Peninsula Packaging Plans Expansions,
More Jobs, Solar, Fuel Cell Projects

80 Year Old Says She Lost Savings to
Visalia Investment Counselor

State Prison Reform Receives Mixed Responses in County

Tulare County - Despite the excitement among lawmakers in Sacramento following the April 26th passing of a bill that provides $7.4 billion to expand prison capacity across the state, the response among many Tulare County officials might be described as lukewarm at best. Some of this is due to questions about what impact the prison and jail plan will have on Tulare County and other Valley counties.

“We worked very hard, and we kept always the eye on the goal, and we never forgot the people that we serve,” announced an enthusiastic Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. “With this agreement we will expand our prisons and we will add a total of 53,000 new beds, so the dangerous criminals will be kept locked up where they belong, and inmates who want to turn their lives around will be given a chance to do so.”

“Republicans and Democrats set aside partisan differences to do the right thing for California by addressing our prison overcrowding problems and expand rehabilitation programs,” said Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines. “We have taken the first step to ensure that Central Valley families are kept safe by creating the prison capacity needed to keep serious criminals behind bars and helping more inmates turn their lives around once they have paid their debts to society.”

Meanwhile, local officials are unsure if they want to jump on the bandwagon. County Administrative Officer Brian Haddix and Tulare County Sheriff's Captain Dave Williams have been carefully examining the provisions for local facilities. A total of $1.22 billion will be available statewide for a two-phase construction of 13,000 jail beds, but there is a catch counties receiving these state funds must contribute 25 percent in matching funds.

“It's fine that they are offering their money, but where are we supposed to get this 25 percent match?” asked Tulare County Supervisor Connie Conway who was in Sacramento lobbying on this issue. “This is a great program down the line, but what are we supposed to do with our prisoner problem over the next couple of years?”

Whether it would be better to use the same amount of county funds to tackle the problem is something that needs study.

“If this benefits Tulare County and the state, great, but if it only helps the state, then I'm less interested,” said Haddix. “It's too soon to comment in detail because we don't have all the information we need to properly analyze the governor's plan.”

The first phase of the plan calls for $750 million, plus a required 25 percent in matching county funds, for 8,000 beds at a $94,000-per-bed cost. Phase two would be $470 million, plus the 25 percent local match, for 5,000 more beds at the same per-bed cost.

Tulare County's early release total for 2006 was 2,593 and has been on the increase for several years. In 2004, the total was 1,631 and climbed more than 500 the next year.

“The preference will go to counties experiencing overcrowding in their jails,” said Seth Unger, Press Secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “The plan focuses on moving inmates from overcrowded conditions, like moving those sleeping in gymnasiums into real prison housing.”

In addition to providing additional housing in overcrowded jails across the state, the bill will create re-entry facilities to assist prisoners in the final phase of their sentence to transfer from incarceration to freedom. These facilities will provide drug and alcohol treatment, vocational training, job placement and anger management for prisoners programs they can continue even after their discharge from parole. The facility could also be used to house short-term parole violators.

“This allows an offender to be successful when they are out on parole,” Unger said. “The ultimate goal is to reduce recidivism.”

If Tulare County decides to apply for jail funds, the County Sheriff's Department would apply for jail funds. The state will take a look at the needs based on how overcrowded the facilities are, explained Unger. The sheriff and other county officials would jointly apply for re-entry facilities. If approved, the state would build a secure re-entry facility in the county.

County officials will take some time to consider their options, however. Williams explained that although Tulare County, like others, has had to release a substantial number of inmates early due to overcrowding, the political clout by heavily populated jurisdictions in Southern California, the Bay Area and Sacramento with much higher numbers of early prisoner releases could reap the lion's share of the jail funds.

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Fruit Stand on the Corridor Could Test City Policy

Visalia - Aproposal by Elliott Farms to build a barn-inspired fruit stand and combination office just west of Shirk at 198 may test the City of Visalia's policy toward the so-called Scenic Corridor. Much of the acreage to the west of Roeben toward Plaza Drive remains in the county jurisdiction even though it is within the City of Visalia's urban development boundary.

