A British company is proposing erecting several score of 195-foot high wind turbines in the desert north of Yucca Valley on Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa north of Pipes Canyon Road between Pioneertown and Yucca Mesa.
London-based Element Power, which has its main North American office in Portland, Oregon, is doing exploratory work to determine whether it will seek to permit the project under the aegis of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which calls for 33 percent of California’s commercially-produced electricity sales to be provided by renewable sources by 2020. Element believes that if it applies under the plan, its permits will be expedited.
In July 2011, Element Power erected two 197-foot high towers to conduct meteorological tests to collect data on wind speed and direction at that height at that location. The Bureau of Land Management in 2010 gave Element permission to build those towers. Element hopes to determine from that data whether building a wind farm at that location will prove commercially viable.
While some endorse the concept of aggressive corporate efforts to develop renewable energy and certain environmentalists embrace the wind farm concept, others, including some environmentalists, are opposed to the project proposal.
Some opponents cite the harm they perceive the placement of turbines will have on the desert vista. They and others find objectionable the harm they say the wind turbines will have on eagles, bats, and other birds that fly through or inhabit the area. Another point of protest hinges on  the possible destruction of Native American rock art and other archeological artifacts in the area. Other critics point out that the remote location of the wind field will require that the electricity be transported a considerable distance, and that a considerable percentage of the energy will be lost during that line transport.
If Element Power elects to proceed with the project, it will need to erect eight miles of transmission lines and towers to deliver the energy to the California Power Grid’s existing electrical transmission lines.
Three groups opposed to the project on environmental grounds, the California Desert Coalition, Save Our Desert, and the Center for Biological Diversity, are seeking to have that portion of the desert which was identified as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern in the Desert Protection Act introduced to Congress in 2011 extended to include Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa.
There is also potential opposition to the project by another, non-environmentally-oriented group –  the Marine Corps. The Department of the Navy is seeking to expand the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base’s Desert Warfare Training Grounds west into Johnson Valley and military officials have concerns the towers could prevent aircraft from hugging the terrain as they carry out low-flying training missions in support of ground maneuvers.

TWENTYNINE PALMS —In reaction to a recommendation by the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission, the Twentynine Palms Water District Board of Directors on June 27 voted to initiate the process of divesting the area’s fire district from the water district.
After the California Department of Forestry ceased providing local fire service in 1958, the Twentynine Palms Water District extended its responsibilities to include fire protection, thus beginning a 54-year-run of overseeing the fire department that has grown now to include two fire stations. But the cost of running the fire department now exceeds the special revenues provided to the water district to maintain the service and in April, residents within the water district’s service area rejected a ballot initiative, Measure H, which would have levied a special fire service assessment on all water district customers.
According to fire chief Jim Thompson, the fire department’s only alternative to balance its books at this point is to shutter either the fire station in downtown Twentynine Palms or the one on Lear Avenue, which provides first response for most of the unincorporated county area within the water department’s jurisdiction.
The Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), which oversees jurisdictional issues throughout the county, in its five-year service review of Twentynine Palms delivered on May 7, 2012 stated that the demands of operating the fire district are now outrunning the water district’s funding ability. The report, authored by LAFCO executive officer Kathleen Rollings-McDonald, assistant executive officer Samuel Martinez and project manager Michael Tuerpe, said LAFCO’s review of the water district’s financial books “identifies a significant deficiency in funding” such that “the water district’s fire operations are unsustainable as presently financed.”
Rollings-McDonald on May 24 told the water district’s board members that the district would have to overcome the financial challenges facing the fire department, or cede control of the department to another entity by July 1, 2013. She said the water district could either on its own spin the downtown station off to the city of Twentynine Palms and the Lear Avenue station to the county fire division and thereby surrender the special tax to both of those entities or in the alternative invite the county fire division to expand its sphere of influence and annex the water district’s territory for the purpose of providing fire service, complete with an arrangement to have the county inherit the special tax.
Last week, the entire water board, with director Nicholas “Bo” Bourikas not present but voting in absentia in writing, moved to pursue filing an application, at a processing cost of $15,400, with the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission to sever fire service from the district.
The fire department has continued to provide fire protection to all areas within Twentynine Palms’ city limits after the city’s 1987 incorporation. The city does not contribute to, participate in or subsidize the fire department’s operational budget. Theoretically, fire department finances are independent of the water district, with water rates totally devoted to the provision of water to customers. Fire department operations are defrayed entirely by a special tax on properties throughout the service area of the department.
The water district’s boundaries and the city limits are not coterminous, as the water district serves areas outside the city as well as within it.
In 2007, the city and the district began earnest discussion of annexing the fire department to the city, and formed a Joint Agency Fire Department Committee to look into the matter. On June 9, 2009, then-city manager Michael Tree told the council that if the transfer were to be made it would be best to do it totally and in one fell swoop rather than in stages. But because of complications with regard to the authority for the special tax and the formula for the distribution of tax revenues, as well as the discrepancy between the city limits and the district’s service area, the city elected to forego the takeover.
While the city remains reluctant to annex the fire department in total, if forced to take on the downtown station it could employ its own firefighters to man it or contract with the county or the California Division of Forestry, also known as Cal Fire.

