Civil Rights leader Rosa Parks honored by free transit rides

Feb. 4 in Riverside

Tony Ault

Staff Writer

Transit agencies across the state announced in honor of Rosa Parks’ fight for civil rights that it will celebrate “Transit Equity Day” Saturday, Feb. 4, by offering free rides on Metrolink, Corona Cruiser, Banning Connect Transit, Riverside County Transit Commission buses and San Bernardo transit services.

The free rides will promote equitable access to transit in the five-county area.

RCTC Caltrans and RCTC crews continue to remove some overhead support structures above westbound US 91 and Interstate 15 connector and continue paving operations along the highway. Drivers should use extra caution in this area.

Menifee

The SoCal Gas Company project is still closing Matthews Road at Menifee Road for gas line improvements. Matthews Road will be closed during daytime hours. Work is expected to continue for approximately another week. Traffic control will be in place during active construction.

At Murrieta Road and Newport Road, Eastern Municipal Water District has almost completed the construction work. Intermittent traffic control may still be in place as the project completion progresses. Please visit www. emwd.org/MurrietaRoad for additional updates on this project.

Traffic Signal Improvement work is continuing at Garbani and Menifee roads. Temporary traffic control is expected to remain in place as necessary through February.

McCall Square traffic signal work continues on the signal and median at McCall Boulevard and Ranch Road. The construction schedule for the project has been extended and is expected to continue through April. Traffic control will remain in place for the duration of the project.

The City continues removing and replacing ADA ramps throughout the Lazy Creek neighborhood. Traffic control will be in place at various locations as necessary.

SoCal Gas Company also continues the installation of pipeline infrastructure in the vicinity of Evans Road and Lazy Creek. Lane closures will remain in place for the next several months to support the project.

For questions on the project/ construction updates listed, please contact Philip Southard, Public Information and Legislative Affairs Officer, at 951-746-0654 or at psouthard@cityofmenifee.us

Wildomar In Wildomar, final surface paving is resuming on Bundy Canyon. The city reported that Cherry Street and Canyon Ranch Road will be closed until sometime in February. Alternate access routes are open and available for the work in that community.

The final paving on Palomar and Clinton Keith is underway

California winter storms boost water allocations for cities

Adam Beam Associated Press

SACRAMENTO (AP) — Weeks of historic rainfall in California won’t be enough to end a severe drought, but it will provide public water agencies serving 27 million people with much more water than the suppliers had been told to expect a month ago, state officials announced Thursday, Jan. 26.

The Department of Water Resources said public water agencies will now get 30% of what they had asked for, up from the 5% officials had previously announced in December. That’s because for the first three weeks of January nine atmospheric rivers dumped an estimated 32 trillion gallons of rain and snow on California. It was enough water to increase storage in the state’s two largest reservoirs by a combined 66%.

“We’re not out of drought in California, but this certainly makes a significant dent,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. California pumps water from its major rivers and streams and stores it in a bunch of reservoirs known as the State Water Project. State officials then deliver that water to 29 public agencies that supply the state’s major population centers with drinking water and irrigate 1,151 square miles (2,981 square kilometers) of farm land.

Years of drought have depleted many of those reservoirs to dangerously low levels, forcing significant cuts to water agencies across the state. Many agencies imposed mandatory restrictions on customers, and Gov. Gavin Newsom called on people and businesses to voluntarily reduce their water use by 15%.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which includes major population centers like Los Angeles and San Diego counties, last month declared a drought emergency for all of its 19 million customers. It has imposed mandatory restrictions on 7 million customers, meaning they can only water their lawns one day per week.

Thursday’s announcement did not automatically end those restrictions.

Adel Hagekhalil, the district’s general manager, said the extra water “will certainly help communities hit hardest by this drought.” But he warned that “Southern California’s water challenges are far from over.”

Supervisor thanks volunteers for sweeping countywide homeless count

City News Service

Special to Valley News

Riverside County Supervisor Karen Spiegel expressed her thanks on Friday, Jan. 27 to the record number of volunteers who dispersed throughout the county this week to conduct the 2023 Point-In-Time Homeless Count, attempting to record accurately the number of people living on the streets.

“This year, I participated in the count in Lake Elsinore, which is now in (my) Second District,” Spiegel said. “Each year that I’ve participated in the count, I’m struck by the different circumstances that lead to someone becoming homeless, which fuels our wraparound services for the homeless.”

“Thank you to the many volunteers who gave of their time to get involved on a cold morning to address homelessness,” she said. The main count was carried out on Wednesday morning, Jan. 25, when more than 1,000 volunteers from civic organizations, church groups, colleges, nonprofit organizations and government agencies departed from 39 sites in 28 municipalities to complete the survey.

“This was the largest number of volunteers ever organized to support the annual PIT count,” according to an Executive Office statement.

Participants sought to identify the status of individuals living in cars, under bridges, in transient encampments, homeless shelters and other locations.

A separate census continued to Friday, Jan. 27, involving roughly 300 volunteers tasked with specifically finding and counting homeless youth.

“This is a critical issue for our county and not just for us working in local government, but all of our neighbors who recognize that it is a humanitarian issue; it’s a qualityof-life issue,” Department of Housing and Workforce Solutions Director Heidi Marshall said.

“I think that’s why you see the number of volunteers ... so high this year.”

The county Continuum of Care manages the annual outings.

The entity is composed of representatives from civic groups, nonprofits and government.

