The lumber industry in Humboldt has been in decline for decades, and the era of luxurious Victorian mansions and railroads has been dead longer than most people living here have been alive. Even as it struggles along, the shock wave from its heyday is still causing ripples. Photo: The former Sierra Pacific Industries lumber mill in Manila is one of dozens of low-lying contaminated sites around the bay. Although the site has been partially cleaned up, contaminated groundwater beneath the buildings could move off-site as groundwater rises, impacting Mad River Slough and the bay. Photo by Jen Kalt, Dec. 24, 2022Buried in the soil at mill sites all around Humboldt are dozens of different chemicals and pollutants, ancient remnants from heavy industry that still lurk. There are so many different types that to list them all out would be impossible. However, many of these legacy contaminants could be very dangerous if they leach into groundwater or if the toxic soil isn’t properly disposed of.Some of the biggest offenders are called dioxins: long-lasting compounds that stick around long after introduction. Many of the dioxins in the former mill sites are from pentachlorophenol (PCP), which was used as a fungicide in wood products until its use was mainly restricted to utility poles and railroad ties. Before that restriction it was sprayed on greed wood in lumber mills, or even held in containers to dip wood into. It was often mixed with petroleum products to allow it to seep into the wood easier. According to Jennifer Kalt, director of Humboldt Waterkeeper, during that process PCP would get all over the ground and ooze into the soil. The people working there were hardly any better protected.“We’ve talked to a lot of people who said that they didn’t even have any kind of protective clothing, or oftentimes even gloves when they were doing that,” Kalt said. “They know now that it was potentially dangerous to be doing that, but at the time people didn’t even think about doing that kind of stuff.”Although the idea of dangerous chemicals just sitting in soil is disgusting, the real danger can be even worse when those old sites are developed. The old Hammond mill in Samoa is the proposed site of the Humboldt Bay Terminal, the launchpad for offshore windmill construction. When soil is dug up for a building foundation or septic tank for instance, the dioxins in the soil risk bleeding into the groundwater. Contaminated soil has to be dug up and properly disposed of for development to be safe. There are other options, such as chemical treating, bioremediation, or concrete caps, but doing that incorrectly can sometimes exacerbate the problem.“If groundwater is rising and flooding from below, that’s not going to work,” Kalt said. “…A lot of times the agencies that are reviewing these things are just looking at a piece of paper with drawings on it, site plans. They’re not familiar with the environment. I’ve seen government regulators approving a plan to reuse contaminated soil on one of the dikes next to the bay for the Humboldt Bay Trail that they’re building right now. They say, ‘Oh, well, it’s an industrial site so we can allow up to 200 parts per trillion of dioxins and it’ll be fine.’ And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, it will not be fine. That’s a really bad idea. It’s a kind of a constant Whack-a-Mole thing that we do to comment on these projects, because people keep proposing the same old bad ideas from past documents, and then we comment and say, actually, you shouldn’t do that.”It is a problem indeed. Dioxins are highly carcinogenic, and many concentrate as they work their way up in the food chain. Dioxins get into invertebrates. Fish and birds eat them, and birds eat those fish. Eventually, they can wind up in a human’s body. Dioxins are stored in the fatty tissues of the body, making them impossible to excrete.“Dioxins are in pretty much all animal products that we eat because they are produced by combustion and other industrial processes, but the chemical process that is the cause of it here in Humboldt Bay is very specific,” Kalt said. “And so the closer you are to a former lumber mill or penta site, the higher the concentration. It depends on the animal and where they’re living in the bay.”Removing all contaminated soils is painstaking work. The companies that own their mill sites often have no incentive to do the work. Private owners are eligible for EPA assessment grants meant to figure out the extent of chemical contamination, but not cleanup grants. According to Kalt, many landowners have no interest in spending the money to clean up their land unless there’s a prospect of redevelopment.The news isn’t all bad. There have been numerous large cleanups in the bay with big success. In 2008 Humboldt Waterkeeper, Ecological Rights Foundation, and Californians for Alternatives to Toxics won a lawsuit against Simpson Timber Company that required them to clean up a tidal wetland on Eureka’s waterfront that was infested with dioxins. The contaminated sediment was removed and a monitoring system was set up. Results from April and December of 2015 indicate that there aren’t any contaminants in the surface runoff from the site, and tides ebb and flow out of the restored wetlands. A former Sierra Pacific mill in Manila next to Mad River slough was cleaned up as part of another lawsuit. They’re not perfect—some contaminants still exist in the sediment or soil around these sites—but they are no longer actively discharging dioxins into the bay. Samples of aquatic life taken around the bay show vastly decreased levels of dioxins compared to the ‘90s.The Humboldt Bay Harbor District recently received a $500,000 US EPA grant to assess contamination at the site of the proposed offshore wind terminal. Once the extent of contamination has been identified, the District will apply for grant funding to clean up that contamination before redeveloping the site to ensure that dioxins, PCBs, heavy metals, and other contaminants are not released into the bay.“It’s not like we can’t do anything about this,” Kalt said. “We just need to be attentive and do the right thing instead of trying to pretend like it’s not happening and just ignore it, which a lot of people have done for a long time.”
