YUCCA VALLEY—(December 31) This desert town of 20,700 is up against a formidable deadline by which it must complete the first phase of a large scale wastewater treatment system within less than 17 months.
That deadline was imposed by state water quality officials in 2011 because of a mounting water quality crisis local officials had previously failed to address. Despite Yucca Valley’s incorporation as a municipality in 1991, it remains the only one of San Bernardino County’s 24 cities without a sewer system.
But a combination of factors, financial, political, ideological and even religious – not to mention out and out cronyism – have prevented the town, its residents and its local water district from coming to terms with a reality that will, if it is not redressed, severely impact all of the area’s residents.
Long a remote and rustic desert area that attracted those wishing to remain well off the beaten track and free of the strictures of urbanization, Yucca Valley made its first lurch toward modernity in the 1950s when Norman J. Essig promoted it as both a getaway to and private residency for entertainment celebrities. He ventured capital toward that end, acquiring hundreds of acres, which he improved with roads around the region’s major arterial, Highway 62, also known as Twentynine Palms Highway.
While attracting movie stars as well as recording and visual artists was only marginally successful, the improvements did succeed in luring others by virtue of the relatively inexpensive land prices, and Yucca Valley grew sporadically over the years, appealing to the independent minded and lovers of its remote desert beauty. As early as 1973, when the area’s population was hovering below 5,000, there was a push to outfit the core of Yucca Valley with a rudimentary sewer system, one that would extend only to the town’s modest commercial area and the relatively sparse residential neighborhoods that surrounded it. But a water treatment facility and skeleton sewer system to which future developments could connect carried a price tag of roughly $10 million, well beyond the tiny community’s fiscal means at that time.
After the town’s November 1991 incorporation, civic officials continued to reflect and embody the values of their constituents, who eschewed big government and excessive regulation and put a premium on maintaining the town’s rural character. There was little collective will to pave any roads other than the town’s main thoroughfares and many town streets remain dusty trails to this day. A modern, urban sewer system has been an imperative to few locals. At the same time, the town council has been accommodating of most developers who expressed an interest in Yucca Valley, and over the first 23 years of the town’s history as an incorporated entity, gave builders what has essentially been carte blanche to build aggressively without incorporating urban land use standards.
Thus, the septic systems that had proliferated in Yucca Valley for three-quarters of a century remained the accoutrement of homes and businesses built within the 40 square mile city limits.
Ten years after incorporation Yucca Valley’s officials were notified by the state’s Regional Water Quality Control Board that the lack of a sewage treatment system had resulted in nitrates accumulating in the water table. Simultaneously, the Hi-Desert Water District, which serves the Yucca Valley community, experienced nitrate traces in district wells.
Local officialdom did not respond with alacrity. Rather, some feigned outrage that the state felt it necessary to involve itself in what many perceived as a local issue. As a good number of those who had moved to Yucca Valley were senior citizens and retirees living on fixed incomes who had been attracted to the area by cheap land, they were alarmed by the concept of having to defray the cost for the installation of a sewer system. They were heartened and to a certain extent lulled into a state of complacency by their political leadership, which asserted the town would not fall victim to overreaching regulation imposed on it by Sacramento. Thus, the water table contamination issue was kicked down the road.
In the early 2000s, monitoring carried out by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board and the United States Geological Survey demonstrated that residues left in the ground that seep into the aquifer had increased to levels that presaged health threats if the matter was not addressed. Those contaminants included nitrates and other pollutants including pharmaceuticals and salts.
Historic pumping increases from the 1940s to 1995 resulted in the water levels dropping faster than the nitrates from septic systems seeped downward. Thus, for years Yucca Valley was able to avoid the consequences of the contamination accumulating in the local soil. Eventually, however, as the water table dropped lower and lower as a result of greater utilization combined with limited recharge from rainfall, the water district began importation of state aqueduct water into Yucca Valley. Completion of the Morongo Basin Pipeline project and the accompanying completion and activation of recharge basins in Yucca Valley allowed the Hi-Desert Water District to begin percolating water into the aquifer and the water table began to rise. That water came in contact with the high levels of nitrates left over from decades of septic discharge and the nitrates found their way into some of the Hi-Desert Water District’s wells. Notice of the contamination triggered a scaling back of the Hi-Desert Water District’s recharge efforts, and the goal of reestablishing the Yucca Valley water table to the natural level present in the 1940s has not been achieved.
For a time, at least, the imported water actually diluted the nitrates so water tests showed nitrate levels below the maximum contaminant level allowed by the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In the meantime, the discharge of septic waste continues and the United States Geological Survey determined that nitrates accumulating beneath Yucca Valley are present in ever increasing concentrations and at depths that pose a threat to the groundwater, including a calculation that 880 acre-feet of septic discharge currently reaches the groundwater every year.
In 2007, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state agency responsible for protecting water quality, adopted a resolution identifying the town of Yucca Valley as one of 66 communities throughout the state with groundwater threatened by the continuing overuse of septic systems. The board further declared Yucca Valley as a top priority for eliminating the use of septic systems, meaning Yucca Valley’s is one of the five most seriously threatened significantly-sized water supplies in the state.
Nevertheless, local officials resisted taking immediate action, as they lacked the financial wherewithal to undertake the construction of a sewer system. Nor did the city have the will to impose any kind of building or development moratorium that would stabilize the problem.
For a while, town and the water district officials were able to delay the imposition of state mandates by forging a memorandum of agreement with the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Hi-Desert Water District to allow interim permits for new septic systems while planning for a wastewater system proceeded. But they could not suspend the consequences indefinitely.
By 2010, Yucca Valley’s population had zoomed to 20,700, an increase of 3,835 or 22.7 percent over the 16,865 town residents counted in the 2000 Census.
In 2011, the town was firmly informed it had only five years to take a definitive step toward water quality compliance.
The Regional Water Quality Control Board at that point imposed three progressive phases of septic discharge prohibitions on Yucca Valley. Under the state mandate, phase 1 of a waste water system must be completed or significantly on its way to completion by May 19, 2016 or enforcement action will be initiated. The first phase of the project is to cover the downtown area of Yucca Valley, the area most proximate to the heart of the groundwater basin. Similarly, phase 2 must be completed or nearly completed by May 19, 2019 and phase 3 must be completed by May 19, 2022. The last two phases lie further out where future concentrated development is most likely to occur.
The imposition of that deadline nearly four years ago was intended as a wake-up call to local officials to undertake an effort to avert the growing water quality crisis. But woefully little progress toward the goal of planning and funding the system has been made and there has been absolutely no physical progress with regard to establishing it.
If the town, its residents and the local water board do not collectively act to fund and begin building the sewer system that will eliminate Yucca Valley’s reliance upon septic systems that are now overwhelming the area’s water table, the state is threatening action that could reduce Yucca Valley to a ghost town by 2022.
Nineteen months ago, the State Water Resources Control Board’s sub-executive director, Jose Angel, told those gathered at the Yucca Valley Community Center the state will be methodical and thorough in enforcing the prohibition, holding the town to account to complete each phase of the project by the succeeding deadlines and taking steps to ensure that each residential and commercial property within each phase’s geographical boundaries ties into the sewer system once it is in place.
