The extended Thanksgiving weekend is one of the busiest travel periods of the year. This raises the risk of a potentially serious or even deadly traffic collision.

As families and friends gather for the holiday, the California Highway Patrol, along with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), wants to encourage travelers to always buckle up, avoid driving distracted, obey the posted speed limit, and never drink and drive.

“Something as simple as buckling up before your trip can save your life and avoid turning a non-injury collision into a tragedy,” said CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow.

Thanksgiving is a Maximum Enforcement Period for the CHP.

The Thanksgiving holiday reporting period begins Wednesday, Nov. 26, at 6 p.m. and runs through Sunday, Nov. 30, at 11:59 p.m.

The Thanksgiving MEP also coincides with NHTSA’s annual “Click It or Ticket Campaign.”

While collisions decreased during last year’s Thanksgiving holiday travel period, tragically, 33 people lost their lives on California’s roadways due to a collision; this was down from the 44 killed during Thanksgiving 2012. Sadly, 88 percent of those killed in 2013 were not wearing a seat belt.

“Protect yourself and those you love through the simple action of buckling a seat belt,” added Commissioner Farrow. “Seat belts are the single most effective piece of equipment in a vehicle that will prevent loss of life or injury.

The CHP also would like to remind motorists to avoid distracted driving, to travel at a speed that is safe for conditions, and also designate a non-drinking driver for the safety of everyone on the road.

Last year during the Thanksgiving holiday, the CHP arrested more than 1,200 people for driving under the influence.

The public is encouraged to report unsafe or impaired drivers by calling 911.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – After even the briefest of rainfall the woods and forests of Lake County come alive in a fantasyland of fungi, or decomposers.

After fall's first rains and the subsequent sunshine an astonishing array of fungi pops up under leaves on downed limbs, and in all sorts of nooks and crannies.

The Greeks of antiquity thought that because of mushroom's ability to magically materialize after a rain, that Zeus' lightning was the cause.

During Medieval times those ring-shaped patterns of ground mushrooms which form were called “fairy rings.” The belief was that magic and dances were performed into the wee hours by the “little people.”

Today we know that mushrooms can be not only beautiful in their own right, but some are toxic while others are edible.

As far back as the Roman times mushrooms, such as chanterelles, morels and truffles have been prized delicacies.

Although we can't always see them, mushrooms are always present, secluded under the soil or hiding beneath bark.

Some, like bracket fungi are highly visible, and form ladders, ascending a dead tree trunk: beauty from death.

Decomposers come in all shapes and sizes. If you were a science fiction writer you couldn't dream up these strange-looking, mysterious life-forms! From enormous bracket fungi to small, slimy jelly fungi.

Fungi are veritable living paradoxes, containing the strength to push up through the soil, while at the same time being comprised of such delicate tissue.

Some, like the puffball, are beautifully spherical: white wonders. While others, like Western Jack 'O Lantern mushrooms (Omphalotus olivascens) are bioluminescent and glow in the dark!

Mushrooms are comprised of roots, a base, stalk, gills, ring and a cap.

A fun art project is a “spore print.” First, lay a cap mushroom on a sheet of paper, and later, discover the spore print pattern it leaves behind.

Fungi are nature's recyclers. Some fungi are plant decomposers, some are carrion decomposers, while still others are waste decomposers that break down droppings from carnivores and omnivores.

Other recyclers in nature are scavengers, such as turkey vultures, beetles and flies.

Earthworms are foremost in the world of recycling, digesting soil, then releasing precious minerals to nourish the soil. Without their work, topsoil would be devoid of these minerals and infertile.

There is much to be learned from the mighty mushroom.

According to “Bay Nature” magazine a fungi experiment to digest E. coli is looking very promising.

Near the town of Orinda King Stropharia and oyster mushroom mycelium, or vegetative filaments are grown in burlap bags filled with wood chips and other natural matter.

They are tended by members of mushroom enthusiasts who work along with the East Bay Municipal Utility District who are learning that the watershed can be cleaned up from toxic human waste, along with oil derived pollutants, plastics and more.

Those amazing mushrooms!

Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is an educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also writes for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.

KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – A Friday afternoon fire destroyed a garage at a Kelseyville home.

The fire, located at 4050 Pharo Place, was dispatched shortly after 12:30 p.m., according to scanner reports.

The first units on scene reported finding a fully involved structure.                  

Kelseyville Fire Chief Mike Stone said the structure that burned was a detached garage.

