Courthouse employees on furlough 3rd Wednesdays
Responding to the deepening statewide financial crisis, the Los Angeles Superior Court will substantially reduce its operations and furlough employees the third Wednesday of each month, beginning Wednesday, July 15. These furloughs will affect all courthouses in the L.A. Superior Court system, including the Malibu Courthouse. How to handle traffic tickets, inquiries regarding jury service and various other transactions or court information can be obtained online at the court’s Web site at www.lasuperiorcourt.org.
Filing dates are not affected by the furloughs and can be left in a drop box at the Clerk’s Office by 4:30 p.m. to be considered filed on that day. Payments of fines and fees will be accepted through secured drop boxes only; however, no receipts will be given on furlough days for payment of fines or fees. A limited number of courtrooms will be available for statutorily mandated hearings and felony bench warrants and the court will also handle requests for domestic violence, elder abuse or civil harassment restraining orders involving stalking and/or threats of violence.
Jurors are not expected to report to any Los Angeles Superior courthouse on furlough days, with the exception of a limited number of jurors who will be called to report to the jury assembly room on the 11th floor at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center on the furlough day. Agents at the SRV-JURY (1.800.778.5870) telephone center, the staff at the Juror Services Central Office and all staff in court assembly rooms throughout the county, will be unavailable to serve the public. Jurors may still access and process self-postponements and receive reporting instructions through the court’s SRV-JURY system or through the court’s Web site at www.lasuperiorcourt.org.
Traffic and road closure updates
The following projects in Malibu will affect traffic near the project sites: Carbon Beach Undergrounding Project: Moving overhead utilities underground. Projected completion date is late summer. Lane closures include Pacific Coast Highway in the Carbon Beach area, intermittently between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Pepperdine road and traffic signal upgrades: Work at Civic Center Way/Seaver and Malibu Canyon Road scheduled through July 24. Traffic controls will be in place from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on various days during construction. Commuters should anticipate delays throughout the duration of this project.
Las Flores Canyon Road: The county will be doing repair work for a road failure on Las Flores Canyon Road, between Gorge Road and Hume Road, from July 5 to approximately July 30. There are no closures scheduled at this time, but traffic delays up to 30 minutes or longer can be expected.
More information can be obtained by contacting the Los Angeles County Road Department at 310.456.8014.
UC Davis professor to speak on biomass-to-energy project
Dr. Frank Mittloehner of UC Davis will address the Malibu Creek Watershed Council on July 23 at Malibu City Hall. The subject of his talk will be: “A biomass-to-energy project in times of regional and global change.”
“The town in Germany where Mittloehner’s parents still live has taken the waste from a number of homes and a small pig-farm and turned it into enough energy to fuel several small towns,” wrote Melina Watts, Malibu Creek Watershed Coordinator for the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, in a press release. “This project is on a similar, albeit smaller, scale than the Rancho Las Virgenes Composting Facility, making this a doable regional environmental solution.
Dr. Mittloehner, admired in agricultural communities for the research he is doing with cattle to reduce climate change, has also spoke on “Clearing the air: Livestock’s contribution to climate change. His work may lead to inventive ways to manage horse manure locally as well.
The meeting during which Mittloehner will speak takes place July 23 at City Council chambers, 23815 Stuart Ranch Rd., 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
NOAA bans commercial harvesting of krill
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today published a final rule in the Federal Register prohibiting the harvesting of krill in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington. The rule goes into effect on August 12. Krill are a small shrimp-like crustacean and a key source of nutrition in the marine food web.
“Krill are the foundation for a healthy marine ecosystem,” said Mark Helvey, NOAA’s Fisheries Service Southwest Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries. “Protecting this vital food resource will help protect and maintain marine resources and put federal regulations in line with West-Coast states.”
While the States of California, Oregon and Washington currently have regulations prohibiting the harvesting of krill within three miles of their coastlines, there was no similar federal restriction within the three to 200-mile confines of the EEZ.
Today’s rule is intended to preserve key nutritional relationships in the California Current ecosystem, which includes five National Marine Sanctuaries.
Krill are important because they convert microscopic phytoplankton into a food source for numerous other species and are a principal food source for many species of fish, seabirds and marine mammals. Some of the species that depend on krill as prey are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and many others are important as target species for commercial and recreational fisheries on the West Coast.
-Laura Tate