News



‘Exceedingly rare’ ecosystem mined for decades



11/16/13 



Two Humboldt County residents who pleaded guilty to felony and misdemeanor charges earlier this week for mining wetlands without a permit have agreed to pay $320,000 in fines — one of the highest penalties ever given to noncorporate defendants in California, officials said.



“This case is unusual because peat in itself is very rare in the state,” said Matthew Carr, deputy district attorney for the California District Attorneys Association and prosecutor. “Many of our wetlands are coastal wetlands; peatlands are exceedingly rare in the state.” Bridgeville resident Daniel Michael Wojcik was accused of operating a large-scale, industrial surface peat mine — a material made of partially decayed vegetation that accumulates in wetlands — without a permit near the Van Duzen River and profiting off the sales without a business license within a timber production zone.



He was also accused of illegally diverting water, selling the illegally diverted water, grading without a permit, developing near a stream without a permit and altering a work site without approval.



Because it contains a high amount of carbon, peat is harvested — or “mined” — off the top of surface groundwater for fuel. Permits are required under the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act of 1975.



“Peat takes hundreds, if not thousands, of years to develop,” Carr said, adding that surface mining itself is fairly common. “Most of our gravel comes from surface mining of dry streambeds.” According to a five-count felony complaint filed by Carr in February 2011, Wojcik began mining in the area in the late 1980s.



Officials said he expanded his operation to two other lakes in 1988 and cleared 5.3 acres of forest in 2000 to set up a processing plant next to a 11.6 acre lake owned by Fortuna resident Robert Henry Wotherspoon. That lake was mined through the summer of 2011.



The complaint states that based on the amount of drying peat at the processing plant in May 2010, Wojcik illegally removed an estimated minimum of 27,250 cubic yards from the lake on Wotherspoon’s property. Wojcik was selling shredded peat at $60 per cubic yard, making the value more than $1.6 million.



“This was considered a priority case because of the apparent willful violations on an exceedingly rare ecosystem,” Carr said.


Humboldt Baykeeper Policy Director Jennifer Kalt said she had heard of the “mythical” peat lakes in the area, but has never seen one because they are on private property.



“It’s one of the rarest habitats in the whole county, probably Northern California,” she said. “I’m really sad to see that this was done. It’s good that they’re making them restore it, but I don’t know how you restore something like that.” Under the settlement, Wotherspoon agreed to grant the state permanent access to the damaged site so it can be used as a “living laboratory” to study the rare ecosystem. He will also pay a penalty of $130,804 and serve 100 hours of community service.

Wojcik will pay a penalty of $189,222 and serve 500 hours of community service. He must also address zoning and code enforcement issues, replant timberland in certain affected areas and restore the ponds that were allegedly mined prior to 2000.


The defendants are required to restore the area “well above what would be required” by law under the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act by maximizing peat regeneration and the flow of cold water from a nearby spring into Van Duzen River.



Carr said the defendants could not be asked to restore the habitat to the way it was before because it could take hundreds of years.


The case began when the state Department of Fish and Wildlife began investigating the area after one of its environmental scientists noticed the operation while taking aerial photographs. With assistance from the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, CalFire and the Humboldt County Department of Planning, the case was submitted to the District Attorney’s Office for prosecution.


Because of staffing shortages, District Attorney Paul Gallegos referred the case to the Circuit Prosecutor Project — which was set up to handle the prosecution of complex environmental cases in rural Northern California — at the California District Attorneys Association in Sacramento.



“The defendants are to be given credit for working with all the parties in the settlement,” Carr said. “One of the principle goals, if not the principle goal, was to restore the peat in the area.”

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11/14/13

A complaint filed over a long-time allegedly illegal peat-moss mining operation in Bridgeville has resulted in two Humboldt County residents — peat moss miner Daniel Wojcik and landowner Robert Wotherspoon — entering felony and misdemeanor pleas yesterday for violations of the Surface Mining and Recovery Act and Lake and Streambed Alteration permitting process and of the Clean Water Act.

Their penalties amount to one of the "largest ever to be assessed in California against non-corporate defendants for violations of section 404 of the Clean Water Act," according to a news release issued this evening by the Humboldt County District Attorney's office.

