9/18/12

It was standing-room only at yesterday’s special meeting of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors.

“Was it something I said?” joked Fifth District Supervisor Ryan Sundberg, who last week expressed confusion and concern over the general plan update process and suggested possible changes to that process. Many, including this reporter and Sundberg’s fellow supervisor, Mark Lovelace, interpreted those comments as the opening salvo in an effort to undo some or all of the work that has been done on the update process thus far. Not so, Sundberg asserted.

“Just to be clear, I don’t want to kill the general plan. I don’t want to start over.” Sundberg said he was just seeking a way to clearly track the changes between the existing framework plan, which has been in effect since 1984, and the updated draft, 12 years in the making and approved by the planning commission. “I take responsibility for my part in not being clear about that,” Sundberg said.

Interim Planning and Building Department Director Martha Spencer then laid out a proposed method to help make things more clear. For each element of the general plan under consideration, Spencer said, staff would prepare two reports: one looking back and the other looking forward. Report No. 1 would compare the framework plan with the planning commission-approved draft (as Sundberg requested) and provide background on the reasons for any changes. This would be prepared prior to any board vote on the element in question.

Report No. 2 would be prepared after the vote, examining the big-picture implications of the board’s decision, clearly stating the changes that had been made to the framework plan and providing a potential blueprint for implementation.

Sundberg was pleased, and tranquility settled across the land.

Or not. The crowd had come loaded for bear, and while many commenters eased off the trigger in appreciation of Sundberg’s comments, most fired away. Developers, contractors and other property-rights advocates thanked the three conservative supervisors for the suggestion they now disavowed — namely, starting from scratch with the 1984 framework plan and updating it just enough to comply with state and federal laws.

Others, including environmental activists, argued that the update process represents years of hard work and compromise from all corners and urged the board to move forward.

Even county planning commissioners, who spent years helping to craft the current draft plan, disagreed on the best approach. Current Second District Commissioner Mel Kreb urged the board to respect the efforts of others. “You inherited the work done by previous supervisors, planning department staff and the planning commission. You need to ask yourself if you trust any of the work that those people did, because you repeatedly hear from people here who say you should not trust anything that’s ever been done in this process. And I just reject that idea outright. It’s an insult,” Kreb said. “You must get to work.”

But former commission chair Jeff Smith urged the board to think independently. “None of you were on the board when this ship set sail … but the bottom line is, whether you’ve been on the board for 15 minutes or 15 years, it doesn’t matter. This is gonna be your plan, and it’s up to you to do what you think is right.”

Public comments continued for nearly three hours, leaving the supervisors no time to proceed with the task at hand — continuing its review of the general plan’s land use element. Instead, the board elected to skip the remainder of that contentious element for now and move on to chapters five and six (community infrastructure/services and telecommunications) at the next meeting, to be held Oct. 1. Staff will prepare new reports for those chapters, as proposed.

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9/14/12

The video of Monday’s contentious general plan update meeting of the county board of supervisors is now available for viewing (here). If you have the time it’s well worth your while.

The original report on the meeting mentioned a handful of reasons offered by the board’s new conservative majority — Ryan Sundberg, Rex Bohn and Virginia Bass — for throwing the switch to derail the general plan update process, now in its 13th year. But as the full video reveals, over the course of the meeting this trio of supervisors suggested a wide variety of excuses for undoing much of the work that’s been done so far. Here are the ones we caught. (The relevant debate starts around the 84-minute mark.)

1. It’s too confusing
“I guess the more I look at this the more confused I get. … It’s super-overwhelming to me, I know, to try to go through this thing and understand it. The more I read it, it seems like, the more backwards I get. So [Bohn and I] met with [Interim Planning and Building Department Director] Martha [Spencer] to ask, is there a way we can bring this thing down to something digestible … basically take the [1984] framework plan, is what we talked about, and then making it up to state code[emphasis added].”

     —Ryan Sundberg

“I wished I had the knowledge that, I mean, that Mark [Lovelace] had. He’s got to work on this for 12 years. I’d like to have some of that knowledge so maybe I’d have a little bit of understanding.”