He said a total of four engines and a water tender from Kelseyville Fire, Lakeport Fire and Cal Fire responded.

It took firefighters about 45 minutes to contain the blaze, he said.

Stone said the fire was confined to the building of origin and didn't do any damage to the nearby home.

He said no one was injured.

The garage was a complete loss, Stone said.

The cause of the fire, said Stone, is so far undetermined.

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.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Firefighters from several agencies are on the scene of a gas storage tank fire outside of Lakeport.

The fire at Westgate Petroleum, located at 3740 Highland Springs Road, was first dispatched shortly before 9 a.m. Sunday.

Lakeport Fire units arriving at scene found one of the business' storage tanks burning with others threatened.

Additional units from Northshore Fire, Kelseyville Fire and Cal Fire were dispatched, with every fire truck in the county that has Class B fire suppression foam also requested, based on radio traffic.

Incident command also asked that Pacific Gas and Electric respond due to nearby high transmission traffic, according to reports from the scene.

Reports from the scene indicated the fire was still active shortly before 10 a.m., with Cal Fire units still en route.

Just before 10:10 a.m., the fire was reported to be knocked down.

Traffic detours are being put in place. The California Highway Patrol reported that Caltrans is closing Highway 29 at Highway 175 Hopland, with other closures at Ackley and Argonaut roads on the northbound side. Highland Springs Road also is being closed by county roads staff.

Additional information will be posted as it becomes available.

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.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control has seven dogs waiting to go to loving homes this week.

Dogs available this week include mixes of boxer, Chihuahua, hound, pit bull and shepherd.

Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.

If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.

In addition to the animals featured here, all adoptable animals in Lake County can be seen here: http://bit.ly/Z6xHMb .

The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).

Male Chihuahua mix

This male Chihuahua mix has a short white coat.

He's in kennel No. 2a, ID No. 1202.

Male pit bull mix

This male pit bull mix has a short tan and white coat.

Shelter staff said he is a very friendly dog with no food aggression or food guarding issues.

He was introduced to other dogs and never showed any aggression but was a little nervous until he got to know them better. They said he is a great boy who could use some socialization.

He's in kennel No. 7, ID No. 1233.

Female boxer mix

This female boxer mix has a short tan and white coat.

She's in kennel No. 8, ID No. 1247.

Hound-shepherd mix

This male hound-shepherd mix has a short brown coat.

Shelter staff said he is a very sweet dog that walks well on a leash and does not appear to be interested in cats.

He needs more socialization with other dogs; he does well with female dogs but caution is suggested around other males.

He has no signs of food aggression.

He's in kennel No. 13, ID No. 1107.

'Gizmo'

“Gizmo” is a male Chihuahua mix with a short tan and white coat.

Shelter staff reports that Gizmo is a very sweet and loving dog who is full of energy. He appears to be good with children. His ideal home will have an owner willing to spend time training and teaching him.

He's in kennel No. 17, ID No. 1229.

Male pit bull terrier-shepherd mix

This young male pit bull terrier-shepherd mix has a short tan coat.

He's in kennel No. 25, ID No. 1135.

Male pit bull terrier mix

This male pit bull terrier mix has a short tan and white coat.

He's described as a sweet and friendly dog that walks well on a leash and has no signs of food aggression.

Shelter staff said  he gets along well with both male and female dogs, but he would be best in a home with no cats and with children age 10 and above.

He's in kennel No. 30, ID No. 1201.

To fill out an adoption application online visit http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Dog___Cat_Adoption_Application.htm .

Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.

Office hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .

For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.

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.

Thanks to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, some of the most mysterious cosmic residents have just become even more puzzling.

New observations of globular clusters in a small galaxy show they are very similar to those found in the Milky Way, and so must have formed in a similar way.

One of the leading theories on how these clusters form predicts that globular clusters should only be found nestled in among large quantities of old stars.

But these old stars, though rife in the Milky Way, are not present in this small galaxy, and so, the mystery deepens.

Globular clusters – large balls of stars that orbit the centers of galaxies, but can lie very far from them – remain one of the biggest cosmic mysteries.

They were once thought to consist of a single population of stars that all formed together. However, research has since shown that many of the Milky Way's globular clusters had far more complex formation histories and are made up of at least two distinct populations of stars.

Of these populations, around half the stars are a single generation of normal stars that were thought to form first, and the other half form a second generation of stars, which are polluted with different chemical elements.