A woman who was recently promoted to the position of  captain with the Redlands fire department has sued the city, its fire chief and two battalion chiefs, alleging she was thrice earlier denied that promotion on the basis of gender discrimination.
Eva Toppos, 36, who went to work with the Redlands Fire Department in June 2001, was named firefighter of the year in 2008 and  was promoted to engineer in July 2009, alleges she twice, in 2009 and 2011, tested at the forefront of her colleagues who were vying for the position of fire captain but was not promoted. She claims that when she applied to take part in the competition for an open captain position in 2007, she was not permitted to do so.
In Toppos’ suit, her attorney, Michael McGill, asserts that fire chief Jeff Frazier in 2009 told her she had “performed exceptionally but would not be respected as a captain because she is a woman” and in 2011 Frazier told her she had finished second and there was nothing about her performance that needed to be improved upon. According to Toppos, Frazier assured her she would eventually be promoted if she continued in the capacity of “engineer for another year or two and let the guys get used to the idea of a female captain.”
According to the suit, “Plaintiff was not promoted even though she had more experience than the two firefighters that were promoted.”
McGill maintains Toppos experienced retaliation and harassment for complaining, including being subjected to rumors of her having affairs with some of her colleagues, which she believed may have led to two stress-induced miscarriages. She was also subjected to obloquy for taking maternity leave, according to the suit.
“Plaintiff’s gender was a motivating reason for the actions taken against plaintiff,” McGill states in the suit.
The suit was filed on June 11. Almost simultaneously, Toppos received a promotion to fire captain.
In its response, the city denied all of the allegations in the lawsuit. Redlands officials would not respond to questions about whether Toppos’ promotion was made before or after the lodging of the lawsuit or whether the promotion was given in response to the suit.

SAN BERNARDINO—Graduation rates among high school seniors throughout San Bernardino County increased by 3.5 percent in the 2010-11 academic year, the California Department of Education announced this week.
While the 74 percent graduation rate in San Bernardino County trailed the statewide average of 76.3 percent, the graduation rates among Hispanic and African- American students were higher in San Bernardino County than statewide averages.
The Department of Education’s figures did not include statistics from the just-concluded 2011-12 academic year, making those for 2010-11 the most recently available. According to the data, the county’s overall graduation rate, which stood at 71.5 percent in 2009-10, advanced 3.5 percent to 74 percent in 2010-11. In comparison, the state averaged 74.8 percent graduates in 2009-10 and saw a 1.5 percent improvement to 76.3 percent in 2010-11.
The graduation rates for African-American high school students in San Bernardino County jumped significantly between 2009-10 and 2010-11, rising 6.5 percent from 60.5 percent to 67 percent, putting them at 4.1 percent above average for all black students in California.
Hispanic students in San Bernardino County also made significant strides in fulfilling educational goals. In San Bernardino County, Latino students bettered the graduation rate for Hispanic students statewide, posting an average of 71.4 percent, which eclipsed the California average of 70.4 percent.
The graduation rate for Caucasians in San Bernardino County was 81 percent in 2010-11, an improvement of 3.7 percent over the 77.3 percent recorded in 2009-10, but nevertheless behind the state average of 85.5 percent.
San Bernardino County’s statistics with regard to the converse of graduation, i.e., dropout frequency, also showed an improvement.
The dropout rates for the county’s black students dropped 5.5 percent to 20.2 percent, encouragingly under the state average of 24.7 percent.
The Hispanic student dropout rate in the county was 17 percent, which was 0.7 percent lower than the statewide trend.
The dropout rate for white students fell from 14.8 percent in 2009-10 to 10.7 percent, an improvement but still an unfavorable comparison to the overall state rate of 8.9 percent for 2010-11.
Among county students for whom English is a second language, graduation rates improved 2.5 percent to 60 percent, putting the county just off the state average of 60.3 percent. Socioeconomically disadvantaged students in San Bernardino County who graduated increased 4.6 percent from 65 percent in 2009-10 to a graduation rate of 69.6 percent in 2010-11, just behind the rest of the state, which averaged 70 percent.

