News

California’s planning a renewable energy project at a scale never before attempted in the world

The Newsom administration’s path to net-zero carbon emissions runs through one of the state’s poorer, most remote areas.

A 300-foot tall smokestack from a defunct paper mill looms over the port in Humboldt Bay, a relic of the timber industry that once defined the northwestern corner of California along with the struggling salmon fishing industry and sputtering marijuana trade.

But a gust of optimism has arrived in Humboldt County over plans to develop offshore wind at a depth and scale never before attempted in the world – sparking hope and anxiety in a region that has lived through repeated boom-and-bust cycles and ended up with one of the lower per-capita incomes in the state.

“This is a generational project,” said Jeff Hunerlach, secretary-treasurer of a council of construction unions for Humboldt and neighboring Del Norte County. “I could work 20 years on this project and my kid could work 20 years on this project.”

The offshore wind proposal, driven by the Biden and Newsom administration efforts to dramatically increase renewable energy, would erect dozens of turbines three times the size of that smokestack with blades as long as a football field in an area of the Pacific Ocean nearly 10 times the size of Manhattan.

But the project faces a host of major challenges. They include not just the obvious economic and bureaucratic hurdles but also a widespread distrust of outsiders in a region where indiscriminate logging engendered deep resentment and where an illegal marijuana industry created a counterculture haven in the fog-shrouded mountains.

The region is still recovering from mistakes of the past. International wind developers are pitching their projects just as many residents celebrate the removal of Klamath River dams the Yurok Tribe and the fishing industry fought for decades. The structures destroyed rich salmon habitat to export hydropower even as many native people lived without electricity.

“It has to be done right,” said Yurok Vice Chairman Frankie Myers. “Because we have to avoid being in the same position we are now 50 years from now. I’ve spent most of my life fighting the dams. I do not want to leave my children a fight to remove offshore wind.”

leaders such as Yurok Tribal Court Judge Abby Abinanti worry how the expected influx of construction and manufacturing labor, some likely to occupy temporary “mancamps,” will affect vulnerable people such as native women who already go missing and are killed at higher rates than other groups.

“Our concern is that these camps end up elevating those kinds of statistics unless preventative efforts are made,” said Abinanti.

She also wants to make sure women have the same access as men to the new jobs through training.

Humboldt County beaches not on recent ‘bummer’ list - but Clam Beach still gets an F

A rarity for the past decade, Humboldt County did not have a single beach on a list of the state’s top 10 most polluted beaches.

Since 2013, Clam Beach County Park at Strawberry Creek made the worst-in-the-state list eight times. Luffenholtz Beach made two of those years and last year featured Moonstone Beach County Park on the list for the first time. However, Clam Beach still received an F grade for summer water quality.

“Unfortunately, we had a lot of beaches with bad grades, so maybe it’s not a great achievement to make it off the list this year,” said Katherine Pease, director of science and policy with Heal the Bay, a nonprofit that creates the list with county-submitted data measuring beach water contaminants.

“Regardless of the sources, people can avoid exposure to bacterial pollution by avoiding contact with water for a few days after major rainstorms. Another general rule is to swim, surf, and play in the ocean away from creek mouths and stormwater discharge pipes,” Jennifer Kalt, director of Humboldt Baykeeper, said in an email.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Taking First Steps in Possible Reintroduction of Sea Otters

At an open house hosted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to gather input on the possible reintroduction of sea otters to parts of their historical range from the Bay Area to Oregon, a phrase repeated often was the process was still "on the ground floor."

The informal Sunday event on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus — one of 16 to take place in West Coast coastal communities from Astoria to Emeryville — saw USFW staff, including sea otter experts, manning a series of tables with presentations on everything from the endangered species' biology and role as a keystone species to previous reintroduction efforts and potential socio-economic effects on local communities, as well as next steps.

While the staff was there to answer questions, one of the key points of the sessions, they said, was to listen and take in feedback as the service begins the information-gathering portion of an extensive process that will be years in the works before any decision on whether to proceed is made.

