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Public officials see pulp mill site up close Friday

11/16/13

Public officials toured the Samoa pulp mill on Friday, seeing firsthand an abandoned industrial site reminiscent of a ghost town that is rife with potential despite its lurking environmental dangers.

Humboldt Bay Harbor, Conservation and Recreation District CEO Jack Crider led the tour, which included a pair of Humboldt County supervisors, a few harbor commissioners and representatives of the Headwaters Fund board. Walking the group of about 15 people through the 72-acre property, Crider showcased the good, the bad and the ugly -- explaining the problems that pushed the United States Environmental Protection Agency to initiate an emergency response and the vast potential the district sees in the site.

Crider led the tour out onto the shipping dock and through cavernous, sprawling industrial spaces, pointing out tanks storing caustic liquids and chemical-laden blue barrels with EPA stickers on them along the way.

The biggest concern is that a large earthquake could destroy the tanks, causing millions of gallons of caustic liquids to run into Humboldt Bay. A large-scale spill wouldn't carry major risks to human life, but could have devastating impacts on the bay's ecosystem and booming aquaculture industry.

The mill has sat dormant for more than five years, since Evergreen Pulp shut it down in October 2008, essentially shuttering the buildings without notice in the dead of night and putting 200 people out of work. Freshwater Tissue purchased the mill in February 2009, but plans for a pulp-and-tissue paper facility were never realized.

The harbor district acquired the site in August with the aim of transforming the mill into the National Marine Research and Innovation Park, a mixed-use space with aquaculture hatcheries, an aquaponics greenhouse, renewable energy research labs, a public shipping dock and educational facilities.

Aquaculture hatcheries are the first part of that plan coming to fruition. Taylor Mariculture is planning to open a large oyster nursery at the site and lease part of the old mill facility, according to Crider.

Crider said there are real challenges, which is why the district refused to pay to acquire the site from Freshwater. Harbor commissioners Greg Dale and Richard Marks also said Friday that the district took over the mill in part because of environmental concerns and the possibility they would grow while the site was inactive.

The largest concerns swirl around the 4 million gallons of pulping liquors left at the site, much of which was stored in failing tanks. The liquors -- which have a pH of higher than 13 -- are a caustic byproduct of the pulping process.

Crider said closing mills generally wind production down, burning off most of the pulping liquors but leaving a small amount of concentrated, highly valuable liquors on the site. The Samoa mill closure happened quickly, and large amounts of the liquors were left, some of them in roofless tanks that allowed rainwater to mix with the liquors, diluting them and increasing the overall volume of caustic materials.

Concerned with the liquors and how they were being stored, Dale asked the EPA to inspect the site shortly after it was acquired by the district. EPA federal on-scene coordinator Steve Calanog was immediately alarmed at the condition of the facility and its proximity to Humboldt Bay.

He initiated an emergency response action, federalizing the site under EPA's control.

EPA and U.S. Coast Guard crews worked to relieve the pressure on some of the worst tanks, bringing in temporary storage containers to hold the liquors.

”EPA has basically stabilized the site,” Crider said Friday. “The site is actually a lot safer now than it was a couple of months ago.”

Under EPA's emergency response, the district plans on piping the liquors out to a shipping barge, which will transport them to a mill in Longview, Wash., that plans to reuse the liquors. The effort will likely involve three barge loads of the caustic substance, the first of which is tentatively scheduled for January.

The effort will prove expensive. Each barge shipment costs about $400,000, according to Crider, and the district plans to cover the expenses by selling off parts from the old mill.

The EPA's response will include getting all the liquors off-site and destroying the old tanks. Even after that's complete, the site has some other hurdles, such as ground contaminants, including possible dioxin, left behind by Louisiana Pacific. Crider said soil sample tests are currently underway to determine the extent of the brownfield cleanup. The good news, he said, is that Louisiana Pacific has so far taken responsibility for the site.

”They've been very responsive,” he said.

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11/17/13


State water quality officials announced Satur­day their intent to reduce the rate of sediment pollution in the Elk River by 97 percent over the next 20 years by limiting it in timberland areas for both residents and logging companies.



