News

Harbor district unclear when CEO search will begin

Following the unexpect­ed termination of the har­bor district’s former chief executive officer, the Hum­boldt Bay Harbor, Recre­ation and Conservation District Commission has appointed its director of administrative service as interim CEO.

Patricia Tyson started her new position Thursday after the commission unan­imously appointed her in a special meeting Wednesday night.

Board President Mike Wilson said the board plans to start its search for a per­manent CEO as soon as possible, and was pleased with the decision.

“The board appreciates Patti’s willingness to step into the position to assist the district and I, along with the rest of the board, look forward to working with her,” he said.

Tyson has worked for the Harbor District for the past 14 years as their director of administrative services “and has extensive knowl­edge of district operations, policies and ongoing proj­ects,” according to a release sent out by the district. Tyson is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the district and will assist the commissioners with their search for the district’s next CEO.

Wilson said the board has not decided on the details of the search process, but will discuss it soon.

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9/20/11

A powerful case for breaching four economically and functionally obsolete dams

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar won't make his formal declaration on the future of four dams on the Klamath River for six months, but it's as good as done. You can write it down: Those dams are history.

A draft environmental impact statement due for release Thursday will make a powerful case for the world's largest dam removal and restoration effort. In a speech Monday in San Francisco, Salazar previewed the report, revealing that it puts the cost at taking down the four dams at roughly $290 million -- far less than the previously announced $450 million price tag. 

That's encouraging news, and so, too, are some of the other numbers in the environmental analysis. Salazar said that dam removal and watershed restoration could add more than 4,600 jobs over 14 years. Meanwhile, delivering more reliable water supplies could strengthen agriculture and add hundreds of farm jobs annually. You can question those job estimates -- they are educated guesses -- but it's obvious that stronger salmon runs and consistent irrigation deliveries are going to mean more jobs. You only have to look back five years, to 2006, when low returns of Klamath salmon forced a near-total shutdown of the West Coast salmon fishery, wiping out jobs and badly damaging coastal economies.

Moreover, there's no good argument left for keeping these dams. Their federal licenses have expired and complying with today's fish passage and water quality regulations would require hundreds of millions of dollars in new investments, and cost their owner PacifiCorp, and its ratepayers, far more than the 2 percent surcharge applied to help defray the costs of dam removal and replacing their generation.

Everyone can see that the Klamath is a slow-moving and sick river that ill-serves everyone who depends on it, from farmers to fishermen to Native American tribes. Looking at it now, a river plagued by toxic algae that killed 60,000 returning salmon in 2002, it's hard to believe that once upon a time the Klamath supported the third largest salmon run on the entire West Coast.

The Klamath will never be that river again. The guaranteed irrigation withdrawals always will be a limiting factor, even if the federal government delivers the hoped-for half-billion-dollar investment called for in the Klamath River accords worked out by a diverse collection of more than 40 interest groups over the past five years.

But the Klamath can and will be a better, healthier, cleaner and more productive river than it's been for decades. Removing the four dams would allow threatened wild coho salmon to reclaim 68 miles of historical habitat, and open more than 400 miles of river to the hardy steelhead that used to power up the Klamath. It's surely true that most of those miles and miles of river are in poor condition. But putting the Klamath right begins with getting it moving again.

In his speech Monday, Salazar said "naysayers" are still trying to unravel the Klamath accords and stop the breaching of the dams. Critics of dam removal abound in places such as Oregon's Klamath County and California's Siskiyou County. But from here, it's hard to see what they think they are protecting by fighting for the dams.

The Klamath dams, like those being dismantled on Washington's Elwha River, are economically and functionally obsolete. Preserving them would cost far more than breaching them. These dams are coming down, and when they finally do, the river and everyone who depends on it will be better off. 

Original Article

9/17/11

The sudden death of thousands of red abalone and other invertebrates along the Sonoma County Coast over the past few weeks has prompted state wildlife officials to propose an indefinite ban on abalone fishing while biologists search for a cause.

The California Fish and Game Commission passed an emergency order Thursday to close the only abalone fishery in the state after continued reports of dead mollusks along the shoreline and in the water in Bodega Bay, Russian Gulch, Fort Ross, Timber Cove and Salt Point State Park.

California Department of Fish and Game officials said the mass die-off was caused by an unusual and virulent red tide.

"It is an unprecedented event," said Ian Taniguchi, the senior marine biologist for fish and game. "It's definitely going to affect the fishery. It is such a significant event that it may change how we manage the overall abalone fishery in the future."

Taniguchi said the red tide, which is a large bloom of phytoplankton, suddenly appeared late last month. Abalone divers reported a dark reddish brown tide and very low visibility. On Aug. 27, huge numbers of dead abalone, urchins, starfish and gumboot chitons, an oval shaped mollusk, were strewn all over the beaches, he said.

The carnage continued at a startling pace. Tom Jahng, 39, who was diving in the Fort Ross and Timber Cove areas on Sept. 5, said he encountered the rotting carcasses of hundreds of abalone and other mollusks on the beach and lying underwater.

"In the shallows, within the first quarter-mile of diving, there was just dead abalone and sea urchin everywhere," said Jahng, 39, of Los Angeles, who grew up in the Bay Area and often dives along the pristine Sonoma coast, which is normally teeming with colorful urchins and sea life. "I was heartbroken. I was devastated. It was a graveyard."

Taniguchi said the deadly bloom spread from Bodega Bay all the way to Anchor Bay, in southern Mendocino County, but the hardest hit area was at Fort Ross. A team of biologist divers from the department estimated that 30 percent of the red abalone at Fort Ross had died. At Timber Cove, 25 percent were dead. Some 12 percent of the abalone at Salt Point died too, according to the survey.

Marine scientists up and down the coast are trying to figure out what caused the tide and why it is so deadly. One possibility is that the phytoplankton was so plentiful that it sucked all the oxygen out of the water, suffocating invertebrates. The other theory is that this particular plankton species is emitting biotoxins that are essentially poisoning sea life.

"We haven't figured out for sure yet, but we are leaning more toward toxic poisoning," Taniguchi said.

The makeup of this particular tide is of particular interest to biologists, who took samples and found that the most abundant organism in the killer bloom was an algal species called Gonyaulax spinifera. This particular spore creates a biotoxin called Yessotoxin, which was found in low levels in the dead abalone, Taniguchi said.

"We have never seen this species off our coast in California as far as we know, at least not in a large algal bloom like this one," said Taniguchi, adding that the species was also found in blooms this summer in Washington state. "There is not much known about this particular biotoxin, but it appears to affect invertebrates."