MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The Middletown Art Center is among the recipients of the California Arts Council’s 2017 Local Impact grant recipients for an upcoming, year-long project called “Resilience.”

“We are thrilled to receive support from the California Arts Council to launch ‘Resilience,’” said Lisa Kaplan, executive director of MAC.

“This grant allows us to provide broad access to the arts for all residents of Lake County,” said Kaplan. “It’s a multi-disciplinary project focused on the regeneration of nature after the Jerusalem, Rocky, Valley and Clayton fires. ‘Resilience’ will act as a mirror reflecting the revitalization of individuals and the community at large through image and word.”

The wildfires provide a unique opportunity to observe nature’s regeneration through a cycle of seasons.  

The Resilience project will address regeneration and/or resilience with monthly five-hour workshops in each of four disciplines: Painting, photography, printmaking and poetry/spoken word.

Participants ages 12 through older seniors are encouraged to take a monthly classes in one or all four disciplines for $5 per class or $60 for a complete series in one discipline.

The project will culminate in a countywide art exhibit and a chapbook entitled “Resilience” to showcase images and words from the overall project. 

Each workshop is designed to be an engaging and constructive experience where participants will learn and create through the guidance of professional artists, educators, poets, writers and naturalists.

Guests artists will provide master classes, public lectures and poetry readings. 

“From beginner to professional, all are welcome to participate in the Resilience project,” said Kaplan.  “Whether you come to one class or all classes in all four disciplines, attend poetry readings, nature walks or exhibitions, we want folks to take advantage of this wonderful county wide opportunity.”

Classes begin in early June and participants should register as soon as possible.

Visit www.middletownartcenter.org and click on the “Resilience” page for full details, or come by the center, located at the junction of highways 175 and 29 between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., Thursday through Sunday, or call 707-809-8118.

“While arts programming cannot directly impact health conditions, stem the tide of unemployment, or restore housing, it can reduce lingering post-traumatic stress by creating a sense of order amidst chaos, and fostering positive attitudes and wellness through expressions of loss, grief and hope,” said Kaplan. 

Kaplan said the grant required a combination of monetary and in-kind matches, and she expressed gratitude to St. Helena Hospital Clear Lake, the Lake County Arts Council, the Lake Area Rotary Club Association, Lake County Rising, the Lake County Land Trust, the cities of Lakeport and Clearlake, Woodland Community College’s Lake County Campus, The Hub Lower Lake, the Middletown Luncheon Club, Middletown Merchant’s Association and many others.

She credited those contributing organizations with understanding “the power of art to elevate, enrich, strengthen and sustain a community.”

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is paying property taxes and franchise fees of more than $337 million this spring to the 50 California counties and 243 cities where the energy company owns and operates gas and electric infrastructure that serves 16 million Californians.

“Property tax and franchise fee payments are one of the important ways PG&E helps drive local economies and supports essential public services like education and public safety. This year’s higher payments reflect the substantial local investments we are making in our gas and electric infrastructure to create one of the safest and most reliable energy companies in the nation,” said Jason Wells, senior vice president and chief financial officer for PG&E.

PG&E pays franchise fees to cities and counties for the use of public streets for its gas and electric facilities. The energy company submitted the fees to counties by March 31 and to cities by April 15.

Lake County received approximately $799,463.25 from PG&E.

Amounts paid to neighboring counties are as follows: included Colusa, $4,228,853.05; Glenn, $709,000.54; Mendocino, $1,444,810.50; Napa, $2,131,724.98; Sonoma, $6,053,761.93; Tehama, $1,066,552.10; and Yolo, $2,174,857.59.

Santa Clara received the highest amount of all of the counties, $23,934,947.57, while San Diego received the lowest amount, $7,386.97.

PG&E’s franchise fee payments totaled nearly $132 million – almost $31 million for natural gas and $101 million for electric service. This sum is more than $6 million more than the previous year’s total.

In addition, PG&E also collected and remitted to cities and counties over $25 million in statutory franchise fee surcharges.

PG&E also increased its payment of property taxes sharply this year as the energy company continued to make significant investments in its gas and electric system to improve safety and reliability.

Last month, PG&E paid property taxes of over $205 million to the 50 counties in which it owns property. The payment covers the period from Jan. 1 to June 30, 2017.

Total payments for the tax year of July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017 are more than $411 million – an increase of $25 million over, or 7 percent more than, the prior fiscal year.

PG&E invested about $5.7 billion last year and expects to invest about $6 billion this year to enhance and upgrade its gas and electrical infrastructure across Northern and Central California. One example is PG&E constructing a $75 million-gas operations technical training center in Winters.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – The California Department of Water Resources on Wednesday offered an update on operations at the Lake Oroville spillways.

