Organizers and volunteers at the 31st Annual SLV River & Road Clean Up on Sept. 16 faced special challenges, because of the immense quantities of trees and debris washed down the 22 miles of the San Lorenzo River by the near-record 2017 winter storms.“The volume of wet and smelly materials was enormous – over three tons of trash and 850 pounds of recyclable metals and glass,” said Nancy Macy, of the Valley Women’s Club, organizer of the annual event.“There were 20 large zip-lock bags packed with hundreds of cigarette butts collected, and dozens of plastic straws.”Macy said a large number of family groups participated this year, along with a Boy Scout Troop from Los Altos, and some adventurous adults willing to climb under bridges and traverse steep slopes.She said the targets were along the San Lorenzo River, Zayante Creek, Love Creek and Bear Creek.The Santa Cruz County Public Works Department donated one truck, with Shane Hommel, and San Lorenzo Valley Water District also donated trucks, driven by Ben Viramontes and Howard Oliphant, to load and delivered tons of materials to the Ben Lomond waste Transfer Station, where the county provided free disposal.“There were many items that were too big to carry to the staging sites, so one volunteer with a truck took five loads (two of trash and three of scrap metals) to the Transfer Station,” Macy reported this week.The Valley Women’s Club reported a total of 101 volunteers, ranging in age from pre-school to 90-plus, participated in the cleanup. The event has been organized by The Valley Women’s Club since 1986, partnering with the SLV Water District and Santa Cruz County since then, and with Save Our Shores for the past nine years.“Each volunteer had a great story to tell – from finding aged items long-buried by the creek to daring steep slopes to get that rusty hunk of culvert,” Macy reported.David Kapellas of Boulder Creek walked up to his waist in mud bringing in lengths of plastic drain pipes, and the Leon and Renee Khaimovich family  pulled a mammoth ooze-coated vinyl sheeting from the River embankment below their house north of Boulder Creek.In Ben Lomond, the Reedy Family (Dan and Lauren, plus Ashton, Tess, Claire and Evanne) dug out hunks of culvert and junk metal, and a “tire” that ended up being filled with cement and a broken pole (tether ball!), and managed to haul it up their very steep embankment, having lost their steps in the flood where the River passes their home below Ben Lomond.Carl Reuter crossed the river with his heavy-duty wheelbarrow to the beach by the Highlands Park playground, where Bryce Griffen met him and brought up three very heavy loads to clear that entire play area, where Charmian Traynor was also pulling out trash caught up in the shrubs and vines.In Felton, Boy Scouts from Los Altos and Troop 604 from Felton, brought in a couple dozen bags of debris on their community service adventure, and Joan Takenaka brought in over 325 pounds of trash to add to the enormous truckloads taken from the Covered Bridge Park.Photos of the event are posted on the Valley Women’s Club’s Facebook page.“Each resident of the San Lorenzo Valley can help make every day River & Road Clean Up Day by removing the trash from along their road frontage or from the pull-outs along Highway 9 and other major roads. Don’t wait for a year to help protect your waterways and their wildlife from the impacts of cigarette butts, plastics and other debris’ contamination,” Macy said.

Santa Cruz County health officials for more than two months have been waging an intensive battle against an outbreak of hepatitis A, a potentially deadly virus.

When Bill Smallman, a director of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District, announced two weeks ago that he would be requesting a Civil Grand Jury investigation of his own board and staff, citing a lack of transparency and payment of Terry Vierra’s legal bills, his four colleagues remained silent.

An privately owned antique Brookdale firetruck lost its brakes coming down a steep hill on Larkspur Road in Brookdale on Monday, Sept. 11,, failed to negotiate a turn and slammed into a corner of the bridge across the San Lorenzo River.

