Oct. 2, 2003 THE
WEEKLY WRAP
|
|
COUNTY
IN FLAMES At the beginning of last
week, the Canoe fire had burned about 1,650 acres in Humboldt
Redwoods State Park, putting a lot of smoke into the air
but otherwise leaving SoHum citizens alone. It's been a different
matter since then. The fearsome blaze broke out of the park and
onto private land, growing to more than 10,000 acres and continuously
threatening the small community of Salmon Creek. The residents
of the imperiled area were asked, but not forced, to evacuate.
Relief centers were constructed, to be activated in the event
of disaster. The Board of Supervisors declared a local
emergency. Schools throughout the region were closed, due to
degraded air quality. The King Range and the Lost Coast
Trail turned away visitors. In all, over 2,200 people, 30-odd
bulldozers and 16 helicopters were fighting the fire. On Saturday,
one firefighter -- an inmate with the California Department of
Corrections -- was badly injured when a tree fell on him. Two
other inmate-firefighters went missing from their camp Monday
morning and were presumed to have escaped. But the weather was
being cooperative as we went to press, according to the California
Department of Forestry, and if the trend continued the CDF
hoped to have the fire contained early next week.
TIMBER
AND TREES Judge John Golden,
overseer of the EPIC v. PALCO lawsuit, has declined
the Environmental Protection and Information Center's request
to order Pacific Lumber to cease almost all of its logging operations,
saying last week that such a move would damage the company and
the local economy. However, the judge agreed to halt all PL timber
harvest plans the company had filed since June. Golden's
ruling angered North Coast Earth First! members and others working
to stop PL's logging. "He's basically rewarding them for
their illegal acts," said activist Naomi Wagner, 58, of
Petrolia. "Anyone who wants to rob a bank should plead economic
necessity so that they can keep on doing it." Meanwhile,
Gov. Gray Davis, who may have just a few days left in
office, was pushing to have the state acquire an additional 691
acres of PL land in the Grizzly Creek area before the
recall election is held. The deal is an unconsummated provision
of the Headwaters Forest agreement.
Meanwhile, Earth First! entered the third week of its
"action training camp" near Grizzly Creek State Park
this week. In an attempt to stop old growth logging and "unsustainable"
cutting by Pacific Lumber, protesters have been blockading
a road leading up to Pacific Lumber land near the park. And
on Tuesday, two women and two men chained themselves to an
orange Volvo in front of the law offices of Mitchell, Brisso,
Delaney & Vrieze on Seventh Street in Eureka, to protest
what it called the firm's conflict of interest in representing
both the county and Pacific Lumber, activist Naomi Wagner said.
None were arrested. Earlier this month, one PL security guard
was very nearly hit by a falling tree as Earth Firsters shadowed
loggers in the Grizzly Creek area. One protester was arrested;
two others were cited and released, Wagner said. The loggers
-- who reportedly have adopted forest names like the activists
do (one calls himself "Clearcut") -- have since
stopped their work, for now anyway. PL did not return a phone
call on the matter.
EUREKA
INN OWNER JOHN BIORD' S attorney has asked the city of Eureka to produce
transient occupancy tax records for other area hotels. City Attorney
Dave Tranberg says such records are not public information. Biord
has been charged with misappropriating $117,000 in the so-called
bed taxes, which hotels must collect and turn over to the city.
He's scheduled for another court hearing Monday.
EVERYONE'S
A CANDIDATE Buried under the mountains
of publicity received by impeachment efforts and recalls, local
and state, is the fact that we're going to have a good old, plain
vanilla election next month. Normally these odd-year elections
for school boards and special districts are quiet, civil affairs,
but this year's promises some heat. Almost every office is being
challenged, and the race for the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation
and Conservation District looks to be especially juicy, with
McKinleyville gadfly David Elsebusch taking on incumbent
Charles Ollivier. Sal Steinberg, a Carlotta resident
and head of Friends of the Van Duzen, will be challenging incumbent
2nd District Supervisor Roger Rodoni this March. Supervisors
John Woolley and Jimmy Smith are also up for reelection,
technically, but if there exists a candidate quixotic enough
to challenge the impregnable Woolley, or just plain rude enough
to challenge the beloved Smith, that candidate has not yet surfaced.
