BODEGA BAY, CA., 5/5/26 — For the first time in three years, commercial salmon boats are pushing out of Spud Point Marina with king salmon as the target. But the season Sonoma County’s fleet returned to this month does not look much like the one it left behind in 2022. After three consecutive statewide closures,…
Author: Roger Coryell
Opinion: A quiet scam at the dumps voters own — and pay twice to clean up after
By design, Sonoma County’s $47 dump fee is a customer-acquisition strategy for Republic and Recology When I moved to West County twelve years ago, dropping a load of yard trimmings at the Pocket Canyon transfer station cost $7. Today the minimum charge for the same vehicle, at the same gate, is $47. The per-ton rate…
Photo by Styves Exantus (Pixels)
Lake County enters fire season with its safety net already stretched
May is supposed to be the month when Lake County talks about preparedness. Clear the brush. Check the evacuation routes. Get the go bags ready. Make sure the tools work before the smoke shows up. It is practical advice, and in Lake County, it is not optional. Wildfire preparedness is not a seasonal slogan here….
Photo courtesy North Shore Fire District
State money buys trucks, but Lake County fire districts still face crunch
Lake County enters fire season with new equipment money, deeper budget worries On the first day of Wildfire Preparedness Month, Lake County fire leaders stood beside state Sen. Mike McGuire to celebrate $2 million in state money for badly needed firefighting equipment. The funding will help three local agencies replace or rebuild aging apparatus: two…
Photo courtesy Robledo Family Winery
Sonoma’s first Mexican American family winery is in bankruptcy court
Robledo Family Winery, founded by a man whose father was a Bracero, joins the worst quarter California wine has seen in years. In a glass case at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History sits a hat that belonged to Reynaldo Robledo Sr. Next to it, his tools. Next to those, a label from the…
Yountville’s town manager walked into a performance review. He walked out resigned.
Yountville is the second city he’s left under the same cover story. The math on his exit doesn’t match a voluntary resignation — and the project he built is on the May 7 council agenda without him. YOUNTVILLE — At 3 p.m. on Wednesday, April 29, the Yountville Town Council went into closed session. The…
Permit Sonoma’s code-enforcement reckoning
Three lawsuits, fresh allegations from residents and a $2.2 million reform pitch all arrive at the Board of Supervisors at once A speaker at Tuesday’s Sonoma County Board of Supervisors meeting told the room about the day Esteban Diaz had a heart attack on the floor of a Sonoma County courtroom. An ambulance was called….
Photo by Yana Nadolinska on <a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/calm-water-in-the-river-12438981/" rel="nofollow">Pexels.com</a>
Federal gauges below Lake Sonoma have gone dark just as Sonoma Water calls a dry year on the Russian River
The river at Guerneville more than doubled within the same week. The public gauges that would tell us why have nothing to say. When Sonoma Water put the upper Russian River into a “dry water supply condition” on April 16 — the first such call in years — the regional coverage looked exactly one direction:…
The Lake Sonoma contract the board no longer votes on
For forty years, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors voted every spring on the same small contract — Sheriff’s deputies patrolling Lake Sonoma from May through September, paid back by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They asked questions. They kept watch. This spring the vote didn’t happen, and it won’t happen again. The contract…
Word Junkie: A flight of obscure wine words
The bâtonnage is done, the foudre is breathing, and the cellar smells like rancio, brett, and Tuesday. The pourriture noble has set in on the late-pick Sémillon, gloriously and on purpose, and somewhere in the back a saignée tank bleeds off rosé like a politely punctured artery. (Roger Coryell / Wine Country Daily) Wine has…