In the last nineteen months. the High Desert Water District, which is to be the lead agency on the project, has not completed anywhere near two-thirds of the work needed to meet the first deadline on May 19, 2016, while more than two-thirds of the time since the deadline was announced has elapsed. The tangible progress it can point to consists, basically, in having undertaken an effort to inform local residents of the problem and having completed cost comparisons on paper. The primary cost projection identifies the difference between having a contractor undertake building the system and having the water district manage the project – between $133,248,401 and $140,651,089 for the design and construction work to be performed by Atkins North America and somewhere between $111,539,901 and $117,736,562 for the district to construct the project using Atkins North America’s proposed design. The system would consist of a water treatment plant and a collection system entailing over 400,000 linear feet of pipe.
The district has made some tentative projections with regard to obtaining grant funding, but has made no substantive progress toward actually receiving such grants, other than obtaining a $20 million authorization from the Bureau of Reclamation. It has also applied for a low to no-interest loan through a state revolving fund. Ultimately, there will yet need to be significant financial participation by the town’s residents and businesses. A dated calculation, using the assumption that the overall cost of the project will amount to no more than $125 million, is that each parcel in Yucca Valley will be counted upon to provide $16,700 toward the system construction debt burden. If the cost of the project can be defrayed over 30 years, water district officials calculate the project can be financed through homeowner assessments of $20 to $40 per month to cover just the construction costs of the system.
Costs could rise due to unforeseen circumstances or complications with regard to easements, particularly on the north end of town, where the proposed trunk line will be laid alongside a steel natural gas line accompanied by electrical pumps. The cost of upgrading the trunk line to one consisting of steel seamless pipe could raise the cost.
Of tremendous moment is the community’s ability to pay for the system, which includes town residents’ willingness to embrace a debt servicing mechanism to cover the financing arrangement on its construction costs. One such effort was Measure U, sponsored by the town in 2012 and which appeared on the November ballot. If passed, Measure U would have imposed a one-cent sales tax within Yucca Valley. Town officials said the lion’s share of those proceeds would go toward building the sewer system. Measure U was defeated, however.
If the multiple issues with regard to the sewer system are not resolved, and resolved soon, Yucca Valley will have no conceivable prospect of meeting the May 19, 2016 deadline.
The water quality crisis may prove insoluble because of a host of social realities in Yucca.
The town in many ways defies definition along any traditional political measure. In terms of median income, household worth and property values, Yucca Valley is among the poorest of San Bernardino’s 24 incorporated cities, and is surpassed economically by many of the county’s unincorporated communities as well. Yet it is a decidedly conservative bastion, with the Republican Party dominating politically. Among the town of Yucca Valley’s 9,963 registered voters as of last week, 4,096 or 41.1 percent were Republicans and 2,601 or 26.1 percent were Democrats. Within the slightly larger confines of the Hi-Desert Water District, which includes the entirety of Yucca Valley and some outlying area, there are 11,473 voters, of whom 4,634 or 40.4 percent are registered Republicans and 2,996 or 26.1 percent are Democrats. The town’s residents are predominantly of a minimal-governmental-interference philosophy and that has traditionally been the platform of its elected leadership.
Indeed, Yucca Valley’s leading citizen, Paul Cook, who served on the Yucca Valley City Council for eight years, from 1998 until 2006, was later a member of the California Assembly and is now beginning his second term in Congress representing the 8th District, which includes Yucca Valley. Cook, perhaps more than any single political entity, in reflecting the attitudes of his constituency, has prevented the wastewater project from moving ahead. As the region’s representative in Sacramento until two years ago, Cook effectively undercut the project’s proponents, referring to the demand that Yucca Valley transition from septic systems to a sewer system as “just another unfunded state mandate.” He dwelled at length upon the cost of the project and what he considered his constituents’ inability to bear that cost.
“We have to look at this from some perspective of a cost analysis,” Cook, while still serving in Sacramento, said. “This is never going to happen. We have to remember what type of community this is. We got to be very, very careful when we start talking $125 million to people who cannot afford it because we do not have the businesses and the state’s not going to give you the money. I’m not afraid to talk to Governor [Jerry] Brown. I work for you and we’re not afraid to get a bloody nose.” Cook bragged he would tell Brown, “In Yucca Valley, we want you to declare Yucca Valley a historical site because we’re going to be a ghost town!”
Just prior to leaving the Assembly, Cook acknowledged that building the sewer system is a desirable goal, but maintained the state is overstepping its authority by requiring that it be built on the local dime.
“When a state bureaucracy imposes a septic tank prohibition, sets a 2016 deadline, and doesn’t offer funding to deliver the project, it is without question an unfunded mandate,” Cook said. “It is imperative that the California Water Resources Control Board provide Yucca Valley residents and businesses access to extended term, reduced interest rate loans along with debt forgiveness. Additionally, every Proposition 84 dollar appropriated to our region needs to be made available to the Hi-Desert Water District to help deliver the lowest cost sewer system to our community. While protecting water quality is a laudable goal, the costs associated with constructing a sewer and wastewater treatment plant could have a potentially devastating impact on Yucca Valley without these resources.”
As a member of Congress, Cook has not achieved the provision of any federal money to assist in the water treatment system’s construction.
As or even more remarkable as Cook’s role in the matter is the influence of the religious community in shaping Yucca Valley’s approach to governance, and by extension, its indolence in addressing the wastewater contamination crisis.
Like Loma Linda, where the Adventist Church’s sway over the political affairs of that city is well recognized, Yucca Valley is dominated politically by politicking from the pulpit. The entities exercising the strongest pull in this regard are Joshua Springs Calvary Chapel, where the Revered Jerel Hagerman is the pastor; Grace Community Church, where Roger Mayes is the pastor; and to a lesser extent St. Mary of the Valley, the Catholic Church in Yucca Valley that counted Paul Cook among its parishioners. Joshua Springs Calvary Chapel boasts a membership approaching 3,000 and Hagerman can deliver somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 votes for a candidate or for or against any measure that appears on the town ballot.
Both Hagerman and Mayes are credited with being the actual co-regents behind the throne in Yucca Valley. Their sermons set not only the spiritual and moral tone of the town, but appear to define its political tenor as well. Both pastors share a born-again zealotry and conservative political ethos that carries itself beyond the two or so hours they have the attention of their parishioners on Sunday, and into everyday life and into the halls of power down at Yucca Valley’s civic center. Indeed, both Hagerman and Mayes were instrumental in launching the political careers of their sons, both of whom served on the Yucca Valley City Council.
Isaac Hagerman, Jerel’s son, was a member of the town council that effectively ignored or resisted for so long the state’s dire warnings with regard to the deterioration in the quality of the town’s water supply and championed the further growth of Yucca Valley by providing developers with carte blanche to build aggressively without incorporating urban land use standards.
Chad Mayes, the youthful mayor of Yucca Valley who captured his position on the city council in some measure because of the advantage conferred upon him by his father’s position as a leading religious figure in the community, promoted limited government throughout his tenure in office before he resigned to become chief of staff to San Bernardino County Supervisor Janice Rutherford in 2010. Chad Mayes was similarly opposed to imposing the intrusion and expense of creating a sewer system on the town’s residents, businesses and landowners. Last year, in November, he was elected to serve in the California Assembly.