VICTORVILLE—A jury this week acquitted a 20-year-old Las Vegas man of gross vehicular manslaughter and deadlocked on the lesser charge of negligent vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated in regard to the death of California Highway Patrol  Officer Justin McGrory.
Rafael Garcia was driving a car with four passengers in the early morning of June 27, 2010 as they were returning to Las Vegas from Los Angeles when the vehicle plowed into McGrory, who was conducting a traffic stop on the right shoulder of northbound I-15 roughly a mile south of Hodge Road.
In  an interrogation by investigators after the accident, Garcia acknowledged he had smoked marijuana several hours before beginning the drive back to Las Vegas. A subsequent blood test showed there were cannabinoids in his system. Garcia said he had started to fall asleep at the wheel, but continued driving while using the car’s cruise control.
One of the passengers in the vehicle had a medical marijuana prescription and a search of the car turned up about two-and-a-half ounces of marijuana.
After deliberations lasting three-and-a-half days, the jurors made findings of not guilty of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated with marijuana, not guilty of gross vehicular manslaughter and not guilty of child endangerment of a juvenile who was in the car. The panel split 9-3 in favor of acquittal on a charge of negligent vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated
The jury did rule Garcia guilty of transporting marijuana after trial judge Eric Nakata refused to allow Michael Becker, Garcia’s attorney, to inform the jury that one of his passengers who had a medical prescription for marijuana was allowed to possess the drug under the terms of the Compassionate Use Act.
Becker, Garcia, and deputy district attorney Jill Gregory, who prosecuted Garcia, are due back in court on July 27 when motions from the district attorney’s office will be due on a decision of whether to proceed with a retrial of Garcia on the negligent vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated charge.

In Yucca Valley, a bastion of political conservatism where limited-government sentiment predominates, the ascendant ideology has created a circumstance in which the state is now threatening action that in the words of the town’s former mayor and current state Assemblyman Paul Cook could transform Yucca Valley into a “ghost town.”

