Amador County - State lawmakers and federal officials are taking steps to address the threat posed by abandoned mine sites across California. “It's time for Congress to develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with the safety and public health problems of these abandoned mines,” wrote U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein in a guest commentary published in the San Bernardino County Sun. Feinstein has introduced legislation to pay for the cleanup of abandoned mines, with fees and royalties to be paid by the hardrock mining industry. Her plan would “set spending priorities for the cleanup fund based on the severity of risk to public health and safety and the impact on natural resources.” It would also establish an 8 percent royalty on new mining operations on federal lands, a 4 percent royalty on existing operations, and “would create a new limited reclamation fee on the gross value of all hardrock mineral mining on federal, state, local and private lands.” The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the California Department of Conservation’s Office of Reclamation estimate there are approximately 47,000 abandoned mines in California, two-thirds of them on Federal lands. Of the estimated 20,000 abandoned mines on public lands in California, BLM has evaluated 1,820 and characterized 60 as affecting water resources, and over 120 mining district with physical safety hazards. Since 2007, eight accidents at abandoned mine sites were reported in California. Last month, Jim Abbott, Acting State Director for the BLM in California, told a House Natural Resources Subcommittee that his agency is in the process of implementing an Abandoned Mine Lands program to remove these mine-related hazards. “For over a century and a half, miners scoured hillsides and mountains, dug mines, and subsequently abandoned them with little or no reclamation, creating the pollution and public safety issues we face today,” he said. One legacy of the famous California Gold Rush is environmental hazards created by mercury contamination. Abbott said mercury mining took place in California between 1846 and 1981, resulting in about 75 percent of the total mercury production in North America. According to a study by University of California Davis ecologist Fraser Shilling, mercury pollution renders fish unsafe to eat and risks the health of at least 100,000 people. He said the pollution disproportionately hurts poorer populations who rely on fishing from local waterways to supplement their diets. Feinstein said the metal mining industry has not taken responsibility for the clean up of abandoned mines. The California Department of Conservation estimates that California alone needs $4 billion to address the issue. Abbott said the sites with the highest potential for harm to the public health have been identified and are being addressed. “Congress must move swiftly to address this issue before more environmental harm, injuries or death occur,” said Feinstein. Story by Alex Lane This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County – The Amador County Mental Health Steering Committee last week selected a set of strategies to address Prevention and Early Intervention in the county. The committee met last Monday (November 30th) at the Amador County Health building in Sutter Creek, and reached a consensus in it planning to receive state Mental Health Services Act funding. Consultant Jennifer Susskind, senior program associate for Resource Development Associates led the committee in deciding the approach for the Amador County Behavioral Health Department in its preparation for MHSA funding. Susskind in an e-mail Thursday said the next steps in Amador County planning process are separate areas of “Prevention and Early Intervention,” as well as “Workforce Education and Training,” and “Innovation.” Susskind said the “Planning Council meeting was a great success, and members unanimously reached an agreement to move forward” with Prevention and Early Intervention” strategies “proposed by Resource Development Associates.” The agreed upon strategies by age group start with “Children and Families” including “Interventions for young children with depression and/or anxiety. At the “school-aged children” level, the strategy is to have “A Youth Wellness and Activity Center.” For adults and all-age people, the approved strategy is a “Field Based Mental Health Liaison” for primary care, jailhouse care, the probation department and other agencies. Strategies for older adults include “Grandparenting Support” and “Respite for Caregivers.” Susskind said Amador Behavioral Health and the steering committee are now in the process of finalizing the prevention and intervention plan. She said a draft of the plan will be available for public review by mid-January. Following the 30-day review period, there will be a public hearing of the plan at the Mental Health Board Meeting in February. Committee members also were asked to review a list of Workforce Education and Training strategies recommended by the RDA. They were asked to send comments or questions to Susskind by December 31st. The strategies will be brought to the community for prioritization during a meeting January 26th in Amador County. Susskind said the “Innovation component” of the state Mental Health Services Act “provides funding for new, novel, and creative strategies for addressing the mental health needs of each county.” She said the committee is “seeking community recommendations for potential Innovation strategies.” RDA is using a survey (ending January 4th) “to help the Behavioral Health Department develop a list of potential projects.” Findings will be presented at the Community Prioritization Meeting set for 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, January 26th. Committee members are asked to reserve the full day for the meeting. Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County – The Amador County Public Health Department announced Thursday that another H1N1 flu vaccine clinic has been scheduled for December 22nd from 9 am to 11:30 am. This is in addition to the already scheduled clinic on Wednesday, December 16th, from 11:30 am to 1 pm. These clinics will be open to all residents over the age of six months. The Public Health Department is located at 10877 Conductor Boulevard in Sutter Creek. For further information on H1N1 vaccination clinics call the Amador County Public Health Flu Line at 223-6697 for English, 223-6642 for Spanish, or Public Health at 223-6407. Story by Alex Lane This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County – Amador Regional Transit System made cuts in its bus routes last week, with the aim of saving money in the name of common sense. ARTS Executive Director James Means said that last week’s service changes included “realigning of routes and the times to catch all the people that are going to be affected.” And vanpooling and voucher programs are 2 other modes that will make up for the shortfall. He said ARTS will also “be adding back some routes, as long as they will be self-sustaining.” They also added an express route, between Jackson and Sutter Creek. And he is working on routes with businesses and vintners. He was also planning to meet Wednesday with the Sutter Creek Business & Professional Association about stay-and-ski trip packages with local bed & breakfast lodges, including ski passes and shuttle bus tickets to Kirkwood Ski Resort. Means said ARTS is working on handling lost routes with a voucher system and with a new program of “vanpooling.” Vanpooling, made possible with funding from the Amador County Air District, is operated by Foothill Rideshare, and is organizing van rides in the county. Means said vanpools, with 5-7 people, include a designated driver and will become ARTS routes, once they start to operate. In the face of falling revenue, the ARTS board of directors last week approved cutting 13 bus routes in the system, and realigning other routes to make up for redundancies. Of those, one route to River Pines was eliminated and replaced with a “voucher program.” Means said: The River Pines route “has one customer. It’s cheaper for me to put the guy in a taxi than to send a bus all the way out to get him.” Means said Pine Grove routes were eliminated because of low rider counts, but the area is still served with bus routes. The riders must simply catch an earlier or later bus. The same happened with elimination of some Jackson shuttle routes, which were not used. Means said that some of those routes were extended to cover areas visited by the cut routes. So the riders are still served at those stops, and bus drivers are more efficient because they do not drive around with empty busses. Instead of covering stops 3 times, they go to them twice. Means said the cuts eliminated redundancy, and removing routes with no passengers had a “zero-sum effect.” Another ARTS route returns December 19th with the first Saturday Kirkwood shuttle bus. ARTS surveys will see if riders’ needs are being met with the new schedules. Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County – The Amador Water Agency board of directors could select a new board president and vice president for the upcoming year at its meeting today in its offices on Ridge Road. District 1 Director and Vice President Bill Condrashoff was discussed as the next president, when the board appointed current President Terence Moore of District 5 last December. The board will also decide committee assignments, many based on the sitting president and vice president. The AWA board held a rate workshop Tuesday to discuss rate increases in the Camanche Water System. Interim General Manager Gene Mancebo said no action was taken but the board directed staff to prepare information for considering a rate increase in the Camanche Water System. He said the board will come up with a date for a public hearing, probably sometime in January or February. It must be noticed 45 days in advance. The board also went through a financial plan for the Central Amador Water Project water system, and adjourned meeting to be reconvened at 1:30 p.m. today (Thursday, December 10) in the middle of the regular board meeting that starts at 9 a.m. today. Other discussion includes a recommendation by Mancebo to pay $2,000 for a Mokelumne River Forum quarterly meeting. The board will also discuss AWA Attorney Steve Kronick’s recommendations on “buying local” or contracting local preferences. The board could also hear more of Kronick’s presentation on the benefits and risks of joining the Amador Regional Sanitation Authority. Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County – The Amador Water Agency this week announced intent to consider a mitigated negative declaration for its proposed Gravity Supply Line, which would carry raw water from the Tiger Creek area to the Buckhorn treatment plant. Interim General Manager Gene Mancebo said a comment period opened November 21st and extends until December 21st. The notices are available on the AWA website, the agency’s office and the Amador County Library. Mancebo said the AWA board on January 14th will consider whether to make the negative declaration. The GSL’s estimated construction cost is $13.4 million, for which AWA is working with California Rural Development of the USDA for an $8 million loan and $5 million grant. Mancebo said the gravity supply project does not use power, and would replace pumps that carry raw water uphill to the Buckhorn plant for treatment. Those pumps lost power in Sunday’s storm. Power was restored about 24 hours later. Mancebo said one option AWA could consider is to just upgrade the pump stations, potentially needing backup generators there as part of the system upgrade. The generators there now are not big enough to operate the pumps. He said if the Gravity Supply Line was built, AWA wouldn’t have to have the pumps. After the outage this weekend, PG&E had crews searched a 60,000-volt line for causes. AWA “had a request to make it a priority.” Late Monday night, power to the pump stations was restored. Mancebo said Upcountry areas were working to restore stored water used for treating. Conservation efforts helped and it “could have potentially been much worse.” He said during the 24-hour outage, the agency “used more than half of the water from storage” in “20 diff storage tanks throughout different systems.” He guessed customers “probably used 30-40 percent less water than they normally use.” Taking a generator to the pump stations would have involved traveling on private, un-cleared roads, to treacherous pump location on the sides of cliffs. Mancebo said “had power not been restored, they would have had to clear the roads to haul generators down there.” See the Gravity Supply Line notice of intent at www.AmadorWater.org. Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County – The Amador County Board of Supervisors decided on Tuesday to transfer ownership of the Rosedale water treatment equipment serving the community of Volcano to the Volcano Community Services District (VCSD), in consideration of Volcano’s “ongoing needs.” Mike Israel, Director of the Environmental Health Department, said the “equipment has been in place about 8 years and…it is infeasible to transfer it somewhere else.” Back in 2000, Supervisors voted to purchase the water filter system using approximately $38,000 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Revenue funds, the same funding source used by the state’s Safe Drinking Water Program. Both the County and Volcano applied for the grant funding, but only the County qualified. Initially it was believed that the equipment would be portable, providing interim treatment until Volcano secured another source of potable water via a pipeline from the Amador Water Agency. In a memo included with the agenda packet, Israel said “the cost associated with the alternate water source once planned is recognized to be cost prohibitive.” He told the board that VCSD has made “significant investments” in the upkeep of the Rosedale system. He said Volcano has “several thousand dollars invested on their own.” He also urged the board to “establish a means of reimbursement with VCSD” to assure county funds are available for future programs that would utilize Safe Drinking Water applications. Chairman Novelli said this was a way to “transfer it from the county over to their books,” but wanted to develop a reasonable repayment plan, as many Volcano residents are on limited incomes. Supervisor Louis Boitano moved to ask VCSD for reimbursement of the Rosedale water filter system unit, and upon completion of that reimbursement, transfer of the asset to VCSD. The motion was approved 4-0 with Novelli abstaining. Novelli agreed to work with Israel and the Environmental Health Department to draft a payment reimbursement schedule and a sale price. Story by Alex Lane This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County - While Mother Lode residents recover from a heavy winter storm Monday that dropped snow as low as 1000 feet, another warmer wave of winter weather is expected to dump rain and snow on Friday. This storm will bring a 90 percent chance of precipitation on Saturday, but no snow in lower elevations, according to the National Weather Service. As of Wednesday afternoon, there were still approximately 2,700 customers without power in the Calaveras-Amador-San Joaquin region, according to PG&E spokeswoman Nicole Liebelt. PG&E said none of these outages were concentrated in particular areas and were mainly attributed to isolated issues like downed tree limbs. Also on Wednesday, 12,000 customers were still without power in El Dorado County. Public schools were closed completely in Amador and Calaveras counties on Monday, and bus routes were limited Tuesday and Wednesday due to unsafe road conditions. But the severe weather isn’t isolated to California. Upper Midwest residents braced themselves Wednesday as a storm of snow, ice, wind and rain closed most schools and businesses and killed at least 12 people. The weather service said the storm was Iowa’s worst since 1996. Des Moines had 14.7 inches of snow by 7 a.m. Wednesday. Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle declared a state of emergency as the state rode out blizzard-like conditions. Hundreds of schools across New York's eastern half were closed and almost 50,000 upstate utility customers were without electricity. Snowfall was very heavy in Maine during the day, with accumulations of up to two feet expected in the state’s western mountains. Caltrans is reminding residents that chains are required on all vehicles except 4-wheel-drive vehicles with snow tires on most open roadways in the higher elevations. Due to the icy and snow covered roadways, residents are asked to limit their travels to essential travel only. Story by Alex Lane This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County – Amador Regional Transit System made cuts in its bus routes last week, with the aim of saving money in the name of common sense. ARTS Executive Director James Means said that last week’s service changes included “realigning of routes and the times to catch all the people that are going to be affected.” And vanpooling and voucher programs are 2 other modes that will make up for the shortfall. He said ARTS will also “be adding back some routes, as long as they will be self-sustaining.” They also added an express route, between Jackson and Sutter Creek. And he is working on routes with businesses and vintners. He was also planning to meet Wednesday with the Sutter Creek Business & Professional Association about stay-and-ski trip packages with local bed & breakfast lodges, including ski passes and shuttle bus tickets to Kirkwood Ski Resort. Means said ARTS is working on handling lost routes with a voucher system and with a new program of “vanpooling.” Vanpooling, made possible with funding from the Amador County Air District, is operated by Foothill Rideshare, and is organizing van rides in the county. Means said vanpools, with 5-7 people, include a designated driver and will become ARTS routes, once they start to operate. In the face of falling revenue, the ARTS board of directors last week approved cutting 13 bus routes in the system, and realigning other routes to make up for redundancies. Of those, one route to River Pines was eliminated and replaced with a “voucher program.” Means said: The River Pines route “has one customer. It’s cheaper for me to put the guy in a taxi than to send a bus all the way out to get him.” Means said Pine Grove routes were eliminated because of low rider counts, but the area is still served with bus routes. The riders must simply catch an earlier or later bus. The same happened with elimination of some Jackson shuttle routes, which were not used. Means said that some of those routes were extended to cover areas visited by the cut routes. So the riders are still served at those stops, and bus drivers are more efficient because they do not drive around with empty busses. Instead of covering stops 3 times, they go to them twice. Means said the cuts eliminated redundancy, and removing routes with no passengers had a “zero-sum effect.” Another ARTS route returns December 19th with the first Saturday Kirkwood shuttle bus. ARTS surveys will see if riders’ needs are being met with the new schedules. Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Amador County – The Amador County Board of Supervisors decided on Tuesday to transfer ownership of the Rosedale water treatment equipment serving the community of Volcano to the Volcano Community Services District (VCSD), in consideration of Volcano’s “ongoing needs.” Mike Israel, Director of the Environmental Health Department, said the “equipment has been in place about 8 years and…it is infeasible to transfer it somewhere else.” Back in 2000, Supervisors voted to purchase the water filter system using approximately $38,000 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Revenue funds, the same funding source used by the state’s Safe Drinking Water Program. Both the County and Volcano applied for the grant funding, but only the County qualified. Initially it was believed that the equipment would be portable, providing interim treatment until Volcano secured another source of potable water via a pipeline from the Amador Water Agency. In a memo included with the agenda packet, Israel said “the cost associated with the alternate water source once planned is recognized to be cost prohibitive.” He told the board that VCSD has made “significant investments” in the upkeep of the Rosedale system. He said Volcano has “several thousand dollars invested on their own.” He also urged the board to “establish a means of reimbursement with VCSD” to assure county funds are available for future programs that would utilize Safe Drinking Water applications. Chairman Novelli said this was a way to “transfer it from the county over to their books,” but wanted to develop a reasonable repayment plan, as many Volcano residents are on limited incomes. Supervisor Louis Boitano moved to ask VCSD for reimbursement of the Rosedale water filter system unit, and upon completion of that reimbursement, transfer of the asset to VCSD. The motion was approved 4-0 with Novelli abstaining. Novelli agreed to work with Israel and the Environmental Health Department to draft a payment reimbursement schedule and a sale price. Story by Alex Lane This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.