STORIES FROM THE PAST

50 years ago

A second desert victim succumbed to the heat yesterday while on the job in Ocotillo.

Identified as Sal Paul Pizza, 59, of Indio, he died almost to the hour a Chula Vista girl, Pamela Stephenson, died one day earlier in Winterhaven.

Pizza was rushed unconscious to the El Centro Community Hospital and was dead on arrival. An autopsy is still pending, however, Leonard Speer, chief deputy coroner, reported that the intense heat was certainly a contributing factor to Pizza’s death.

Witnesses reported that Pizza, a carpenter, was working on a bridge for a highway construction project on Interstate 10 and Highway 98 near Ocotillo when he suddenly collapsed.

40 years ago

Imperial County’s government agencies are rewriting their budgets this week to add a portion of the $5 billion in grants and loans from the state’s Proposition 13 rescue fund.

Gov. Edmund Brown Jr. Saturday signed the emergency aid bill for cities, counties, schools and special districts, calling it “a very sensible but human response to Proposition 13” that will share the burden of tax cuts ordered by tax revolt leader Howard Jarvis’ initiative.

The measure uses a $5 billion state surplus built up over four years to partially replace the $7 billion in property taxes that Proposition 13 cut from local budgets.

But the aid is only for one year.

Brown and the legislative leaders who drafted the rescue bill all warned that next year the state will have far less to give local government, and still deeper cuts must be made then.

Imperial County is probably in “relatively decent shape” on its budget thanks to the rescue bill, said County Administrative officer John McClure.

30 years ago

General Dynamics has not determined whether it will actually build the proposed electronics assembly plant that local officials have been trying to lure to Imperial County, a company spokesman said today.

Fred Bettinger, staff vice president for business communications, said the company has not decided if it will build a new plant to handle anticipated new business and work that is presently being done in San Diego and the company’s other aerospace divisions.

“The decision may be that we’ll keep doing it the way we’ve been doing it,” Bettinger said in a telephone interview from San Diego.

In recent weeks, officials from Regional Economic Development Inc. and Rep. Duncan Hunter’s, R-45th District, office, who have been negotiating with the company for more than a year, have anxiously awaited what was thought to be an imminent decision.

Most recently June 10 came and went without the expected announcement of the company’s final decision.

20 years ago

LA QUINTA — In a two-pronged effort; the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors gave direction to staff on its inevitable designation as a public water system on Aug. 6.The designation is the result of human consumption of district canal water.

Human consumption is defined as drinking, cooking, bathing, showering, dish-washing and oral hygiene. District water was never intended for such use, however.

“We don’t provide drinking water,” said Patricia Brock, IID spokeswoman.

After a previous attempt to regulate the district, which ended in defeat for the EPA in court, EPA is back with 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act. It has written a new draft guidance for compliance with the new law, with several exemptions. Congress in 1996 added the amendments that changed the designation of public water system to include suppliers that deliver water via canals and ditches, such as IID.