STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
What is a lumberyard? Or how many board feet separate a retail from a wholesale dispenser of lumber?
This knotty question failed to balk the oaken determination of the El Centro Planning Commission in session Tuesday night.
The question arose when the secretary announced a group of investors interested in locating a home improvement center in the 700 block of Main Street, occupying the quarters formerly used by Sears, Roebuck and Co.
That floored the commission.
The question arose: Will this be a lumberyard or just a building emporium? Will it infringe on city ordinances prohibiting lumber yards in that vicinity? It was a though question.
The matter was bandied back and forth for some time. Chairman Henry Wien was puzzled by semantics. “What is the definition of retail as contrasted with wholesale?”
He asked City Manager Leonard McClintock that question and the manager, after consulting his book replied, “I can ‘CEDAR’ point and I’ll say I’m ‘FIR’ your definition.
Other members of the commission accepted the plank and the nail of approval was driven and ... if retail is retail ... and not wholesale ... a new tenant will soon occupy Main Street.
40 years ago
The marketplace in Mexicali was at low-key bustle Friday morning in anticipation of another long day of buying and selling.
Workmen in an alley were unloading green bananas from a large truck.
Young boys swept in front of storefronts and owners of open-air markets tried to maintain reasonable order from the fruits and vegetables stacked in little bins.
A layer of smoke from cantinas and two-wheeled taco vendors covered the town.
And not 100 feet from the open air marketplace is the sewage treatment and pumping plant Number 2 for the city of Mexicali.
A white-haired man with a sack-load of garbage stepped over tires and broken chunks of cement until he reached the banks of New River.
From there, he deposited the contents into the dank, green flow of sludge.
It’s not a pretty sight, this New River.
At one point near the marketplace, a thick, chocolate flow of effluent rushes underground and splashes into the river.
There it dissolves into a million small, brown flecks.
The river is a tire’s graveyard. Countless numbers deteriorate in it.
In Mexicali, the term for the river is “aguas negras, translated literally to “black waters.” Black ... and dead.
The oxygen level of the river as it crosses the international border is dead zero. No fish live in the river. Couldn’t if they tried.
Large numbers of mullet once migrated up the New River from the salty confines of the Salton Sea, according to the Department of Fish and Game.
That phenomenon stopped in 1948.
30 years ago
The state plans to apply for additional federal funds in time to keep Imperial County’s special prosecutions program for drug offenders running until at least October, a spokesman for the California Office of Criminal Justice Planning said Monday.
The state has already promised the county enough federal funds to keep the program afloat until March 31. Justice Planning Executive Director G. Albert Howenstein Jr. said the state is applying for another $10.7 million in federal funds to keep the Imperial program and others like it active until October and perhaps even the end of 1989.
The local program, staffed by an attorney, two Sheriff’s sergeants, two probation officers and a secretary, works to convict drug offenders and conducts regular testing and searches of drug offenders on probation.
It began Jan. 1 of this year with $291,000 in federal funds allocated by the state.
However, because only California and three other states got their programs off the ground in 1988, Congress reduced its nationwide appropriation. California’s allocation dropped from $16.8 million for 1988 to just $2.8 million for the first six months of 1989.
That means local officials will start next year with $53,000, only enough money to run the program until March 31.
20 years ago
IMPERIAL — The construction of Imperial’s newest elementary school took a step closer to reality this week as the Imperial Unified School District received the go-ahead from the state to solicit bids on construction.
The district will have a bid meeting Tuesday at 2 p.m. in the district office.
District Superintendent Joe Maruca said Friday morning that construction on T.L. Waggoner Elementary, which has been five years in planning, would begin after the state reviews the bids and gives final approval, a process that lasts 30 days.
“Our board acts once the state gives approval,” Maruca said.
The district has set a tentative state date for the new school for winter 2000.
In 1995 Imperial residents approved a $9 million bond measure for the new school, which was to be matched by state funds, although Maruca is dubious it will be an even split.
“It’s supposed to be 50/50, but by the time they get through with you it’s more like 30/70,” with the Imperial district paying the bulk.