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September 8, 2005
DISASTER RELIEF: A Creole restaurant in Garberville, with roots
in New Orleans, La., is taking in friends and family who were
left homeless and jobless in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Becky
Krossland, manager of Cecil's California Creole said that so
far a family of three from New Orleans has made it to Garberville
after evacuating. Krossland and co-owners Cecil Stansill and
Michael Kohn are expecting more friends next week. The restaurant
has set up a fund at the North Valley Bank called Cecil's Hurricane
Relief Fund. Rather than donating through the American Red Cross,
Cecil's will choose relief efforts to fund. "We feel that
all that red tape will devalue our money," Krossland said.
Among the possibilities, which were to be discussed at a town
meeting in Garberville on Tuesday after deadline, were sending
willing local construction workers to Louisiana.
Area locations contributing
to disaster relief are:
- World Shelters: Arcata makers
of heavy-duty, disaster relief shelters are working with American
Red Cross and rescue agencies to send a shipment of shelters.
Make checks payable to World Shelters. 550 South G St., Suite
3, Arcata. 822-6600 or www.worldshelters.org.
- St. Vincent de Paul: The charity
is collecting supplies -- bottled water, non-perishable food,
toiletries. 443-8676.
- Blue Max Pizza: Arcata pizza place
donates all sales on Wednesday, Sept. 14. 822-4841.
- North Valley Bank: KHUM, KWPT
and the Times-Standard have accounts for disaster relief
funds through American Red Cross. Make checks payable to Gulf
Coast Disaster Relief Fund. www.khum.com.
- Umpqua Bank: Donations go to the
American Red Cross. Umpqua matches donations made by associates
up to $25,000.
- Arcata City Hall: Funds sent to
American Red Cross. Make checks payable to City of Arcata --
Hurricane Katrina. Drop off or mail donations to 736 F St., Arcata.
- Mobile Medical Office: Eureka-based
healthcare on wheels sending a clinic to Houston. Van needs equipment
-- generator, EKG, nebulizer, oxygen tanks, and a lot more --
plus a pickup truck. Medical providers should call Dr. Wendy
Ring (498-6183) or Office Director Sally Hewitt (443-4666) for
details. www.mobilemed.org.
CLAM BEACH SHOWDOWN: As the battle over Clam Beach management nears
a key engagement -- a Sept. 13 public hearing before the county
supervisors, extended from last month's hearing -- a new group
has entered the fray. The Friends of Clam Beach, according to
a news release, favors "a compromise 'Safe Beach Alternative'
to seasonally limit driving on Clam Beach." Its plan would
limit recreational driving five months of the year. "Clam
Beach is really kind of out of control," said Friends member
Tim McKay, of the North Coast Environmental Center. "We
get a lot of stories from people about altercations out there."
McKay said the pro-vehicle cry -- which he believes has prompted
county public works director Allen Campbell to back off on limiting
recreational driving on the beach -- doesn't hold up in the letters
department. The county, he said, received 171 personal letters
from county residents supporting vehicle restrictions at the
beach, as opposed to 31 supporting unrestricted vehicle access.
Most of the comments supporting unrestricted vehicle access came
from non-county residents, he said. But beach-access promoter
Dennis Mayo, a horseman and fisherman, says neither the group,
nor its claims, are all that new. "They're the same people
who are all right with the report that came out that says [people]
shouldn't gallop horses on the beach," Mayo said. "They're
the same group of people that says 'no kite flying.' So, they're
just making another stab at trying to infringe on legal activities
for their own special interest gains." He said anti-vehicle
groups "have absolutely hijacked this discussion" on
how to better manage Clam Beach, and "turned it into one
about vehicle access." The real problems, Mayo said, are
the illegal drug activities in the parking lots, and other crimes,
not the people driving on the beach. And he scoffs at the Friends'
use of the word "compromise." "We've put in a
gate, we can't drive at night, we gave Big Lagoon County Beach
to the state -- what's the compromise, what are you giving me?"
ANTI-FLUORIDE FODDER: The arguments of local anti-fluoride forces got
a bit more clout late last month after 11 Environmental Protection
Agency employee unions, representing thousands of environmental
and public health officials, called for a nationwide moratorium
on fluoride, citing cancer risks. A Harvard School of Dental
Medicine study from 2001, which was only recently made public,
shows that boys and animals who drink fluoridated tap water are
at greater risk of having bone cancer. According to an Associated
Press article that appeared in the Boston Globe, Chester Douglass,
head of Harvard University's Department of Oral Health Policy
and Epidemiology allegedly downplayed the research. Locally,
the Arcata Citizens for Safe Water have lobbied the city council
over the past year, without success, to mandate the removal of
fluoride from the city's drinking water. Over the course of the
debate, local health professionals, including Public Health Officer
Ann Lindsay, came out in support of fluoridated drinking water,
citing dental health benefits and shoddy logic from opponents.