Paul Cook

The town’s burgeoning population has created and accelerated the need for the construction of a wastewater treatment system and a demand by state regulators that locals build it. In reaction to what they perceive as heavy-handed government intrusion into their affairs, local voters have consistently elected leaders who have either outright defied or simply ignored the regulators, while consistently instituting policies that have delayed or obstructed the provision of the infrastructure.
The delays, in turn, are escalating the eventual cost of providing the infrastructure, lessening the likelihood that once the grudge match with the state is resolved, local residents will be able to bear the cost of the infrastructure.
Long a remote and rustic desert area that attracted those wishing to remain well off the beaten track, a major development in Yucca Valley’s evolution toward becoming a larger community was Norman J. Essig’s effort beginning in the 1950s to establish 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, which is 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 the remote desert beauty.
In November 1991, the town incorporated, becoming the 24th and last municipality in San Bernardino County to do so.
City officials, embodying the values of their constituents, eschewed big government and excessive regulation. Many town roads remain unpaved to this day. Other citified amenities such as wastewater treatment, are non-existent. When elements of the populace’s libertarian values clashed with popular sentiment such as the desire of some residents to maintain the town’s rural character and prevent urbanization, the issue was resolved by providing developers with carte blanche to build aggressively without incorporating urban land use standards.
The town did not undertake the construction of a municipal sewer system. Instead, the septic systems that had proliferated in Yucca Valley for a half-century remained a constant 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.
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 the previous decade, 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 risen to levels that presaged health threats if the matter was not addressed. Those contaminants included nitrates and other pollutants including pharmaceuticals and salts. Water levels are deep enough to have delayed the need for a wastewater treatment system.
In an effort to reverse severe declines in water tables resulting from limited recharge from rainfall,  the water district began importation of state aqueduct water into Yucca Valley, which in turn caused notice of the contamination.  Whereas historic pumping increases from the 1940s to 1995 resulted in the water levels dropping faster than the nitrates from septic systems seeped downward, with the completion of the Morongo Basin Pipeline project and the accompanying completion and activation of recharge basins in Yucca Valley, the Hi-Desert Water District began to percolate 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. This 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.
The imported water has actually diluted the nitrates so water tests now show 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 water supplies in the state.
Nevertheless, local officials resisted taking immediate action and refused to impose any kind of building or development moratorium that would stabilize the problem. While suspending any action at least five years into the future, the town of Yucca Valley forged 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 proceeds. The city was not able, however to stave off state-imposed septic discharge prohibitions due to be triggered as of May 19, 2016. Under that mandate, phase 1 of a wastewater system must be completed or significantly on its way to completion by that date or the state will initiate enforcement action. 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.
Currently,  finding funding remains the main focus as grants and low interest loans are sought. The Hi-Desert Water Agency, which is to undertake the project, is seeking to lead the community into an acceptance of the sewer system. The town of Yucca Valley, while evaluating for the water district various funding options for the project, in keeping with the laissez faire, minimal-governmental-interference philosophy that has traditionally been the platform of its elected leadership, until very recently has stayed  at arm’s length from the matter.
Indeed, Yucca Valley’s leading citizen, Paul Cook, who served on the Yucca Valley City Council for eight years, from 1998 until 2006, and is now serving in the California Assembly and is one of two candidates who has qualified for a run-off in the newly drawn 8th Congressional District, more than any single political entity has prevented the wastewater project from moving ahead. As the region’s representative in Sacramento, 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 has dwelled at length upon the cost of the project and what he considers his constituents’ inability to bear that cost.
“We have to look at this from some perspective of a cost analysis,” Cook 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!”
More recently, Cook has acknowledged that building the sewer system is a desirable goal, but still maintains that 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.”

