 
COVER
STORY | STAGE DOOR | ART BEAT
PREVIEW
| THE HUM | CALENDAR
Aug. 18, 2005
MAXXAM ENDGAME: Over the past few weeks, a flurry of documents
filed by the Houston-based Maxxam Corp. with the Securities and
Exchange Commission have made it clear that the company is seeking
to unload, in one way or another, some combination of the two
main assets it holds in Humboldt County -- its Scotia mills,
which, along with the town itself, falls under the age-old banner
of the Pacific Lumber Co.; or its 220,00 acres of Humboldt County
timber land, which, following a 1998 reorganization, legally
belong to a sister company, Scotia Pacific. Both companies are
wholly owned subsidiaries of Maxxam, the company that has been
the particular bête noire of local environmentalists
since the company bought out Pacific Lumber in 1985. That is
about to change. In recent months, the company has made no secret
of the deep financial crisis it finds itself in. The cause of
all the red ink flooding Scotia is hotly debated. The company
blames environmental regulators, especially the California State
Water Resources Control Board, for shutting off logging in the
Freshwater and Elk River watersheds; that agency and local environmental
groups blame the company's own crippling debt, a legacy of the
Maxxam takeover that requires it to come up with over $50 million
annually to keep creditors at bay. Whatever the case, the company
is insolvent. In July, it was barely able to make its semiannual
payment on its debt, which is now held in the form of "timber
bonds." Shortly after, Maxxam floated a plan to relieve
itself of its debt obligations, essentially by declaring bankruptcy
and turning over Scotia Pacific assets -- the land itself --
to creditors, along with a new $300 million IOU. According to
the newsletter Debtwire, a committee representing Maxxam's creditors
is currently in heated negotiations with the company; in a report
dated August 10, Debtwire's Matt Wirz reported that the creditors
are pushing for Scotia Pacifc to declare bankruptcy by the end
of September. Such an outcome would likely affect Pacific Lumber
and Maxxam as well, as Maxxam noted in a quarterly report to
the SEC last week. The company noted that it currently owes about
$35 million to its workers' pension plan, and that in the event
of a bankruptcy the three companies would likely all be held
responsible for coming up with that money. Or, in the end, it
could be the someone else picking up the tab: When another Maxxam
subsidiary Kaiser Aluminum terminated its pension plan in late
2003, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation -- an insurance
program run by the federal government -- was forced to take over
payments to retired workers. Whatever the case, the final days
are certainly upon us. "Scotia Pacific and its bondholders
are working toward bankruptcy like lumberjacks pulling a two-man
saw through one of the timber company's giant redwoods,"
Wirz wrote in last week's report. In other words, slowly but
steadily.
DON'T CALL IT THE HARBOR DISTRICT: The upcoming race for
the governing board of the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and
Conservation District is beginning to take shape. Two seats on
the board, which is charged with overseeing development on and
preservation of California's second-largest natural harbor, are
up for election -- those currently occupied by Dennis Hunter
of Eureka and Ron Fritzche of Arcata. Both men will seek reelection,
but, somewhat unusually, both will have some competition this
time around. In Eureka, Maggy Herbelin ended weeks of speculation
by announcing that she would challenge Hunter. A mediator by
trade, and the former coordinator of the Humboldt Bay Stewards,
Herbelin said that if elected, she would strive to open the district
to collaboration with other groups with interested in the bay
-- something that is currently sorely lacking, she said. "I
want to see that all the groups that are out there, working for
the betterment and future of our bay, are part of the work that
the commission does," she said Monday. "Right now,
you talk to somebody from the Friends of the Dunes, or from other
agencies -- it's like pulling teeth, talking to the district.
I want to change that, to make it so the district wants to look
forward to them coming in." At a press conference last week,
Herbelin pleaded with members of the media to abandon the practice
of referring to the awkwardly named governmental body as "the
harbor district" in favor of "the bay district"
-- a more accurate and inclusive description of its focus, she
said. Meanwhile, Mike Wilson, a hydrological engineer and a member
of the board of directors of the Friends of the Dunes, announced
that he would challenge Fritzsche for the Arcata seat on the
district board. Wilson could not be reached for comment, but
last week he told the Arcata Eye that he would "work
towards improving the health of the entire Humboldt Bay watershed."
