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Governor Schwarzenegger announced that California will join forces with Microsoft to provide free technology training to thousands of Californians through Elevate America, Microsoft’s innovative program to enhance the technical job skills of individuals across the country.
Tags: ca, California, Governor, Humboldt, job, Sacramento, schwartzenegger
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Governor Schwarzenegger joined First Lady Maria Shriver and delivered remarks at the Honoring Our Women in the Military event during the Women’s Conference’s Day at The Museum in honor of Women’s History Month.
Tags: ca, California, Governor, Humboldt, schwartzenegger
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Governor Schwarzenegger delivered remarks at the 17th Annual California Charter Schools Conference highlighting the need to provide funding for charter schools and options for students and parents.
Tags: ca, California, Governor, Humboldt, schwartzenegger
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Linda Holm, park ranger for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, squirts dye to simulate an oil spill in the San Francisco Bay. More than 150,000 people a year visit the 145,000-square-foot Bay Model in Sausalito, a hydrologically precise scaled working replica of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the San Francisco Bay. mcrisostomo@sacbee.com
A scaled representation of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta waterways leading to Suisun Bay can be seen at the Bay Model – a three-dimensional mock-up that can simulate tides, currents and river inflows.
SAUSALITO – It stands as a monument to the days before supercomputing when engineers wearing pocket protectors had to be able to do math – serious math – in their heads and on the fly.
Tucked into a sprawling World War II-era shipbuilding warehouse in a corner of this North Bay town is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Bay Model.
The hydrologically precise scaled working replica of the entire San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Delta takes a first-time visitor’s breath away – just as it has since it first opened in 1957.
Corps Ranger Linda Holm said the site was used as a research facility from 1958 through 2000 to measure and evaluate the freshwater and saltwater circulation characteristics of the bay, the Delta and its tributaries. While the hard science officially ended there in 2000, the corps decided to keep the site open.
Now more than 150,000 students of all ages annually tour the model for a chance to see the entire bay and Delta with one sweep of their eyes.
“It really never gets old,” Holm said. “We have our visitors first sit and watch a short movie and then they walk out and look down over the model. Watching their reactions can just be priceless.”
The model was approved and paid for by Congress in the early 1950s following a series of massive private-sector proposals on how best to dam up and manipulate the greater Bay-Delta Watershed. The model was designed to help officials better understand how the watershed worked and what would happen if some of the dams were built.
The 145,000-square-foot model is made up of 286 individually supported concrete slabs with adjustable screws.
All of the bay and Delta’s most important features can be found – every river, creek, slough, ship channel and canal. Every major pier, slip, wharf, dike, bridge and breakwater is also represented.
Holm said the deepest part of the model is about 3 feet in the narrow undersea canyon that runs under the Golden Gate Bridge. Elsewhere, in some of the upstream sloughs and tributaries, only a trickle of water is present. All told, about 150,000 gallons circulate through the model at any one time, she said.
Although advanced computer software modeling has long replaced the slide rule-era facility, Holm said the site is still a favorite of TV reporters when oil spills on the real waterway occur. To help them – and their viewers – better visualize how a spill would spread, Holm sprays a bright pink nontoxic dye into the water.
“There, see how it’s eddying?” Holm asks a visitor after spraying two or three squirts into the water out in front of a mini-Golden Gate Bridge. “You can see that we have an ebb tide, and if that was oil, it’d be headed out to sea.”
Following the 2007 Cosco Busan fuel oil spill, Holm said, she was mobbed by TV crews looking for ways to better quantify the size and scale of the real spill.
The model is also designed to simulate the tide cycle as it occurs on the bay – only instead of taking 24 hours to complete, the model’s system replicates the tidal patterns every 15 minutes or so, Holm said.
Although rangers like Holm lament that scientific or engineering work is no longer conducted at the site, they take comfort that the model remains an educational resource for the greater Bay Area.
“When I’m out showing schoolkids the model I sometimes feel like I’m Godzilla because of the scale,” Holm said, mimicking the movements of the beloved Japanese movie monster. “We try to keep it fun. The object is for them to understand that the bay and the Delta are real living ecosystems and that only through understanding will come the need to preserve and protect.”