“There’s been a loss of property uses in terms of being able to get to and from homes, to and from work, damage to structures, damage to water systems,” North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board engineer Adona White said. “This watershed’s been managed for timber for 150 years. There’s been a lot of hard impacts to the river.” White said the board is in the preliminary steps of establishing a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the Elk River watershed, with a goal of late 2014. The TMDL would establish a limit for on how much sediment could come from the property owners in the area.



In June, the Board of Supervisors directed staff to organize a public forum after Elk River residents complained of decreasing water quality, increased flooding, property damage and loss of habitat for coho salmon.



Kristi Wrigley, who spoke at the board meet­ing and served on a panel at Saturday’s forum, said her family has owned and operated an apple farm on the river since 1903, and she is the first downstream resident below industrial logging on the north fork of the Elk River.



“I welcome the TMDL as the first solution that I have seen come from an agency that I believe will help us recover,” she said, adding that she thought other programs put in place throughout the past decade have been inadequate.

White said the limit is based on how much sediment can be in the river before it is no longer up to state water quali­ty standards, called a loading capacity.

She said the calculated load­ing capacity for the Elk River is 82 cubic yards of sediment per square mile per year, with nat­ural erosion contributing 68 cubic yards. This means prop­erty owners would need to get discharge permits through the Environmental Protection Agency to work their property, and may not exceed an annual 14-cubic-yards limit.

According to White’s num­bers, the amount of sediment entering the Elk River annual­ly hasn’t dropped below 360 cubic yards per square mile in 58 years. Between 2004 and 2011, that figure was 485.

Humboldt Redwood Co. watershed analysis manager Michael Miles said the com­pany spends “a couple mil­lion bucks” monitoring sedi­ment run-off from its prop­erties near Elk River and Freshwater Creek.

“I’m leery about the assumption that if we do more up on the hill slope, there’s going to be some big benefit out of it,” he said.

California Trout North Coast Regional Manager Darren Mierau also intro­duced three pilot restoration projects involve catching and removing sediment that comes from the upper tribu­taries, the removal of 4,000 cubic yards of deposited sedi­ment in the flood plains and vegetation thinning to monitor the effects on water velocity.

Elk River residents expressed concern that a small change upriver could mean disastrous changes down river.

First District Supervisor Rex Bohn said the issue needs to be addressed now.

“There are some people who stayed away from this forum because they don’t agree with the process that it’s taking,” he said. “But the whole idea is, at the end of the day, we have to do something and get it done.”

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‘Exceedingly rare’ ecosystem mined for decades



11/16/13 



Two Humboldt County residents who pleaded guilty to felony and misdemeanor charges earlier this week for mining wetlands without a permit have agreed to pay $320,000 in fines — one of the highest penalties ever given to noncorporate defendants in California, officials said.



“This case is unusual because peat in itself is very rare in the state,” said Matthew Carr, deputy district attorney for the California District Attorneys Association and prosecutor. “Many of our wetlands are coastal wetlands; peatlands are exceedingly rare in the state.” Bridgeville resident Daniel Michael Wojcik was accused of operating a large-scale, industrial surface peat mine — a material made of partially decayed vegetation that accumulates in wetlands — without a permit near the Van Duzen River and profiting off the sales without a business license within a timber production zone.



He was also accused of illegally diverting water, selling the illegally diverted water, grading without a permit, developing near a stream without a permit and altering a work site without approval.



Because it contains a high amount of carbon, peat is harvested — or “mined” — off the top of surface groundwater for fuel. Permits are required under the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act of 1975.



“Peat takes hundreds, if not thousands, of years to develop,” Carr said, adding that surface mining itself is fairly common. “Most of our gravel comes from surface mining of dry streambeds.” According to a five-count felony complaint filed by Carr in February 2011, Wojcik began mining in the area in the late 1980s.



