Supervisor Denise Rushing brought good news from the medical marijuana dispensary in Upper Lake. The facility, which continually gets ire from neighbors and tourists, for the number of people waiting outside for services, has implemented a new paging system similar to that found in some restaurants. This should reduce and, hopefully, eliminate the number of people waiting outside the office making Upper Lake friendlier to tourism and residents alike.
The Board of Supervisors has also received a commitment from the University of San Francisco to look over the Lucerne Hotel (the Castle) as a potential candidate for a remote culinary and hospitality campus.
Konocti Trails was approved by the Board.
Schools
Career day in May - date to be determined.
There will be an office for the probation department on the school site. There are a lot of kids on probation at the school so this helps them.
They're going to start an adult ed program at the school.
Holly Harris - Chuck Lamb - Clark's Island
Clark's Island
A survey was mailed to all the residents of CLO asking them what they wanted done in the community. The item highest on the list was Clark's Island which had been a mobile home park that had been flooded numerous times to the extent that even FEMA became involved. Their septic system was actually leaking sewage into the Lake. The County eventually purchased the property from the Santa Rosa resident. Among the other issues, the bridge to Clark's Island was in such poor shape it would be difficult to get an emergency vehicle onto the island. The mobile homes have been towed away.
The residents got together and developed an educational eco park. This is also the only island in the County that's a public park.
They're using local ingredients and even using local clays to make a building on the island. This is a sustainable initiative which will generate tourism in the County.
Locals actually helped make the clay bricks and natural building materials. Lake County has incredible clay that can be used for building. Copper Cross Vineyards donated all the clay for the building. This took well over 100 volunteers from ages 4-78 over the two months it took to put this together.
Citizens and businesses have donated $8100 toward the project. In-kind donations for hardware, testing, building materials an engineering drawings have totaled $11,000.
Right now there is a grant for up to $1,300,000 from the state that has been applied for that would provide improvements to the 1.5 acre Clarks Island.
There will also be a living dock featuring a kayak launch.
The University of San Francisco is also considering a rural satellite here in Lake County for natural buildings.
Floating Islands.
Floating islands are man-made structures that simulate the wetlands. It's made of PET which is what they use to make plastic bottles. The bottles are processed and then there's marine foam inside. The plastic is inert and doesn't hurt the water at all. These islands are then planted with cattails and the objective is to compete with algae for nutrients which chokes out the algae. It's very effective in proximity to the island. This 150' island has the cleaning capacity of 1.25 acres of wetlands.
An entire eco system is created beneath the island so it's possible that this might be some of the better fishing in Clearlake Oaks.
Tule Revegetation
Tules are nature's water cleaner and are so important to Clear Lake that there's an ordinance to kill them. Unfortunately, we've lost 70% of the tules around the Lake since before people moved in.
There are 100 ft sq of tules around Clarks Island.