Four new Mexican fruit fly larvae were found inside the quarantine area between April 22-24, prompting the state Dept. of Food & Agriculture to extend the quarantine.
Currently no time limit has been set for the end of the Mexfly quarantine, but discovering new larvae definitely extends the time it will take to eradicate the pest.
Jay Van Rein, spokesman for the state ag department, told The Roadrunner last week, “You can’t put a final date on it until you go quite a while without flies. Not until we get an extended period, say, forty-four to forty-five days in the summer,” he said.
He added, “It all depends on when we stop finding them. The most active time of the year for the fly is when it’s warmest. We’re heading into the season when the fly is at its most active.”
Although the quarantine may have been extended, “most of the growers who wanted to go back to harvesting have already gone back into harvesting,” he said.
To do that individual growers had to sign contracts with the state to submit to protocols of treatment of their fruit.
Most have chosen to treat the flies with spinosad or malathion. The type of spray that they use depends on whether they have citrus or avocados.
The state will continue aerial spraying within the core areas of the quarantine every ten days. The next spraying, weather permitting, will be May 8.
Warming weather speeds up the reproductive cycle of the Mexfly, which invaded Valley Center’s productive groves last November.
If the aircraft are delayed by weather they will choose the next available day with good weather to spray.
People who want to know for sure if the spraying will take place so that they can park cars inside or bring pets indoors should either call 1-800-491-1899 or visit www.cdfa.ca.gov and follow the link to the Valley Center Mexican Fruit Fly Project.
Honorary Mayor’s candidate Kim Laventure is the “family values candidate” whose campaign slogan is “Bear-ly Honest!”
Mrs. Laventure is representing the Chamber of Commerce in the three-way race. Other candidates are Lori Heck and Tom Williams.
“The Chamber would like to promote a more family-oriented kind of mayor’s race. That’s why we came up with the Country Fair Fun Raiser,” says Mrs. Laventure, who is owner/manager of Bear Valley Farm Supply.
The “fun-raiser” will be held at Bates Nut Farm from 1-4 p.m. It will include a “turtle” drop at 1:30 p.m. They will drop as many turtles as they sell. Turtles cost $5 for one, or $20 for a family of five. NOTE: These are plastic turtles, not real ones. They will be dropped from the ladder of one of Mike McDonald’s hook and ladder fire trucks.
Each turtle has a number. Whichever three turtles are closest to the target will get the prizes.
Grand prize is one week’s vacation with accommodations anywhere in the RCI International Network of condos (transportation not included). Second prize is $300 and third prize is $150.
Turtle drop tickets are available at The Roadrunner, Community Pharmacy, Bear Valley Farm Supply and the Chamber of Commerce office.
The event at Bates will include a barbecue, sno cones and popcorn. Entertaining the kids will be a clown that makes the balloons and a giant turtle jumping trampoline plus cars from the Early Ford Club, a San Diego organization, which has a lot of VC members.
There will also be a silent auction and items are needed for it. Call Donna Jorgensen at 749-1112 if you want to make a donation.
The campaign is also selling business card sized spots on a place mat that will be used at the pancake breakfast on the Saturday of Western Days and at Pepperoni’s the entire week prior. The cost is $50 for a business card sized ad.
As all candidates do eventually, Mrs. Laventure is making promises: “Every kid in Valley Center should own a pony and the Chamber of Commerce will provide it for them,” she says and adds “That won’t hurt business at all.”
Another promise: “Since the road is such an issue, we want to have, instead of planted median, a monorail running through the median with overhead horse trails and an overhead from the pharmacy to the bank.
“That would create more tourism to the casino and we will start selling hard hats at the store,” said the candidate.
By DAVID ROSS
Two Hidden Meadows residents representing perhaps hundreds inconvenienced by the two month closing of Cougar Pass April 30 asked the Board of Supervisors for help.
And, unlike many who speak to the board during its open forum, Margaret Hyatt and Brandon Cesmat, representing the Open Cougar Pass Coalition, got a response.
Fifth District Supervisor Bill Horn told the two speakers that the County has been researching using a little known federal law to open up land closed to the public in various locations of the unincorporated areas. That law seems to fit the Cougar Pass situation like a glove.
An obscure law
That law is called RS 2477, a statute adopted by Congress in 1866 to help settle the West by encouraging the development of a system of roads and trails.
RS 2477 gives counties the ability to convert federal easements into rights of ways for roads and trails.
Although it was repealed in 1976, Congress in the Federal Land Management and Policy Act (FLPMA) stated that all rights of way up until that time were not affected.
RS 2477 is what is known as a “self-executing law,” which means that when its minimal conditions are met, the right-of-way grant occurs. The grant is a property right held by the state or local government for the public.
If the local government accepts the property right it also accepts the legal obligations that go with it, such as maintaining the right of way for the public.