On Sunday DWR completed the transition from incident emergency response to incident emergency recovery at the damaged spillways.
 
Officials said emergency recovery includes construction of the main spillway and the emergency spillway throughout the summer and fall.

DWR reported that the main spillway will be operational by Nov. 1 to accommodate flows from winter storms.

Additional work will begin again in 2018 to complete reconstruction of both spillways, the agency said.

DWR said it will begin ramping down outflows from the main spillway on Friday, May 19, at 9 a.m., with outflows expected to stop by Friday afternoon. The gates at the main spillway are closing to accommodate the construction work on the main spillway.
 
“We are making gradual changes to outflows and river levels and will continue to adjust as we balance community concerns, regulatory requirements and Mother Nature,” said acting DWR Director Bill Croyle.
 
DWR said it intends to keep the gates at the main spillway closed for the remainder of the season.
 
Agency officials that, as part of the ongoing site preparation work that is under way – in addition to the upcoming use of the main spillway – some soil and concrete may be dislodged from the spillway structure. This is expected and will not delay construction.

To balance flows in the Feather River, the Hyatt Powerplant flows are expected to ramp up from 5,000 cubic feet per second to 8,100 cubic feet per second at 1 p.m. Friday.
 
Penstock 1 at Hyatt Powerplant is expected to come online after routine and scheduled maintenance early next week. Once Penstock 1 is back in use, Hyatt Powerplant will have the ability to release 13,000 cubic feet per second.

The River Valves Outlet System has the capacity to release an additional 4,000 cubic feet per second should DWR deem it necessary. A contingency plan is in place should reservoir levels require that the main spillway be used once more this spring or summer.
 
The forecast flows downstream in the Feather River will be a gradual transition over four days, beginning at 20,550 cubic feet per second on Friday morning and ramping down to 5,300 cubic feet per second to Sunday, before the outflow is allowed to rise to 9,800 cubic feet per second beginning on Sunday night.

Meantime, Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. – shown in the video above at work at the site on Tuesday – is expected to ramp up construction work on Monday, May 22. DWR said the complete recovery or replacement of the spillways will be done in multiple phases due to the enormity of the project and the time limitations of the construction season.
 
Work has already started on portions of work like road construction and slope stabilization in and around future work areas which needs to be completed regardless of spillway recovery design decisions.
 
The public can watch construction activities through a live feed from two cameras at the site.

Hosted by the California Department of Parks and Recreation, the Lake Oroville State Recreation Area Spillway Live Stream is at www.parks.ca.gov/live/lakeorovillesra_spillway .

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County District Attorney’s Office has reached an agreement with the owner of the former Wisedas Resort in Clearlake to settle an environmental case arising from a second fire at the property last fall.

As a result of that agreement, District Attorney Don Anderson said that on Monday Edward Sherry Meyer Jr., the Wisedas property’s owner, entered a plea of no contest to one misdemeanor violation of continuously maintaining a public nuisance on his property and one misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act for negligently discharging fire ash, a pollutant, into Clear Lake on Oct. 14, 2016.

Anderson said Meyer was sentenced to three years’ probation and 150 hours of community service, and was ordered to complete full site remediation no later than Oct. 2.

Meyer also was ordered to pay a fine of $5,000 plus full restitution to the Lake County Fire Protection District in the amount of $15,256.16 for the district’s response costs for the most recent fire at the site in October 2016, Anderson said.

In addition, Meyer will pay $50,000 as a charitable donation to the county. Anderson will divide the donation amount up between several charities that he’s selected that work within the city of Clearlake to address issues involving homelessness, the environment and animal welfare.

“The District Attorney’s Office takes environmental crimes seriously, as well as its duty to protect valuable local natural resources such as Clear Lake,” said Anderson. “Any property owner who ignores directives from local and state agencies, as well as the District Attorney’s Office, to clean up their property, and subsequently causes significant environmental harm, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Meyer told Lake County News that he reached the plea agreement with the District Attorney’s Office in order to finally resolve the case. “It’s just a bunch of nonsense,” he said.

He also said he is pursuing a wrongful prosecution action against Anderson and the deputy district attorney who handled the case, Rachel Monten.

“Eventually we’re going to move to vacate this agreement,” Meyer said.

Separate fires destroy former resort property

Meyer, a mediator and arbitrator who works in Hollywood, purchased the once-popular Clearlake resort, located at 14395 Lakeshore Drive, in August 2012.

In February 2013, the main building at the property was destroyed by a fire which officials determined was caused by arson. A Clearlake man was arrested and spent several months in jail before pleading no contest and receiving three years’ probation.

Later in 2013, Meyer had the remainder of the fire-damaged building removed, leaving behind an old two-story, 14-unit motel structure at the rear of the property.