GET WED, SENATE SAYS: Gay couples in California who want to legally
marry celebrated the Senate's approval of the Religious Freedom
and Civil Marriage Protection Act, which passed by a vote of
21 to 15 last week. The senate decision marks the first time
a legislative body has approved same-sex marriage without a court
mandate. On Thursday, Sept. 1, a few hours after the vote, the
local chapter of Equality California threw a party at the Humboldt
Unitarian Universalist Church in Bayside, where revelers ate
wedding cake amid rainbow colored balloons. The bill, AB 849,
sponsored by Assemblymember Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and co-authored
by Assemblymember Patty Berg (D-Eureka) is headed to the Assembly,
which rejected similar legislation in June by a vote of 41 to
37.
POWER DEMAND: The Hoopa Valley Tribe demanded last week that
the Public Utilities Commission not eliminate a public hearing
on PacifiCorp's $9.4 billion sale of its Klamath River hydroelectric
dams to MidAmerican Energy. PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Scottish
Power, and MidAmerican asked the PUC for a blanket exemption
from state provisions that, among other things, require Californians
be given the chance to weigh in on major public utility sales.
In a statement, Hoopa Tribal Chairman Clifford Lyle Marshall
said the "Hoopa Valley Tribe is not opposed to the sale,
per se. We just want to make sure that an opportunity is not
lost for Californians to ensure that salmon passage around these
dams is established and maintained." A major tributary to
the Klamath River, the Trinity River, passes through the Hoopa
Valley Tribe's reservation, and the Klamath also crosses a portion
of it. The Klamath Hydroelectric Project has cut off 300 miles
of river, and associated tributaries, to fish that once swam
upstream to spawn. The tribe's counsel, Tom Schlosser, said,
"These inefficient and aging dams may only provide a small
portion of California's energy grid, but the environmental impact
on the rivers is huge. To allow this sale without giving Californians
a chance to comment is unconscionable."
CASINO LARGESSE: For the second year running, the Blue Lake Casino
has given a generous donation to the Humboldt County Sheriff's
Office. Times aren't as tough for the county's law enforcement
agency as they were in 2004, Sheriff Gary Philp said last week,
but the casino's $120,000 donation is still most welcome. "We're
not quite as deep in crisis, but having sustained the cuts we've
had over the years, we are still well below what was our previous
minimum of staff," Philp said. The money came with no strings
attached, but Philp said it will be used to fund two deputies
working out of the office's McKinleyville substation, which covers
Blue Lake, Fieldbrook and other north county communities.
CORRECTIONS: A brief news item last week ("Spinning Hurwitz")
misstated the size of the Headwaters Forest. It is approximately
7,500 acres. Another story ("Global Warming? Not in our
town") fumbled the full name of the federal environmental
protection legislation commonly known as NEPA. The initials stand
for "National Environmental Policy Act." Finally, Dan
Gianotta, aka "The Dub Cowboy," plays Arcata's Sidelines
on Thursday nights, not Friday nights. The Journal regrets
the errors.
Another
Salzman alias?
Plus: Gallegos, Kerrigan,
others react to phony e-mail campaign
by HANK
SIMS & HELEN SANDERSON
Reaction around the county was
swift to the news that Richard Salzman, the founder of the Alliance
for Ethical Business and a political campaigner for a number
of causes associated with Humboldt County's progressive movement,
had been writing letters to local newspapers under false names.
Meanwhile, District Attorney
Paul Gallegos acknowledged that the week before the Journal's
story appeared ("Web
of lies," Sept. 1), he had received a complaint from
a citizen alleging that Salzman was sending her abusive e-mails
under a false name.
"Basically, she just told
me that this might be happening," he said. "I explained
that I didn't believe it, and I guess we're going to find out."
However, Gallegos said that
he was reserving judgment on this allegation, as well as the
particulars of the Journal's story last week, until he
had a chance to speak to Salzman. On Tuesday, he said that he
had not yet been able to have that conversation with the man
who has been his top fundraiser and political advisor.
In last week's article, the
Journal revealed that Salzman had sent fake letters to
the editor of local newspapers under at least two false names:
"R. Trent Williams," a pseudonym, and "Dick Wyatt,"
an actual resident of Fortuna who later disclaimed the contents
of a letter to the editor that appeared above his name. (Posing
as another person in a letter to the editor is a punishable misdemeanor
under California law.)
The Journal also determined
that it had received false letters from an "R. Johnson,"
purportedly a Eureka resident. The letters praised former Assistant
District Attorney Tim Stoen and castigated the Humboldt Taxpayers'
League for failing to disclose campaign contributions for its
efforts in opposing Measure L, a failed countywide ballot initiative
that would have raised the local sales tax.
