To the community,

The Tahoe Heritage Foundation and all of us at the Tallac Historic Site would like to thank these generous donors for their contributions to the Great Gatsby Festival’s silent auction. Money received from the auction goes directly back to the restoration and preservation of the estates on the Tallac Historic Site.

Businesses: Anderson Bike Rental, ARTrageous Framing, Base Camp Pizza Co., Bear’s Den, Bridgetender Bar and Restaurant, Buster Edwards ~ Blacksmith, Cakes by the Lake, Camp Richardson Corral, Carriage Rides, The Firkin & Fox, Freshies, Hard Rock, Heavenly Mountain Resort, Inn by the Lake, Joyce Gebo, Kings Beverage, Lake Tahoe Cruises, Lake Tahoe Golf Course, Magic Carpet Golf, Meeks Lumber & Hardware, Ski Run Boat Co., Tahoe Donner Ski Area, Tahoe Heritage Foundation, Tahoe Tallac Association, Tep’s Villa Roma, Thornburg, Bob Sierra View Acoustic Music, TruValue (Scottys), and Woodwind Sailing Cruises.

Sincerely,

Tami Africa, assistant site director Tallac Historic Site

Barton Health puts on a Type I Diabetes Support Group the first Tuesday of each month at 5:30pm.

Led by medical professionals, the support group provides a place for those affected by Type 1 Diabetes to share ideas, experiences, and resources. All ages welcome.

The guest speaker on Sept. 2 is CalSTAR nurse Beth Frisby who will talk about gestational diabetes. On Oct. 7, Tami Force is the speaker.

The talks are Barton Memorial Hospital’s board room.

For more info, email tt1thrive@gmail.com.

By Martin Griffith, AP

The Burning Man counterculture festival drew a peak crowd of nearly 66,000 celebrants as it neared an end Monday on the Northern Nevada desert.

Friday’s official peak attendance of 65,922 was within the population cap of 68,000 the federal Bureau of Land Management imposed on the quirky art and music festival, said Gene Seidlitz, manager of the agency’s Winnemucca District.

The number was down from last year’s record peak crowd of 69,613, which resulted in organizers being placed on probation for a second time in three years for violating the limit.

Organizers had been warned that if they were placed on probation a second straight year, the agency might suspend or cancel their permit.

“That (crowd size) is not a problem this year,” Seidlitz said, adding the attendance cap was one of 55 conditions organizers had to comply with under terms of their permit.

“We don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t meet all other stipulations,” Burning Man spokesman Jim Graham said.

Overall, the weeklong festival leading up to Labor Day was successful and safe except for Thursday’s death of a 29-year-old Wyoming woman who was struck by a bus carrying passengers on the playa of the Black Rock Desert, Seidlitz said.

Crime statistics will not be released until later this month, he added.

Rain early on closed the gate for a day — the longest closure in the event’s history — and dust storms caused occasional whiteout conditions Friday.

But the festival’s eclectic artwork, offbeat theme camps, concerts and other entertainment drew praise from participants from around the world.

“Actually, I feel renewed faith in humanity,” John Bacon, of Seattle, told KRNV-TV.

Ron Adair, of Ojai, said he felt “a little tired.”

“It’s a little hard to have that many nights in a row and get by on four, five, six hours of sleep every night,” Adair said.

After it moved from San Francisco, the inaugural Burning Man in Nevada drew only about 80 people in 1990.

Author and Sierra Nevada native Gary D. Noy will be talking about his new book “Sierra Stories: Tales of Dreamers, Schemers, Bigots, and Rogues” on Sept. 23.

This collection highlights unusual or lesser-known stories of the Sierra Nevada experience. The focus of this presentation will be the Yosemite Valley Grant Act of 1864, which brought the valley under government control. The legislation was introduced by an El Dorado County resident John Conness.

Noy will also look at six painters and photographers who popularized Yosemite during the 19th century and influenced the establishment of the state parks and national park system.

The book will be available for sale and signing after the free 6pm talk South Lake Tahoe Library, 1000 Rufus Allen Blvd.

By Doresa Banning, Nevada Business

Demand for land in Nevada has resembled a roller coaster pattern this decade. During the real estate boom in the first half of the 2000s, both residential and commercial developers hungrily purchased land, driving up prices. With the recession, the opposite happened; development nearly ceased, land demand decreased and so did the price.

Again, the pendulum has begun to swing in the other direction as the post-recession restart of residential construction has heated up the state’s land market.

“The land market has been in recovery since 2010, and homebuilders have been driving that,” said Bill Lenhart, managing partner of Sunbelt Development & Realty Partners LLC, a real estate brokerage company specializing in land.

Nevada is a state whose land is primarily owned by the federal government — 87 percent, in fact. The state itself owns less than 1 percent of its land; about 12 percent is privately owned, according to the Nevada Division of State Lands. This agency provides land and land use planning services to the state, its agencies and its people. For instance, it secures, disposes, leases and authorizes use of state land. Of the Silver State’s state-owned land, most consists of wildlife management areas (158,345 acres), parks (120,471 acres) and prisons (6,692 acres), said Charles Donohue, NDSL’s acting administrator.

Other Nevada-owned sites include 500 Lake Tahoe lots managed as conservation areas, parcels housing state facilities and undeveloped and/or vacant properties that the NDSL plans to hold until land prices rise.