The majority on the council favor keeping the land at the western entrance to the city in pastoral setting favoring a long range plan to designate the area as an ag enterprise zone. Property owners within the 1,000 or so acres of affected land have been generally skeptical of the idea. But now one major player, Tokkie Elliott who owns over 400 acres on the south side of the freeway, appears to be offering a proposal that fits in with the ag enterprise idea.

Mr. Elliott filed a special use application with the county and now the county has referred the matter to the city before the application proceeds.

So on May 7th, the council likely in a study session format will hear about the project and suggest what approach they might favor, says assistant city manager Mike Olmos. “We want to know if council prefers to allow it to remain in the county or to proceed with an annexation,” says Olmos.

Mr. Elliott says he would prefer to keep the land in the county noting that he had an application for annexation on the city's desk for a year and a half and “they didn't respond other than to cash our check.” But he says he understands the city council can begin annexation if they wish.

Council member Greg Kirkpatrick, one of the supporters of the ag enterprise idea, says the proposal “is just what I had envisioned” when the concept was developed to allow ag related enterprises like fruit stands, wineries or ag related offices to locate in the area as long as surrounding land remains in farming. “I'm glad the county decided to refer this to the city as I think they should,” says Kirkpatrick.

As to the plusses and minuses of annexation, Kirkpatrick says his instinct is to go along with what the Elliotts want. He notes annexation would allow the project to connect to city service, although he was inclined to allow them to link into sewer in any case.

It's not clear how the city would proceed with annexation if Elliott doesn't want to.

Kirkpatrick says he wants to work with the county to co-plan the corridor area as an ag enterprise zone and that this project could actually kick off the idea.

Olmos told the Voice that if the annexation proceeds, the city would have to accommodate ag uses within the city limits as a zone.

Council had already indicated the desire to hire a consultant to nail down just what an ag enterprise zone might look like but the decision has been delayed in part due to the press of business. “The only thing we are going to decide is whether to annex or not. We don't have any say-so about the project itself,” since that is a county decision, says Kirkpatrick.

Besides Kirkpatrick, both Mayor Jesus Gamboa and Greg Collins have been strong proponents of an ag enterprise zone along the corridor. Collins told the Voice he would look at the project to see if it included any other development besides the combination office and fruit stand.

Tokkie Elliott told the Voice the upper story of the building would house company office for various enterprises including Wileman Brothers and Elliott Packing and Elliott Farms. Downstairs there would be the fruit stand, fresh juice operations, café and feed store. The project is being planned by Quad Knopf.

The building will be 16,318 square feet and sit on seven acres of a 143-acre parcel, says the county application. The development includes a second storage building of 2,400 square feet for feed storage to be located at the site.

Besides the fruit and food sales the applicant may do an ag museum as well as offer occasional ag auctions says the county application.

If the city decides not to annex, the special use application will go on to the county planning commission.

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Group Announces Dairy Energy Park

Tulare - Plans revealed several weeks ago for a dairy energy park have moved forward with the announcement that a company has agreed to purchase 900 acres between Tulare and Corcoran to build a manure-to-energy power plant side-by-side with a proposed ethanol plant. The company, HBS BioEnergy DDG Corcoran, is a joint venture headed by Len Chapman of Visalia.

Chapman told the Voice that the company has agreed to pay $12 million to John Valov whose land is near Waukena to build the energy park with escrow closing in 18 months. “That's how much time we will need for all the approvals,” says Chapman who says the company has been in discussion with the county on doing a full EIR on the innovative project.

There's high hopes for the project that will take manure from surrounding dairies and convert it in a biomass power plant that in turn will power the adjacent 60 million gallon ethanol facility. Altogether Chapman predicts the value of the project is over $150 million. Once the project is built out look for employment over 50, he says.

“We believe that this Dairy Energy Park will put the San Joaquin Valley on the map for the entire nation—setting a new standard for integrated technologies,” Mr. Chapman noted. “Dairying is an economic powerhouse in the Valley, but now we can show the nation how dairying can also be a sustainable industry in this new age of environmental concerns.”

