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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
City Manager Kevin Ingram took the proposal to the council at its Oct. 6 meeting.
He said it’s the time of year to consider recruitment for the city’s committees and commissions. Over the past couple of years, the city has had trouble finding enough people to fill the seats and hasn’t had adequate agenda items for those who do serve.
As a result, Ingram was proposing a new option, which included freezing the Traffic Safety Advisory Committee and the Parks and Recreation Committee and instead forming ad hoc committees to deal with specific issues.
Ingram also suggested that at the beginning of the year the council would hold joint meetings with its committees to help members understand their roles and the council's direction.
“I think what’s important here is that the commissions and committees work in a manner that is beneficial for the council and for the city,” said City Attorney David Ruderman, who told the council that any resulting Brown Act concerns from creating the new committees would be handled by staff.
Council members offered their support for the plan, with Councilwoman Stacey Mattina noting that she liked the potential for having less staff time going into managing city committees that don’t meet regularly.
Ingram said the proposal was only dealing with the Traffic Safety and Advisory Committee and the Parks and Recreation Committee, as the Lakeport Planning Commission and Measure Z Advisory Committee have set roles, and the Lakeport Economic Development Advisory Committee has a strategic plan.
He said if it doesn’t work, in a year the city can return to its previous approach.
Councilman Kenny Parlet said that, ultimately, issues come back to the council anyway, and if there are problems community members usually call the council members directly.
Councilwoman Mireya Turner said everyone is strapped for time, so it made sense to focus resources where there’s the most energy and where they can get things done.
Turner moved to direct staff to review council goals, return with proposals for new ad hoc committees, and freeze the Traffic Safety and Advisory Committee and the Parks and Recreation Committee, which the council approved unanimously.
Ingram said he has talked to both the Traffic Safety and Advisory Committee and the Parks and Recreation Committee about the proposal and believed that the members are looking forward to participating in the new ad hoc committees.
In other council action on Oct. 6, the council presented a proclamation to Sheri Young of Lake Family Resource Center designating October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, held a hearing and approved an ordinance to update the Lakeport Municipal Code’s emergency services chapter, made amendments to the fiscal year 2020-21 city budget and approved a resolution for approval that would authorize the city manager to submit an application for the Prop 68 Per Capita Program and execute any agreements necessary for the use of grant funds.
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- Written by: Amanda Barnett
After touching down on the Red Planet Feb. 18, 2021, NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will scour Jezero Crater to help us understand its geologic history and search for signs of past microbial life.
But the six-wheeled robot won't be looking just at the surface of Mars: The rover will peer deep below it with a ground-penetrating radar called RIMFAX.
Unlike similar instruments aboard Mars orbiters, which study the planet from space, RIMFAX will be the first ground-penetrating radar set on the surface of Mars. This will give scientists much higher-resolution data than space-borne radars can provide while focusing on the specific areas that Perseverance will explore.
Taking a more focused look at this terrain will help the rover's team understand how features in Jezero Crater formed over time.
Short for Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment, RIMFAX can provide a highly detailed view of subsurface structures down to at least 30 feet underground. In doing so, the instrument will reveal hidden layers of geology and help find clues to past environments on Mars, especially those that may have provided the conditions necessary for supporting life.
"We take an image of the subsurface directly beneath the rover," said Svein-Erik Hamran, the instrument's principal investigator, with the University of Oslo in Norway. "We can do a 3D model of the subsurface – of the different layers – and determine the geological structures underneath."
While Mars is a frigid desert today, scientists suspect that microbes may have lived in Jezero during wetter times billions of years ago and that evidence of such ancient life may be preserved in sediments in the crater.
Information from RIMFAX will help pinpoint areas for deeper study by instruments on the rover that search for chemical, mineral, and textural clues found within rocks that may be signs of past microbial life.
Ultimately, the team will collect dozens of drill-core samples with Perseverance, seal them in tubes that will be deposited on the surface for return to Earth by future missions. That way, these first samples from another planet can be studied in laboratories with equipment too large to take to Mars.
