Wiyot Tribe searching for additional project funding

6/13/12

The Wiyot Tribe has almost finished restoring Indian Island to a place where its members can continue their traditions.


But after a dozen years of removing lead batteries, con­taminated soil and other debris, tribal representatives are searching for additional funding to complete the envi­ronmental cleanup.



Environmental Director Stephen Kullmann said he had hoped the island restoration, part of the Tuluwat Restora­tion Project, would be finished this summer, but an estimated $350,000 is needed to cover the contaminants that couldn’t be removed. The tribe has spent roughly $2 million in grant funding and volunteer work on the environmental cleanup and restoration work, Kullmann estimated.



Much of the contaminated soil has been removed, but there are still various metals and other low-level contami­nants, Kullmann said. The per­meable cap will protect the public from anything that might still be in the soil, he said. It will also be used to dif­ferentiate from historical material and material that’s been brought to the island from the outside, Kullmann said.



“Every shovelful needed to be sifted and gone through by hazardous waste-trained archeologists,” he said. “That’s someone that doesn’t come cheap. The tribe wanted to dis­turb as little as possible.” Indian Island’s entire 275 acres is sacred to the Wiyot people, who consider it the center of their universe, said Cheryl Seidner, the tribe’s cul­tural liaison. It is the site of the tribe’s World Renewal Cere­mony, an annual dance cere­mony that lasts seven to 10 days. All people are welcome to attend the ceremony, which is the Wiyot people’s way of putting the world right, Seid­ner said. Since 1860, the dance has not been completed, she said. There has not been a World Renewal Ceremony since then.



Under cover of darkness fol­lowing a ceremony in Febru­ary 1860, a group of Eureka men, armed with hatchets and knives, went to the island and killed the sleeping men, women and children, accord­ing to the tribe’s website. Seid­ner said the massacre inter­rupted the World Renewal Ceremony.



“Why does anyone harm anyone,” Seidner said. “It’s over greed. Over money. And things of that nature — prop­erty. In the end it’s all greed.” Robert Gunther, who pur­chased the land in 1860, took possession of the island fol­lowing the massacre and the Tuluwat Village site was leased to Duff Shipyard Dry­dock, which ran a ship repair facility well into the 1970s and 1980s, Kullmann said. In the process of repairing those ships, the wood would be treated with preservatives and chemical paint, which seeped into the soil, he said.

The tribe purchased 1.5 acres of the original village site in 2000, Kullmann said. They thought they’d just be able to clean it, but what they found was highly contami­nated debris including a paint shed with chemical barrels and a retaining wall made out of old marine batteries, he said. “There wasn’t much concern for the health of the area,” Kullmann said, refer­ring to the people who had leased the land prior to the tribe purchasing it.

“Someone else let amateur archeologists dig up bones and artifacts. It takes a lot of work to try and repatriate remains and artifacts. It’s a hugely complicated process.” In 2004, the city of Eureka returned more than 60 acres of island north of the Samoa Bridge back to the Wiyot Tribe, Seidner said. “That was a fabulous day,” she said.

Since 2000, the tribe has removed some of the old buildings and rebuilt a bulk­head to allow barges to land, Kullmann said.

Remnants of the rails the ship repair facility used to bring boats on shore are still visible at low tide.

The tribe has also had to deal with trespassers and homeless encampments, Kull­mann said.

The tribe has also worked to convert much of the land Eureka gave to them to saltwa­ter marsh, Kullmann said.

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6/7/12

"A massive dock" that was washed away from a city on Japan's northeast coast by the devastating March 2011 tsunami landed this week on an Oregon beach. It's a warning sign that dangerous chunks of debris from that disaster are reaching the Pacific coast of the mainland U.S. much sooner than predicted, The Oregonian reports.

"This stuff is coming a lot faster than we thought it was," Tom Towslee, a spokesman for Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden told the newspaper. "It's starting and at least nine months ahead of schedule as far as I can tell."

As we've previously reported, experts had thought it might be March 2013 before major pieces of debris hit the coasts of North America.

According to the Oregonian, the dock that washed up on Agate Beach this week is "66 feet long by 19 feet wide by 7 feet tall." It came from the northern Japanese city of Misawa, according to Hirofumi Murabayahsi, deputy consul general at the Japanese Consulate in Portland. He tells the newspaper that there are three more like that dock possibly floating toward the U.S.

Agate Beach is about 55 miles west of Corvallis, Ore. It's about a 90-mile drive from both Salem and Eugene.

Commercial fishermen, as Oregon Public Broadcasting has reported, are very worried about the danger that such debris presents to their ships.
In April, the U.S. Coast Guard fired on and sank a Japanese "Ghost Ship" that hd been set adrift by the tsunami and was floating in shipping lanes off Alaska's southeast coast.

