It’s been a difficult start to the year in our corner of far Northern California, with record tidal flooding that inundated more than 40 homes in King Salmon Jan. 4-6, the same weekend as the fire in downtown Arcata. Just over a year prior on Dec. 5, 2024, our community experienced a magnitude 7.0 earthquake and tsunami warning — a stark reminder of the seismic risks our region faces. To the east, huge wildfires return almost annually, with the August Complex and Slater fires in 2020 burning through communities in Trinity and Siskiyou counties, killing three people and destroying hundreds of homes.While our geographic location has always placed us at risk of disasters, climate change will only make things worse, bringing sea-level rise and increased coastal flooding, wildfires of larger size and severity, and greater potential for extreme weather events.We are two faculty members from Cal Poly Humboldt who research community aspects of natural resource issues. Because of recent events, we have been documenting how disaster response and recovery does and does not work in our region. We hope to share some of what we have learned here.The general public may assume that after a disaster the government will provide relief and support. We might imagine that after a disaster teams of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workers flock to a site to assist and Congress grants millions or billions of dollars to support recovery. The truth is that federal or state assistance following a disaster is rare in our region. Federal and state emergency declarations require that the disaster meet certain thresholds, often related to the financial costs of damage. Due to our rural location and comparatively lower property values, these thresholds, particularly at the federal level, are difficult to meet. If there is no emergency declaration, then the individual and public assistance programs offered by FEMA are not available to survivors.For example, the 2022 Rio Dell earthquake that severely damaged 25 percent of the city’s housing stock and caused $35 million in damage to the county did not meet the threshold for a federal declaration. Because housing and communities are so remote and dispersed in many of the wildfire-impacted communities in our region, very few fires meet FEMA’s threshold for assistance. The 2017 Helena Fire in Trinity County burned 72 homes in the town of Junction City, but was not declared a disaster. Federal thresholds would have required more than 400 homes to burn.Keep Reading
The truckloads of dirt just kept coming. Day after day, neighbors watched as one semi-truck after another came chugging up Humboldt Hill hauling open-top trailers loaded with soil. The drivers would downshift as their rigs crested the hill, groaned past the McMansions along London Drive and navigated the little dogleg-right onto Blue Spruce Drive.After a few months, Humboldt County’s code enforcement office started receiving complaints about this activity.“For the past two weeks my neighbors and I have observed between 400 and 500 full size dump trucks (from many different companies including Zabel, Kernan and many others) travel down London Avenue and deposit their load at the end of Blue Tree Ct.,” says a Sept. 15, 2025, complaint, which the Outpost obtained through a Public Records Act request. “I just want to be sure that if permits for a massive project like this were required, that they were obtained.”Permits were required, as it turned out, but had not been obtained.The following week, Code Enforcement Investigator Sara Quenell emailed her boss, Chief Building Official Keith Ingersoll.“I just spoke with a neighbor who is concerned about what she said is ‘hundreds’ of dump trucks taking loads of fill to the end of Blue Spruce Drive, Eureka,” Quenell wrote. (Blue Spruce Drive and Blue Tree Court often get mixed up. The latter is only a few hundred feet long, and the three newly built houses on Blue Tree Court all have Blue Spruce Drive addresses.)Keep Reading https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2026/mar/20/duncan-property-grading-permit-wiyot/
“Light pollution can actually impact wildlife's entire life cycles because it can disrupt hormonal balances. And that has this like cascading effect into their sleep cycles. Their reproduction cycles, etc.. And light pollution can impact a migratory birds ability to even undertake, migration along migration route,” said Sylvia van Royen GIS and Policy Analyst for Humboldt Waterkeeper.Humboldt Waterkeeper has been on the frontlines in the local movement to reduce light pollution. Lightbulb brightness and hue restrictions are important aspects of these policies.Van Royen says that an easy way to reduce light pollution on a personal level is to use motion detecting sensors and warm lighting 1100 lumens or less.Read more and watch the interview
It might be a little easier to see the stars over Humboldt Bay soon.The Arcata City Council voted last night to adopt a comprehensive update to the local coastal program, the policy framework for development and land use for properties that lay within the coastal zone. The last comprehensive update was completed in 1994.Many of the changes reflect an increased understanding of how sea level rise will affect Arcata in the coming decades. City staff organized all of the land in the coastal zone into different areas, based on the important infrastructure located in each one and how likely they are to be underwater in the coming decades.One of the most interesting additions to the program is the adoption of Dark Sky guidelines that will regulate electric lighting in the coastal zone. The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors passed its own Dark Sky program last year. The rules prohibit using light fixtures that bleed excessive amounts of ambient light into the sky, which increases light pollution and makes it harder to see the stars.All outdoor lighting fixtures in the coastal zone must be shielded or recessed; the light it emits has to be restricted to the property it’s located on.Director of Community Development David Loya said at last night’s meeting it was the influence of Humboldt Waterkeeper, a local advocacy group dedicated to environmental preservation, that made the city decide to add the Dark Sky guidelines to the program.Humboldt Waterkeeper’s Policy Analyst Sylvia van Royen told the Outpost that they had been keeping an eye out for other opportunities to implement Dark Sky policies since they’d convinced the county to adopt one. Codifying these rules ensures that it’s not just up to individuals to keep the view nice, van Royen said.“It will make our night skies a little more visible, and reduce the ‘sky glow’ from the city of Arcata,” van Royen said. “[Humboldt Waterkeeper executive director] Jen [Kalt] just sent me a picture last night of the Arcata Bottoms from McKinleyville at, like, 8 p.m., and you can see the sky glow of the whole city from that far away, and that impacts wildlife, and our ability to see the night sky and stargaze, things like that.”Large amounts of light pollution also can mess with migratory birds’ homing instincts, she said; Arcata’s coastal zone, which includes the marsh, is home to many of them.Keep Reading
The California Coastal Commission is set to hear the City of Eureka’s request to formally toss an abandoned plan to rezone the Balloon Track — the plan that once aimed for the property to become the Home Depot-anchored Marina Center development.In a report, Commission staff recommended the body that regulates land use along the coast finally deny the 2011-era application that would have amended the city’s local coastal plan.The effort, which Eureka voters supported in a 2010 ballot measure, would have rezoned the 43-acre property to support commercial, office, residential and open space uses.But it sat lingering at the Commission, which must approve zoning changes in the coastal area before they can take effect, for nearly 13 years, with the official status sitting at “incomplete and inactive.”The city hopes that if the application is officially denied next week, the path would clear for future planning of the site which hasn’t been in use since the 1980s.The Eureka City Council, with support from property owner Security National, voted to withdraw the Coastal Commission application back in November. Commission staff instead are recommending that it be officially denied, for procedural purposes. The Commission says the proposed changes don’t meet requirements in the Coastal Act.Keep Reading
