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When canines arrive on a high school campus to sniff out drugs, a texting frenzy among students quickly spreads the news. These “drug dogs” have roamed Santa Barbara high schools once a month for the past two years. And the school board voted Tuesday in a 3-2 split for the hounds to return for a third. The dogs, which cost the district $13,500 annually, search parking lots and classrooms. Perhaps impacting the results, students can choose SNIFF-SNIFF: For the third year in a row, drug dogs to take their backpacks out of the will search high school campuses for narcotics. classroom during the searches, an effort to uphold privacy rights — and to likely avoid lawsuits. Last year, the dogs did not find any drugs. Drug offenses have mostly declined since they peaked during the 2009-2010 school year, when 258 students were caught, according to school staff. Last school year, 147 students were busted for using or selling drugs. The issue of drug dogs has for years split boardmembers who tend to vote unanimously on most issues. The general decline in drug offenses cannot necessarily be attributed to the dogs, argued Boardmember Monique Limón, who opposed renewing the contract. In fact, all types of infractions have decreased. And expulsion cases continue to be drug related, she added. Drug-sniffing dogs have increasingly shown up in public schools across the country, inviting a militant atmosphere on campuses, opponents contend. But the program is a preventative one, say supporters, who credit the zero hits and decreased offenses in part to the random searches by the drug-sniffing dogs. Also, the district spends more than $200,000 on drug prevention programs, Boardmember Ed — Kelsey Brugger Heron said.
amount of our revolving credit facility debt” and turn its attention to its offshore Sockeye field, also near Oxnard. According to government relations manager Steve Greig, Venoco aims to connect all of the field’s employees with jobs at the new company or at other Venoco sites. The sale comes after Venoco laid off 10 percent of its workforce in June and in the midst of its search for a new CEO.
Chevron ($1.2 million), Freeport-McMoRan LLC ($463,483), Orcutt Oil Field–operator Pacific Coast Energy Company ($27,473), and Breitburn ($24,423), which has ties to Pacific Coast Energy Company. The regional “No on P” campaign saw Venoco donate $80,000 this week, adding to the $78,500 already given by Pacific Coast Energy Company. The “Yes on P” campaign has raised $45,876.
Californians for Energy Independence — a political committee composed of oil-industry heavy hitters — has raised more than $1.8 million in its efforts to defeat drilling bans statewide, including Santa Barbara County’s Measure P, which would outlaw all new fracking, acidizing, and cyclic-steaming operations in the unincorporated areas if voters okay it in November. The committee has aimed approximately $365,000 against Measure P. Notable donors include
Plans to convert a vacant lot into a senior living facility in Goleta have crept along since they were first introduced to the Santa Barbara school board late last year. Colloquially referred to as Granny’s Field, and officially known as the Tatum property, the 23-acre site located near Hollister and Turnpike came one step closer to development after the school board recently approved collaborating with The Towbes Group. The proposal includes 260 cont’d page 12
Big Bucks for Bike Projects
The California Transportation Commission awarded $8.6 million in grants to the City of Santa Barbara for four street-improvement projects designed to accommodate pedestrians and cyclists and otherwise “increase the safety for non-motorized users.” Three of the projects are slated for the lower Eastside to the tune of $7.2 million. To be replaced are the narrow, rickety bicycle and pedestrian footpaths on Cacique and Soledad streets, which will be switched out with new, well-lit 12-foot-wide bridges. The Cacique Street bridge was originally washed out more than 30 years ago, and the limited passage that’s existed since has emerged as a cause célèbre in the simmering battle to replace at-large elections with district elections throughout the city. City transportation planner Rob Dayton said residents living near the bridges opposed projects that accommodated cars, as well, because they didn’t want the additional traffic in their neighborhood. In addition, the funds would cover the costs of replacing the Montecito Street bridge. Dayton said the city’s grant application fared so well because most of the money was focused on underserved neighborhoods and that such issues had been the focus of considerable community planning efforts. Those efforts were sparked by the death of 15-year-old pedestrian Sergio Romero in 2011 as he tried to cross Milpas Street. In addition, $1.3 million has been set aside for a multipurpose bike path along Las Positas Road from Cliff Drive to Modoc Road. A condition of the grant requires the money be spent within — Nick Welsh two years of receipt.