In past years, the district has focused a good deal of effort
on improving port facilities in the hopes of spurring economic
development; some critics have said that the conservation aspect
of its mission has been undervalued.
WILLIAMSON ACT REDUX: The county planning division's revisions
to its hotly debated updates to local Williamson Act guidelines
go before the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors next Tuesday.
The Williamson Act -- a.k.a. the California Land Conservation
Act of 1965 -- allows farmers and ranchers to enter into contracts
with their local governments in which they agree to keep their
lands in agricultural production in exchange for significant
tax breaks. Humboldt County has been part of the Williamson Act
program since 1969, and has 273,000 acres in the program. In
2002, county planning staff made sweeping changes to the local
guidelines, a few of which baffled or angered some contract holders,
in particular some ranchers with "Class B" (grazing)
lands held in Williamson Act preserves when the county planners
officially announced enactment of the updates earlier this year.
One of the most contentious of the 2002 guidelines required all
contract holders to sign updated, new contracts. After much dissent,
the county planners revised that guideline "to require only
owners of contracted lands that have been transferred outside
of the family of the original signatory to update their contract
with a new version," according to the planning division's
public notice. Some ranchers still find that new requirement
grating, however, in particular ranchers who've owned their preserves
for years even though they're not the original contract signatories.
And, says attorney Bill Bertain, who has spoken out against some
of the guideline changes, the revisions to the guidelines "do
not address the primary issues of concern: the retroactive application
of the 2002 guidelines" to existing contract holders, and
"the 600-acre minimum parcel size" for land transfers
within grazing preserves. In all of the meetings during the past
eight months, Bertain says, "the Williamson Act chairman
and apparently the planning department did not want to have any
discussion on those two issues." He says he and "many
ranchers hope the board will revisit the 2002 guidelines"
and those two issues. (For more background on the debate, see
"Divided
Land," July 21). The hearing is Tuesday, Aug. 23, at
1:45 p.m. in the board chambers at the county courthouse in Eureka.
PAC CLEARS UP COMMIE ENDORSEMENT: Patrick Riggs, founding
member of the Local Solutions political action committee, wants
Journal readers to know that his group has not formally
endorsed Shane Brinton, the 18-year-old communist who is running
for a seat on the Northern Humboldt Union High School District's
board. In a story last week, the Journal quoted from a
Brinton e-mail to filmmaker Michael Moore in which the youth
claimed that Local Solutions had given him the "thumbs-up."
Riggs wishes to clarify the statement. "It's possible that
we'll work with a person and encourage them to run, but when
it comes down to it we might endorse someone else," Riggs
said. In fact, he says, Local Solutions will be inviting all
candidates for the NHUHSD board -- as well as other local offices
up for election this November -- to meet with the group to discuss
the issues. Only then, Riggs says, will the PAC make an endorsement
in any given race. (See "Communist
blasts developer," Aug. 11)
CORRECTION: Our Aug. 4 cover story, "Incident
at C. Crane," mistakenly implied that Chris Justice
and Kirk Williams were arrested for illegally copying the C.
Crane Company's customer database. In fact, though criminal charges
relating to the incident in question were brought against both
men -- charges to which both later pleaded no contest -- neither
of them were ever physically taken into custody by the Fortuna
Police Department or any other law enforcement agency. The Journal
regrets the error.
Results
of state school testing in
On Monday, the California Department
of Education released the initial results of last year's STAR
tests -- a comprehensive, statewide standardized test taken annually
by California students in grades 2 through 12.
Janet Frost, spokesperson for
the Humboldt County Office of Education, said Tuesday that she
was still poring through the voluminous reports pertaining to
Humboldt County schools, but that the results initially appeared
to be good.
"Generally, the results
on the `California Standards' portion of the test -- the one
they're placing the greatest emphasis on the days -- are good
throughout the county," she said.