Late on the night of Oct. 13, 2016, a fire broke out in that motel building, damaging about 30-percent of the structure, as Lake County News has reported. At the time of the fire, authorities had reported that there were squatters in the building.

The city red-tagged the building on the day after the fire, while at the same time District Attorney’s Office staff conducted a 3D scan of the property.

The fire resulted in a significant amount of burned timber and other materials going into Clear Lake on Oct. 14, the date for which Meyer was charged.

On Wednesday neither Meyer nor Anderson could say definitively what had caused the fire.

“I don’t think it was ever really determined,” said Anderson, adding that it was never provable that it was arson.

Anderson assigned prosecution of the environmental case against Meyer to Rachel Monten, who in addition to being a deputy district attorney in Lake County is an environmental circuit prosecutor with the Circuit Prosecutor Project at the California District Attorneys Association. Monten also has handled an environmental case involving the former Hoberg’s Resort in Cobb.

He said that circuit prosecutors, like Monten, bring specialized experience in prosecuting environmental and workplace safety crimes to rural counties in California that are often hard-pressed to allocate resources to prosecute these types of crimes, at no cost to the county.

Anderson said his office and the Circuit Prosecutor Project are dedicated to protecting Lake County’s natural resources, public health, and holding people accountable who harm the local environment. 

Clearlake City Manager Greg Folsom welcomed the resolution of the case.

“The city recently adopted a strategic plan to improve the quality of life in Clearlake and the cleanup of this property will help achieve goal No. 1, make Clearlake a visibly cleaner city, and goal No. 4, improve the image of Clearlake,” Folsom said.

He added, “The former Wisedas Resort property has been a blight on the city of Clearlake for too long and the cleaning up of the property has made a huge impact on the Lakeshore Drive corridor visually. We appreciate the efforts of District Attorney Don Anderson and his staff in forcing the cleanup of this property.”

Meyer pursues claims against county

Meyer said he is pursuing a prosecutorial misconduct charge against Anderson and Monten for the handling of his case.

He said that on Monday, before his case went before the judge, he served notice of his intention to pursue the misconduct action to Monten. Additionally, he plans to report the case to the State Bar and petition the attorney general, and will seek to have his plea agreement nullified.

Meyer alleges that Anderson should have recused himself and his office from handling the case because he said Anderson gave him legal advice during a March 2013 meeting about the fire-damaged properties with local agencies. He also said that key pieces of discovery, like the 3D scan the District Attorney’s Office created the day after the fire, were not provided to him.

Meyer also has filed a tort claim with the county of Lake alleging defamation by Anderson in a Lake County News article from last year.

In the article, published on Oct. 14, Anderson stated that that the property had caught fire because it had not been properly cleaned up.

If the county’s third party claims administrator denies that claim, Meyer said he plans to file a lawsuit seeking to recover the amount of money the county required that he pay, along with punitive damages, which he estimated could run into the millions.

He said the case against him was “very vindictive,” adding, “It’s like they took a baseball bat to me.”

“This is not over,” said Meyer.

Anderson, however, dismissed Meyer’s claims.

“The only legal advice I gave him was that if he didn’t clean up his mess we were going to prosecute him,” Anderson said.

Anderson said he also had told Meyer he wasn’t giving him legal advice when he suggested at that meeting that Meyer consider pursuing bad faith insurance litigation against his insurance company.

He said his immunity in such cases doesn’t give Meyer much recourse.

“I have absolute immunity on prosecution issues and limited immunity on law enforcement issues,” Anderson said.

As for Meyer’s defamation claim regarding the October Lake County News article, Anderson said, “There’s nothing I said that’s not the truth, and the truth is always a defense to any libel or slander.”

Property status and future plans

Earlier this year, Meyer had the rest of the burned motel building demolished. He said that work was finished in March.

Meyer received a copy of a letter dated April 27 to Monten from Clearlake Building Inspector/Code Enforcement Supervisor Lee Lambert regarding the building’s demolition.

The letter, which Meyer shared with Lake County News, confirmed that the structure’s demolition had been completed and that the contractor, Wahlberg Inc. – which has done demolition contracts for the city – had submitted the required disposal documentation.

Lambert also stated in the letter that the demolition and other required work at the site had been completed to the city’s satisfaction.

The letter said that there still remained to be completed “construction, repairs or demolition” to the property’s seawall. However, that work cannot be completed at this time due to Clear Lake’s high water conditions, so the city has given Meyer an Oct. 2 deadline to finish that work.

Meyer said he plans to do rip rapping at the site. It’s not an expensive repair but the lake has to go down first, he said.

Outside of his fight with local officials, Meyer told Lake County News he still has plans for the property, with just over $2 million in insurance payments to fund a project.

He said his biggest dream for the land is to place a bass fishing museum there.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

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