After Hacker Creek
For the neighbors of the Hacker Creek spill, the effects are personal — their property has been devalued, their lives disrupted and their loyalties to their community torn. Barbara King and her son, Julian, recently hiked from their home up the waterway to the spill site.
Barbara knows and loves the local flora and fauna. While moving up the creek bed, she points out uncommon shrub species, quietly watches a small snake slither over a large rock, and gently fingers ferns, letting soft yellow powder cover her fingertips as she indicates unusual pollination patterns. However, she quiets when approaching the damaged area. Gazing at the diesel glazed pools covered with dead and dying insects, Barbara shakes her head and whispers, “I’m a bit disappointed, really.” Then gathering herself, she adds with asperity, “It’s really shocking and it stinks!” It’s not only the diesel that distresses her; she points out waterline and pieces of asbestos thrown into the creek. “What to do about it? I’m so perplexed.”
Recently she spoke with someone contemplating buying the spill property. Worried that another indoor operation might start up again, “I reminded him that he is at the top of the creek and everybody else is at the bottom.” After all, this is not the first spill at this site. One happened there about 12 years ago, too, and there are rumors of a third.
“I don’t like to go off on people,” she says, then adds with a sigh, “You hear generators as you walk along the road … I’m more or less shutting my eyes. [I] feel this dread and anger …” She doesn’t want to accuse her neighbors without cause. But, she worries, “I basically don’t say enough.”
On another day in late September, Erik Nielsen of SHN Consulting Engineers stared down at pools covered by diesel. “Because there is such a low flow, things aren’t going anywhere … In some ways that is a good thing. As a natural occurrence, sun breaks down the residual stuff on the rocks … Overall, effects aren’t as bad as July,” he said. He explains, with hope, rain washing through the spill area will flush the pollutants more extensively. The diesel no longer stings the eyes — much of it has been carted off, embedded in soil to be rehabilitated.
The economic fallout of dismantling the indoor grows could be devastating both to individuals and to the County as a whole. But the ecological fallout is long lasting and so are the reverberations throughout Humboldt County. The tock, tock of dripping water in Hacker Creek, like the ticking of a clock, warns community activists that time for solving the environmental and social consequences of indoor marijuana is running out, and another ecological disaster could explode.
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Label GMOs Signature Gathering Training
meetings / 4 p.m. Sun Yi's Academy of Tae Kwon Do, 1215 Giuntoli Lane, Arcata. Help gather valid signatures to get the 'California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act' on the 2012 ballot. E-mail northernhumboldtlabelgmos@hotmail.com. 223-0424.
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Nonviolence Action Camp
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11 Comments
Comment / By Ernie Branscomb / Oct. 2, 2008, 3:52 p.m.
Wow, the NCJ went from yellow journalism, (Pistol Packing People, Heidi Walters) to real journalism in less than one week. Nice work.
Kym Kemp really nailed the need for environmental reform in the article that she wrote on diesel fuel spills. The article was very descriptive of the wide range of people and critters that were effected. Kym made me want to do something more about taking care of this river canyon that I love, even more than before. I can put up with people that don’t see things my way, but I can’t tolerate this kind of destructiveness.
I hope you can get her to do more writing for you. Nice work Kym! Ernie
Comment / By Ben Schill / Oct. 2, 2008, 10:06 p.m.
The buried oil problem is going to haunt us in the future. Kym Kemp has done a fine job on this article.
Comment / By Mike Goldsby / Oct. 3, 2008, 12:22 p.m.
This was a pleasure to read: Well written on an important topic. Thanks
Comment / By Not A Native / Oct. 4, 2008, 6:48 p.m.
I feel very sad for Barbara. She is committed to being non-judgemental and tolerant but her neighbors are abusing her good will and subjecting her to torment. She’s torn. Like a Sunni Iraqi in an Al-Qaeda area, she’s caught up in loyalty to her group, even as they blow up citizens. Her neighbors destroy the environment in the name of independence and freedom but actually for greed.
