Ojai-Ventura Water Agency Partnership working to increase water supply
By Assemblymember Monique Limón and Supervisor Steve Bennett
Nearly two years ago, the two of us, along with a group of local water agency and other government leaders, began meeting to facilitate a collaborative approach to addressing the seven-year drought. The group name is the Ojai-Ventura Water Agency Partnership. Our group’s goal is to improve the sustainability of the regional water supply in the Ventura River watershed that encompasses the Ojai Valley and the western half of the city of Ventura.
HELP of Ojai closes out financial books for fire relief with gratitude and pride
By Terri Wolfe and Help of Ojai Board of Directors
In the middle of the night on Dec. 4, 2017, the Thomas Fire descended on all of us and didn’t let up for anyone in the valley for weeks (that seemed like months).
This month, Help of Ojai wrote the final checks to home-loss survivors as we closed this chapter (and financial books) on a disaster still being felt by scores of friends and neighbors.
County can convert fleet to electric to help in fight against climate change
By Richard H. Baldwin and Phil White
There is a global climate-change crisis. No question. And Ventura County is near ground zero in that crisis.
Take a look. We’re experiencing the worst of drought, fires and water shortages. The projections of sea level rise that will impact our coastline are alarming. These local impacts have the fingerprints of climate change all over them. Additionally, the county suffers from unhealthy levels of ozone air pollution. Addressing these impacts makes reducing greenhouse gas emissions critical, and we believe that the county can and should do something to fight back.
Sea level rise and the future of Ventura County
By Steven Colomé, Sc.D.
A picture is fast emerging, like a photographic image developing in a darkroom — and it isn’t pretty.
As an air quality scientist, I have been following the evidence of human-caused planetary warming for nearly four decades. The basic physics connecting fossil- fuel combustion with climate was understood by the end of the 1800s; and measurements through the 20th century confirmed those theories.
Ojai Valley veterans’ sacrifice remembered
By Dave Pressey
Memorial Day in Libbey Bowl was a project initiated by Sanford Drucker, a member of the Ojai Valley Veterans of Foreign Wars and community activist. With his passing, the Woman’s Auxiliary of the American Legion joined with the VFW of Ojai Valley to perpetuate the event each year through the leadership of Nancy Hill who developed the “Wall of Remembrance” for all Ojai Valley veterans and active duty service personnel.
Nancy Hill had an idea for specific remembrance of Ojai Valley veterans, living and deceased. She created a display of posters of every valley veteran, identified and mounted them each Memorial Day in Libbey Park. She called this massive display,“The Wall of Remembrance.”
Tell 7-11 Committee May 9 to keep Summit a full-week, public school
Summit School has been the beating heart of our community for 108 years. And it should stay that way!
Upper Ojai parents and residents know the value of Summit School to our community. In fact, everyone at the July 2018 Upper Ojai Neighborhood Council meeting voted in support of Summit being reopened as a free and public school. It was a unanimous vote!
Mom’s heartbreaking ordeal
By Pamela Duarte
On the afternoon of July 16, 2018, my 94-year-old mother’s back was broken and her spine severed in the imaging room of the Ojai Valley Community Hospital.
She became paralyzed from the waist down with the possibility of losing the use of her arms as well. As the neurosurgeon at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura where she was transferred told me the next morning, it was the worst possible outcome as her pain pathways remained intact. As a result, she was in unbearable pain any time the nurses needed to move her as well as in severe danger of further damage. After she was eight days in Community Memorial, they couldn’t keep her any longer and she requested to be sent home to hospice. She died six days later.
'Upper Ojai’s success is Ojai Valley’s success:' Summit School in Upper Ojai needs to remain a free, public school
By Thea Wilcox
I have been an active participant in the Summit School discussion since May. Since that time, I have made arguments for keeping Summit School open. I have spoken to the school board at public meetings, I have spoken to them individually and I have met with the superintendent many times. I have repeatedly asked for assistance to come with some ideas and grants we can access to move our school district forward and help revitalize our Upper Ojai area by reopening a public school at Summit. I and others have received no tangible resources from the district or the Board.
Ojai Valley has plenty of water and can remain self-sufficient
By Dr. Andrea Neal and Michelaina Johnson
Contrary to widespread belief, Ojai actually has plenty of water!
However, the legal and bureaucratic nature of water management locally and statewide, in addition to a lack of scientific data, has impeded our community’s ability to determine the appropriate path that will lead to a water secure and sustainable future for Ojai. Three key steps, if taken, could ensure that Ojai meets its water needs from within the basin.
Reserve day and place in Ojai to honor veterans on Memorial Day
This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.
--Elmer Davis
By Nancy Hill
Once again, Memorial Day is approaching — on Monday, May 27. It’s a time to honor those who gave their lives in defense of our freedoms, and those who are still with us and should be recognized for their service. We will put on a program at Libbey Bowl that day in observance of Memorial Day, from 11:30 a.m. until 2 or 2:30 p.m. We must not forget the great sacrifices our veterans made and still are making today, in harm’s way in so many places around the world.
Questions and facts inform my patriotism
By Nicolas Oatway
In his March 15 Op-Ed, Ojai resident David Pressey gave us a wonderfully clear, gritty, unmistakable first person picture of a 17-year-old American boy and his teenage buddies tossed into the muddy, murderous conflict called the Korean War. He spoke of his war experiences so many decades ago that haunt him still.
I was 10 years old, just seven years behind him in the early ’50s, when he found himself so far from home in such a horrible situation. In the LA Times during the Korean battles, a good map of the entire Korean Peninsula would often appear, usually in the front-page upper-righthand corner illustrating the war’s progress with a thick jagged line and arrows bending one way or the other. I can draw a decent outline even now of North and South Korea, even locate Pusan, Inchon, Seoul and Pyongyang, and the famous “demilitarized zone” so branded into my mind is the picture of that particular piece of Asia’s geography.