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COBB – A big rig crash shut down a portion of Highway 175 on Cobb for several hours Thursday evening.
The crash was reported at 4:41 p.m. at Highway 175 and Socrates Mine Road, according to the California Highway Patrol.
A big rig was said to have hit a utility pole and lost its load of rocks and asphalt, which blocked both lanes of the roadway and knocked down phone and power lines, the CHP reported.
The report said the driver suffered minor injuries.
Caltrans, CHP and Cal Fire were among the responders attempting to get the roadway reopened. Caltrans brought a scraper to clear the lanes as well as closure signs. Pacific Gas and Electric also arrived at the scene to move wires out of the roadway.
The CHP issued a statement shortly before 6 p.m. reporting that the roadway would reopen a half hour later.
The roadway did open briefly before 7 p.m. but closed once more shortly before 7:30 p.m., according to the CHP.
The CHP reported that the roadway finally reopened just before 9 p.m.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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LOWER LAKE – A week after a majority of the Konocti Unified School District's board voted to close Oak Hill Middle School, a united board on Wednesday agreed to convert all of the district's elementary schools to include kindergarten through eighth grades.
The vote followed an in-depth presentation by members of the district's management team that looked at the pros and cons of turning the schools K-8 versus a plan that would have configured East Lake and Lower Lake Elementary schools to K-8, and converted Burns Valley Elementary to K-3 and Pomo Elementary to fourth through eighth grades.
The district voted to Close Oak Hill Middle School on March 11 as part of a plan to cut $1.2 million from the upcoming fiscal year's budget, as Lake County News has reported.
District Superintendent Bill MacDougall said the district's administrators began meeting last Thursday to weigh the pros and cons of the different reconfigurations, with meetings continuing this week.
“We've been working very, very, very hard,” MacDougall said.
Management team members Jeff Dixon, Pat St. Cyr and and Patty Langston presented the pros and cons. Dixon, the Lower Lake High School principal, said they were chosen for the duty because they're believed to be the most neutral members of the team when it relates to the proposed changes.
The lists of pluses and minuses for each plan that district administrators compiled clearly favored the K-8 model. Administrators held that the model fosters greater relationships between students, parents and faculty; creates safer campuses; requires fewer transitions for students; keeps siblings together; and maintains equity between sites.
At the same time, it will mean boundary shifts, loss of electives and programs, stretched resources and larger class sizes in seventh and eighth grades.
Dixon said district administrators considered going K-8 districtwide is considered to be “the least hassle” and the easiest transition, with the emphasis on relationships for students, teachers and families. Administrators were concerned that the alternative would see more students slip through the cracks. For that reason they offered their “overwhelming support” for converting all district elementary schools to K-8.
Board President Mary Silva asked about the prospect of some programs being lost or watered down.
Lower Lake Elementary Principal Greg Mucks told Silva and the board that it would be a mistake for any of the district's principals to claim they would be able to keep all of the programs currently offered at Oak Hill Middle School.
“What we're going to do is our best,” he said.
Mucks and Pomo Elementary Principal April Leiferman also went over boundary changes and possible enrollments for the various schools under the different grade alignment scenarios.
Board Clerk Anita Gordon asked about growth possibilities for the district's schools, which Mucks said he believes exists. Interdistrict transfers also were accounted for in their calculations, although he added, “We may not be able to grant very many more.”
Board member Hank Montgomery, who last week voted against closing Oak Hill along with Board member Herb Gura, reminded fellow board members that he had asked at the March 11 board meeting about the ramifications for the other school sites if Oak Hill closed. He said he felt he had received an assurance at the time that the other schools could handle the additional enrollment.
However, Montgomery said the message he was getting from Wednesday night's meeting was that the only way to accommodate the shifting student population was to open up another school. They hadn't previously discussed an alternative school for grades fourth through eighth as a way to make the enrollment shifts happen.
MacDougall said there are a few options for reconfiguring the schools, and that they can fit all of the students at the district's schools – minus Oak Hill – without the alternative school.
