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April 11, 2002
HSU
wins; Arcata loses
A lawsuit filed by the city
of Arcata to stop the construction of the Behavioral and Social
Sciences Building on the Humboldt State University campus has
been dismissed.
Judge J. Michael Brown rejected
the city's claim that the building, planned for the corner of
15th and Union streets, needed additional environmental review.
The university's environmental studies were completed in 1993,
and the city claimed they were out of date and insufficient.
Residents with houses close
to the property have voiced concerns that the building would
be too tall and would attract too much additional traffic for
the neighborhood.
Brown's decision was welcomed
by the university. President Alistair McCrone, who will be leaving
office at the end of the academic year, said in a press release
that the school "looks forward to completion of this project
for the benefit of our students and faculty."
But it won't be that simple.
While construction is now legally free to proceed, it is not
financially feasible. The university lost the state funding for
the project when construction bids came in $4 million over budget
last year. The university now has to wait until November to see
if the next education bond passes. That bond would provide money
for capital improvements at educational facilities across the
state.
And Arcata may not be finished
fighting the building's construction. City Councilmember Connie
Stewart said she has been talking with municipal governments
in other cities with campuses in the California state university
system. The cities could take their concerns to the state government,
she said, and demand a more responsive attitude.
"We all have similar concerns
when it comes to the lack of cooperation on planning issues,"
she said.
Timberland
sold to nonprofit
In a startling reversal, Sierra
Pacific Industries announced April 8 that the company will sell
its timberland east of the Arcata neighborhood of Sunny Brae
to a nonprofit land conservation organization.
Sierra Pacific will sell the
land to the Trust for Public Land, a national organization that
has worked with the logging company since 1989 to transfer its
most sensitive holdings to public ownership. The trust is proposing
transferring the land to the city of Arcata for management as
a community forest.
It remains unclear where the
money to pay for the purchase would come from. In a press release,
the trust suggested that a mix of private and public funds could
be used for the purchase. The property has been appraised at
about $2 million.
"I was pleasantly shocked,"
said Arcata Councilmember Connie Stewart. "We're very appreciative
(to Sierra Pacific) for doing this."
David Sutton, senior project
director for the trust, said the deal is highly unusual. SPI
has sold the trust a lot of land -- over 30,000 acres last year
alone -- but in this case, the company had finished all the legally
required environmental reviews. It could have begun harvesting
the land within weeks.
"It is unusual for them
to sell land with an approved THP," Sutton said. "I
think it speaks to their recognition of neighbors' concerns."
"This is something we'd
hoped for, but I don't think it was anything anyone had expected,"
said Mark Lovelace, spokesperson for the Sunny Brae-Arcata Neighborhood
Alliance.
Lovelace said his organization
will now concentrate on seeing that watershed restoration work
SPI had proposed to do as part of its harvest would be completed
by the city.
"This has changed from
being something we were working against into something we are
working for," he said.
A recovery
of sorts
Humboldt County may be on its
way to a modest economic recovery, but not without a few surprises.
That's the picture from the
latest Index of Economic Activity, published monthly by
Humboldt State University. March's Index, with data covering
February, has plenty of encouraging news -- all from unexpected
sources.
Lumber manufacturing, the traditional
heart of the Humboldt County economy, bucked a long-term trend
by increasing 2.9 percent in February. And that simple increase
might be more than a fluke.
"I think we'll see a modest
recovery in lumber manufacturing," said Professor Steve
Hackett, who compiles the monthly index. There are two main reasons:
One, recent tariffs imposed on Canadian softwood imports may
help stabilize prices for the redwood and Douglas fir Humboldt
mills produce. And two, one of Humboldt's idle mills this year
may come back on line. Eel River Sawmills of Fortuna was shuttered
in February after a long period of financial decline. However,
a recent offer to buy the mill and start it up again has been
approved by the company's shareholders.
If a steady log supply can be
found, Eel River Sawmills stands a good chance of staying afloat.
It is widely considered to be a modern, efficient facility and
is designed to process the smaller second-growth logs available
today.
And demand for lumber should
remain high in the short-term, as new home construction sped
up in February. Housing starts reached their highest point nationally
since December 1998.
The only problem may be future
increases in interest rates. Mortgage rates have been increasing
in anticipation of a national economic recovery. If they get
too high, the cost of building a new home could become a drag
on demand for lumber.
Just as lumber manufacturing
enjoyed a good month, two sectors that have become mainstays
of the county economy had a bad month. Both the housing market
and tourist activity declined during February.
The tourism sector dropped 5.1
percent and home sales dropped 12.1 percent. Factor in future
increases in mortgage rates and gasoline prices, and the two
sectors look even more vulnerable. But Hackett said it was too
soon to worry.
