1/28/13
With plans to develop a district-operated RV park on Woodley Island on hold after local fishermen and community members balked at the idea, the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District now has its eye on the former Samoa pulp mill site as a potential revenue source.
Chief Executive Officer Jack Crider said the cash-strapped harbor district is currently in negotiations to acquire property from Freshwater Tissue Co., owners of the Samoa pulp mill which closed in October 2008.
”Freshwater has given us an excellent opportunity to acquire this property, and we are trying to take advantage of it,” Crider said Friday. “We understand there is all kinds of potential revenue here. If we could lease out 100,000 square feet of this facility, the district would be just fine, cash flow wise.”
Crider said the harbor district has several projects -- including a public docking facility, commercial aquaculture and a Humboldt State University research facility -- in the works, should the property acquisition go through.
But it's not a project without challenges.
For one thing, the site is huge.
”Everything was built so large to accommodate the pulp mill,” Crider said. “When we fire that super-size monster up, that's going to be expensive.”
In addition to making sure the size of the site is even feasible for a aquaculture development, Crider said the district also worries about funding staffing positions at the site, and the possibility of left-over contamination.
”It's a little overwhelming for all of us -- taking on an operation of this size,” Crider said. “We want to make sure this thing doesn't just gobble us up.”
The harbor district is currently working with aquaculture specialists, as well as the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District, to determine the feasibility of acquiring the site. Feasibility studies have been conducted in the past, Crider said, “but that was done on a very global scale. We now are looking at the project in more detail; like the cost and reality of using the site, the potential revenue we could generate.”
Perhaps the biggest challenge, Crider said, will be figuring out whether the district can even afford to purchase the property.
”That's absolutely something that keeps me up at night,” Crider said.
Hired in May 2012, Crider said he realizes that the district needs to get creative when it comes to feasible alternative revenue sources.
After years in the red, the agency has eaten away at its reserve funds. Debt from dredging Humboldt Bay in 2000, combined with lost revenue from disappearing timber companies and the closure of the Simpson pulp mill in 2008, saw the district's reserve funds plummet from $6 million in 2006 to just over $2 million in 2010.
In addition to another round of dredging -- which Crider said will likely need to happen in about four years with the rate silt sediment is piling up in the bay-- the district also needs to start thinking about replacing the more than 50,000-square-feet of marina floats that make up the harbor dock.
If something doesn't change soon, Crider said the district will be forced to increase harbor rates.
Crider said he still hasn't given up on plans to develop a proposed 65-space RV park on Startare Drive, the main access road to Woodley Island. In addition to RV parking, the site would include landscaping, a play area, and a dog area. The preliminary feasibility study estimated the start-up cost at a little over $1 million.
Although Crider stresses that the project is vital to preventing harbor district rates from rising, discussion and concerns from local fishermen and community members have kept the commission from moving forward.
”They could absolutely say, 'OK, we don't have an agreement, but are going to move forward anyway,'” he said. “But they don't want to do that. They are committed to making sure everyone has adequate input and making sure the public has plenty of opportunity to speak.”
It's an exercise in patience, Crider said.
While he hopes the RV park project will eventually move forward, Crider said the district has to look elsewhere as “the bleed continues.”
The district is hoping to take advantage of a $70,000 Headwaters Fund grant as it moves forward with potentially acquiring the Samoa Pulp Mill site and developing the aquaculture component of the project.
Headwaters Fund Coordinator Dawn Elsbree said there has been community conversation about developing aquaculture in Humboldt Bay for some time, beginning with an HSU environmental engineering class that studied the feasibility of such a project on the Samoa peninsula. Erika Blackwell took up the project, spearheading what became known as the Humboldt Aquaculture Innovation Center and she worked with the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission to originally apply for the $70,000 grant.
When RREDC learned that the harbor district was considering acquiring the Samoa pulp mill site, Executive Director Don Ehnebuske said it made sense to direct the grant funding to the harbor.
”We felt that it would be a better use of Headwaters Fund money,” Ehnebuske said. “Our plans were just getting started, theirs are moving ahead.”
