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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife said a coalition of tribal, local, state and federal entities is taking immediate steps to support the long-term survival of the Clear Lake hitch.
A large minnow found only in Northern California’s Clear Lake and its tributaries, the hitch, known as chi to Pomo tribal members, migrates into the tributaries to spawn each spring before returning to the lake.
Historically numbering in the millions, Clear Lake hitch now are facing a tough fight to avoid extinction.
On Thursday, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, or CDFW, announced a list of commitments designed to protect spawning and rearing areas, provide appropriate stream flows, remove barriers to migration and reduce predation. That list can be seen below.
CDFW expects these actions to provide a positive impact on the Clear Lake hitch population this spawning season and over the next few years.
Clear Lake hitch require adequate stream flows during spring for spawning. In some years, flows can become intermittent or can disappear, resulting in fish strandings and even fish kills.
Immediate actions are needed to ensure flows are sufficient for successful spawning conditions; tribal, local, federal and state leaders, as well as private landowners, are actively collaborating on interim efforts to ensure successful conditions through the end of the spawning period in June.
These same entities are also collaborating on long-term planning, restoration, monitoring and management actions.
Recent reports indicate hitch are migrating up tributaries from Clear Lake into Cole, Kelsey, Manning and Adobe creeks.
A recently installed fish ladder, designed by CDFW habitat specialists specifically for hitch, has allowed them to migrate up and over a barrier in Manning Creek that has prevented fish passage for several decades.
CDFW has made agreements with tribal governments for rescue of fish that may become stranded during spawning while also engaging with the local agricultural community to identify areas of fish stranding throughout the watershed.
On March 16, CDFW fishery biologists, local agricultural community members and tribal members rescued 450 adult Clear Lake hitch from a drainage canal along Cole Creek.
CDFW has also taken steps to hold fish at hatchery facilities should rescued fish need a safe haven for a short time.
In coordination with the State Water Resources Control Board, CDFW is evaluating permitting options for local agricultural stakeholders to provide pumped groundwater into areas of creeks that may become dry during spawning season providing immediate relief during low water conditions.
The broad coalition of partners is also gauging streams at multiple locations and reporting data to identify areas of poor spawning habitat conditions and to develop models for future use in predicting streamflow conditions.
Simultaneously, several key longer-term projects are advancing. CDFW recently approved a California Environmental Quality Act statutory exemption for the Wright Wetland Preserve Restoration Project in cooperation with Lake County and the Lake County Land Trust to restore 32 acres of Clear Lake hitch wetland habitat and connect it to 120 acres of existing wetland habitat.
The Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians is being supported by a CDFW grant to prepare environmental review and design for removal of the fish passage barrier along Kelsey Creek at the Main Street bridge and a coalition of partners is working to identify existing barriers on all the spawning tributaries.
On Thursday, CDFW is also committing $2 million to implement barrier removal projects over the next three years. Working with Tribes and the Lake County Land Stewards, CDFW will accept funding proposals submitted in the next 90 days to remove barriers to hitch migration.
CDFW has also committed to ongoing coordination with a coalition of Clear Lake tribes; state, local and federal resource agencies; landowners and others to help facilitate projects to protect and increase streamflow during Clear Lake hitch migration and spawning.
The coalition includes Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians, Robinson Rancheria Pomo Indians of California, Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake, Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians, Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians California, Elem Indian Colony, Lake County Farm Bureau, Lake County agricultural community, Lake County Land Trust, Lake County, California Fish and Game Commission, State and Regional Water Boards, California Department of Water Resources, Blue Ribbon Committee on the Rehabilitation of Clear Lake, the California Natural Resources Agency, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
CDFW thanked all the partners in this coalition for the increased commitment and momentum to save Clear Lake hitch.
Commitments to Save Clear Lake Hitch
CDFW collaborative actions to ensure hitch survival:• Convened a multi-agency state, federal, and tribal summit to highlight the needs of the hitch and its risk of extinction; the summit led to commitments by multiple agencies and tribes to take decisive actions to collect data, preserve streamflows, and enforce on illegal diversions and stream modifications.
Streamflow enhancement efforts:
• In cooperation with the State and Regional Water Boards and local agricultural stakeholders, CDFW is helping to evaluate and facilitate ways to increase stream flow during spawning season, including efforts to develop voluntary reductions in water diversions during critical Clear Lake hitch spawning season.