San Lorenzo Valley Water District ratepayers are still paying legal bills connected to actions by former director Terry Vierra.The original November 2014 lawsuit challenging Vierra’s role in a 2010 real estate deal in Boulder Creek – filed by Boulder Creek ratepayer Bruce Holloway – was split nearly two years ago into two case numbers but based on the same set of facts: one with Vierra as the defendant, and one with the water district as defendant.In the first case, Vierra faced individual penalties for violating state conflict-of-interest laws. The second case was created when the judge ruled that Holloway did not have standing to sue and separated the district from Vierra’s conflict-of-interest case.Vierra decided to appeal to the Sixth District Court of Appeal. Holloway also appealed, contending that the real estate deal was illegal because of Vierra’s actions, and should be voided.The appellate court this month decided to coordinate the appeals of both cases, which means the same panel will hear all arguments related to Vierra’s conflict of interest. Oral arguments are likely a year away.The coordination of the appeals may simplify things for the Court of Appeal in San Jose, but it makes sorting out the legal payments difficult for ratepayers, because the same law firm, Colantuono Highsmith & Whatley PC, of Grass Valley, is representing both Vierra and the water district. Details of legal bills may be protected under lawyer-client privilege.Payment of legal bills with ratepayer money has been a hot button for many SLV water ratepayers.The district paid approximately $160,000 for Vierra’s legal bills in Superior Court, for the trial and for an unsuccessful attempt to convince the trial judge to reverse his own decision. In April, the water board decided it would not fund a continuing appeal, and Vierra decided to continue on his own.In his appeals, Vierra is asking the appellate court to reverse a December 2016 Superior Court decision that resulted in a $9,346.67 fine, plus $116,647.47 in plaintiff’s legal fees. Vierra is arguing that he did not violate the state Political Reform act when he and his wife pocketed real estate commissions from a 2010 water district decision in which the trial judge determined Vierra had participated.In its defense of Holloway’s appeal, the water district is arguing that even if its decision to buy property in Boulder Creek was illegal, the decision cannot be challenged in court by its ratepayers.A Superior Court judge in October 2015 had separated the district from the Vierra lawsuit brought by Holloway, and said Holloway did not have standing to seek to void the 2010 contract even though it involved a conflict of interest. The district has called this a “victory.”State law gives citizen taxpayers the right to challenge illegal expenditures by public agencies. The trial judge said that law didn’t apply to Holloway.On April 3, Gene Ratcliffe, president of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District, stunned a packed Boulder Creek meeting room with the announcement that the board had just voted in a closed-door session “to stop all financial commitments to the Political Reform Act case,” which Ratcliffe described as “the case of Bruce Holloway versus Terry Vierra, the San Lorenzo Valley Water District, etc.”The district had actually been separated as a defendant in that case 18 months earlier, leaving Vierra as the only defendant.“Now that a legal decision has been rendered and reaffirmed by the judge,” she said the board had concluded unanimously that “the district’s obligation [to Vierra] is complete.”Any decision to further pursue an appeal of the case would be “his [Vierra’s] choice moving forward” – and presumably at his expense – added Ratcliffe.On July 14, the announcement by General Manager Brian Lee of the July 13 decision by four water district directors proposing five years of water rate increases included in its “Frequently Asked Questions” the question: “Will any funds from the proposed rate restructuring be spent on legal fees related to the Terry Vierra case?”Lee’s first answer:  “No, for two reasons: 1) the district is no longer funding legal costs in the Holloway/Vierra case: and 2) the proposed rate restructuring would support capital improvement projects and building the District’s emergency reserves.”In a later version of this statement, Lee added this qualifier: “Legal costs are considered to be operational costs and therefore would not be funded through this [rate restructuring] proposal.”There is no language in the legal document that is the subject of a final Sept. 21 public hearing on new water rates that includes any language with regard to “legal costs.”On Aug. 17, Lee reported to the water district directors that he had paid a $13,624.61 bill from the Colantuono law firm for “services through June 30.” The board accepted his report without a vote, following its new procedures for approving payment of the water district’s monthly bills.The Colantuono firm had been retained by the board early this year to convince a Superior Court judge to reverse his own decision in December that had ruled Vierra had violated state conflict-of-interest law when he was on the water district board. That ratepayer-funded Colantuono effort to seek a new trial for Vierra was rejected by the judge in March, which prompted the water board’s April decision to stop paying Vierra’s legal bills.Lee authorized payment of $2,473 to the Colantuono firm for “services through April 30,” on July 20.Colantuono, meanwhile, had continued to represent Vierra after April, presumably at the former director’s expense.The law firm in June unsuccessfully sought to reduce Vierra’s legal obligation to pay plaintiff Bruce Holloway’s legal bills.Sometime in late June or early July, Colantuono was asked to take over the board’s appeals, although the only record of any board discussion of the appeals was at a closed-door meeting on July 20.The board’s discussion included the Terry Vierra case that it had publicly washed its hands of in April.That discussion occurred one full week after Colantuono filed a stack of supplemental briefs in the case in which the district is still the defendant.The district never announced it had retained Vierra’s lawyer for its appeal, and it was unclear who made the request or when it was made.The firm was paid $13,624.61 on Aug. 17 for work done “through June 30.” A July invoice from Colantuono could appear in the Sept. 21 bill list.The water district changed its district counsel on July 1, hiring Nossaman LLP of Los Angeles, which assigned Gina Nicholls as the district’s counsel. She is to be paid $370 per hour.“Our representation of the district does not include a representation of the individuals or entities that are officers, directors, joint ventures, employees or members of such entities,” Nicholls wrote in her contract.The previous district counsel, Marc Hynes, who originally represented both Vierra and the district in the Holloway lawsuit, continues to be paid a retainer of $3,500 per month through September.

The so-called “green rush” has jarred Santa Cruz County, where the value of a retail cannabis license has soared to more than $2 million.