The release says that "circuit prosecutor" and Deputy District Attorney Matthew Carr, who filed the complaint on behalf of the understaffed Humboldt D.A.'s office, alleged that numerous violations had occurred over at least a decade on Wojcik's "large-scale industrial surface mining of peat from wetlands" on land owned by Wotherspoon. The alleged violations include:

• Wojcik operated without a permit to mine peat from the wetland — the sort called an "inland peat fen," a rarity in California which "develops slowly, over thousands of years," says the news release. It notes that the few neighboring fens of the mined areas contain rare plants, but it's not known whether the mined areas did;
• Wojcik did not have a business license to sell said peat;
• Wojcik and Wotherspoon conspired to mine the peat.

In the settlement reached with the D.A.'s office, Wojcik must pay a $189,222 penalty, work 500 hours of community service and replant timberland, among other things. Wotherspoon must pay $130,804, work 100 hours of community service and "donate to the state permanent access to the violation site for monitoring the restoration and as a 'living laboratory' for scientists to access to study this sort of rare ecosystem and its hoped-for regeneration," says the release.

We previously wrote about another aspect of this case, in which Daniel and Robin Wojcik, owners of the peat moss company McClellan Mountain Ranch, challenged the county's code enforcement warrant to inspect the lands in question.

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Harbor District, feds create plan to get caustic liquors off peninsula


11/10/13


The United States Environmental Protec­tion Agency has taken over the Samoa pulp mill site and initiated an emergency response to remove millions of gallons of caustic liquids, much of which are currently stored in failing tanks.



EPA has stabilized the situation, and is now working with the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District on a plan to remove more than 4 million gallons of pulping liquors from the site. Adding urgency to the effort is a constant fear that a large earth­quake could lead to a potentially disastrous spill into the sensitive environmental habitat and economic engine that is Humboldt Bay.



When the district decided to take over the abandoned mill from Freshwater Tissue Co. in August, it was well aware of the daunting challenge of having to remove the pulping liquors — a caustic byproduct of the pulping process. It appears the situation was a bit more dire than the district may have known.



EPA federal on-scene coordinator Steve Calanog said he was in the area working on a clean-up effort on Indian Island in mid­August when Harbor Commissioner Mike Wilson asked him to take a look at the mill site, which closed in October 2008. Calanog said he realized the severity of the situation as soon as he got on site.



“It got my attention, that’s probably very safe to say,” he said, adding that he was immediately alarmed by the condition of the facility and its proximity to Humboldt Bay. “I was concerned there was an imminent and substantial threat of endangerment to folks who live around the facility and Humboldt Bay.”

Several weeks later, Calanog returned to do a more thor­ough assessment. On Sept. 30, he officially initiated an emergency response action, federalizing the site under EPA’s control.

The largest concern, accord­ing to Calanog, was that the tanks housing the pulping liquors — which have a pH of 13 or higher — were built in the 1960s.

“Tanks, especially in that marine environment, suffer significant corrosion,” Calanog said, adding that some of the tanks’ roofs were damaged, meaning rain water was leaking in, raising levels and increasing pressure on the tanks.

Perhaps the most alarming thing, Calanog said, were four large concrete tile tanks that look like silos. While the tanks were designed to store pulp slurry, at some point in the last handful of years, the contain­ers had been filled with the much more caustic pulping liquors. Calanog said the liquors could be seen seeping out of the sides of tanks.

“They’re not designed to store caustic materials, and there’s evidence the tanks are failing,” he said.

Since taking over, EPA crews have stabilized the site, bring­ing in temporary storage tanks to alleviate pressure from those that were failing and controlling small leaks to make sure liquors don’t run off into the bay. Calanog and the district are now working on a plan to get the liquors off the peninsula. A pulp mill in Longview, Wash., has agreed to take on and reuse the liquors, but transporting mil­lions of gallons of highly cor­rosive liquid is no easy task, especially without a rail line.

“There’s no rail system and I don’t want to put a thousand trucks over a mountain — that’s asking for a problem,” said Calanog, adding that the only other option is moving the liquid by barge.

A couple of weeks ago, the district received approval to contract with a barge and tug company that can handle the material. With the largest chemical barge available only able to transport 1.5 million gallons at a time, Calanog said the project will necessi­tate three shipments from Humboldt to Longview — a 400-mile trek.

