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According to data from the CHP’s Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System, at least 38 people were killed in crashes in California throughout the Christmas holiday enforcement period last year.
During that 78-hour maximum enforcement period, CHP officers made 573 arrests for driving under the influence.
“The CHP will be out on California’s roadways while the public travels to join friends and family this weekend,” said CHP Commissioner Amanda Ray. “Our goal is the same as yours, to make certain you arrive safely at your destination. From our family to yours, we wish you all a safe and happy holiday.”
The CHP will begin its maximum enforcement period at 6:01 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 24, and continue it through 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 26.
During that time, all available officers will be on the road for enhanced enforcement and to assist any motorists or pedestrians in need of help.
Wherever your holiday travels take you, remember to plan ahead, buckle up, avoid distractions and never drive while impaired.
On Monday, the city and county issued a joint announcement saying their negotiation teams have developed a draft sales tax agreement for the Lakeport City Council and Board of Supervisors to jointly consider next month.
The area the city proposes to annex is approximately 137 acres, composed of 50 parcels, adjacent to South Main Street and Soda Bay Road.
It’s reported to be the most lucrative commercial area in county jurisdiction.
The city of Lakeport has long had an interest in adding the area to the city limits, having included it in its sphere of influence since at least the 1980s.
Over the past decade, the city and county have had major disagreements over Lakeport’s annexation effort.
The city had wanted to have the annexation completed in 2019, at which time county officials indicated they were not willing to give up the corridor.
In August 2019, the Lakeport City Council approved submitting an application to the Lake Local Area Formation Commission, or LAFCO. Four months later, LAFCO sent letters to the city and county to ask them to participate in a good faith process to resolve the ongoing dispute over the proposed annexation.
City and county officials said in their joint Monday statement, “Negotiations were undertaken in good faith, and focused heavily on two priorities: 1) sustainably delivering the best possible public services and governance to residents, businesses and property owners in the project area; and 2) ensuring efficient use of public funds.”
Officials said residents and businesses in the annexation area can expect improved fire protection, access to public water, emergency resiliency through installation of fire hydrants and municipal law enforcement.
The proposed draft sales tax agreement will be considered at a joint hybrid meeting of the county and city leadership at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 11, in the council chambers at Lakeport City Hall, 225 Park Street.
Community members are strongly urged to attend and may participate in person in the chambers or via Zoom.
The meeting can be accessed at this link.
The webinar ID is 870 8745 5679, pass code is 122127. To participate via one tap mobile, dial +12532158782,,87087455679#,,,,*122127# or +13462487799,,87087455679#,,,,*122127#.
Additional information about the annexation may be found at www.lakeportannexation.org.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
The commission drew four Board of Equalization districts, 52 congressional districts, 40 Senatorial districts and 80 Assembly districts.
All districts were drawn within the permissible population deviation.
The maps can be seen here.
The commission is scheduled to meet Tuesday and give a report on the process.
Redrawing the district lines for state and federal representation occurs every 10 years based on Census data.
The 14-member commission’s work to produce new maps began in earnest earlier this year after the final Census data was released.
“We have reached the finish line for the people’s redistricting process in California. When voters approved the Voters FIRST Act, it created a monumental shift in this decennial process,” stated Commission Chair Alicia Fernandez. “As Californians, my colleagues on this commission and I answered the call to serve for this great state we honor and love. We conclude our map drawing responsibilities with pride in our final product. We started this process leaving politics out of the equation in hopes of achieving fairer and more equitable maps. I think I speak for my colleagues when I say mission accomplished! Thank you to all that participated in this process.”
The final map for congressional districts puts Lake County into one district, District 4, whereas over the past 10 years it was split between Districts 3 and 5.
The new District 4 includes all of Lake and portions of Napa, Solano, Sonoma and Yolo counties. Based on the map it also appears there is a very small portion of Sacramento County in that new district.
Congressmen John Garamendi and Mike Thompson, serving the third and fifth congressional districts, respectively, have represented Lake County over the past decade.
The new map suggests Lake County’s new district will be represented by Thompson, whose home base is Napa County.