Officials said he expanded his operation to two other lakes in 1988 and cleared 5.3 acres of forest in 2000 to set up a processing plant next to a 11.6 acre lake owned by Fortuna resident Robert Henry Wotherspoon. That lake was mined through the summer of 2011.



The complaint states that based on the amount of drying peat at the processing plant in May 2010, Wojcik illegally removed an estimated minimum of 27,250 cubic yards from the lake on Wotherspoon’s property. Wojcik was selling shredded peat at $60 per cubic yard, making the value more than $1.6 million.



“This was considered a priority case because of the apparent willful violations on an exceedingly rare ecosystem,” Carr said.


Humboldt Baykeeper Policy Director Jennifer Kalt said she had heard of the “mythical” peat lakes in the area, but has never seen one because they are on private property.



“It’s one of the rarest habitats in the whole county, probably Northern California,” she said. “I’m really sad to see that this was done. It’s good that they’re making them restore it, but I don’t know how you restore something like that.” Under the settlement, Wotherspoon agreed to grant the state permanent access to the damaged site so it can be used as a “living laboratory” to study the rare ecosystem. He will also pay a penalty of $130,804 and serve 100 hours of community service.

Wojcik will pay a penalty of $189,222 and serve 500 hours of community service. He must also address zoning and code enforcement issues, replant timberland in certain affected areas and restore the ponds that were allegedly mined prior to 2000.


The defendants are required to restore the area “well above what would be required” by law under the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act by maximizing peat regeneration and the flow of cold water from a nearby spring into Van Duzen River.



Carr said the defendants could not be asked to restore the habitat to the way it was before because it could take hundreds of years.


The case began when the state Department of Fish and Wildlife began investigating the area after one of its environmental scientists noticed the operation while taking aerial photographs. With assistance from the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, CalFire and the Humboldt County Department of Planning, the case was submitted to the District Attorney’s Office for prosecution.


Because of staffing shortages, District Attorney Paul Gallegos referred the case to the Circuit Prosecutor Project — which was set up to handle the prosecution of complex environmental cases in rural Northern California — at the California District Attorneys Association in Sacramento.



“The defendants are to be given credit for working with all the parties in the settlement,” Carr said. “One of the principle goals, if not the principle goal, was to restore the peat in the area.”

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11/14/13

A complaint filed over a long-time allegedly illegal peat-moss mining operation in Bridgeville has resulted in two Humboldt County residents — peat moss miner Daniel Wojcik and landowner Robert Wotherspoon — entering felony and misdemeanor pleas yesterday for violations of the Surface Mining and Recovery Act and Lake and Streambed Alteration permitting process and of the Clean Water Act.

Their penalties amount to one of the "largest ever to be assessed in California against non-corporate defendants for violations of section 404 of the Clean Water Act," according to a news release issued this evening by the Humboldt County District Attorney's office.

The release says that "circuit prosecutor" and Deputy District Attorney Matthew Carr, who filed the complaint on behalf of the understaffed Humboldt D.A.'s office, alleged that numerous violations had occurred over at least a decade on Wojcik's "large-scale industrial surface mining of peat from wetlands" on land owned by Wotherspoon. The alleged violations include:

• Wojcik operated without a permit to mine peat from the wetland — the sort called an "inland peat fen," a rarity in California which "develops slowly, over thousands of years," says the news release. It notes that the few neighboring fens of the mined areas contain rare plants, but it's not known whether the mined areas did;
• Wojcik did not have a business license to sell said peat;
• Wojcik and Wotherspoon conspired to mine the peat.

In the settlement reached with the D.A.'s office, Wojcik must pay a $189,222 penalty, work 500 hours of community service and replant timberland, among other things. Wotherspoon must pay $130,804, work 100 hours of community service and "donate to the state permanent access to the violation site for monitoring the restoration and as a 'living laboratory' for scientists to access to study this sort of rare ecosystem and its hoped-for regeneration," says the release.

We previously wrote about another aspect of this case, in which Daniel and Robin Wojcik, owners of the peat moss company McClellan Mountain Ranch, challenged the county's code enforcement warrant to inspect the lands in question.

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