In the coming weeks, Calanog said EPA and U.S. Coast Guard crews will be working to construct docking and loading facilities, both on the Samoa Peninsula and up in Longview, that will include piping and pumping mecha­nisms to safely fill and unload the barge.

This entire process is expensive, and the district would not have been able to move so quickly without the help of a $1.25 million line of credit put forward to the district by Pacific Coast Seafoods, which is owned by Commissioner Greg Dale.

“They, of course, are extremely concerned about the impact to the oyster indus­try if we got a catastrophic spill,” said District CEO Jack Crider, adding that the hope is the district will be able to repay the loan through the sale of the boiler and other machin­ery at the mill site, which has been valued at between $2 million and $3 million.

While hurdles remain — the Longview mill is still doing chemical testing on samples of the liquors to make sure it can reuse them — Calanog said it appears the first barge load will be ready to leave Hum­boldt Bay sometime in mid-January. Everyone involved with the effort has raved about the collaborative response, saying the district and EPA have worked very well togeth­er to address the situation.

Dale and Crider also said North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman has been inte­gral in working with EPA, and making sure the project will continue to receive the neces­sary federal funding moving forward.

“Jared Huffman has been very, very helpful, as have sen­ators (Barbara) Boxer and (Dianne) Feinstein,”Dale said.

In a statement released Fri­day, Huffman praised the work of the district and the EPA in addressing what he deemed an “imminent threat.”

“This effort is critical to pro­tecting Humboldt Bay and the Samoa Peninsula from potent contaminants remaining at the site,” he said. “Both agen­cies have done an exemplary job in dealing with the prob­lem, and I am committed to seeing the emergency response through to its completion.”

While nobody can say for sure what the impact of a cat­astrophic spill of millions of gallons of caustic liquids into Humboldt Bay would be, everyone agrees they don’t want to find out.

“I could only speculate,” said Calanog, adding that a large spill would surely impact water quality and the sensitive habitats of the bay, and — at least from a public perception standpoint — could prove disastrous for the local aquaculture industry.

A 4.9 earthquake located about 30 miles west-north­west of the mill site on Oct. 11 only underscored the urgency of getting those liquors off the peninsula.

“It appears to have caused a few new areas where there are some new leaks on the tanks,” Calanog said. “It was an eye­opener, and evidence that we need to get that stuff out of there as soon as possible.”

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11/5/13


Local starfish appearing to be dying of a disease spreading along the West Coast that causes the inver­tebrates to lose their arms — and in the most advanced cases disintegrate.



“It’s some of the worst stuff we’ve seen on starfish in this area,” said Joe Tyburczy, a California Sea Grant Extension scientist. “It’s potentially important because sea stars are an important predator in the intertidal, and they consume mussels, and mussels are really good at occupying a lot of space and pushing other things out.



“So, if there are fewer sea stars, there may be more mussels and less diversity because the sea stars open up space,” he said.



On Sunday night, Humboldt State Uni­versity marine biologists and students conducted surveys at Luffenholtz to deter­mine the extent of the damage caused by sea star wasting disease. Tyburczy esti­mates about 20 percent of local sea stars exhibit at least mild symptoms, including losing pigment and developing open sores. Sick stars have also been found at Trinidad State Beach.



“It’s a noticeable percentage, or we wouldn’t all be looking at it if it was just a random one in one place,” Tyburczy said.



From Vancouver, British Columbia to Santa Barbara, starfish are dying of the disease.



“I think people are trying to see whether it’s a virus or a bacteria,” Tyburczy said. “Diseases in the ocean are notoriously dif­ficult to figure out because you might detect bacteria on a sick sea star, but is the bacteria causing it? Or is the bacteria already there, just breaking down on something that’s already there?” HSU scientists began conducting sur­veys about a month ago after noticing some of the sea stars collected in the wild and brought to the Telonicher Marine Lab became sick and died.



“We noticed the collected animals we brought back to the lab autotomized so rapidly they fell apart,” HSU marine biol­ogist Kathryn McDonald said. “We’ve never seen anything like it.” The wasting disease was first noticed on the West Coast in June.

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