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Dam disaster map ready
Board to get look at draft of flooding paths
| Thursday, Oct 25 2007 8:40 PM
Last Updated: Thursday, Oct 25 2007 8:44 PM
A draft of the long-awaited inundation study map for the dam at Isabella Lake will be shown to Kern County supervisors Tuesday morning.
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The map will show the areas of Bakersfield most likely to flood if the dam on the Kern River collapses.
Copies of the preliminary draft will not be handed out to the public or the county, said Isabella dam project manager Veronica Petrovsky with the Army Corps of Engineers.
The map supervisors will see is not final and does not cover all the possible ways the dam could fail, she said.
The corps cannot release copies of the map publicly, Petrovsky said, for national security reasons.
No one, she said, wants terrorists to get access to precise studies of how much damage they could do by destroying a dam.
Real estate fraud
Supervisors also will be asked to create a $2 fee on all real estate transactions that would fund real estate fraud investigations.
The recommended action would also set up a trust fund to hold the estimated $280,000 a year.
But supervisors are not being asked to create a formal group or organization to conduct the fraud investigations.
District Attorney Ed Jagels has recommended against it and county officials determined a formal investigation team would cost more than the new fee on property sales would bring in.
County staff will investigate other ways to spend the cash the fee will raise.
Historic labor site
The U.S. Department of the Interior is considering designating the Forty Acres site in Delano as a historic landmark.
The site was the first formal home of the United Farmworkers union.
New lawyers
Supervisors will consider hiring the Howard, Rice, Nemerovski law firm to handle the appeal of the U.S. District Court ruling that overturned Measure E, Kern County's voter-approved ban on land application of sewage sludge.
The contract calls for a $200,000 expenditure of county money.
Fire appeal
Jared Russell, 22, of Bakersfield will ask supervisors Tuesday morning to forgive a $1,500 fine for lighting off illegal aerial fireworks at 1:16 a.m. July 5.
In a letter to supervisors, Russell said he should not be charged the fee because it is "a little excessive" and accused the firefighter and sheriff's deputy who caught him firing off the illegal fireworks in a backyard on Ceder Creek Avenue with entering the home without permission.
Firefighter Devin Lawrence reported he we was allowed to enter the house after identifying himself and witnessing the launch of an illegal firework from the backyard.
Russell said he knew the fireworks were illegal but felt he was safe because he was "shooting them off over a grass-covered park surrounded by a lake."