HBS BioEnergy is in the business of biofuel production, with a team focusing on locating, constructing and operating biofuel facilities using cutting-edge technologies. The company has offices in Fresno.

Chapman says the site is located along the BNSF rail line that runs between Corcoran and Hanford and will bring in corn to supply the feedstock of the ethanol plant. “We hope to source more corn from California,” he says and believes “we can grow more corn in the state like we used to.”

Chapman says he looks to work with the dairy industry in sharing the benefits of the plan. “We want it to be more than telling them to bring us their manure.”

Dairymen are under the gun to “manage” their manure waste to reduce emissions in the valley's air. Such a plant could help them do that. Likewise, says Chapman, the country needs both alternative energy and ethanol for traditional fuel and this project could help meet that demand.

“We think it makes sense to make the ethanol where it will be used—in California, he says. Already the county has two ethanol plants—one operating in Goshen and one under construction in Tipton.

In Kings County, a proposed ethanol plant in the Hanford Industrial Park is moving forward as well.

The parties opened an escrow account on April 17, 2007, and HBS Corcoran has made an initial deposit. The purchase agreement calls for deposits in the aggregate amount of up to $690,000 within 18 months from the opening of escrow. The deposits are nonrefundable except under certain conditions, are to be applied to the purchase price, and will constitute liquidated damages in the event of HBS Corcoran's default under the purchase agreement.

“This model for a complete vertically integrated project has never been implemented in the renewable fuel business to our knowledge,” noted Claude Luster, president of HBS BioEnergy. “This model pairs expertise from closely related but diverse industries, with the end result that the biomass fuels could provide energy cost savings of 50 to 80 percent,” Mr. Luster explained. “This project will benefit the Valley, and help address the environmental issues here, by processing the waste to reduce emissions and practically eliminating water quality concerns normally associated with dairies.”

Chapman heads Dairy Development Group, who assists dairymen in planning, permitting, building and operating their dairies, with a focus on environmental mitigation and compliance.

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2006 – A Down Year for Ag
Kings Drops 8%/Tulare Slides 11%

Tulare County - Led by a decline in milk prices, both Tulare and Kings Counties experienced lower production values in 2006 with Tulare County declining 11% and Kings down 8.4% from 2005 figures.

Tulare County fell from $4.36 billion in 2005 to $3.87 billion in 2006, the biggest decline ever. Kings County came in at $1.28 billion.

The gross value of milk was down a whopping 20% from the year before reflecting depressed prices nationwide most of last year. Most of that drop came because milk averaged just $11.47 per hundredweight compared to $13.85 in 2005. Milk prices have rebounded nicely in mid 2007, say dairymen, up more than $3 or higher. Milk production also fell in 2006 by 4.5% probably due to hot summer temps last year in a year full of weather problems.

Across the Board

“It was a tough year for fruit crops which experienced a 9% decrease,” says Ag Commissioner Gary Kunkel. “At late frost and heavy spring rains and a record heat wave resulted in lower yields for many fruit crops.” Olive production dropped 81%.

Beyond milk, most of the other top ten crops in Tulare County declined in production value last year in part due to tough weather conditions during the year.

In the top ranking led by milk is the heavyweight making up as much as one third of the value of all ag products in Tulare County with the number two crop, oranges, we had a down year in 2006 even as production increased but faced lower prices particularly for navels. Valencia prices were up.

The number three crop in Tulare County, cattle and calves, reflected “lower prices for cattle and dairy cows and a slight reduction in numbers of herds,” says Kunkel.

Number four, grapes were down in 2006 as well as acreage declined to 56,000 acres from 65,000 in 2005. Farmers pulled vineyards in all categories, raisins, wine and table grapes. Wine grape farmers again got lower prices for their crushed product from $242 per ton in 2005 to $224 in 2006. Raisin farmers and table grape farmers each saw higher prices per ton, however.