Also on Monday night, Garamendi, who has been in Congress since 2009, announced he will run for reelection to Congress in the new Solano-North Contra Costa Eighth Congressional District.
On the state level, Lake County will be included in the new Senate District 2, which stretches along the North Coast from Marin in the south to Del Norte County in the north. The state senator for the district is expected to be Mike McGuire.
For the State Assembly, Lake will be part of District 4, which also includes Colusa, Napa and Yolo, and a portion of Sacramento County. Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, who currently represents Lake County, lives within the newly created district and also is expected to continue to represent the county.
In accordance with the California Constitution, the commission followed criteria to draw the maps, including ensuring they are of equal population to comply with the U.S. Constitution; complying with the Voting Rights Act to ensure that minorities have an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice; drawing districts contiguously; minimizing the division of cities, counties, neighborhoods and communities of interest to the extent possible; and making districts geographically compact.
Where practicable, the commission said each State Senate district should be composed of two complete and adjacent Assembly districts, and the Board of Equalization districts should be composed of 10 complete and adjacent State Senate districts.
The place of residence of any incumbent or political candidate may not be considered in the creation of a map, and districts may not be drawn for the purpose of favoring or discriminating against an incumbent, political candidate, or political party, the commission reported.
The California Constitution requires public comment to be taken for at least three days from the date of public display of any final statewide maps.
Additionally, the commission shall not display any other map for public comment during that period.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
This policy will expand the availability of sustainable transportation options to help meet the state’s climate, health and equity goals.
“California must reduce dependence on driving without sacrificing mobility and accessibility,” said Caltrans Director Toks Omishakin. “As Caltrans and local transportation agencies prepare for the influx of new federal infrastructure funding, it is important that we provide safe, convenient, sustainable and accessible alternatives to driving to achieve our climate goals while equitably serving all Californians.”
A complete street provides mobility for people of all ages and abilities, particularly those who are walking, biking, using assistive mobility devices and riding transit.
Complete streets offer several benefits, including enhancing safety and creating more sustainable transportation options to decrease dependence on driving and improving public health by encouraging active transportation like walking and biking.
As part of the new policy, Caltrans commits to remove administrative barriers and partner with communities and local agencies to ensure more projects on state and local transportation systems improve the connectivity to pedestrian, bicycle and transit facilities, and accessibility to destinations.
If not appropriate to the context or community of the project, projects must receive approval from Caltrans before complete streets features are excluded.
View the new policy here.
The Biden administration has released a plan to accelerate removal of lead water pipes and lead paint from U.S. homes. As a geochemist and environmental health researcher who has studied the heartbreaking impacts of lead poisoning in children for decades, I am happy to see high-level attention paid to this silent killer, which disproportionately affects poor communities of color.
Childhood lead poisoning has declined significantly in the U.S. over the past 50 years. That’s largely due to the elimination of leaded gasoline in the 1980s and the banning of most lead-based paints.
But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that up to 10 million households and 400,000 schools and child care centers have service lines or other fixtures that contain lead. These pipes are ticking time bombs that can leach toxic lead into drinking water if they corrode. As long as they remain in service, children and families are vulnerable.
The same is true of lead paint, which is still present in many homes built before consumer use of lead paint was banned in 1978. Because it tastes sweet, children sometimes chew on paint chips or painted wood.
The Biden administration will spend US$15 billion from the recently enacted infrastructure bill to replace lead service lines, faucets and fixtures over the next five years and is seeking additional money in the pending Build Back Better Act to reduce lead hazards in public housing and low-income communities. I see this as a key priority, since Black children and children living in poverty have average blood lead levels that are 13% higher than the national average.
Lead poisoning does permanent damage
Lead poisoning is a major public health problem because lead has permanent impacts on the brain, particularly in children. Young brains are still actively forming the amazing network of neurons that comprise their hardware.
Neurons are designed to use calcium, the most abundant mineral in the human body, as a transmitter to rapidly pass signals. Lead molecules look a lot like calcium molecules, so if they are present in a child’s body, they can penetrate the brain, impair neuron development and cause permanent neural damage.