The model’s future appears bright. The Corps of Engineers was recently given $13.2 million in federal stimulus funds to install solar panels on the roof, make seismic structural improvements, remove asbestos and make general improvements to the model, the adjacent visitor’s center and the exhibits.
To accommodate the renovation, the model will close today through May 31.
The Bay Model includes an exhibit of the San Francisco watershed. The blue LED lights represent water flow from the snow-covered Sierra to the bay. Elements are drawn on a scale of 1 to 1,000.
The Golden Gate Bridge exhibit includes an underwater canyon – at 3 feet, it’s the deepest part of the Bay Model. About 150,000 gallons of water flow through the model at any given time.
A scaled representation of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta waterways leading to Suisun Bay can be seen at the Bay Model – a three-dimensional mock-up that can simulate tides, currents and river inflows.
Tags: ca, California, Delta, Freshwater, Humboldt, Northern California, Sacramento, San Francisco
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The sentencing of Ryan Karr was postponed when his attorney asked for time to file a brief seeing a new trial. Karr was convicted of five felony counts of vehicular manslaughter in a 2007 Highway 101 crash that killed five members of a Windsor family.
Tags: attorney, ca, California, felony, Highway 101, Humboldt, Northern California, Trial
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Governor Schwarzenegger joined First Lady Maria Shriver and delivered remarks at the Honoring Our Women in the Military event during the Women’s Conference’s Day at The Museum in honor of Women’s History Month.
Tags: ca, California, Governor, Humboldt, Sacramento, schwartzenegger
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Counselors are assisting students and staff at Santa Rosa’s Sequoia Elementary School today after the death of a kindergarten teacher who went home for lunch Thursday and never returned to her class.
Tags: ca, California, Humboldt, Northern California, Santa Rosa
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The California Highway Patrol has issued a warning to drivers with a DUI felony or misdemeanor arrest warrant hanging over their heads. Turn yourself in before a special team of CHP officers turns up the heat.
Tags: ca, California, California Highway Patrol, CHP, felony, Humboldt, Northern California
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State wildlife officials Wednesday ruled that the California tiger salamander deserves protection as a threatened species, subjecting landowners to more scrutiny if they want to build or farm in the amphibian’s habitat.
Tags: California, Humboldt, Northern California, Sacramento
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Governor Schwarzenegger delivered remarks at the 17th Annual California Charter Schools Conference highlighting the need to provide funding for charter schools and options for students and parents.
Tags: California, Governor, Humboldt, Sacramento, schwartzenegger
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Gov. Schwarzenegger held a press conference to highlight a proposal to exempt the purchase of green tech manufacturing equipment from the sales tax in his California Jobs Initiative, a legislative package that will create or retain at least 100,000 jobs.
Tags: California, Governor, Humboldt, job, Sacramento, sales tax, schwartzenegger
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A large swath of downtown Santa Rosa, including Santa Rosa Plaza and several hundred homes, were without power for more than an hour Monday night following the failure of electrical equipment about 5:45 p.m. Some shoppers were left in the dark for about 20 seconds before backup lights came on and employees brought out flashlights.
Tags: California, downtown, Humboldt, Northern California, PG&E, Santa Rosa
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Santa Rosa Police lifted a lockdown at Montgomery High School today after a search found no one matching a report of a teen carrying a rifle near the school.
Tags: California, Humboldt, Northern California, Santa Rosa
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What will become of Healdsburg’s 90-year-old, steel-truss bridge over the Russian River?
Tags: Northern California
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John Silver discusses the political and economic policies of former President Ronald Reagan in a new certificate program at City College of San Francisco that trains community health workers to help former inmates navigate the medical system. Many class members are ex-inmates themselves or relatives of ex-inmates.
SAN FRANCISCO – About two dozen City College of San Francisco students leaned forward in their wobbly desks on a recent evening as they debated personal responsibility, the role of correctional officers and the fear of going to the doctor.
Many of these students are former inmates and family members of inmates. The course they’re taking is part of the country’s first certificate program for post-prison health workers, which trains participants how to handle ex-inmates’ chronic health problems and negotiate the barriers that hinder access to care.
“Can you manage your life outside an institution without someone managing it for you?” asked Clifton Martin, a City College student who spent 20 years in and out of prison on drug and robbery charges and now works for a drug counseling organization.
