controversial due to concerns about safety, location and traffic received a vote of support from the Lakeport City Council for a state grant application during a special Thursday night meeting.
The council met for just under an hour and a half to consider a request from City Manager Kevin Ingram to execute a 2018 Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery grant extension request letter to the California Department of Housing and Community Development on behalf of the Parkside apartments project.
Ingram also asked the council to approve reallocating $2,396,301 in grant funds from the Bevins senior apartments project to Parkside, which will be located next to Westside Community Park.
In the end, the council voted 3-1 to support Ingram’s request. The dissenter was Mayor Michael Froio, who has been consistent in his opposition to the project for reasons including the need for another point of access. As the project is currently designed, it would be accessed only by Charlie Jolin Way, the main road into Westside Community Park.
Councilmember Kim Costa had to recuse herself from the discussion because she and her husband own a home in the existing Parkside Subdivision; she noted the project would be located behind her house.
The grant funding is part of the effort to acquire the gap funding necessary to get the project into the building phase, which it will now have a year to do.
Ingram told Lake County News in a Thursday morning interview that he believes the project can start building in that one-year time frame if it has the necessary funding. He told the council the same during the Thursday evening meeting.
The council’s vote was an about face from action it took in response to another request for grant support from the developer, Peter Schellinger, at its May 21 meeting.
At that time, after hearing more opposition from neighbors, the council — in a decision that appeared to surprise city staff — voted 4-0 against supporting staff submitting an application to the California State Department of Housing and Community Development for funding under its Permanent Local Housing Allocation Program to support the project.
Ingram emphasized during the discussion that the project already has been approved and has the entitlements to move forward.
That’s because in November 2022, in a 3-1 vote — with Froio again the lone dissenter — the council approved the project, clearing the way for Schellinger to move forward with building a 64-unit apartment community in the project’s southern phase. A zone change ordinance for the project was given final approval on Dec. 6 of that year.
That’s just the first part of the project, which at full buildout will include 128 new apartment units and 48 cluster homes.
What’s changed since then is that Schellinger — who was not at Thursday’s meeting — has not been able to win the grant funding he’s pursued. Originally, the applicant was Schellinger’s company, Waterstone Residential, formed in 2019, the year after Ingram said Schellinger first pitched the project to the city.
Recently Schellinger has brought on a partner in the effort. The lead applicant is now Danco Communities, the same firm building affordable housing projects in the city of Clearlake.
While Schellinger wasn’t at the council meeting on Thursday evening, appearing instead to speak on behalf of Danco was Chris Westlake, a former deputy director of the California Housing and Community Development Department under then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Westlake said Schellinger wasn’t able to be at the meeting.
Noting that in past meetings an access bridge — or emergency vehicle bridge — has been of particular concern, Westlake said they want to provide a full access vehicular bridge. The design of that bridge still needs to go through environmental review and city design review, but Westlake said they are committed to providing it, which they think will take care of a lot of circulation issues.
Westlake also spoke to the challenges they have had in the highly competitive grant funding rounds for the Parkside project.
When asked at Thursday’s meeting by Lake County News about ex parte contacts from the developer to council members, Brandon Disney and Stacey Mattina said they hadn’t been contacted. Froio said Schellinger had called him twice this week.
The history of the Parkside Subdivision
Schellinger Brothers — made up of Peter Schellinger’s father and uncle — received city approval for their 96-lot Parkside Subdivision in 2005.
The subdivision was supposed to be built out over three phases, the first of which consisted of 31 lots. Schellinger Brothers built 17 homes before progress stopped.
One of the original requirements of that subdivision was that its first phase would include development of Wrigley Street, which was set to extend from Westside Road and connect to Craig Avenue, requiring construction of a bridge over Forbes Creek in the area of 1297 Craig Ave., 1226 Wrigley St. and 1227 Wrigley St.
That was key because it would create a second access point for the subdivision.
In December 2008, Schellinger Brothers took a request to change that through-street and bridge to a cul-de-sac to the Lakeport Planning Commission.
City staff at the time said the Schellingers made the request because after the subdivision application was approved an elderberry tree — that the project’s biological assessment somehow missed — was found within the creek area where the bridge was supposed to have been built.
The valley elderberry longhorn beetle, listed as a threatened species, is found only in the elderberry, its host plant. However, the beetle — endemic to California’s Central Valley — is not known to range into most of Lake County, particularly the Lakeport area, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service map.
The commission voted down that December 2008 revision request, citing lack of documentation about the elderberry's impact on bridge construction.
Another factor in that vote was the commissioners’ concern about having the subdivision limited to a single entry at Westside Park Road.
The Schellingers appealed the commission’s decision to the City Council. The following month, January 2009, the council unanimously granted the Schellinger appeal, which removed the bridge as a requirement.
Ingram told Lake County News on Thursday that the elderberry bush in question did, indeed, exist, but there hadn’t been confirmation that any beetles were present.
“Bridges are expensive,” he said.
At the point of the council’s elimination of the bridge requirement, Lake County was well into the impacts of the Great Recession, which hit it later and longer than other areas, and the rest of the subdivision’s phases weren’t built.
