Residents along the Elk River spoke at length Friday during a public forum of a North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board meeting. The board was taking a fresh look at the Humboldt Redwood Co.’s existing waste discharge requirement on the Upper Elk River Watershed, adopted in 2019. The water board was considering whether to reopen the case or keep it as is, and allow new logging to start in 2025 in what is considered high-risk areas and riparian zones.The discussion inflamed a long-standing issue about flooding — people’s homes and properties downriver fill with water and silt due to sediment from historic logging, and largely saw the extension of logging as a gut punch.“The lower part of the river is not going to fix itself. So why would you keep allowing more sediment to keep coming down?” asked Monte Lowe, a 60-year resident of the north fork of the Elk River.Christy Wrigley, whose family apple farm was decimated by flooding in 1997, showed a recent video of her home flooding. Since ’97, she said she and her neighbors have been trying to get state agencies to protect their water, land and homes, with no success.“Our safety, security and sanity are all sacrificed to one rich landowner. This is not finding balance. Every removed tree from the forest is another nail in the coffin of the upper Elk River community,” she said.Read More
In a North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board meeting Friday, water board staff said Kernen Construction Co. sought an extension Thursday for violations over stormwater discharge at a property in the community of Glendale.The company was sent a notice of violation from the water board in May 2024 for 11 alleged violations — largely allowing untreated industrial stormwater to flow off the site that stages construction materials and failure to submit reports and technical studies surrounding water before construction, including in a wetland.While the company has so far failed to send required technical reports, the extension means they are seeking more time while board staff help the company with compliance.“We’re going to make a recommendation to our executive officer as to whether to approve or not that extension,” said Claudia Villacorta, water board assistant executive officer at the meeting.The meeting was mostly a public forum, an opportunity for people to comment on water issues in the district. A few people spoke on the impacts from the company on their neighborhood and urged the water board to hold the company accountable.Residents who live nearby said at the meeting the issues began in the last year and a half — around the time the company started staging for the Indianola project for Caltrans.One resident, Lynne Owens, said she’s moved into her van because of the noise and dust at the site.Read More
An environmental dispute between a Glendale construction company and its residential neighbors is driving a woman out of her home.Located off the 299 between Fieldbrook and Blue Lake, Kernen Construction Co. offers excavating, paving, concrete, asphalt, metal fabrication and other services. From the company’s 37-acre site at 2350 Glendale Drive, employees crush, mix, transport and pile rock aggregate materials into small mountains – an understandably loud business activity – for 11 hours on weekdays and 10 hours on Saturdays.Although Glendale has “traditionally been an industrial site,” as Humboldt County’s Planning and Building Department Director John Ford put it, the various industrial businesses along Glendale Drive are surrounded by homes. Flanked by marshy agricultural land and hilly redwood forest, residents like Glendale for its countryside feel.Alas. “Any time you have residences and industrial uses, you’re going to have conflicts,” Ford said of the neighborhood. Even so, longtime community members say they lived in harmony with Kernen Construction – founded in 1986 – for decades. But just over a year ago, they say, living next to the company became unbearable literally overnight.Boiled down, the residents have two concerns: the noise and the environment. Accused by its neighbors of flouting environmental protection laws and disregarding the operational conditions of its permit, Kernen Construction has attracted the scrutiny of the state water board, the county planning and building department and a lawyered-up environmental nonprofit. They’re doing what they can to investigate accusations against the company, but for Owens and her neighbors, change isn’t coming fast enough.Kernen Construction founders Scott Farley and Kurt Kernen didn’t respond to interview requests for this story.Read More
Recent raging winter storms have caved in streets, wrecked piers, collapsed homes and apartment buildings, and submerged property up and down California’s coastline.Now, as sea levels continue to rise from climate change, scientists are working on a real-world experiment that could help reduce the impacts.At a 247-acre property near the Santa Cruz-Monterey county line, crews are planning to protect against flooding — not by trying to hold back the ocean by building bigger sea walls — but by converting flood-prone farmland into tidal wetlands. During big storms and high tides, this allows ocean waters to move inland in an orderly way instead of threatening homes and other property.In other words, working with nature, as opposed to trying to battle the ocean’s relentless forward march.“It’s a demonstration,” said Sarah Newkirk, executive director of the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, which is overseeing the project. “What we are doing here is applicable to other places in California, the Gulf of Mexico, and other parts of the country.”On Wednesday, Newkirk’s non-profit environmental group closed a $13.4 million deal to buy the property, known as Beach Ranch. The bucolic farmland sits at the mouth of the Pajaro River near the crashing waves of Monterey Bay, and has flooded multiple of times over the past few generations, most recently this January, and during the previous winter.Read More
One third of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge is closed to the public after a tide gate and the adjacent levee were found to need urgent repairs. The Salmon Creek Unit, including a visitor center and the Shorebird loop trail, were closed in mid-July after staff found the overflow infrastructure was deteriorating.“Having people walking on a trail that’s being undermined, that’s pretty dangerous,” said Cashell Villa, the refuge manager.The Shorebird loop trail is on the levee itself, which protects the Richard J. Guadagno Visitor Center and the refuge’s headquarters from tidal water. A news release from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says both the levee and the Long Pond tide gate need urgent repairs until they can be replaced.During an extreme high tide event, the trail and refuge buildings could be inundated with water, according to the release.Villa said more water was observed coming from pipes, showing that deterioration was happening between the levee and Humboldt Bay. The unit was fully closed to the public July 21, and the trail was closed a few days earlier once the water was noticed.When the area will be reopened to the public is yet to be determined.The rest of the refuge is open, including the Hookton Slough and Ma-le’l Dunes units. The refuge’s website, www.fws.gov/refuge/humboldt-bay is being updated with closure information.Read More