In addition, the Reverend Roger Mayes has been directly involved in the water quality issue, having himself served several terms and continuing to serve as a board member of the Hi-Desert Water District Board of Directors, where he has proven himself to be a longtime advocate of limited government.
Complicating the issue is the cronyism that stands side-by-side with the political and religious fervor against big government and state mandates.
A minority of town residents now, and have for some time, recognized that the water contamination issue is a real one and that the state government is purposed to apply some harsh remedial action if progress toward a solution is not made. Some have expressed a willingness to impose on themselves and their fellow residents some order of a regime to effectuate the construction of the waste water treatment system. But at the level of the water board they have been met with resistance because a majority of the water board members have been backed by town business interests who are opposed to any taxing or assessment schedules that would impact upon the profitability of their business operations.
This has led to a cynicism on the part of many residents who are now resistant to the water district’s overtures to form an assessment district out of the belief that the assessment district will be formed to favor the political backers of the board’s members and will finance the construction of the system largely upon the backs of the town’s residents.
There are indications that the Hi-Desert Water District’s board has begun to factionalize. Sarann Graham and Dan Munsey appear to have charted a path at odds with the board majority, consisting of Roger Mayes, Bob Stadum and Sheldon Hough. At the board’s most recent meeting December 17, Mayes, Stadum and Hough overlooked Munsey, who was reelected to the board in November with the largest number of votes, in choosing who would serve as the board’s chair and vice chair. While Graham sought to elevate Munsey, she was outvoted by Stadum, Hough and Mayes, who chose Stadum as board chairman and Hough as vice chair.
Unless dynamic action is taken by the board, either independently of the town or in conjunction with it, the residents of the town are very likely to see themselves uprooted from their homes and community.
The state of California has utilized draconian measures in the past against other communities that failed to come into compliance, such as in Los Osos, which was under a similar order from the California Water Resources Board and failed to heed it. The entire community of Los Osos became subject to an enforcement action, which was done in a lottery fashion, in which random property owners were selected to receive cease and desist orders with the potential of daily fines for non-compliance. They were ordered to discontinue the discharge from their septic systems, seal them off and pump them at regular intervals. If they did not, they were subjected to fines of up to $5,000 per day.
Many in the town of Yucca Valley evince an abiding, almost pious, faith that the coming tribulation of the state’s cease and desist order will be averted, and through some miraculous suspension of bureaucratic authority and ecological reality, the bitter cup will pass over them.

(December 29) The twenty-ninth annual West Coast convention of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community held at the Baitul Hameed Mosque in Chino December 26 to 29 directly addressed the efforts by the Islamic State In Syria [ISIS] to attract Muslim youth and other disaffected elements to its cause.
The upshot of the convention was assertions by the Ahmadiyya Community that the violence and intolerance advocated by ISIS is not representative of Islam in its purest form or as is practice by the majority of the 72 Islamic sects.
“Isis has built its case around distorted and inappropriate interpretations of the Koran and Islmic teachings,” said Ibrahim Naeem, the faith outreach director for the Los Angeles West Chapter of Ahmadiyya Muslim community.
Naeem said the Ahmadiyya and other Muslims were as appalled by the action of ISIS as non-Muslims.
“We want to have a conversation about the current state of Islam, in particular the concern with ISIS and what their objective is as opposed to what the ideas and ideology of Islam is in general worldwide,” Naeem said. “What people are concerned about when they hear of these terroristic acts is they link them all. They think Islam is a monolith and that all Muslims have the same ideology. Nothing could be further from the truth. People who are part of ISIS are far removed from the basic beliefs of Islam. What ISIS believes and what ISIS practices is absolutely anathema to the beliefs of the Ahmadiyya community. We have a saying – a motto of sorts – ‘Love for all. Hatred for none.’”
The convention, known as a Jalsa Salana, was titled “The ISIS World Crisis and the Pathway to Peace.” Over 1,500 Muslims from across the country and guests attended.
The most scholarly and dynamic speech at the three day event was that given by Imam Azhar Haneef, who oversees the Ahmadiyya mosques in the tri-state area of New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania.
Haneef sought to provide some historical, cultural and overarching religious perspective on the phenomenon of ISIS.
“There has been a root disease within the Muslim world for some time,” Haneef stated. What ails Islam and the world currently, he said has plagued all religions that have receded from their spiritual apex into a directional nadir. Using the Muslim term caliph, which refers to the leadership succession of a religious movement, Haneef pointed out that Moses, as the leader of the Jews, was succeeded by his chosen caliph, Joshua, who led the Jews into the Promised Land. For a time, Haneef said, the Jews maintained their spiritual intensity and flourished, reaching ultimate fruition under King David. But in time, as Haneef said was inevitable, the Hebraic spirituality was compromised and King Solomon lamented that the son who would succeed him to the thrown would be too weak to carry on. Israel had so declined that by the time of Jesus, Haneef said, the zealots were casting about futilely to reestablish Israel to its former greatness, refusing to knuckle under to the authority of the Roman Empire.
“When it reached a point of crisis at the time of Christ. the zealots were rebuilding the empire, just like the Taliban and Al Khaida today, determined to fight against Rome to the point where Rome destroyed Israel in A.D. 132. Hundreds of thousands were killed. The temple was desecrated. Israel was not to come back until 1947.”
Similarly, Christianity, which stared out with such fervent spiritual intensity under Jesus Christ, Haneef said, would be subject upon Jesus’ passing to a caliphate.
“Jesus selected a leader for after he was gone, James, or Peter, for the Catholic succession,” Haneef said. “Someone was needed to keep people united and focused for the mission of the founder. None live on earth forever and they start a succession. Each succession started out spiritually. Look at the struggle of the early Christians. Centuries later, the Christians who were born into a mission of peace and who had been forced to go into the catacombs to survive had split into an eastern and a western church and were fighting amongst themselves. The Spanish Inquisition drove the Jews and heretics out of Europe, yet these people called themselves the caliphate of Jesus Christ.”
ISIS and Al Khaida and the Taliban are the Muslim manifestation of, Haneef said, “the same scene, the same struggle. We have a situation coming into Islam the prophet [i.e., Mohammed] warned the Muslims about. The caliph, a spiritual successor, is always spiritually inclined and then the devotion dissipates. The true caliphs are followed by kings, who are followed by those who turn from being not just powerful monarchs but then become corrupt kings and become despotic tyrants with no sense of justice.”
The realization of this reality, Haneef said, “drove a truly spiritually dedicated caliph, Omar al Farooq, whose efforts on behalf of Islam had pushed the border of the Islamic state far into Persia and into portions of what had been the Western Roman Empire to tearfully ask one of his associates, ‘Tell me, what am I? Am I a caliph or am I a king?’ His companion answered him, ‘If you extort even one dinar from the people and misappropriated money from the state treasury you are a king and not a caliph.’ Omar said, ‘I know not what I am,’ and he broke down in tears.“
Hanef said, “Kings are not spiritual. They are political. This whole discussion takes us back to our roots. We have to recognize where we began and where we are and how afar form the original source have we come.”