In particular, the polluted stars contain up to 50 to 100 times more nitrogen than the first generation of stars.

The proportion of polluted stars found in the Milky Way's globular clusters is much higher than astronomers expected, suggesting that a large chunk of the first generation star population is missing.

A leading explanation for this is that the clusters once contained many more stars but a large fraction of the first generation stars were ejected from the cluster at some time in its past.

This explanation makes sense for globular clusters in the Milky Way, where the ejected stars could easily hide among the many similar, old stars in the vast halo, but the new observations, which look at this type of cluster in a much smaller galaxy, call this theory into question.

Astronomers used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to observe four globular clusters in a small nearby galaxy known as the Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal galaxy.

“We knew that the Milky Way's clusters were more complex than was originally thought, and there are theories to explain why. But to really test our theories about how these clusters form we needed to know what happened in other environments,” said Søren Larsen of Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, lead author of the new paper. “Before now we didn't know whether globular clusters in smaller galaxies had multiple generations or not, but our observations show clearly that they do!”

The astronomers' detailed observations of the four Fornax clusters show that they also contain a second polluted population of stars and indicate that not only did they form in a similar way to one another, their formation process is also similar to clusters in the Milky Way.

Specifically, the astronomers used the Hubble observations to measure the amount of nitrogen in the cluster stars, and found that about half of the stars in each cluster are polluted at the same level that is seen in Milky Way's globular clusters.

This high proportion of polluted second generation stars means that the Fornax globular clusters' formation should be covered by the same theory as those in the Milky Way.

Based on the number of polluted stars in these clusters they would have to have been up to ten times more massive in the past, before kicking out huge numbers of their first generation stars and reducing to their current size.

But, unlike the Milky Way, the galaxy that hosts these clusters doesn't have enough old stars to account for the huge number that were supposedly banished from the clusters.

“If these kicked-out stars were there, we would see them – but we don't!” explained Frank Grundahl of Aarhus University in Denmark, co-author on the paper. “Our leading formation theory just can't be right. There's nowhere that Fornax could have hidden these ejected stars, so it appears that the clusters couldn't have been so much larger in the past.”

This finding means that a leading theory on how these mixed generation globular clusters formed cannot be correct and astronomers will have to think once more about how these mysterious objects, in the Milky Way and further afield, came to exist.

The new work is detailed in a paper published on Nov. 20 in The Astrophysical Journal.

MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – A bicyclist died late Saturday night after being hit by two vehicles near Middletown.

The 62-year-old St. Helena man, whose name has not been released by the California Highway Patrol pending notification of family, was hit on Highway 29 south of Central Park Road, officials reported.

The CHP's report said that at approximately 10:12 p.m. Saturday 62-year-old Alma Louise Cross of Clearlake was driving her 1992 Chevrolet Blazer northbound on Highway 29 at 50 miles per hour, with the bicyclist traveling southbound at an unknown speed on a NEXT La Jolla bike.

For reasons that the CHP said are yet to be determined, the man allowed his bicycle to veer into the northbound lane, where he collided with Cross' Blazer.

As a result of the crash, the man was thrown from his bike and landed in the highway's southbound lane, the CHP said.

Aria Dawn Mulvihill, 21, of Hidden Valley Lake, who was driving a 2006 Volvo S60 southbound on Highway 29 at approximately 50 miles per hour, hit the bicyclist while he was lying in the roadway, the CHP said.

The man died of his injuries at the scene, according to the report.

The CHP said Cross, her passengers Daniel David Wilder, 59, and Douglas Ray Alexander, 52, both of Clearlake, as well as Mulvihill and her passenger, 23-year-old Zach Montana Strickler of Hidden Valley Lake, were all uninjured.

The two drivers and three passengers were wearing their seat belts. The CHP said the bicyclist was not wearing a helmet.

Drugs and alcohol were not factors for Cross and Mulvihill, according to the report, but the CHP added that it is unknown at this point if they were contributing factors for the bicyclist.

The crash is under investigation by CHP Officer Ryan Erickson.

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.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Lakeport's 29th postmaster was sworn in on Friday.

Maria Lane, a 22-year Lakeport resident who was appointed to the job on Oct. 4, took her oath of office during an afternoon ceremony that included colleagues, family and friends.

Doing the honors of administering the oath to Lane was Dana Tibbetts, who retired as Lakeport's postmaster in 2010. He hired Lane as a letter carrier in 1995.