Number five crop, alfalfa, was down in 2006 as production per acre and price each declined. Number six crop, corn, was down just slightly from the year before. Walnuts, number seven crop in value bucked the trend heading slightly higher in value to $95.2 million from $94.5 million in 2005 even though acreage declined by 3500 acres. The price for walnuts averaged $1750 per ton compared to $1510 in 2005.

Almonds declined in 2006 in Tulare County largely due to lower prices for the nut down from $5380 per ton in 2005 to $4540 in 2006. Plums, number nine crop, also declined though not due to prices but to production with just 86,900 tons produced in 2006 compared to 116,000 tons in 2005, probably a weather-related decline. Also heading down were number 10 crop, pistachios experiencing a production decline and a price drop resulting in an overall decline from over $97 million in 2005 to $72.8 million in 2006.

Tulare County's cotton crop dropped another 13,210 acres in 2006, a 26% decline from 2005. The cotton industry in Tulare County is now a shadow of its former self with just 37,000 acres compared to 79,000 acres in 2000 and 145,000 acres in 1992 when it was the number five crop here. One bright spot in Tulare County was nursery production up 7% in 2006.

Other interesting facts from the crop report are that oranges make up 43% of the fruit and nut exports shipped from Tulare County followed by grapes. Korea, Japan and Mexico are our largest export partners.

Also organic farming appeared to be growing in Tulare County with 59 growers on over 3000 acres. There are 1100 acres of organic grapes, 1105 acres of organic citrus, 394 acres of organic tree fruit and 259 acres of nuts. In addition there are 4200 head of dairy cows raised organically.

In Kings County declines were seen in vegetable crops down 28% and field crops that declined 5% in 2006.

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What's New

And then there were nine. That's right, nine Starbucks in Visalia either in operation, being built or scheduled to be built. The latest ones under construction are in front of the Kmart on Noble, in the Demaree Caldwell shopping center, and now at the new Lowes anchored shopping center at Riggin and Demaree. The ubiquitous caffeine fixer also has stores in Exeter, Farmersville and Lindsay. The company has 13,000 locations worldwide now. Their first store in Visalia opened Downtown in 1997 competing against the locally-owned coffee houses in Downtown. Even as the number of Starbucks has exploded in Visalia, so have locally-owned coffee stores around the city as the popularity of the beverage has deepened. With names like Jammin Java, Jitterz and Jungle Road, these locals are holding their own against the world's largest coffee maker.

Is Hanford ready for a Costco? That's what the Texas developer The Woodmont Co. thinks. The company has the southeast corner of 12th and 198 under contract and is trying to lure Costco to locate there. Currently, Kings County residents have to travel to Visalia or Fresno to shop at the popular warehouse store.

A new Cal Trans report on Highway 190 suggests rescinding a long range plan to extend Highway 190 to the east beyond Quaking Aspen to Highway 395. The report says the state should rescind the adopted unconstructed route—about 30 miles—because the plan is in the Golden Trout Wilderness and South Sierra Wilderness. As a result, Highway 190 will remain a dead end before it turns south and becomes the Great Western Divide highway that circles back towards Johnsondale.

Visalia airport manager Mario Cifuentes says the city “is very pleased” over passenger numbers on flights to Las Vegas out of Visalia pegged at 1,300 for the month. “It is the highest since 2001,” he says. City may also try to promote Sequoia Park as a destination for visitors to Las Vegas hotels—particularly with folks who stay at sister hotels like Marriott who have hotels in both locations. Las Vegas visitors could tour Sequoia and stay overnight at the Visalia Marriott taking the new Sequoia Shuttle that begins this month to the park and fly back the next day to Las Vegas.

Plans for the new East Visalia public safety building are moving forward along with a dispatch center. A few weeks ago city council approved a plan to proceed with the project despite hopes that several other cities and the county could join in co-utilizing the dispatch center. City manager Steve Salomon says the city needs to proceed and if other entities want to join in they need to participate in the pre-planning. He says he is hopeful some other entities will decide to join up but not likely Tulare, Porterville or Dinuba. The new police and fire administration facility will be on the May 7 city agenda to determine how it will go out to bid with a possible request for qualification from a design firm on the big project being authorized. It could take at least two years before we see the new complex go up.