Haneef said it was his hope that the non-Muslim world will see that all of Islam is not hell bent on destruction of those who do not share all of their beliefs and recognize that “these Al Khaida terrorists are driven by a radical and perverted vision of Islam that crushes dissent and justifies the murder of women and children for political power and a totalitarian Islamic empire they hope to establish.”
ISIS and other advocates of violence, Haneef said, “have turned from the true spirit of the prophet they claim to represent. Much of the disorder we see in the world today is occurring because of the acts of so-called Muslims. One group is viciously spreading its net of fear and terrorism. I am speaking of a group of extremists commonly known as ISIS. They are impacting not just the Muslim community but countries in Europe where we see disturbing number of our youth who have come to believe ISIS represents a true picture of Islam. For this reason they have resolved to help and fight for them, thinking, ‘I will bring back that old Muslim empire and then destroy all infidels, representing Mohammed. Yes, I am in.’ We need to make them not go down this line of rationalization. Everyone, and not just the Muslim world are alarmed. Their objectives are utterly horrific and barbaric. I could not watch someone saying ‘Allah Akbar’ – God is Great – and taking an instrument and removing someone’s life. This is senseless brutality we are witnessing over and over again. I cannot claim this to have any semblance of Islam. This is not the way and never was the way of the Prophet of Islam nor any prophet.”
Congressman Ed Royce, R-Fullerton, the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, also spoke at the convention. Royce said ISIS, the forerunners of which existed as early as 1999, escalated into prominence within the cauldron of a “toxic environment” in Syria as the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, struggled to maintain power during the ongoing Syrian Civil War, which resulted in a “humanitarian nightmare as al-Assad, backed by Iran and Russia continued to order mass atrocities.”
The current situation in which ISIS has maintained its footing and is gaining strength, Royce said, would have been avoidable if there had been a stronger stand taken against ISIS early on by both the United States and its allies. Royce said he believed “We should have implemented a policy to rally the international community to protect civilians and hold al-Assad accountable. Some others in the international community argued a different position, that intervention would lead to civil war. It is regrettable what happened.”
Royce said he believe ISIS had “subverted Islam,” and he called for “cooperation and engagement with Muslim community… in exposing the true nature of ISIS.” Muslims as much or more than other religious groups, Royce said, are victims of ISIS. “ISIS is a threat to every religious minority,” Royce said. “It is a threat to every religious majority, because for those who do not agree with the tenets of ISIS, as ISIS defines them, the threat is death.”
Karen Comstock, the newly selected police chief in Chino, offered her perspective of the Ahmadiyya community, removing it to a local rather than international context. She said she was “impressed” by the “Ahmadiyya community’s constant quest for peace and love but also knowledge” and the “wide ranging professional fields” the mosque’s members worked within. She said she wanted her department to “work in partnership with you to deliver peace for the community of Chino.”
Rancho Cucamonga City Councilwoman Lynne Kennedy said the Ahmadiyya’s approach represented “core beliefs that resonate for all of us. The real enemy is disease, ignorance and poverty. Those are the things we need to concentrate on. This is an opportunity to learn. This event gives us all an opportunity to come together. We know there is no lack of information, but at what point does information become knowledge and knowledge understanding? That is the key: unity among diversity. We must learn from one another. We have to be willing to embrace diversity and accept living among one another.”
Corona City Councilman Dick Haley decried the violence ISIS has engaged in but noted that violence is ubiquitous, as he was reminded recently while watching his grandchildren playing a video game involving a virtual firefight among assault weapon wielding combatants.
In the world of virtual reality and video games, a reset button can restore vanquished combatants, Haley said. Games may make life seem superficial, he said, but in the real world, “We are at war. We too suffer from peer pressure to do things or not do things.” When violence is brought to bear in the real world, Haley said, “There is no reset button.”
He said a stand against resorting to violence must be taken. “We can work together to collectively stop this,” he said. “The people of the world, all of God’s people, have to put our foot down and say we’ve had enough.”

(December 30) An appeal of the San Bernardino County Planning Commission’s December 4 vote approving Salt Lake City-based Sustainable Power Group LLC,’s 35-acre, three-megawatt solar farm to be located between Bowman Trail and Sunny Vista Road in Landers has been filed.
The Landers Association, a nonprofit social welfare organization serving the Landers community, filed the appeal with the San Bernardino Board of Supervisors, which has not yet scheduled a hearing date on the matter.
According to Michael Krantz, Vice President of the Landers Association, “The solar facility would be a blight on our rural desert community, being located on pristine land, highly visible from Reche Road, the major highway running through Landers. Migratory birds and desert tortoises are also likely to be affected.”
“Wind blown dust and sand is currently a major effect suffered by residents living near other existing solar farms in the area with very similar soil conditions, due to the disturbance of the delicate soil crust.” continued Krantz. “The Bowman Trail solar project would be equivalent to 32 football fields, likely to severely affect the quality of life for neighbors during our frequent windy days.”
The project is 2,000 feet from Reche Road which it parallels, and is on land which is at some points elevated almost 180 feet higher than Reche. Among other affected land owners within view of the site is a Buddhist retreat center, which is diagonally across the Reche/Bowman intersection.
According to Tracy Creason, an associate county planner who prepared the county land use services staff report on the project for the planning commission, “Planned facilities are proposed to include photovoltaic panels mounted at either a fixed tilt or on single axis trackers, supported by steel piers driven into the ground to an appropriate depth, as determined by soil conditions. The height of panels is proposed to range from 6 to 12 feet, in rows running north and south on the project site. The proposed design also includes inverters and transformers, mounted on small concrete pads and distributed across the site, as well as an unmanned data acquisition system to monitor and control facility operations. The project will interconnect to Southern California Edison’s existing Landers 25 kV distribution line, near the intersection of Bowman Trail and Reche Road, via a 0.4 mile gen-tie placed either overhead or underground in the public right of way along Bowman Trail.”
Creason noted that “The current general plan land use designation for the project area is Homestead Valley Community Plan/Rural Living – 5 acre minimum parcel size (HV/RL-5). This designation allows development of renewable energy generation facilities with a conditional use permit, as requested by the project applicant.”
In approving the project, the planning commission made a finding of consistency with applicable development standards outlined in San Bernardino County Development Code Chapter 84.29 Renewable Energy Generation Facilities, as was required by the county’s guidelines, and it further granted Sustainable Power Group the conditional use permit.
The planning commission approved the project, based on Creason’s assertion that “the proposed project is considered consistent with the county general plan, the development code, and Homestead Valley Community Plan. Overall, the project is largely obscured from the view of nearby residences by existing natural vegetation common to the area. The proposed project will, however, alter views from immediately adjacent areas. Visual impacts will be reduced by the proposed relocation of selected Joshua trees, branched pencil cholla and cottontop cactus from within the project site to the site perimeter. Due to the proposed area to be enhanced, intervening vegetation, and the height of project facilities, project structures would not dominate the horizon or significantly modify the overall visual landscape.”
Creason’s report also stated that “The proposed project will assist in meeting the renewable resource targets for retail sellers of electricity in California and is consistent with the state’s greenhouse gas emissions goals. Therefore staff recommends approval of the project.”
After the planning commission’s December 4 vote, roughly 60 Landers residents gathered at Belfield Hall on December 13to hear a presentation on the project from a representative of Sustainable Power Group.