HARDWARE
UPGRADE Humboldt County businesses,
schools and tech geeks shed tears of joy and relief last week,
as telecommunications provider SBC-Pacific Bell announced
that the troublesome 21-mile gap in its fiber-optic line
to the county had finally been conquered. The line bestows on
Humboldt County a bandwidth bonanza, allowing local schools to
hook up to the Digital California Project and businesses and
residents to enjoy easier access to high-speed Internet services.
The legal wrangling between SBC and the Caltrans, which held
up construction for over a year, continues; Caltrans is seeking
a few million dollars for the company's use of its right-of-way.
by BOB DORAN
Outmaneuvering the Eureka based KEET-TV, a Southern Oregon public radio station announced last week that it will acquire KZPN, the 91.5 FM station best known for carrying news and other programs produced by the British Broadcasting Corp.
The $130,000 acquisition by Jefferson Public Radio, based in Ashland, Ore., will bring an end to those broadcasts, long popular with local radio listeners. According to JPR Executive Director Ron Kramer, KZPN will be used as a translator for its "Rhythm and News" programming.
"The folks at KZPN have been talking about wanting to get out from under the operation for years," Kramer asserted in a telephone interview this week. "At one point," he added, "we were asked to submit a formal offer [to buy the station] and we did."
JPR is not a newcomer to the Humboldt radio scene. Three years ago it acquired KNHT 107.3 FM, which carries JPR's "Classics and News Service" programming. In all, the station, a giant of sorts, broadcasts on 38 FM frequencies and seven AM frequencies in southern Oregon and Northern California.
KZPN, in contrast, has always been decidedly, and to many, refreshingly small. For the past 11 years the BBC broadcasts have been relayed basically single-handedly by Monica Olsen, KZPN's founder and sole deejay. [photo at right] Olsen, a British expatriate, started the station in her home with help from her then-husband, Lee Olsen, a radio engineer who formerly worked for KHSU.
"I'm tired of it," Monica Olsen said flatly this week. "Life is for living and I've been living under the wheel for too long."
Olsen said that running the station 24 hours a day meant that she was seldom able to get a good night's sleep. Operating on a shoestring budget -- about $14,000 a year -- didn't help.
The sale caught KEET-TV Executive Director Ron Schoenherr off guard. The local Public Broadcasting Service affiliate has been in negotiation with the Olsens regarding the purchase of KZPN since 2001.
"Lee [Olsen] said Monica was interested in selling the station because it was a burden operating it out of her living room," said Schoenherr. "He showed me a letter from JPR offering $100,000 for the station. Lee told us, `We would really rather keep the station local.'"
Schoenherr discussed the idea with his board and late last year KEET made a counteroffer: $108,000 with $8,000 down, the rest to be paid over five years, which was accepted verbally by Lee Olsen, who's on KZPN's board. "Then the next thing I knew, the station was being sold to JPR," said Schoenherr.
Kramer said he learned about KEET's plan to purchase the license from newspaper accounts and figured his deal was off. "Then, about five weeks ago I got a call from Lee asking if we still wanted to buy the station. I said `yes.'"
While Kramer denies that there was a bidding war for the KZPN license, his second offer was considerably higher than KEET's. "I offered them $130,000," he said. It would appear that KZPN merely went with the highest offer.
"We wanted to recoup our money," Monica Olsen said.
Schoenherr for his part is puzzled.
"Monica stated very clearly that she wanted to be sure BBC's World Service survived. My concern personally is that this is a community license and once it goes into the hands of an out-of-state party, it no longer is a local radio station."
The new programming at KZPN will mean a measure of duplication with another radio station, KHSU 90.5 FM, according to that station's general manager, Elizabeth Hans McCrone.
"Their `Rhythm and News Service' very much duplicates KHSU's programming content. They're carrying `All Things Considered,' `Morning Edition,' `Car Talk' and [a number of other] programs that we carry," said McCrone.
McCrone also expressed concern about "what it will mean to us for fund-raising," as those programs are popular with underwriters and contributors.
COVER STORY | GOOD NEWS | GARDEN | ART BEAT | PUBLISHER | CALENDAR
Comments?
© Copyright 2003, North Coast Journal, Inc.