     —Rex Bohn

2. Though nearly complete, the updated plan might somehow cost more money than scrapping it and starting over
“I don’t know if we can afford the plan that’s here. I think we can afford a Yugo and I think we’re building a Cadillac sometimes with all the extra addendums and everything else when we just need to worry about the state and federal mandates.”

     —Rex Bohn

3. Private property rights and values need more protection
“I made promises to people that I would protect their property rights and their property values, and I’ve got to stand by that. And if somebody up here can say that property rights and property values are gonna be held in whole when this gets through, I’ll vote for the whole thing right now and we can walk away from here, but I don’t think anybody can do that.”

     —Rex Bohn

“Getting all this paper and documents at one time and trying to digest it and know what’s in it and be able to look somebody in the eyes at the end of this and say, ‘This is not going to affect your property rights. This is doing what we want it to do’ — I just don’t know how I can get there with this.”

     —Ryan Sundberg

4. [?]
“We gotta start a new plan in a year anyway.”

     —Rex Bohn

5. Someone might sue the county for reasons unknown
“I’m worried that at the end of this it’s gonna be sued, [though we’ll] probably get sued anyways.”

     —Ryan Sundberg

“I don’t want to make it the lawyers’ full-employment plan.”

     —Rex Bohn

6. The update and its supporting documents have too many pages
“This just is so big. I had a conversation with [former county supervisor] Jill [Duffy] this morning and asked, ‘How did this thing get this big?’ … Is there a way to pare it down to make it more understandable for me, for the general public, for people who are going to come in and get permits?”

     —Ryan Sundberg

7. Despite holding more than 200 public meetings, the county didn’t give people in rural areas enough opportunity to comment
“The one thing I got out of so many meetings, there’s always somebody to get up and says, ‘You haven’t come at the citizens advisory committees.’ That pops up, and I’m just grabbing it ‘cause it’s in my notes in about three places. We heard from Mattole and Honeydew. They didn’t feel like they were included. … I don’t know what we did in Willow Creek, Orleans and the outside areas.”

     —Rex Bohn

8. Virginia Bass’s vague sense of unease at fate’s unpredictability
“What my uncomfortableness at this point, especially when you, you know, we’re looking at the document, we have asked for so much information … but what I don’t have in there, and I have never really asked or we haven’t really been able to get to the bottom of, which really rises to my radar today is, again, the unintended consequences and my needing to have a level of confidence in moving forward.”

     —Virginia Bass

9. No big government
“The level of governance — how much more bureaucracy are we throwing in on top of this?

     —Rex Bohn

Members of staff, along with Supervisors Mark Lovelace and Clif Clendenen, attempted to address this dizzying barrage of complaints. Lovelace said breaking the plan up and addressing its individual elements piece by piece, as Sundberg suggested, would be impractical since the elements are all interrelated. Spencer added that breaking the process up would only make it longer and more complex, since each piece would require a separate environmental impact report. Addressing concerns over litigation, she said breaking the plan up would be far worse. “Your board is always subject to more litigation the more environmental documents we do.”

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For More on the Latest GPU Kerfuffle...

Public Involvement, So Crucial And So Stupidly Disregarded

Kevin Hoover, Arcata Eye - 9/17/12

The Supes’ GPU Swerve: Where We’re At and Where We’re Going
Hank Sims, Lost Coast Outpost - 9/14/12

Options covered at next general plan update meeting; county staff to ask supes if they want new review materials
Megan Hansen, Times Standard - 9/13/12

EXCLUSIVE: That ‘Simplified’ General Plan Update
Hank Sims, Lost Coast Outpost - 9/11/12

Baykeeper’s Jen Kalt on the Board of Supervisor’s Sudden General Plan Right Turn
Hank Sims, Lost Coast Outpost - 9/11/12

C U, GPU?
Ryan  Burns, North Coast Journal Blogthing - 9/11/12

Dead Plan Walking: Matters get tense as new majority of Supervisors prepare to kill General Plan Update
Thomas Bradshaw
, Humboldt Sentinel - 9/10/12

Just three years after she was found covered in oil and near death, a California sea otter called Olive is a new mom — another milestone for the first otter to survive an oiling in the state.

9/14/12

The California Department of Fish and Game said Friday that "Olive the Oiled Otter" was spotted recently swimming on her back with a pup resting on her belly.