The address given in the "R.
Johnson" letters was the true home of Ruth Johnson, a 93-year-old
Eureka woman, whose caregiver emphatically denied that she would,
or would be able to, write letters to the editor.
Though the "R. Johnson"
letters could not be definitively traced to Salzman in the way
that the "R. Trent Williams" and "Dick Wyatt"
letters were, there is new evidence that they were at least sent
by someone with Salzman's particular political proclivities.
After the story appeared last
week, the Journal learned that the same "R. Johnson"
had written letters to private individuals in the area -- in
one case apparently acting as something of an agent provocateur
in next year's race for the Fifth District supervisor's seat
currently held by Jill Geist.
Last June, Geist, a former Salzman
ally, raised his ire by sitting at a table with former Deputy
District Attorney Allison Jackson during a fundraising event
for Rep. Mike Thompson. (Jackson, a Gallegos critic and supporter
of Deputy DA Worth Dikeman, was fired by Gallegos after the recall
election last year.) Shortly after the fundraiser, bumper stickers
reading "Dump Geist" began appearing in area mailboxes,
their provenance unclear.
Then, on July 1, McKinleyville
resident Mike Harvey -- a former candidate for county supervisor
and chair of the local chapter of the Republican Party -- received
an e-mail from "Randy Johnson" urging him to run against
Geist.
The e-mail came from the same
address as letters signed "R. Johnson" received by
the Journal -- [email protected]. Unlike the
other "R. Johnson" e-mails, the writer in this case
purported to be a Republican eager to see a challenge to Geist
from the right.
"Are you ready to run again?"
the letter to Harvey asks. "If not, who is there that understands
the need for jobs in this county that will run in the 5th? It
sounds to me like the left is eating their own with Geist so
we should take advantage of the situation!"
Reached Tuesday, Geist said
that Salzman's reaction against her attendance at a function
with Jackson -- a registered Democrat -- was typical of a "you're
either with us or you're against us" approach to political
difference.
"I attended a political
fundraiser for Mike Thompson," Geist said. "This is
a man who embodies the ability to work in a non-partisan manner."
Gallegos said that he was not
yet convinced of the facts of what Salzman had done, and that
there could be a pending "investigation" (he did not
specify what sort of investigation, or who would be carrying
it out.)
"I'm going to reserve judgment
at this time," he said. "I'll always consider him a
friend, so, you know -- you move forward. Sometimes friends make
mistakes."
However, Gallegos did roundly
condemn the practice of writing to newspapers under a false name.
"I would not do that,"
he said. "I would not condone someone doing it. I would
be very unhappy with someone doing it on my behalf, if it was
done on my behalf. I know it's a common practice, but it doesn't
make me happy, that's for sure."
Eureka City Councilmember Chris
Kerrigan, who hired Salzman to work on his reelection campaign
last year, said that he had talked to Salzman after the Journal's
story appeared. Kerrigan said that Salzman called to apologize
-- rightly so, in the councilmember's opinion.
"It was very brief -- because
it's a legal matter, he wasn't able to say a whole lot,"
Kerrigan said. "I hope Richard realizes that what he did
was wrong."
Kerrigan took exception with
the letter defending Salzman written by the chairperson of his
reelection campaign, Andrea Davis (see "Letters," p.
3).
"She's entitled to her
own opinion, but I don't fault the Journal for covering
a local story," he said. "That's the intent of a local
newspaper. I would agree that there are things that are much
more important around the world, but that doesn't excuse the
fact that his actions were wrong and unacceptable."
Salzman did not return e-mail
and phone messages last week.
Palco,
water board spar over layoffs
by
HEIDI WALTERS
When Scotia Pacific Company
LLC announced last week that it was laying off a third of its
workforce as part of a restructuring plan, it landed the blame
squarely at the feet of the regional and state water boards.
In an Aug. 30 statement on its website, the company's vice president,
Jeff Barrett, said the layoffs were the "direct result of
the overly burdensome and duplicative regulatory environment"
imposed on the company by the North Coast Regional Water Quality
Control Board and the State Water Resources Control Board.
"Newly imposed environmental
restrictions and regulatory burdens are reducing our harvest
levels, and that in turn reduces the number of people we can
employ," said Barrett. "It is a sad situation, particularly
because much of the job loss was avoidable."
In June, the state board put
on hold several timber harvest plans filed by the timber company
earlier this year, which at first had been partially permitted
by the regional board. Conservation groups sued to halt the harvests,
and the state board agreed to stay them until the regional board
completed its watershed-wide waste discharge requirements for
the Elk River and Freshwater Creek watersheds. Palco is fighting
the board over the WWWDR approach. The regional board, meanwhile,
is holding a public hearing Sept. 14 and 15 in Ferndale on the
requirements.
