Years in development, the Waterfront Eureka Plan is approved but there’s room for changing it as there’s support for waiving minimum parking requirements in some of the plan’s districts.The plan gained unanimous approval by the city council at its May 6 meeting, closing a formative phase that included many public meetings.Ultimate approval still waits, however, as the state’s Coastal Commission will have to certify the plan as part of the city’s Local Coastal Program (LCP).And as council approached its vote on the plan’s approval, there was talk of changing it to universally waive minimum parking requirements for residential development.During a public comment period, Colin Fiske of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities vouched for lifting the requirements throughout the plan area.“Eureka’s plans and policy documents acknowledge that these mandates are problematic and restrict new housing supply,” he said. “And a number of years ago, Eureka led the way in loosening parking mandates and providing needed exceptions. Now it’s just time to get rid of them altogether.”Jen Kalt of Humboldt Waterkeeper backed that up.“There’s been a lot of studies showing that this is the single policy that can make the biggest difference in increasing new housing development,” she said.Read More
Two governing bodies in Humboldt County are weighing in on a state Assembly bill that would change the permitting process for billboards. They want to keep existing permitting rules in place in times where billboards need to be shored up.The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors approved a letter in opposition to Assembly Bill 770 in a 4-1 vote last week. The Eureka City Council will consider a similar letter next week.If passed, the bill, sponsored by the California State Outdoor Advertising Association, would add a single sentence to the Business and Professions Code regarding billboard maintenance.” ‘Customary maintenance’ means an activity performed on a display for the purpose of maintaining the display in its existing physical configuration, including, but not limited to, replacing structural members, such as posts and internal bracing, and using stronger materials, without increasing the number of posts,” the bill’s text read.This addition would change the permitting process.According to an analysis from the Assembly Committee on Appropriations, existing regulations say customary maintenance is “action taken on a permitted display to actively preserve the display, in the display’s approved physical configuration and size, for the duration of the display’s normal life,” citing examples like changing the message, or adding a light box.The regulations, as they are, require owners to apply for a new permit in certain activities, like adding structural bracing. If passed, billboard owners can instead upgrade display structures without seeking the permit through Caltrans for the work.The Assembly Standing Committee on Governmental Organization approved the bill with 20 voting in favor and 2 not voting last month. Some elected officials in Humboldt County, however, fear the bill will limit local control.Read More
The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a letter of “strong opposition” to a new state bill that would would dramatically expand the definition of “customary maintenance” on billboards, allowing sign companies to make substantial changes to those structures without local government review or permitting.“No other structure of this size in the state of California gets that kind of waiver,” Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson said during Tuesday’s meeting.The letter, which the board approved with a 4-1 vote, argues that Assembly Bill 770 would undermine local authority, compromise public safety and endanger environmental and cultural resources. It was placed on the agenda’s consent calendar, meaning it was scheduled to be adopted among a batch of items without specific deliberations, but First District Supervisor Rex Bohn pulled it for discussion.Second District Supervisor and Board Chair Michelle Bushnell said her understanding was that existing billboards already went through the necessary permitting processes, but Planning and Building Director John Ford said that’s not necessarily true.“A lot of the billboards that exist out there were never permitted,” he said, and he vouched for Wilson’s assertion that the bill would essentially allow billboards to be completely rebuilt without local review.Wilson also said the bill could nullify the legal precedent that was established after Viacom Outdoor, Inc. sued the City of Arcata in 2006 after city officials red-tagged billboards that had been toppled by storms, thereby preventing them from being re-erected.Read More
