the town dandy / By Hank Sims

Fall of the Great

(April 17, 2008)  The North Coast Railroad Authority and the Humboldt Bay District last week got the final big thumbs-down on their … ummm, creative scheme to juke the California Transportation Commission out of a cool $20 mil. The idea, you’ll remember, was that the railroad authority would snatch the cash to open up the dead tracks around Humboldt Bay and down to the Van Duzen, whereupon, theoretically, the gravel fields in the south county would yield their fruit to the international market. Ship it up to the Port of Humboldt Bay, ship it out to the world. Felicitously, and completely coincidentally, we’re sure, the scheme would effectively cock-block the trail activists who are clamoring to put the public right of way to use after 10 long years of rot.

It would have been a beautiful thing, but the state funds in question were earmarked for “trade corridors of national significance,” and the applicants didn’t even bother to pretend that the ol’ Samoa-to-South Fork run really qualifies. Also: The grant required matching funds, and the applicants didn’t have matching funds. Also: The grant gave preference to projects that would reduce air pollution, and the applicants didn’t bother to make the difficult case that their project would. Also: The transportation commission thought that the applicants’ hyper-accelerated timeline for building the thing was, in true railroad fashion, downright kooky.

So: No go. They put the stake in the thing last week.

But the Gravel X-Press was only one part of the proposal — the bigger part. What about the other part? The Bay District was part of the original deal, too, so it wound its own bit of pork into the plan. The entrance to Humboldt Bay is currently plagued by a natural process known as “shoaling” — for reasons no one’s quite certain of, the mouth of the bay is always filling up with sand, making passage in and out difficult. A modest amount of the $20 million was to go sorting out that problem, which at least has the advantage of being real. When the gravel train went down, it took the shoaling down with it.

But there may yet be hope. Lately the Bay District has jettisoned the railroad albatross, at least in this matter, and they’ve reapproached the transportation commission to look at their piece of the thing on its own merits. There remains a chance that some of the money awarded to other projects during this cycle might be returned to the CTC, say if the successful applicants around the state are unwilling or unable to move forward with their plans. In that case, said Bay District Commissioner Mike Wilson, the district may be well poised to pull down some cash for the shoaling project.

“It’s my understanding, based on the report given by our CEO at our last meeting, that the district has the potential to avail of some funding if it’s freed up,” Wilson said Tuesday. CEO Dave Hull has been talking to folks in Sacramento, Wilson said, and the transportation commission has indicated that it is well aware of the problems at the entrance to the bay.

Unlike the gravel train, a solution to the shoaling problem would likely meet the state’s project guidelines, at least to some reasonable degree. If our gasoline and raw logs aren’t able to come in by barge, as they currently do, they’ll have to come in by truck. The pulp mill moves a bit of its product out by ship; if there’s no ship, that bit will have to go by barge. What’s more, the Bay District isn’t really asking for that much cash.

Which really makes you wonder why the district hitched itself to the chronically inept railroad authority in the first place.

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