The 2022 homeless census confirmed that 3,316 people were chronically unsheltered, a 15% increase from two years ago. The 2021 homeless census was severely curtailed, with virtually no canvassing of known transient dwelling spaces because of the coronavirus public health lockdowns. Data was based only on shelter interactions and did not provide an accurate representation of the county’s homeless population.

The January 2020 count found that 2,284 adults and youths were chronically homeless countywide, about a 3% increase from the prior year.

Data from the latest survey will be processed and published in the next three to four months.

The figures are used by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to determine how to distribute federal homeless relief funding, and by policymakers in determining the scope of homelessness nationwide, including what’s working, and what’s not.

The district gets about a third of its water from the State Water Project, a third from the Colorado River and a third from other sources. The Colorado River system has benefited from the recent storms, but not to the same extent as California’s water system. Hagekhalil warned Southern California may “see significant reductions” from the Colorado river beginning next year.

“To replenish local storage and reduce reliance on imported supplies, we must all use water as efficiently as possible,” he said.

The U.S. Drought Monitor said Thursday that severe drought was reduced to moderate drought in most of the San Joaquin Valley and the lowest category — abnormal dryness — has replaced moderate drought on the entire central coast, including Monterey Bay.

Most of the state, however, remains in moderate or severe drought, with only a fraction on the far north coast entirely free of drought.

The worst categories of drought — exceptional and extreme — were eliminated from California earlier this month.

The recent storms have and should also be completed in February.

Caltrans

The California Department of Transportation continues work to rehabilitate 59 miles of lanes, ramps and drainage systems on Interstate 15 in San Bernardino County. The project spans from Oak Hill Road in Hesperia to just south of Bear Valley Road in Victorville. There will be a traffic switch on this portion of the freeway and motorists should use caution and slow down in this area. There could be possible connector closures at the NB I-15 to NB US 395 during some operations. Tony Ault can be reached at tault@reederemedia.com highlighted how difficult it is to manage water in the West, where long dry spells are often punctuated by intense periods of rain and snow that leave officials scrambling to capture it all before it flows out to the Pacific Ocean. Environmental regulations limit the amount of water state officials can take out of rivers, making sure to protect habitat for endangered species of fish.

But when strong storms hit, like the ones that pummeled the state in January, state officials say they are limited more by outdated infrastructure than they are by environmental rules. The State Water Project has been pumping at maximum capacity the past few weeks, pulling out water at 9,500 cubic feet per second (269 cubic meters per second). Meanwhile, Nemeth said water is running into the ocean at 150,000 cubic feet per second (4,247 cubic meters per second).

California is trying to build seven new water storage projects, paid for in part by a $7.5 billion bond voters approved in 2014. But it has taken those projects nearly a decade to get off the ground amid a long permitting and approval process.

Meanwhile, it has been 17

celebrated at MSJC

years since the State Water Project has delivered 100% of its water allocation. State officials say part of the problem is a climate change that causes more rain to evaporate into the warmer air and seep into the drier ground instead of flowing into the state’s rivers and streams.

State officials said Thursday they’re cautiously optimistic about the rest of this year. California has twice as much snow in the Sierra Nevada compared to its historical average, and Thursday’s water announcement did not include the amount of water it will generate when it melts in the spring.

The intense rainfall has saturated the ground, meaning when the snow melts in the Sierra Nevada this spring less of the water will be absorbed by dry ground and more of it will flow into the state’s reservoirs.

Still, even with the series of intense rainfall, it’s possible California’s water year — which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 — will be average.

“We can have intense dry conditions and intense wet conditions all in the same year,” Nemeth said.

The program began with a keynote address by Brian Hawkins, City of San Jacinto councilmember, ordained minister and social justice advocate, who inspired the crowd with his heartfelt speech. “We all play a big part of this, whether you are black, brown, white, Asian, whatever your ethnicity is we are all stitched into this American fabric,” he said.

This annual MSJC event brings the community together to remember the message and work of Dr. King to promote social justice and equity. Many guests were apparently motivated by the tribute seen today and felt inspired to continue Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy by upholding values.

Kevin Baker, director of student life & development, strongly encouraged the community to visit MLKday.gov to learn about how to get involved. “It just takes helping that one person to make a difference,” he said.

Submitted by Mt. San Jacinto College.

Congressman seeks stiffer penalties for mail thieves

City News Service Special to the Valley News Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, is seeking to stiffen federal penalties for mail theft amid ongoing acts of thievery throughout the Inland Empire and elsewhere.

“Americans continue to suffer from dramatic increases in mail theft here and around the country,” Calvert said Tuesday, Jan. 24.

“It’s clear we must send a stronger message and have a more effective deterrent for would-be mail thieves.

That’s why I have introduced the ‘Ensuring the Safety of Our Mail Act,’ which would double the jail time for anyone convicted of mail theft.”

The congressman reintroduced House Resolution 446, which had been brought forward but failed to gain traction in Congress’ previous session. Under federal law, the maximum sentence for a person convicted of postal theft is five years behind bars. H.R. 446 would revise that to a 10-year max.

Calvert cited recent instances of theft to emphasize the need for stronger measures, including robberies targeting U.S. Postal Service delivery personnel in Moreno Valley and Riverside and a series of thefts allegedly committed by two people in Rancho Mirage. Mail thefts have been an ongoing strain on law enforcement resources throughout the area for the last decade or more, often involving repeat identity thieves seeking credit cards and documents in mailboxes to perpetrate financial crimes.

“I am committed to ensuring Americans can rely on the safe and secure delivery of their mail,” Calvert said.

His bill has been assigned to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee for initial consideration.