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Volume 171 • Issue 141 | $1.00
mtdemocrat.com
Friday, December 2, 2022
Mountain Democrat photo by Eric Jaramishian
El Dorado County Fire Protection District personnel work to fully extinguish a residential fire on Forebay Road in Pollock Pines Tuesday.
Fire destroys 2-story Pollock Pines home Photos courtesy of American Rivers
Eric Jaramishian Staff writer
About 16,000 pounds of soil was moved at Calf Pasture Meadow to renew its important role in the Sierra Nevada ecosystem.
Moving earth: Calf Pasture a healthy meadow again
Firefighters battled a fire at a two-story house on Forebay Road in Pollock Pines Tuesday afternoon that caused major damage. No injuries were reported but a cat died in the fire, according to 78-year-old home owner Eric Land. His grandson had been living in the house and was at work when the fire occurred. Land and his wife reside in another home adjacent to the house. n
Mountain Democrat staff
See house fire, page A6
At Lake Tahoe
Traffic concerns prompt new highway plan Miranda Jacobson Tahoe Daily Tribune STATELINE, NEV. — The Nevada Department of Transportation will be completing its U.S. 50 Tahoe East Shore Corridor Management Plan at the end of this year and officials say they have found mixed reactions to the proposed concept of
reconfiguring three portions of the highway from four to two lanes. Average daily peakseason traffic has grown substantially on the highway since 2014 and during a recent four-year period, crash rates were more than 50% higher between Elks Point Road and Glenbrook Drive in Douglas County, when compared to similar highways across the
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n
See u.s. 50, page A6
This fall almost two months of work went into restoring the degraded Calf Pasture Meadow on the back side of Desolation Wilderness. The meadow had been impacted by decades of cattle grazing, road construction and logging. Leading the restoration effort was American Rivers, a national river conservation organization. Calf Pasture Meadow is adjacent to Bassi Creek, which feeds into the South Fork of the American River. The meadow had deepened to the point where flows could not spread across the meadow and nourish plant communities and wildlife that depend on it, according to a news release from American Rivers. The groundwater drained abruptly after snowmelt and conifers had begun encroaching on the meadow. The project began Sept. 1 and was completed Oct. 21. “This restoration was both a necessary step to ensuring the health of mountain meadows, watersheds and forests in the region, and a model for how to responsibly manage the precious ecosystems of the Sierra Nevada,” states the news release. Conservationists note meadows provide a suite of benefits, including improved groundwater storage, enhanced water quality, reduced peak flood flows and critical habitat. The Sierra Nevada’s meadows are also hotspots in terms of biodiversity. American Rivers completed this project alongside Eldorado National Forest staff,
Maiya Greenwood, associate director of California conservation for American Rivers and project manager at Calf Pasture Meadow, measures water level in relation to the meadow’s surface with a groundwater well to quantify water storage resulting from the meadow restoration. consultants and a number of volunteers from different organizations. The project cost about $971,000, with funding coming entirely from
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