A handful of wildfires on a very hot day have led to some jitters in Mendocino County. On Wednesday fires popped up in Redwood Valley near Road B and Ricetti Lane and near the Potter Valley/Redwood Valley border along Highway 20 near Potter Valley Road and Elledge Ranch Rd. The fires were contained within a few hours and while evacuation warnings went out, no evacuations were triggered although Highway 20 was closed for a while. Meanwhile last night around 930pm a fire started in Laytonville along Spyrock Road. Forward progress there was stopped within about 25 minutes.
Some CalFresh recipients in Clearlake and Lower Lake will be getting automatic replacement benefits as a result of the power outages during the Boyles Fire. The benefit could show up on the CalFresh cards as soon as today for zip codes 95422 and 95457 who have not yet received replacement benefits due from the Boyles Fire. Lake County News reports those folks will have 60 percent of their September 2024 benefits replaced. If you didn’t get a reimbursement and think that you should, you have until Monday October 7 to contact Lake County Social Services to request replacement.
You could be getting about $70 dollars back on your power bill this month. Yesterday Governor Gavin Newsom announced that more than 11.5 million California power customers will get an average of $71 back in October through the California Climate Credit. When you add that to what came back in April, that’s an average of $217 in credits per household for 2024. Newsom’s office says more than a million small businesses are also expected to receive the credit which comes from the State’s Cap-and-Trade Program, which requires companies to pay for pollution.
If you live in Lakeport you have a chance to help make some decision on how things are run. There are openings on a handful of Committees and Boards including the Measure Z Advisory Committee, the Lakeport Planning Commission and the Lakeport Economic Development Advisory Committee. These appointments would start January 1. The Planning Commission and Economic Development Advisory Committee meet twice a month; the Measure Z Advisory Committee meets quarterly. As of December there will be two seats opening on the Planning Commision, four on the Economic Development Advisory Committee and three on the Measure Z Advisory Committee. You can apply on the Lakeport city website with a deadline of November 12. The committee appointments will be made at a special meeting of the Lakeport City Council in December.
There’s a new effort to bring more visitors to Lake Mendocino with a unique partnership between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Greater Ukiah Business and Tourism Alliance. The Ukiah Daily Journal reports its a cooperative agreement to develop recreation assets and educational programs along with marketing and branding to promote all the possible activities available at the lake. Officials say Lake Mendicino has over 3,000 acres of outdoor opportunities with unique ecosystems including an endangered plant – the burke’s goldfields. There are several hiking trails as well as biking, fishing, boating, and camping and many areas at the lake are wheelchair accessible and ADA compliant. They say while locals know about many of the features of the lake, the branding could attract visitors from across the region and the state.
California has an official slug. With last week’s signing by Governor Gavin Newsom of Assembly Bill 1850 the banana slug is the official state slug. The bill was co-sponsored by Assembly Member Gail Pellerin of Santa Cruz, where the banana slug is already the college mascot. Pellerin says banana slugs serve a vital function in the ecosystem because they eat dead things and move seeds and spores around and they eat poison oak and poisonous mushrooms. Another vital critter has also gotten props: the Dungeness Crab, which is a huge economic driver, is now the official state crustacean.