"We are interested in hearing a range of perspectives," said Lilian Carswell, USFW's southern sea otter recovery and marine conservation coordinator, adding that includes people's thoughts on reintroduction and their concerns, especially on the socio-economic front. "We are way at the beginning and we want to hear from people and really want to understand their perspectives."

Returning sea otters could revive kelp forests

Sea otters, which hunt shellfish, crab and kelp-devouring sea urchins, are at the top of the kelp-forest food chain. Without otters, those ecosystems have been slowly degrading, and in 2013 they hit a catastrophic tipping point: A mysterious disease — possibly triggered by warming ocean temperatures — caused a continent-spanning die-off of sea stars, which had filled otters’ role as the top predator of sea urchins. Unchecked, urchins proliferated, causing the widespread collapse of kelp forests: In Northern California, they’ve shrunk by more than 90%, replaced by urchin-filled barrens. Researchers believe reintroducing sea otters may be one of the only ways to save what’s left.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in an assessment published last month that returning sea otters to Oregon and Northern California is feasible and would also bring likely — if unequal — economic benefits. Scientists and tribal leaders say reintroducing otters would restore balance to degraded kelp forests, boost fish species, protect shorelines, generate tourist dollars and even capture carbon. But concerns remain in communities where otters would compete with humans for shellfish, and among some tribes that fear their self-governance is also at stake.
The feasibility assessment is the latest step in a reintroduction effort championed by Oregon’s Elakha Alliance, an otter conservation nonprofit founded by tribal members and scientists. Peter Hatch, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and an Elakha Alliance board member, said their significance to ecosystems and tribes drives the organization’s work. Though generations have passed since otters were hunted to near extinction, many places still bear their name in tribal languages. Stories about them depict a relationship that epitomizes the interconnections between humans and the rest of the natural world.

One site likely to be considered is near Port Orford in southern Oregon, where one of the few remaining large kelp forests offers ideal habitat. The area is a stop on the Run to the Rogue, an annual 234-mile relay that retraces the Siletz Tribes’ forced relocation. When Oregon and the federal government removed families from the area more than 150 years ago, Peter Hatch said, sea otters were still present. Today, the relay is an important act of remembrance, community and homecoming.

“Bringing sea otters back to our ancestral lands is a different kind of homecoming,” Hatch said. “I look forward to the day when we’ll be celebrating in Port Orford and be able to see the sea otters out in the water, as the folks from there always had been able to.”

More Than 5,000 Toxic Sites Along SF Bay Threatened by Rising Groundwater

More than 5,200 toxic sites buried along the shore of San Francisco Bay could be impacted by rising groundwater levels over the next century, posing potentially severe risks to human and environmental health, according to a recently released study.

That’s more than 10 times as many potentially at-risk Bay Area sites as had been identified in previous reports. A disproportionate number are located in lower-income communities of color, including in low-lying areas of San Francisco, Richmond, West Oakland and East Palo Alto.

Unlike much lower tallies from the federal and state agencies that oversee these sites, Hill’s study includes 1,480 open sites, which are in the process of being cleaned up or have not yet been cleaned up, as well as an additional 3,817 closed sites where some level of cleanup work may have been conducted, but that may still contain residual contaminants and be vulnerable to rising groundwater.

“It’s like a graveyard,” said Kristina Hill, director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Urban and Regional Development, who co-authored the study. “Everything we’ve done in the past is coming up with that groundwater to haunt us in the present.”

The two state agencies in charge of enforcing cleanup of the sites, Hill said, need “to flip a switch” to the default goal of removing or neutralizing contaminants.

“It’s a solvable problem. But it requires us to dig up the graves,” she said, emphasizing the need to consider rising groundwater levels in future climate adaptation plans.

“The idea is not to run away from these places,” she added. “The idea is to make them safe and healthy again.”

Cleanup of toxic sites can range from digging up contaminants and trucking debris to contained locations, treating toxics directly on-site, or capping the pollutants in the ground with materials like cement to prevent them from leaking. That third option, Hill said, is likely not a good long-term solution because groundwater rise will generally circumvent barriers over time.