Visalia council will likely let a contract for a San Luis Obispo firm, RRM, to do a master plan for the existing City Hall West two blocks in the next month. The buildings that house the police and fire station as well as city council chambers and office would be vacated to make room for expansion of the Kaweah Delta medical district in the future.

Farmersville got some good news and bad news this past month. On the bad news side, a long time market in town, Chans Market—now called Mercado Del Valle—burned down causing more than a million dollars in damage. Ironically, the city had decided to shut the market down for both health and fire safety reasons a few days before. Fire investigators are examining the fire's origin. On the good news side, the owner of a Jack in the Box franchise will build a fast food restaurant at the SE corner of Walnut and Farmersville Blvd. along with his office. The project recently got city approval.

A German steel maker is looking for a local site to build a valley steel mill melting scrap metal to make rebar used in the construction business. The unnamed company is looking at sites throughout Tulare County. The plant could employ 100 people. It would need to meet air district regulations considered the big hurdle for the project along with the need for considerable power. The company has operations in Germany. Fueling the plan is big demand for rebar used in the building and highway construction business in California and plentiful supply of scrap metal that can be reused.

Lemon Cove Presbyterian Church celebrated their 100 year anniversary this past weekend. Portions of the original building are still being used by the thriving orange belt congregation.

ImaginU Children's Museum is eyeing a permanent location at Soroptimist Park at Douglas and Santa Fe for the future. Preliminary plans are being discussed at the city who owns the land where the facility would be located. The city would convert the ponding basin at the park to a park pond. The museum's board is going on a fund drive to raise money for the ambitious project.

More offices on Mooney. Visalia developer Johnny George is building another 11,200 square foot office complex on Mooney near the former Lumberjack. George already is remodeling the old Canned Goods building for county use and says he believes the county will utilize this new building as well along with some of the former Lumberjack building.

Plans would steer youth to recreation center. A plan outlined by Visalia Police Chief Bob Carden this week would use $100,000 in city funds to identify youth transportation routes to steer kids from gangs to recreation centers around town. The drop off/pick up point to catch a ride would run all year long with the program beginning May 16 in cooperation with VUSD who will tell parents about the plan.

Swimming pool for East Visalia? That's the suggestion of a majority of members of an aquatic ad hoc group advising the city council who made their report this week. Among them—adding a new pool for both competition and recreational use, build within the next 2 to 5 years. The majority agreed the East Visalia Civic Center area would be a logical location. Further study is needed on whether an indoor/outdoor pool complex is feasible. The upshot— council will decide if we go to the design phase.

You can kiss Hershey Chocolate goodbye as a valley food processor. The company announced this week they will move operations to Mexico from Oakdale. The news highlights how much the valley food business is under pressure from high costs.

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San Joaquin Valley - “We're clearly in the first year of a significant drought,” said Dr. David F. Zoldoske, Director of the California Water Institute, housed at California State University, Fresno. “It's not going to take many years of that to give us serious problems.”

Two recent studies indicate that we may well be heading for a prolonged drought, although they disagree about the main reason for their respective predictions.

Research conducted by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University used 19 climate models to show that the American Southwest will dry significantly in this century and that a transition to a more arid climate is currently underway. If these models are correct, they suggest that Dust Bowl conditions may be coming to the American Southwest.

“The arid lands of southwestern North America will imminently become even more arid as a result of human-induced climate change just at the time that population growth is increasing demand for water, most of which is still used by agriculture,” said Richard Seager, Senior Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and one of the lead authors of the study. “The West, and in particular, the United States and Mexico, need to plan for this right now, coming up with new, well-informed and fair deals for allocation of declining water resources.”

The 19 different models showed that “human-induced aridification” will cause this climate change. In the Southwest, the climate is predicted to become similar to that of the 1930s Dust Bowl, perhaps leading to a perpetual drought by 2050.