I have little sympathy for “Max”. Gotta grow pot for his medicine? Guess that justifies all the inner city ghetto drug dealers and pimps who do it to support their families. Thats the same excuse employers of illegal aliens at substandard wages use too, and similarly for politicians who take bribes. Everybody’s got to live, does that justify everyone seeking illegal money?
And tell me, if Max is so disabled and using a walker, who is planting and maintaining those gardens, contacting the customers, and bringing the product to market? There’s a lot of physical work in farming, Max’s role seems to be only the land owner and profit collector. Max is a criminal, plain and simple, whether he wants to admit it to the mirror or not.
If he grew for his own use or sold it at cost, that would be different. As it is, he’s growing only so he can get illegal profits, not as an act of conscience or civil disobience to protest unjust laws.
Comment / By anonymous / Oct. 6, 2008, 7:07 p.m.
Why cant folks just switch over to propane generators……propane is cheaper, and turns to a gas and rises into the air if it leaks……no fouling streams.
Jesus h christ it isn’t rocket science.
Comment / By love godess / Oct. 7, 2008, 12:40 p.m.
Message to not a native. Lets see either the government or max is going to pay the medical bills. Wouldnt you rather see him trying to pay his own way or would you rather have your tax dollars supporting him? At least Max is being cautious about his grow. Also do you really care that much as to how he is able to garden. You obviously waste alot of your time worry about petty things and need to get your own life and keep busy so you are not concerned as to how someone farms their garden. I also do not see a correlation between crack, tweek, or coke dealers to that of a marijuana grow. Those sort of drugs have nothing in common to that of a grow farm as long as precautions are taken place and not harming the environment
Comment / By Not A Native / Oct. 7, 2008, 5:07 p.m.
love godess. Funny isn’t it? You don’t even mention or have any sympathy for the pain Barbara experiences due to marijuana growing in her neighborhood. Would you tell her she should move or suck it up?
Many people have medical bills and needs but don’t take up criminal activities. If Max can’t pay, he’s old enough for medicare and if he’s poor enough he gan get medi-CAL. All of which I’m happy to help support as a social good, as opposed to the underground illicit marijuana trade. Max grows indoor to make the biggest buck and thats a pure profit motive.
You need to get your head out of your a and face up to the harm that he’s doing, and the harm criminality does to children who grow up around it, and the real environmental damage thats caused by it.
Get real, growers don’t take precautions. Reread the article about the “Harsh Reality”. They don’t give a hoot about the environment as long as they can intimidate their neighbors into hushing up. Like Barbara is being forced to. Growers create a climate of fear, secrecy, dishonesty and denial. Just like a dysfunctional family. How can that ever be a good thing for the community?
Comment / By Jeff Muskrat / Oct. 8, 2008, 5:58 p.m.
Nothing beats some good sun-powered outdoor organic ganja, grown with love and not greed.
Comment / By towelly the dread head / Oct. 11, 2008, 10:13 a.m.
i agree with mr muskrat. solar powered is the way to go. ‘max’ needs to get off the purple and go with some sour diesel or cherry AK if he wants some yield, and maybe once thats worked out he can afford to put in a solar powered compact flourescent veg room and quit paying for clones..
make the world a better place , one plant at a time
thanks NCJ for a really decent piece of journalism…
i assume its ok to use noisy polluting diesel generators for large scale construction projects and other asset creating endeavors with marginal benefit to the general public??
just not dope, nope
Comment / By Fancy Nancy / Dec. 25, 2008, 10:23 a.m.
Max talks about prescription drugs being shipped from China compared to diesel dope ,really they are very similar. The diesel does not originate here either. The sun however is local, organic and free! Max also says he is producing an organic product. How could that be if it’s grown under artificial lights that are powered by diesel?
Comment / By humboldtbambee / Jan. 12, 2009, 3:51 p.m.
There has to be a way to do anything without making a mess. In Oakland they have Oaksterdom—classes which help medical marijuana get to patients. We can grow mm without killing critters, causing a spill or burning down a Historic home in Arcata. We are not that stupid.