"Home sales are a volatile
sector," he said. "It's hard to get a good sense of
a trend of one month. I feel like the sector is healthy."
And tourism?
"I'm optimistic. The fact
we are having a modest recovery nationally will mean people on
the West Coast are more likely to plan a North Coast trip,"
because Humboldt represents a lower-cost alternative to distant
vacation spots.
"And gasoline is not a
major component of the cost of a trip for a family," Hackett
said.
Capping off the month's report
was a dose of good news about the county's job market. The unemployment
rate fell from 7.9 in January to 6.8 in February, driven by an
increase in employment in the service sector.
And the future looks bright,
too: The number of help wanted ads in the Times-Standard,
used by the Index as an indicator of future performance
in the job market, rose 17.5 percent in February.
The Index is available
online at www.humboldt.edu/~economic/current/index.html.
![[photo of students sitting in hallway at HSU]](news0411-NASprotest.jpg) Students back Native
American professor
Samantha Williams and other
Humboldt State students held a protest outside the office of
Kathleen Stokes, the university's vice president for academic
affairs, April 5. The sit-in is part of an ongoing campaign to
reverse Stokes' recommendation not to rehire Assistant Professor
of Native American Studies Kathleen Hill. Williams, a 24-year-old
Humboldt County native of Tlingit and Choctaw descent, said HSU
needs professors like Hill.
"The Native American Studies
program is why I even came to HSU," she said.
EF! vs.
FBI to trial
A long-awaited civil rights
lawsuit claiming that two North Coast activists were unjustly
targeted as suspects after a bomb destroyed their car got underway
in Oakland this week 11 years after being filed.
"We have to pinch ourselves
to realize we are really going through with it," said plaintiff
Darryl Cherney in a telephone interview from Oakland.
In 1990 Cherney and Judi Bari,
both activists with Earth First!, were on their way to a rally
in Oakland when a bomb detonated inside the car. Cherney escaped
without major injuries, while Bari's pelvis was crushed, confining
her to a wheelchair until her death from breast cancer in 1997.
Bari and Cherney filed suit
in 1991, claiming their constitutional rights were violated during
the subsequent investigation by the FBI and the Oakland Police
Department. They were considered suspects and arrested but never
prosecuted. No one has ever been charged with the crime.
Cherney blamed the FBI for the
11-year delay. "It's taken them 11 years to give us photos
of me lying in the hospital after the explosion," he said.
But the Earth First! legal team
also asked for and received a delay last October because of fears
that they would not be able to receive a fair trial in the political
aftermath of Sept. 11.
Thompson:
North Coast being ignored
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS FAVORING
agricultural interests to the exclusion of all other parties
as it seeks to resolve the ongoing fight over water in the Klamath
River basin, Congressman Mike Thompson said last week.
Speaking from his Eureka office,
Thompson expressed indignation that North Coast communities,
along with commercial and sport fishing interests and Native
Americans, have been left off a government-appointed task force
set up to seek a solution to the Klamath situation.
"I think it's more than
an oversight that the coastal communities, the river communities,
Native Americans and commercial and sports fishermen were left
out of the equation. The task force needs to be made up of all
the stakeholders," said Thompson, who last week made an
appearance at a press conference in Eureka held by an environmental
group intended to highlight the Klamath's environmental decline.
"I'm on the Agriculture
Committee (in the House). I used to be in agriculture. I support
agriculture. But I can't imagine (the Administration) not understanding
that we on the North Coast have been suffering economically for
years because of the water management practices of the federal
government. And now to say, `Too bad North Coast, too bad Humboldt
and Del Norte and Mendocino counties, too bad southern Oregon,
I'm concerned with farmers in the basin and that's all,' well,
that's just not appropriate. You need to be concerned with everybody."
While a relatively wet winter
will prevent a repeat of last year's crisis in the basin, a repeat
at some point is unavoidable unless all the parties can reach
agreement about how to divvy up the water. "The underlying
problem is overallocation," Thompson said.
On a related matter, Thompson
said the Bush administration needs to carry out a decision made
in the Clinton era to return a portion of the Trinity River now
being diverted to farmers in the Central Valley as a way to boost
the river's declining salmon and steelhead runs. He said the
Interior Department's present position that the matter needs
more study is unjustifiable.
"We've studied it too long
already," Thompson said. "It's pretty clear there needs
to be some water returned to the Trinity. The longer we study,
the worse the problems are going to become.
"We need to carry out the
record of decision," Thompson continued, referring to the
2000 order by then-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt to
restore part of the river's flow to its natural channel. "The
fisheries are dependent on that, the river communities are dependent
on that. And there's a matter of trust. We did the study and
now it's time to live up to our end of the deal."
Thompson said he would probably
be a co-sponsor, along with Sen. Barbara Boxer, of a bill that
would designate more wilderness areas on federal land in California.