The first group of students will graduate this spring. Other schools around the country are watching the program as a possible model for shoring up county-led indigent care programs and saving public health dollars by catching diseases early, getting parolees into primary care and reducing the number of emergency room visits.
“People may not have gotten good health care or health education in prison,” said Tim Berthold, chairman of the health education department. “As a consequence, … they might be particularly reluctant to access health services on the outside.”
About 120,000 California prison inmates are now paroled every year. Over the next two years, the state may also reduce the overall prison population by more than 40,000 inmates to comply with a federal court order.
Because of IV drug use, unprotected sex and tattooing, rates of HIV infection are nine times higher among prison inmates than the general public. Hepatitis C rates are at least 10 times higher, according to a 2009 report from the Rand Corp.
With an aging prison population, chronic diseases such as advanced diabetes, hypertension, asthma and cancer are all common.
“Incarceration is pathogenic,” said Donna Willmott, who teaches the class on the health effects of incarceration. “It creates ill health, and it complicates ill health people already have.”
Willmott’s students learn how to manage these diseases. But they focus even more on the challenges of delivering care to ex-inmates.
“There’s an assumption that they will not be treated well or with dignity,” said Berthold. “There’s real discrimination, and the fear that it will happen everywhere.”
So many problems were detailed in a lawsuit against California’s prison health care system – insufficient facilities, long wait times, even deaths – that a federal receiver has been appointed to oversee it.
Because many of the students were once incarcerated themselves or have family members in and out of prison, they know firsthand what their future patients have experienced and the obstacles they face when they get out.
“Incarceration strips you of responsibility for yourself,” Martin said during Willmott’s class. “You get three meals a day, your laundry is done for you, even your medication is brought to you.”
Hands flew up around the circle of desks during the discussion. You can’t relinquish responsibility like that, says Johnny. What about kids who grew up in jail and never learned responsibility? asks Desiree. You get broken down, Jessie says. People go in fine, but they come out with post-traumatic stress disorder, Norell says.
“I was in the best shape of my life when I was in the penitentiary,” student Kevin Mitchell said. “I spent days laying on my bunk dreaming what to do when I got out. But when I hit the streets, it’s a whole different ballgame.”
Willmott helps put the personal stories into context.
“What is the purpose of prison and jails? Why is there this instrument for social control?” she asked. “How does that impact people’s health?”
The public’s health is also at issue. When chronic diseases go untreated, people can land in emergency rooms with advanced illnesses that are expensive to treat, with taxpayers often picking up the tab.
Even if prescriptions are called in to community pharmacies, parolees rarely pick them up, according to a University of Texas study. Co-author David Paar says parolees don’t have practice navigating the health care system.
“If you call to verify an appointment, you get 10 minutes of phone tree. If you’re like me, you get irritated and you hang on,” Paar said. “A lot of those patients don’t have those life skills, so they call their crack dealer who lives down the street and get their crack.”
That’s a scenario that the City College program is trying to prevent by training workers to coach parolees through difficult times. They learn how to walk patients through the health care system and help them find housing, employment, and mental health and substance abuse services.
Administrators expect this year’s graduates to find jobs at nonprofits, county public health departments, and specialty centers like San Francisco’s Transitions clinic, which treats ex-inmates only and offers internships to the program’s students.
“They trust me because they know I’ve been there, done that,” said Juanita Alvarado, a former inmate who’s now a community health worker at Transitions.
Funding for such training programs is hard to come by, and City College is already scrambling to cover next year’s costs. But advocates believe that such care for parolees will save money in the long run by controlling disease, preventing emergency room overuse and reducing recidivism.
And, at least for some former prisoners, the City College program provides an opportunity for them to find work that leverages their incarceration history, instead of forcing them to hide it or make excuses for it.
“They come to community college with the goal of independence, the goal of standing on their own two feet,” Berthold said. “Many have a mission to give back to their communities, where some of their individual strengths can really be assets in the public health field.”
Hermann Bormann, majoring in social work, is part of the first-in-the-nation program. Its aims include providing jobs for former inmates and saving taxpayer dollars by reducing emergency room visits.
Tags: California, court, employment, Humboldt, inmate, job, law, lawsuit, Northern California, prisoner, robbery, San Francisco, sex
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