It's been exactly a century since a woman last held Lakeport's postmaster job. Myrtle Hancock was postmaster in 1914.

Since joining the US Postal Service, Lane has worked her way up from a letter carrier to a full-time clerk in Clearlake Oaks in 1997.

She transferred to Upper Lake, where she worked from 2000 to 2008, worked as postmaster of Hopland and then, in 2010, returned to Upper Lake to serve as postmaster, where she worked until her latest appointment.

In introducing Lane at the Friday ceremony, Joseph Machado, manager of Post Office operations from the San Francisco office, explained that the postmaster appointment is a significant one.

The position serves as a local federal representative, and has a responsibility to the community, Machado said.

“Maria does her job very well,” Machado said.

Lake County historian Ruby Glebe was on hand to offer a brief history of the local Lakeport Post Office.

The first trading in the area took place in 1855, with settler William Forbes arriving around that time and claiming a 160-acre homestead, she said. What is now Lakeport would, for a time, be known as Forbestown.

On July 17, 1858, a post office opened in Big Valley, as there was no suitable place at that time in Forbestown, Glebe said.

Indian and deer trails would become the post roads, she said. Mail would come from Sacramento, over the mountains through Pope Valley, and later from Ukiah by horseback and from Calistoga by stage.

Glebe said the city's name became Lakeport in 1861. The name change followed the formation of the county and came, in part, to prevent the town being confused with the mining town of the same name in Yuba County.

According to county historical records, a post office was authorized in Lakeport in November 1861, leading to the Big Valley Post Office's closure.

In 1913, Scotts Valley ranchers submitted 123 signatures in support of rural delivery, according to Glebe.

Over the years, the Lakeport Post Office was in a number of locations. On June 4, 1984, the Lakeport Post Office opened at its current location on 11th Street. Glebe said it's the only federally built post office in the county.

After Glebe's historical retrospective, Lane took her oath from Tibbetts.

She offered her thanks to her fellow postmasters and staffers. “Every day we learn something new.”

She added, “What a great crew we have here.”

Following the ceremony, when asked about the challenges Lane will face coming into the job, Tibbetts – who served as the city's postmaster from 1984 to 2011 – said it will be a matter of trying to keep up financially with a huge delivery volume and fewer staff.

“We can't cut services, we can't close places down just because they're not making money,” Tibbetts said.

When Tibbetts started as postmaster, there were 28 employees at the Lakeport Post Office, and 20 when he left in 2011.

Today, there are 17, said Lane, which serve 10 carrier routes and 1,234 post office boxes.

Over the last few years, as the post office has lost more staff, it's also gained about 1,000 deliveries, Lane said.

“As the county grows we add new delivery points,” she said.

Despite the challenges, Lane – who stopped to receive congratulatory hugs from staff – is excited about her new job.

“I love it,” Lane said.

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.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – After a rainy Thursday, forecasters are predicting more rain will fall on Lake County on Friday and Saturday.

Totals reported by the National Weather Service late Thursday for the preceding 24-hour period included 0.69 inches in Lakeport, 0.52 inches in Kelseyville, 0.64 inches in Whispering Pines, 0.51 inches near Middletown, 0.54 inches in Bartlett Springs and 0.66 inches at High Glade Lookout above Upper Lake.

Thursday's rain created a slight improvement in Clear Lake's conditions. At the start of the day, the lake was at -.85 feet Rumsey, the special measure for the lake. By early Friday the lake's depth was -.81 feet Rumsey, according to the US Geological Survey.

The National Weather Service forecast for Friday includes an 80- to 90-percent chance of rain around Lake County, with rainfall totals expected to be about a tenth of an inch.

Patchy fog also is in the Friday forecast, with daytime highs in the mid 50s and nighttime highs in the high 40s.

On Saturday, forecasters also anticipating a 70-percent chance of rain in the county.

Rainfall totals for Saturday are expected to range from a tenth of an inch up to a quarter of an inch.

Conditions are expected to be sunny and mostly clear from Monday through Thursday, Thanksgiving day, with daytime highs in the mid 60s and nighttime lows into the high 30s, according to the National Weather Service.

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.

An international team of researchers analyzing decades of observations from many facilities, including NASA's Swift satellite, has discovered an unusual source of light in a galaxy some 90 million light-years away.

The object's curious properties make it a good match for a supermassive black hole ejected from its home galaxy after merging with another giant black hole. But astronomers can't yet rule out an alternative possibility.