Such a federal easement was granted in 1948 in federal court to the San Diego County Water Authority four years after its creation to bring water into San Diego County.
The federal government sued 150 land owners to obtain that easement which it then granted to the Authority.
A section of the San Diego Aqueduct, including that easement, runs through Cougar Pass, which has for many years been the only direct connection between the Meadows and Valley Center.
Records exist of the public using these dirt roads or similar roads well before the end of the 19th century.
One leg of the pass has been closed since March by the action of a private San Diego land owner, John Braman. He closed the gates to one of two nearly side by side dirt easements connecting VC and the Meadows. The easement he closed belongs to the VC Municipal Water District.
When the Open Cougar Pass Coalition sued Braman to reopen the gates, they also named the VC Municipal Water District and the County Water Authority, which in late 2001 put up gates on the other leg of the dirt road because it had become a dumping ground.
Braman, whose action in closing the gate on his property, seems to have loosed forces way beyond his control presents arguments that largely consists of statements of residents along Cougar Pass who object to traffic because they feel that it constitutes a hazard.
The Coalition presents statements of various residents who have personally used the easement in question for many years.
It also presents various maps showing that the easement has been used by the public for over a century.
The Judge Rules
Two weeks ago Superior Court Judge Lisa Guy-Shaul refused to grant the Open Cougar Pass Coalition’s request for an injunction to reopen the gates.
The Coalition argued that closing the gate created such an immediate hardship for many Hidden Meadows and VC families that before the case was argued on its merits, the gates should be opened.
Note: 85 Meadows students attend VC schools and some 300 trips per day on the pass have been logged during a county study.
The judge ruled against granting the injunction. She apparently agreed with arguments of the Water Authority that illegal dumping of old cars, trash, used appliances and trespassing threatened its pipeline.
That doesn’t mean that the Coalition “lost” the case. It can still go forward with the case if it chooses. But if the County exercises its rights under RS 2477 it may not have to.
“Superior Rights”
The Authority does not contest that the public has a prescriptive easement created by decades of use. It does claim that its rights to maintain the aqueduct supercede those rights. In its arguments it writes that “the potential inconvenience to a relative few who have to take other routes because the Water Authority has closed off its aqueduct easement pales in comparison to the real and direct threat that opening the gates would cause to the security of the system that provides water to millions of San Diego County residents.”
The Authority did not state what those threats are, although it implies that they might be terrorist in nature.
The Authority also wrote: “The Water Authority’s aqueduct easement can be traced to 1948 and is superior to any later acquired interest, public or private. . . To the extent the court determines that the plaintiff has established a prescriptive easement for public or private road purposes . . .such an easement would be subordinate to and inconsistent with the Water Authority’s aqueduct easement.”
The Authority also revealed its probable reason for opposing the reopening of the gates: It doesn’t want to maintain the road.
“. . . the Water Authority does not assert that use by others is incompatible with the Water Authority’s use so long as (1) the Water Authority is not responsible to the plaintiff, or any of its constituent members (or the public), for road maintenance, (2) it has no liability for use of the easement by others, and (3) retains its rights to restrict access to the aqueduct easement.”
Even more superior rights
This is where RS 2477 enters the picture. Since the Water Authority’s easement was created by the federal government taking an easement from private land owners, it appears to fall under the statute, which says: “. . .the right-of-way for the construction of highways over public lands, not reserved for public uses, is hereby granted.”
When Margaret Hyatt, a Meadows attorney, spoke before the Board of Supervisors on Wednesday, she put on her hat as a “soccer mom” who, since the road closed, has had to drive three hours a day instead of the 40 minutes that she used to drive her children to school and to sports events.
Mrs. Hyatt also talked about paying $9000 in fees to the VC school system, which she now has to drive two hours extra a day to send her children to.
Brandon Cesmat, spokesman for the Coalition, told the supervisors that his family has used the road at least since the late 1940s and that people were using it long before that, as early as 1898.
“Geographically this is the most reasonable passage between two north county communities, between Valley Center grade and Old Castle Road,” Cesmat told The Roadrunner.
“In fact, that’s one of the reasons it’s a problem. The pass draws people and what is happening is that there is a tangle of easements.
“What I wanted from the County was for them to untangle the easements by accepting the IOD (irrevocable offer of dedication) that’s been on that property for decades,” he said.
Cesmat concluded, “I was very pleased with the Board of Supervisors’ response yesterday morning. It was nice to have Supervisor Horn’s suggestion that the county government has already been looking at this problem. Apparently we are not the only community suffering from having historic geographically reasonable roads closed.
“Given the County’s positive reception either the federal government will open it up or the realities of North County will open it up. It’s historically too important to gridlock our community,” said Cesmat.
The Valley Roadrunner
P.O.B. 1529, Valley Center, CA 92082
Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
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