Remember When for the week of 1/24/17
125 years ago
A dispatch from Alturas to N.S. McKinley, postmaster at this place, says the liquor ordinance was repealed.
The Lassen Advocate contains interesting reading. People in that section hold of the irrigation question and have accomplished much already.
Their efforts will bear fruit before the close of the year and the Gazette congratulates the people and the Advocate for the good work it has done in that direction.
75 years ago
Another step in the acquisition of a site for a Lassen National Forest headquarters building was taken with instruction from Washington to have the deed recorded to the premises on Grand Avenue. This would seem to indicate the Bureau of Land Management has accepted the property and the last obstacle removed in their erection of a building, which would permanently locate the Lassen National Forest Administration in Susanville.
35 years ago
Susanville’s Riverside Park and two local schools were to be aesthetically improved through the use of trees in cooperative demonstration project designed to educate the public on the use of trees in city areas.
The idea was to go beyond just provided shade as the trees were to be placed as barriers, buffer zones to direct foot traffic and hide unsightly storage areas at the three sites.
25 years ago
After months of gathering and considering information on year-round education, the Susanville School District Year Round Education Study Committee has come up with a series of recommendations that, if adopted, will end the traditional summer vacation for some local students as early as next year.
20 years ago
Inmate labor was a big factor in the low level of recent flood damage. But with local control of that resource threatened, one assemblyman vowed to cut through the red tape.
“We couldn’t do it without the inmates,” Susanville Fire Chief Steve Rose said of recent flood control efforts. “That labor force is just invaluable, the training they have and their ability.”
15 years ago
Lassen County’s troubled publicly-owned utility company asked the state for the money to end its financial woes, according to the resolution written by the Lassen Municipal Utility District’s General Counsel, Susanville attorney Frank Cady.
Faces with sky-rocketing utility costs, which it must pass on its consumers LMUD’s board of directors passed a resolution to on Thursday, Jan. 11, requesting $19 million from the state to “forestall the impact of the unprecedented increase in the cost of wholesale power.”
10 years ago
A rapid response team is helping Sierra Army Depot employees deal with impending layoffs.
Gary Corderman, Alliance for Workforce Development executive director, said SIAD officials changed the job titles of one group of employees.
“The temporary employees they are going to change to intermittent and then not schedule them to work,” Corderman said. “The definition of a layoff is that you’re not scheduled to work. So there’s not much difference between the semantics of being an intermittent employee for the federal government and not being scheduled to work and being laid off. They will certainly qualify for unemployment insurance.”
On Wednesday, Jan. 3, officials from Sierra Army Depot announced a change in work schedules that will effect up to 73 employees.
Five years ago
On Dec. 27, the U.S. Department of Agriculture granted a secretarial disaster designation for Lassen County and the contiguous counties of Plumas, Modoc, Shasta and Sierra due to agricultural losses caused by drought beginning Jan. 1, 2010.
The California Emergency Management Agency states emergency farm loans for actual losses as a direct result of the disaster up to a maximum of $500,000. The interest rate is 3.75 percent.
Last Year
Graeagle resident Shirley Swindell spotted odd rings on the water along the Feather River near Graeagle Golf Course on Dec. 31.
“I took a few pictures of it and when I was at Mountain Hardware in Blairsden I asked if anyone knew what it was, but no one had seen it,” said Swindell.
She posted a photo on social media and two friends found that the floating circles, which have been documented on far larger bodies of water, are called “ice pancakes.” They are known to form on creeks around the world in harsh weather conditions.
The ice formation surprised Dr. Derek Lerch at Feather River College and Portola High School teacher Dave Valle, both never having seen ice pancakes before.
According to National Geographic on its website nationalgeographic.com, “The ice disks form when waves jostle pieces of smooth ice against each other, rounding their edges. As the resulting pancakes collide with the waves, they develop raised edges, making them look even more like lily pads,” or pancakes.