Traveling back in time
Scientists believe the 28-mile-wide Jezero Crater formed when a large object collided with Mars, kicking up rocks from deep in the planet's crust. More than 3.5 billion years ago, river channels spilled into the crater, creating a lake that was home to a fan-shaped river delta.
Hamran hopes RIMFAX will shed light on how the delta formed. "This is not so easy, based on surface images only, because you have this dust covering everything, so you may not necessarily see all the changes in geology."
He and his science team will stack successive radar soundings to create a two-dimensional subsurface image of the crater floor. Eventually, data will be combined with images from a camera on the rover to create a 3D topographical image.
The instrument employs the same type of ground-penetrating radar used here on Earth to find buried utilities, underground caverns, and the like. In fact, Hamran uses it to study glaciers.
Tens of millions of miles away on Mars, however, he and his colleagues will be relying on Perseverance to do the work as it roams through Jezero Crater.
"We do some measurements while we are stationary," he said, "but most measurements will actually be gathered while the rover is driving."
More about the mission
A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life.
The rover will characterize the planet's ancient climate and geology, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent missions, currently under consideration by NASA in cooperation with ESA (the European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Charged with returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028 through NASA's Artemis lunar exploration plans.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers.
For more about Perseverance visit www.mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ and www.nasa.gov/perseverance.
Amanda Barnett works for NASA.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The shutoff, which began on Wednesday evening in response to red flag weather conditions, impacted 41,000 customers – about 12,000 customers less than originally forecast – in 24 counties: Alameda, Butte, Contra Costa, Humboldt, Lake, Monterey, Napa, Nevada, Plumas, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Solano, Sonoma, Tehama, Trinity, Yolo and Yuba.
In Lake County, 82 Lake County customers, five of them in the medical baseline program, were impacted in the Cobb, Lower Lake and Middletown areas.
PG&E said the severe weather subsided enough during the day on Thursday in some locations for its meteorology team to issue a number of “weather all clears,” which allowed electric crews to begin patrols of power lines to look for damage as the first step toward restoration. As a result, 10,000 customers had their power restored on Thursday.
On Friday morning, PG&E issued the all clear for the remaining areas in the PSPS footprint, deploying 1,200 employees on the ground or in 47 helicopters inspecting about 3,200 miles of lines for damage or hazards.
The majority of the remaining 31,000 customers affected by this PSPS event were restored by early Friday evening, the company said.
PG&E said wind gusts of more than 50 miles per hour were recorded in multiple high fire danger areas including Napa, San Mateo and Yolo counties. Peak wind gusts were recorded in Contra Costa County, 61 miles per hour; Butte County, 64 miles per hour; and Sonoma County, 73 miles per hour.
Based on preliminary data from the company’s damage inspections, there were 30 instances of weather-related damage and hazards – such as downed power lines and vegetation on power lines – in the PSPS-affected areas. PG&E said that type of damage could have resulted in wildland fires had the lines not been deenergized.
PG&E said it will submit a report detailing damages from the severe weather conditions to the California Public Utilities Commission within 10 days of the completion of the PSPS.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The CHP’s Clear Lake Area office said Carl Curtis Knight, 59, of Clearlake died as a result of the crash.
Knight was crossing Highway 29, south of Orchard Street in Lower Lake, at 6:30 a.m. Thursday, when conditions were reported to be dark, the CHP said.
The CHP said Knight was walking from the west side of the roadway at the Power Mart towards the east side of the roadway when a vehicle hit him while he was in the No. 2 northbound lane of Highway 53.
The driver of the vehicle that hit Knight then fled the scene, according to the CHP’s Friday evening report.
Knight was transported to Adventist Health Clear Lake Hospital where he succumbed to injuries resulting from the collision, the CHP said.
If anyone has any information as to who the driver of the involved vehicle is or the location of the involved vehicle, please contact the Clear Lake CHP office at 707-279-0103.
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