• CDFW is supporting a cooperative approach to increase streamflow gauging in the Clear Lake watershed, in collaboration with other state agencies, and is finalizing grant funding for the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians to conduct stream flow and groundwater monitoring in Clear Lake hitch spawning areas.
Eliminating and fixing migration barriers:
When making their annual spawning runs up the Clear Lake tributaries in spring Clear Lake hitch encounter a variety of barriers both natural and man-made that inhibit their progress upstream.
• Evaluations of barriers to hitch movement have been done by CDFW, tribal governments, and the agricultural community to identify areas where action can be taken to remove these barriers.
• Through grant funding CDFW is supporting the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians and Lake County to complete the removal of the Main Street barrier along Kelsey Creek.
• CDFW is collaborating with the local agricultural community to prioritize barriers on agricultural lands and provide resources for barrier removal.
• CDFW has committed two million dollars for barrier removal projects.
Advancing monitoring, science, and co-management:
CDFW is engaged in several actions with cooperating tribal governments to protect and monitor Clear Lake hitch populations in the lake.
• CDFW recently funded and permitted a carp and goldfish removal project with Robinson Rancheria Pomo Indians of California to reduce the risk of predation on Clear Lake hitch.
• CDFW is also funding a tagging project with the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake to understand the habitat usage, movement and survival of Clear Lake hitch in Middle Creek watershed.
Fish rescues:
• In cooperation with tribal governments CDFW has entered multiple memoranda of understanding with and trained tribal members to facilitate rescues of Clear Lake hitch that have become stranded during spawning runs.
• CDFW is also working toward a strategy to conduct fish rescues on agricultural lands with that community. Over the last few years, the cooperating rescue groups have been able to rescue thousands of Clear Lake hitch during spawning runs and are prepared to perform rescues if needed this season.
• To meet the needs of rescued Clear Lake hitch, CDFW has evaluated off site locations to properly house fish that have been rescued and may not be suitable for immediate release. These locations are prepped and ready to provide a home for these fish for however long is necessary to equip them to survive in the wild.
Environmental permitting:
• CDFW recently approved the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, statutory exemptions for restoration projects for the Wright Wetland Preserve Restoration Project on Lake County Land Trust preserve lands with Lake County Community Development Department as CEQA lead agency.
Capacity for the interim and long-term:
• CDFW has tasked additional staff with meeting the commitments to save the Clear Lake hitch. One environmental scientist specialist has been tasked with spearheading the task force coordinating activities among the coalition of partners. One environmental scientist has been tasked with conducting on-the-ground management activities. One environmental scientist has been tasked with streamlining permitting activities for agreed commitments. One limited term environmental scientist will be hired to work on-the-ground conducting management activities over the next 14 months.
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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
The group’s will unionize with SEIU Local 2015, the nation’s largest long-term care workers union.
Nearly 80 full-time and part-time CNAs, RNAs, housekeepers, dietary workers, laundry workers, activities assistants, and nursing assistants will have a union for the first time.
“Management at Rocky Point has agreed to recognize their workers’ majority decision to form their union. It’s an exciting time in a new era where employers and workers collaborate to benefit the entire nursing home industry,” said Arnulfo De La Cruz, president of SEIU Local 2015.
SEIU officials said union membership is good for both workers and facilities. A study recently published found that unionized nursing homes had lower worker infection rates and nearly 11% fewer patient deaths from COVID-19.
Both workers and facility operators want to address wages, healthcare benefits, and working conditions, and possess the desire to attract caregivers and ensure safe staffing at all skilled nursing facilities.
“We came together to form our union at Rocky Point to improve quality care and to be treated with equality,” said Patrick Mutua, a CNA at Rocky Point Care Center. “Holiday pay, safe staffing, and remuneration (wages) are important to me, especially right now with growing inflation. The next step for us is a strong contract!”
Workers at Rocky Point Care Center now have a vehicle to use their voices on the job.
Next, they’ll move forward to form a bargaining team and negotiate their first union contract as SEIU 2015 members.
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- Written by: Edward Lempinen
BERKELEY — Restaurants, retail stores and other small businesses, long thought to be vulnerable to increases in the minimum wage, generally do not cut jobs and may actually benefit when governments raise minimum pay, according to a new study co-authored at UC Berkeley.
The prevailing wisdom among many business owners and policymakers is that when the minimum wage rises, smaller low-wage employers suffer more from higher labor costs and are more likely to cut jobs.
