On any given day between April and September, dozens of wildfires are burning throughout the West. More than 4,700 fires have already scorched California this year, burning nearly 30 times the acreage that was charred over the same period last year. The Park Fire — now the fifth-largest fire in the state’s history — has destroyed more than 821 structures and forced residents of four counties to evacuate. 

After more than a decade of increasing risk, many residents of fire-prone areas are well aware of the need to make evacuation plans and clear defensible space around their homes. Some residents are stepping up to fill gaps in regional fire protection. Still, many fire prevention and mitigation strategies can only be addressed by local government. 

Just as individuals vary widely in their approach to wildfire preparedness, so too do community leaders. How do you know that your county or municipality is taking effective measures? 

While the answer depends on the area’s level of fire risk, among other factors, there are certain steps that can help strengthen wildfire defense. We asked three experts working in or alongside local governments about essential, advanced and ideal wildfire-preparedness strategies for Western communities. 

Essential preparedness

Publish a wildfire action plan. In May, Oregon’s Wasco County received a $5.9 million grant from the U.S. Forest Service, the largest in the state so far this year, to conduct multiple mitigation projects, including targeted tree removal and community education. It’s a feat that community development director Kelly Howsley-Glover said would not have been possible without the county’s community wildfire action plan, which aggregates information on local risk reduction efforts, updating a previous version from 2005.

“Plans translate into grants,” she said, because they demonstrate that local agencies are already working together to identify their most urgent needs. This year, Wasco County’s priorities include finalizing a study on vegetation near roads, which can contribute to fires, and adopting new standards for building with nonflammable materials. 

Establish an active dialogue with community members. Both Wasco’s community wildfire action plan and its natural hazards mitigation plan sought public feedback through surveys, which informed how the county prioritized its goals. Over time, the county bridged the communication gap between firefighters and the local farming community, encouraging the latter to play an active role in containing this year’s fire in Larch Creek. 

Build relationships among agencies. Tuolumne County, which sits north of Yosemite National Park, is 75% public land. To effectively reduce the buildup of fallen trees and shrubs, which fuel fires, county leaders must work with the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. When county officials realized that they were competing for the same state and federal grants as the Forest Service and other agencies, they decided to host annual meetings among county, state, tribal and federal agencies to streamline their efforts and set shared priorities.

“We have very high fire-severity zones,” said Dore Bietz, assistant director of Tuolumne’s Office of Emergency Services in. “In a rural community that is truly dependent upon finding grant-funded programs, (identifying areas of need) really allows us to work together as a team.”

Update fire safety standards. Detailed building and zoning codes can also ensure that every homeowner is prepared for fires. In Wasco County, these codes remind residents to make sure their driveways are wide enough for emergency vehicles, and, on longer private roads, to have enough turnouts for cars to pass one another safely. They also emphasize that homes need fuel breaks, including barriers of fire-resistant plants. Whether self-certified or externally enforced, standard codes can encourage property owners to act ahead of time and keep their fire agencies in mind. 

Advanced preparedness

Identify areas of greatest risk. The Forest Service and the Bozeman-based research group Headwaters Economics run a program called Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire, which provides fire expertise to local governments. Their study of Wasco County found that unused agricultural lands, previously believed to pose a low risk, had contributed significantly to recent fires when farmers applied no-till practices, leaving enough vegetation to allow wildfires to spread. 

Share data across jurisdictions. When the Tuolumne County team of federal and local officials began to apply for funding, they compiled all their land-use data into a single map that showed where fuels reduction was proposed or already occurring. The map eventually became a publicly accessible tool that is updated annually. It cost the county only a small amount beyond paid staff time, because each office had already collected its own data. 

Develop auxiliary measures for vulnerable communities. The storyboard also helped Tuolumne County secure a $10 million grant from the USDA to create defensible space around over 1,000 homes. These homes were identified as a priority because many of their owners were elderly or low-income and either could not carry out the manual labor or couldn’t afford to hire contractors. In Lost Valley near Eugene, a nonprofit connects young adults with older residents in need of mitigation efforts. 