He said taking some of the more difficult students in the lower grades and having them go through a system similar to Carle High School would help more students graduate.
Montgomery said that he was hearing a boundary realignment and opening an alternative school were necessary, which he hadn't heard before. “It feels like it's coming piecemeal rather than having everything on the table to look at.”
He said he wanted to see the big picture – “so that we know what it is we bought.”
MacDougall said he thought of it not as a piecemeal approach but one that was being presented step by step. That's because each part is contingent on a board decision.
The board still has an issue of school programs to consider down the road, MacDougall said.
Once the board decided they wanted a K-8 program, MacDougall said he would design a K-8 program “that will surpass anything in Lake County.”
Montgomery said he believed many of the public hearings at the district's schools, which had been held to take community input on the options relating to school closures and realignments, would have gone differently if parents knew boundary realignments were being considered. “I don't think people understood that was part of what we were looking at.”
MacDougall said boundary shifts had been identified as a possibility early on.
Board member Carolynn Jarrett said they needed to come to the realization that there's no way to make $1.2 million in cuts and have everything next year that they have now. She said they need to identify priority programs and make sure they continue.
She said the district has been talking about alternative programs for elementary school students for a number of years. “This is an extremely opportune time for us to be meeting those needs.”
Said Montgomery, “We have discussed an alternative elementary program for years but up to this point we have not decided to create one,” he said.
With some issues being pulled from the night's agenda – including recommendations on alternative education program for grades fourth through ninth – Montgomery said he assumed the district wasn't prepared to deal with it.
Silva said she wanted to make sure the district's seventh and eighth grade students will get the services they need to succeed in high school.
Mucks said they'll try to get teachers who can deliver high quality programs, but even then they will come nowhere near the electives and programs Oak Hill Middle School currently has, and the programs could be diluted.
However, he said he believed the K-8 model provides for deeper relationships between students, families and the community, adding that stronger student achievement will be a result.
“This is a big change in this community,” said Silva, noting that community members were counting on the board to make the right decisions for students.
Debra Malley, principal of East Lake Elementary School in Clearlake Oaks, explained to the board that “a K-8 is an elementary school, not a middle school.”
She said the school has followed the exact curriculum as Oak Hill, but it looks different at an elementary school. Malley has worked with Mike Brown, Lucerne Elementary's principal and superintendent, to get ideas from him about how to help improve East Lake.
“It's working. We have our bumps but I want to stress it's an elementary school, not a middle school,” she said.
Troy Sherman, principal of Burns Valley Elementary, told the board he has a superb staff. “We will do the best we can to make it happen,” he said of the transition.
Sherman added that a decision made soon will give the schools more time to plan.
Jarrett said the decision before the board was whether to go K-8 or split some of the schools up. A former fourth grade teacher, Jarrett said she didn't want to ask third graders to transition to another school, which she saw as an additional burden.
That comment received a round of applause from the several dozen people in the audience, many of them with signs that had slogans such as “Unity in K-8.”
Jarrett said a phone survey of parents found that 48 percent favored the K-8 option as opposed to 33 percent who wanted to see Pomo and Burns Valley split up.
Gura said it was clear to him that the K-8 was the most popular with the administration and community, although he was concerned about electives and the music program, the latter being one of the district's greatest strengths.
Silva said she knows the district can make the transition. “I believe in this district and I believe we will make it work.”
Montgomery asked to hear from audience members before a vote was taken.
Many people – including students and parents – had submitted yellow forms to speak to the board. But when Gordon asked if they wanted to speak or if they wanted the board to vote, the response was a united, “Vote!”
Gura made the motion to convert the district's elementary schools to K-8, with Jarrett seconding. The vote was 5-0, and was greeted with a round of applause.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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The lawsuit, filed by Christopher Griego, 31, of Tracy, had alleged he had been sexually abused by Father Ted Oswald, 63, between 1988 and 1995, as Lake County News has reported.
