Hopkins fire clean-up, redistricting, move ahead
November 1, 2021 \u2014 The cleanup from the Hopkins Fire has a clear path forward now. The State has issued a proclamation declaring the event an emergency, which means the county can probably be reimbursed 75% of what it spends on remediating the damage, including what it\u2019s spent so far. And the Department of Toxic Substances Control is scheduled to begin cleaning up hazardous waste in the burn zone tomorrow.\nThe Redistricting Advisory Commission presented the eighth and ninth drafts of its proposed map to the Board of Supervisors last week, explaining that number nine would adjust the boundaries so that Hopland, which is now in the fifth district, would join Potter Valley and Redwood Valley in the first district. None of the maps has been finalized yet.\nThe deadline for cannabis cultivation applicants to submit documents to the online portal has been extended to 11:59 on Tuesday night, due to power outages during last week\u2019s storm. That deadline means that applications submitted by Tuesday will be eligible for consideration, not just those that had been reviewed by that time.\nAnd the misinformation campaign regarding vaccination and masking is in full swing. Numerous members of the public called in to the Board of Supervisors last week to share falsehoods\nabout natural immunity and claim, erroneously, that wearing masks causes health problems. Callers made analogies involving Satanic rituals and the Nuremberg Trials, and used creative terminology like \u2018natural killer cells\u2019 to support their arguments about the vaccines\u2019 efficacy.\nTravis Killmore, field coordinator for the county\u2019s Prevention, Recovery, Resiliency and Mitigation or PERRM team, reported that just a few days before the atmospheric river threatened to sluice debris from the Hopkins burn scar into the Russian River, several organizations including the California Conservation Corps stepped in to provide emergency assistance\u2026.