Ideal preparedness 

Conduct an annual evacuation drill. In Benton County, Oregon, Carrie Berger, fire program manager at Oregon State University and a local Firewise coordinator, was one of the first to receive a text that her community-wide evacuation drill had begun. Despite working with local emergency services for months, she still felt her stomach flip. Then she and her family grabbed their bags, piled into the car and joined hundreds of neighbors participating in the voluntary drill. Five years and four drills later, Berger said she and her neighbors were able to overcome the anxiety by working through the first few steps of an evacuation. “Now,” she said, “I don’t feel uneasy about it. I just go.” 

Widen existing roads or build new evacuation routes. At the time of 2018 Camp Fire, one of the deadliest wildfires in recent history, Paradise, California, had only six emergency exit routes. Some were blocked when cars broke down or fires swept through town. According to an investigation by USA Today and The Arizona Republic, hundreds of Western communities face similar vulnerabilities. 

New roads are costly, and they can harm habitat and wildlife. When designed to minimize impact and maximize access, however, they allow more emergency vehicles to get in and more people to get out when a fire approaches. 

Hire local workers for annual mitigation efforts. Bietz of Tuolumne County reflected that even with millions of dollars of state and federal grant money, opportunities for long-term mitigation are limited. Grants typically run out after five years, and the funding is often spent on contractors, who can charge steep prices for their work. With a longer funding horizon, the county could hire more full-time staff and develop training programs for seasonal fuels reduction or prescribed fire management, involving more residents in active mitigation. 

Creativity is the key to building resilience, Bietz said. “Everyone, if they do their part, from their little household to their community to their neighborhood to their county to their state, helps reduce all of that risk, which means we will survive what’s to come.” 

The post Is your community ready for a wildfire? appeared first on High Country News.

Mendocino County might be known throughout the state for its towering redwood trees, stunning coastlines, wine, cannabis and small-town communities.

But one thing the locals know about this rustic, rural region when it comes to health care: you need a helicopter membership.

For many, the less than $100 they spend for the year to cover themselves and loved ones in the event of an emergency could wipe away the entire bill for an airlift during a medical emergency.

This was exactly the case for Fort Bragg resident Kathy Orsi, who two years ago experienced the most fatal type of heart attack known as a “widowmaker” and received a transport by air to Adventist Health St. Helena, a hospital located in northern Napa County. The 30-minute helicopter trip from her small coastal town to the hospital with the cardiologist who ultimately saved her life would have otherwise taken three hours by car.

“For help for heart attacks, especially, it’s either Santa Rosa or St. Helena,” Orsi said, explaining that smaller nearby hospitals offer more basic care than what she needed during the heart attack that has a notoriously low survival rate.

The American Heart Association cites the survival rate following a widowmaker heart attack to be 12% if it occurs outside of an advanced care center.

Orsi’s helicopter ride alone would have cost her $117,000, but thanks to the membership her husband secured for their entire family as the fire chief of Fort Bragg Volunteer Fire Department, she never paid a penny.

Tanya Taylor shared a similar story. And because of her experience, she urges everyone she knows living in rural Mendocino County to make sure they too become members.

Taylor is still recovering from the injuries she suffered from an accident on a Kawasaki Mule, a utility task vehicle, in August 2021 when she was 64 years old. She and her brother were at the ranch their family has owned for more than 60 years near Leggett.

As dinner was ready, Taylor took the Mule to pick up her brother who was out on the property. But on the way back to the house, she lost control of her steering going down a steep hill.

“What I learned later is that the front axle had broken and snapped and went into the front wheels and took out my brakes and steering capability,” Taylor explained.

When the Mule flipped, her brother stayed in the vehicle and suffered a minor concussion. But Taylor was ejected, her ear ripped off and the skin torn from her left hand. She broke all her ribs on one side, along with her back in several places.

“My brother thought I was dead,” she shared.

The helicopter took her to Enloe Medical Center in Chico.

“By the time I got there, they could no longer get a blood pressure on me, and it had been probably just about three hours total, not quite. But had it been any longer, I certainly would not be here,” she said.

She commended everyone involved — from the first responders who managed to get an IV in her while driving down a bumpy dirt road to the helicopter crew and the hospital staff.