This summer, Eureka’s Madaket Plaza will host a new bi-weekly market, connecting Humboldt County fishermen directly with customers.The Humboldt Dockside Market, developed by the North Coast Growers Association and Ashley’s Seafood, will allow area residents to access sustainable, locally caught fish in a low barrier-to-entry venue. Attendees will be able to purchase fish from Humboldt County commercial fishermen and have their fish cut and packaged by staffers; they’ll also have the opportunity to ask questions and learn about how to prepare a variety of local fish species that might otherwise appear daunting to the casual fish consumer.“We really want to teach people how to consume it, how to cook it and to feel comfortable and confident,” Ashley’s Seafood’s Ashley Vellis told the Times-Standard.The first Humboldt Dockside Market will be open to the public from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on June 7, with subsequent events every-other week throughout the summer.“Fishermen will be able to offer fillets and whole fish to their customers,” Vellis said. “Customers will be able to purchase directly from their fishermen and ask their questions (and learn) where the fish was caught, what species it is, if (there are) recommendations for cooking. If you purchase a whole fish, you’ll be able to take it to our on-site cutting booth … you can have it cut in different ways … we can even teach you how to cook your fish whole.”Vellis said that the Humboldt Dockside Market isn’t intended to replace direct sales by fishermen out on Woodley Island; instead, it’s a way to connect those fishermen with a different customer within walking distance of Old Town Eureka.Vellis noted that the market has worked very closely with the local fishing community that sells their catch on Woodley Island and noted that “most if not all of them” are participating in the market. She also stressed that the market is intended to be an opportunity for fishermen, who have faced headwinds with shortened Dungeness crab seasons and closed salmon fisheries, to sell fish and recoup some of the profits that would otherwise go to a wholesaler, while also helping to educate customers about what is available this summer.“We’ll have different kinds of rockfish, Pacific halibut, California halibut, potentially … we might see Oregon salmon … We’ll have … lingcod; we may have smelt, petrale sole,” Vellis said.“Sanddabs, for example,” Vellis said, “You have to catch a lot of it to make a profit, and who is going to buy such a small amount (from a local fisherman)? Well, the consumer; they’re hugely popular here, especially with people who used to go and catch them with their dad during their childhood, out in the bay somewhere.”An estimated 12 to 15 Humboldt County commercial fishermen are expected to participate throughout the season, though ongoing albacore season may mean a smaller first event on June 7.Read More
Three months after cutting bait on plans to build a $500 million fish factory in Belfast, Maine, Nordic Aquafarms is courting new investors and facing a longer, more complicated timeline for a similar project along Humboldt Bay.In a recent interview, Nordic executives outlined some new permitting and environmental mitigation hurdles and said it will likely be “a few years” before the company can demolish the old pulp mill infrastructure on the Samoa Peninsula and break ground on its proposed recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility.Announced more than six years ago, the land-based fish farm, as originally conceived, is expected to cost $650 million and employ up to 150 full-time workers while producing up to 27,000 metric tons of Yellowtail kingfish per year — enough to supply West Coast markets from Seattle to Los Angeles and beyond.However, given the recent geopolitical upheaval and its impact on world financial markets, the future of any project with such a long timeline is uncertain, as the company saw in Maine. Nordic’s East Coast project, announced in 2018, received all required local, state and federal permits but faced fierce opposition from environmental groups, whose legal challenges ultimately proved too costly.“The company exits after tens of millions of investment dollars and many years of planning and permitting in the State of Maine,” CEO Brenda Chandler said in a January press release.Last week, Chandler and local Project Manager Scott Thompson sat down for an interview at Outpost headquarters in Old Town Eureka. They said that while the project is progressing, certain steps may take longer than anticipated.Environmental mitigation, for example. Nordic recently committed to an extensive Marine Monitoring Survey Plan that requires up to five years of water quality sampling and marine ecosystem analysis near the business end of an outfall pipe, which will discharge treated effluent from the RAS facility into the ocean, roughly a mile and a half offshore. That monitoring plan recently received approved from the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.Even with these new mitigation measures, local environmental groups remain wary. Jennifer Kalt, executive director of Humboldt Waterkeeper, said her organization is still concerned that the nutrient discharge from the ocean outfall pipe could increase the risk of toxic algae blooms, especially during marine heat waves like the one from 2014-16, nicknamed “The Blob.”Kalt said she’s grateful for the Marine Monitoring Survey Plan.“All we have to go on now is modeling, so the monitoring is really important to understand what is really happening in the ocean once the project is up and running,” she said.Read More