After the meeting, the residents present unanimously approved an appeal of the December 4 planning commission approval.
The Bowman Trail Project is one of the first commercial solar projects to be approved by the planning commission after the board of supervisors lifted a moratorium on solar projects in December 2013 by enacting a special ordinance with restrictions on the siting of commercial solar power facilities in the county. Among other conditions, a project, under the county’s restrictions, must be either “separated from existing/developing rural residential areas or be “screened from public view so as not to adversely affect the desirability of …rural residential use.”
Krantz said the Landers Association expects a large turnout of Landers residents at the January 6 meeting of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, and that he anticipates they will detail their objections to the project to the board at that time.

HINKLEY—(December 30) The Lahontan Region Water Quality Control Board has approved Pacific Gas & Electric’s proposals to utilize extraction wells to limit the migration of chromium six in the water table in, at, around and below Hinkley and to conduct hydraulic testing to ascertain the effectiveness of those measures in this community that has seen its population diminish as the result of severe water contamination in the area.
On December 19, California Water Quality Control Board, Lahontan Region Assistant Executive Officer Lauri Kemper informed Kevin Sullivan, the director of chromium remediation for Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) that his team would be permitted to undertake the effort to trace the extent of the southern chromium 6 plume in Hinkley.
Three days later, In a letter dated December 22 to Sullivan, the Lahontan Region Water Quality Control Board’s executive officer, Patty Kouyoumdjian, informed PG&E its most recently formulated plan to remove chromium 6 from Hinkley’s groundwater was acceptable.
In the December 19 missive, Kemper said the water board’s prosecution team will not pursue enforcement actions against PG&E if the tests fail to achieve the data measurement the board has specified in its earlier cleanup and abatement order to the company, if the company has a contingency plan at the ready and actuates it if necessary.
Pacific Gas & Electric is under a standing order to regularly make assessments of the groundwater contamination at Hinkley and deliver that data to the Water Quality Control Board on a monthly basis.
Chromium 6 is the common name of hexavalent chromium.
Hexavalent chromium contamination in Hinkley came about as a consequence of Pacific Gas and Electric’s operation of a compressor station there beginning in 1952. The compressor station was a facility located on a pipeline that ran between Texas and Canada and delivered in excess of three billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. The compressor station in Hinkley was one of eight such stations along the line in California. Natural gas available in the line was used to fuel compressors which repressurized the gas to push it through the pipeline. At Hinkley, the compressed gas was cooled with water circulating through two cooling towers. From 1952 until 1966, hexavalent chromium, was added to the cooling water to prevent corrosion to the cooling towers and the water circulation system. Wastewater from the cooling system was disposed of in unlined ponds at the Hinkley site. Beginning in 1964, after the danger of chromium 6 was recognized, the cooling water was treated to remove the chromium before it was disposed in the pools and a non-chromium-based additive was substituted into the cooling system in 1966. As of 1972 the cooling water was pumped into lined evaporation ponds.
These improvements to the system, however, did not undo the ecological havoc that had occurred up until 1972.
In 1988, the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, which oversees water quality issues in that portion of the desert, issued a cleanup and abatement order to PG&E to investigate a plume of chromium 6 in the water table. In 1991, the water board issued permits to treat the contaminated groundwater using land treatment units.
In 1993, attorney Ed Masry, with whom Erin Brockovich, a Hinkley resident, was working, filed a multi-plaintiff direct action suit against PG&E, alleging contamination of the town’s drinking water and untoward consequences of that pollution. In 1996, the case was settled for $333 million, the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit until that time. In 2000, the matter became an international cause célèbre, with the release of the blockbuster movie Erin Brockovich, which related a substantially accurate version of events in Hinkley. Contrary to widespread public assumptions, Pacific Gas & Electric’s payment of the $333 million did not redress the underlying problem. Masry and his law firm netted over $100 million in legal fees. Only a few of the plaintiffs received more than $100,000. No physical solution to the contamination problem was effectuated.
In 1997 and 2004, the water board reissued follow-up permits to PG&E for the use of land treatment units in the treatment of the contaminated groundwater around Hinkley. In 2006, with the Hinkley groundwater contamination issue fading from public consciousness, the water board gave permits for two subterranean remediation systems to clean up the source and central areas of the plume. In 2008, however, the issue was resurrected as one of regional and local concern when, amidst the water board’s provision of a permit for Pacific Gas & Electric to apply additional cleanup measures, it issued redrafted cleanup and abatement orders. Steadily over the last six years, the condition of the lingering contamination in Hinkley has grown into a larger and larger public issue as evidence of how the underground plume of chromium 6 continues to migrate through the water table into the area from which local wells draw water used for household purposes has emerged.
On August 6, 2008, the Water Quality Control Board issued an order to PG&E to clean up and abate waste discharges containing hexavalent chromium and total chromium to groundwater in the area in, around and under Hinkley. The order called upon Pacific Gas & Electric to put in place a remediation program to reduce the chromium to background levels and set an interim maximum background level of 4 parts per billion.
On March 14, 2012, the board intensified the requirements pertaining to PG&E so that hydraulic containment of chromium-affected groundwater south of Thompson Road in Hinkley was effectuated. Part of the strategy Pacific Gas & Electric proposed was utilizing a groundwater extraction system involving drawing water from certain wells situated in the basin to prevent further plume migration.
Nearly three months ago, on October 3, PG&E proposed undertaking hydraulic testing in the northern area of the southern chromium plume. According to the Lahontan report, recent monitoring data indicated some of the remedial actions have been effective at hydraulic containment and at either reducing or stabilizing the chromium containment area.
According to Kouyoumdjian’s December 22 letter, however, chromium 6 has migrated from the upper end of the aquifer to the lower aquifer, raising the hexavalent chromium concentrations there above the current drinking water standards.
Kouyounmdjian said that in the 36 months from July 2011 to July 2014, the concentration of chromium 6 increased from 9 to 19 parts per billion in water drawn from a location in the lower aquifer at Acacia Street east of Mountain View Road. In addition, hexavalent chromium concentrations increased between 2013 and 2014 from 7.8 to 24 parts per billion in a monitoring well in the lower aquifer located southeast of Santa Fe Avenue and Mountain View Road.
On November 6 of this year, Pacific Gas & Electric proposed initiating extraction at selected wells to provide containment of the plume if data from monitoring wells showed increasing hexavalent chromium concentrations outside or within the identified plume.
Environmental consultants working with PG&E, Arcadis and CH2M, have called for increasing extraction at certain points in the aquifer and increasing extraction at other positions to stabilize the plume.

(January 1) Star Moffatt, who is vying to replace Steve Knight as 21st District State Senator, this week enunciated her commitment to hold the line against any erosion of Second Amendment rights by the California Legislature.
In recent years, sportsmen and advocates for the preservation of Constitutional protections have expressed alarm over efforts within several state legislatures, including both the state senate and assembly in California, to enact gun control laws that nibble at the corners of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and presage future efforts to compromise citizens’ rights to bear arms.
“I am pro-Second Amendment,” Moffatt said in declaring her belief that citizens’ ability to arm themselves should be held sacrosanct. .