When she got home, however, the medical bills arrived promptly, and she contacted her regular health insurance to learn they would only cover about $20,000 of the nearly $90,000 bill that arrived for the helicopter flight.

“And I just thought to myself, this is going to put me in the poorhouse,” Taylor said. “How can I afford $60,000 worth of a bill for one trip, not to mention all the other ones?”

But then she remembered her membership. When she called and provided her number, she was told, “You will never hear from us again.”

“They completely swallowed the entire bill,” she said.

When a resident in Mendocino County needs an emergency flight like Orsi or Taylor did, REACH or CalStar helicopters are set to arrive. REACH acquired CalStar in 2016 and merged under the Global Medical Response umbrella, covered by the AirMedCare Network membership. In other words, Mendocino County members might get picked up by either REACH or CalStar, but their membership would cover a flight with either.

Sarah Gordon, AirMedCare Network director of membership, shared that the network has 320 aircraft across 38 states. She explained that while the service might sound like insurance, it’s technically a membership, as AirMedCare Network owns and operates its aircraft, as opposed to paying another vendor for those services.

“We do not pay money to anyone else. So if you’re a member with us, we do bill your major medical or whatever insurance plan is applicable, and any remaining is written off as a member. So we’re not exchanging funds, not paying out to anyone else,” she said. “And also, we do not offer reciprocity with other (aircraft) providers, because we don’t own their assets.”

Much like a ground ambulance, the helicopters will transport a patient regardless of their membership, but it’s the bill that arrives later that’s the difference.

While rural residents are inclined to become members, Gordon explained that interfacility transfers also make up a significant number of their flights even in urban areas.

“Sometimes it’s not that they can’t get to a hospital, but it’s that they’re not at the right hospital,” she said. “You may go to a facility that cannot meet the needs of the patient at the moment — whether it be a burn, stroke, trauma — and they will actually use our helicopters or fixed wing airplanes to send that person to a higher level of care.”

According to Mendocino County Supervisor Maureen Mulheren — whose young daughter required an emergency flight in October 2018 — every parent should be prepared for the chance that their child might need an interfacility transfer flight.

“So you may think, as a parent, oh, we’re not hunting, we’re not out four-wheeling, we’re not out of the remote country,” she explained. “But almost any kid that goes to our local hospital is airlifted to Oakland Children’s Hospital.”

“I remember hearing the doctors call for the helicopter, and my very first thought was, ‘I can’t afford that. I know that cost.’ And it makes me emotional now, because no parent should have to think that,” Mulheren said. “You’re in this super hard situation with your child, you shouldn’t have to be thinking about money and how much it’s going to cost.”

Remembering that she had purchased a plan brought her tremendous relief.

Daniel Schoenfeld, firefighter and emergency medical technician with the Gold Ridge Fire Protection District, said if a rescue is needed in addition to medical response, sometimes the crew will call for a Sheriff’s Office helicopter, but this is rare.

“Quite honestly, unless your medical insurance company is going to 100% cover it, you should have a helicopter membership,” he said.

Given the rural landscape in Northern California, he also urged residents to call for help before it becomes a life-or-death emergency. He noted that the pain from an injury like a broken ankle could trigger a heart attack in some patients.

He also stressed the importance of staying up to date on visits and vaccinations.

“For rural people, it’s kind of hard to make appointments, because it might take you 45 minutes to get there, it might take an hour and a half — you never know,” he said. “But it’s preventative medicine, and it’s really important.”

For more information about helicopter memberships, visit www.airmedcarenetwork.com.

The post Examining the rural need for helicopter membership appeared first on The Mendocino Voice | Mendocino County, CA.

During the third day of hearings for Laura Hobbs case against the Shasta County Elections Office, Judge Stephen Baker issued a ruling formally dismissing the case. 

“The lack of evidence was profound,” Baker said, while issuing the judgement.

Hobbs sued the Elections Office, and her winning opponent Allen Long, shortly after she lost the March 5 primary. She has alleged, among other things, that her name being placed in the incorrect order on the ballot affected the election outcome. 

