The LookOut is a monthly digest of climate issues and activities in our neighborhood during May of 2022
Fighting off the
coal train just got a little more serious, thanks to the federal
Surface Transportation Board. Its recent ruling on the old
decrepit Northwestern Pacific Railroad line between Humboldt and the
Bay Area denied the North Coast Railroad Authority the authority to
railbank the railroad for the Great Redwood Trail and the
Annie and Mary Trail between Arcata and Eureka. Rather chillingly,
the STB ruled that two parties–Mendocino Railway and the North Coast
Railroad Company–must be allowed to make their proposals to revive
railroad service. The NCRC appears to be the shadowy corporation
that wants to run coal from the Crow Tribe reservation in Montana to
the port in Humboldt.
This
decision probably resulted from complaints put to the STB about a
national slowdown in coal deliveries that some industries see as a
threat to the power grid even though coal has been playing a smaller
role in power production. According to this article from a rail industry periodical,
the problem at the heart of many supply chain issues can be traced to
a shortage of train crews. However, the NCRC aims to export
coal overseas, precisely because domestic markets for coal are
declining. A very similar scheme has targeted Cherry Point in
Washington.
After
referring to this new federal development as “the worst case
scenario” in a message to his constituents, Senator McGuire reassured everyone that California legislation SB 307
will stop any new train proposals in its tracks. Here is a website
for joining the resistance.
photo courtesy of Lost Coast Outpost
A lumber mill in
Korbel hopes to build a biomass electricity plant. It has
solicited letters of support from 5th District Supervisor Steve
Madrone and Redwood Coast Energy Authority in hopes of procuring a
grant to fund a feasibility study.
North Fork Lumber Company in Korbel is owned and operated by Frank Schmidbauer.
Currently, its mill waste is trucked to the plant in Anderson, also
owned by Schmidbauer. So the issue of how to deal with mill waste is
phrased as “how do you want this wood burned–locally or
transported by carbon-spewing diesel truck to Redding?” The
aspiration to do something less polluting and less carbon-intensive
never even makes it to the table.
Granted, most of the
eco-friendly alternatives–such as gasification or nanocellulose
technology–are more expensive than your typical co-generation plant. Composting, however, is an inexpensive method of converting
mill waste to something useful though it doesn’t produce electricity.
Meanwhile, the official designation of burning biomass as a carbon-neutral
climate solution is responsible for clear-cutting in many parts of
the world while making the problem of climate change even worse.
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Sea
level rise will not catch us by surprise.
Multiple county planning agencies and state agencies have studied it,
plus we’re lucky to have the brain power of the university. Cal Poly
Humboldt started the collaborative Sea Level Rise Initiative four
years ago that has brought together numerous organizations, including
tribes, academics and nonprofit groups. Its Osher Lifelong Learning
Institute (OLLI) convenes a SLR group every month, led by Jerry Rhode
and Aldaron Laird, who was one of the first people to study and map
SLR. The land around Humboldt Bay is the most extensively studied
because it is subsiding as the sea rises. Consequently, two feet of
SLR can be expected by 2050 and an additional foot twenty years
later.
But
just because we’ve been watching the sea approach doesn’t mean we’re prepared.
Humboldt County’s Grand Jury of 2022 has identified twelve different
major problems that must be fixed before 2050–such as sections of
Highway 101 and 255, the Humboldt Bay Power station and its nuclear
dump, 7 wastewater lift stations, 10.5 miles of sewer lines and 30
electrical transmission towers. Read the report for the full list here.
Considering
how long it takes to plan and build any projects along the California
coast, we need to start now with first the requisite studies and the
permits–a single project could require permits from ten different
agencies–and then the actual building. The most challenging
complication is that many of these needed projects cannot happen
independently of other projects because the area around Humboldt Bay
is one large unit divided into six sections. Changes within one
section will affect the other sections.
The
Grand Jury Report focused mostly on problems of permitting and
funding. Applying to the California Coastal Commission was described
as complicated, contradictory, and slow. This is a problem because
the CCC guards the gate for almost everything here on the coast.
Funding is also a challenge for a small, rural county competing for a
finite pot of state money.
For
the most thorough and detailed report on the forecasted impacts of
SLR here in Humboldt County, read Aldaron Laird’s Vulnerability Assessment.
photo courtesy of Aldaron Laird
Offshore
wind developments sped up during the month of May.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released on May 5
its final environmental assessment of the Humboldt Wind Energy Area.
Its finding of “no significant impact” is necessary for the
next steps towards selling leases. However, this verdict is a
generalized assessment of the 207 square mile area. Each proposed
wind project within that area will need to complete its own specific
environmental review.
On
the 24th the Board of Supervisors directed staff
to work with community stakeholders on the development of local
supply chains necessary for building the turbines and to explore how
to prepare the local workforce. With this same aim in mind they
authorized the County Administrative Officer to submit letters of
support and requests for funding.