"Olive is an attentive mother, frequently grooming, nursing and holding her pup," the agency said in a statement.

The birth continued the remarkable story of the animal rescued in 2009 from a beach near Santa Cruz. It also was welcome news following a recent state and federal study that found tepid growth of the threatened California sea otter population on the Central Coast.

Scientists say oil is especially harmful to the species that has the thickest coat of any mammal. When the animal's coat is damaged by oil, its skin is exposed to cold water, which can lead to hypothermia and death because otters don't have a layer of blubber like other marine mammals.

The U.S. Geological Survey said there are 2,792 sea otters left in the California population, which spans more than 200 miles of the Central Coast, from Morro Bay to Half Moon Bay.

The animals once ranged from Mexico to Alaska, but they were hunted to near extinction in the early 20th century for their fur.

David Jessup, a veterinarian with the state wildlife agency who washed Olive, said the animal was "circling the drain" when she arrived.

"She was in very bad condition," Jessup said. "She had probably been oiled for some period of time and (had) not eaten."

For the previous two years, he had been researching techniques for washing oil off otters — the Monterey coast sees regular natural seepage, which likely was the source of Olive's oil.

Jessup and others bathed the otter in olive oil — hence the name — which he'd found could loosen the tar-like oil off the thick fur. Once cleaned, Olive was fed by Jessup and his staff.

After she recovered, Olive was outfitted with a microchip and transmitter and released back into the wild, where scientists have tracked and studied her.

Veterinarians understand the immediate health effects of oil on wildlife, but little is known about long-term impacts.

That makes Olive and her baby especially interesting to marine biologists.

"Few animals are available for long-term follow-up," said Bill Van Bonn, a veterinarian at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, which rescues and rehabilitates marine mammals. "It illustrates the value of rehabilitation work."

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9/10/2012

The Northcoast Environmental Center will sponsor the 28th annual California Coastal Cleanup Day next Saturday (Sept. 15) from 9 a.m. to noon. Volunteers will scour Humboldt County shorelines, from the Klamath River to Shelter Cove and inland to Willow Creek and the South Fork Eel River, to remove debris that has accumulated over the past year.

While much of the garbage contaminating the sea comes from ships, an estimated 60 percent to 80 percent of it originates on land. Cigarette butts, plastic bags, fishing line, six-pack rings, bottles, cans, syringes, tires are just a few of the items commonly found polluting beaches and waterways. It's not only ugly, it can be a health-and safety risk to both humans and wildlife.

Thirty-six years ago, the NEC received federal funding for its Humboldt Beach Beautification and Restoration project, which combined beach cleanup with community education and job training. In 1985, it expanded into California Coastal Cleanup Day (led by the Coastal Commission) and the International Coastal Cleanup (led by the Ocean Conservancy).

Today, the International Coastal Cleanup includes 130 countries and all 50 U.S. states. Last year 598,076 volunteers throughout the world removed 9 million pounds of debris from 20,776 miles of shoreline.

This year's event will also provide one of the first opportunities for documenting debris on the shores that may be a result of last year's devastating tsunami in Japan, when an estimated 1.5 million tons of debris were washed out to sea. The West Coast has already begun to feel its impact, as items as small as a soccer ball and as large as a 100-ton pier have washed ashore north of the California border. None of the items recovered in Humboldt County so far -- including those found on Mad River Beach in June -- have been confirmed to be tsunami debris. To achieve a better understanding of when or if the debris from the tsunami is reaching local shores, the NEC in coordination with the Coastal Commission will be distributing a new, simplified data card for use at selected beaches. These cards will collect information about items that could potentially indicate tsunami debris, and will provide a baseline of data against which future cleanups will be measured.

”Given that Humboldt County's coastline will likely be among the first to be hit in the state, we expect the NEC's Tsunami Debris Monitoring Program will be helpful not only in gathering data, but serving as a watchdog for counties to the south,” said Dan Ehresman, NEC programs manager. “While Japan's tsunami will likely increase the amount of debris washing up on shorelines on the North Coast, we hope it does not take the attention away from the fact that we have a veritable tsunami of debris coming from our own shorelines and inland areas throughout the county.”

For more information, visit www.yournec.org or call 822-6918.

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