“Proven statistics are now showing that gun ownership is actually helping to protect citizens from crime, because most sheriff and police departments are underfunded, overworked and underpaid. Due to underfunding, most sheriff and police departments can only be so many places at one time.”
Moffatt said she would, if elected, attempt to persuade her colleagues to enact legislation that would keep the Second Amendment from being contradicted by state law.
“Should I have the blessings of our citizens to be elected as your next state senator, I will introduce Second Amendment legislation to mirror the Federal Second Amendment so there can be no mistake about the direction and intent of any gun safety regulation the legislature takes up in the future.”
Moffatt, who spent six years in the United States Army, said she is pro-Second Amendment because “gun ownership is a fundamental right enshrined in the United States Constitution, which many have forgotten. Furthermore, the ability of the citizens to arm themselves is for protection. We as Americans need to be self-sufficient and not rely on the government for self defense. We need to defend ourselves, our homes, our businesses, our families and those weaker than ourselves.”
Moffatt also said lawmakers need to recognize the values the United States was founded on remain positive attributes “We should reinforce those values,” Moffatt said. “The Second Amendment was one of those values, the need and responsibility to carry and maintain weapons. Within the Constitution, the Second Amendment created a right to bear arms, to protect ourselves from enemies, both foreign and domestic. You and I as everyday citizens have to uphold multiple laws on a daily basis. Our state government as a whole is also required to abide by all state and federal laws, and in this particular case, uphold the federal law applicable to the Second Amendment. It is an appalling fact that the state government is not upholding the Second Amendment and is doing everything within its powers to corrupt and destroy our Constitutional Rights to bear arms.”
Moffatt said she supports the issuance of concealed carry weapons permits as a fall back solution. She noted the wording in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling which struck down California’s concealed weapons rules, saying they “violate the Second Amendment right to bear arms.” Said Moffatt, “This ruling now helps us to recognize that we have a Constitutional Right to protect ourselves with guns.”
Characterizing herself as a conservative Democrat, Moffatt said she intended to build on the basis of her 2012 run for the same state senate position, in which she garnered just under 43 percent of the vote. Five others, Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris, Hesperia Mayor Eric Schmidt, Apple Valley-based entrepreneur Sal Chavez and former state senator Sharon Runner, all of whom are Republicans, are contemplating their own candidacies to replace Knight, who was elected to Congress in November. Knight’s Congressional victory left the 21st District, straddles San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties and covers portions of the Victor, Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys, vacant. Nearly two years remain on Knight’s term.

(December 31) Ontario officials have raised the specter of racism and ethnic prejudice in their effort to convince the California Public Utilities Commission to order Southern California Edison to scrap its current plans to construct an above-ground electrical transmission line across the southern portion of the city and instead bury that high capacity cable below ground.
Trying to replicate the rather improbable success the city of Chino Hills had in persuading the California Public Utilities Commission to force Southern California Edison to underground the 500 kilovolt electrical lines that are part of its Tehachapi Renewable Energy Project traversing that city, Ontario officials have now filed with the commission a petition and an amended petition to modify the massive utility corridor through the southern portion of its city, where the city intends to complete the so-called New Colony retail and residential subdivisions, which will entail the addition of roughly 12,000 residents once it is completed.
The 173-mile Tehachapi line is intended to connect what is planned as the world’s largest windfarm, consisting of hundreds of electricity-producing windmills in Kern County, with the Los Angeles metropolitan basin.
The Public Utilities Commission in 2009 over the city of Chino Hills’ protest granted Southern California Edison clearance to erect high-tension power transmission towers through the 44.7-square mile city at the extreme southwest corner of San Bernardino County along a long-existing power corridor easement owned by the utility.
In 2011, after Southern California Edison had already expended millions of dollars in erecting 18 of the 197-foot high transmission towers within the Chino Hills city limits, the California Public Utilities Commission issued an order to Southern California Edison to halt work on the project while the commission’s staff looked into the possibility of bringing the towers down and instead having Edison bury the transmission lines beneath the power corridor running through Chino Hills.
In July 2013, the California Public Utilities Commission voted 3-2 in favor of requiring Southern California Edison to underground high-voltage power lines for the 3.5 miles of the five miles they run through Chino Hills.
Well over a year after commissioners Michael Peevey, Mark Ferron and Catherine Sandoval effectively undid a four-year standing vote of the Public Utilities Commission that gave Edison go-ahead to string 500 kilovolt cables from the towers running through the heart of upscale Chino Hills, Ontario on October 31, 2014 filed a petition for modification of the Tehachapi line design in its jurisdiction with the public utility commission.
According to Joshua Nelson and John Brown of the law firm Best Best & Krieger, who represent the city of Ontario, “The actual impacts of the line are greater than anticipated [and] the impacts to the city of Ontario are the same or worse than those in Chino Hills,” such that “fundamental fairness and equal protection requires treating the city of Ontario and Chino Hills the same.”
Southern California Edison, through its attorneys, Beth Gaylor, Angela Whatley and Laura Zagar of the San Diego-based law firm of Perkin Coie, responded.
In turn, Ontario, through its attorneys, Joshua Nelson and John Brown of the law firm Best Best & Krieger, filed an amended petition.
According to Gaylor, Whatley and Zagar, Ontario’s delay in making its protest to the above-ground design of the utility corridor through its territory, seven years after Edison previewed the design and five years after the public utilities commission held hearings on the proposal, is requesting too much too late.
“In July 2009, the commission held ten days of evidentiary hearings with over 25 witnesses, which involved numerous parties, extensive witness testimony, hundreds of pages of briefing, and oral argument,” Gaylor, Whatley and Zagar wrote in their December 5, 2014 response. “Ontario did not participate in these proceedings. Ontario’s petition for modification is procedurally defective and attempts to relitigate issues already decided by the commission. There are no new facts or evidence warranting the extraordinary relief Ontario requests.”
Furthermore, according to Gaylor, Whatley and Zagar, the commission’s rule pertaining to protests of commission decisions and rehearings “requires a petitioner to file a petition for modification within one year of the effective date of the decision it seeks to modify. Ontario does not provide a compelling reason for its failure to participate in the commission’s initial review of the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project or the commission’s reevaluation of Chino Hill’s petition for undergrounding. A party that has not engaged in the proceedings should not be able to derail this crucial project at such a late stage in development.”
According to Nelson and Brown, however, “the city of Ontario’s delay was justified as the facts supporting its petition for modification were unknown. The actual effects of the line were not known until they [i.e., the towers] began to be constructed. Construction began within the city of Ontario after April this year. Once these facts were known, the city promptly filed its undergrounding petition. Moreover, the city was not aware that similar communities would be treated differently until [the commission’s July 2013 decision] provided an undergrounding exemption for Chino Hills.” Nelson and Brown assert that “while the city of Ontario did not participate in [the 2009 decision to approve the Tehachapi line] as a formal party, it submitted numerous California Environmental Quality Act comment letters throughout the process. The adverse impacts of this line, which only became clear after its partial construction, occur within the city of Ontario. In addition, the city previously limited its participation in this proceeding for economic reasons.