The source, called SDSS1133, may be the remnant of a massive star that erupted for a record period of time before destroying itself in a supernova explosion.

“With the data we have in hand, we can't yet distinguish between these two scenarios,” said lead researcher Michael Koss, an astronomer at ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. “One exciting discovery made with NASA's Swift is that the brightness of SDSS1133 has changed little in optical or ultraviolet light for a decade, which is not something typically seen in a young supernova remnant.”

In a study published in the Nov. 21 edition of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Koss and his colleagues report that the source has brightened significantly in visible light during the past six months, a trend that, if maintained, would bolster the black hole interpretation.

To analyze the object in greater detail, the team is planning ultraviolet observations with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope in October 2015.

Whatever SDSS1133 is, it's persistent. The team was able to detect it in astronomical surveys dating back more than 60 years.

The mystery object is part of the dwarf galaxy Markarian 177, located in the bowl of the Big Dipper, a well-known star pattern within the constellation Ursa Major.

Although supermassive black holes usually occupy galactic centers, SDSS1133 is located at least 2,600 light-years from its host galaxy's core.

In June 2013, the researchers obtained high-resolution near-infrared images of the object using the 10-meter Keck II telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

They reveal the emitting region of SDSS1133 is less than 40 light-years across and that the center of Markarian 177 shows evidence of intense star formation and other features indicating a recent disturbance.

“We suspect we're seeing the aftermath of a merger of two small galaxies and their central black holes,” said co-author Laura Blecha, an Einstein Fellow in the University of Maryland's Department of Astronomy and a leading theorist in simulating recoils, or “kicks,” in merging black holes. “Astronomers searching for recoiling black holes have been unable to confirm a detection, so finding even one of these sources would be a major discovery.”

The collision and merger of two galaxies disrupts their shapes and results in new episodes of star formation.

If each galaxy possesses a central supermassive black hole, they will form a bound binary pair at the center of the merged galaxy before ultimately coalescing themselves.

Merging black holes release a large amount of energy in the form of gravitational radiation, a consequence of Einstein's theory of gravity.

Waves in the fabric of space-time ripple outward in all directions from accelerating masses. If both black holes have equal masses and spins, their merger emits gravitational waves uniformly in all directions.

More likely, the black hole masses and spins will be different, leading to lopsided gravitational wave emission that launches the black hole in the opposite direction.

The kick may be strong enough to hurl the black hole entirely out of its home galaxy, fating it to forever drift through intergalactic space. More typically, a kick will send the object into an elongated orbit.

Despite its relocation, the ejected black hole will retain any hot gas trapped around it and continue to shine as it moves along its new path until all of the gas is consumed.

If SDSS1133 isn't a black hole, then it might have been a very unusual type of star known as a Luminous Blue Variable (LBV).

These massive stars undergo episodic eruptions that cast large amounts of mass into space long before they explode.

Interpreted in this way, SDSS1133 would represent the longest period of LBV eruptions ever observed, followed by a terminal supernova explosion whose light reached Earth in 2001.

The nearest comparison in our galaxy is the massive binary system Eta Carinae, which includes an LBV containing about 90 times the sun's mass.

Between 1838 and 1845, the system underwent an outburst that ejected at least 10 solar masses and made it the second-brightest star in the sky. It then followed up with a smaller eruption in the 1890s.

In this alternative scenario, SDSS1133 must have been in nearly continual eruption from at least 1950 to 2001, when it reached peak brightness and went supernova.

The spatial resolution and sensitivity of telescopes prior to 1950 were insufficient to detect the source.

But if this was an LBV eruption, the current record shows it to be the longest and most persistent one ever observed.

An interaction between the ejected gas and the explosion's blast wave could explain the object's steady brightness in the ultraviolet.

Whether it's a rogue supermassive black hole or the closing act of a rare star, it seems astronomers have never seen the likes of SDSS1133 before.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The beaches around Clear Lake are increasing in number and size due to low lake levels.

As a result, many trash objects, such as old and discarded tires, are now visible.

To take advantage of the exposed shoreline conditions, the Lake County Department of Water Resources has scheduled a Clear Lake Cleanup day for Saturday, Dec. 6, between 8:30 a.m. and noon.

The three sites chosen for cleanup will be shorelines in Lucerne, the city of Clearlake and Clearlake Oaks.