Children with lead poisoning have lower IQs, poor memory recall, high rates of attention deficit disorder and low impulse control. They tend to perform poorly at school, which reduces their earning potential as adults. They also face increased risk of kidney disease, stroke and hypertension as they age. Research has found strong connections between lead poisoning and incarceration for violent crimes.
Today researchers estimate that about 500,000 U.S. children still have elevated blood lead levels. Health experts widely agree that there is no known “safe” blood lead concentration.
Where are the lead pipes?
The Biden administration’s plan calls for replacing 100% of lead service lines across the nation – a goal that the EPA aims to write into regulations by 2024. Step 1 is finding the pipes.
Most U.S. cities have countless miles of lead service lines buried beneath streets and sidewalks and feeding into people’s homes. Utilities don’t know where many of these aging lines are and don’t have enough data to map them. Replacing them will require significant analysis, modeling, data and some guesswork.
Old service lines have caused lead poisoning outbreaks in such places as Washington, D.C.; Flint, Michigan; and Newark, New Jersey. The chemistry is a bit different in each case.
Lead service lines typically develop a protective “plaque” of minerals on their inside walls after a short time, which effectively separates the toxic lead pipe from the water flowing through it. This coating, which is called scale, remains stable if the chemistry of the water coursing through it doesn’t change. But if that chemistry is altered, disaster can ensue.
In 2002, Washington, D.C., shifted from chlorine to chloramine for treating its water supply. Chloramine is a more modern disinfectant that does not form dangerous reactive chlorinated byproducts as chlorine can.
This rapidly corroded the protective plaque lining the city’s pipes, flushing highly absorbable lead into homes. Tens of thousands of children were exposed over two years before the problem was adequately identified and fixed.
In Flint, state-appointed managers decided to save money during a fiscal crisis in 2014 by switching from Detroit water to water from the Flint River. But regulators did not require enough chemical analysis to determine what additives should be used to maintain the pipe plaque. And they skipped the typical step of adding phosphate, which binds chemically with lead and prevents it from leaching out of pipes, in order to save about $100 per day.
Corrosion chemistry is well controlled in many U.S. cities, but it is not a perfect science. And utilities don’t always have detection systems that adequately alert water suppliers to dangers at the tap. That’s why removing lead pipes is the only sure way to avoid the threat of more water crises.
Cities will need to innovate
While $15 billion is a big investment, experts agree that it’s not enough to replace all lead pipes nationwide. For example, the estimated cost of replacing all of Flint’s lead service lines is about $50 million – and there are thousands of U.S. cities to fix.
My own city, Indianapolis, has a population of about 850,000 – about 10 times larger than Flint – and officials have only a rough idea of where to find the lead service lines. There are ways to statistically model the likelihood that a given portion of the water system has lead service lines, using information such as water main sizes, locations and construction dates, but they are imperfect.
Cities will need to get creative to make whatever funds they get go as far as possible. As one example, I am working with colleagues to develop a citizen science project that will provide thousands of tests for lead at taps around Indianapolis. This effort, a partnership with the University of Notre Dame funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, may augment modeling with real data on levels of lead in homes, and will increase public awareness of this issue.
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In spite of these challenges, I believe more urgency on this issue is long overdue. Every lead pipe that’s replaced will pay off in higher lifetime earnings and lower rates of illness for families that gain access to safer tap water.
This is an updated version of an article originally published on May 4, 2021.
Gabriel Filippelli, Chancellor's Professor of Earth Sciences and Executive Director, Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute, IUPUI
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The National Weather Service’s forecast for Lake County anticipates the potential for showers every day this week.
The forecast says as much as an inch and a quarter of rain could fall during the day and night on Tuesday, with about an inch possible on Wednesday.
Specific rainfall estimates for the rest of the week are not available.
The rain will be accompanied by cold temperatures in the 40s during the day and dropping into the low 30s.
On Christmas day, daytime temperatures are forecast to be in the low 40s, reaching the low 30s at night, the coldest temperatures forecast for this week.
While it’s still too early to be certain, the National Weather Service’s forecast says there are indications that “much more impactful and widespread winter weather” is on the way, with the potential for heavy snow at lower elevations during the holiday weekend.
Email Elizabeth Larson at