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January 26, 2006
TWO-WAY STREET: Fields Landing residents
fed up with persistent truck traffic in their neighborhood have
two seemingly disparate forces to blame for their troubles --
a logging business and state environmental agencies.
At a meeting facilitated by Supervisor Jimmy Smith
last Thursday night, residents focused on the issue of truck
traffic, though other issues plaguing the town were briefly mulled
over, including drainage concerns and a broken levee that has
been in disrepair for close to two years and awaiting a consultation
from NOAA Fisheries. Residents of the small, unincorporated town
on Humboldt Bay complained that big rigs from Stanwood "Woody"
Murphy Jr.'s business, Humboldt Bay Forest Products, barrel through
the neighborhood, down Railroad Avenue, all day and into the
wee hours (often at unsafe speeds, neighbors claim), spewing
dust, causing an unbearable clamor and destroying the road with
potholes.
Murphy, whose family controlled Pacific Lumber
pre-Maxxam, said he's open to alternative routes, namely building
a road across wetland area his company owns. Part of the trouble
is, the permitting process with oversight agencies like the California
Coastal Commission and state Department of Fish and Game
moves at a snail's pace. His company can't quit hauling product
in the interim and Railroad Avenue is the only way to go. And
even if the state agencies were to give Murphy the green light
for a wetland road, the project might be too expensive to engineer.
Most in attendance appeared somewhat understanding
of Murphy's plight, referring to the drawn-out permit process
as "bureaucratic bullshit". But another vocal contingent,
including Railroad Avenue resident Darrell Evenson, offered little
sympathy, saying the company is bad for the neighborhood: No
one wants to visit homes on his noisy street, the area is unsafe
for kids, property values are affected, some have moved away
in frustration and he's considering the same, Evenson said. In
addition, his new pickup truck is eternally soiled from the big
rigs that spray gravel, dirt and oily puddles onto his vehicle.
"There ain't no car wash in Eureka will take it off,"
he explained.
The bottom line, from Murphy's point of view, was
that industrial and commercial zoning allows his company the
right to use that road, the county is responsible for repairs,
and 50 employees depend on the well-being of his company, along
with another 150 sawmill workers who supply the
wood. "I don't want to be the problem, I want to be the
solution," Murphy told the crowd of roughly 30 people. "I
don't care about those jobs if it makes my life miserable,"
Evenson countered, exasperated. He continued with a half-apology
to Murphy: "I'm not mad at you, personally. I'm mad at the
problem, and right now, you own the problem."
On Tuesday morning, Supervisor Smith said that
since the meeting, Murphy told his drivers to reduce their speed
and is having traffic signs made to cite the rule.
NOT BANKRUPT YET: Maxxam, Inc., the parent
company of Pacific Lumber, announced last Wednesday that thanks
to a $2.3 million shuffle between its various corporate arms,
the company was able to meet its $28 million payment to debtholders
and to avoid a foreclosure on its Humboldt County timberlands.
In a report to the Securities and Exchange Commission,
the company said that one of its subsidiaries -- "Maxxam
Group Inc." -- would make an advance purchase of timber
from another -- Scotia Pacific, the entity that holds title to
the bulk of the company's land holdings in the county and carries
the bulk of its debt.
The report carried the disclaimer now standard
to Maxxam filings with the SEC: The cash-strapped Scotia Pacific
may soon have to restructure its operations, institute more layoffs
or even declare bankruptcy. But that day is not now. The company's
next payment to debtholders will come due in July.
NOT MARBLEY ENOUGH? Commissioners in Coos
County, Ore., filed a lawsuit last Thursday in U.S. District
Court in Eugene against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, demanding
de-listing of the marbled murrelet -- a seabird that nests in
old-growth trees in Oregon, Northern California and Washington.
Coos County is contending that marbled murrelets in the United
States have been incorrectly deemed distinct from their counterparts
in Canada. The commissioners' goal, naturally, is to eliminate
another pesky threatened-species obstacle to their constituents'
log gathering on state and federal lands. And it isn't as if
the F&WS is balking -- it already has proposed de-listing
the murrelet under the federal Endangered Species Act, but the
Coos commissioners want the Service to giddyup already. Closer
to home, recall that the recent treesits down near Scotia were
all about the murrelet.
OVERACHIEVERS: They only needed 4,389 signatures
to get their initiative on the ballot but the Humboldt Coalition
for Community Rights threw in a few thousand more, showing any
would-be, non-local, big-money corporations (and you know who
you are, Maxxam and Walmart) who try to get all up in this county's
elections that the HCCR is for real.
