Benicia Proclaims Local Emergency; Announces Testing of Bypass Line for Damaged Water Transmission Pipeline
The City of Benicia proclaimed a local emergency following the break in its water transmission line when a hillside in Fairfield collapsed during recent rain storms.
The declaration of a local emergency will enable the city to use all resources necessary to repair the damaged water transmission pipeline. “It’s important for us to take this action so that the city can receive funding through the California Disaster Assistance Act and any other State and Federal funding that may be available,” said Mario Giuliani, interim city manager.
Benicia Public Works and various contractors are working on a temporary bypass line to regain access to the city’s primary water sources which are delivered via the damaged line. Designing the bypass began last week upon notification of the damage. Construction for the bypass line began on Tuesday, April 4, 2023 and is expected to be ready for testing on Friday, April 7. If testing is successful, then water transmission from Cordelia to the City of Benicia will be partially restored. While testing is scheduled to begin on Friday, it could take several days to fully assess the viability of the temporary system. Construction is now underway 24-hours a day until testing is complete.
“This is a highly complex project,” said Public Works Director Kyle Ochenduszko. “The bypass line is unique to the pipeline system and ever evolving circumstances. While we are confident that the bypass line will be successful, this is a situation with many variables,” he explained.
The bypass line is a temporary solution that will provide the community water while the primary pipeline is being repaired.
The bypass line will deliver water at a lower capacity than the main line. Benicia’s water source will still be coming from Lake Herman until the bypass line has been successfully tested. Benicia residents and businesses are still under 40 percent mandatory water conservation until further notice.
A special webpage has been established to provide a one-stop source for information about this incident. The site can be found at www.ci.benicia.ca.us/WaterTransmissionLine.
Social media posts, email notifications and other communications materials are being regularly distributed to residents and businesses as information becomes available. To sign up for emergency alerts, visit AlertSolano.com. To sign up for email notifications, visit www.ci.benicia.ca.us/announcements.
BenIndy highly recommends ‘Jumping Into Solutions’
Email from Pat Toth-Smith, March 31, 2023
Hi, I‘m so pleased to announce Jumping Into Solutions Episode 2, “Switch is On for Electric Heat Pumps.” This episode features the new electric water heat pumps and home heating/cooling units for your home. The video clears up confusing things like:
How do the new heat pumps work?
Will they cost a lot of money to install?
Do I have to change my electric systems?
Can I remove my gas system after installing them?
Will they save money in the long run?
What are the new Air District (BAAQMD) rules for getting new electric water/heat systems?
Are there rebates?
Much more efficient, non-toxic and economical, electric heat pumps use Thermal Dynamics to run their systems.
Guests for this episode are homeowner Constance Buetel and Energy Engineer Tom Kabat, who speak candidly about all of this and share their knowledge and experiences switching over to heat pump water heaters and home heat/cooling heat pump systems.
Other benefits to the home heat pump is that it is also an air conditioner. They come in all sizes from a central system to mini splits that go in the walls to portable window units to heat and cool any room in your home, which is especially nice for people living in apartments.
Lastly, this episode discusses the dangers of having gas products in our home for our families’ health and for the health of our community. The reduction of gas and its byproduct, methane, a serious greenhouse gas, goes a long way to reducing our carbon footprint and helping our planet.
[BenIndy Contributor Nathalie Christian – On Wednesday, March 29, the Benicia Unified School District (BUSD) issued a district-wide warning that the annual occurrence of the racist, violent “game” Benicia High School students call “La Migra” is anticipated to occur this Friday, March 31. For more than 20 years, the La Migra “game” has inflicted deep emotional and often physical harm on Benicia’s vulnerable youth, especially our youth of color. La Migra also claims countless hours of our police department’s time, tying up emergency resources and costing Benicia thousands in overtime wages and related spending. Despite all of this, too many in Benicia consider La Migra a harmless tradition. Although the game occurs off campus and is no way organized or condoned by BUSD, the district is right to call for an immediate end to this event and to warn the community of the imminent danger. – N.C.]
Let’s Stop ‘La Migra,’ A Dangerous Game of Chase – March 31, 2023
Posted by Benicia Unified School District March 29, 2023
Dear Benicia Community,
We want to bring your awareness to an unsanctioned and dangerous activity that Benicia teens have participated in over the last twenty years, which is an underground, and unwelcomed event in our community. It is a chase-and-capture game referenced as “La Migra”. This activity happens in the Spring, usually on a Friday evening in late March or in April. We have information that suggests this game may take place on Friday, March 31, 2023.
While this activity is not in any way organized or condoned by the schools, Benicia Unified School District, or the City of Benicia, there is an urgent need to provide our community with information and ask for your partnership in putting an end to this event once and for all. We want to provide awareness about this event and see it stopped for two important reasons: the inappropriate, racist, and offensive nature of the game and the incredible safety concerns for our students and innocent bystanders.
“La Migra” is slang for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and is the name used for this controversial game based on ICE agents deporting undocumented immigrants. The event involves older students chasing younger students through the city, trying to catch them, and then possibly transporting or holding the student against their will. The event begins at one location, typically a park in town, with the younger students attempting to get to a second designated location without being caught by an older student. A student that is captured is sometimes dropped off in an unknown location. There are reports of extremely unsafe situations in the course of this event, including unsafe driving, students dressed in all black with masks running through backyards and private property, speeding, physical contact causing injury, unsafe physical detainment, and students being left without the ability to contact someone to pick them up. It is important to stop this activity immediately to keep students from being injured or harmed.
