Tse-Lin Lincoln and William Randolph Billy Warren were formally charged with murder Friday, following the death of 17-year-old Dylan Moon from injuries sustained in a shooting in Hoopa. 

A prosecutor said the District Attorney’s office had not yet made a decision on whether they would pursue the death penalty.

Judge Steven Steward read charges in the amended complaint aloud to the codefendants in the courtroom Friday morning. Murder charges were sought by prosecutors after Moon died of his injuries last week following the March 10 shooting.

Warren and Lincoln each ultimately pleaded not guilty on all counts Friday, and denied all allegations and enhancements. They remain incarcerated on no-bail holds.

When it was time for Warren to enter his plea, his attorney Rebecca Linkous brought up the death penalty. She asked if the prosecution was prepared to waive the death penalty, as the new charge made it a death penalty case, and urged compliance with Marsy’s Law.

Deputy District Attorney Roger Rees said the office had not discussed the topic with the victim’s family — but would not need much time to do so.

Linkous also called for the court to ensure the defense attorneys were qualified to represent clients in a death penalty case — she noted she was qualified and ready to assemble a team.

Later, after the hearing was reconvened to give the District Attorney’s office a chance to speak with the victim’s mother, Lincoln’s attorney Ken Bareilles informed the court “I’ve never had a death penalty case before,” and said he did not want to jeopardize a trial if a new attorney later had to be appointed who was trained on capital punishment.

Linkous argued the case should be treated as a death penalty case, until it is waived on the record.

Rees informed the court “at this time, the people are not committed to a decision,” regarding the death penalty, but said the office would decide prior to a scheduled hearing next month.

Andrea Sullivan was appointed to represent Lincoln, after a conference between the judge and attorneys, something she agreed to while attending the hearing over Zoom. A hearing to confirm this appointment is scheduled for next week. Conflicts have been declared with the Public Defender’s office for both defendants, and the arraignment was previously postponed due to the appointment of a new attorney.

The pair previously pleaded not guilty to the six felonies they were initially charged with. Originally, the codefendants were charged with four counts of assault with firearms against five total victims, along with attempted murder and shooting at an occupied vehicle — they face multiple enhancements for participation in a criminal street gang. The amended complaint replaced attempted murder with murder.

Three juveniles have been arrested for the same incident. One was booked on similar charges as Lincoln and Warren, while the remaining two were booked solely for participation in a criminal street gang. Juvenile court proceedings are confidential.

PREVIOUSLY

• One Person Hospitalized With ‘Life-Threatening’ Injuries Following Yesterday’s Shooting in Hoopa; Suspect Remains At-Large, Says HCSO
• Hoopa Valley Tribe Offers $10K Reward for Information Leading to Arrest of Suspect in Tuesday’s Shooting; Emergency Community Meeting in Council Chambers Tonight
• 15-Year-Old Arrested in Connection With Hoopa Shooting, Sheriff’s Office Says; Two Other Teenage Suspects Still at Large
• Another Suspect in Monday’s Shooting in Hoopa Taken Into Custody
• Third Suspect in Hoopa Shooting Surrenders at the Sheriff’s Office
• The Victim in the Hoopa Shooting Has Died
• Teenagers Charged With Murder in Hoopa Shooting
• Two More Juveniles Arrested in Hoopa in Connection With Last Week’s Murder, Sheriff’s Office Says

###

The truckloads of dirt just kept coming. Day after day, neighbors watched as one semi-truck after another came chugging up Humboldt Hill hauling open-top trailers loaded with soil. The drivers would downshift as their rigs crested the hill, groaned past the McMansions along London Drive and navigated the little dogleg-right onto Blue Spruce Drive.

After a few months, Humboldt County’s code enforcement office started receiving complaints about this activity.

“For the past two weeks my neighbors and I have observed between 400 and 500 full size dump trucks (from many different companies including Zabel, Kernan and many others) travel down London Avenue and deposit their load at the end of Blue Tree Ct.,” says a Sept. 15, 2025, complaint, which the Outpost obtained through a Public Records Act request. “I just want to be sure that if permits for a massive project like this were required, that they were obtained.”

Permits were required, as it turned out, but had not been obtained.

The following week, Code Enforcement Investigator Sara Quenell emailed her boss, Chief Building Official Keith Ingersoll.

“I just spoke with a neighbor who is concerned about what she said is ‘hundreds’ of dump trucks taking loads of fill to the end of Blue Spruce Drive, Eureka,” Quenell wrote. (Blue Spruce Drive and Blue Tree Court often get mixed up. The latter is only a few hundred feet long, and the three newly built houses on Blue Tree Court all have Blue Spruce Drive addresses.)