Dan Galvin, the diocese's attorney, confirmed the case was settled but would offer no other details about the settlement.
“Out of respect for the plaintiff we're not going to comment,” he said.
Bishop Daniel Walsh reportedly broke the news of the settlement to St. Mary Immaculate parishioners earlier this month during mass, but he offered church members no details.
Hayward attorney Richard Simons, who represented Griego in the case, is out of the office this week and won't return until next Monday, so could not be reached for comment.
The suit, originally filed in Sonoma County Superior Court in January of 2008, had initially named only the diocese. However, Simons filed an amended complaint adding Oswald's name to the suit. Galvin told Lake County News last summer that the suit was seeking $2.5 million in damages.
Oswald served as priest at St. Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Lakeport for 20 years. A Vietnam veteran, he earned his master's of divinity degree in 1984 from a Roman seminary.
On June 1, 2008, at the end of Sunday mass, Oswald told his parishioners that he would be taking a leave from his post until the case was resolved.
Both the Lakeport Police Department and the Lake County District Attorney's Office said no criminal complaint about the abuse allegations had ever been filed with their agencies.
Oswald maintained his innocence after the suit was filed and vowed to fight the allegations. As a young priest, Oswald had helped investigate a sexual abuse case in Arizona.
Last summer, after he went on a leave of absence from the parish, Oswald also took leaves from his volunteer chaplain posts with Lakeport Police Department and the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
Lt. Brad Rasmussen of the Lakeport Police Department said Wednesday that Oswald is a former chaplain for the department.
Capt. James Bauman of the Lake County Sheriff's Office said he believed Oswald was still officially on a leave from service to that agency.
Dierdre Frontczak, the diocese's spokesperson, said Oswald remains a priest but he is now retired. “He is no longer in active ministry.”
Because he's been removed from the ministry, he can't come back and hold mass, Frontczak said.
She said the diocese hasn't “laicized” Oswald, meaning they haven't officially removed him from the priesthood.
“It's not done often,” said Frontczak, explaining that church leadership usually takes that step only when a priest asks to be released from the priesthood to marry or if the priest has been egregiously defiant of the church's morality rules.
Rev. Thomas Diaz, the diocese's director of vocations, currently is acting as St. Mary Immaculate's priest, said Frontczak. She said she does not know if Diaz will be permanently appointed to the spot.
The diocese doesn't have as many young priests coming into the vocation, Frontczak said. She thinks that's a problem all over the western United States.
The road to becoming a priest, she said, has become “a more thoughtful process,” with many more tests, evaluations and interviews to determine whether candidates are right for the priesthood.
“It's not for everybody,” Frontczak said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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Heidi Marlene Fichthorn, 50, found her way back to Harbin Hot Springs after being reported missing on Monday, according to Capt. James Bauman of the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
Bauman said sheriff's deputies responded to Big Canyon Road, north of Middletown, on Tuesday at about 8:30 p.m. on a report of suspicious circumstances involving a missing person case initially reported the previous day.
A passerby had reportedly picked up a 70-year-old woman identified only as “Omi” of Harbin Hot Springs on Big Canyon Road, six miles north of Harbin Springs Road, said Bauman.
Omi had sustained some injuries from an apparent fall she took while hiking with Fichthorn, also of Harbin Hot Springs. Bauman said Fichthorn had been reported as missing from the Harbin Hot Springs Retreat on Monday due to unknown circumstances but Omi’s absence had apparently gone unnoticed.
Omi told deputies she and Fichthorn had left Harbin on Sunday at about 1 p.m. to go on a hike and at some point during that night in the woods, the two became separated and presumably lost, said Bauman.
Bauman said Omi had apparently remained in the wilderness area north of Harbin for the next two days and at some point, she took a fall and sustained her injuries. She had no further information on Fichthorn’s whereabouts. Cal Fire Rescue personnel responded for treatment of her injuries.