Read the whole story

By Stephen Baxter, Santa Cruz Sentinel

WATSONVILLE — A 24-year-old Watsonville man is suing Santa Cruz County law enforcement agencies after he was pulled over on his motorcycle and later lost his job because a deputy called his employer.

Kristopher Klay was riding his motorcycle on Highway 1 near Watsonville in May 2013 when he was stopped by members of the Santa Cruz County Gang Task Force. A South Lake Tahoe firefighter at the time, Klay was wearing a “cut,” or leather vest with a patch of the Guerillas Motorcycle Club — a group that rides together and raises money for youth organizations.

Deputies who pulled him over and stopped another rider who was riding with him on a second motorcycle. Authorities asked Klay for his registration, which was current, and Klay and the other rider were let go without being ticketed or arrested.

Four weeks later, about May 30, 2013, Sgt. Stefan Fish of the task force called Klay’s boss at South Lake Tahoe Fire and told him about the traffic stop, according to court documents.

It’s not clear exactly what was said in the phone call, but a few days later, Klay was called in to meet with his fire chief. He was then fired from his job, which was as a probationary firefighter because he recently started.

Read the whole story

Updated Sept. 5 4:50pm:

A pickup driver kept driving after hitting two cyclists on Highway 28 on Aug. 30, according to the Nevada Highway Patrol

The cyclists were treated and released from the hospital after sustaining non-life threatening injuries. Jerry Hitchcock, 59, of Santa Clara was CareFlighted to Renown Medical Center in Reno and Robert Shorey, 59, of Stillwater, Minn., was taken by ambulance.

The  accident occurred Saturday about 2:40pm near Skunk Harbor.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By John Heilprin, AP

GENEVA — About 3,000 species of wildlife around the world have seen their numbers plummet far worse than previously thought, according to a study by one of the world’s biggest environmental groups.

The study Tuesday from the Swiss-based WWF largely blamed human threats to nature for a 52 percent decline in wildlife populations between 1970 and 2010.

It says improved methods of measuring populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles explain the huge difference from the 28-percent decline between 1970 and 2008 that the group reported in 2012. Most of the new losses were found in tropical regions, particularly Latin America.

WWF describes the study it has carried out every two years since 1998 as a barometer of the state of the planet.

“There is no room for complacency,” said WWF International Director General Marco Lambertini, calling for a greater focus on sustainable solutions to the impact people are inflicting on nature, particularly through the release of greenhouse gases.

The latest “Living Planet” study analyzed data from about 10,000 populations of 3,038 vertebrate species from a database maintained by the Zoological Society of London. It is meant to provide a representative sampling of the overall wildlife population in the world, said WWF’s Richard McLellan, editor-in-chief of the study. It reflects populations since 1970, the first year the London-based society had comprehensive data. Each study is based on data from at least four years earlier.

Much of the world’s wildlife has disappeared in what have been called five mass extinctions, which were often associated with giant meteor strikes. About 90 percent of the world’s species were wiped out around 252 million years ago. One such extinction about 66 million years ago killed off the dinosaurs and three out of four species on Earth.

In the new WWF study, hunting and fishing along with continued losses and deterioration of natural habitats are identified as the chief threats to wildlife populations around the world. Other primary factors are global warming, invasive species, pollution and disease.

“This damage is not inevitable but a consequence of the way we choose to live,” said Ken Norris, science director at the London society. “There is still hope. Protecting nature needs focused conservation action, political will and support from industry.”

By Steven Greenhouse, New York Times

MIRA LOMA — Week after week, Guadalupe Rangel worked seven days straight, sometimes 11 hours a day, unloading dining room sets, trampolines, television stands and other imports from Asia that would soon be shipped to Walmart stores.

Even though he often clocked 70 hours a week at the Schneider warehouse here, he was never paid time-and-a-half overtime, he said. And now, having joined a lawsuit involving hundreds of warehouse workers, Rangel stands to receive more than $20,000 in back pay as part of a recent $21 million legal settlement with Schneider, a national trucking company.

“Sometimes I’d work 60, even 90 days in a row,” said Rangel, a soft-spoken immigrant from Mexico. “They never paid overtime.”

The lawsuit is part of a flood of recent cases — brought in California and across the nation — that accuse employers of violating minimum wage and overtime laws, erasing work hours and wrongfully taking employees’ tips. Worker advocates call these practices “wage theft,” insisting it has become far too prevalent.

Some federal and state officials agree. They assert that more companies are violating wage laws than ever before, pointing to the record number of enforcement actions they have pursued. They complain that more employers — perhaps motivated by fierce competition or a desire for higher profits — are flouting wage laws.

Many business groups counter that government officials have drummed up a flurry of wage enforcement actions, largely to score points with union allies. If anything, employers have become more scrupulous in complying with wage laws, the groups say, in response to the much publicized lawsuits about so-called off-the-clock work that were filed against Walmart and other large companies a decade ago.

Read the whole story

Fire Fest is Sept. 27 from 10am-3pm at Lake Tahoe Airport.

Fire Fest is a free annual event that highlights fire and life safety for children and families. Helicopters will star at Fire Fest as they land at the South Lake Tahoe airport.

People can get inside a fire truck, escape from the smoke house, wear firefighting equipment, squirt fire hoses, play in a bounce house, meet Smokey Bear and Sparky, watch fire departments compete, and learn about fire resistant construction.

For more information, contact Jeanne Lear 530.542.8366 or Leona Allen at 530.577.3737.