The 7,900 customers of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District face bigger water bills, totaling 61.5 percent over five years for a typical family — 29 percent in the first year, beginning Nov. 1.
The two-decade-old Town Center project has ground to a halt, as developer Foothill Partners and City of Scotts Valley are unable to agree to terms with the City of Santa Cruz.
The new district counsel for the San Lorenzo Valley Water District, Gina Nicholls, this week advised the district’s Board of Directors that “it is well within the board’s discretion to establish and enforce” its new procedures for controlling public comment at board meetings.
Four years ago, when the San Lorenzo Valley Water District voted to raise water rates 65 percent over five years, it said the money would be used for infrastructure repairs and to build a new “campus” consolidating offices in a single location in Boulder Creek. The district had already spent $2.2 million three years earlier to buy the campus site.
In a statement released on Monday, July 10, the San Lorenzo Valley Water District confirmed that two weeks earlier it had cut some French Broom plants and used the herbicide glyphosate in its Olympia Well Head property in Felton.The “cut and dab” effort had been reported the week before by the Press Banner, which located a pile of freshly cut French Broom at the Felton watershed.In its statement, the district said that a local environmental consultant, George McMenamin had completed a “first phase” of the “eradication effort in the most environmentally responsible manner “ the week of June 26.The district’s Board of Directors had voted seven weeks earlier, on May 8, to direct its staff to “immediately” begin cutting some of the invasive plants in the protected watershed around an old quarry off West Zayante Road in Felton, before the yellow-flowering plants went to seed. That immediate effort was to involve no herbicided use.On July 7, the California Environmental Protection added glyphosate to its list of cancer-causing chemicals, requiring warning labels on any products containing the pesticide to state that it is known to cause cancer.In the district’s “French Broom Eradication Update” released this week, entitled “Major Progress Made,” it was reported that McMenamin, a “licensed herbicide applicator” was paid $7,500, and used 8 ounces of Rodeo (containing glyphosate) by “dabbing” not spraying.The district’s report this week again failed to mention that the board had directed that the first steps in the eradication were to be “hand-cutting” without the use of herbicide.“Having completed the urgent effort to eradicate high-priority seed-bearing plants, district staff will be planning a second phase of eradication this year,” this week’s report said. “Additional eradication efforts this year will not include the use of glyphosate.”
A state Fish and Wildlife officer shot an armed guard during a July 7 raid on an illegal marijuana-growing operation on state property northeast of Scotts Valley.