The difference between water and land has been especially muddy this winter, but for the Elk River Estuary Restoration Project that was part of the plan. Two City of Eureka parcels near the mouth of the river, more than 120 acres of “reclaimed” pasture and degraded salt marsh, will once again be a functioning intertidal ecosystem. Throughout fall, travelers on 101 between Herrick Road and Humboldt Hill were entertained by a moto-cross of loaders and dump trucks taking out old dikes and dams, re-digging buried tide channels on the south side of the river. On the north side, along Pound Road and Hikshari’ Trail, crews with hand tools and weed whackers cut back invasive spartina grass while Swamp Masters crawled through newly uncovered channels. At high tide, it looks like part of the bay. At low tide it looks like a big muddy mess–but we all know recovery can be ugly in its early stages. Originally proposed by Aldaron Laird and funded by the state’s Coastal Conservancy, the project began as a way to accommodate sea level rise. But it also removes old tide gates and barriers to fish migration, opens up nearly three miles of water for non-motorized boating, and re-purposes thousands of cubic yards of sediment, the product of upstream logging, into a pedestrian and bike path that extends from Elk River to a new access point at Humboldt Hill.The new trail is already popular. Elevated well above high tide, paved, two lanes wide, it even features a center line and traffic signs. A lot of trash was cleaned up. There are pull-outs for wildlife viewing. Walking and biking is almost like motoring.Not everyone is pleased by these changes. Fishermen, beach strollers, and dog walkers used the old trail for many years. They complained about lack of public access during construction and called attention to the destruction of existing wildlife habitat. A big muddy mess.Restoration also uncovers old mistakes. This place is still known to many locals as Stinky Beach. The pasture was once a place where they spread the solids of Eureka’s sewer plant. Across the river, Pound Road leads to the old concrete ruins where the City caged and disposed of its excess dogs and cats. They went next door to the rendering plant, along with dead livestock and leftovers of the slaughterhouse, to be cooked into a malodorous commercial product that mingled with the fog and sulfurous exhaust of two pulp mills.Restoration has to ask what we hope to bring back to this place. Its older, Wiyot name is Hikshari’, a site of continuous settlement and “management activity” for many centuries. When Laird and engineer Steve Salzman drew up plans for reconstructing the estuary, they made sure it would be done in consultation with Wiyot representatives. Laird prefers to call what they’re doing enhancement. “We are not returning the area to what it was before white people came here.” After recovery, it’s important to accept the things that can’t be changed.Restoration means education and change, as much as engineering and botany. The City of Eureka has demonstrated, when it returned Tuluwat / Indian Island to the Wiyot, that it can also mean acceptance, reparation, and land return. Making things right. Calling places by their Wiyot names. Hikshari’.Restoration also applies to governance, changing the ways we make public decisions, being more inclusive and open. People in Elk River only learned of this project because it got attached to another murky issue we have followed for years. At a meeting of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, in 2016, while Elk River residents waited to ask the board to take effective action to reduce sediment (they didn’t), Eureka officials were told that their sewer plant was in violation of state and federal water quality laws. Its effluent was illegally going into Humboldt Bay (and Elk River’s estuary). But the timber companies got their zero sediment logging plan, and the City was given five years to fix their waste system.Seven years later, Eureka and regional water quality staff were claiming the Elk River Estuary Restoration Project would “mitigate” their problem–basically, make it go away. That claim hasn’t come up again since an environmental law firm sued the City for its criminal behavior–and won–but meanwhile, time and effluent move on. Then another piece of the story came to the surface at a Humboldt Community Services District (HCSD) meeting. The old pound property, owned by Figas Construction, the low bidder on the project, would be the site of a $4.2 million Nature Center. Because HCSD is Eureka’s junior partner in the wastewater plant, serving ratepayers from Freshwater to Fields Landing (not Elk River), it would want to help pay for this additional “mitigation” of the plant’s pollution. HCSD strongly objected, and the Nature Center sank out of sight with the mitigation claims. Its status remains unclear.Recovery from old habits requires time and constant vigilance. This project is a good beginning. Many people should be thanked for their contributions, but especially project manager Katie Marsolan, the drivers and equipment operators for their long hours, the tireless weed whackers and hand diggers of Redwood Community Action Agency, and Samara Restoration for its care in returning native plants to this damaged landscape. A few mallards have been seen checking things out. A hopeful egret. A small flock of sanderlings that came over from the beach. Nature will heal before we do.