Attorney Christopher Pisano, who represented the county, acknowledged early on in the case that the Elections Office had made a mistake in how names on the ballot were ordered. But, Pisano argued, the simple clerical error was neither evidence of mal-conduct by elections staff, nor a reason to invalidate the election outcome.

Today, June 25, Judge Baker agreed, saying that Hobbs’ attorney, Alex Haberbush, had failed to offer any expert witness testimony to attempt to prove that the mistake made by the Elections Office changed the outcome of the election. He asked Haberbush how he could possibly expect to prove his case without such testimony.

Haberbush, who works for a Long Beach legal firm specializing in bankruptcy and runs the non-profit Lex Rex Institute, told the Judge he didn’t need to offer any expert witness testimony because case precedent indicates “as a matter of law” that mistakes in ordering of names on election ballots necessarily affect the outcome. 

Judge Baker said he “could not disagree more” with Haberbush’s assessment.

“There is no case that has found, as a matter of law, that mere placement creates an advantage,” Baker said. 

Judge Baker also emphasized that while some prior cases have used expert witnesses to prove that alphabetization errors created an advantage for some candidates, no prior court has ever reversed an election on the basis of that kind of mistake even when such advantage was documented.

In a scathing statement that accompanied his ruling, Judge Baker issued a definitive rebuke against Hobbs and her attorney, saying that evidence presented in the case was “ill-defined, vague, full of irregularities and lacking in foundation.”

In fact, the only qualified elections expert interviewed during the case at all, Judge Baker said, was the acting County Clerk and Registrar of Voters herself, Joanna Francescut, who faced hours of questions that he referred to as “argumentative”, “misleading” and “undignified.”

Nevertheless, Judge Baker continued, the evidence showed that Francescut competently and professionally performed her duties as the county’s acting top elections official. “Some mistakes were made,” Baker said, but they were “normal and unintentional.” 

To argue otherwise, Baker stated, “is pure speculation.”

Francescut has worked for the Elections Office for sixteen years. She took charge of day-to-day operations last November when her boss, the last elected County Clerk and Registrar of Voters, stepped down due to health concerns. 

Francescut was running the Office during the March primary election when the alphabetization error was made. She testified that her staff applied the wrong random alphabetized name list in local races, including Hobbs District 2 supervisor race. Francescut said it was ultimately her responsibility to have caught the error during ballot proofing. She also testified that a confluence of factors including a change in voting machine systems, a change in ballot creation process, a series of new laws that affected ballot wording, and the absence of the Elections Office supervisor, Darling Allen, were contributing circumstances.

A majority of county supervisors issued a statement a few weeks ago saying that they believed the misordering of names on the ballot might have affected the election outcome.

Last week, they chose a new candidate to be appointed as County Clerk and Registrar of Voters, overlooking Francescut in favor of a semi-retired prosecutor who has no elections experience. The Hobbs case did not come up during interviews. 

In a statement to Shasta Scout after today’s ruling, Francescut said she was very pleased with the judge’s ruling and the comments he made.

“I’m proud of my staff for the work they do every single day to serve our community and ensure our elections are accurate, transparent and fair,” Francescut said.

Haberbush said he plans to appeal the case, noting that he disagrees with the judge that expert witness testimony was needed to prove that mis-ordering of names affected the election. Hobbs did not respond to a request for comment.

Do you have a correction to this story? You can submit it here. Do you have information to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org

| YOUNG VOICES MEDIA PROJECT By Fe Aguilar | Part of the series Our Future, produced in collaboration with the California Youth Media Network. The Salinas Valley is a green ocean that flows for miles. Rows of lettuce seem to stretch endlessly, meeting the Gabilan and Santa Lucia mountains like a kiss after a long […]

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In search of answers was first posted on June 24, 2024 at 10:30 am.
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Former San Benito County Free Library supervising librarian Erin Baxter was charged with three felony counts involving an alleged embezzlement scheme, including forgery and conspiracy to commit a crime with public funds. She posted $20,000 in bail.

According to court documents, Baxter allegedly took between $100,000 and $500,000 between July 2022 and April 2023.

San Benito County District Attorney Joel Buckingham said his office obtained a warrant for her arrest on May 21. She surrendered and posted bail two days later.

