the town dandy / By Hank Sims

Portapalooza

(Aug. 7, 2008)  All’s been quiet on the railroad for a few months. The old Northwestern Pacific line, that dead set of tracks from Humboldt County to the Bay Area, has been as quiet and trainless this summer as it has for the last 10 years. Strangely, though, even debate about the railroad seems to have gone on summer break. No one’s been much talking about the grand plans to reopen the 300-mile track, which would surely cure all our economic ills.

Instead, attention, such as it is, has focused on the railroad’s kissing cousin and partner in the master plan to revivify our economy — the Port of Humboldt Bay, supposed future home of an international freight terminal. Since the entrance of investment firm Goldman Sachs into scene, offering to sell off long-term leases on the assets of both the port and the railroad, everyone’s been focused on the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District. Ask anyone on the sister agency, the North Coast Railroad Authority, about the Goldman Sachs deal and you get the official non-answer — vee know nossing!

All that is set to change this month, as the railroad steps back into the limelight. In fact, there’s a whole three-day extravaganza of port and rail development activities scheduled for next week, in and around Eureka. First up, on Tuesday, the long-dormant Bay Stewards will hold one of their informational fora, this time specifically about the Bay District’s plan to develop its marine terminal. (The forum will start at 6:30 p.m., in Eureka’s Wharfinger Building.) What, specifically, is the Bay District planning for? How many cruise ships per year? How much military cargo? How many container ships? Has the Goldman Sachs deal gone south, as was recently reported in the Times-Standard? Insofar as anyone has actual numbers, whether imaginary or non-imaginary, they will likely be presented here.

Then, to skip ahead a day, the Bay District itself will have its regular meeting on the evening of the following Thursday, Aug. 14. (Check next week’s paper for venue.) This will be the latest in a series of meetings in which the great freight plan will be discussed and debated, and occasional shards of actual information might squeak their way through before the district approves its draft plan at the end of the month, by a vote of 3-2.

Sandwiched between these events, but in no way connected to them, is the monthly meeting of the North Coast Railroad Authority, which generally pops into town every third month. On the agenda will be a plan to finally hand over the future Annie & Mary Trail, a bit of track between Arcata and Blue Lake, to an agency that will put the tracks to use for pedestrians and cyclists. Word is that there’s going to be a great deal of movement on the Annie & Mary in the near future, following the smashing success of McKinleyville’s Hammond Trail last year.

What most emphatically will not be on the NCRA agenda is anything to do with the great freight plan, which up to now has been the entire rationale for bringing the trains back to Humboldt Bay (and for refusing the entreaties of the trail people, who want to see 100 Hammonds bloom, especially between Eureka and Arcata). Two years ago, when it was seeking bail-out money from the state, the authority confidently forecast that it would be moving 1,000 containers per day out of the Port of Humboldt Bay by the year 2011. Now, it has to do its best to pretend that Humboldt Bay does not exist at all.

That’s because of August’s main event. On Tuesday, Aug. 26, the city of Novato’s big lawsuit against the NCRA, which has been joined by the county of Marinand a multitude of environmental organizations, is set to go to trial. The lawsuit challenges the adequacies of the railroad authority’s environmental studies; if the petitioners are successful, the NCRA — a public agency, mind — will actually have to make a plan for its entire line, and put that plan on paper. This it desperately wishes not to do. So while the case gears up, the railroad authority has to pretend that it has nothing to do with Humboldt County. Barely heard of the place. To admit otherwise would be to bolster Novato’s argument.

So if you go to the NCRA’s meeting and want to watch the authority’s directors squirm, just go ahead and the most basic of questions. Is reopening the line to Humboldt County on the table, or off? Either answer has immense — and, for the authority, immensely unpleasant — consequences.

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