If you are interested in participating in the Clear Lake Cleanup, email Carolyn Ruttan at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 707-295-0333 (any time) to determine the closest coordination site.

Dress in appropriate attire, and bring gloves, bottled water and snacks. 

Gloves will be available at the coordination site for those who don’t have them.

All participants will need to sign a waiver of liability. An adult will need to sign for anyone under the age of 18.

C&S Waste Solutions and the Lake County Department of Public Services are also providing services to assist with the cleanup event.

“Volunteer just three hours of your time and know you will have made Clear Lake a cleaner place for everyone and our wild life to enjoy,” said Carolyn Ruttan of the Lake County Department of Water Resources and coordinator of the event.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Attorney General Kamala D. Harris and Alameda County District Attorney Nancy E. O’Malley on Thursday announced a settlement with AT&T to resolve allegations that hundreds of AT&T’s California facilities unlawfully disposed of hazardous waste and material over a nine-year period.

If approved by the court, AT&T will pay $23.8 million, including $18.8 million in civil penalties and costs.

Another $3 million will fund supplemental environmental projects furthering consumer protection and environmental enforcement in California, and AT&T will pay a minimum of $2 million to enhance its environmental compliance.

In addition, AT&T will spend an estimated $28 million over the next five years to implement the enhanced environmental compliance measures required by the settlement.

Among the affected locations listed in the settlement are two in Lake County – 2510 Old Highway 53 in Clearlake and 555 Lakeport Blvd. in Lakeport.

The settlement includes a $6,000 penalty that AT&T must pay to the Lake County District Attorney's Office.

Sites in the neighboring counties of Mendocino, Napa, Sonoma and Yolo also are among the affected locations, with the district attorney's offices in those counties to receive penalty payments of $6,000, $21,000, $45,000 and $63,000, respectively, according to the settlement documents.

The settlement and proposed judgment, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, requires approval from the court before becoming final.

“This settlement holds AT&T accountable for unlawfully dumping electronic waste,” Harris said. “The illegal disposal of hazardous waste can lead to serious environmental and health risks for California communities. AT&T will be required to implement strict compliance measures at its facilities that set an example for other companies to safeguard our communities against hazardous waste.”

This is the first enforcement action in California against a telecommunications company for its management of electronic waste.

“Today’s settlement marks a great victory for California’s ongoing efforts to ensure that hazardous waste is disposed of in a safe, legal and environmentally sustainable manner,” O’Malley said Thursday. “Whether a small local business or a huge international company, my Office will pursue all necessary legal action against entities that pollute our environment. This legal action should put others on notice that local and state agencies will continue to work together to investigate and prosecute violations against our environment.”

The civil enforcement action and proposed settlement against AT&T were filed on Thursday in Alameda County by Harris and O’Malley, and is the product of a robust investigation by the two offices together with the Department of Toxic Substances Control.

The enforcement action claims that approximately 237 AT&T warehouse and dispatch facilities throughout the state unlawfully handled and disposed of various hazardous wastes and materials over a nine-year period.

Those hazardous wastes and materials primarily consisted of electronic equipment, batteries, aerosol cans, as well as certain gels, liquids and other items used by AT&T service technicians in delivering telephone, Internet and video services to residential and business customers in California.

In 2011, inspectors from the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office Environmental Protection Division and investigators from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control conducted a series of waste inspections of dumpsters belonging to AT&T warehouse and dispatch facilities.

The inspections revealed that AT&T was routinely and systematically sending hazardous wastes to local landfills that were not permitted to receive those wastes.

There are 13 AT&T facilities in Alameda County and all 13 facilities were found to be unlawfully disposing hazardous waste.

Upon notice of the investigation, AT&T immediately agreed to cooperate and promptly implemented measures to halt the removal of regular trash until it could be inspected to remove any potentially hazardous wastes before they reached municipal landfills. 

AT&T also has voluntarily dedicated additional resources toward environmental compliance and improving its hazardous and universal waste management compliance programs.

In addition to the $23.8 million settlement payment, AT&T expects to incur another $28 million over the next five years to implement enhanced environmental compliance measures required by the settlement.

For example, AT&T has implemented multiple layers of protection against electronic waste getting into its regular trash, including contractor inspections of “staging bins” before their contents are deposited in dumpsters, hundreds of unannounced dumpster inspections annually, and three independent audits over five years.

The telecom provider will be bound under the terms of a permanent injunction prohibiting similar future violations of law.