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Fishermen, birders, researchers question Coast Seafoods plan

1/19/17

The Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District is set to decide this evening whether to certify the environmental review of Coast Seafoods Company’s proposed 256-acre shellfish aquaculture expansion in Humboldt Bay.

The first phase of the expansion would add 165 acres of shellfish culture operations. The remaining 91 acres would be added after three to five years of monitoring by Coast Seafoods, which will have to implement an adaptive management plan to address any potential impacts to eelgrass beds. 

Should the harbor district Board of Commissioners approve the plan, the expansion will still need to receive a water quality certification from the regional water quality control board, a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a coastal development permit from the California Coastal Commission, according to Dale. Dale said he hopes to begin the expansion this summer.

Several environmental advocates, bird hunters, fishermen and researchers state the project’s revised environmental impact report still does not address their concerns about the expansion’s impact on sensitive eelgrass beds in the bay and the wildlife that rely on them.

To address these concerns, Coast Seafoods reduced the size of the expansion and agreed to remove a quarter-acre of its existing long-line operations for every new acre added. More than 60 acres of existing operations will be removed if the plan is approved.

The full environmental review and other information about the proposed expansion can be found online at http://humboldtbay.org/coast-seafoods-company-humboldt-bay-shellfish-aquaculture-permit-renewal-and-expansion-project

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1/11/17

It’s been a wet, windy few days on the North Coast that have seen widespread flooding, power outages, land- and mudslides on roads, falling trees, high tides and now school closures.

“PG&E meteorologists today said this is the wettest winter that Humboldt County and Mendocino County have seen in 20 years. The last time this much rain fell in these areas was the winter of 1996-1997,” Pacific Gas and Electric Company representative Deanna Contreras said Tuesday.

It’s not just rivers flooding; Humboldt Bay broke a high tide record.

“Today’s high tide was 1.4’ higher than predicted, reaching 9.64’ — an all-time high for Humboldt Bay!” Humboldt Baykeeper tweeted Tuesday.

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12/22/16

Humboldt Bay’s clean yet productive waters are one of the main reasons it is home to both extensive eelgrass beds and an expanding shellfish aquaculture industry that generates more than $10 million in sales per year.

Yet the aquaculture industry must now contend with a new threat that is altering the chemistry of seawater: ocean acidification. The impact of intensifying ocean acidification on aquaculture in Humboldt Bay, and the extent to which eelgrass may reduce these impacts, is the focus of a new project by California Sea Grant Extension Specialist Dr. Joe Tyburczy and collaborators at Humboldt State University, with funding awarded by the Ocean Protection Council.

The team, which includes industry partner Terry Sawyer of Hog Island Oyster Company, will install a state-of-the-art monitoring instrument called a Burkolator to track Humboldt Bay’s carbonate chemistry at the company’s new oyster hatchery. The researchers will place additional sensors in coastal waters outside the bay and establish the first bay-wide monitoring program for eelgrass.

“Our goal is to provide the aquaculture industry and environmental permitting agencies with data and information that will help them develop win-win scenarios – ones that allow the aquaculture industry to expand, while at the same time minimizing impacts on eelgrass and the services it provides,” said Tyburczy.

12/31/16

The year 2016, which marked the 40^th anniversary of the Coastal Act, was not a proud one for the powerful agency charged with regulating coastal development and ensuring maximum preservation and public access.

The problem, in my humble opinion, was not with the professional staff but with the appointed commissioners — some of whom were so feckless, arrogant, unprofessional and cozy with the development lobby that lawsuits were filed and legislative reforms introduced.

And yet Gov. Jerry Brown's Finance Department decided, in what whiffed of politics from Day One, to conduct an expensive, months-long review of staff operations based on the trumped-up argument that an emergency loan to the agency (standard procedure in state government) was cause for alarm.

It seemed, then and now, that the real reason for the review was retaliation for the public backlash that followed the February firing of beloved staff leader and Executive Director Charles Lester — a blow that marked a battle for control of the agency.

On Friday, we got the results of the witch hunt, and there wasn’t much there. As with any government bureaucracy, there appears to be room for some tighter management and better bean-counting. But greater efficiency is hard to come by when the state has plenty of money for audits but no money to hire more employees at the long-understaffed agency.

To repeat, it was the commissioners who needed the scrub, not the staff.

So here’s my suggested agenda for 2017:

Brown and state leaders need to appoint a higher class of commissioners, whose first duty is to the Coastal Act and the public. The media need to vet every one of those appointments. Commissioners who don’t report full accounts of private meetings must be publicly flogged. And the next executive director has to uphold a tradition of independence and protect the agency, and the coast, from political pressure.

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