COBB – At the Cobb Area Council meeting Thursday Glen March, Director of Public Works for Lake County, announced a $7 million county investment in Cobb area roads. March, who started working for the county six weeks ago, reported that he had already heard from other county residents whose road work will have to wait. March and a number of community members congratulated Supervisor Jessica Pyska for securing the planned six months of work for the district. Pyska in turn thanked her colleagues on the Board of Supervisors for recognizing the dire condition of Cobb roads and agreeing to let the area have access to the funds.
March hopes to gather bids and issue contracts to local builders by the end of August. He wants to get a contractor on site in September to get a few months of work completed before winter sets in. He warned of the inconvenience to the community while existing asphalt is pulverized on location, laid down as road base on newly compacted roadway and fresh asphalt is applied. They are currently informing local contractors to submit bids for the work. Community members, looking at the list of planned work, asked about redundancy and conflicts with PG&E undergrounding work. There were also questions as to culvert repairs and water pipe routing issues under and along roadways. March stated that there were no planned culvert repairs at this time, but if there were savings found from some areas of planned road rehabilitation there was the possibility of adding to the contracts.
Supervisor Pyska, informed the council that more Right of Entry (ROE) permits need to be filled out for the Tree Mortality program so the survey and eventual free tree removal can take place. She reminded attendees that this program is for free removal of dead trees on private property that may impact county Right of Way such as roads and other county infrastructure. The survey target area includes Cobb, Hidden Valley, Middletown and Jerusalem Valley. They have received 35 ROE permits so far, up from six last month, but they still need another 35 to reach their goal of 70. The program cannot survey or remove trees without the permits granting access to private land. Interested parties should go to the county website and enter “tree mortality” in the search bar. This is a county program wholly separate from PG&E vegetative materials removal.
Fire Chief Paul Duncan announced “…we are in peak fire season.” He has four incident management teams deployed throughout the state with a large number of resources out of the unit. He cited several large fires burning throughout the state pulling in needed resources. Duncan pointed out that 40 percent of the fires so far this season are from mowing. He cautioned against mowing or even weed-whacking with a string trimmer after 10 a.m., at a temperature over 90 degrees or any red flag day. Leaf blowing is acceptable, preferably with a battery-powered unit. Any gas-powered leaf blower should have a spark arrestor on it. Duncan mentioned that the air curtain burner for incinerating vegetative material in accordance with EPA particulate requirements is not yet accepting material. It’s still going through the permitting process with the carbonizer that will be located in the same area.