Chino Hills spent $1.8 million during the initial proceeding with another $2 million on the petition. While the city of Ontario appreciates that jurisdiction’s decision to participate fully in the proceeding and the result it obtained, $3.8 million is a significant sum of money that the city of Ontario simply could not spend at that time. However, now that the true impacts of the lines are apparent and an effort to ensure equal treatment for its residents, the city will spend the public resources necessary to achieve a similar result. Undergrounding [the transmission line] through Chino Hills without undergrounding portions through the city of Ontario is fundamentally unfair and raises concerns that similarly situated communities have been treated fundamentally differently by the commission. There is simply no reasonable rationale basis for requiring Southern California Edison’s ratepayers (i.e., the community at large) to share the cost of undergrounding through the city of Chino Hills while requiring the city of Ontario’s residents to solely bear the impacts of the aboveground portions of [the transition line].”
According to Nelson and Brown, the positive outcome Chino Hills obtained in its petition to the California Public Utilities Commission must be replicated in Ontario to avert the manifestation of favoritism along racial lines.
“While the city of Ontario does not attribute any personal animus to the commission or its staff, these concerns are compounded given the racial and economic disparities between the communities,” according to Nelson and Brown. “Based on the 2010 Census, the city of Ontario’s population is 163,924. The median income in the city of Ontario is $54,994, with 16.4% of the population living below the federal poverty line. By contrast, Chino Hills’ population is 74,799. The median income is $97,065, with 6.3% of the population living below the federal poverty line. Moreover, the decision not to underground the lines in the city of Ontario has a discriminatory impact on the Hispanic and African American populations in the city of Ontario. The census tracts affected by the Tehachapi Renewable Enegy Transmission Project in the city of Ontario have a significantly greater proportion of Hispanic and African American residents than do the affected census tracts in Chino Hills. In Chino Hills, where the Tehachapi Renewable Energy Transmission Project will be undergrounded, the affected population is 22.8% Hispanic and 4.6% African American. In contrast, in Ontario, where the Tehachapi Renewable Enegy Transmission Project’s 200 foot towers will be visible from the residents’ backyards, the affected population is 49.5% Hispanic and 14.1% African American. Given the demographic differences between the communities, their disparate treatment is especially concerning. Whether through less access to resources or otherwise, the residents of Ontario were unable to mount the exorbitantly expensive campaign necessary to underground the segment through the city. It is unfair and a denial of equal protection to penalize the city’s residents. As such, basic notions of fundamental fairness mandate undergrounding the portions of [the transmission line] through the city of Ontario.”
In response, Gaylor, Whatley and Zagar asserted, “What Ontario fails to disclose is that the commission directly compared the impacts of the project on Chino Hills and Ontario and concluded that the impacts in Chino Hills were not the same as those experienced in Ontario. This conclusion formed the basis of the commission’s decision to order undergrounding only in Chino Hills. The commission also considered the environmental justice arguments Ontario now raises in its petition and specifically rejected those arguments.”

(December 30) San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Lieutenant Donny Mahoney will replace captain Rick Ellis as the station commander of the Twin Peaks sheriff’s station, effective January 6.
Ells, a San Bernardino Mountain community resident, has been the Twin Peaks station commander since March 2012, when he departed from his previous assignment as second in command of the sheriff’s department’s office in the city of Highland.
Mahoney, who had previously served in the United States Air Force, has been with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department since 1992.

Earlier, I dropped 4,100 feet in elevation to do some business in the county seat and hunt down a few juicy political tidbits for my column. I have a few sources who are “in the know” around the halls of power in San Bernardino. I’ll tell you, though, one of these tipsters is bound to get me into trouble. Why do I get the feeling when I walk the corridors of power in San Bernardino that I’m cavorting with the wrong guys? As you will see below, government around here, it seems, is shot through with small time hoods who would be better associated with the numbers rackets than looking after the public’s affairs. I have now come back limp and tired to the chalet in Lake Arrowhead, where the hearth and my heart is, home. I went straightaway to my typewriter, and have returned to the grind of churning out a column…
According to my spies inside the county, high level officials there have closed what appears to be a dubious deal with the city of Adelanto to – and I am not quite sure what the right word is – transfer, exchange, trade, or divert – over $700,000 in community development block grant funds the city previously obtained for doing repairs and upgrades at the Hardy Fire Station and the city’s sports park to the county. In exchange, the county is to give Adelanto a similar amount of credit toward the city’s contract for law enforcement with the county sheriff’s department…
Community Development Block Grants are funds provided to local jurisdictions by the federal government, that is, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Recipients of the grants are required to hold public meetings to solicit input from the community, and are provided to local jurisdictions based upon their representations that they will utilize the money for the general purpose of improving the community…
The funds are subject to less federal oversight than many other programs. Nevertheless, the federal money is offered up with an expectation that it is going to be put to use on specific local needs.
What the county and Adelanto have worked out is a – can I use the term diversion? – of the block grant money to a purpose for which it was never intended. That money was supposed to be used for tangible improvements – capital improvements – to the city’s existing facilities, to benefit its citizens. It is now going to be used to pay the salaries of county employees, although officially the sheriff is supposed to use the money for making some of its facilities, including its detention center in Adelanto, accessible to the handicapped. So what will happen is the sheriff will then divert money intended for something else entirely to paying for deputies to patrol the streets and neighborhoods of Adelanto. I wholeheartedly support stepped up police activity, especially in a place like Adelanto. However, the means by which this is being accomplished is questionable, involving a series of diversions as one diversion begets another diversion and that diversion begets yet another…
When people who are not government officials use money contrary to its intended or approved purpose, they can get into trouble. It might be called misappropriation, which is a delicate way of saying stealing. Regular people go to jail or prison for diverting funds…
Very soon, I suspect, I will get a call or a letter from someone – maybe even a lawyer – who will endeavor to explain to me through my ignorance how there is nothing wrong with this deal and that it is just a creative way of achieving financial flexibility and using money where it is most needed and that this is a completely justifiable way of redistributing scarce money from one useless or obsolete endeavor to a more meaningful or necessary one. This is much like one hood rationalizing how the money in some mark’s pocket would be put to a way better use if it were in his own.,,

By Mark Gutglueck
The city of Montclair evolved out of what was originally called the Monte Vista Land Tract, which was created by Los Angeles land developer Emil Ferth. The Monte Vista Land Tract was 1,000 acres that extended from the wash on the north, to the railroad tracks near State Street on the south, eventually expanding southward to Phillips Avenue. A settlement nearby was that of Narod, at a latitude 34.058 and longitude of 117.685, located between what is today Benson Avenue and Vernon Avenue just north of Mission Boulevard. Narod included a dry goods store, a hotel, a packing house and the Little White Church of Narod. Two pumping plants provided water along with cisterns. About fifteen families were spread around in various locations in the land tract. Most of the houses were wood frame duplicates of those from back east Most were hidden by orange groves. The roads were oiled rather than paved. Mission Avenue was a through street. Horses and buggies were the most common form of transportation at that time, although a local train from the Salt Lake Line would stop and take passengers to Pomona or Ontario. The quality of goods at Narod Market attracted shoppers from Ontario and Pomona. Farmers provided local markets with fruit and vegetables. Old Monte Vista School was in place during the first decade of the 20th Century, but was moved to Holt Avenue around 1911 or 1912 . Afterwards parents hired a man to take children to Chino Schools. The following year Ontario sent out busses for the students.
