After more than 30 years toiling in obscurity in the ultra-complex world of battery technology, Kurt Kelty and the other chemists, electrical engineers and minerals experts racing to design the next generation of electric vehicle batteries are at last having their moment. Kelty, who ran Tesla’s battery cell team for more than a decade, now […]
mining
Posted inLife + Outdoors
How They Got Here: Panama
They came from all over, hoping to get rich, 300,000 of them between 1848 and 1855, changing California forever. Word of the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in January of 1848 (“The Gold Bug,” Dec. 3, 2020) got out slowly, and most of the prospectors that first year — a few thousand at most […]
Posted inNews
A Quarry Quandary
A recent decision by the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors left environmental groups fuming and a local landowner feeling he’s been singled out amid a flurry of allegations of hypocrisy, dishonesty and good old boy politics. Playing out over two meetings spread across two months, the board ultimately voted 4-1, with 3rd District Supervisor Mark […]
Posted inNews
Peat Miner Must Pay
A complaint filed over a long-time allegedly illegal peat-moss mining operation in Bridgeville has resulted in two Humboldt County residents — peat moss miner Daniel Wojcik and landowner Robert Wotherspoon — entering felony and misdemeanor pleas yesterday for violations of the Surface Mining and Recovery Act and Lake and Streambed Alteration permitting process and of […]