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December 13, 2001
Fish ladder
for Freshwater:
Can a group of Humboldt State University
students save the Freshwater swimming hole? A federal fisheries
biologist warns "It's not going to be easy."
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St.
Joseph charge nurses resign
Citing an attempt to exclude
them from an impending union election at St. Joseph Hospital
in Eureka, several registered nurses have taken a pay cut and
resigned from their positions as charge nurses.
St. Joseph announced Dec. 3
that the nurses' job description was changed to make them part
of management. The change, which would exclude them from collective
bargaining, follows the Nov. 17 announcement that the California
Nurse Association will try to organize nurses working for the
hospital.
In response, 16 of the 17 charge
nurses in critical care resigned to assume regular staff positions
Dec. 4.
Charge nurses are responsible
for assigning beds and nurses to patients, ensuring that emergency
equipment is readied and generally directing patient care. By
giving up those responsibilities, the nurses accepted a 10 percent
pay cut.
"You have to make sure
everything runs smoothly," said Mary Bustamante, who was
a charge nurse in the intensive care unit.
"They say we would be in
a supervisory position of hiring, firing and disciplining people.
But that's just not our role," she said. Bustamante said
that the change to management was totally artificial -- jobs
that were the responsibility of the unit director were simply
given to the charge nurses.
It's not an unusual strategy
for hospitals facing nurse unionization, said Liz Jacobs of the
CNA. "It's purely an attempt to diminish the power and strength
of the bargaining unit and divide and conquer."
Jacobs said St. Joseph has hired
the Burke Group, a consulting firm that specializes in helping
hospitals avoid unionization. Reclassifying charge nurses as
management is "a common tactic" recommended by Burke,
she said.
The charge nurses' resignation
takes effect Dec. 17. Bustamante said that it was "not yet
clear who will take over as the charge nurses" but that
she would be willing to continue performing most of the responsibilities
involved with the job -- as long as she retains her right to
vote in the union election.
"The pay cut doesn't matter,"
she said. "What I need is some concrete leadership and someone
watching my back."
DA draws
a challenger
Eureka attorney Paul Gallegos
announced this week he will run against incumbent Terry Farmer
for the office of district attorney.
Gallegos, whose practice handles
criminal defense and civil litigation, said there were several
reasons for his decision to run against Farmer.
"A significant amount of
our efforts are involved in nonviolent crime, but there are more
important things to do," Gallegos said. Cases involving
nonviolent crime, especially marijuana enforcement, have swamped
the court system. "It's difficult to get a case to trial.
Our system is full."
"This is going to be interesting,"
said Farmer, who has served as Humboldt's DA for 16 years. "Last
time I read the penal code, possession of marijuana under circumstances
other than that of medical necessity was against the law. We
have an obligation to enforce that."
This is the first time Farmer
has faced a challenger since 1994.
Fishladder
for Freshwater
EILEEN CASHMAN IS PROUD OF THE
STUDENTS in her HSU environmental engineering class. They are
hard at work designing a solution to a real world problem: how
to keep the county's Freshwater pool recreational facility from
harming juvenile salmon.
The swimming spot wasn't filled
this year because of concerns that the dam used to create the
pool was preventing juvenile coho salmon and steelhead from swimming
upstream.
![[photo of prototype fish ladder]](news1213-fishladder.jpg) A prototype fish ladder
designed by HSU students to allow fish upstream passage over
the Freshwater Dam
Cashman's students are designing
a fish ladder that would allow upstream passage over the dam.
There are only two problems: It's a very hard job that has to
be completed within a very short time.
"It's not going to be easy,"
said Dan Free, fisheries biologist with the National Marine Fisheries
Service. "It's mainly the eight-foot height of the dam.
The water velocities through the ladder need to be such that
juveniles can pass, and the energy from that eight-foot dam to
the level of the stream is substantial."
Free's skepticism casts doubt
on the project: It was NMFS biologists who nixed the Freshwater
dam's installation this summer, and it is these same biologists
who must be convinced that the ladder allows fish to travel upstream.
What's more, the design must
be completed soon in order to work its way through the regulatory
process in time for next year's swimming season. "That process
would need to begin very soon," he said.