Chad Mayes

Chad Mayes, the youthful mayor of Yucca Valley who championed limited government throughout his tenure in office before he resigned to become chief of staff to San Bernardino County Supervisor Janice Rutherford in 2010, was similarly opposed to imposing the intrusion and expense of creating a sewer system on the town’s residents, businesses and landowners.
Mayes’ father, the Reverend Roger Mayes, is a member of the Hi-Desert Water District Board of Directors, and a longtime advocate of limited government.
With the May 19, 2016 deadline looming, one community institution – the Hi-Desert Water District – is pushing for a transformation in the way things are handled.
Jennifer Cusack, the spokeswoman for the district, sounded an alarm about further inaction. “There is a state prohibition on the discharge from septic system as adopted by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board,” Cusack said. “There are three ways for people to comply. We can build the sewer system or they can seal off their system and pump it or they can build their own package treatment facility.”
Only the first of those three approaches has practical viability for the entire town population, she said.
“This is the solution we believe will be best for community,” Cusack said, explaining, “We have so many in the community using septic systems that we have saturated the ground with nitrates. The United States Geological Survey has studied it for a decade-and-a-half and confirmed the nitrate concentrations are from the septic systems. Right now the water we are delivering to our customers is safe, thanks to the high quality water from the Morongo pipeline.”
But recharging the aquifer with the imported water is limited due to the nitrate concentrations existing in the soil, Cusack said.
“We cannot continue to use septic systems as water moves nitrates further into the ground,” she said.
Cusack said the water district has done much of the preparatory work for the wastewater system. “In fact, our plans for a wastewater treatment system are well under way. We have done all of the environmental studies. We have clearance though the California Environmental Quality Act and National Environmental Protection Act. We have surveyed and mapped the project’s phase one and are ready to go. The collection system, consisting of over 400,000 linear feet of pipe, is the largest part of the project. It will be the most time-consuming and expensive component of phase 1 of the project. Phase 1 will protect all of the groundwater at the base of the valley. By the end of this summer we will begin the design for the collection system and it will have been paid for entirely by grants.”
Cusack acknowledged “Financing is a huge issue. There are significant costs. A high percentage of our population are retired seniors living mostly on fixed incomes who came here to live because it is an inexpensive place to retire. We have to be sensitive to that. We are seeking low interest funding though state revolving funds. We have applied for a low to no-interest loan through the state revolving fund and continue to aggressively seek grants. We have a significant need financially and have a  $20 million authorization from the Bureau of Reclamation, which will help. We are still going to need a component that comes from the residents. The question we need to answer is ‘What is the affordability threshold?’ We need to find out what the typical household in our community can afford.  We believe a majority of people understand this issue and would be willing to pay between $20 and $40 per month.”
The $125 million cost of the project could be defrayed over 30 years, Cusack said, and the debt servicing would involve loans satisfied by assessments on property owners. “Public agencies can form assessment districts,” she said.
Previous figures, which Cusack now says are dated, put each parcel’s share in the debt burden at $16,700.
“We do not have new figures, yet,” Cusack said. “We would form the assessment district to lien the properties to get a loan though state revolving funds. The assessment district would become the securing mechanism. The lien would be passed on to the next homeowner when the home is sold. We would not need to be paid until a year after construction is complete, 2017 or later.”
The formation of the assessment district would be made, Cusack said, through a mail ballot sent to the town’s property owners. A simple majority vote approving the district would result in its formation.
As of three months ago, however, there did not appear to be majority support for the assessment district’s formation. At the water district’s behest, BW Research carried out a telephone survey of property owners to measure their willingness to support an assessment of $15,000 to construct the sewer system. Thirty-two percent of respondents said they would vote in favor of the assessment district’s formation. Sixty-eight percent said they could not afford the current cost estimate.
Nevertheless, Cusack said Yucca Valley residents understand the need for the project. She said lowering the cost remains the key factor.  She cited the  previous approval of the Morongo Basin Pipeline Project as an indicator of the local population’s willingness to invest in necessary infrastructure when doing so is in the collective interest. She said that if the property owners have the facts they will make an informed decision.
One method of education is to let Yucca Valley’s residents know what will befall them if the system is not built. An illustration of that peril consists of the experience of Los Osos, California, which was under a similar order from the California Water Resources Board and failed to heed it.
“The goal is to protect our groundwater on our own and not have the state enforce its order,” Cusack said. “Los Osos became subject to an enforcement phase, which involved cease and desist orders, and that community is now building a wastewater system at a greater cost than originally planned. Enforcement is done in a lottery fashion, selecting random property owners to receive cease and desist orders with the potential of daily fines for non-compliance. They are ordered to then discontinue the discharge from their septic system, seal it off and pump it regularly. If they do not, they levy fines which can amount to up to $5,000 per day and they start by sending request letters for the homeowners to stop discharging from their septic systems. What they try to do is motivate them through their authority to solve the problem.”
Cusack admitted that there are still “some” members of the Yucca Valley community who do not believe a sewer system is needed.
“Distrust of government has created a situation where people do not realize they are hurting themselves,” she said. “We are hoping our community can educate themselves and learn we can do ourselves more harm than good by fighting this. It is true that this is a conservative community. People out here like to be left alone. But our community is able to solve problems once people understand we have problems that need to be solved. As priorities go, this is very important.  People for the most part do understand that septic systems  pollute the environment. Without safe water Yucca Valley will be a less attractive place to be. It is a fantastic place to live.”
Cusack said the community cannot afford to temporize.
“We have limited time to educate the property owners of the situation we are dealing with and get the cost low enough so it is affordable,” Cusack said. Initiating the effort now makes sense, she said, because “of the competitive construction market. The sooner we move the better. We need money to construct the project. The assessment district is the security mechanism needed to obtain the financing.”
And lead time is required on a project of this size, Cusack emphasized.  “Delays beyond an 18-to-24 month design process could result in increased costs as construction costs rise,” she said. “If we cannot get the financing by the time the design is complete, a delay in construction would be necessary and the project may not be completed by May 19, 2016. That is not a hard line date, but if we do nothing, it could lead to an enforcement phase of the regional board’s prohibition on the discharge from septic systems. The bottom line is we need to protect our groundwater.”
Yucca Valley Town Manager Mark Nuami told the Sentinel, “The town of Yucca Valley is working together with the Hi-Desert Water District in their efforts to deliver an efficient and low cost sewer system. We are pursuing grants and state funding to upgrade our local sewer systems.”
Revenue sources for the project are likely to prove elusive, Nuami said.
“State budget deficits are anticipated for years to come,” he said. “Given the legal nature of the state sewer mandate and the potential for large fines, it is our responsibility to find a solution that will create certainty, keep costs low and protect property values. We can’t continue to put this issue off to the future. A centralized sewer system is long overdue.”
Nuami concluded, “The town and Hi-Desert Water District are working together to identify funding solutions that will significantly lower the costs of the state-mandated sewer system improvements for local taxpayers.”