In the meantime, the Schellingers left the existing homeowners in the lurch when it came to dealing with lighting and landscaping in the Parkside subdivision, Councilmember Kim Costa told Lake County News in a Wednesday interview.
Costa said that, in the original agreements, a homeowners association was supposed to be formed to help take care of lighting and landscaping. When the Schellingers walked off, “there was no fix for that,” and the agreements were no longer in force, Costa said.
With neither the city nor the developer responsible for that upkeep, Costa said the subdivision’s homeowners have been left in limbo. They’ve had to deal with weeds and hire cherry pickers to make repairs to lighting. Costa said the developers have never shown an interest in sorting out the situation.
As to the larger issue of safety that Costa and other Parkside residents have raised about the new development, she said both the developer and the city are downplaying their concerns. “It’s like living in some alternate reality.”
With the new Parkside apartments projects, the city similarly did not require a bridge over Forbes Creek. Staff reports for the council discussion in late 2022 showed that the city said it consulted with three separate fire chiefs over the life of the project and that all three had decided that an emergency vehicular access bridge across Forbes Creek wasn't necessary.
During meetings in November and December 2022, a majority of the council — Stacey Mattina, Kenny Parlet and George Spurr — voted to approve Parkside, while Froio voted against it, concerned about its location in a high fire zone and his belief that it didn’t conform to the spirit of the general plan.
At that time, Spurr said he decided to vote yes because this aspect of the project is a good starting point to see if it will turn out the way Schellinger is proposing.
“I hope I didn’t make a mistake,” Spurr said.
Concerns about higher density
City staff said that the purpose of the meeting was not to relitigate the project, as it had already been approved.
Instead, Ingram — who acknowledged that Parkside “is very controversial” — emphasized that it is nonetheless fully entitled and the developers could apply for building permits tomorrow.
He also pointed to new measures by the state Legislature that have chiseled away at the autonomy of local jurisdictions when it comes to approving affordable housing.
Not supporting such projects, he said, could result in punitive measures against the city. That includes being cut off from a major source of funding in the form of Community Development Block Grants.
Under the city’s zoning, if another developer took over, as many as 99 units could be built where Schellinger and Danco are proposing to build 64 units. Ingram said that, with new state density bonuses, that 99 units could be doubled and would be permitted by right and not subject to additional review by the city.
He said only the objective design standards the city was required to adopt two years ago gives them the last tool they have left for input on such projects.
Despite the fact that the project’s approval wasn’t up for discussion, several community members submitted letters or gave testimony during the meeting regarding their opposition, citing issues with fire safety, lack of an evacuation route and inadequate mitigations.
Ingram also was questioned about a city evacuation plan. He said there isn’t one, but that a countywide plan is underway.
Supervisor Michael Green, a former council member, said he was excited to hear about the proposal for a new bridge. He noted that the city had the grant funds to expend for the project because the county had played a role in getting them the money, adding that the county of Lake relies on trusted city partners to collectively address regional housing needs.
Green, who was appointed to the Board of Supervisors by Gov. Gavin Newsom, said he took Newsom’s statements on emphasizing support for housing seriously.
He added that a housing project will bring jobs, new residents and income. “When a city isn’t building it’s dying.”
Retired Lake County Undersheriff Chris Macedo, a resident in the Parkside Subdivision, related his concerns with inadequate ingress and egress in a high fire area that is prone to high winds which, he added, are not addressed in project plans. Additionally, the density is double the original subdivision plan, there will be between 1,000 and 1,500 vehicle trips a day on Charlie Jolin Way and safety concerns for children at Westside Park.
Retired Lakeport Fire Chief Jeff Thomas said he hoped the developer would consider defensible space, adding he is in favor of moving forward with the project if there is a bridge in place.
Parlet asked staff if anything could be done to stop a fully entitled project. City Attorney David Ruderman said the time periods for challenging the project have passed, and that the property owner has rights protected by law.
Parlet said he has heard that the developer hasn’t been mitigating issues related to lighting and vegetation for residents at Parkside.
“That’s an issue that needs to be dealt with in the future,” Parlet said. “If you’re going to do a project, you need to take care of it and you need to do it right.”
He added, “I think our path is clear.”
Disney said he believed the full vehicle access bridge would address a lot of residents’ concerns, adding that if the project died someone could come in and build more units.
Mattina said she felt there is a misconception about what the City Council can and cannot do, explaining property owners go through a huge process of which the council is not a part.
She said the council doesn’t get to say they like or don’t like projects. “I wish we had more power to do that,” she said. “That’s just not how it works.”
Mattina said it has been an uphill battle with the state, which has taken away all of the city’s power. “Extending the funding just makes sense.”
Froio said he was happy to hear about the plans for the bridge, but added, “That bridge Is not assured.”
Mattina asked where he was at on extending the grant, and Froio said he was a no vote.
Parlet moved to approve the grant extension which Disney seconded. They were joined by Mattina in voting in support of the motion, while Froio voted no.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
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