Community

Lice are Mother Nature’s quintessential survivors.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators were at Bracco's Towing in Gilroy Wednesday studying the 17-ton Greyhound bus that crashed Tuesday at Highways 85 and 101 killing two and injuring nine. The bus was traveling from Los Angeles to Oakland when the 6:38 a.m. crash occurred. 

When you think of mimosas, you probably think of breakfast, but at a Morgan Hill bookstore they have paired mimosas with coloring books. No, minors aren’t drinking; adult coloring books are a new trend.

Over the objections of neighbors who worried about impacts to parking and property values, the city Planning Commission on Jan. 7 unanimously approved104 new rental housing units on a former cannery site in downtown Gilroy.

If you get caught by these cameras, you have no reason to smile.In a stepped-up effort to capture and punish polluters, conservationists are posting hidden cameras and signs to warn and catch people who dump trash in creeks, killing steelhead trout and other wildlife.   The Gilroy-based group Coastal Habitat Education and Environmental Restoration (CHEER) this month began posting warning signs along creeks in the Pajaro River watershed. It’s the first assault in a two-pronged attack designed to stem dumping and prosecute defilers of the waterways and wildlife, including fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals and plants.Soon, hidden cameras will be mounted in areas prone to dumping and CHEER volunteers equipped with binoculars will monitor others to nab the offenders.“We are going to start surveillance and doing stings daytime and nighttime,” said CHEER president and founder Herman Garcia of Gilroy.“I will have people out there 24/7 with binoculars with night vision, so it won’t just be our cameras; we will have physical surveillance. We want to make immediate examples out of people who are dumping their garbage.”Garcia is furious that the even after posting a dozen NO DUMPING signs in English and Spanish, the illegal practice continues. In one case, someone dumped a small mountain of garbage at the base of one a newly erected sign along Uvas Creek in rural southeast Gilroy.Garcia and CHEER volunteers Mike Sanchez and Steve Guerriero discovered the pile of trash and other new ones on Jan. 9 while putting up more signs.Garcia said, “He is telling me he is disrespecting not only the signs and the natural resources but the law, and he doesn’t care and he is just being a jerk; more than being a chronic polluter, he is giving us a message: ‘I don’t care how many signs you put up, I am dumping my garage here.’“Our volunteers can’t wait to bust that guy, everyone is waiting for that,” Garcia said.“I will go to court when the people are sentenced and I will ask the judge to give the maximum sentence possible, which is six months in jail and a $25,000 fine.”Funding for the signs, cameras and other CHEER efforts come from a $50,000 grant from the Rose Foundation in Oakland. The grant was made possible by Recology South Valley, which enables CHEER to dispose of thousands of cubic yards of creek trash and debris for free at its Gilroy dumpsite.Garcia and his busy CHEER volunteers aren’t alone in wanting to see justice done to deter watershed pollution, which at one point became so serious that indigenous steelhead trout vanished from the watershed’s creeks and streams. They are now making a comeback, according to CHEER.“I really hope we catch some people and I hope it does some good,” said Michelle Leicester,a fisheries biologist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. Leicester oversees Santa Clara County and works closely with the conservation group.Leicester called creek dumping a “huge problem” in the watershed and others and said CHEER has worked closely with state fish and wildlife wardens to improve conditions.Cameras have been invaluable in a variety of wildlife studies, Leicester said, but she is not aware of them being used to catch people dumping garbage.She that garbage dumping has a “huge impact on the quality and quantity of the [fisheries’] habitat, so our department takes illegal dumping very seriously.”Leicester credited Garcia and the CHEER volunteers with playing a critical role in the effort.“Their help has been absolutely indispensable,” she said. “They serve as liaisons with landowners and do a lot of work in the watershed and outreach and education. As a result, we have seen a lot of really good things happen in terms of cleanup, and people are more aware of the problem and are better land stewards. I think it’s a win-win.”And at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office in Santa Rosa, fisheries biologist Joel Casagrande wrote in an email to the Dispatch that CHEER’s “dedication and tenacity in the Pajaro River Watershed has been a huge asset to … our mission of steelhead protection and recovery.“I often rely on them for real-time updates on everything from stream flow conditions, fish presence, pollution, poaching, etc. CHEER leading the charge on the illegal dumping effort is just another example of them taking the initiative to improve the watershed for both steelhead and the community. I can't thank them enough for all their outstanding work—they are true difference makers,” Casagrande said.