Officials immediately launched a search and rescue operation to try and locate Fichthorn, Bauman said.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office coordinated as many as 75 volunteers searching the wooded areas north of Harbin Springs Road throughout the night and into the early morning hours on Wednesday, according to Bauman.
Air support was provided during the night by REACH out of Lampson Field in Lakeport and when day broke, California Highway Patrol and the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office both responded helicopters to assist with the search.
At about 10 a.m. Fichthorn emerged from the woods just north of Harbin Springs Road and reportedly got a ride from a passerby back to the Harbin Hot Springs Resort where she met up with search personnel, Bauman reported.
He said Fichthorn was relatively uninjured and confirmed she had initially left the retreat on a hike with Omi on Sunday but became separated that night and she had spent the next two days lost in the wilderness.
Agencies assisting with the search for Fichthorn included search and rescue personnel from Lake, Contra Costa, Mendocino, Sonoma and Sacramento counties. REACH, Cal Fire, CHP, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, Lake County K-Corps and personnel from the Harbin Hot Springs Retreat also assisted while sheriff’s volunteers supported command and coordination of the search operation, Bauman said.
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The power plant, currently owned by a partnership between US Renewables Group and Carlyle/Riverstone Renewable Energy Infrastructure Fund I, reopened in 2007 after being closed for many years. The Department of Water Resources had originally operated the plant.
Last fall, neighbors in the area began holding a series of public meetings with county officials and plant representatives over their concerns with a variety of plant-related issues, from noise and truck traffic to the disposal of materials created by geothermal drilling, as Lake County News has reported.
Rick Coel, director of Lake County's Community Development Department, said the county sent the plant violation notices in the second week of January.
“Bottle Rock has been working pretty feverishly to rectify some of these problems,” Coel said.
Melissa Floyd, the county's geothermal coordinator, said the county's issues with the plant involve drill cuttings left in a meadow, grading roads and firebreaks, reporting and contingency plans, construction of berms around drill pads, financial assurances, sumps – ponds used to store materials from the drilling – and freeboard, which is the space between the top of the materials in the sumps and the top of the basin.
The county required Bottle Rock Power to come into “substantial compliance” by March 1, with the understanding that some items on the list will require waiting until the dry season because they involve substantial grading, said Floyd. She said she's received contingency plans for the completion of additional measures. The completion dates range from the coming weeks to after the end of the rainy season.
The State Water Resources Control Board also cited the plant last fall based on complaint from a neighbor, said Joe Karkoski, acting assisting executive officer.
A concern for the state was that the plant had not collected necessary data on their operation, he said.
Then there was the issue of freeboard and disposal. “Those are issues that are potential threats to water quality,” said Karkoski.
However, he noted that the problem is being addressed. The plant lowered the level of materials in the sumps to achieve the required 2 feet of freeboard to prevent overtopping, thus restoring the safety margin. He said Bottle Rock Power hired a consultant to work with the state on the resolving the violations.
Karkoski said the agency hasn't made a determination that any water quality problems in the area have resulted from the operations.
The state also was concerned about improper disposal of materials from the sumps on a meadow. However, Karkosi and Guy Childs, a State Water Resources Control Board engineering geologist, said the plant was looking at moving those materials in early November and the plant has since changed its disposal practices.
“That's part of what our conversation is going to be with them, is to get them on track and make sure they're taking care of this material properly,” said Karkoski. “At this point they're being cooperative and responding to the issues that have been raised.”
This is the only dealing the water board has had with Bottle Rock Power, said Karkoski.
He said the agency has a progressive enforcement policy, which begins with working with a discharger to come into compliance. If that doesn't work, they pursue other options, with the more severe possibilities being fines of $1,000 a day.
“Our feedback from the state and the county is that we are meeting their expectations,” said Bottle Rock Compliance Manager Karon Thomas.
Thomas said the plant was working on the issues prior to the issuance of the notices of violation.
“The materials from the meadow were removed, they were never meant to stay there,” she said.
The nonhazardous soil drill cuttings were completely cleaned up prior to Oct. 15, said Thomas, which is a month earlier than the state indicated.
