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July 26, 2001
Dell'Arte to examine casino
The Dell'Arte Co. received word
last week that it was successful in a bid for an $80,000 grant
from the Americans for the Arts' Animating Democracy Initiative,
a program funded by the Ford Foundation. The application from
the Blue Lake-based theater company was chosen over 39 other
proposals.
The grant will fund The Dentalium
Project, a multi-component undertaking that will "explore
what happens when you add a Native American casino to a small
town community," said Michael Fields, the Dell'Arte artistic
director.
"The project will include
a series of community dialogues/forums that explore the traditional
practice of Native American gambling as well as the community
response to living with a casino in its midst," said Brenda
Bishop, Dell'Arte development director.
The forums examining the economic,
political and cultural conflicts arising from the construction
of the Blue Lake Rancheria's casino will be run by Dell'Arte
in association with the Cascadia Leadership Center, a conflict
management group headed by former 3rd District Supervisor Julie
Fulkerson.
A second component of the project
is a video documentary spearheaded by Jan Kraepelien of KEET-TV
that will follow five residents of Blue Lake from the onset of
construction to the operation of the gambling facility.
The culmination of The Dentalium
Project will be a Dell'Arte-style theater production planned
for next summer's Mad River Festival.
For more information about the
Dell'Arte see www.dellarte.com.
To learn more about the Ford Foundation's Animating Democracy
program see www.artsusa.org.
The
end of a fishery?
Some areas off the North Coast
may become off-limits to rockfish harvesting, and fishermen are
getting angry.
"Where they've marked off
is exactly where we fish," said Larry Williams, owner of
King Salmon Sportfishing and skipper of the Coral Isle.
"We may as well throw our
rods away," he said.
Williams said that the proposed
"marine reserves," where only severely curtailed fishing
would be allowed, will put him and others out of business.
The proposed regulations are
supposed to help several species recover from overfishing, said
Patrick Collier, a marine biologist with the Department of Fish
and Game. Collier said that after the salmon fishery collapsed,
fishermen focused their attention on rockfish, a broad class
of long-lived fish that use rocks on the ocean floor for habitat.
He said the proposed marine
reserves are small, but would at least give the state an idea
of what the effects of marine reserves are.
But those small areas are rockfishe's'
only habitat, Williams said, and cutting them off doesn't leave
him room to survive. The small boats that would be affected by
the reserves aren't causing the fishery much damage, he said.
"We don't have nets, we
don't have longlines, and we've had four or five days this whole
year we could have fished for them," he said.
Fish and Game will hold a public
meeting July 31 at 7 p.m. in the Wharfinger building to discuss
the marine reserves proposal.
Hospitality
helper
It's hard to find good help
-- but that may not be the case for long.
College of the Redwoods is initiating
a program that will train workers for the hospitality and tourism
industries. With classes covering customer service and management,
the new program will produce the kind of workers that hotels
and restaurants in Humboldt County need -- skilled professionals.
"Anyone who has a restaurant
in the county should be stoked," said Mark Carter, owner
of the Carter House Hotel and Restaurant 301.
The new classes fill an important
hole in the college's curriculum, said Paul DeMark, spokesperson
for CR.
Start-up costs for the new program
will be covered by the proceeds from this year's Autumn Vintage
wine auction in October. Last year's event raised $125,000.
While the program will not initially
be for credit, DeMark said the long-term plan is to award graduates
either a certificate or a two-year degree.
Walgreens
on its way
The good news is that Eureka
and Humboldt County's governments have responded to citizens'
concerns about the impact of a new Walgreen's drug store on the
corner of Harris Street and Harrison Avenue. The bad news is
that they are doing so very late in the game.
The city of Eureka had asked
county government to reopen public comment to include more of
the concerns over traffic, lighting, landscaping and signs voiced
by people living next to the site. The proposed site sits just
outside the city, in the county's jurisdiction, so Eureka officials
had asked if the county would allow more public input, but that
request came too late.
"We found out they had
gone through the required processes and were at the administrative
stage of the process," said Eureka City Manager Dave Tyson.
Luckily, Walgreens has agreed
to allow more public comments to be heard.
The Humboldt County Board of
Supervisors voted July 23 to create a subcommittee made up of
representatives of county government, the city of Eureka, Walgreens
and neighbors.
Tyson said he hopes the groups
can come to an agreement that "meets the needs of the neighborhood
while recognizing the developer has some vested rights."
He said the city had already talked to the developing company,
Village Properties, about mitigating the impacts of the planned
building, and it had "tentatively agreed to scale down the
sign and reduce its height, adjust the landscaping and reduce
the lighting."
Fortuna
police talks stalled
It is almost never a good idea
to argue with a policeman, but Fortuna City Manager Dale Nieman
isn't backing down from this fight. Nieman, who represents the
city in stalled negotiations over salary and benefits for the
police, said the two sides have "reached the point of impasse."
A state mediator was called
in to help break the deadlock, but issues on the sidelines have
prevented progress. After meeting with the mediator July 11,
the two sides agreed to postpone further face-to-face until the
city had figured out how much a new health insurance plan will
cost.
Nieman said much of the fight
is over the form salary increases would take. Officers want a
flat raise, while the city is offering a program that rewards
officers for taking part in training and committing themselves
to the force. Nieman said incentives for people who decide to
stay in Fortuna are necessary, because many officers use the
city as a proving ground before moving on.
"We hire a lot of officers
out of the academy who only stay here one or two years,"
he said.
The two sides meet next in August.
State
may list coho, too
California is considering listing
the coho salmon as endangered, a move that would dramatically
affect what timber companies and other land owners can do on
their property.
"A reasonable interpretation
based on what we now know is that it will be listed," said
Mark Stopher, habitat conservation manager with the Department
of Fish and Game, in a telephone interview from Redding. The
department announced at the beginning of July that it had received
and was considering a request to list the fish and has started
to perform extensive fieldwork on which it will base a decision.
The coho is already listed as
threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act and enjoys
protection from fishing and the impacts of land use. But listing
the fish under California law would still have a dramatic impact,
Stopher said.
That's because the Department
of Fish and Game, which would be responsible for the fish's survival,
has a larger stake in some regulatory proceedings than its federal
counterpart. The National Marine Fisheries Service, which is
responsible for carrying out federal protections for coho, isn't
a statutory member of the timber harvest plan review team, but
Fish and Game is.
"We have a place at the
table to say, `This has an effect,'" Stopher said. Any human
activity in a stream that supports coho -- and much that happens
adjacent to that stream -- would require a permit from the department.
A listing would probably help
motivate timber companies to complete a habitat conservation
plan, Stopher added. Such a plan addresses the well-being of
coho across a landowner's holdings. HCPs will become attractive
because procuring permits for individual projects will prove
too time-consuming and expensive, he said.
One Humboldt County timber company
already has such a plan -- Pacific Lumber Co. of Scotia. Stoffer
said that while implementation of PL's HCP "has been a bit
bumpy," the company is submitting better timber harvest
plans now than before. If a state listing forced other companies
to follow suit it would "level the playing field on coho
protection."
The department will probably
decide by next May whether or not to list the fish.
Dry
weather test period open
The Humboldt County Department
of Public health has announced that the dry weather test period
is open.
Individuals wishing to develop
or subdivide land located within the coastal zone need to show
they can develop 400 gallons a day during the dry season to supply
their land. A qualified consultant should perform the test.
The test period will remain
open until Sept. 30 or until the first major rainfall. Call 445-6215
for more information.
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