He said no other person has been charged in connection with the case but that his office is still involved in parts of the investigation that are ongoing to determine if “additional individuals should be charged.”

“It’s of utmost importance to me that taxpayers understand how important this case is to the District Attorney’s Office and ensure we hold all individuals accountable who were responsible for the loss of these funds,” Buckingham said.

San Benito County Sheriff Eric Taylor previously told BenitoLink he asked the FBI to become involved with the investigation because his office lacked “the expertise in forensic accounting.”

Taylor said the alleged suspect or suspects opened up a number of accounts that allowed them to order merchandise. No actual cash had been taken, he said, and an internal audit established that none of the library’s supply of Chromebooks, which had been purchased through a $11.8 million federal grant from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, were involved.

While merchandise, including camping equipment and electronics, was found at the home of the suspect or suspects, Taylor said he did not know if they planned to resell the goods.

Around the time the investigation began, the then-librarian Nora Conte retired. It is unclear if her retirement had anything to do with the investigation. BenitoLink also confirmed that other staff members resigned, but the county did not disclose how many. Baxter was among the staff that resigned. She is scheduled to appear in the San Benito County Superior Court on July 10.

San Benito County Public Information Officer Rosemerry Dere told BenitoLink Baxter had been a county employee since January 2017.

Since Conte’s retirement, Manny Gonzalez has been serving as the interim librarian.

In March, the county was set to consider hiring a new librarian but the item was removed from the San Benito County Board of Supervisors’ agenda. Dere said that the county decided to go in a different direction.

She said the county is currently going through a thorough background check process for one candidate for the position. Dere said there is no timeline for when the Board of Supervisors will consider this candidate.

“We’re actively trying to wrap it up as quickly as we can,” Dere said.

In April, the Board of Supervisors moved in a 4-1 vote to reduce the number of years of experience they would require from applicants because the county “experienced multiple unsuccessful recruitments,” according to the staff report.

Supervisor Bea Gonzales cast the “no” vote.

“Making this change will facilitate internal training opportunities and the opportunity to hire and promote from within the county,” the staff report states. “These revisions allow current staff promotional opportunities throughout several levels within the library structure as there are staff that currently possesses sufficient experience and capabilities to effectively fulfill the role of County Librarian.”

BenitoLink related articles:

Sheriff’s Department investigating criminal complaint at library

BL Special Report: FBI looking into alleged embezzlement at library

County to consider hiring new librarian

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As a result of a nearly year-long Voices inquiry into a possible homicide, the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office has reopened its abbreviated investigation of the 2015 traffic death of longtime King City resident Aracely Zavala.  Over the past few weeks, a detective and a commander have been assigned to question South County residents including Zavala’s […]

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Sheriff’s Office reopens ‘lost’ King City death case was first posted on May 31, 2024 at 5:16 pm.
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Few places in California are as unforgiving for driving an electric car as the remote and sparsely populated Imperial Valley.

Only four fast-charging public stations are spread across the valley’s vast 4,500 square miles just north of the US-Mexico border, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That means if you’re Greg Gelman — one of only about 1,200 Imperial County residents who own an electric car — traveling almost anywhere is a maddening logistical challenge.

“It’s been, I won’t say a nightmare, but it’s been very, very, very inconvenient,” Gelman said on a recent afternoon as he charged his all-electric Mercedes-Benz at a charging station in a Bank of America parking lot in El Centro. “Would I do it again? No.”

California’s electric charging “deserts” like the Imperial Valley pose one of the biggest obstacles to the state’s efforts to combat climate change and air pollution by electrifying cars and trucks.

Experts say the slow installation of chargers in California’s remote regions could jeopardize the state’s phaseout of new gas-powered cars. Under the state’s mandate, 35% of sales of 2026 models must be zero-emissions, ramping up to 68% in 2030 and 100% in 2035.

Nestled in the desert in California’s far southeast corner, Imperial County ranks dead last in electric car ownership among California counties with populations of 100,000 or more, according to a CalMatters analysis of 2023 data. Only 7 out of every 1,000 cars are battery-powered there, compared with 51 out of every 1,000 statewide.

