The El Dorado Irrigation District Board of Directors met yesterday and made the decision to ask the Amador County Board of Supervisors to place a 10 mile per hour speed limit on Silver Lake. Last fall the El Dorado Irrigation District began looking at recommendations for a personal water craft ban for the lake citing concerns about public safety and potential liability. irrigation Board member George Osborne stated in November that liability issues in the event of an accident is a major concern. "We are not the enforcement agency; whatever action is involved will be done by the Amador County Board of Supervisors," he said. "But as a public entity, we are deep pockets."

Save Mart Supermarkets, based in Modesto, recently purchased 132 Albertson’s stores in Northern California, including the Amador County store. It was announced last week that the Sonora store will be closed this coming Saturday leaving the Sonora area’s 65 employees without jobs. According to Save Mart spokesperson Alicia Rockwell the Jackson store will remain open and will slowly be converted over to a Save Mart store. Customers will not see a big difference in the store for at least three to four months. Employees here are also safe, says Rockwell, the purchase agreement for the stores included the employee positions and each employees now a Save Mart employee. There are no major plans to change the operations of the Amador County store, with the exception of the change of name and product content.

A fatal accident occurred Friday afternoon just after one pm on Hwy 88 near Toyon Rd. The accident closed that roadway for several hours causing motorists to detour. According to witnesses on scene the accident occurred just West of Smalley's Sales and service when a female driver traveling westbound, in a green Buick sedan, lost control on a long sweeping corner. As a result the Buick spun into the path of a Ford pickup truck with two male occupants that were headed east up Hwy 88.  The result was devastating.  The sedan was cut into 3 pieces and the truck was pushed back around 100 feet. The two males were taken to the hospital via American Legion Ambulance. The female driver of the Buick was declared dead at the scene. This accident is under investigation by the CHP.

Main Street in Ione is expecting a face lift in May according to Mayor Jerry Sherman. Cal Trans will be doing a series of improvements on Main Street that begin at the Preston Avenue Bridge and continue down Main Street to Hwy. 104. Cal Trans will make upgrades to the drainage as well as making improvements to the street. Mayor Sherman said that while Cal Trans reported that they would begin the upgrades sometime in May he has yet to have them nail down an exact date. “I just hope it’s not in the 2nd weekend of May,” he said as it is the weekend of Ione’s Homecoming. He said this year’s Homecoming event will be bigger and better as railroad speeders from all over Northern California, Nevada and Arizona will attend. He also said that a trolley car will run the tracks. Sherman said they even hope to allow people the opportunity of riding in the speeders, but only if all the insurance issues are worked out.

Sutter Creek Fire Protection District firefighters were busy in the month of January. The local volunteers answered 72 calls January 1st through February 8th. 56 of those calls were emergency medical calls, accounting for almost 79 percent of the total call log. 5 of the calls were actual fire related calls with 4 Hazmat call, which also includes hazardous conditions such as the recent bomb threat.

A Reno-Tahoe coalition has begun building support for a possible 2018 Winter Olympics bid around Lake Tahoe, the site of the 1960 games. A group of business leaders and politicians known as the Reno-Tahoe Winter Games Coalition on Tuesday won unanimous support from the Placer County Board of Supervisors to pursue the plan. According to CBS 13, on Thursday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office signaled he would consider supporting a bid if the U.S. Olympic Committee decides to pursue the 2018 games. "The governor is always supportive of anything that would be of potential economic boost to California," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear. "He is currently working to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to Los Angeles and would consider any other events that would benefit California." Jim Vanden Heuvel, the coalition's chief executive officer, estimates the region would need $1.6 billion in improvements to host the 2018 Games.

Even with the nearly two inches of rain we received over the weekend, more falling some areas of the state, California will still need about double its normal precipitation for the rest of the winter and spring to catch up with a normal year, said Department of Water Resources hydrologist Maury Roos. And that brings up discussions of cloud seeding. When conditions are right cloud seeding across California can bolster the state's runoff by perhaps 3 percent to 4 percent. That could be important this year, with the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada only at about 40 percent of normal. "When you get into a dry year, every drop is valuable," hydrologist Roos said.

According to a federal appeals court ruling issued Friday, Indian tribes are indeed subject to federal labor law. This case, according to labor experts could now lead to stricter labor protections - and more unions - at the nation's booming Indian casinos. According to the AP, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected arguments from a wealthy Southern California tribe that as a sovereign government, it should not be subject to those laws. "Tribal sovereignty is not absolute autonomy, permitting a tribe to operate in a commercial capacity without legal constraint," said the opinion written by Judge Janice Rogers Brown. The ruling stemmed from an organizing dispute at a casino run by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, 60 miles east of Los Angeles, where a union filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board arguing that another union was getting preferential access.

A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination. Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse Disorder. Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers - who often keep thousands of colonies - have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer. The country's bee population had already been shocked in recent years by a tiny, parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed more than half of some beekeepers' hives and devastated most wild honeybee populations.

A federal judge ruled Friday that a voter-approved California Prop83 can't be applied retroactively to where sex offenders live, potentially freeing thousands of parolees from a ban on living within 2,000 feet of a school, park or place where children gather. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton said there was nothing in Proposition 83, commonly known as Jessica's Law, that specified its provisions were intended to be applied retroactively. "The court finds that the law does not apply to individuals who were convicted and who were paroled, given probation or released from incarceration prior to its effective date," he wrote.