This study is not linked to any historical pattern of change in sea surface temperature, but instead attributes the predicted climate change to an overall surface warming driven by rising greenhouse gases. This is based on subtropical drying that occurred in the atmosphere models when they were subjected to uniform increases in surface temperature.

“Our study emphasizes the fact that global warming not only causes water shortage through early snow melt, which leads to significant water shortage in the summer over the Southwest, but it also aggregates the problem by reducing precipitation,” said Mingfang Ting, Doherty Senior Research Scientist and one of the study's co-authors.

Meanwhile, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, are predicting warmer weather due a historical pattern of change in sea surface temperature. They have reported evidence of pronounced changes in the earth's climate that can be tracked in cycles of ocean conditions over thousands of years. These cycles reveal that the earth is currently in a period in which a natural rise in global temperatures, combined with warming from the greenhouse effect, will push the planet through an era of rapid global warming.

Charles Keeling and Timothy Whorf reported in the March 21 online edition of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that strong oceanic tides are the engines behind this warming-cooling cycle that may help determine future climates. The current phase in the cycle suggests that a natural warming trend began 100 years ago, picked up in the 1970s, and should continue over the next five centuries.

“We have discovered an 1,800-year tidal cycle that appears to match with recent climate change,” said Charles Keeling, the study's first author. “If this is a correct mechanism for understanding climate change over millennia, then temperatures will rise both because of weaker tidal mixing and because of the greenhouse effect, which is on the increase as well.”

Keeling and Whorf's 1,800-year cycle, which arises because of gradual changes in the astronomical alignments of the sun, moon and earth, was proposed as an explanation for nearly periodic millennial changes in temperature seen in ice and deep-sea sedimentary core records.

While Zoldoske is not embracing all the findings of either study, he is concerned about what he calls the current significant drought. Even if the climate increases by only two or three degrees, there would be major problems globally, and especially in the Central Valley.

“Snow would fall as rain,” he said. “And if it came down as rain, it would run over the tops of dams.”

Zoldoske defines a “dust bowl” as “a huge expanse of land that doesn't have water to grow crops—either from irrigation or rainfall.” He doesn't expect Southern California to become a dust bowl because of all the concrete and homes.

“Yes, you're probably going to lose some lawns and stuff,” he commented, but was much more serious about how things would be in California's Central Valley.

“The Valley will become a dust bowl if we were in a prolonged drought and a significant amount of water was taken out of the area,” he said. “Agriculture will bear the brunt of it because it uses 80 to 85% of all water.”

California's expected population increase will also contribute to a water shortage.

“I'm not a statistician but another 12 million people are going to move to California over the next 20 to 25 years,” Zoldoske said. “There will be an unprecedented demand for water and the water will be taken from agriculture. Even at today's current supply, we're going to be hard-pressed to not significantly impact agriculture.”

The California Water Institute (www.californiawater.org) brings together people representing government, public organizations and private industry to create a shared vision for the future of the water in the state. Areas of concern include water quality, water supply, floods, conservation, ground water and environmental restoration.

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Visalia - If we get no more rain this season—through the next two months—Visalia will be experiencing one of the driest years since record keeping began in the 1870s. Visalia got only 0.36 inches of rain in April—typically the tail end of the rainy season, bringing this year's total to just 3.89 inches, according to preliminary figures from the Visalia Airport rain station monitored by the National Weather Service.

A search of records by the Valley Voice turned up only one other year the rainfall total for the entire water year from July through June ended up below 4 inches—in 1878/79. On average, the Visalia area gets between 10 to 11 inches of rainfall.

Still with two months to go—typically dry ones—a surprise storm could make a dent in the number. Long time record keeping shows May can add 0.40 inches to the bucket on average while June averages more like 0.1.

Any way you slice it, “the central valley is experiencing one of the top ten dry years of all time,” says Porterville meteorologist John Hibler. Fresno's total at 5.8 inches to date is slightly brighter than the conditions here reflecting dryer conditions in the state as you go south.

Things are even drier in Southern California, notes Hibler, with Los Angeles experiencing the driest year since 1877 according to the National Weather Service. The dry weather is fueling fears of rampant wildfires this summer. L.A. has received under 2.5 inches of rain this season.