Initial news reports of the
layoffs had scant response from the accused. But last Friday,
in an interview, state water board staff geologist Michael Gjerde
concurred with Scopac's Barrett that the job loss was regrettable
and avoidable -- but he sent the blame right back to Scopac and
its parent company, Pacific Lumber Co, and a "highly leveraged
business management model" under which, Gjerde said, Palco
has maintained an enormous debt that leaves the company vulnerable
to the slightest of upsets.
Although Gjerde works as a geologist
for the state board, he has a master's degree in economics and
worked for years for Chevron and Wells Fargo. "I literally
did oil and gas tax shelters," he said. "So I'm not
just a 'dumb geologist.'" That's the label he said Palco
gave him after he wrote a rebuttal, earlier this year, to Palco's
assertion in a white paper that its financial troubles are the
result of undue regulation by the water board -- over and above
regulations from other agencies such as the California Department
of Forestry -- that could reduce Scopac's timber inventory by
30 percent. In that white paper, Palco said its logging and hauling
costs had doubled in recent years, and it noted the efforts it
had made toward meeting environmental concerns, including the
Headwaters deal in which it sold about 5,000 acres of old-growth
forest to the government, and the costly increase in science
staff to meet its conservation plan and other environmental commitments.
Barrett said on Tuesday that
his company only agreed to the Headwaters deal once the state,
backed by federal assurances, agreed to a sustained-yield harvest
of 175 million board feet per year (the state initially wanted
to set a lower sustained-yield harvest number, at which point
Scopac balked). The CDF then determined, said Barrett, that the
company could harvest 176.8 mbf/year. "Now the water board
comes along" and says the company can't harvest at those
agreed-upon levels, Barrett said. The layoffs are the water board's
fault, he said. "They're really turning this around and
saying we're the bad guys."
But "even in the years
before the 1999 Headwaters deal," rejoined Gjerde, the timber
company "lost money in eight out of 12 years. The water
board has had an impact, but mostly in the last year." He
added that the timber company has "higher harvest rates
than any company in the region."
Mark Lovelace, of the Humboldt
Watershed Council (which along with the Environmental Protection
Information Center appealed the regional board's approval of
the Elk and Freshwater THPs), said Palco "is actually doing
better than at any time" in terms of money brought in from
log sales. "The problem is not the cash flow in, but the
cash flow out." He said Scopac pays more toward its debt
(now at $743 million, not much below the $870 incurred in 1986
when Maxxam bought the company) than its harvests, even at full
level, could support. "The amount of trees they were not
able to get water quality permits for in Freshwater and Elk River
-- which is only a small part of the company's ownership -- was
6 percent of what they planned to log this year. That's a pretty
minor amount. What they're doing, and this is my opinion, is
the company is timing the announcement of the layoffs to try
to bully the water board" before its hearing.
Gjerde said the water board
is merely doing its job: "to regulate in a manner to attain
the highest quality water which is reasonable, for the people
downstream who have to drink the water, and for fish that live
in the water." That charge includes consideration of economic
needs, which Gjerde said the water board has tried to do.
"We feel terribly for the
employees," he said. "We think they've been put through
the wringer by Maxxam. It's highly inaccurate to say we're the
cause of the layoffs. It's like the straw that broke the camel's
back. Is it the straw's fault, or the fact that you're overloading
it so much?"
Gjerde said one of the company's
reports predicted the downturn.
"They planned to have high
harvests initially, to get a lot of money back quickly, and then
decrease until they bottomed out," at which time they'd
have to wait for the trees to grow back before the cycle started
again. "They projected that fluctuation in the workforce
in their own documents. I do think it may be occurring a little
earlier than they projected. But it's not a surprise."
He predicts Scopac will declare
bankruptcy before Oct. 17, the date the Bush administration's
get-tough-on-bankruptcy law goes into effect. "And it's
really sad," he said. "In the last six months, Scotia
Pacific made $14 million in profits before it made interest payments.
That's the same amount they made in the same six-month period
last year. But when they have to pay $27.5 million in interest
payments...."
Barrett said the company hopes
the restructuring will help the company avoid bankruptcy. The
layoffs, in conjunction with the elimination of some programs
and a reduction in helicopter yarding and some contractor costs,
should save several million dollars a year, he said.
The regional water board's public
hearing on its watershed-wide waste discharge requirements for
the Elk River and Freshwater Creek watersheds is set for Sept.
14 and 15, at 8:30 a.m. both days, in the Ferndale Community
Center in Firemen's Park, 100 S. Berding Street. The water board
expects to make a decision on the requirements at its Sept. 27
meeting in Windsor.
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