In addition to the physical safety concerns, Benicia Unified School District strongly advocates for respect for all individuals, regardless of race, place of origin, sexual orientation, or disability. A game such as “La Migra” causes harm, both physical and emotional, to members of our community.
We urge every family to discuss this event, use this as an opportunity for education and understanding, and help us put an end to this game in our community. In a city that has been nominated as a Be Kind city, continuing “La Migra” is counter-productive to this goal.
A young girl places on March 28, 2023, places an item at a growing memorial for the victims of the shooting at the entry to The Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn. (AP)
A woman who survived a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, in 2022 made a passionate plea for gun safety legislation in front of TV cameras after a mass school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee.
Mom and mass shooting survivor Ashbey Beasley
After a police official finished a briefing on the deadly school shooting that left three 9 year olds and three adults dead, Ashbey Beasley stepped in front of the microphones.
“How is this still happening? How are our children still dying and why are we failing them? Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens — it has overtaken cars,” Beasley said March 27.
Beasley told PolitiFact that she was in Washington, D.C., on March 24 to attend the Generation Lockdown rally, where activists and lawmakers gathered to support an assault weapons ban, and then traveled to Nashville to see family and a friend. Beasley became a gun safety activist after she and her son, then 6 years old, survived the Highland Park mass shooting during a July 4 parade.
After previous mass shootings, including at a school in Uvalde, Texas, we fact-checked U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who said that “the leading cause of death among children is a firearm.” We rated his statement Mostly True based on analyses of 2020 federal data. The same finding holds true for 2021 data on children and teenagers ages 1 to 19.
Data shows firearm deaths surpassed motor vehicle deaths
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes data on the leading causes of death among different demographic groups.
CDC data for 2021 shows that 23,198 people ages 1 to 19 died in 2021. Firearm deaths, 4,733, were the No. 1 cause. Motor vehicle traffic deaths ranked second at 4,048.
This data is similar to what researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions found when they analyzed CDC data for 2020 deaths. The lead researcher for that report confirmed that the same point held true for 2021.
Beasley told us she is careful to say “children and teens” because she has heard people dispute the statement when someone refers only to “children.” She told us she got the 2021 statistic from Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group.
Generally, researchers say they don’t include infants in their analyses because of certain conditions unique to babies.
It is technically correct to say that firearms are the leading cause of death for people aged 1 to 19 when they are combined into a single group, said Veronica Pear, an assistant professor in the Violence Prevention Research Program at University of California, Davis.
“This is an eye-catching and powerful statistic, so I get why people use it,” Pear said.
But Pear warned that someone could wrongly interpret the statement to mean that firearms are the leading cause of death for each individual age within the 1 to 19 range.
Firearm-related deaths are exceedingly rare among babies and young children, while teenagers, especially older teenagers, have very high rates of dying from firearm-related injuries, Pear said.
“When all these ages are pooled together, the very high rates among teens are swamping the very low rate among young kids, such that firearms are the leading cause of death for the group as a whole,” Pear said.
The Nashville shooting occurred at The Covenant School, a small private Christian school serving preschool through sixth grade. If we look at death data for ages 3 to 12, it shows firearms as the sixth leading cause.
However, researchers we interviewed said it is valid to look at firearm deaths for ages 1 to 19. David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, told us there is no official definition of “children.”
Hemenway co-wrote a perspective article for the New England Journal of Medicine about causes of death for people ages 1 to 24.
“For more than 60 years, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of injury-related death among young people. Beginning in 2017, however, firearm-related injuries took their place to become the most common cause of death from injury,” the article said. “This change occurred because of both the rising number of firearm-related deaths in this age group and the nearly continuous reduction in deaths from motor vehicle crashes.”
The CDC cites the 15 leading causes of death for people ages 1 to 19, but it does not pluck out firearm deaths. This data shows the top causes of death are accidents, homicide and suicide — all cagetories that include some firearm-related deaths.
The CDC does not classify firearms as a cause of death, but rather as a mechanism by which death occurs. “So, while our data does not allow us to say that firearms are the leading cause of death for this age group, it does show that firearms are the leading mechanism of injury mortality,” Brian Tsai, a CDC National Center of Health Statistics spokesperson, told PolitiFact.
Patrick M. Carter, co-director of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan, and Philip Cook, a professor emeritus at Duke University and gun researcher, both told us they agree it is accurate to say that in the 1 to 19 age category firearms are the leading cause of death.
PolitiFact ruling
Beasley said, “Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens — it has overtaken cars.”
CDC data for 2021 shows that for people ages 1 to 19, firearm-related deaths ranked No. 1, followed by deaths from car accidents.
That’s for the age range as a whole; it is not the leading cause of death for each age in that group. Firearm-related deaths are far more common among older teenagers than among young children.
The City of Benicia proclaimed a local emergency following the break in its water transmission line when a hillside in Fairfield collapsed during recent rain storms.
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