A Glen Ellen woman who ran a residential contracting business under the names Lone Wolf Designs and LW Design Build despite never holding a state contractor’s license has been arrested and charged in Napa County in what investigators say is a scheme that has cost victims more than $1 million across Northern California. Christina Daniels…
County: Sonoma
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For Bodega Bay’s salmon fleet, the season is open. Whether the fishery is back is another question.
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,…
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 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…
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….
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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…
Photo courtesy City of Cloverdale
Cloverdale’s own water plan says the city doesn’t need the Eel River dams its vice mayor is fighting to save
Cloverdale Vice Mayor Todd Lands has spent the better part of this month working the phones with the Trump administration, lobbying USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins and her staff to derail PG&E’s plan to tear down the Potter Valley dams. He told the Press Democrat last week that 750,000 people in the Russian River basin depend…
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Appeals court blocks Santa Rosa mobilehome park owners from recouping wildfire-era rent increases
A 1st District ruling sets statewide precedent on California’s price-gouging law and clears the way for hundreds of Santa Rosa residents to keep their post-emergency rents intact. A California appellate court has barred Santa Rosa mobilehome park owners from raising rents to make up for annual increases they couldn’t impose during the multi-year wildfire state…