Last Thursday, coalition supporters, including
elected officials like Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District
Board Member Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap (who's also the HCCR campaign
manager) and District Attorney Paul Gallegos, congregated at
the HumCo Elections Office in Eureka to rejoice in their successful
petition drive, using volunteer labor to pull in 7,668 signatures
from North Coasters. The petition signatures supporting the initiative
-- known as the Ordinance to Protect Our Right to Fair Elections
and Local Democracy -- must be verified by the Elections Office
within the next 30 days to be qualified for the June 2006 election.
FIXIN' IT: On Tuesday evening, Jan. 31,
President Bush will deliver his State of the Union address to
Congress. On Wednesday, Feb. 1, at 12:15 p.m., on the courthouse
steps in Eureka, speakers will rally to lambaste that SOU. The
speakers are pretty sure about that -- the lambasting part --
even though they don't know for certain what the President's
going to talk about. Whatever he says, it'll probably need "adjusting"
in light of the facts, said rally organizer Ellen Taylor Tuesday
when we phoned her up.
"Let me just turn down Amy Goodman and I'll
be right back," Taylor said after answering the phone. And
then: "The theme of the rally is to discuss and interpret
the State of the Union address and correct any misrepresentations
he makes." Iraq's a likely theme, and the economy. "And
right now he's on a stomp through Kansas talking about the National
Security Agency ... whose intent has been to spy on U.S. citizens."
Alexander Cockburn, editor of the newsletter CounterPunch
and a columnist for The Nation, is one of the speakers
scheduled to respond at the rally to Bush's night-before address.
"I imagine the headline will be `Bush claiming ongoing victory
in Iraq,' upon which all the speakers will pour scorn,"
Cockburn said Tuesday. "I'll probably talk about the absolute
hollowing out of the economy, and the fact that America's losing
a staggering number of jobs."
Eureka resident Dave Cobb, Green candidate for
President in 2004, also will speak, as will Arcata City Councilman
Dave Meserve. "The only bad part about that is I'll have
to listen to the address -- ha ha," was all Meserve had
to say pre-address and pre-rally.
Oh, and Uncle Sam -- born a meatpacker in 1766--
will be there. "The historical Uncle Sam was Sam Wilson,
who actually provided beef to U.S. fighters in the War of 1812,"
Taylor said.
And he's likely to deliver more beef, you know,
but not the edible kind this time. So bring your lunch to the
rally.
CORRECTION: An item in last week's "Weekly
Wrap" incorrectly identified a spokesperson for the local
Caltrans office. She is Ann Jones, not Ann White. The Journal
regrets the error.
TOP
They think they can
Railroad officials say they can bring trains back to Humboldt County
by JIM HIGHT
T ormented by years of disaster and disappointment
at the hands of Mother Nature and Father Government, the North
Coast Railroad Authority has been hammered recently by a wave
of bad press.
Last June, syndicated columnist Dan Walters attacked
a funding bill for the railroad, calling the NCRA a "pretend
railroad" and a "rathole" for public dollars.
The bill was later vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger.
Locally, many elected officials still support NCRA's
quest to restore service on its 316-mile railroad (it's one topic
the Arcata and Fortuna city councils agree on), but more and
more influential citizens are calling for an end to what they
consider a hopeless crusade. "Can you hear the whistle blowin'?
We can't. And it seems increasingly likely we never will,"
opined the Times-Standard on Oct. 12.
"Sooner or later someone has to stand
up and say 'the emperor has no clothes,'" wrote John Murray,
former Humboldt County director of public works and chief administrative
officer, in a scalding critique of the NCRA published in the
Nov. 25 Eureka Reporter. "County supervisors from
Humboldt and Mendocino counties and their staffs, during my county
tenure, said the railroad is not worth spending monies on ...
However, they will not say that in public."
But John Woolley, Humboldt County supervisor and
NCRA board member, told me recently that the NCRA's plans were
more realistic than many people realized. I was intrigued, and
I felt an obligation to follow up and learn more, not so much
because Woolley is a friend but because I'd played a role in
the NCRA's public relations nightmare with a story last summer
("[T]rail," June 30, 2005) that quoted cycling advocates
and transportation pros who doubt the railroad will ever run
again and want the tracks around Humboldt Bay turned into a rail-trail.
Woolley set up a meeting for breakfast at a local
café, where he quickly turned the discussion over to Dave
Anderson from NCRA's engineering firm HNBT.
Anderson described a series of treks he and others
took through the difficult Eel River canyon section in 2002.
On the river's mainstem, east of the South Fork that Highway
101 follows, the canyon is riven by earthquake faults and splayed
with enormous landslides. It is where a storm wrecked the railroad
in 1998.
"I'm an engineer and I thought we could solve
the problems with things like big retaining walls," he said.
