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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
LAKEPORT – The annual Seaplane Splash-In made big waves Friday, as seaplanes landed on Clear Lake and taxied into town for this year's event.
From late morning until sundown land-based aircraft were landing at Lampson Field at a rate of four per hour.
The first plane to splash into Lakeport arrived at just after 11 a.m., a perfectly restored 1949 Piper owned by Presten's Aero Photo Service that is used for air-to-air photography.
By 2 p.m. 15 airplanes had ramped out and were parked for public display on the ball field at Natural High School.
As expected, several of the aircraft from last year's event were on hand, including the world's only registered Piper Apache on floats.
Despite this week's change in the weather, the fun is expected to go on as planned throughout the weekend.
E-mail Harold LaBonte at
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- Written by: Sophie Annan Jensen
On Thursday they received notices in the mail that the water they had been consuming since July of 2006 exceeded maximum contaminant levels of total trihalomethanes. {sidebar id=11}
Long-time use – defined as drinking two liters a day for 70 years – may increase the risk of getting cancer and may cause liver, kidney or central nervous system problems.
On Friday, Cal Water employees hand-delivered boil water notices throughout Lucerne, stating "this precaution is necessary due to exceeding legal levels for turbidity from recent rains."
Representatives of Lucerne's two water groups, Lucerne Community Water Organization and LucerneFLOW, could not be reached for comment on the town's water situation Friday.
John Graham, the company's water quality project manager, said the boil water notice is expected to be in effect through the weekend.
He explained the scanty recent rain was not the real problem, and the two notices are related. Current lake conditions of increased organic matter which could be pathogens require disinfecting the water before distribution, which increases the trihalomethane level.
Both Graham and Bruce Burton, director of the Drinking Water Field Operations Branch of the California Health Services department in Santa Rosa, explained the risky trihalomethanes form when organics in the lake combine with chlorine.
"Over the last couple of weeks we have been experiencing quality problems," Graham said. "Last year's mild winter gave us a respite from typical water quality issues. But in the last two weeks we've seen a change, a musty odor and things growing."
Graham said the lake's pH measurement, which indicates its ability to absorb acid, has been changing rapidly, "sometimes every 15 or 20 minutes."
He added he is sure other systems which rely on Clear Lake's water are also "being challenged by it," but Cal Water's situation is different because its plant is "at the end of its life cycle."
Burton said the turbidity is a measure of particulate matter in the water. He said an engineer in his office had contacted other water systems around the lake and "all are meeting standards. Seasonal changes in lake water are creating challenges, and systems have found water more difficult to treat. For instance, they are having to backwash more often. Clear Lake water is not easy to treat, because of seasonal changes."
The new Cal Water Lucerne plant, which is under construction on Highway 20, should be in operation by this time next year, Graham said. It will use a membrane and ultra-violet system, which minimizes the need to add chlorine.
Burton said his office was notified at 4 a.m. Friday that the Cal Water plant had problems, and directed the boil water notice.
Graham said the turbid water was released at about 9 a.m. and would not reach the furthest part of the system before about 11:30 a.m.
The company brought in four employees from its Oroville and Chico offices to distribute the boil water notices, said Graham.
The boil water notice deliveries continued all afternoon. Central Lucerne residents received notices between 3 and 4 p.m.
A moratorium on new hookups to the Lucerne water system has been in effect since July 2007, when Burton's office recommended it to the California Public Utilities Commission.
E-mail Sophie Annan Jensen at
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
As Lake County News reported Friday, the California Attorney General's Office's Division of Gambling Control arrested Jack Daniels Ewing, 27, of Las Vegas, Nev., and Mikael Inturbe, 27, of Hercules at Hopland Sho-Ka-Wah Casino.
California Department of Justice agents and Mendocino County Sheriff's deputies arrested the men as they were feeding fake $100 bills into slot machines at Sho-Ka-Wah.
Attorney General's Office spokesman Gareth Lacy told Lake County News Friday that the agency tracked the two men for four months as they bleached real $1 bills and used home printers to make counterfeit $100 bills.
At least 20 casinos in Northern California and Nevada are believed to have been hit, said Lacy, for a total of $100,000.
Those casinos include Middletown Rancheria's Twin Pine Casino, Cache Creek, Jackson Rancheria and Thunder Valley, Lacy said.
And the numbers of casinos involved may be growing.
“We are getting more intelligence information from casinos as this investigation is still ongoing,” said Lacy.
The Attorney General's Office said the men fed the counterfeit bills into slot machines and then cashed out. They also occasionally played the machines using the fake bills, and won as much as $4,000 in one instance.
The two men had a “consistent baseball cap calling card,” said Lacy, using a variety of caps from different teams to help disguise themselves. But that helped investigators identify them in surveillance videos.
The baseball caps were found – along with the bleaching solutions, printers, a scanner, rubber gloves and bleached bills – when the Attorney General's Office raised an extended stay hotel in Richmond.
Inturbe has previous counterfeiting and homicide convictions. He and Ewing are facing charges of conspiracy, counterfeiting and burglary. Each is being held on $300,000 bail.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The district’s board voted Aug. 22 to call for 15-percent conservation from its customers, said General Manager Al Tubbs.
The board also imposed a moratorium on new hookups to the system. “We’re not going to do any more hookups until we get a little more water,” said Tubbs.
In addition, the district board voted to stop selling surplus water to out-of-district water users, which includes Morgan Valley residents who had depended on a standpipe to supplement their low water table.
Earlier in the summer, Tubbs had reported that the district’s eight pumps had to operate around the clock to meet the daily demand of 500,000 gallons of water for the district’s 900 hookups. He previously stated his concern that the pumps could run dry.
But the conservation order is working very well, said Tubbs, who noted district customers are doing a “beautiful job” of conserving water. He did not say what percentage they had achieved, out of concern that customers might not continue saving water.
The pumps are now running an average of 13 to 14 hours a day to meet demand, Tubbs added.
Tubbs’ proposal to create an interdistrict tie-in with the Mt. Konocti Mutual Water Co. is on hold, he said, because he does not have a district master plan done, which is a requirement.
That plan was a backup in case Lower Lake ran out of water, Tubbs said, and isn’t a paramount concern at this point. “We’re not quite that desperate as of yet.”
The district board held a special meeting Thursday to give Tubbs approval to drill a ninth well, which is scheduled to begin today.
That new well will be located near another well that had stopped producing, said Tubbs. He expects the new well will produce 250 to 300 gallons of water a minute.
Tubbs said he hopes conservation measures and the new well will help pull the district out of its water crisis.
“I’m going to pull that (hookup) moratorium off just as soon as I possibly can,” said Tubbs, noting that he doesn’t like what it does to customers and the community.
He said he’s also pursuing funding sources for a surface water treatment plant that would allow the district to draw water from Cache Creek and raise it to drinking water standards without using chemicals.
“It’s a great system,” he said.
Similar treatment facilities can be found in Healdsburg and Yuba City, said Tubbs, and he is planning to travel to see one of them with district board chair, Frank Haas.
Tubbs cautioned that he hasn’t secured funding for the treatment system, which could cost as much as $500,000. “I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up on this because I’ve been shot down too many times before.”
Lower Lake County Water Works District has a contract with Yolo County Flood Control & Water Conservation District which allows Lower Lake to draw 350 acre feet a year from Cache Creek at a cost of about $48 per acre foot.
Tubbs said his board has been very supportive. Two members, Haas and Ellen Pearson, are both water managers themselves, for the Callayomi and Clearlake Oaks water districts, respectively.
“As a water manager you couldn’t ask for better people to be on your board,” said Tubbs.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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