The motion picture and television industry has discovered Lucerne Valley as a Western-themed location. Apple Valley-based Two-Gun Productions, which touts itself as a Christian-oriented media concern, is creating an answer to the once-popular HBO offering Deadwood. The series, called “Tales of the Frontier,” features far less, or more accurately, none of the foul language which was a staple of Deadwood. The family-oriented Tales of the Frontier has yet to be picked up by HBO, but in recent weeks it has been airing on AskMilton.tv, a global Internet-based television network. Two-Gun founders Tino Luciano and Garry Lee Brooks did not have to travel to far to find backdrops for the shooting of “Tales of the Frontier.” Portions of the series pilot were filmed at Lucerne Valley’s Lazy Lizard Ranch in northern Lucerne Valley.. Luciano and Brook’s production company have also made use of the Lazy G Ranch, located in southeast Lucerne Valley as a shooting location. Two half hour episodes of Tales of the Frontier play back to back from 7:30 to 8:30 Thursday night on Ask Milton.tv.

BARSTOW—In a move toward self-sufficiency and faster response time, the city of Barstow will consolidate its fire department and police department dispatch functions.
Currently, the police department operates its own dispatch center and the fire department contracts with the county’s fire service dispatch system, known as Confire JPA Communications, which operates out of a communications center in Rialto. The contract with Confire currently runs at $179,000 per year.
The police department dispatch system fielded well over 33,000 calls of all type and order of magnitude in the last year. Roughly 10,000 of those were for emergency services most logically provided by the fire department. Those calls were immediately patched through to the Rialto Confire JPA communications system, which in turn reached a determination as to which of the Barstow Fire Protection District’s two fire stations would be the most logical first responder and second responder, and dispatched crews accordingly.
The Barstow Fire Protection District is a subsidiary district of the city. This month, the city council, acting as the governing board for the district, voted to enter into an arrangement by which the police department’s dispatch center will be expanded and the city’s contract with Confire JPA will be terminated so that the city’s dispatch center will handle all emergency calls, police, fire and medical.
The changeover will result in a one-time $164,000 cost to augment the existing police dispatch center with the requisite equipment and computer software to allow for the efficient sorting of calls and the routing of a call for action to the appropriate station.
The police department dispatch center, which already employs six full time dispatchers, will hire two more full-time dispatchers and another two part-time dispatchers. All ten will be provided with training to make them capable of dispatching in response to police, fire and medical calls and emergencies. The four new hires and training for all ten employees will cost the city an estimated $191,000 for the first year of operation.
City officials hope to have the fire department weaned off of the Confire system by September, at which point the new safety division dispatch center will be entirely up and running.
By eliminating the middle call from Barstow to Rialto, officials believe response time will be improved and that coordination between the police department and fire department will be improved, and in certain cases provide for greater safety for responders and superior response to those involved in traumatic incidents.

RANCHO CUCAMONGA—The city of Rancho Cucamonga and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department are stepping up video surveillance around Victoria Gardens.
The video cameras already in place at the popular shopping mall will be augmented with 20 more of the devices.
The images captured are displayed at a viewing station located within the sheriff’s department’s Kew Avenue quarters adjoining the AMC Theater and lying south of Cultural Center Drive and north of North Main Street.
From that vantage, a trained and quick-eyed deputy will scan the multiplex of monitors, looking for any indication of trouble or overt criminality.
The cameras are being strategically located near spots that have already shown themselves to be likely scenes of illicit activity. The deputy at the monitor, who will be tied directly into the 911 system, will be able to monitor the locations where crime has been reported, note descriptions of suspects and relay that information to a deputy or deputies in the field who have been dispatched to the scene, potentially aiding in the apprehension of a suspect or suspects.
In addition, the high-resolution cameras will record activity at all of the locations under electronic surveillance, allowing an after-the-fact review of events and suspects who escaped real time notice in the commission of their illegal acts.
The sheriff’s department and the city refer to the videotaping capability as a force multiplier and have declined to disclose the equipment’s cost or the cost of mounting it. Nor would officials discuss the locations where the cameras will be installed.
While city and sheriff’s officials and others hail the videographic devices as a safety and security enhancement, others see them as further evidence of the intrusion of government and the extension of mass surveillance,  authoritarian presence, and oppressive control of the population as was expounded upon in George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four.