City urged to consider environmental changes in future planning
On Tuesday, the Arcata City Council and the Arcata Planning Commission met jointly to hear about the risks sea level rise will bring to the city, and by extension the rest of Humboldt Bay.The appointed and elected bodies heard from local, state and federal sea level rise experts on how Humboldt Bay is expected to see three feet of sea level rise in the next 40 years, which will likely overrun the dikes and flood areas with key infrastructure such as U.S. Highway 101 and the city’s sewer treatment plant.“We really need to avoid putting any new things at risk in those areas. This was said before — sea level rise is not going to stop anytime soon,” Aldaron Laird, senior environmental planner at Greenway Partners, said. “It’s going to keep on going until we think we need to reduce what’s at risk and not put more development in areas that are vulnerable.”
Laird urged the council and commission to partner with other agencies, as Arcata will be limited in its ability to singlehandedly adapt to sea level rise.The full study session can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxa_9tLKdtU.Read More
The wind resource beyond Humboldt Bay is among the best in the United States, with strong, consistent wind speeds that are ideal for commercial development. There’s just one problem: electrical transmission.Getting the power from the floating offshore turbines to the shore is one thing; getting the power to communities throughout the region and across the state is another. Wind developers can run big, subsea cables from their offshore wind projects to land with relative ease, but once that power comes ashore it encounters an electrical grid that wasn’t designed to handle it.“This is going to take many years,” Rep. Jared Huffman told the Outpost in a recent phone interview. “Anyone who thinks that we are very close to manufacturing these huge turbines, getting the clean power onto the grid and adding these thousands of jobs might be disappointed. This is going to take close to a decade to really bring it all forward, but I’m hoping we can speed that up.”However, the development of offshore wind is completely dependent on California’s transmission capabilities. Those issues must be resolved before offshore wind can move forward, Huffman said.“The developers don’t know how many of these floating platforms they’ll even be able to install until they know whether there’s enough transmission to move the power onto the grid,” he continued. “To me, that’s by far the most important bottleneck here. Until you have all that figured out, you really don’t know a lot about the economics of the project. When you’re trying to negotiate community benefits and other things, you can begin those conversations now, but you can’t sign on the dotted line until you know how big the project is, how much it’s going to cost, how profitable it’s going to be. It all depends on all of these details that tie back to questions about transmission.”Read More
On Tuesday, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved forming two ad hoc committees to work on offshore wind-related issues, authorized the County Administrative Officer to execute a $851,500 grant agreement for offshore wind activity, and enacted agreements with the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation, and Conservation District, the city of Eureka and other local and tribal agencies to collaborate on port and wind development.Offshore wind in Humboldt County is still in a very early stage, though California North Floating LLC placed the winning bids for the area where turbines would be placed roughly 20 miles off the coast of Eureka. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is still reviewing the bids, but once the leases are granted, the site must be surveyed and a plethora of permits must be issued.“There’ll be a couple years of site assessments and surveys. After that, the concept of operation plan process will begin,” Scott Adair, Humboldt County’s director of economic development, said. “We are many years away from actual turbines being put into the water.”Read More
Only in two previous years — 2008 and 2009 — has California’s salmon season been shut down completely. That closure came as the numbers of spawning fish returning to the Sacramento River, the state’s main salmon producer, crashed to record lows.
Now California’s Chinook runs have collapsed again.
Just 62,000 adult fall-run Chinook returned last year to the Sacramento River to spawn, the third lowest return on record and only half of the fishery’s minimum target.
Runs on the Klamath River, in far-northern California, also have plunged, hitting 22,000 spawning adult fall-run Chinook last year, the fourth lowest return in 40 years. Native American tribes rely on the Klamath River’s salmon for traditional foods and ceremonies. What’s ailing the fish, scientists and state officials say, is a variety of factors, primarily in the rivers where salmon spawn. Large volumes of water are diverted for use by farms and cities. Combined with drought, this causes low flows and high water temperatures, which can kill salmon eggs and young fish. Vast tracts of floodplains and wetlands, where small fish can find food and refuge, have also been lost to development and flood control projects.
Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the quantity and quality of river water appear to drive salmon numbers. Eric Stockwell, a naturalist and ocean kayak fishing guide based in Humboldt County, said he wants a season closure even though it will put him out of work. He called it long overdue, given the recurring poor returns in the Sacramento and Klamath rivers. “It’s a shame seasons have been allowed even though we haven’t reached the minimum escapement spawning goals,” Stockwell said. Fishing, after all, has impacts on the salmon population, too. For many Californians, wild Chinook salmon is a rare treat. For members of California’s indigenous tribes, it is a core element of their culture and diet. In the Klamath River basin, the Karuk, Hoopa and Yurok tribes fish for Chinook salmon for subsistence. “The health of our people depends on having salmon,” said Bill Tripp, the Karuk Tribe’s director of natural resources and environmental policy. “Their survival in the basin is imperative. If they disappear, we could lose our ability to survive here.”Read More
