STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
HOLTVILLE — Free shots play a major role in winning basketball games, and it is not often that a team can shoot 58.3 percent from the foul line and win — when the free shots are the margin of victory or defeat. However, last night, the Calexico Bulldogs hit seven of 12 (58.3 percent) and the Holtville Vikings only made four of 16 (25 percent) as the Bulldogs stretched their winning streak to four straight by defeating the Vikings, 53-50. Both teams made the same number of field goals, but the free shots gave Joe Enserro his first victory as a high school basketball coach. Enserro, the head football coach and athletic director at Calexico, was filling for ill John Kratzner.
40 years ago
Fishermen who dip their lines in the Valley’s irrigation canals will have onethird of their domain shut down to them on March 1. Because of the threat of hydrilla spreading throughout the entire irrigation system, the state Fish and Game Commission Friday voted to outlaw fishing in the western section of the Imperial Irrigation District waterways.
The IID and the Department of Food and Agriculture had recommended the five-year moratorium on fishing because they feared fishermen will transfer hydrilla from an infested canal into a “clean” canal. At least one fisherman was found with a bait bucket full of water and hydrilla ready to move from an infested canal to an uninfested canal several weeks ago. If such measures were not taken to prevent the spread of hydrilla, fishing (as well as an efficient irrigation system) would be nonexistent in Imperial Valley within years, according to Robert Wilson, IID water supervisor.
Hydrilla is an alarmingly quick-growing weed, said Wilson. The pesky weed already has spread through a third of the county’s waterways in the two years after its “thorny tubers” were tossed into the All America Canal, possibly from someone’s aquarium, said Wilson.
30 years ago
A 45-year-old San Diego man was found dead early today in the west playground of Lincoln Elementary School, 200 N. 12th St., the victim of an apparent suicide. Glen Harry Wrensch, vice president of the Worley Division of American Tool and Engineering Corp., San Diego, was found just after 6 a.m. hanging from the playground’s monkey bars, according to Coroner Investigator Sharon M. Housouer. The body was found by a school janitor arriving for work. Housouer said the area was cordoned off and the principal was called to the scene while the body was removed and the area was investigated.
The evidence was removed and the area was reopened before children began arriving at school, she said.
20 years ago
A surplus on the Colorado River for water year 1999 was declared by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt last week.
In a letter sent to western state governors dated Dec. 2, Babbitt said his decision was based on consultations with representatives of the Colorado River basin states, the Upper Colorado River Commission, appropriate federal officials, Indian tribes and other interested parties. “Taking into account (1) the existing water supply conditions in the basin, (2) the most probable near-term water supply conditions in the basin, and (3) that the beneficial consumptive use requirements of Colorado River main-stream users in the lower division states are expected to be more than 7.5 million acre-feet, the surplus condition is the criterion governing the operation of Lake Mead for calendar year 1999,” Babbitt wrote. “This determination is warranted based on the current and projected hydrologic conditions in the Colorado River basin and water needs in the lower division states, utilizing an analysis of future reservoir conditions, Lake Powell releases and flood control releases.”