the town dandy / By Hank Sims

You Dropped the Bomb

(Oct. 4, 2007) Two great big Earth-shattering pieces of news came down the pike last week, and for various reasons we’re not going to treat either one with any degree of completeness.

One: Dateline, Corpus Christi, Texas. The Pacific Lumber Co., which filed bankruptcy in January, submitted its long-awaited reorganization plan on Monday. In brief, how does the Scotia-based timber giant propose to get back on its feet? By subdividing 22,000 acres of its timber land into 160-acre “ranchette” parcels, and by convincing the government to buy another 6,600 acres of old-growth redwood. The land for sale would comprise a hefty swath of Pacific Lumber’s holdings in the northern part of the county, a continuous chunk of land between Fortuna and Kneeland.

The company seems to think that it can pocket big dollars on such a real estate play. It values the 6,600 acres of old growth at $400 million, which seems very, very high. Second, the company seems to think that it can pocket about $5.7 million per 160-acre ranchette, which seems batshit-insane. Right now, there’s a 3,800-acre ranch in Petrolia with Mattole River frontage listed for $3.8 million. There’s a 1,100-acre ranch near Ferndale with a home and ocean views listed for $4.5 million. Look for opponents of Palco’s parent corporation, Maxxam Corp., to challenge the company to explain how it’s going to get over $5 million each for over 130 little 160-acre parcels. And look for local government to start flipping out over the idea of little “trophy” ranchettes sprawling out over a big old stretch of timber land.

Second: The city of Novato just filed a comprehensively damning lawsuit against the defunct North Coast Railroad Authority, which asks the court to shut down all work being done on the southern end of the publicly owned railroad until such time as the authority files a comprehensive environmental impact report on its planned operations. It’s a major blow for those Humboldt County politicos who hold true to the dream of bringing rail and cargo shipping back to Eureka. More next week.

“Which cider you on?” Such is the slogan for the “Clif Clendenen for Supervisor” campaign, at least as proposed by an unusually clever blog-infesting anonymouse a few days ago. Clendenen, whose family has run Fortuna’s premier commercial apple orchard for the last 100 years or so, last week announced that come next year he would be challenging four-term Second District Supervisor and vinegar-pissing cowboy Roger Rodoni.

Or, rather, we assume that he’ll be challenging Rodoni. For the last couple of weeks, Rodoni himself has been on a hunting trip and out of the reach of modern telecommunications. (Clendenen’s timing demonstrates a remarkable degree of political savvy, for a neophyte; note that he waits until Roger and his guns are safely out of the county.)

Clendenen’s entry into the fray could be the first sign of a spicy Spring 2008 election down in the Schizophrenic Second, which takes in redneck-dominated Fortuna, Rio Dell and Scotia as well as the elderly, patchouli-reeking freaks in the hills around Garberville. Rodoni’s kept a firm grip on the place by a) staying true to his cowboy roots, and friendly with resource extraction industries, and b) promoting a libertarian, live-and-let-live attitude toward marijuana cultivation, which by itself wins him much of the hippie heart. For 12 years, this simple formula has proven uncrackable.

But now, with the Maxxam Corp. name equaling mud in the conservative Eel River Valley and beyond, some are thinking the equation has changed. Clendenen, a friendly, middle-of-the-road guy whose surname is just about synonymous with Fortuna, may have a shot, the thinking goes. But there’s an X factor in the equation — Estelle Fennell, the longtime news director at Redway public radio station KMUD, who just stepped down from her post last month. Fennell hasn’t made an announcement yet, but she’s certainly been toying with the idea.

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