He said the bill, still in draft stage, would provide protection
to the Kings Range and possibly other areas on public land in
Humboldt County.
The 51-year-old Napa Valley
Democrat, who has represented the 1st Congressional District
since 1998, is being challenged by Lawrence Wiesner, a conservative
Santa Rosa accountant. Wiesner has lost two previous bids to
take Thompson's seat and is considered a longshot at best.
On national matters, Thompson
said there will be "a tremendous debate" on fiscal
issues now that the increased spending and tax-cutting priorities
of President Bush have put the country in debt. "The idea
that this administration wants to increase our debt level when
we're already $5.7 trillion in debt, already spending $1 billion
a day on interest on that debt ... and to come back and ask that
the debt ceiling be lifted with no plan to pay off that debt
or to balance our books is terribly short-sighted and a tremendous
threat to our economic and national security."
Thompson, speaking before President
Bush sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Middle East
to try and defuse the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said Bush
erred when he came into office and chose not to continue to seek
a solution to the conflict as President Clinton was doing at
the end of his term. "It was a mistake not to remain involved
in the Middle East (peace) efforts," Thompson said. "This
administration didn't do that. They ran on a platform that they
weren't going to do that. They told the American people they
wouldn't become involved in nation-building and solving the problems
of the rest of the world. I think the voters understand that
it's important to do that and I think the administration now
understands that."
When asked if the U.S. should
invade Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein as President Bush has openly
called for, Thompson said such an effort at this point in time
would be "a bit premature.
"I don't know how this
country can do that if there's not some provocation on (Hussein's)
part or if there's not some sort of agreement amongst the allies
that he's doing what some suspect he's doing and that by stopping
him we'll stop terrorism. Right now (that kind of agreement)
is not there. We're kind of alone on that."
-- reported by Keith Easthouse
New director
at HAC
The Humboldt Arts Council announced
last week it has appointed an interim director.
Guy Joy, operations manager
for the council, will replace outgoing Executive Director Debbie
Goodwin. The appointment takes effect April 22.
Joy has held several administrative
positions, including director of public relations for the University
of California at Berkeley and tourism executive for the Lake
Tahoe Visitors Bureau.
The council, which provides
fiscal support and exhibition space for the fine arts in Humboldt
County, is best known for the Morris Graves Museum, located in
the Carnegie Building at 6th and F streets in Eureka.
HSU's
track and field champs
Two Humboldt State University
track and field athletes are at the top of their game -- literally.
Jason Walker and Kate Droz have
the best records in all of NCAA Division II track and field for
their events.
Walker earned that honor by
completing the 3K steeplechase in 8:58.52. Droz threw the javelin
148 feet and 11 inches to claim her spotlight. With six more
meets to go, the duo may yet improve their marks.
"There is a lot more to
come this season," said head coach David Wells.
Headwaters
$$ report out
The final staff report on how
to spend the $22 million the county received as part of the Headwaters
agreement has been published.
The report is the result of
a two-year process in which the Department of Community Services
looked at how the money could best be used to foster economic
growth in the county. The recommendations include a mix of revolving
loan and grant funds.
The final report will be used
as a basis for the Board of Supervisors' decision about how to
spend the money. A preliminary version was released earlier this
year. The new version includes changes that reflect the public
comment the department accepted.
Chief among those changes is
the way the report treats venture capital, said Kirk Girard,
director of community development for the county. Other changes
include a clarification of how watershed restoration projects
might qualify for funding and making the charter flexible enough
to adapt to changing conditions.
People unhappy with the report
still have a few chances to comment. Written comments can be
submitted to Jacqueline Debets, 520 E St., Eureka, 95501. Oral
comments can be made before the board at a May 6 hearing. The
report can be found online at www.co.humboldt.ca.us/planning/index.asp.
Co-op conventioneers
here
Score another point for eco-tourism.
Drawn by Arcata's famed marsh
and recycling center and the region's thriving organic farming
economy, a national organization of cooperative groceries will
hold its convention in Humboldt County June 6-8.
The 46th Annual Consumer Cooperative
Management Association Conference will bring more than 300 directors
and managers to the North Coast.
They'll be surveying the North
Coast Co-op's newly expanded flagship store in Arcata as well
as looking at the farms that deliver produce to the store. Then
it's on to the recycling center to see where food containers
go, and to Fire and Light to watch recycled glass be turned into
fine dinnerware and other consumer goods.
But it's more than just a guided
tour, said Angy De Simone, Co-op spokesperson.
"They'll also be talking
about issues within the cooperative movement, what might be new
or upcoming, and what kind of strategic planning they can do,"
De Simone said.
People interested in attending
or volunteering for the convention should call 826-8670, Ext.
134.
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