RIALTO—The city of Rialto will move ahead with the outsourcing of its water and sewer operations to New Jersey-based American Water Works Co. Inc., despite outsourcing opponents’ successful gathering of sufficient petitions to force a referendum on the takeover.
City officials, guided by city attorney Jimmy Gutierrez, are referencing what they claim is a technical glitch in the circulation of those petitions for the referendum as grounds deny the request for the citywide vote.
After more than two years of contemplating an arrangement by which American Water Works Co., Inc. would take over maintenance, operation and administration sans ownership of the city’s dilapidated water and wastewater system for 30 years, the city council on March 27 voted to do just that.
Under the terms of the deal, American Water Operations and Maintenance, Inc., a division of American Water Works, was to function as a local company known as Rialto Water Services and take over operation and maintenance of the water district. The city was to retain the district’s water rights.
The for-profit company would take on all aspects of operations, maintenance and billing, effectively running both the water and sewer utilities for the next three decades.
Some water and wastewater division employees were to be allowed to transfer into the city’s engineering or public works divisions, remaining as city employees with their public pension plans intact. Others would go to work with American Water, which was to be required to guarantee those employees will remain employed for at least a year-and-a-half with salary and benefits equal to those offered by the city. That guarantee was to sunset after 18 months.
According to city officials, the company had agreed to make somewhere in the neighborhood of $45 million in upgrades to the water system. American Water has also agreed to assume all debt owed by the city’s water utility division.
In return, city officials agreed to a 114.8 percent increase in water and wastewater rates by 2016, such that the average water bill of Rialto households utilizing 17,000 gallons per month will jump from the current rate of $26.27 per month to $64.14 monthly and increase the wastewater treatment fee from $25.97 to $61.46 as of January 1, 2016.
Members of the Utility Workers of America together with citizens irate at the prospect of the rate hikes organized a signature drive to require that the outsourcing be approved by the city’s voters. The city council’s 4-1 vote with councilman Joe Baca, Jr. dissenting was an unpopular one, and a capacity crowd attended the March 27 meeting to lodge protests.  The petitions collected in April and early May requesting the referendum were handed off to the Rialto city clerk’s office on Saturday May 12,  The union submitted 6,379 signatures to meet the threshold of 3,800 valid signatures of registered voters needed to force the matter to a vote. According to the city clerk’s office, 1,545 of the signatures were determined to be invalid during a certification process conducted by the county Elections Bureau, leaving 4,834 valid signatures, which seemingly qualified the call for a referendum.
On June 26, however, the city council voted against scheduling the referendum on the outsourcing agreement to coincide with the November November 6 general election.

Jimmy Gutierrez

The council’s rationale was based upon city attorney Gutierrez’s rendered opinion that the referendum applicants had failed to include with the signed petitions when the signatures were being gathered a copy of the ordinance authorizing the deal with American Water, including the several-hundred-page-long concession agreement between the city and the New Jersey-based company.
Gutierrez’s citation appears to be to California Elections Code Section 9238, which states, “(a) Across the top of each page of the referendum petition there shall be printed the following: ‘Referendum Against an Ordinance Passed by the City Council’ [and] (b) Each section of the referendum petition shall contain (1) the identifying number or title, and (2) the text of the ordinance or the portion of the ordinance that is the subject of the referendum.”
Petition circulators did offer a copy of the city council resolution to city residents before they signed the petition. There is a legal question as to whether that inclusion would have provided the signers with enough context and information upon which to make an informed endorsement of the petition or if, as Gutierrez is suggesting, voters needed to be provided with the full text of the agreement with American Water as was approved by the council on March 27.
Utility Workers spokesman Mark Brooks told the Sentinel that the union is now contemplating legal action to force the city to conduct the referendum.
“We are studying what the city did before determining what action we will take,” Brooks said. Without getting into specifics, Brooks said “It appears the council acted on very bad advice with regard to whether the referendum qualified. We are examining all of our options.”
Brooks said the union was mindful that there is a deadline for items to appear on the November ballot that will elapse later this summer, requiring timely action in challenging the council’s decision.