The LookOut is a monthly review of climate issues and recent
developments in our neighborhood.
The new deadline for the County Action Plan is April of next
year—almost a year after the projected date still on the county
website. By the time the Climate Action Plan is official, we’ll have five
and a half years to fulfill its already belated and optimistic promises.
Two consulting firms assisting the county in preparing the
Environmental Impact Report for the Plan—Rincon and LACO—met with
the planning department in February to kick the project off.
If all goes as now scheduled, a Notice of Preparation will inform the
public on June 12 of this year that the Environmental Impact
Report process has begun. The public has a thirty day chance for early
comments on the proposed project, alternatives, and potential
environmental impacts. During that time the county will meet with the
Department of Environmental Quality and other agencies to review the
administrative DEIR–a draft of the draft–to make sure it is legal and conforms to state
guidelines before coming up for a second public review on November
28.
The second period of public review will last for 45 days with public
meetings scheduled throughout Humboldt’s various jurisdictions. The
final EIR will then be prepared and presented in April of next year
to first the Planning Commission and then the Board of Supervisors.
With a General Plan that doesn’t recognize California’s
requirements to reduce our emissions 40% by 2030 and a CAP that won’t
fill the bill either, Humboldt abstains from meaningful action.
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The ghost of a future Gateway Area development hung over a
study session on sea level rise that was convened by the Arcata City
Council and the Planning Commission. The question studied was how to
plan for city growth when we don’t know how high the water will
come. The panel of experts included Aldaron Laird, a senior
environmental planner who has been studying local sea level rise for
more than twenty years. He was joined by Jeff Anderson, a local
hydrologist and engineer. NOAA and the Coastal Commission,
represented respectively by Gwen Shaughnessy and Kelsey Ducklow,
attended by Zoom. You can watch the very interesting two and a half
hour meeting here.
Of course, no definite answers emerged because the predictions after
2050 range quite a bit. By 2050 to maybe 2070 it’s reasonable to
expect and plan for up to three feet of sea level rise even though it
could be somewhat lower. Any further in the future, the variation
between best case scenario and worst case scenario diverge widely
from two to seven feet or more of sea level rise by 2100. But as
Laird pointed out, sea level rise will not stop then.
So planning comes down to risk tolerance and adaptation—what can we
live with? The panelists all agreed that when it comes to critical
infrastructure the more dire predictions should be heeded. But maybe
not all residential or commercial buildings should toe the same line.
Anderson seemed the most sanguine about the risk within reasonable
limits. He suggested that whatever problems might loom because of
decisions we make now aren’t irrevocable. We will most likely find
technical fixes and adaptations.
Laird suggested a more conservative and definite metric, saying that
going by a scenario of ten feet in a hundred years time should be the
metric used before building anything, including houses. The Coastal
Commission may require any development taking place within the
coastal zone to fall within this limit.
Nine feet of sea level rise would affect only the southern edge of
the Gateway area and perhaps only during high tides and without
taking into account any adaptive measures. Probable dates for that
level range from eighty to a hundred years from now. But another
question related to the Gateway area concerns Arcata’s wastewater
treatment plant. According to a senior engineer at the wastewater
treatment plant, the levees are high enough until 2050, but as some
point it will need to be moved, and to where would it move if not
into a part of the Gateway area? No one addressed the last unspoken
question. Laird also pointed out that salt water intrusion into sewer
lines could seriously undermine the functioning of the plant even
before the levees are due to be topped.
This issue of saltwater intrusion and emerging groundwater was
perhaps the most sobering point expressed at the meeting. Even if the
Coastal Commission relaxed its rules about extending or armoring
dikes—and Ducklow all but promised that it would do so in order to
protect critical infrastructure—Laird said that heightening the
dikes would do no good in the long run because rising sea levels
would push groundwater up from below. So a dike could hold back the
tides, yet freshwater wetlands and open water would stand behind
them. Fortunately, a groundwater modeling tool specifically for the
Humboldt Bay area is due to become available from US Geological
Survey in September of this year.

Graphic courtesy of Lost Coast Outpost
To
get ready for offshore wind prospects,
the Board of Supervisors have formed two ad hoc committees.
One objective is how to spend an $851,500 grant from the California
Employment Development Division. Others include hammering out a
collaborative blueprint with the Harbor District and local governments
and tribal agencies; a community engagement plan; and negotiating
with wind developers for supply chain community benefits. Supervisors
Bohn and Bushnell were appointed to one of the committees and
Supervisors Arroyo and Wilson to the other.
