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Eureka council approves water, sewage rate increase

On Monday evening, the Eureka City Council unanimously voted to approve water and sewer rate increases.

Over the next five years, water rates will go up by 8 to 10% each year, an overall increase of 58%. In the same timeline, sewer rates will jump from 4 to 10% per year for a total increase of 34%. The rate increases come in the wake of capital improvement program costs, and after some discussion, councilmembers more or less resigned themselves to approving the rate hike, citing a lack of other options.

Councilmember Scott Bauer noted that several cities, facing rate increases, privatized their water and sewer systems to disastrous effect.

“There is no good alternative, look at Flint (Michigan),” Bauer said. “It’s a bummer that the can has been kicked for decades, I feel like it has, but as Councilmember (Natalie) Arroyo said, water is life and sewer systems are critical to not having things like cholera and the diseases that struck cities centuries ago.”

Eureka Public Works Director Brian Gerving said, “If we were not to enact these rates or adopt some rate structure that is less than this, then the two alternatives would be either don’t incur the same capital expenditures, which in most cases is not a feasible option,” Gerving said. “In the case of wastewater, with the regulations that we’re facing and the consent decree that we’ve entered into with Ecological Rights Foundation, those are non-negotiable items. And on the water side, just from the standpoint of ensuring we safely deliver water to our customers, it’s also non-negotiable.”

Crowley’s plans for offshore wind complex at California’s Humboldt Bay

On October 27th Crowley Wind Services signed an agreement with the Port of Humboldt Bay to exclusively negotiate to be the developer and operator of a terminal to serve as California's first hub for offshore wind energy installations.

If an agreement is reached, Crowley will be the exclusive developer/operator of the wind terminal at Humboldt Bay.

In an interview with the American Journal of Transportation, Jeff Andreini, Crowley Wind Services's Vice President, described the future terminal, saying “heavy lift ships will be used for the construction of the terminals. There will be heavy lift cranes that will … be doing the actual construction of the turbine. So, the terminal will do the construction of the floaters. The floaters will actually be built in Humboldt Bay and not in a foreign country.

There might be materials that might come from Asia, but the pre-construction will potentially (take place) in either San Francisco or Los Angeles and would be shipped to Humboldt Bay where the actual buildout will take place.”

Oregon reaches nearly $700M settlement with Monsanto over PCB contamination

Oregon’s attorney general announced a nearly $700 million settlement Thursday with the biotech giant Monsanto for its alleged role in polluting the state over the course of decades with toxic compounds known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

“Polychlorinated biphenyls have caused and continue to cause devastating impact on the natural environment,” Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said during a news conference in Portland. “They threaten the health of the people that use and enjoy our state’s natural resources — our air, our water, our ground, our fish, practically everything in our habitat.”

From the 1930s to just before they were banned in 1979, Monsanto was the sole manufacturer of PCBs in the United States. Since at least 1937, the company knew they were harmful. The chemicals were distributed throughout the U.S. in a variety of products, including paint, caulking, and electrical equipment.

[Humboldt Bay was designated as impaired by PCBs under Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act in 2002, based on levels of PCBs found in fish tissue. PCBs have been demonstrated to cause a variety of serious health effects, including cancer and serious effects on the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system, and endocrine system. For more info on PCBs and their health effects, click HERE].

Lease to Farm: The long road ahead for offshore wind

To much fanfare, two foreign multinational corporations combined to spend more than $331 million on winning bids for the chance to develop more than 207 square miles of ocean off Humboldt Bay into two floating offshore wind farms.

But the auctions also represent just a very early step in what promises to be a long process fraught with possible pitfalls and hurdles, potential risks and rewards, for Humboldt Bay and beyond. Here's a quick look at the road ahead.

Winning bids for North Coast offshore wind leases top $331 million

The first offshore wind lease auction off the California coast has come to a close and the winners of the leases have been announced.
The U.S. Department of the Interior announced the two leases in the Humboldt wind energy area, 21 miles off the coast of Humboldt Bay, were awarded to RWE Offshore Wind Holdings — 63,338 acres for $157.7 million — and California North Floating — 69,031 for $173.8 million — just before noon on Wednesday.

The five leases, including three roughly 80,000-acre apiece leases off Morro Bay, garnered $757.1 million for 373,268 acres capable of generating 4.6 gigawatts of energy, or enough power for 1.5 million homes. The winning bids off the coast of Morro Bay were from Equinor Wind US ($130 million), Central California Offshore Wind ($150.3 million), and Invenergy California Offshore ($145.3 million).

The lease sale is a significant milestone in meeting the state and nation’s goals to address the climate crisis. Wind energy is expected to complement solar energy, which is plentiful during the day while wind speeds are stronger when the sun goes down.

Humboldt County doesn’t have the transmission infrastructure in place to develop a large offshore wind farm right away, so developers are expected to start with a smaller community-scale project.