The
U.S. Department of the Interior
announced
on the 26th
that it will publish a Proposed Sale Notice on the last day of May to
open lease areas off the California coast for building offshore wind
farms. The public will have sixty days to comment.
Redwood
Coast Energy Authority has sought to emphasize community control and
benefits for Humboldt county. A Journal article
referred to “potential stipulations that would give preference
to bidders who pursue community benefit agreements with surrounding
communities . . .” That sounds a little iffy, but one thing for
sure is that these developments far outstrip Humboldt’s picture.
According to Humboldt’s
draft Climate Action Plan, RCEA is positioned for only 40 MW
of wind power–at least
at first. However, many different community stakeholders are working
together towards facilitating offshore wind development, protecting
our environment, and getting the best deal we can. Floating offshore
wind technology may unlock a vast amount of clean energy desperately
needed to curb climate change.
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Timber companies,
housing developers, and conservationists have long admired the McKay
Forest bordering the southeast side of Eureka. The
conservationists gained a thousand acres in 2014 when Green Diamond
sold them to the city of Eureka. An additional 197 acres was acquired in 2020. Green Diamond retains ownership of almost 6,000 acres of
forest in the area.
The health of the
McKay Community forest will be managed for water quality of the Ryan
Creek watershed, coho salmon, northern spotted owl and other
creatures. It’s a working forest, meaning that timber harvesting will
occur, based on the same ecological management principles that are
practiced by the Arcata Community Forest. These principles are
detailed in the recently released Forest Stewardship Plan.
Most of the trees in the McKay Community forest are less than fifty
years old.
This North Coast
Journal article from 2009 gives some interesting history of
the McKay Community forest, including the roots of the contentious
North McKay Ranch subdivision that the Board of Supervisors recently
approved.
The
county also released the trails plan, which seeks to fulfill the
recreational desires of the public. Visitors are not officially welcome
yet in the Community Forest, but it’s a fairly popular destination
all the same. The Eco-News Report
of April 30 gives a good rundown on the current situation with Stevie
Luther and Hank Seeman of the Humboldt county Public Works.
photo courtesy of Dana Utman
Cal-Fire has
offered several compromises to tree defenders at Jackson State
Demonstration Forest, including protection of Gemini Tree, a huge
hundred year-old redwood that had been slated for the chopping block.
Other large second-growth redwoods within the Caspar 500 Timber
Harvest Plan area that measure more than four feet in diameter at
breast height would be protected. No such guarantees are currently
promised for future THPs. However, the entire JDSF management plan
will be re-written four years early, giving the public a sooner than
planned opportunity to try to influence the forest’s future.
One proposed idea
for future management of JSDF is based on the idea of Cal Poly
Humboldt’s professor, Steve Sillet, the well-known champion of
redwoods and other tall trees. He and partner Marie Antoine have
suggested that all managed forests should preserve some of the
biggest and most vigorous trees of the forest as a way of promoting
overall health and sequestration. Cal-Fire is proposing two of these
Elite Trees per acre.
Will such reform
suffice to win over the hearts and minds of the protesters? Many of
them want a moratorium on logging until the management plan is
rewritten to make carbon sequestration the top priority.
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California’s
climate strategy is floundering,
according to Danny Cullenward, a PhD energy economist and policy
director of Carbon Plan. His persuasive
analysis of the
California Air Resources Board’s 2022 Scoping Plan can be read here.
The Scoping Plan is the progress report made every five years on how
well the state is on track to achieve the climate goals set out in SB
32. Not well at all is the short answer. Right now California’s pace
of emission reductions would have to triple in order to meet the 2030
deadline of 40% below 1990 level of emissions.
Cullenward
found a
huge
accounting error that threw off all four of the outlined scenarios by
23 tCO2e. It assumed that California’s land sector would sequester a
net 15 million tCO2e annually; however, by CARB’s own calculations in
a different part of the plan, our land sector actually emits about 8
million tCO2e per year.
Cullenward
is also dubious about the planned reliance on carbon dioxide removal
[CDR] technologies, to hit our 2045 goal. These young, expensive
technologies may or may not work. Preventing the emissions in the
first place would be much more reliable.
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Links
Tribal
activists determined that reservations won’t be left out of
the energy revolution.
Listen to Cool Solutions. https://coolsolutions.libsyn.com/
Operating
tidal energy facility in Nova Scotia bodes well for the rest of
us coastal dwellers. https://theenergymix.com/2022/05/17/floating-tidal-project-linked-to-nova-scotia-grid-in-canadian-first/?utm
The
extraction of lithium exacts a heavy toll. How can we do this
better? https://capitalandmain.com/will-lithium-save-the-imperial-valley
California
hits 100% clean, renewable energy–for
15 minutes! Go, California! https://electrek.co/2022/05/02/california-runs-on-100-clean-energy-for-the-first-time-with-solar-dominating/
Watch
condors introduced into the wild again. https://www.wildcalifornia.org/post/california-condors-take-flight-in-redwood-skies?