Amid praises of “good job” and star-shaped stickers, a student attending school in Gilroy may also receive a different kind of compliment: “excelente,” “muy bueno” or “terrifico.”

Half the farmland that Santa Clara County had 30 years ago has been lost to development but agriculture is thriving and in some cases is more robust than ever thanks to advanced farming techniques, according to a new county report.The report, already circulated at the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) and other regional bodies that control land use and promote its preservation, appears to supply arguments to both sides in Gilroy’s debate over annexing 721 acres of farmland to build 4,000 homes.LAFCO, which opposes premature conversion of farmland for development, is expected to rule on Gilroy’s annexation request later this year, and on one from Morgan Hill to annex 250 acres of farmland.It already alerted Gilroy city leaders of major concerns with the proposal, according to LAFCO executive officer Neelima Palacherla.The agricultural economics report was commissioned and released by Santa Clara County Agricultural Commissioner Joe Deviney.It is the first study to analyze the state and viability of the county’s agriculture industry—which is largely based in South County.It concludes that despite a “significant reduction” in farmland, “continued growth of both land and labor productivity has resulted in a county agricultural sector that is gaining in both production value and employment … driven by a shift towards higher value crops, increases in productivity, new technologies, and more efficient farming practices.” The per-acre value of irrigated farmland “has never been higher,” the report states.Deviney commissioned the report to resolve a long-standing debate over the viability of farming in the county and questions about its contribution to the economy.“This report says very clearly that ag is viable,” he said.The county’s 2014 ag production was valued at $276.2 million, up nearly five percent from 2013.The top two crops for 10 years have been nursery stock and mushrooms, which require less land than more traditional crops. Nursery crops brought in $75.5 million, and mushrooms $72.1 million. Bell peppers, a land-intense row crop, were a distant third at $15.4 million. Cherry production was down 70 percent to $2.6 million, according to the recently released 2014 county crop report.The economic analysis comes as county planners and the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority move forward with a grant-funded $100,000 study of the effects of farmland loss on climate in South County and the need to preserve land.OSA general manager Andrea Mackenzie said Wednesday that southern Santa Clara County “is one of our highest priorities,” as the special district created by the state legislature in 1993 goes about its business of land preservation. And that includes, she said, “keeping farms and ranching viable by ensuring there’s a land base for agriculture.”That effort took a powerful new tack when Gov. Jerry Brown, state lawmakers and others added land conservation policy to the arsenal of tools in the fight against climate change, according to Mackenzie.She called the combined Gilroy and Morgan Hill annexation bids “The (county’s) largest proposal for the conversion of farmland at one time in probably more than 30 years.”A recent OSA study also noted a sort of hidden value, beyond crop values, of farm and open space land, according to Mackenzie.“When you look at open space land there is a suite of environmental goods and services provided back to the local economy. We call these natural capital and they are the life-support system of our county,” she said.It includes such things as the value of land in flood control, percolation to the underwater aquifers and improved water quality. Those are valued conservatively at “$1.6 to $3.9 billion to the local economy, just as the agricultural contribution is $1.6 billion,” Mackenzie said.For opponents of Gilroy’s LAFCO application, approved by the City Council but not yet submitted, Deviney’s report states unequivocally that acreage in farming dropped from 40,000 in the late 1980s (excluding range land) to 20,000 in 2014, the year the data was collected.For advocates of development of the 721 acres, page after page of the report is filled with glowing statistics about the state of the county’s agriculture industry in spite of farmland losses.The full report, titled The Economic Contribution of Agriculture to the County of Santa Clara 2014, can be found here:http://adobe.ly/1njbM8L.

Bad weather and pilot inexperience might have been factors in the crash that killed a Gilroy family of five Dec. 19, when their Piper PA-32RT broke up in mid-air on the way from San Jose to Henderson, Nevada, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB).