Countywide, Frost said, the
scores for language arts were up for every age cohort in the
county, except for 10th graders. Children did better in primary
math -- grades 2-7 -- then they did last year, though algebra
scores fell slightly. History and social sciences were up; biology
and chemistry were down.
Later in the year, the results
released this week will be run through a complicated formula
to determine how well each school and each district in the state
is doing in meeting the goals set by the federal No Child Left
Behind Act. The outcome of that process will determine whether
a school will be subject to "program improvement,"
a series of ever-harsher penalties (see "Making the Grade,"
Sept. 23, 2004).
With the beginning of the school
year just around the corner, parents may wish to use the test
results of prospective schools to gauge whether or not it is
a good fit for their child. Competition between public schools,
private schools and charter schools has been increasingly fierce
in recent years, with many schools making strong pitches at a
time when overall enrollment is static.
Frost said that the impulse
to research a prospective school was laudable, but she offered
some caution to parents wishing to use STAR test results for
that purpose.
"What I would say is that
it's useful information to see, especially if you have the time
and patience to track a school over time, to see how a it has
done in improving its scores," Frost said. "But in
selecting a school for a particular student, it's important to
look at what that school can offer a particular child's needs.
And it may not be measured by a test score."
Full test results can be accessed
through the STAR page at the California Department of Education's
website, star.cde.ca.gov.
Reports are available by school, by school district or for Humboldt
County as a whole.
Bay dredge spoils may be beach-bound again
by
HEIDI WALTERS
A row has broken out over plans
to dredge Humboldt Bay along the Eureka waterfront and Woodley
Island and dump the spoils on the beach of the Samoa Peninsula.
Last week, when the city of Eureka and the Humboldt Bay Harbor,
Recreation and Conservation District brought their dredge dumping
applications before the California Coastal Commission, there
was enough agitation from opponents to the dumping portion of
the plan to give the commissioners pause. The proponents were
asked to withdraw their applications and bring them back to the
next commission meeting, in Eureka, in September.
Dredging isn't a new thing for
the bay, nor one that meets with too much opposition. It's what
should happen with the muck after it's either sucked or dug up
off the bottom of the bay that people disagree about. The Army
Corps of Engineers does frequent dredging along federal channels
leading into the harbors, and it dumps its spoils in an offshore
Environmental Protection Agency-designated site called the Humboldt
Open Ocean Disposal Site (HOODS), three miles offshore from the
harbor entrance.
The city and harbor district
dredge less frequently. They dredged in 1988, and they dredged
in 1998. Both times, they disposed of the dredge spoils in the
surf-zone of the Samoa Peninsula -- with blessings from a number
of local, state and federal agencies, but over the objections
of the EPA.
Now they want to dredge again,
between November and next March, from nearly a dozen sites --
which they are allowed to do under two existing 10-year permits
from the Corps of Engineers. They want to slurry their combined
200,390 cubic yards of dredge spoils through
a 12-inch pipeline to open shoreline
along Samoa, as in the past. They'll need permits from the California
Coastal Commission to do that, and last Friday their permit applications
(submitted last September) finally went before the Coastal Commission
at its meeting in Costa Mesa. However, after hearing concerns
from the EPA and the nonprofit watchdog groups Humboldt Baykeeper
and the Environmental Protection and Information Center -- including
that it was hard for local folks to get to Costa Mesa for the
hearing -- the commission convinced the city and harbor district
to withdraw their applications and bring them back to the commission's
September meeting in Eureka.
Coastal Commission planner Jim
Baskin said the applications had already been delayed because
the city and the harbor district had failed to consult with some
of the federal agencies, such as the EPA, about chemicals in
some of the sediments.
"We had to remind them
they have to bounce these applications off of the federal agencies
first -- and oh, they need to give chemical and material sampling
of the dredge materials to the EPA," Baskin said.
Concerns include the presence
of trace chemicals in the sediments, the impacts to the beach
environment and beach users when the sludgy spoils wash up on
the sand, and the potential impacts to two protected salmonid
species that use the bay.
