The LookOut is a monthly digest of climate-related
issues and events taking place in
Humboldt County.
350 Humboldt
Calendar
Instead of a
general meeting this month, we plan to walk the Hammond Trail on
Saturday, October 5. We’ll meet at 10 AM at the
trailhead right off School Road. If it’s raining, we’ll
try for the following day on October 6 at the same time. The weather
next weekend looks good from here, but who knows? There is always the
weekend after that if it rains both days. This will probably be our
last outdoor meeting for quite a while.
Join us for
letter writing every Sunday night at 7 PM on Zoom.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84789051501?pwd=L3pJL0t1am5EblJRVWZhUWFIenpIdz09
The book club
meets on Oct. 28 to discuss Not the End of the World: How We
Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by
Hannah Ritchie. November’s book will be Dear Human at the Edge
of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States, edited by
Luisa A. Igloria, et al https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87104876080?pwd=Q1Z2Z0d3K3V0UE9EN2Z0TlFweTZndz09
News
This
is the first of a series of articles about the draft
Humboldt Regional
Climate Action Plan.
Humboldt
county emitted a little more than a million and a half metric tons of
CO2e in 2022, according to the most recent inventory we have. Rincon
Consultants, hired by the county last year, compiled that inventory.
California requires us to drop 218,000 of those tons by 2030 in order
to meet the goal of a forty percent reduction from the 1990 inventory
(which was “backcasted” from the 2022 inventory). The draft
Regional Climate Action Plan, written by Rincon Consultants, proposes
how to do that.
Unlike
the aborted 2022 draft CAP, this one doesn’t assign targeted
reductions to each jurisdiction within the county. Instead the county
is taking an overall regional approach to achieving the goal.
Accordingly, the “cornerstone strategy” for the plan is a
Regional Climate Action Committee composed of representatives from
all the Humboldt jurisdictions and from “partner”
agencies—Redwood Coast Energy Authority, Humboldt Transit
Authority, Humboldt County Association of Governments, and Humboldt
Waste Management Authority. This committee is supposed to promote the
plan, engage with the public, write grants, run feasibility studies,
develop ordinances and pilot programs, and tend to equity issues. The
Planning Department proposes to devote one staff person—a Program
Manager–to working with the committee.
More
than one worried bystander has pointed out that an awful lot of work
is depending on only one staff person and a committee composed of
people who already have full-time jobs. The coalition of seven
environmental organizations commenting on the HRCAP suggested that
Humboldt County Association of Governments [HCAOG] could serve as the
core of the proposed regional committee. As a Joint Powers Authority,
its board is composed of representatives from the different
jurisdictions. The Safe and Sustainable Transportation Targets of its
Regional Transportation Plan already addresses the largest sector of
county emissions. Executive Director Beth Burks spoke about the
possibility of helming the RCAP at HCAOG’s September 19 meeting.
She and several board members sounded positive about the suitability
of the agency to work on that level with all the different
jurisdictions in the county.
Another
difference between the 2022 draft and this one is the distinction
made between rural and urban areas of the county. The reasoning seems
realistic—different conditions prevailing in rural and urban areas
affect residents’ ability to change carbon-emitting behavior. The
primary and most obvious example would be transportation. Residents
of urban areas have more ability to go where they need to go on bus,
bicycle, or foot. However, McKinleyville, Cutten, and Myrtletown and
some other fairly dense population centers are designated as rural in
the draft CAP. These are exactly the communities that could and
should develop more public transit, bike infrastructure, and
walkability in order to reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled.
The
Board of Supervisors will adopt a draft of the RCAP during the first
part of October. That draft will undergo the Environmental Impact
Report process. All the various jurisdictions will have an
opportunity to consider and question the DEIR when it emerges next
year—sometime in the spring, according to the Planning
Department–and the final report [FEIR] is slated to be approved in
July of next year.
screenshot of Director Burks at HCAOG meeting
On
behalf of us all, the Blue Lake Rancheria will conduct a major carbon
sequestration project, thanks to a large grant
from the federal government. $11,498,810—let’s call that eleven
and a half million dollars–will enable the Rancheria to purchase up to 650 acres
of land around Humboldt Bay—400 acres forested and 250 tidal that
have been diked for agricultural use.
The
tribe’s environmental department plans to use more than three
million of the grant dollars to return a hundred acres of the
artificially claimed land to the bay in the form of wetlands, which
store more carbon than tropical forests while accommodating sea
level. Carbon sequestration is a priority for the forested lands as
well. This restoration of some of the tribe’s ancestral territories
will significantly increase their current land holdings.
The
Blue Lake Rancheria and thirty other tribal nations, two tribal
consortia and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands were awarded this Climate Pollution Reduction Grant, one of the
programs funded through the Biden administration’s Inflation
Reduction Act. The Rancheria has already won recognition as a “Climate Action Champion” for its climate resilience
projects—including an internationally recognized micro-grid that
played an important role for its
neighbors during power shutoffs in 2020.
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A 2.8-megawatt solar farm got
the go-ahead from the Humboldt Planning Commission on
September 19 despite a letter from the Farm Bureau that opposed it.