Death Valley Mystery Solved
S.B.’s Jim Norris Solves the ‘Sailing Stones’
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BY M AT T K E T T M A N N
S COT T B E C K N E R
Drug-Dog Days Continue
science
n a landscape dominated by marvelous natural oddities, no location fascinates more visitors to Death Valley National Park than The Racetrack, a crackedearth playa where rocks big and small magically move from place to place, leaving distinctly smooth tracks across the otherwise uniform lake bed as their only evidence. For decades, if not centuries, the phenomenon mystified even the most HOW THE HECK? A sailing stone leaves a trail after it diligent researchers, becoming scooted along The Racetrack. a standard passage in geology textbooks, prompting more than one dozen sciIn late November 2013, a brief rain and snowentific inquiries, and provoking all manner of storm formed a three-inch-deep pool on the possible causes, from tricks by frat boys to the playa, which was still there when the Norris cousins arrived in late December. Surprised by handiwork of little green men. The mystery is no more, thanks to Santa Bar- the pool and unable to enter the playa due to the bara native Jim Norris, who — along with his “complete slop” of mud that sat on the surface, cousin, Richard Norris, and a team of mostly the cousins worked the northern part of the area S.B.-based volunteers — discovered through a and noticed that the pool seemed to be blowing mix of amateur investigation and lucky happen- uphill toward the playa’s mudflats as the winds stance exactly how these stones sail. In a paper increased. Soon, their rocks were actually movpublished this week in the scholarly journal ing for the first time. PLOS ONE, Norris and company reveal how last “We started documenting it hard, not really winter — amid a very rare convergence of freez- understanding exactly what it meant,” said Noring temperatures and a standing playa pool of ris, who determined what was happening over recent rain and snowmelt — they documented the next couple of days and subsequent trips, football-field-sized sheets of windowpane-thin thanks to more observations and camera footice being floated by wind across the slick, muddy age. “I think other people have probably been playa and pushing the rocks, some as far as 700 there when it happened, but they can’t tell,” said Norris. “It’s slow and so far away and at an feet. “We watched it happen,” said Norris, who oblique angle.” started monitoring Racetrack movements in The news throws a wrench into theories 2012 as part of a “recreational science” experi- related to magic, magnetism, or Area . “I’ve ment and was on-site for routine equipment even seen a wonderful photograph of a horned maintenance in late December when the event lizard pushing a stone,” said Norris, with a laugh. occurred. “The sheets of ice start ramming into “It’s pretty amazing what the public will come up the stones and bulldozing them along. It’s all with.” But most in the scientific community figultra-slow-motion.” The discovery, which has ured the phenomenon was somehow reliant on been sought scientifically since at least 1948, ice and wind, so the Norrises had also erected a when the first academic paper was published weather station as part of their project and were about the rocks, is quickly making waves in prepared to spend more than 10 years before the annals of popular science, with reports reaching any conclusions. But despite the techpublished this week in the Los Angeles Times, nology, had they not been on-site to witness the National Geographic, and Nature, among other sheet ice bulldozers, the Norrises might still be publications. scratching their heads, even with data in hand, Norris first visited The Racetrack in the 1960s especially since the movement occurred with with his father, the late Robert Norris, who was relatively light wind rather than the hurricane a professor of geology for many years at UCSB. force gales widely suspected. Norris admits feeling “a little wistful” at The younger Norris, a graduate of Vieja Valley, San Marcos High, and San Diego State, became having pulled the curtain off of Death Valmore intrigued in 2008, when he started scour- ley’s beloved mystery and knows there will be ing existing reports. He enlisted his cousin some public dismay. But he hopes it may shed Richard, a paleobiologist at UC San Diego, in light on processes elsewhere in the universe the completely self-financed hunt, and they set — important planetary scientists, for instance, about equipping research-ready rocks with GPS have researched The Racetrack before — and he tracking devices, which are one of the things believes knowing is more important than supthat Norris makes for his engineering company, posing. He explained, “It’s hard to be a scientist, Interwoof. The first rocks were laid in early 2012 and I’m just an amateur scientist, and not want with National Park Service blessing, and the to figure stuff out and not get joy out of going, team made trips there every six to eight weeks. ‘Wow, that’s how this works!’” ■ august 28, 2014
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