By Josh Sanburn, Time
 
Riley Anderson was a C student in high school, bored by the work and driven partly by a desire to stay on the football team. In 2015, he graduated 25th in his class–of 31 students.

Without a particular career in mind, Anderson enrolled at Lake Area Technical Institute (LATI) in Watertown, S.D., a relatively inexpensive two-year college 30 minutes from his home. There, his classrooms were hangar-size spaces filled with wind turbines, solar panels, ethanol distillers and miniature hydroelectric dams. It seemed more like his dad’s garage, where Anderson would spend hours tinkering with his 1971 Chevrolet pickup, than a place to learn math. But trigonometry began making sense when you used it to fit together piping systems. Basic computer code seemed worth learning when you could program an assembly-line robot.

 The former C student soon started making straight A’s. He graduated in May with a 4.0 gpa and, most important, a job lined up. Two years after squeaking by in high school, Anderson is set to become a maintenance technician at 3M. His annual starting salary is $60,000. The South Dakota median is a little over $53,000.

LATI is a model for the growing number of politicians, CEOs and academics who believe that community colleges have the potential to become much needed engines of economic and social mobility.

The value of an associate’s degree has never been clearer. Currently, the median salary for someone with only a high school diploma is $36,000. For those with a community-college degree, it’s $42,600.

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Paramedics tend to a man and woman who were injured Aug. 27 in South Lake Tahoe. Photo/SLTFD

A South Lake Tahoe man was arrested Sunday after he allegedly ran into two pedestrians with his motorized bicycle.

The collision occurred about 7:25pm Aug. 27 at Highway 50 and Rufus Allen Boulevard.

Patrick Bryan Baker, 41, was arrested on felony charges of driving under the influence, hit and run causing injuries, and a misdemeanor obstruction charge.

The pedestrians, who were in a crosswalk, were taken to Barton Memorial Hospital.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Richard N. Velotta, Las Vegas Review-Journal

Nevada Sen. Dean Heller told the story Monday morning of how Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., invited some airline executives to his office, seated them on a couch, then jammed a coffee table up against their knees.

It is an example of how lawmakers are lobbied to legislate consumer protection because airlines won’t address it voluntarily.

This was one of a score of travel and tourism issues that Heller and Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Rossi Ralenkotter addressed at the opening session of Boyd Group International’s 22nd annual Aviation Forecast Summit at Wynn Las Vegas.

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El Dorado County and South Lake Tahoe online video services are being affected by a faulty fiber optic line in the Midwest.

The Board of Supervisors’ meeting could not be accessed online Tuesday because of the issue. The City Council meeting tonight will also not be available.

Online meeting agendas, minutes, archived audio and video content are likely to be inaccessible.

The service provider has not given an estimated time of repair as the issue is beyond their control. They are in the process of rerouting traffic to other circuits, however access may be limited and slower than expected.

The special City Council meeting on Aug. 29 will be available for viewing after the “live” event. This means that if the meeting concludes at 7pm, then the video will not be available for viewing until after 7pm.

By Sean Whaley, Las Vegas Review-Journal

A Nevada think tank has filed a complaint with the state Attorney General’s Office over a Lake Tahoe-area government’s failure to follow the state public records law.

The Nevada Policy Research Institute filed the complaint against the Incline Village General Improvement District after discovering last week that an official with the agency allegedly acknowledged destroying or concealing public records as a matter of policy, a violation of state law.

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By Nicole Jackson, KTVN-TV
 
According to CHP Truckee, a bicyclist is in the hospital with major injuries after being hit by a car on the West Shore of Lake Tahoe Monday afternoon. 

At approximately 12:40pm the victim, idenitified as Larry Ferguson, was riding his bike east on McKinney Rubicon Springs Road at an unknown speed. Officers say a woman driving a gray mid-size SUV was traveling west at approximately 25 mph in Ferguson’s direction.

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By Guy Marzorati, KQED-TV

Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic leaders in the Senate and Assembly have reached a deal on a $4 billion bond measure to fund affordable housing in the state.

The measure addresses one cause of California’s affordable housing crisis: a lack of state funding to construct homes for low-income residents.

Senate Bill 3, authored by state Sen. Jim Beall of San Jose, originally proposed $3 billion to fund the construction of new housing. The deal announced late Monday adds $1 billion to that total for the Cal-Vet Loan Program,  an initiative to provide home loans to California veterans that expires next year.

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The boulder that struck the vehicle is in the foreground. Photo/NHP

A boulder came tumbling down on Highway 28 this morning, striking a vehicle in its path.

The driver was taken to Renown Medical Center in Reno with non-life threatening injuries.

The accident occurred about 6:30am on Aug. 29. It was about two miles north of the intersection with Highway 50.

Highway 28 was closed while crews removed the boulder and cleared the accident. It reopened about 8am.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

A Bay Area man died Saturday in an ATV accident in Homewood.

The 30-year-old man, whose name has not been released, was riding the all-terrain vehicle on Forest Road 24 north of Sugar Pine Road when he failed to negotiate a curve, according to the California Highway Patrol. The ATV left the road and hit a tree.

The CHP said the San Pablo man was wearing a helmet.

The accident happened Aug. 26 at 11:35am.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Blue-green algae in the Tahoe Keys showed up this month. Photo/LTN

By Kathryn Reed

Figuring out how to make the water near the shore as consistency clear as it is in the middle of Lake Tahoe is confounding scientists.

Part of the problem is the limited historical data there is to work with. While scientists for decades have been studying the overall lake clarity issue, the near shore has been an afterthought. Some data goes back 15 years, but even it is spotty.

It has been in the last few years that agencies have started to take an interest in the water that most people interact with. It got on people’s radars because of the deterioration of water clarity. In some places it is brown, not “blue.”

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency was given an update last week on what is going with the near shore. Dan Segan with TRPA and Bob Larsen with Lahontan Regional Quality Control Board delivered the message.

For TRPA, there are 19 standards related to the near shore. With all the other agencies studying this subject, there are 62 standards. The bi-state regulatory agency divides them into four main groups: clarity; trophic status (primarily periphyton); fish, invertebrates, plants; community structure (human health).

“Our standard in the basin should be less than 1 NTU (nephelometric turbidity unit) at the near shore. At outflow less than 3 NTU. One NTU is near drinking quality,” Segan said.

Scientists from the Desert Research Institute in Reno did not find any measurements of more than 1 NTU from November 2014 to November 2015.

UC Davis installed 11 monitoring instruments two years ago and two more will be online this year on the South Shore. These are designed to determine if lake clarity is changing based on natural factors or if they are human caused. Wind and wave action play a role in those findings.

Periphyton, or the algae that sticks to rocks, has been studied for the last 28 years by UCD. The nine sites are visited five times a year.

“The findings are interesting. There is no lakewide trend. There is no clear signal what is happening,” Segan said.

Metaphyton is the algae that floats in the water. It has never been studied, but will be going forward.

A request for proposal is being developed for a comprehensive aquatic plant survey. The hope is it will incorporate near shore management and aquatic invasive species. The study will include marinas.

The plan is to also establish intervals for fish and invertebrate surveys.

One of the human health issues is the blue-green algae that was found in the Tahoe Keys earlier this month. And while people at the board meeting knew about the outbreak in the Keys, nothing was said to the Governing Board – at least in public – during the meeting.

For 2018, the plant survey will be done, micro-organism and toxic survey (human health) will be conducted, and algae research.