But the groundbreaking new study, co-authored by Berkeley economist Michael Reich, found that small businesses can pass the costs on to consumers with little negative impact.
“A minimum wage increase doesn’t kill jobs,” said Reich, chair of UC Berkeley’s Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics, or CWED. “It kills job vacancies, not jobs. The higher wage makes it easier to recruit workers and retain them. Turnover rates go down. Other research shows that those workers are likely to be a little more productive, as well.”
The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 an hour since 2009, but California and dozens of state and local governments in recent years have raised their minimum to $15.50 or more.
The new working paper is the first ever to examine the impact of higher minimum wages on small, low-wage businesses, a sector that includes restaurants, grocery and retail stores, and child care operations. It’s the second recent study by Reich and co-authors that challenges the conventional wisdom on minimum wages.
A working paper released last fall and revised in December found that $15-an-hour and higher minimum wages in California and other states and cities gave employees more financial security without causing their employers to cut jobs.
An updated version of that paper will be released in coming weeks, Reich said.
Business groups have long warned that teen workers would be the most likely to lose their jobs when employers confronted higher minimum wages. But Reich and his colleagues found that higher wages often allowed teenage employees to work a little less and study more.
The findings have dramatic implications for public policy: Most obviously, higher wages reduce poverty and financial insecurity. But, Reich said, governments currently spend millions of dollars every year on tax breaks for businesses confronted with government-approved minimum wage hikes. Those expenses may be unnecessary, he said.
Conventional business wisdom lags behind research insights
UC Berkeley is globally influential in the field of labor economics and a leading producer of research on the minimum wage in the U.S. and other countries. Reich has written extensively on the topic.
Such research has been repeatedly verified and now is widely accepted in economics. Still, for opponents, it seems only common sense that when employers face higher wage costs, they will employ fewer workers.
“We worked on this new paper because we continually heard that small businesses are especially vulnerable to higher minimum wages,” Reich said in an interview yesterday. “I heard that from a prominent member of the U.S. House of Representatives when I testified at a hearing in 2019. I’ve heard it from the National Federation of Independent Businesses many, many times. For some people it’s a given — but it’s not supported by the evidence.”
Reich’s latest paper, co-authored with Belgian economist Jesse Wursten, carried that inquiry into small, medium and large U.S. businesses that comprise the low-wage economy. Restaurants, grocery stores and general merchandise stores account for 36% of all minimum-wage employment.
The researchers used state-of-the art statistical methods and 30 years of employer-provided data from the U.S. Census to understand how some 550 changes in state and federal minimum wages between 1990 and 2019 played out in the labor market.
It’s counterintuitive, but higher wages benefit almost everyone
When employers hear that minimum wages are going up, Reich explained, they tend to imagine the impact only on their own businesses. They wonder how they can absorb higher costs without cutting staff or losing profit.
“I say to them, ‘Look, your industry will respond very differently compared to what your individual firm can do,’” Reich added. “‘If everyone in the industry faces the same shocks and costs, not just you, then the market response might be a modest price increase.’”
Indeed, some restaurants pass on the higher costs to consumers — and the small price increases are not enough to drive consumers away, Reich said.
The owners benefit further because higher wages mean less turnover, as well as less advertising and training for new workers. In the end, their profits are not harmed.
“The net effect,” Reich said, “is a transfer of income from consumers, who are able to pay a bit more, to the workers.”
The authors found that among all businesses and workers studied, higher minimum wages led to lower employment only among high school-age workers in small businesses.
But that cuts two ways, Reich said. While employment in that sector fell, teens overall earned more — so they could work less and study more. The study cites other recent research that, among students of low socio-economic status, a 10% increase in the minimum wage reduces the high school dropout rate by about 10%.
Reich’s paper found that the effects are amplified by the growing availability of college financial aid programs that reward high school students for strong academic performance.
So in the market at large, Reich said, there are now more incentives for adolescents to focus on studies.
“Given the many benefits of educational attainment,” the authors write, “the long term impact on teens substituting time studying for time working in the labor market should be considered a benefit, not a cost, of minimum wage policies.”
The Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics is a project of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC Berkeley.
Edward Lempinen writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — New best friends are waiting to meet you at Clearlake Animal Control.
There currently are nearly three dozen dogs at the shelter available to be adopted into new homes.
They include “Marshall,” a Doberman pinscher, and “Maya,” a female German shepherd mix.
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 week’s adoptable dogs are featured below.
Email Elizabeth Larson at