Editor’s Note: What follows is a month-by-month breakdown/recap of the early months with some of the more impactful news stories of the year that was.
JANUARY
PG&E prepares for regional winter storms. The biggest affecting Lake County happened in winter/springtime
The year began with Northern California utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co. deploying almost 2,900 workers ahead of a major to deal with a regional monster winter storm that was threatening to be among the worst in Bay Area history.
The storm, which already had brought emergency proclamations and hazard warnings for flooding and miserable winds throughout the region, was expected to be at its heaviest from for several weeks in early January.
By early morning on January 4, 632 Bay Area customers were without power, according to the utility. Of those, 225 were in the East Bay, 144 were it the South Bay, 125 were in San Francisco and 57 were in the Peninsula. PG&E said at the time that it expected those numbers to rise.
According to PG&E, 800 personnel would monitor electric incidents, while 360 four-person electrical crews and 397 trouble-men — distribution line technicians, system inspectors and first responders from the utility — also were in place to stem any damage caused by the elements.
About 250 vegetation-management personnel also were ready to deal with fallen trees and branches that interfere with power lines. Sixteen crews from Southern California Edison provided aid as well, the utility said. Other extreme impact of weather later in the winter would have a greater impact on the Lake County region.
—Rick Hurd, Bay Area News Group
FEBRUARY
‘Dream big:’ cannabis workers search for new futures as Emerald Triangle economy withers
Leann Greene’s rose-colored glasses are scratched, cracked, sitting askew, but still firmly planted on her face during her latest monthly open house for the Humboldt Workforce Coalition.
For three hours in a sunny conference room at the public library, apprehensive cannabis workers, lured by a segment on the community radio station KMUD, trickle through, seeking a potential refuge from their collapsing industry. Greene is their counselor and confidante, a relentless cheerleader promoting new career opportunities.
“So dream big. It’s your life, right?” she tells one young man looking for help connecting to job possibilities in a place where there don’t seem to be many right now.
It’s a mantra for Greene.
“You’re kind of reinventing your life here, so dream big,” she tells Daniel Rivero, who fears he could lose his job at any moment after his hours were cut back at the small warehouse where he manufactures cannabis products for $17 an hour.
A crash in the price of weed over the past two years has sent California’s cannabis market reeling — and with it, the communities that relied economically on the crop for decades, even before the “green rush” of commercial legalization.
In the Emerald Triangle — the renowned Northern California region of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties that historically served as the hub of cannabis cultivation for the state and the country — growers who can no longer sell their product for enough to turn a profit are laying off employees and shuttering their farms. The cascading financial impacts have left local residents with broken dreams and a daunting question: If not cannabis, then what?
“We just need to reassess this whole situation as a community of what we can do to evolve with it instead of trying to go against it,” Rivero said.
—Alexei Koseff
MARCH
The Lake County board of Supervisors discuss long term changes to cannabis taxes
the Lake County board of supervisors discussed long term changes to cannabis taxes as well as the extension of the Emergency Warming Shelter located at 1111 Whalen Way in Lakeport in the Spring. They also considered rescinding the 2017-05 formation of the Middle Region Town Hall (MRTH) and 2018-334 amendment from MRTH to the Lucerne Area Town Hall (LATH) and Establishing the Central Region Town Hall (CeRTH) as the Municipal Advisory Committee for the Central Region in District 3.
District 2 Supervisor Bruno Sabatier and District 4 Supervisor Michael Green presented regarding permanent changes to cannabis cultivation tax and amending resolutions for the purpose of “extending the end date for changes made to cannabis cultivation taxes in regards to suspension of CPI increases, using canopy area only, and a decrease of the tax by 50%.”
District 5 Supervisor Chair Jessica Pyska said, “We are heavily invested in what has already been created and I don’t think changing to a new way of doing things is going to be helpful, I think that will set us back.” The board directed staff to focus on placing leads for enforcement, looking at the late tax penalty rate, and a permanent canopy calculation.
—Nikki Carboni
COVID deaths take a downturn early in the year
The number of COVID deaths continued to fall in California in April as the rest of the country, dropped 65% in the last early months of 2023 in the Golden State, another sign that the virus was losing its grip on people’s lives.
In March, California added just 540 names to its COVID death total, and numbers for April were projected to be even lower.
After three years of the pandemic, the state showed a notable pattern of decline in deaths from the virus: An average of 5,100 Californians died in each of the first 12 months of the COVID years, starting in April 2020. That dropped by more than half in the second year to 2,400 and by even more to 900 in early 2023. A total of 101,000 Californians died from COVID since the pandemic began.
“I think we’re finally seeing the fruits of the fact that we’re dealing with a less virulent organism,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. “And we’ve got a high immune population to withstand serious infection.”
The declining number of deaths — mirroring a drop in COVID hospital patients — came despite the long-anticipated end to California’s COVID emergency and almost universal shedding of masks and other precautions over the last months of 2022.
March 2023 saw one of the lowest death tolls since the virus first overwhelmed hospitals and intensive care units in early 2020. The pattern was similar across the country, with nearly 8,800 Americans dying in March, the lowest monthly death total since summer 2022. But the virus continued to be a significant health threat for the elderly and others with compromised health: In California, COVID still claimed more lives in February and March of this year than died in the entire “severe” 2017-2018 flu season.
—Harriet Rowan