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Project will need state approval

6/7/12

The Eureka City Council approved the redirection of $1.2 million in fund­ing from the defunct Waterfront Drive Extension project to a waterfront trail from Del Norte to Truesdale streets at its Tuesday meeting.



The city had secured more than $4.6 million for a project to extend Water­front Drive but abandoned the project in April in the face of strong and ongo­ing opposition by the California Coastal Commission.



In a 4-1 vote Tuesday, Councilman Lance Madsen dissenting, the council directed staff to work with Caltrans and the Humboldt County Association of Governments to use funds from the project for construction of the trail and the remaining balance for other road­way improvements.



The funds were originally allocated to the city in conjunction with the water­front drive extension, and the stand­alone trail will have to go before the Cal­ifornia Transportation Commission for approval. The funds carry stipulations to improve the safety of the U.S. High­way 101 corridor.



Madsen praised the idea of the trail but said he didn’t think the project fit the conditions for which the funds were designated.



“There seems to be some confusion about what these non-freeway funds were designated for,” Madsen said.



He said he had not seen any findings that the trail would improve safety on Broadway, and expressed concern that the trail will increase traffic crossings on Broadway.



“There’s also a reasonable expectation that an increase in traffic will increase accidents,” Madsen said. “Public safety is the express priority of this council.” Councilwoman Linda Atkins predict­ed the project would have a positive effect.



“Taking bicycles and pedestrians off Broadway I think is a really good way to increase the safety there,” Atkins said.



Representatives from the Audobon Society, Redwood Community Action Agency, Humboldt Baykeeper and other organizations spoke during pub­lic comment, saying the trail would benefit local businesses, tourism and access to the waterfront.

Westside Improvement Association member Richard Evans said waterfront access would transform the Westside.

“The most successful coastal towns have embraced their waterfronts,” Evans said.

Councilwoman Marian Brady praised the project, adding that it was important to have law enforcement and public safety access to the area which she described as currently less than family-friendly.

“There are weird, strange people out there that jump out at you,” Brady said. Assistant City Manager Mike Knight said staff was aware of the need for pub­lic safety access, and was confident that $1.2 million would be enough to com­plete the project as the city envisions it. Knight said the project has Humboldt County Association of Governments support and believed that the project would be acceptable under the funds’ stipulations.

“I was hoping that if all of us in this area are in agreement about how this money should be spent, that should go a long ways in front of the Califor­nia Transportation Commission,” Knight said.

In other business, the council voted unanimously to direct staff to imple­ment a mandatory commercial recy­cling program which will affect 1,100 businesses and could start as soon as the end of the year.

The program will mean a increase in both commercial and residential rates, and will help Eureka move toward waste reduction, according to Deputy Public Works Director Miles Slattery.

Slattery said average residential cus­tomers will see a $1.30 per month increase. Commercial customers will see an increase of $8.50 per month, but Slattery said that many businesses will see reduced recycling costs as they move away from voluntary recycling pro­grams that can be more costly.

Slattery said the program will double the amount of recycling done by the city and generate $30,000 per year.

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6/1/12

Humboldt County con­tractor Dennis Wendt of Wendt Construction resolved a federal lawsuit today with the Environmental Protec­tion Agency and Department of Justice following the con­struction company’s unper­mitted dumping of the equivalent of 200 large dump truck loads of material into federally protected wetlands crucial to neighboring salmon populations.



According to an EPA news release, the illegal fill activities took place between 2005 and 2008 at two Fortuna develop­ment sites — the Strongs Creek Plaza Site and the East Littlefield Property — and impacted four acres of wet­lands. Wendt Construction will pay a $170,000 penalty for dumping fill material into wetlands connected to Strongs Creek, a tributary to the Eel River.



As part of the settlement, the company will spend an additional $150,000 on a multi-year project to restore the damaged wetlands, including the creation of a vegetated pond that will sup­port wildlife.



Restoration will allow the creek to provide movement corridors for wildlife and habitat for the northern red­legged frog, a threatened species in California.



The wetlands are associat­ed with Strongs Creek, which flows approximately 1.3 miles west to the Eel River, a resource for maintaining cold, freshwater habitat for salmon and steelhead. The Lower Eel River is considered impaired under the Clean Water Act due to excessive sediment loads, low dis­solved oxygen and high tem­peratures, according to the press release.



The Clean Water Act pro­tects the nation’s coasts, rivers, lakes, streams, and wetlands, which are vital to the protection of human health and the environment. The act requires anyone who proposes to fill and alter pro­tected waterways, including wetlands, to first obtain a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.



The proposed consent decree for the settlement is subject to a 30-day comment period and final court approval. A copy of the pro­posed decree is available on the Justice Department web­site online at www.justice.gov/ enrd/Consent_Decrees.html.

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See also EPA Dings Fortuna Construction Firm More Than $300,000 for Wetlands Dumping