The Monte Vista Land Tract grew on the northwest but the northeast boundary with Ontario remained sparse. The constantly overflowing wash on the north made that area an unpredictable place to reside. Twenty inches of rain caused it to overflow in 1916.
In 1927, the Monte Vista area was covered with orange and lemon groves. Houses were no closer to one another than a half mile away . A group of men headed by C. Earl Wetherbee, who was the secretary of the Limited Mutual Water Company, which delivered irrigation water to the orange and lemon groves, concluded that water should also be furnished for domestic purposes. Those in Monte Vista were drinking, cooking with and bathing in irrigation water stored in their own cisterns normally located at the high end of their groves. This would give each house about five pounds of water pressure.
The service area of the Limited Mutual Irrigation Company was bounded by 8th Street , known as Arrow Highway, on the north, Central Avenue on the West, Benson Avenue on the East and San Bernardino Avenue on the south. The remaining area now known as the Monte Vista County Water District bounded by the Santa Fe Rairoad tracts on the north the San Bernardino County line on the west, Benson Avenue on the Ontario City Limits on the east and Francis Avenue on the south were served by the Palomares Water Company, the Monte Vista Water company, the Century Water company and the Monte Vista Irrigation Company and several privately owned wells. Many of those in the area who were not served by the Limited Mutual Water Company heard of the creation of a domestic water company and asked to be included.
Petitions to form the new entity were sent out on June 1, 1927. seeking permission to set up a water district under the general laws of the state of California. The original name of Narod for the district was dropped and the name Monte Vista was adopted. The initial elected board members of the district were C. Earl Wetherbee, V.C. Wecks, G.W. Naftel, O.V. Barr and A.B. Tato. Wetherbee was selected board chairman. W. Hartley, manger of the West Ontario Citrus Association, was appointed secretary of the board. The board obtained a 122 to 2 vote of those within the district to pass a $75,000 bond. The money was used to build a reservoir on land owned by the Limited Mutual Irrigation Company with a 49-year lease. Also purchased were 60 shares of water stock at $100 per share in the Limited Mutual Irrigation Company, which entitled the Monte Vista Water Company to fill the reservoir. On May 28, 1928 a contract was let for main lines and services to the West Coast Pipe and Steel Company. L. H. Kreigh was hired as field superintendent and secretary of the company During the month of November 1928 those lines that were under contract were completed and paid for. That month the district sold 3,501,000 gallons of water for domestic use. In 1929, the district operations had grown to the point that it had insufficient reservoir capacity and had to undertake to build another reservoir.
In 1937, the worst freeze in the history of Montclair hit in January. The fruit was saved by smudge burning. In 1938 a huge flood racked the area, bringing debris down from Mount San Antonio. Water damage to homes and underground tanks occurred.
In 1946, the Limited Mutual Water company was unable to supply the district with enough water, so it was necessary for the Monte Vista Water District to develop it own supplemental water supply. A new pump and gas engine was installed to obtain water form a well drilled in 1935 and which had never been used. The district began pumping water directly into its system.
In 1950, the Monte Vista County Fire Department opened its first fire station on land provided by the Monte Vista County Water District and the West Ontario Citrus Association.
On April 10, 1956 the residents in the district voted to incorporate the municipality of Monte Vista District as a general law city, and selected five men to form the first city council James West, who was an orange grower and pest control company operator was chosen mayor. Paul Fremo, a real estate broker and builder; Miller Buchanan, a poultryman; Dana Pankey, a minister; and Glen Wolfe, the proprietor of an equipment sales and rental business were elected to the council. Two years later the city’s name would be changed to Montclair. The council held informal meetings at West’s home. The city’s first address was Post Office Box 867 in Pomona. After several meetings at West’s home, the council met with representatives of the League of California Cities. They selected a building owned by Phil Hurst at 5326 San Bernardino Avenue as the council’s meeting place. They hired Henry Busch as Montclair’s city attorney, setting up May 8, 1956 as the first official meeting date of the city council. On April 25, 1956 Montclair was certified by the state of California as a general law city.
The council chose Larry O’Rourke, who had been acting as city administrator in Tehachapi for fifteen months, to serve as the city administrator and clerk.
West subsequently praised O’Rourke as “a brilliant young Irishman who not only proved to be an excellent administrator but also a hard worker who was willing do such menial tasks as painting the floor of the city hall one weekend, Kelly green, of course! He was a patient and thorough teacher of government procedures. None of us were schooled in the field of government.”
That council at its maiden meeting did a “voluminous amount of work,” adopting such resolutions as certifying the boundaries of the city and creating a planning commission and adopting several emergency ordinances setting up a special gas tax fund, creating wholesale and retail business licenses and setting a retail sales tax and a use tax. “We had to have income to run our new city,” West said in 1963.

Darkling beetle is the common name of the large family of beetles, Tenebrionidae. Tenebrionidae are cosmopolitan, living on every continent with the possible exception of Antartica, though through human transport this bug may have spread there as well.
The number of species in the Tenebrionidae is estimated at more than 20,000.
The name Tenebrionidae was given to these beetles by Linnaeus in his 10th edition of Systema Naturae in1758-59 and means roughly: “those that seek dark places.” Darkling beetles are thus beetles which dwell in the dark.
Most species do inhabit dark places, but there are exceptions. Some species of Tenebrionidae in genera such as Stenocara and Onymacris are active by day and inactive at night. The family Tenebrionidae includes a large number of species in an immensely varied range of forms, thus presenting challenges in making comprehensive classifications. As of 2005, Alleculinae Laporte, 1840; Cossyphodinae Wasmann, 1899; Diaperinae Latreille, 1802; Lagriinae Latreille, 1825 (1820); Nilioninae Lacordaire, 1859; Phrenapatinae Solier, 1834; Pimeliinae Latreille, 1802; Stenochiinae Kirby, 1837; Tenebrioninae Latreille, 1802; and Zolodininae Watt, 1974 were largely accepted as subfamilies for taxanomic purposes.
The Tenebrionidae may be identified by a combination of features, which include 11-segmented antennae that may be filiform, moniliform, or weakly clubbed, its first abdominal sternite entire and not divided by the hind coxae, eyes notched by a frontal ridge, tarsi which have four segments in the hind pair and five in the fore and mid legs, with simple tarsal claws.
Many darkling beetles feed on plant matter, some on fresh and some on decaying vegetation; some are generalist feeders on detritus, whether of animal or plant material.
Species within the Tenebrionidae occupy various ecological niches and accordingly are important resources for ranges of predators and parasitoids in the food chain, including birds, rodents, reptiles, and arthropods such as sun spiders, Hymenoptera and Acari.
Some species live in intensely dry deserts, and have evolved adaptions by which they collect droplets of fog that deposit on their elytra. As the droplets accumulate the water drains down the beetles’ backs to their mouthparts, where they swallow it.
In the Mojave Desert, a species of the genus Eleodes (particularly E. obscurus) are well known as “pinacate beetles” or “desert stink beetles.”

Do you have special knowledge about San Bernardino County’s wildlife? If you want to share what you know with others, you can do so by becoming a Sentinel contributor and writing an occasional county wildlife corner column. Call Mark at (909) 957 9998 to see how you can become a published columnist.