In
addition to these ad hoc committees, local governments, environmental
groups, tribes, fishing interests, labor organizations, local
businesses, Cal Poly and College of the Redwoods–you name it—have
also joined forces under the auspices of Core-HUB
to descend upon the two developers—RWE, second largest wind
developer in the world and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners– to
negotiate for further Community Benefits Agreements. In response to
their pre-auction negotiating, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
assigned a record amount of non-monetary bid credits to Humboldt;
however, it remains to be seen if a portion of auction proceeds will
be directed to community benefits instead of federal coffers.
OSW
will have big impacts
on our community, especially the fishing industry, and the resolute
hope is to make them positive ones
with environmental safeguards and fairly distributed financial
benefits—especially among groups that are typically left out.
Despite
this flurry of planning, site surveys,
environmental reviews
and permitting
puts the actual
construction of wind turbines seven to ten years away. Construction
will probably take two years, and that would be just for an initial
small-scale project. An ultimate build-out will take longer and
require two new transmission lines out of Humboldt—a huge hurdle.
Potential routes could head south underwater—skipping Humboldt–or
come ashore near Eureka before going south or east or both. These
decisions will be made at state level.
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The Board of Supervisors revised its approval for the McKay
Ranch housing development on March
7. Almost a year earlier, it had conditionally approved
the original project over the objections of a coalition of
environmental groups, including 350 Humboldt. The coalition pointed
to the project’s unmitigated contributions to GHG emissions,
according to its own Final Environmental Impact Report.
Two of the environmental demands have now been met. The developer,
Kurt Kramer, has agreed to make the buildings all-electric.
Considering that natural gas is supposed to sunset in a little over
twenty years, gas hookups would be obsolete anyway. Not installing
them would seem to save money over the not-so-long run. However,
Kramer says that the all-electric requirement will complicate matters.
The
other improvement involves more amenities for bicycles and
pedestrians to partially make up for the
development’s
distance from mass transit. Other transportation improvements
suggested by Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities—such
as free bus passes for apartment residents and reducing the amount of
subsidized parking—did not make the cut.

Graphic courtesy of Lost Coast Outpost
Seaweed is good for the ocean and all of its creatures,
including us. Representative Mary Peltola of Alaska and California’s
second district Representative Jared Huffman want to encourage more
of it with the Coastal Seaweed Farm Act of 2023. If passed, this bill
will direct the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National
Oceanic Atmospheric Administration to conduct a joint study of the
benefits and impacts of seaweed farming. HR 1461 would also
create a grant program for coastal indigenous communities who want to
apply their traditional knowledge of mariculture to commercial
seaweed projects, which often cost a lot to start.
The joint report would help establish regulations and evaluation
metrics to site farms advantageously for both commercial and
ecosystem benefits. Both are huge, according to seaweed fans. Seaweed
can be utilized as fertilizer and animal feed, not to mention human
cuisine. It can even serve as stock for bio-plastics. Most
importantly, seaweed cleans the water (bio-remediation), sequesters
carbon and provides habitat for marine life.
Many types of aquaculture, including mariculture, (for the difference
between the two, click here) can have negative impacts on the
environment if not scaled appropriately. Using native cultures as “seed stock” seems important as well. Here is a realistic look at the risks of large-scale seaweed farming.
Seaweed
farming has long been a large industry in Asia. The western world is
now following suit. Cal Poly Humboldt began studying and farming dulse
a couple of years ago under the direction of Professor Rafael Cuevas
Uribe in collaboration with Karen Gray of GreenWave. Now they have
branched out to kelp. This vital study is very timely, considering
the recent collapse and then widespread recovery of the kelp forest along the north coast.
Interesting Listening
Hear how thirteen
free e-bikes in Denver led to a cascade of climate benefits.
Electric
trucks are fine if you
need one, but they’re not the road to salvation.
Interesting
Reading
Okay,
so lying fossil fuel barons
delayed climate progress for forty years, sowing mass death and
destruction and endangering the future of global civilization, but
does that mean they are guilty of crimes against humanity?
Are
we perhaps clutching at
hydrogen a little too blindly? Some questions
we should ask.
Can we be enduring
the throes of peak oil demand? Here is an important indication.
It’s
official—a
heat pump water heater will save you money
even if you’re switching from gas