Colette Harmon was late to her own retirement, but it came as no surprise to anyone.She’d been called out on an emergency, just when the festivities for her last day on the job were about to begin. Luckily, after about 15 minutes, she turned around and drove back to the Sunrise fire station where she was honored by her Gilroy Fire Department peers and received a city proclamation from Mayor Don Gage, just before his own retirement.Harmon, 56, said she was honored to “just be one of the guys” during her 27 years as a Gilroy firefighter. As the first woman hired by GFD, she never wanted to be treated differently.On her last day, the guys praised her, saying she was the one they turned to when they needed technical help on computers or machines. She was an engineer who was skilled not just in driving the big rigs, but in fixing them.They also joked about her strict exercise routine and her healthy eating, which included vegetarian items such as tofu. Some said they snuck away for burgers when she was cooking.A San Diego native, Harmon worked as a hardware and software engineer on F-14 flight simulators in the Navy, including the ones Tom Cruise used when filming Top Gun.“We actually used to mess with him,” she said. “Because he wasn’t always the nicest person so we’d always give him flameouts and stuff like that. It was all in fun.”After leaving the military, she took a job with Grumman, the flight simulator maker, but grew bored. Her best friends were a police officer and a firefighter, and both suggested she try their trades.“Everybody I talked to at the fire service, just like you see here, they all loved their jobs. That’s why I decided to become a firefighter.”She tested in San Diego but wanted to work in a smaller town. Someone suggested she try Gilroy.“I drove up and saw it was a nice little town and they’d never hired a woman, so I always like the challenge.”She got hired, loved the work and her peers, and never left.The best part of the job?“The small town feel. I never had brothers but now I have an extended family of brothers and their families and kids. It’s the closeness of the department. Since it’s so small, you actually know everybody. You know their kids, their birthdays, anniversaries. It’s an extended family. It’s really nice.”The worst part?“Ask any firefighter—the scene. Death. Seeing young kids injured. We can only do so much but in our minds you think you can help everyone, save everyone you can. Seeing vehicle accidents where whole families are wiped out. Stuff like that stays with you forever.”Fires have decreased over the course of her career because of better building safety measures, and fire departments have increased their responsibilities by taking on medical duties.Her biggest thrills on duty were fighting more than a dozen huge wildfires that called on strike teams from across the state or region. She fought the Devore Fire, the Rocky Fire and too many others to recall.“Those are like a giant camping trip for two weeks,” she said. “We saw the very worst of everything, the devastation of people losing their homes. But you see the very best in people too. They’d be so thankful. They’d send you signs. They’d come to the base camp and bring you food and water. That really is touching.”She’s going to spend her retirement based in Santa Cruz, but traveling to ski on unmarked trails all over the West and volunteering to build homes with Habitat for Humanity, something she’s already done.Plenty of her peers thought she should move up the ranks and go into management for Gilroy’s department, but she preferred not to.“I’m a behind-the-scenes kind of person,” she said. “I like supporting people. The captain’s job never appealed to me. As an engineer you get to do all three positions. I get to be a firefighter, I get to be an engineer and I get to be a captain. I bump up when my captain is gone.”There is only one other woman in Gilroy’s department, EMT Chief Mary Gutierrez, who joined a year ago after working for San Jose’s department.Harmon’s biggest regret is that she never got to work with another woman for most of her career. What advice does she have for women who want to follow in her boot steps?“First of all you have to have the right attitude. You can’t look for special treatment, because we do the same exact job a guy does. The fire’s not going to look at you and go, ‘you’re a women, so I’m going to be a little less.’“You have to be held to the same standards as the guys. You’ve got to be flexible. How I’ve always viewed it—because I’ve always worked in a male-dominated field—you know, people call you one of the guys and then they look at you, and I go, ‘No, I am one of the guys!’“This is who I work with. You have to have that attitude. There’s no differentiation of male or female.”

Say what you will about downtown Gilroy, one of its unabashed fans is Bruce Dane, whose Garbo’s Antiques has been a mainstay on Monterey Street for 25 years.