It has long been observed, “Life teaches us how it should have been lived” and two seemingly unrelated stories in the NCJ are illustrative.
Longtime resident, fisherman and boat builder Ken Bates’ life experiences provide a seminal warning against building the Samoa Heavy Lift Terminal serving future industrial development, (“Oysters, Wildlife and Reindustrialization of Humboldt Bay,” Aug. 13, 2026.)
Bates points out the consequences of incremental industrial development noticed too late due to gradual, cumulative impacts of persistent toxic chemicals and heavy metals eventually collapsing biodiversity and the livelihoods dependent on seafood harvests, tourists and new residents bringing sustainable businesses.
How is the civil grand jury’s report on tsunami warnings related? (“The Next Wave” by Kimberly Wear, Aug. 13, 2026).
In the same way unbridled industrial development enriches financiers by deferring long-term, catastrophic environmental and economic costs to posterity, incremental development of high-cost subdivisions, (exceeding the county’s own “Housing Need Assessments” for generations), enrich investors and landowners, leaving unfunded infrastructure liabilities for posterity; rendering evacuations problematic at best as thousands simultaneously stream out of honeycombed cul-de-sacks onto one inadequate rural road following major earthquakes, tsunami or fire, not unlike the ill-fated town of Paradise, California.
Large apartment complexes approved on Humboldt Bay’s North Jetty compounded the chaos following 2024’s earthquake, jamming the Samoa Bridge, Samoa Avenue and U.S. Highway 101, yet, irresponsible permitting continues with the “McKay Ranch” subdivision adding hundreds of vehicles to Harris Avenue’s traffic congestion, potentially blocking thousands of residents’ access to the nearest high ground, (Freshwater Road) and access to our county’s largest source of emergency medical services.
How many more proposed multi-million-dollar developments will it take before local representatives begin performing due diligence by contacting national and local experts qualified to identify long-term public costs and benefits in order to properly weigh alternatives … prior to approval?
George Clark, Eureka
This article appears in Reports from the Grand Jury.