But a geotechnical specialist in the group said such structures
would be overwhelmed when the unstable soil got saturated in
heavy rains. He convinced the group to back another approach.
"He said, 'We need to divert the water,'" recalled
Anderson.
Whipping out a yellow pad, Anderson sketched a
cross-section of railroad, showing how a trench filled with rocks
on the upslope side of the track would catch subsurface water,
then a drain pipe under the tracks would channel it to the river.
The trenches would need to be up to 20 feet deep
to relieve the water pressure that caused landslides, said Anderson.
But this strategy would cost only about one-fifth of the $600
million the Federal Emergency Management Agency estimated it
would cost to repair the canyon section, according to Anderson.
Storm damage would still occur, but according to
Woolley, private contractors in the backcountry around Alderpoint
and Blocksburg could be dispatched to fix problems. "Like
hot-shot crews on fires," he said.
The rest of the conversation covered more familiar
territory: NCRA's contention that a revived railroad will allow
Humboldt Bay to become a shipping port for Asian imports; that
highway taxes ought to be diverted to the railroad in the interest
of getting trucks off Highway 101; that the state will eventually
cough up a promised $42 million that has been held back because
of budget deficits.
But the drainage system seemed pivotal, so I later
phoned the oracular geotechnician.
"To make a long story short, there are some
large landslides in there and a lot of small ones," said
Dexter McCullough, head of railroad services for Shannon &
Wilson, a geotechnical and environmental consulting outfit headquartered
in Seattle. "Most of them can be corrected and will never
be a problem again. The larger ones, with drainage improvements,
will be much less of a problem."
McCullough says that the weather and topography
in the Eel River Canyon are not unique for railroads, which often
run on river banks to avoid steep grades. "There are lots
of other places in the country which are quite similar, with
operating railroads," he said. "Right now we're down
doing stability work for Union Pacific in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas
and Colorado ... on similar water-caused stability problems."
"Through drainage, we can really improve the
conditions [in the Eel River Canyon]. It won't be real easy,
but on the other hand it's all doable," said McCullough.
"The river would benefit from all of this, too. Right now,
it's just choked with debris from the landslides and flooding.
... With no maintenance and no improvements, the railroad itself
is contributing to the debris problems."
McCullough's recommendations are included in the
NCRA's voluminous capital assessment, which is an attachment
to a document the NCRA issued last week: A request for proposals
from private operators to run freight trains -- and maybe passenger
trains -- on all or part of the line from Napa County to Humboldt
Bay.
NCRA last advertised for a private operator in
1998, and back then the railroad industry showed little interest.
Only two proposals were received, one from a company with no
experience operating a railroad, the other from an entrepreneur
who had failed at operating another railroad. The latter firm
was chosen, but the contract was signed just weeks before the
1998 floods shut down the line.
NCRA officials say their prospects are better this
time. "We can get it going," said Woolley. Which private
entities come forward with a proposal this time, what their financing
is, how capable and experienced they are -- not to mention what
they think of the proposed geotechnical solutions in the Eel
River canyon -- will be a key test of whether he's right.
The final Salzman tally?
Fake letter campaign was more extensive than
previously known
by HANK SIMS AND HELEN SANDERSON
P olitical consultant Richard Salzman may have
used as many as 11 names of real and imaginary Humboldt County
citi-zens in a years-long letter-writing campaign to local newspapers,
according to police reports detailing the Trinidad Police Department's
investigation of the case.
Among the other details given in the reports: that
Salzman began sending letters-to-the-editor to area newspapers
under false names as early as February 2002, that he appears
to have disposed of one of his computers shortly after the details
of his letter-writing activities hit the press, and that two
Trinidad residents gave Salzman permission to open an e-mail
account and send letters under their names.
The reports on the investigation were obtained
by the Journal through a request under the California
Public Records Act.
The TPD's investigation of the affair began in
September, shortly after the Journal revealed that Salzman
-- formerly the head of District Attorney Paul Gallegos' campaign
committee and a visible political presence in any number of progressive
causes -- had written a series of letters to this and other newspapers
under fake names ("Web of lies," Sept. 1, 2005). On
the heels of that story, the Eureka Reporter filed a complaint
with TPD Chief Ken Thrailkill, who investigated the matter as
a potential case of felony identity theft.
In the weeks that followed, Thrailkill obtained
a search warrant and seized computers and other items -- including
a file folder containing clipped-out letters published by area
newspapers -- from Salzman's home. He also subpoenaed records
from a number of Internet-related companies, including Yahoo!,
Cox and InReach Internet.
The case was dropped in late December, after a
prosecutor with the state Attorney General's office wrote Thrailkill
that he did not believe Salzman could be convicted on the charges.
Citing advice from his attorney, Salzman declined
to comment when reached at his home Friday.