Cashman thinks her students
are capable of completing the design in a hurry -- in fact, their
academic success depends on it.
"They need to be finished
with their designs by the end of the semester," she said.
"I think for a project of this size, it's a reasonable time
frame and the county would really like to put it in next year."
One reason for Cashman's confidence
is that the planned ladder would be only a temporary structure.
"My understanding is that what the students come up with
is just going to be a prototype." The structure would be
installed, studied and replaced with an improved design later.
A prototype project could help
increase the understanding of a field about which little is known.
So little information on juvenile
fish passage is available that it is unclear whether the dam
is even harming fish. It's true that the dam stops fish from
travelling upstream -- but no one knows if juvenile fish need
to travel upstream.
The real question is "whether
there are fish that would like to redistribute [to travel] upstream
... whether that's biologically important," said Terry Roloefs,
a fisheries biology professor at HSU
Until the evidence shows fish
don't need to travel upstream, NMFS will assume they do and in
order for the dam to be installed "we would need to see
passage for the fish," Free said.
Even if the fish ladder works,
the dam would still have problems.
"When they fill the pool
they block off 80 percent of the flow and only leave 20 percent
in the river for the downstream fish. To me, that's inadequate,"
Free said.
Roloefs said he was not hugely
worried about "partially dewatering the stream." He
pointed out that Clone Gulch, one of the main tributaries of
the Freshwater Creek, enters the stream just 400 feet below the
dam.
Then again, it is not Roloefs
who must be convinced, it is NMFS. Free said the end result might
be that the dam -- and fish ladder -- only get installed during
wet years, when the 20 percent that is allowed to flow downstream
would be sufficient for fish to survive.
"We may get this ladder
but still have conditions where it would be inappropriate to
put the dam in," he said.
Crabs
in time for Christmas
Humboldt gourmands can breathe
a sigh of relief. The county's crab fishermen and a seafood buyer
reached a settlement Dec. 10 that allowed them to start harvesting.
The crab season officially started
Dec. 1, but fishermen had refused to go out until negotiations
over price were completed.
"They wanted $1.75 a pound,
and we came back with $1.40," said Rick Harris of Pacific
Choice Seafoods, a large buyer of crabs from the North Coast.
"It settled at $1.60."
Harris said he hoped that demand
for the crabs would stay strong. "My fear is that the price
is too high. If the crab prices are too high, crab will be a
one-time buy," he said. With most of California in the grips
of a recession, his biggest market has just gone soft.
"In this economy, people
are not spending money on luxury food items," he said. "After
the holidays, the interest in crab products may dry up."
PL loggers,
truckers may go
Pacific Lumber has announced
to its loggers and truck drivers that it is trying to find them
new jobs as part of a reorganization plan.
The Scotia-based timber company
maintains in-house harvesting and trucking crews, but according
to a letter sent to employees last week, it has proven more efficient
to farm those activities out to contractors. PL will try to see
if those contractors will absorb its entire trucking and logging
operations, including both employees and equipment.
Just two weeks ago PL closed
the doors at Mill A, putting 140 people out of work. Both moves
are part of a company-wide reorganization, spurred by losses
of more than $200 million over the last three years.
The company claims that the
financial losses have been caused by a habitat conservation plan
agreed to as part of the 1999 Headwaters Agreement, but a soft
market for lumber products has caused a downturn across the industry.
Can we dodge
the bullet?
The Redwood Curtain is turning
out to be at a barrier against the recession -- at least a temporary
one. That's the picture suggested by the latest Index of Economic
Activity for Humboldt County, published monthly at Humboldt
State University.
Several sectors of Humboldt's
showed strong growth during October, the last month for which
data are available. Home sales, retail sales, tourism and manufacturing
activity all increased. And that success is home-grown: There
are signs that the Humboldt economy is doing better than the
rest of the nation.
"We're doing better than
lots of other people in the country are," said Professor
Steve Hackett, executive director of the Index. "It's
a pleasant surprise."
Most pleasant for Humboldt is
the job market. The latest figures from the federal government
show a national unemployment rate of 5.7, up about 50 percent
from just a year ago. In Humboldt County, unemployment has actually
dropped since last year to just 4.7 percent.