High poverty and unemployment are a major factor in the region’s slow transition to electric cars, but its lack of public chargers are a big drawback, too.

People living in rural, low-income regions like the Imperial Valley have the least access to electric car chargers, according to a state Energy Commission analysis. More than two-thirds of California’s low-income residents are a 10-minute drive or longer from a publicly available fast charger.

Luis Olmedo, executive director of El Comite Civico del Valle, a nonprofit advocating for environmental justice, has battled for years against the Imperial Valley’s unhealthy air. Now he is making a bid to become its go-to supplier of charging stations for zero-emissions cars.

Olmedo isn’t waiting for businesses or the state to make chargers a reality in Imperial County. Instead, his group has embarked on a $5-million, high-stakes crusade to build a network of 40 fast chargers at various locations. It’s an open question whether his somewhat quixotic endeavor will succeed.

Electric car chargers “are an opportunity for us to be able to breathe cleaner air,” Olmedo said. “It’s about equity. It’s about justice. It’s about making sure that everybody has chargers.”

Esther Conrad, a researcher at Stanford University who focuses on environmental sustainability, said getting chargers in places like Imperial County is critical to California’s effort to transition to electric vehicles in an equitable way. Apartment dwellers and others who don’t have charging at home need nearby and reliable places to charge. 

“When you have a rural community that’s low-income and distant from other locations, it’s incredibly important to enable people to get places where they need to go,” Conrad said.

Hours from urban centers

A car is essential for traversing Imperial County, which is the most sparsely populated county in Southern California.

Its neighborhoods are vast distances from urban centers that provide the services that residents need: El Centro — its biggest town, home to about 44,000 people — is much closer to Mexicali, Mexico, than it is to San Diego, which is about a two-hour drive away, or Riverside, nearly three hours. Its highways and roads cross boundless fields of lettuce and other crops that give way to strip malls, apartments and suburban tracts — and then even more crops and open desert. 

If you drive an electric car the 109 miles from El Centro to Palm Springs, your route takes you through farmland, desert and around California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea, which is also one of its biggest environmental calamities.

The Salton Sea has been receding in recent years, causing toxic dust to blow into Imperial Valley towns. The region’s air quality is among the worst in the state, with dust storms and a brown haze emanating from agricultural burning and factories in the valley or from across the border in Mexicali, a city of a million people.

About 16% of Imperial County’s 179,000 residents have asthma, higher than the state average. The air violates national health standards for both fine particles, or soot, as well as ozone, the main ingredient of smog; both pollutants can trigger asthma attacks and other respiratory diseases.

More than 85% of Imperial County’s residents are Latino, and Spanish is widely spoken here. Agriculture is a major employer, and many businesses are dependent on cross-border trade and traffic from Mexico. The county’s median household income is $53,847, much lower than the statewide median, and 21% of people live in poverty.

Now the discovery of lithium, used to manufacture EV batteries, at the Salton Sea has the potential to transform the region’s economy. State officials say the deposit could produce 600,000 tons a year, valued at $7.2 billion, and assist the U.S. as it tries to foster a domestic electric car industry that rivals China’s. 

But Olmedo worries that when the mineral is removed from the valley, it won’t meaningfully change people’s livelihoods or their health. He points to examples in the developing world where local people have been left behind as extractive industries take what they need.

“We’re about to extract, perhaps, the world’s supply of lithium here, yet we don’t even have the simplest, the lowest of offerings, which is: Let’s build you chargers,” Olmedo said.

Chicken and egg: Too few EVs and too few chargers

Last year, electric cars were only 5% of all new cars sold in Imperial County, compared with 25% statewide. Getting chargers into low-income and rural places will become more and more important as California struggles to meet its ambitious climate targets.

The Energy Commission estimates that California will need 1.01 million chargers outside of private homes by 2030 and 2.11 million by 2035, when more than 15 million electric cars are expected on the roads. So far the state has only about 105,000 nonprivate chargers. 

Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, which researches the electric car market, said charging companies won’t locate chargers in regions with few electric vehicles.