The lumber industry in Humboldt has been in decline for decades, and the era of luxurious Victorian mansions and railroads has been dead longer than most people living here have been alive. Even as it struggles along, the shock wave from its heyday is still causing ripples. Photo: The former Sierra Pacific Industries lumber mill in Manila is one of dozens of low-lying contaminated sites around the bay. Although the site has been partially cleaned up, contaminated groundwater beneath the buildings could move off-site as groundwater rises, impacting Mad River Slough and the bay. Photo by Jen Kalt, Dec. 24, 2022Buried in the soil at mill sites all around Humboldt are dozens of different chemicals and pollutants, ancient remnants from heavy industry that still lurk. There are so many different types that to list them all out would be impossible. However, many of these legacy contaminants could be very dangerous if they leach into groundwater or if the toxic soil isn’t properly disposed of.Some of the biggest offenders are called dioxins: long-lasting compounds that stick around long after introduction. Many of the dioxins in the former mill sites are from pentachlorophenol (PCP), which was used as a fungicide in wood products until its use was mainly restricted to utility poles and railroad ties. Before that restriction it was sprayed on greed wood in lumber mills, or even held in containers to dip wood into. It was often mixed with petroleum products to allow it to seep into the wood easier. According to Jennifer Kalt, director of Humboldt Waterkeeper, during that process PCP would get all over the ground and ooze into the soil. The people working there were hardly any better protected.“We’ve talked to a lot of people who said that they didn’t even have any kind of protective clothing, or oftentimes even gloves when they were doing that,” Kalt said. “They know now that it was potentially dangerous to be doing that, but at the time people didn’t even think about doing that kind of stuff.”Although the idea of dangerous chemicals just sitting in soil is disgusting, the real danger can be even worse when those old sites are developed. The old Hammond mill in Samoa is the proposed site of the Humboldt Bay Terminal, the launchpad for offshore windmill construction. When soil is dug up for a building foundation or septic tank for instance, the dioxins in the soil risk bleeding into the groundwater. Contaminated soil has to be dug up and properly disposed of for development to be safe. There are other options, such as chemical treating, bioremediation, or concrete caps, but doing that incorrectly can sometimes exacerbate the problem.“If groundwater is rising and flooding from below, that’s not going to work,” Kalt said. “…A lot of times the agencies that are reviewing these things are just looking at a piece of paper with drawings on it, site plans. They’re not familiar with the environment. I’ve seen government regulators approving a plan to reuse contaminated soil on one of the dikes next to the bay for the Humboldt Bay Trail that they’re building right now. They say, ‘Oh, well, it’s an industrial site so we can allow up to 200 parts per trillion of dioxins and it’ll be fine.’ And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, it will not be fine. That’s a really bad idea. It’s a kind of a constant Whack-a-Mole thing that we do to comment on these projects, because people keep proposing the same old bad ideas from past documents, and then we comment and say, actually, you shouldn’t do that.”It is a problem indeed. Dioxins are highly carcinogenic, and many concentrate as they work their way up in the food chain. Dioxins get into invertebrates. Fish and birds eat them, and birds eat those fish. Eventually, they can wind up in a human’s body. Dioxins are stored in the fatty tissues of the body, making them impossible to excrete.“Dioxins are in pretty much all animal products that we eat because they are produced by combustion and other industrial processes, but the chemical process that is the cause of it here in Humboldt Bay is very specific,” Kalt said. “And so the closer you are to a former lumber mill or penta site, the higher the concentration. It depends on the animal and where they’re living in the bay.”Removing all contaminated soils is painstaking work. The companies that own their mill sites often have no incentive to do the work. Private owners are eligible for EPA assessment grants meant to figure out the extent of chemical contamination, but not cleanup grants. According to Kalt, many landowners have no interest in spending the money to clean up their land unless there’s a prospect of redevelopment.The news isn’t all bad. There have been numerous large cleanups in the bay with big success. In 2008 Humboldt Waterkeeper, Ecological Rights Foundation, and Californians for Alternatives to Toxics won a lawsuit against Simpson Timber Company that required them to clean up a tidal wetland on Eureka’s waterfront that was infested with dioxins. The contaminated sediment was removed and a monitoring system was set up. Results from April and December of 2015 indicate that there aren’t any contaminants in the surface runoff from the site, and tides ebb and flow out of the restored wetlands. A former Sierra Pacific mill in Manila next to Mad River slough was cleaned up as part of another lawsuit. They’re not perfect—some contaminants still exist in the sediment or soil around these sites—but they are no longer actively discharging dioxins into the bay. Samples of aquatic life taken around the bay show vastly decreased levels of dioxins compared to the ‘90s.The Humboldt Bay Harbor District recently received a $500,000 US EPA grant to assess contamination at the site of the proposed offshore wind terminal. Once the extent of contamination has been identified, the District will apply for grant funding to clean up that contamination before redeveloping the site to ensure that dioxins, PCBs, heavy metals, and other contaminants are not released into the bay.“It’s not like we can’t do anything about this,” Kalt said. “We just need to be attentive and do the right thing instead of trying to pretend like it’s not happening and just ignore it, which a lot of people have done for a long time.” 