But the future may not be so
rosy, Hackett said.
"The leading indicators
are all pointing in one direction. We may see be seeing a bit
of a decline in the next few months." While lumber manufacturing
has suffered from weak prices, things could get much worse if
the housing construction activity were to fall off.
"Part of why we are doing
OK is that there is still some sort of a market for lumber,"
he said. The recent termination of 140 employees from Pacific
Lumber's Mill A facility in Scotia also has yet to be taken into
account in the most recent Index.
And part of the reason for the
low unemployment rate is an out-migration of workers. The population
of people who either work or are looking for a job in Humboldt
County dropped by 500 over the last year. While that out-migration
may not show up as a shocking statistic, in human terms it is
very important.
"It creates a lot of dislocation
for people who may not have wanted to leave," Hackett said.
Co-op hires
interim manager
What would it take to make a
successful financial consultant and 17-year veteran of Wall Street
manage a grocery store?
"Love," said Patrick
Cleary, the new interim general manager of the North Coast Co-op.
"I've always loved the Co-op."
It certainly isn't money. Cleary,
who moved to Humboldt County from New York in 1999, said he is
now making less than he has since 1984. But he always had a soft
spot in his heart for the Co-op and found it "hard to turn
down" an offer to take over the reins for a while.
Cleary replaces John Corbett,
who announced his retirement earlier this year. Corbett is running
for 5th District supervisor and was recently appointed to the
Regional Water Quality Control Board.
The new job is only temporary,
Cleary said. "Having me allows us to do a search for a permanent
manager at a deliberate pace," he said. There will be an
excellent opportunity next May, when the Consumer Cooperative
Marketing Association has its annual meeting in Arcata.
"In the long term, we will
want someone who has grocery store experience," Cleary said.
"That's not me."
It's the second highly visible
appointment in a month for Cleary. He has also just accepted
a position as president of the Humboldt Folklife Society. After
all, he said, "I didn't really come to Humboldt County to
work. I came to play guitar."
McKinleyville's
champion
McKinleyville residents may
not know it, but they have a fast-talking champion in their midst.
Bonnie Vukonich won the California Auctioneer Championships in
Sacramento Nov. 16.
"We had an interview with
four judges, and they asked us some questions and rated how we
looked them in the eye," she said. Then came the fun part
-- the contestants had to sell three items they had never seen
before. "One of them was, well, I don't know what. Some
kind of knife, I guess," Vukonich said. Although she never
figured out what to call the item, she did a great job of selling
it and was rewarded with the championship.
Vukonich, who runs an auctioning
and appraisal company with her son, will represent California
at the national championships in Orlando, Fla., in July. Her
hope is that there will be valuable items to sell.
"It's much more fun when
you get it into the hundreds," she said. "They just
roll off the tongue more easily."
$1 million
for coastal ranch
Another piece of undeveloped
coastline was added to public ownership Dec. 6 when the California
Coastal Conservancy voted to contribute $1 million to the purchase
of the Barri Ranch.
The 200-acre property, located
next to the former Centerville Naval Station, will be bought
and transferred to the federal Bureau of Land Management. Cattle
grazing will continue on the property, but will be limited to
protect the land's streams.
The defunct naval base is also
slated to become BLM property. An adjoining property, the Lost
Coast Ranch, has already been purchased for BLM administration.
Booster
seats or else
Here's a great Christmas idea
for your parenting friends: Get them a new booster seat. Not
only will you be protecting a child's safety -- you might also
save the parents a ticket.
After Jan. 1 booster seats will
be required for all children under 60 pounds in size or 6 years
of age.
The new "6 or 60"
booster seat law complements the current "4 and 40"
law that requires children to be in car seats until they are
4 years old and weigh 40 pounds.
For more information on the
new law or how to tell if your child has outgrown his or her
car seat, call the county's Public Health Branch at 268-2148.
County bed
tax illegal?
For the last three years, Humboldt
County may have been collecting too much bed tax -- and may be
required to collect less in the future to compensate.
A series of court battles over
the legality of a 1986 law has left the county in the dark about
whether it will lose $140,000 a year, $280,000 a year or no money
at all.