“You need revenue, and if the EVs aren’t there, then your customers aren’t necessarily there, so you do have a legitimate chicken and egg problem,” Nigro said. “We have to look to public policy to help that market failure.”

The Biden administration will invest $384 million in California’s electric car infrastructure over five years. And state officials are investing almost $2 billion in grants for funding zero-emission vehicle chargers over the next four years, including some special grants in rural, inland areas for up to  $80,000 per charger.  Olmedo says the funding has been insufficient so he’s had to turn to donations and other sources of funding.

Patty Monahan, one of five members of the California Energy Commission, said “it’s particularly important that we see chargers” in the Imperial Valley and other low-income counties with poor air quality.

Imperial Valley has only four fast-charging stations open for public use, where chargers are capable of juicing batteries up to 80% in under an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Three are in El Centro, with one exclusively for Teslas; another is in the border town of Calexico and was recently installed by El Comite. Six other stations offer only slower chargers.

Olmedo envisions a network of 40 publicly accessible chargers throughout the valley. El Comite is expecting funding from the California Energy Commission, and has received donations from Waverley Streets Foundation, the United Auto Workers and General Motors. The group is seeking more state funding.

Olmedo acknowledged that he is facing a slew of challenges with his project, including some local opposition and the high cost of installation and maintenance.

At a warehouse in the city of Imperial where El Comite stores the chargers, Jose Flores, project manager for the group’s charging initiative, said he and three colleagues spent four days in Santa Ana, about 200 miles north, at a facility managed by BTC, the company that makes the chargers that El Comite is installing.

They received training on installation and maintenance techniques, and discussed how not all chargers can be used by all electric vehicles. He learned about payment and cooling systems, and that the chargers might need more frequent maintenance because of Imperial Valley’s harsh desert conditions.

“We’re like a testing ground because we have poor air quality here due to the Salton Sea and being in a desert,” he said.

El Comite installed its first charger at its Brawley headquarters in 2022. Last December, El Civico pressed ahead with a more ambitious project: Four of their fast chargers are now operating in a park in the border town of Calexico.

Chris Aldaz, 35, a U.S. Postal Service worker who lives in Calexico, charges at home, but at times uses chargers at the group’s Brawley headquarters that people can use for free. It is a Level 2, which can take several hours to charge.

“The reason why I wanted to get an EV was that it was cheaper,” Aldaz told CalMatters. “I don’t want to be spending all this money on gas, and on maintenance, and it was better for the environment.”

Nevertheless, Olmedo’s electric car chargers have become a local political issue.

Maritza Hurtado, Calexico’s ex-mayor, and coordinator of a City Council recall campaign, said it was inappropriate for El Comite to have built four electric car chargers in a downtown park. The chargers were a distraction “from our police needs and our actual community infrastructure needs,” Hurtado said at a public hearing at the county’s utility, the Imperial Irrigation District, in January. She declined to speak to CalMatters.

“We had no idea they were going to take our parkland,” Hurtado said at the hearing. “It is very upsetting and disrespectful to our community for Comite Civico to come to Calexico and take our land.”

Olmedo hopes that the chargers ultimately will be something the county’s Latino community takes pride in.

“Put this in perspective: It’s a farmworker-founded organization, an environmental justice organization, that is building the infrastructure. It’s not the lithium industry. It’s us, building it for ourselves.”

Data journalist Erica Yee contributed to this report.

This county is California’s harshest charging ‘desert’ for electric cars. Local activists want to change that  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Editor’s note: BenitoLink may publish work by other news agencies when it may impact residents of San Benito County. This story was written by Kristen Hwang for CalMatters and was published April 23, 2024. Republished with permission. Lea este articulo en español aqui.

Medical insurance delays can keep someone in a hospital bed much longer than they need to be waiting for after-care services like home health care. Those delays can also block hospitals from using beds needed for new patients.

California hospitals have long complained about those delays, and in a new lawsuit, they’re suing one of the state’s largest health insurers to force it to speed its approvals of secondary treatment. 

The California Hospital Association, which represents more than 400 hospitals including Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital, filed the complaint against Anthem Blue Cross in Los Angeles County Superior Court Tuesday. The complaint alleges Anthem is violating the state’s long-standing patient protection laws, which require insurers to provide health care in a timely manner, and engaging in unfair business practices. It also claims that Anthem refuses to pay for the excess hospital days caused by its delays. 

