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A Northern California wildfire has destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses and forced area residents to flee their lake community, authorities said Sunday.The fast-moving Clayton fire broke out late Saturday afternoon off Highway 29 and Clayton Creek Road, forcing the entire community of Lower Lake — located more than 100 miles north of San Francisco — to evacuate, officials said. Extreme hot weather combined with the dry brush allowed the fire to grow overnight, burning about 1,400 acres and destroying four homes, according to Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

 

For many families, the summer heat means backyard barbecues with plates filled to the brim with grilled burgers, hot dogs, potato salad and, of course, some fresh farm-picked corn-on-the-cob. But if you’re enjoying a side of corn with your dinner this month, make sure to savor it because it’s one ear that survived the brutal drought savaging local farmers. Jim Geoghegan, owner of Sunshine Farm in Sherborn, estimates he lost between 30 and 40 percent of all the crops he planted this year.

The offer was too tempting to refuse: Westlands Water District, the ethically challenged agency that often finds itself in the news for all the wrong reasons, invited me on an aerial tour of its watershed. From high above, I would be able to see the public works projects that have allowed the San Joaquin Valley to bloom, cities to explode and the natural environment to implode.

Robert Haskins walked across a vast expanse of cracked mud, littered with old beer bottles and millions of tiny clam shells, that in most Augusts would be 50 feet underwater. But the San Luis Reservoir, the vast inland sea along Highway 152 that is a key part of Silicon Valley’s water supply, is only 10 percent full, its lowest level in 27 years.”Normally that’s an island,” the Santa Clara Valley Water District maintenance supervisor said, pointing to a towering hill.The nation’s largest off-stream reservoir is high and dry this summer, and it’s not really because of the drought.

Critics and a California lawmaker want more answers from Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration on who’s paying for a proposed giant water project.That’s after a Southern California water district said Thursday that Brown’s administration is now stating that state or federal funds will be used to finish planning for two $16 billion water tunnels. The 35-mile-long tunnels would carry water from Northern California south, mainly for Central and Southern California. Brown’s administration is pushing to get regulatory approval for the tunnels before he leaves office in two years.