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California politicians and local activists heavily criticized the Trump administration’s plan to lease coastal waters for offshore drilling today at a standing-room only community meeting.
Held at the Wharfinger Building Sunday morning, over 100 people attended. It was hosted by the Surfrider Foundation, the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), and Humboldt Waterkeeper. Attendees were encouraged to fill out postcards pre-addressed to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum with their hostility to offshore oil drilling.
Politicians from every level of government spoke for an hour, all of them to voice their opposition to the scheme: in attendance was Representative Jared Huffman, state assemblymembers Chris Rogers and Damon Connelly, Humboldt County Supervisor Mike Wilson, Eureka city councilmembers Kati Moulton and Leslie Castellano, and a smattering of other local bigwigs and activists. Huffman, Rogers and Connelly have attended several similar meetings along the California coast in the last few days.
They highlighted the negative environmental impacts of Trump’s plan, who said in November he wants to open up millions of acres along the West Coast and Florida to oil companies. Trump claims that drilling will bolster the economy, creating more jobs and lowering gas prices. Speakers focused on the potentially drastic, negative effects drilling has on the environment, as well as the devastation overusing fossil fuels is already causing to the climate and coastal communities. Many of them mentioned past oil spills that killed untold amounts of marine life and polluted waterways for years, like the 1989 Exxon Valdez, 1969 Santa Barbara, and 2015 Refugio spills.
“Thousands of pounds of toxic sludge are released due to routine operations of these facilities,” said EPIC climate attorney Matt Simmons. “I look out at Humboldt Bay, and I shudder to think about what a similar disaster would be for our community, for the jobs, the livelihoods, the cultures that all depend on the bay.”
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Hundreds of people gathered Sunday morning at the Wharfinger building in Eureka to hear from local and state leaders about how to fight offshore oil drilling on the California coast.

“This is the time when the federal government is supposed to listen to communities, to people, and not just to the powerful, polluting interests that sort of got us here in this situation,” said U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael). “So we’re here for a couple reasons. First, on the off chance that there’s someone in the Trump administration that still gives a damn about people and communities.”

In late November, the Interior Department announced plans to significantly expand offshore oil production along the West Coast and portions of the Gulf of Mexico.

“We want them to hear loud and clear from us. We want them to know that support for offshore drilling is in the single digits, by which I mean the middle digit,” he continued, holding up his middle finger. “I want to put it in terms maybe Donald Trump can understand. And the other reason is we want to build a record … this fight will go on in different forums. It will go on in politics, in public opinion and in the courts, and we want this record to be loud and clear. … I just want to tell the Trump administration as clearly as I can what part of the California coast they should open up for new drilling. None of it. ”

North Coast Assemblyman Chris Rogers (D-Santa Rosa), echoed Huffman, noting the offshore oil estimates would not replace a coastal economy flourishing without oil extraction.

“What the studies have shown is that this proposal is a bad deal for the North Coast,” he said. “It is not going to lower gas prices, like the Trump administration says, and it’s going to put at risk an economy that we have all worked so hard to rebuild up here in Northern California. Even the rosiest projections of how much money could be made from offshore oil drilling is one-tenth of the amount that the economy of our North coasts represent in California. That’s why our fishermen say hell no to offshore oil drilling. That’s why our tribal leaders say hell no to offshore oil drilling. That’s why the California Chamber of Commerce is even saying hell no to offshore oil drills.”

While the proposal to open up the West Coast to offshore drilling, opponents at Sunday’s meeting noted, includes all along the coasts of California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, but, curiously, not near Mar-a-Lago.

Local environmental groups pointed to lessons from history.

“I grew up watching the Exxon Valdez (oil spill in 1989), and then the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spills (in 2010) destroyed precious coastlines. Even when offshore oil drilling isn’t a disaster, it’s always a disaster, because thousands of pounds of toxic sludge are released due to routine operations of these facilities,” said Matt Simmons, a climate attorney for the Environmental Protection Information Center, based in Arcata. “I look out at Humboldt Bay, and I shudder to think about what a similar disaster would mean for our community, for the jobs, the livelihoods, the cultures that all depend on our bay.”

Humboldt Waterkeeper’s Sylvia van Royen said the fight is familiar to many.