The meadow has since been hydroseeded and the materials taken to a facility, Thomas said.
She said she believed the plant's neighbors misunderstood what the procedures were and what actually was happening with the drill cuttings.
Thomas said the plant also has a permit proposal for a dewatering unit to handle rainwater in the sumps in order to ensure the freeboard margin is maintained. She said 3 feet of freeboard has been achieved at the Francisco and Coleman drill sumps.
Reid Morgan, community liaison officer, said each of the meetings with the community “has been better than the last one,” in terms of general progress being made.
He said the noise levels of the drill pads appear to have been handled through a three-level system of sound walls, blankets around the rigs and walls around the rigs' diesel engines.
Plant officials are working on road maintenance and improvement issues, and have completed a road study. Work on High Valley Road and the bridge will have to wait for better weather, said Morgan. They're also monitoring the speed of truck drivers and plant personnel on the roads.
Neighbor David Coleman has mixed feelings about the plant's work to handle its issues.
“The power plant is attempting to do things,” he said. “The problem I have is they made so many mistakes from the beginning.”
Coleman's family members were some of the area's original homesteaders in the 1860s. His property is adjacent to more than 300 acres which are occupied by the plant's operations.
The steamfields at the location were operating in the 1970s, he said, and the plant began operating in the early 1980s. Some of the drill sites are even named for his family.
He said the plant's original permits clearly lay out how it's supposed to be operated, and he faults the current owners for failing to comply with those guidelines.
“I think they're worried,” he said of the plant's operators. “They're making a dramatic effort to make changes.”
While he said the materials in the sumps and drill cuttings aren't toxic “per se,” when considering the chemicals in the ground and those used in high temperature drilling, “over a number of years this stuff adds up.”
He said he's not as concerned with sound issues from the plant, which he said has always been loud.
“I can live with the sound, whereas I can't live with the stuff that's going into the system,” he said.
Coleman is pleased with the state's rapid response to the plant's violations. He said he has friends who work with state government who told him that it's unheard of to get a notice of violation within six months.
And he's upfront in noting that he is the one who complained about the plant to the state. In fact, he said he has contacted many state and local agencies, and will continue to do so, in an effort to keep the heat on Bottle Rock Power so that they comply.
He added, “I've tried to cut them more slack than some of my neighbors have.”
Coleman added that he's been on good terms with the plant's operators since they started.
He maintains the sumps are illegal. The basins have 2-foot-thick clay liners that permit specifications say are only good for eight months. The sumps have been in use for 30 years. He said the sumps have been compromised and may have been leaking into the ground for years.
Coleman said his contact at the plant is Morgan, who he called “a very realistic person.” He said if he shows Morgan a problem, he's willing to accept it and work on it.
Still to be addressed, however, is an issue brought up at a recent community meeting with the plant's operators late last month, in which it was noted that a steam line is starting to fail.
Coleman said he's also asked for core samples to be conducted on the meadow and around the sumps to find if the liners have failed. “They say it's in the works.”
The next step, Coleman said, is for the community to get a time line of when the plant's improvements will be done, who will do them and the process that's involved.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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Public outrage has been mounting over the last week, in the wake of the announcement that AIG was paying $165 million in bonuses to executives.
“It’s outrageous that some of the same bankers who helped create this economic mess are now going to be rewarded for their failures with taxpayer dollars,” said Thompson. “By taxing all bonuses paid out by companies that received money to help them stay afloat, we’ll send a message to these folks that business as usual is no longer acceptable. I would prefer to tax these bonuses at 100 percent but that level is considered confiscatory and doesn’t pass legal muster.”
Currently, the IRS withholds 25 percent from bonuses less than $1 million and 35 percent for bonuses more than $1 million dollars.
Under Congressman Thompson’s legislation, any entity that received assistance under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 would be subject to a bonus tax rate of 90 percent.
Thompson is a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over all tax-related matters coming before Congress.
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