District Attorney Gregory D. Totten announced today that Dean Michael Poe (DOB 04/28/65), of Ventura, was sentenced to serve 120 days in jail and placed on formal probation for three years for his role in causing a 2014 explosion at Santa Clara Waste Water Company (“SCWWC”). This case was jointly prosecuted by the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office and the California Attorney General’s Office. On March 24, 2017, Poe pled guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to dispose of hazardous waste.

Poe was the former vice president of Oil and Gas Sales for SCWWC. On November 18, 2014, an explosion occurred at the SCWWC facility located at 815 Mission Rock Road in Santa Paula. Numerous employees as well as first responders were injured either by the initial explosion or by inhaling a toxic cloud of chlorine gas generated by the illegal disposal of hazardous chemicals that were present on site. In June 2014, Poe provided samples from SCWWC to a local environmental laboratory for testing. In July 2014, Poe was told by lab personnel that testing results for samples he provided for chemical analysis indicated the substances were hazardous waste. Poe failed to take any corrective action at SCWWC when he learned of these hazardous waste results and did not report this information to regulatory authorities.

In addition to the jail sentence, Poe was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine, and victim restitution in an amount to be determined by the Court. Under the terms of his probation, Poe is prohibited from any employment involving the collection of laboratory samples to be used for waste testing.

Enlarge Photo

Rotorcraft Support, Inc. site at the southwest corner of River and D Streets were working on the new private heliport for a maintenance and repair facility for helicopters. The heliport is to be located within the Business Park Master Plan area on property owned by an affiliate of the Applicant. Two companies propose to locate at the site: Rotorcraft and The Guardian. Rotorcraft employs 58 full time employees who will relocate to Fillmore from Van Nuys. The Guardian is a fire helicopter company that is contracted to fight forest fires and has approximately 15 full time employees. The Guardian helicopters will be at fire sites 9 months out of the year. When not attending to fires, the Guardian employees will be in Fillmore training. Both of these businesses would move to the property in Phase 1. The project is to be constructed in two (2) phases. Phase 1 involves the construction of a 67,872 SF hangar, parking spaces, retaining walls, public improvements on River St. and constructing the full width of the D St. extension (from River Street to 460 feet south of River Street). Phase 2 consists of constructing a 45,066 SF hangar for the future undetermined tenant. The businesses would like to be allowed to operate from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Saturdays with allowance to perform work on Sundays during times of emergencies. The project site is 10.52 acres and can accommodate one landing pad with eight (8) helicopter parking areas. The flight paths will occur along the Santa Clara River with the helicopters approaching the site from a southerly direction. The flight paths will not be over the residential areas of Fillmore. Prior to flying helicopters from the property the Applicant is required to obtain approvals from the FAA, Caltrans (the Division of Aeronautics) and The Airport Land Commission. The project is providing a 10' concrete bike path on the south side of River Street in compliance with the Business Park Master Plan’s requirement for bike paths. A noise study was conducted which determined that the sounds anticipated to be generated by the project are at an acceptable level per the City Zoning Ordinance. Additionally, the Planning Commission recommended that a noise monitor be placed close to the helipad. Two Rivers Park will be protected by a buffer zone with employee and customer parking along D Street.

Bob Crum

Last week I opined that resolutions are merely wispy wishes made emotionally after a few strawberry margaritas. I stand by that!

How about goals? Nah. A goal needs an objective that is measurable and needs to be achievable by a hard date... i.e. deadline. So goals are seldom met and equally frivolous, IMO.

Suppose I had a goal of winning the Power Ball jackpot by December 31, 2017. Disregarding the staggering odds, I diligently played the game by buying tickets every week. Nevertheless, I did not achieve the goal. Depressing.

An alternative? Intentions. They don't need a hard date thus winning or losing is irrelevant. For example, I “intend” to win the Power Ball jackpot because I buy a ticket every week. If I win, great. If not, c'est la vie. The beauty of “intentions” is that they are lossless and perpetual.

When I began digital photography, Madame Digital seduced me. Crappy film photos meant wasted money. Crappy digital images could be deleted at no cost. So why not shoot 1000 photos a day if desired? I sometimes did but not without a cost as you'll see.

I began digital photography with trepidation because of costs. I have to produce high resolutions images for both clients and prints. Thus, I record RAW images which are large files. This required a beefy computer & image processing software.
No sooner had I bought my first digital camera, I went berserk photoing. And photoing. And photoing. I now have a gazillion photos stored!

After a shoot and downloading the photos to the computer, I first rate them. All #4-rated images get post processed for client or prints. Afterward, I back up “all” photos on two external hard drives. The result: Eighteen 3.5” 2TB (terabyte) hard drives and six 2.5” 1TB hard drives full of archived images. Remember... a gazillion photos!!

In a perfect world, I would have had time to go back and delete all those that were not rated which is the majority. However, because I'm constantly shooting assignments or for pleasure, or partying with mermaids, I seldom have time to delete unrated images. Besides, it's painful to “delete” anything so I don't. After all, I might one day “need” that image. Ha! That seldom happened in a decade so I could delete all the marginal images and probably not miss them.

Wait! I needed an image for Photo of the Week so I went to the archives (hard drive #12) and found an unrated photo of a seagull napping. I love it! I post processed it and here it is! A terrible mistake had I deleted it. See my dilemma? Nevertheless, too many photos are archived.

So, here in 2018 I “intend” to make an earnest effort to purge each hard drive of questionable images. But will I have time to review a gazillion images? Why bother? Hard drives are relatively inexpensive. So it's easy to rationalize that my time is far more valuable than the cost of hard drives. Thus it's now my intention to reconsider the other intention. I adore intentions!

Hopefully my missteps will serve as a lesson about what NOT to do as you embark on your new path of digital photography. Actually two lessons. Note that photos of a lifetime are priceless so back them up on two hard drives. One copy is not backing up. Furthermore, from the get-go initiate a routine of deleting obviously crappy photos before backing up the photos to archive. Just sayin'.

Happy photoing!

Send your comments, questions or suggestions to bob@fillmoregazette.com