“In 1987, the federal government proposed oil and gas drilling off the Humboldt and Mendocino coast. … The proposal covered a million acres of ocean, and it motivated an entire county to fight back,” she told the crowd. “… Now we are also dealing with the effects of climate change, such as sea level rise, ocean acidification, marine heat waves that have devastated kelp beds and toxic algae blooms that have absolutely upended the Dungeness crab industry. To curb the worst effects of climate change, we have to stand together and tell the Trump administration our coast is not for sale.”

Local governments are ready to take a stand.

“Not long ago, there were some proposals being floated around about using Humboldt Bay as an export port for coal,” Third District Harbor Commissioner Stephen Kullman said. “The harbor district stood with the community to oppose them passing an ordinance to prevent using port facilities for the export of coal. I’m here to say that the harbor district will do the same in regards to offshore oil drilling.”

Residents are encouraged to file comments with BOEM ahead of the Jan. 23 deadline to oppose the offshore oil drilling proposal.

Submit comments at https://www.regulations.gov/document/BOEM-2025-0483-0001.

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Environmental groups and elected officials are hosting a meeting Sunday in Eureka that aims to collect public opposition to a Trump administration plan to expand oil and gas drilling off the coast of California.
Advocates say that with the plan’s public comment period open, someone needed to host a local event to garner opposition.
“The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is not holding any public meetings regarding this plan. Because BOEM is not doing this, we are stepping in, kind of filling its place. Public comment is an important part of the consideration of whether or not to lease offshore drilling areas, at least according to the law,” said Tom Wheeler, executive director of Arcata’s Environmental Protection Information Center.
The five-year draft plan proposal released in November includes one lease in federal waters off the coast of Northern California to be sold in 2029, along with five other sales in the state.
The proposal includes opening up to 1.27 billion acres along the coast of Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific coast. Cities, counties and elected officials have broadly expressed opposition to drilling in California.
In anticipation of the proposal, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors narrowly passed a resolution opposing offshore drilling in October.
The event Sunday will include North Coast representative Jared Huffman (D- San Rafael), state Assemblymember Chris Rogers (D-Santa Rosa), local officials and Assemblymember Damon Connolly (D-San Rafael).
Politicians and environmental groups will detail what they’re working on to stop the plan, hear comments and rally in opposition to the plan. Environmental advocacy groups have hosted similar events along California’s coast.
Wheeler hopes the event, which saw over 100 RSVP by Friday, prompts hundreds of people to sign public comments to fight back against the Trump administration’s effort.
“I hope that this is part of a larger collective of resistance to this plan that ultimately results in its demise,” he said.
Humboldt Waterkeeper and the Surfrider Foundation will join EPIC at the meeting.
Jennifer Kalt, executive director of Humboldt Waterkeeper, remembers volunteering to clean birds after an oil spill in Humboldt Bay in the 1990s.
“There’s money to rescue individual animals that have been oiled and wash them and rehabilitate them and release them, but the majority of them don’t survive the trauma of that,” she said.
She said more oil and gas wells could mean spills reaching Humboldt Bay, if the Trump administration’s plan is successful.
Public comments are just a piece of a puzzle as part of the pushback against offshore drilling in California. Advocates hope local and state regulations will mean hurdles in the effort they called broadly unpopular.
“Whether they listen to public sentiment and elected officials in the state of California or not, there are still regulations in place,” said Kalt.
If you go
What: Town hall
When: Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon
Where: Wharfinger building, 1 Marina Way, Eurela
The event is planned to be recorded and broadcast over Access Humboldt at a later date. RSVP at tinyurl.com/ywz3dp37
The comment period ends January 23 at 8:59 p.m. PST.
You can review the plan and submit comments online, or via U.S. mail by sending an envelope labeled “Comments for the 11th National OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program” to Ms. Kelly Hammerle, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (VAM-LD), 45600 Woodland Road, Sterling, VA 20166-9216. 
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Nearly two weeks after King Salmon and Fields Landing were inundated with record-breaking floodwaters, many residents are still struggling to recover, with some facing tens of thousands of dollars in property damage.
Among them are Linda and James Carter. The pair moved into their King Salmon home — a little light blue house just a stone’s throw away from the beach — shortly after they were married in 2010. In their 15-plus years in King Salmon, the Carters have seen their neighborhood flood countless times during storms and high tides, but they never worried much about their own home because a brick retaining wall surrounds the property.
