Clearlake Oaks County Water District’s five-year rate schedule takes a home’s combined water and sewer base bill from $129.11 to $207.63 a month — while a $36 million state grant awaits a signed agreement.
Author: Roger Coryell
Roger Coryell reports on water, local government and the wine business across Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties. He edited the Sonoma County Gazette until its closing in 2026, and his reporting has appeared through Bay City News and Local News Matters, The Mendocino Voice and the Sebastopol Times. Reach him at roger@rogercoryell.com or 707-394-2642.
Upper Lake wells still pumping past a 2022 state deadline
State regulators gave the Meadow Pointe water system five years to get off gasoline-contaminated wells. The deadline passed in December 2022. Since 2017, $1.3 million has gone to studies and nothing to construction.
Clearlake recruits for a sewer board seat not yet created
The city is taking applications for a public seat on the Lake County Sanitation District board. Supervisors decide Aug. 18 whether the seat exists — and a doubled sewer bill is waiting behind it.
Trees killed by wildfire still stand above the regrowth near Middletown, in the heart of the 2015 Valley Fire burn area. (Roger Coryell, June 7, 2026)
Lake County lost more than a thousand homes to fire. Nobody will say how many came back.
Lake County gained thousands of residents and lost more than a thousand homes since 2010, nearly all in the 2015 Valley Fire. Eleven years on, no agency will say how many burned homes came back.