"Back in 1998, the EPA
objected very strongly" to the city of Eureka's and the
harbor district's being allowed to dump the dredge spoils in
the surf zone, said Brian Ross, a San Francisco-based member
of the EPA's Dredging and Sediment Management Team. "We
believed, and we still believe, it was not appropriate for that
material to go on the beach. And we told them, they need to be
looking forward in their fiscal planning" and take the spoils
to the HOODS site. The city and harbor district say that alternative
is too expensive -- $3.8 million to dump at the HOODS site versus
$2 million to dump in the surf zone -- and not necessarily more
environmentally sound.
In an Aug. 11 e-mail to members
of the Army Corps of Engineers, the coastal commission and other
state agencies, Ross said the EPA had reviewed the sediment test
results, and found that sediments from dredge sites were too
silty to dump on the beach. He noted that samples from the site
contained too much silt in 1996, and that current samples showed
that the material that will be dredged is even less sandy now,
and "inappropriately fine for nearshore placement and beach
nourishment."
Beach nourishment is a term
used when material dredged from one locale is dumped on a beach
that is shrinking. The material has to be mostly sand to work,
and the need for beach nourishment exists in southern California
but generally not up here on the North Coast, Ross said.
"You put sand on a beach,
not mud," he said.
The EPA also wants more study
of the chemicals in the sediments to be dredged. Initial tests
found trace levels of carcinogens and PCBs. And there were higher
levels at one site, the Coast Seafoods Dock. "This is not
the horrible, glowing, contaminated stuff, it's just a little
too much to dump on the beach," Ross said. He said while
most of the other sediment could go to the HOODS site, the EPA
would recommend that sediment from the Coast Seafoods Dock be
disposed on land.
Humboldt Baykeeper Director
Peter Nichols called the city's and harbor district's sediment
sampling analysis, by consultant Pacific Affiliates, "incomplete"
and "flawed."
"They didn't test for dioxins,"
Nichols said. He said dioxins have been shown to be present in
other tests. And, he said, the presence of carcinogens found
in the consultant's sampling should be reason enough not to dump
the sediments in the surf zone. "The problem with that is
there are about six really good surf areas there [off Samoa],
and the last time they disposed of the sediments there, a lot
of surfers told them it was affecting them."
Dave Hull, chief executive officer
of the harbor district, said he agrees that if the sediment levels
at the Coast Seafoods Dock, for example, are higher than acceptable,
they can't be dumped nearshore or offshore. "If it turns
out it's not suitable, then it'll be pulled from the project,"
he said. But he says the EPA is too hung up on the notion of
"beach nourishment."
"What we're doing is not
beach replenishing," Hull said. He said the dredge spoils
are dumped in the surf zone in the winter, when more dynamic
conditions mix up the stuff and wash it away. And what does wash
up on the beach may have an impact, he agrees, but a temporary
one. Studies after the last dredging and surf-zone dumping found
that while sand-dwelling creatures died off, their populations
recovered several months later, he said.
Nichols seems horrified by the
notion, however, of so much muck washing up again on the beach.
"We're talking 200,000 cubic yards -- that's 20,000 10-yard
dump trucks. Bumper to bumper, they would stretch from Eureka
to Crescent City. They're crying poverty, but the lack of planning
on the part of the harbor district and the city of Eureka does
not constitute an emergency on the public's part to allow these
spoils to be dumped in the surf zone."
Nichols said once the spoils
are dumped in the surf zone, longshore currents pull the "black
sludge" ashore. "We're talking paving over the beach,"
he said, "filling in the spaces between the sand, and cementing
over the beach for several months and killing the benthic organisms
that live in the sand. We're not against dredging at all. It's
how it happens and how they're disposing of it that we're concerned
about."
The Coastal Commission's Eureka
meeting is set for Sept. 14-16.
COVER
STORY | STAGE DOOR | ART BEAT
PREVIEW
| THE HUM | CALENDAR
Comments? Write a
letter!
© Copyright 2005, North Coast Journal,
Inc.
|