“That property has never flooded before,” Linda told the Outpost during a recent phone interview. “But on the morning of Jan. 2, we saw [the floodwaters] actually breaching our walkway and coming onto the property, but it didn’t come into the house or anything. Then on Jan. 3, the water had actually breached our wall, and within about 10 minutes, it was in the house. We only had about 10 minutes to get things up, and out of the water … [which got to be] just shy of a foot high.”
The floodwaters damaged sheetrock and the flooring throughout their house, destroyed two refrigerators, a stand-up freezer, a dishwasher and totaled one of their cars. Linda also lost a photo album her mother had made for her when she was a kid.
“We were so depressed about what we had already lost, we just quit looking for more stuff,” James said. “It was just beating us down. Those first three days, we were just in survival mode.”
King Salmon is no stranger to flooding. At just three feet above sea level, the tiny bayside community has grown accustomed to the swollen canals, flooded streets and soggy lawns that come with winter rains, but this year was different.
On Jan. 2, a combination of record-breaking King Tides, heavy rains and an intense storm surge pushed Humboldt Bay beyond its shores, inundating King Salmon with seawater. The tide gauge at the North Spit peaked at 10 feet that morning, breaking the previous record of 9.8 feet set in 2005, according to data from the National Weather Service in Eureka. On Jan. 3, a new record of 10.37 feet was set.
The National Weather Service issued several weather alerts ahead of the storm-fueled King Tides and Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services (OES) shared flood safety tips and resources for people living in low-lying, flood-prone areas. On Jan. 2, Humboldt OES issued a notice urging people to avoid King Salmon due to extreme flooding, but residents were never asked to evacuate.
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 Considering that it is a fixture of life in California, it’s remarkable how much remains unknown about the fog that regularly flows over the coast from the Pacific Ocean. But a collaboration between researchers throughout the state hopes to change that.
With a five-year, $3.7 million grant from the Heising-Simon Foundation, the Pacific Coastal Fog Research project is poised to lift the veil on the rather mysterious meteorological phenomenon. The scientists will record the fog’s chemical composition, examine how it helps support redwood forests and other ecosystems, and look at the possible effects of climate change and pollution from human activities.
Sara Baguskas and her colleagues at San Francisco State University are one of five teams working on the project. Starting in the spring, they will head out to locations on the coast from San Diego to Humboldt County, carrying towering fog collectors and a slew of sensors measuring temperature, humidity, wind speed and solar radiation.
“It’s the first time we have been funded to carry out interdisciplinary research at a scale that really allows us to answer fundamental questions regarding coastal fog dynamics and impacts on ecosystems,” Baguskas said.
The fog collectors are tree-like structures with a fine mesh net spanning between their branches. Water collected in the mesh drips down and is collected into troughs. Baguskas and her colleagues will deploy covariance towers — metallic structures that continuously measure carbon and water concentrations in the air — and use the data to compare fog events in different places at the same time.
“With this, we can begin to make connections between fog events and the ecosystem response to disentangle the ephemeral and nebulous nature of fog events and make it a little more concrete,” Baguskas said.
Meanwhile, a team led by environmental chemist Peter Weiss-Penzias of UC Santa Cruz will study the fog’s composition, looking for toxic chemicals.
This past summer, they collected preliminary data for the project in several locations along the coast, including Pacifica and Santa Cruz. They found highly toxic methyl mercury, which is actually a natural component of the fog.
Methyl mercury is formed by bacteria in the depths of the ocean. But at the coast, winds push surface water out to sea, allowing colder, deeper water to rise to the surface. Coastal fog — which forms when moist air condenses over the cool, ocean water and drifts toward shore — then picks up water evaporating from the ocean surface, allowing methyl mercury to hitch a ride onto land.
To study how methyl mercury gets deposited, the researchers take samples of lichens, dissolving them in nitric acid to extract mercury and other metals. Not surprisingly, preliminary studies have found that the amount of methyl mercury in lichens is highest near the coast and rapidly drops off farther inland.
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  1. Arcata fire and its aftermath ratified as a local emergency by Humboldt County supervisors
  2. ‘Worst it’s ever happened’: Saturday high tide produces more record-breaking water levels
  3. Highest-ever recorded tide in Humboldt Bay results in widespread flooding in King Salmon
  4. When Rivers Rise: Lessons from Hurricane Helene

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