At issue is the Transient Occupancy
Tax or bed tax. The county tacks 10 percent on to any hotel bill
in its jurisdiction. Until 1993, the rate was only 8 percent.
The increase was enacted without
voter approval -- as would seem to be required by Proposition
62. So the county began diverting the 2 percent into a trust
fund.
In 1998 an appellate court ruled
that a three-year statute of limitations applied to tax raises.
Safely outside that time frame, the county declared the coast
clear and began spending the money in the trust fund.
The county may yet regret that
decision. The California Supreme Court ruled in June that the
statute of limitations begins every time the tax is collected
and sent the case back to the appellate court for a ruling on
its merits.
That means the county may be
liable for the tax it collected in the last three years. "The
assumption we are working on is that we have a three-year exposure,"
said Karen Suiker, assistant county administrative officer. The
board of supervisors decided Nov. 13 that until a court ruling
clears the issue, the money will again be put into a trust fund.
If the county did collect too
much tax, it may simply have to stop collecting the tax until
it can get voter approval. That move would put a $140,000 hole
in the budget. But the county might be required to compensate
by reducing the amount it collects in the future to just 6 percent
-- a $240,000 reduction.
It might all sound like peanuts
in a county budget of almost $200 million, Suiker said, but the
loss is significant.
"It is discretionary money,
and that's what we're lacking the most. There's a potential for
a stiff impact," she said.
Eel River
mill buyout?
The financially troubled Eel
River Sawmills may yet escape closure and bankruptcy through
a proposed buyout deal. The Mel McLean Family Trust, which owns
the majority of the stock in the mill, is entertaining two offers
to buy out its share of the company.
One of those offers comes from
Englewood Forest Products, an anonymous group of investors. Bob
Eckart, Englewood's spokesman, said the group is proposing to
"cash out" the trust.
But money is only one part of
the Englewood deal, Eckart said. Another main condition of the
deal is that four employees who are suing Eel River's management
drop their lawsuit. The employees allege that the company's management
has driven Eel River into the ground and defrauded the employees
of stock ownership.
The suit names managers Dennis
Scott and Gene Lucas, both of whom are trustees of the McLean
Family Trust. The proposed Englewood deal would kill the lawsuit,
removing Scott and Lucas from legal liability and control over
the company at the same time.
Eureka attorney William Bertain,
who represents the employees in the lawsuit, said he had spoken
to Eckart about the deal and "there is a possibility of
a happy resolution."
Just two weeks ago the company
announced that the last of its log supply was about to run out
and the remaining employees would be laid off. Management has
contended for more than a year that Eel River does not have a
sufficient supply of reasonably priced logs and was headed for
closure, but Eckart said he believes Eel River can be run at
a profit.
"This mill, in good years,
made $8 million to $12 million," he said. He added that
"there are logs around" -- although he declined to
say where.
But Englewood isn't the only
group putting an offer on the table. Jane McDowell, another trustee
of the McLean Family Trust, said there are "two offers that
are being considered." She declined to comment on who had
made the other offer, but said the final deal would be made public.
"It's all getting taken
care of," she said.
"Doc"
Ball dead at 94
Surfers in Humboldt County and
across California lost a pioneer last week: John "Doc"
Ball died at his Eureka home Dec. 4 of heart disease.
"Doc" Ball was one
of the first surfers on the mainland. Until he and his peers
brought the sport to the California coast in the '20s and '30s,
the sport had remained largely confined to its home in Hawaii.
When Ball moved to Humboldt
County in 1952, he brought his pioneer surfing spirit with him.
It had been unheard of to surf so far north, but after Ball took
his board to Shelter Cove, surfing had a new home. He continued
to surf until the age of 92 -- when he began to devote his time
to skateboarding instead.
Test elected
Arcata Mayor
Arcata got a new mayor in a
five-minute ceremony at City Hall Dec. 11.
Connie Stewart opened the meeting
and called for nominations. Councilman Robert Noble nominated
Jim Test, and the council voted unanimously to elect him just
moments later.
"I know I'll never be Connie
Stewart, but hopefully I will do almost as well," Test said.
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