“Anthem’s misconduct creates an impossible situation for patients and hospitals,” the lawsuit states.

Although the lawsuit targets Anthem, hospital association President Carmela Coyle said delayed discharges are an industry-wide problem.

“This is a long time coming,” Coyle said. “California has some of the strongest laws in the nation governing insurance protection of patients, and these laws are violated every day.”

A spokesperson for Anthem said the company did not have an immediate response and would be investigating the allegations. 

Anthem is the largest health insurer in the state, excluding Kaiser Permanente which contracts almost exclusively with its own hospitals. Anthem represents approximately 6 million Californians, nearly twice as many as the next biggest insurer. 

Every day, 4,500 Californians spend unnecessary time in hospital beds waiting for health insurers to approve their discharge to a secondary facility, a recent report from the California Hospital Association says. That results in 1 million days of needless hospital care annually, the report said.

Coyle said the association has raised the issue with the Department of Managed Health Care, which oversees most health insurers. 

In a statement, department spokesperson Kevin Durwara said the agency has been meeting with the hospital association to address hospitals’ “concerns and challenges” with insurance delays since 2021. The meetings resulted in a letter issued to insurers in Fresno County, where hospital capacity was particularly limited, instructing them to make it easier for hospitals to discharge patients. 

State law does not specify how quickly insurers must approve hospital discharges to post-acute care and that complaints about delays are addressed on a case-by-base basis, the statement said. State law does however define how quickly patients need to be able to see a doctor for appointments.

Anthem met the access standards for urgent and non-urgent appointments 66% of the time in 2022, according to the most recent state data.

How insurance delays hold back patients

In general, health insurers are required by law to arrange for and authorize post-hospitalization care for patients in a timely manner. For example, a stroke patient may no longer need to be hospitalized but may need to be sent to a skilled nursing facility to continue recovering. Hospitals are not allowed to discharge patients who need additional services without authorization from insurers.

Patients who no longer need to be hospitalized spend an average of 14 extra days in the hospital as a result of insurance delays, according to a recent point-in-time survey from the hospital association. Those who need to be transferred to a mental health facility are stuck for even longer, spending 27 unnecessary days in the hospital on average.

Medi-Cal patients fare the worst, accounting for 46% of all unwarranted hospital days, according to the survey. 

“This is basically a daily occurrence,” said Vicki White, chief nursing officer at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Santa Clarita.

Across the state, the hospital association estimates delays cost hospitals an estimated $3.25 billion in unneeded hospitalization each year and contributes to overcrowded conditions in hospitals and emergency rooms.

Last winter during the seasonal respiratory virus surge, White said her emergency department had between 20-30 people waiting for a bed daily, in part, because discharge delays prevented the hospital from freeing up bed space.

“We are blocking 4,500 beds a day for people who need care,” Coyle said. “That is a serious problem.”

California doctors see long waits

The average number of days patients spend in hospitals increased by 9% in 2022 compared to 2019, partially because of discharge delays, according to a report from the California Health Care Foundation.

Dr. Sean Mairano, chief medical officer at Enloe Health in Chico, said in his experience insurance denials and delays have gotten worse over time. Frequently insurers will take days to respond to a request from a physician or won’t respond at all. 

For example, the lawsuit describes a patient with “catatonic schizophrenia” that needed to be admitted to a full-time psychiatric treatment center. The lawsuit alleges that Anthem’s delays in finding an appropriate facility for the patient to be discharged to resulted in eight extra days of hospitalization.

“In extreme cases, people will be here for weeks or months on end awaiting decisions from insurance companies,” Mairano said.

What results is patients not getting the speech or physical therapy or other services they need to fully recover. Sometimes, patients get so frustrated they leave the hospital against medical advice and end up back in the emergency room days later, Mairano said.

“From the clinician’s standpoint it’s obviously frustrating (but) it’s really the patients who are stuck in the middle. It’s not their fault. They’re just trying to get well,” Mairano said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

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