The thirteen acres are zoned for agriculture, but a plan for the
panels to share the land with either grazing livestock or crops
persuaded the commissioners that the project will uphold the spirit
of the law. Those acres can be returned to exclusive agriculture once
the panels are decommissioned. That could happen as soon as 20 years
or as late as 35 years from now unless all parties agree to replace
the panels and renew the lease.
Being fairly near the airport
in Rohnerville, the proposed facility had to pass a glare analysis.
According to EPD Solutions, an environmental planning firm, reflected
light from the solar panels will not pose a danger for plane traffic.
Any glare created would fall into the category of green glare, which
would not impair pilots’ vision.
Approval was unanimous with
one commissioner noting that the “diversity of income could be
beneficial and help preserve ag lands.” The project will also add
much needed local solar to the renewable portfolio of Redwood Coast
Energy Authority.
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A
518 page blueprint for making Eureka safe for bicycle traffic was
unanimously approved by the city council on September 17. The new
bike lanes on I and H streets preview systematic improvements to
come. Getting cars and trucks to move over and share the road is
essential to a vision of the city as a place where transportation is
safer, healthier and emits less carbon.
According
to the Coalition for Transportation Priorities,
the council did not go far enough and “establish minimum design
criteria for the Bike Boulevards” or for other high-traffic
streets. However, the city council did like CRTP’s “proposal for
a quick-build strategy for many of the projects.” Also,
councilmembers and the public were assured that the plan can be
amended down the road.
This
Lost Coast Outpost article gives more detail about the process
and also provides an update about the EaRTH Center—a regional
transit hub with apartment dwellings upstairs planned for the parking
lot on Third Street between G and H streets. Though its future
depends on a ballot measure this November, a proposal for the center
is moving forward and will need approval from the Design Review
Committee when it’s ready. That might be never if Measure F passes.
Funded by a billionaire whose interest in Eureka’s parking
lots verges on proprietary, the initiative would prevent the city
from fulfilling its state mandate for new housing—including much
needed low-income housing—on four of its downtown parking lots.
Indeed, California Housing Defense Fund just warned Eureka of
dire legal and financial consequences if Measure F passes. Click here if you’d like to listen to a discussion of this problem with
representatives of CHDF on the Eco-News Report
Eureka’s
bike plan is integral to infill housing developments, including the
EaRTH Center. They’re both elements of a vision that heads off
sprawl, reduces emissions, inequality, and the stress that domination
by me-mobiles brings to city life.
K.C. Roberts
Governor
Newsom defied the oil industry by signing three bills on September 25
that drillers and frackers fought tooth and nail. He threw in a little combative rhetoric just to add to the festive atmosphere, referring to “big
oil” as “the polluted heart of this climate crisis . . .”
Passed:
AB 2716 targets low-production oil and gas wells in the
thousand acre Inglewood Oil Field in Los Angeles County—a densely
populated and mostly low income area that suffers the pollution from
almost one well per acre. 144 of those are “stripper wells” which
produce less than fifteen barrels per day, but the industry didn’t
want the expense of shutting them down. Now they have to. AB 3233
bolsters the right of local governments to prohibit or restrict oil
and gas operations within their jurisdictions. A somewhat watered
down AB 1866 triples the obligation of oil companies to cap
their idle wells throughout California but gives them longer to do it
than the original text decreed. It also now continues to allow them
to pay a fine instead of the costs of decommissioning. However, the
final version did increase the fine significantly enough for the big
operators that some of them are reluctantly planning to do the right
thing.
Though
the success of those three climate bills required a celebration [see
photo below], and two more on our list were signed into law since
then (SB 960 requiring Caltrans to incorporate safety elements
for pedestrians, bikers and public transit users whenever it repaves
roads; and SB 1299, which makes it easier for farm workers to
make worker comp claims for heat illness), Governor Newsom VETOED SB
1374 that would have stayed the wrecking ball that the California
Public Utilities Commission took earlier this year to the financial
benefit of installing solar on multi-meter properties such as
schools, farms, and apartment houses. He also VETOED AB 2401,
which would have focused low-income EV incentives on those
high-mileage drivers with older, dirtier cars. We hope a re-written
version of these bills will be back next year.
helpful bystander
Redwood
Coast Energy Authority just said no to nuclear energy though
it will re-assess in perhaps another year. The temptation is thorny
because all utilities and load-serving entities [LSEs] in California
are already paying a fee to support Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power
plant, which is slated to run until 2030. There would be no
additional cost if RCEA opened its portfolio to the power. Such a
Power Purchase Agreement could help with its current financial
difficulties.
On
the other hand, saying yes to nuclear energy under any circumstances
risks reinforcing its desirability as a power source. A large vocal
minority of people believe that abundant, low-carbon nuclear power is
necessary to curb catastrophic climate change. 350 Humboldt has not
taken an official position in regard to nuclear energy in general or
in this particular circumstance.
The
question for RCEA seems almost abstract when we consider that the
vast majority of Humboldt’s actual electrons are derived from
natural gas and biomass, no matter what is in RCEA’s portfolio.
Until we build utility-scale clean energy generation here on the
north coast, RCEA’s clean, renewable power purchases can only
affect the grid at a state level. As all utilities and LSEs in the
state do that, the need for natural gas is supposed to wither and die
by 2045, according to California’s current plan. Unfortunately, we
don’t have the same assurance about biomass electricity.