Along with precipitation experts watch the snowpack in the Sierra and here too the conditions are dry.

“We expect to get about one third the normal water delivery” down the Friant Kern Canal says Friant Water Users Ron Jacobsma, with the Bureau of Reclamation telling water contractors to expect 50 percent of their Class One water supply. That supply comes from the upper San Joaquin River basin. About half of that water is delivered to farms and communities in Tulare County.

The state's official May 1 snow survey was not available at press time, but a survey done April 28 showed a statewide average of 37 percent—May 1 average. A statewide snowpack of less than 40 percent is the lowest since 1988.

On the bright side, storage in the state and Central Valley reservoirs is over 100 percent of average due to carryover from last year. At this time last year, storage capacity in Central Valley reservoirs was 145 percent of average compared to 105 percent of average this year and 45 percent of capacity, says an April 1 state report. Experts point to the need for reservoirs precisely because California rainfall patterns vary widely year by year.

The last time snowpack was to this level was 1976 and 1977 a very dry year that impacted water deliveries on the San Joaquin River.

For farmers, the lower snow melt will mean irrigation season will end earlier than years past. For hydroelectric power producers and you and me who need the power, it could mean a reduced supply of electric power this summer in what is expected to be a hot year in the southwest by the National Weather Service.

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Tulare County - The double whammy of an exceptionally cold winter followed by a very dry year may make for a dangerous 2007 fire season in Tulare County, say local fire officials.

“It'll affect (fire) conditions in Tulare County and in the whole state,” said Paul Marquez, battalion chief in charge of fire prevention for the Tulare County office of CAL FIRE. “We're in a drought, and with the freeze, (fire conditions) will be worse.”

While dry weather has a clear connection to an increased danger from wildfires, the threat from extreme cold isn't as obvious. In December and January, temperatures around the Valley at night fell to well below freezing, killing and damaging plants acclimated to the area's normally temperate climate.

“The freeze killed a lot of plants and they've dried out,” Marquez said, adding that vegetation killed by the freeze is now dry fuel for wildfires. “A fire might start in the grass and move to the heavier fuels easier. Plants have less moisture because of the freeze. It's easier for them to burn.”

Making fire conditions worse still is a marked lack of rainfall during the water-year starting in July of 2006.

During a normal year, Visalia should expect to see some 10.5 inches of rain, but with the driest part of the water-year still ahead the city has seen less than five and a half inches, making this the seventh driest year on record according to National Weather Service data.

Less rainfall means plants that survived the freeze are also drier than normal.

“We didn't have as much water for the plants to soak up,” Marquez said. “If I go out in my yard, twigs that are usually easy to bend are drier and more likely to break.”

Recent drought conditions, however, do have a positive side for the fire outlook.

“On the other hand, this year, because of the dry year, we don't have as much grass,” Marquez said. “It's probably about 50 percent.”

But, that doesn't mean the public should let down its guard.

“Every fire season is bad,” Marquez said. “We want the public to be safe when they're out in the wilderness for recreation and when they're clearing their properties.”

In the wilderness, being safe means following restrictions regarding campfires, as well as using common sense rules such as never leaving a campfire unattended. It also means making sure off-road vehicles are equipped with spark arrestors.

At home, state law requires rural homeowners maintain a 100-foot area around their houses free of brush and other fuel, but Marquez advises caution when doing the work.

“People using a mower can start a fire,” he warned. “These mowers aren't made to cut down tall, dry grass. They should use a nylon-string weed-eater.”

Marquez also recommends starting early in the morning when the threat of fire is least, and having a shovel and hose on hand in the event a blaze sparks.

“The biggest thing is start early when the threat [of fire] is lower,” he said.

Within the city limits, regulations require vacant land be mowed to bare soil or low stubble, said Chief Charlie Norman of the Visalia Fire Department. And while city regulations do not require a safety zone around homes, maintaining one is still a good idea, he said.

“If you've got weeds and grass on the property, it could be a threat,” Norman said.

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