1. Healthcare

Comic Ralphie May
is still standing
Warrior men must
cure ailing offense
SCENE
SPORTS | Page C1
The Modesto Bee
modbee.com
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015
$1
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impact
minor
ONLINE For a video report from the tax assistance service at the Modesto Senior Citizens Center, go to this story at www.modbee.com.
EFFECT OF RECYCLING
WATER FOR AG STUDIED
By Ken Carlson
[email protected]
Joan Barnett Lee [email protected]
Ivan and Pamela Strohm prepare their tax return with Mabel Brownlow on Thursday morning at the Senior Citizens Center in Modesto.
Free tax assistance available
AARP AIMS TO HELP
THOSE WITH LOW TO
MODERATE INCOME
By Deke Farrow
[email protected]
dents in Stanislaus County for
about 35 years.
Last year, it served about
1,300 people, said Margaret
Land, district coordinator of
the nationwide program for
Stanislaus County. This year, 42
trained volunteers anticipate
helping a total of 2,000 people
at tax-aid sites in Modesto, Ceres, Turlock and Patterson.
In Modesto on Thursday,
many of the faces – volunteer
and assisted alike – were familiar, Land said. Of the 42 volunTAX HELP | Back page, A10
Volunteer Judy Wilcox
holds up a quality request
sign to have her work
checked. At left, people
wait at the Senior Citizens
Center, one of several
tax-aide sites in Stanislaus
County that are run by
volunteers.
State exports set record, but ports are in trouble
By Mark Glover
The Sacramento Bee
California set an all-time record for exports in 2014, but West
Sacramento trucking company
president Richard Coyle was in
no mood to celebrate that announcement on Thursday.
Normally, he’s overseeing a busy fleet of trucks shuttling merchandise from the Sacramento
region to the Port of Oakland for
export overseas. But in recent
weeks, the executive of Devine Intermodal has watched as his business has throttled back to a parking lot of idled trucks, the byproduct of gridlocked conditions at
West Coast shipping ports hampered by a months-long labor dispute.
“We cannot run our fleet because of the gridlock at the Port of
Oakland. Both exports and imports are severely backed up and
stymied, and now we are having
to lay off drivers and staffers. ...
Our revenue has been cut in half,”
Coyle said Thursday.
Coyle said he will deliver the
bad news by Friday morning to
staff in Sacramento, Fresno and
Reno: six layoffs and a reduction
in hours for 20 more employees.
“I hate to do it, but we’ve been
holding on for as long as we can,
and now it’s come to this.”
A months-long stalemate in
contract talks between the Pacific
Maritime Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, both based in San
Francisco, has clogged major
ports in California and is having a
negative economic impact on
Central Valley growers and other
Northern California businesses
such as Devine Intermodal.
The recent port troubles stand
in contrast to Thursday’s announcement that Golden State
EXPORTS | Back page, A10
TODAY’S SCOOP
LOCAL NEWS
Two dozen employees of
strawberry processing
plant Sierra Cascade
Nursery in Ballico were
rushed to Merced, Turlock
and Modesto hospitals
Thursday morning after an
apparent ammonia spill.
About 1 to 2 gallons of
ammonia spilled. Page B1
OPINIONS
The senior population is
increasing everywhere as
baby boomers age. One of
the many issues faced as
they age is if – or when –
to move to smaller living
accommodations and the
daunting issue of downsizing their possessions to fit
their new home. Page A9
SCENE
The famed Clare Boothe
Luce play “The Women” is
coming to the Prospect
Theater Project stage. An
all-female cast stars in this
comedy of manners about
the lives, loves, friendships
and rivalries of society
women in 1930s New York.
Page 8
®
LOCAL NEWS
A masked gunman held
up the Umpqua Bank
branch at Columbia State
Historic Park just before
noon Thursday before
fleeing on foot, in what
authorities say was
Tuolumne County’s first
bank robbery in several
years. Page B1
Over 1,500
Locations
Nationwide
THE BACK PAGE
Insurance giant Anthem
Inc. suffered a data breach
exposing the personal
information of up to
80 million Americans –
and it could have been
worse. The hackers didn’t
take sensitive medical
information on patients or
credit card data. Page A10
Officials in
Stanislaus
talk water
DISCUSS TRACKING USE
TO COMPLY WITH LAW
By John Holland
[email protected]
Local officials agreed Thursday that carrying out California’s new groundwater law
will be a challenge, but it’s better than the alternative – letting the state impose the rules.
Hosted by Stanislaus County and the Turlock Irrigation District, experts met near
Modesto to talk about how to document
what is happening in the aquifers and to ensure they are reliable sources for farms and
cities well into the future.
The law, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in
September, allows irrigation districts and
other local entities to carry out the measures. If they fail to do so, the state could step
in.
“Now local control is granted, and you’re
all here to try to figure it out,” said Kate Williams, program manager for the California
Water Foundation in Sacramento. It was
among the sponsors of the meeting, held at
the Stanislaus County Agricultural Center,
off Crows Landing Road.
Participants said local control would enWATER | Back page, A10
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MOD0001547943-01
At first glance, those entering
the Modesto Senior Citizens
Center on Thursday could have
thought they’d taken a wrong
turn and ended up at the DMV.
Throughout the main room,
people sat patiently and quietly,
paperwork in hand, waiting to
be called to receive assistance.
But rather than getting licensing and registration taken
care of, the crowd at the center
was there to take advantage of
the AARP Foundation Tax-Aide
Program. The free, volunteerrun tax assistance and preparation service has been helping
low- to moderate-income resi-
A project to build a system for conveying
recycled wastewater from Modesto and
Turlock to farmland in western Stanislaus
County won’t have a significant impact on
the environment, a
study says.
ONLINE:
It suggests that For a look at the
without the project pipeline alternatives,
the lack of reliable go to this story at
water for the West www.modbee.com.
Side farmland could
create pressure to pave over the land for
homes or other development.
The environmental study on the North
Valley Regional Recycled Water Program is
slated to be discussed at a 5 p.m. meeting
Wednesday at Tenth Street Place in downtown Modesto.
Modesto and Turlock initially would sell
a combined 26,500 acre-feet of recycled
wastewater to the drought-stricken Del
Puerto Water District, where farmers reREPORT | Back page, A10