In addition to the three names used by Salzman
already reported in this newspaper -- R. Trent Williams, R. Johnson
and Dick Wyatt -- the police reports cite eight other names that
investigators believed he also used. They include two apparently
fictitious people, Sara Salzman and George Foster; one deceased
person, Eureka resident Patrice Sanderson; and five other individuals
in the community: Jill Szczygiel, Jereme Stinespring, Claire
Courtney, Marie Maloney and Naomi Steinberg. Some of these suspected
names came from clip files taken during the search of Salzman's
home, while others appeared after a computer forensic task force
examined the contents of seized computers.
The reports indicate that Thrailkill contacted
Szczygiel, a Trinidad resident, shortly after he found letters
written under her name and that of her housemate, Stinespring,
in Salzman's file cabinet. Szczygiel told Thrailkill that she
gave Salzman permission to open an e-mail account under her name
and Stinespring's, and to send letters to the editor under those
names, according to the reports. Szczygiel said that Salzman
had always e-mailed her the contents of a proposed letter for
her approval before mailing it off to a newspaper.
The names of Claire Courtney, Marie Maloney and
Naomi Steinberg were found on an old computer that apparently
hadn't been used since September 2004. According to the forensic
team's report, the computer's hard drive contained a letter to
the Times-Standard dated May 12, 2003, and signed with
Courtney's name. Other letters, written to "unknown newspapers,"
were signed with Maloney's and Steinberg's names. The report
did not contain any other information that would shed light on
whether Salzman had written and sent the letters to the newspapers
himself.
Reached Monday, Courtney declined to comment on
whether or not she had allowed Salzman to use her name.
"Any invasion of my privacy is a Constitutional
invasion, and I don't have anything to say to anyone interested
in this kind of journalism," she said.
Steinberg did not return a phone call seeking comment.
A person answering the phone at Marie Maloney's phone number
said that she had moved out of town.
The computer forensics report also notes that there
appears to be a gap in the two computers that had been seized
from Salzman's home, with the older one not used since September
2004 and the newer one used only after September 11, 2005. Recovered
correspondence on the newer machine shows that on Sept. 11, 2005
-- shortly after the first story on the matter had appeared in
the Journal, and immediately after it became public that
Thraillkill was investigating the case -- Salzman wrote a supporter
asking him to help find a new computer to buy or rent as soon
as possible.
No computer or computers used by Salzman between
September 2004 and September 2005 were found during the search.
As for the letters written under the names listed
above, they run the gamut of topics Salzman had previously been
identified with: support for Eureka Councilmember Chris Kerrigan
and derision of his then-opponent, Rex Bohn; support for the
Arcata City Council's various anti-war resolutions and scorn
for Eureka businessman Rob Arkley, owner of the Eureka Reporter.
In a letter in the Times-Standard dated Aug. 2, 2005,
writer "George Foster" called into the tactics of the
semi-anonymous group HELP, which is associated with Arkley and
is critical of county land-use planning.
"Unless they are willing to be identified,
they should not be given the respect of a legitimate organization
and certainly not that of a community group," wrote "Foster."
The statement closely echoes a guest opinion piece
Salzman later published in the Times-Standard on Dec.
17, 2004, under his own name. The piece, entitled "Taxpayers
League should disclose finances," took that group to task
for not disclosing who had funded their successful campaign against
Measure L, a one-cent sales tax hike on the previous November's
ballot.
"Whoever funded the campaign to defeat the
funding for these services should come forward to take responsibility,"
Salzman wrote. "We believe that all citizens who seek to
legitimately affect our political discourse should identify themselves
openly."
The TPD investigation included two trips to the
San Francisco Bay Area to deliver the impounded Salzman computers
to the task force. In addition, the department ended up paying
$220 each for three requests for computer records maintained
by Yahoo!, the company that Salzman used to register e-mail accounts
under the names of R. Trent Williams, Dick Wyatt, Jill Szczygiel
and perhaps others.
Thrailkill said last week that his early estimate
of time spent on the investigation -- 20 hours, as reported by
the Times-Standard -- was simply an off-the-cuff, spot-of-the-moment
guess, and conceded that the actual figure could be higher. However,
he said, the case was approached simply as a matter of law enforcement,
not politics.
"This case was handled just like any other
investigation that is handled during the course of our daily
casework," he said. "Yes, some trips had to be made
to the Bay Area to deliver the forensic information and to do
some interviews, but that's part of what we do."
In recent weeks, Salzman has reemerged from the
months of silence that followed the publication of the Journal's
original story. Earlier this month, he penned a guest editorial
decrying the proposed Home Depot development in Eureka. He is
serving as a publicist for the Westhaven Center for the Arts.
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