Other Humboldt Hill residents took to the social media website Nextdoor to voice concerns about all that dirt. 

“Must have been over 200 loads so far,” one neighbor wrote.

“I too have been wondering,” wrote another.

A third offered an answer: “They are dumping dirt at the north of London Dr off of one of the new side streets as land fill.”

Another code enforcement complaint, submitted on October 1, included a short video, which the complainant said had been taken about a week earlier, “before the dump trucks arrived that day.” The video was shot atop a plateau of fill dirt extending from the back of a large home onsite. The dirt is covered with bulldozer tracks.

Here’s that video, which includes some image redactions from county staff, presumably to preserve the anonymity of whomever submitted the complaint. 

###

Google Earth satellites captured the scene as it appeared last May, a few months before these complaints started coming in. The imagery, seen in the video below, shows a massive volume of dirt graded to form a wedge-shaped plateau just north of a three-story home. The satellites also captured a semi-truck just up the street, about to round the corner of Blue Tree Court with a fresh load of soil.

###

The property in question is owned by Mike Duncan, general manager at Schmidbauer Building Supply and a former member of Eureka City Schools’ Board of Trustees. Duncan declined to say very much when we reached him by phone earlier this week. Nor did he reply to an emailed list of questions.

Duncan. | LinkedIn.

Complaints about construction work on his parcel date back years and include allegations of unpermitted vegetation removal in the Coastal Zone; grading in a hillside stream bed without proper erosion control; and grading without obtaining the necessary permits or developing a stormwater pollution prevention plan. 

Immediately downstream of Duncan’s parcel is a property called Mouralherwaqh. It’s a 46-acre coastal wetland that, in 2022, was returned to the stewardship of the Wiyot Tribe due to its cultural significance and environmental importance.

“Mouralherwaqh” (pronounced more-RAH-share-wahg or more-AW-shore-a-wah) is a Wiyot term meaning “wolf’s house.” The parcel is home to one of the West Coast’s southernmost stands of mature Sitka spruce, a verdant forest that serves as a rookery for egrets and herons. It also includes more than 14 acres of freshwater wetlands populated by sedge, cattail and countless other species.

“It’s just bountiful with wildlife and native plant species and frogs,” Wiyot Natural Resources Director Adam Canter said in a recent phone interview. The tribe’s reacquisition of the property was made possible through a $1.2 million grant from California’s Ocean Protection Council. 

###

Wiyot Tribal Administrator Michelle Vassel said aerial photos of Mouralherwaqh, like the one above, reveal it to be one of the last undeveloped areas around Humboldt Bay, though the wetlands have suffered following the construction of Hwy. 101, which severed this former estuary from the bay. Still, Vassel said tribal elders have stories about what this area used to be like, and the land remains an important wildlife corridor.

“It’s just one of those places where, when you first open the gates and you walk inside, you mostly see the impact of humans,” Vassel said in a phone interview. “You see the dirt road, you see some invasive species around the circle of the fence — and then you dip into that forest and you’re 650 years in the past. There’s not many places like that.”

Like other neighbors, members of the Wiyot Tribe have been concerned for years about the activity on Duncan’s property. Despite recent inspections and citations from multiple agencies, the tribe didn’t know about the mass quantities of dirt hauled onsite until the Outpost called to ask about it.

Environmental scientists at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) consider Duncan’s parcel the headwaters (or very near the headwaters) of a creek that flows through Mouralherwaqh. Canter said the grading and construction activity could have serious consequences. 

“We have concerns, because who knows what’s in all that soil that he brought in?” he said. “[We’re concerned about] the sedimentation literally filling in wetlands and converting these vegetation types, converting open waterfowl habitat to more vegetative marsh.”

###

A couple of weeks ago, inspectors with the County of Humboldt, CDFW and the California Northcoast Regional Water Quality Control Board (Water Board) conducted a site visit to Duncan’s property. All three agencies found violations within their jurisdictions, according to Humboldt Planning and Building Director John Ford.

The county subsequently issued Duncan a Notice of Violation and Notice to Abate for unpermitted grading and development in a stream-side management area. The notice warns of daily $2,000 fines if corrective action is not taken within 10 days. 

Ford said the county hopes to coordinate with CDFW and the Water Board to resolve the violations through a single, unified plan. Asked if Duncan is cooperating, he said, “I think he wants to resolve this.”

A history of problems

But why were things allowed to get to this point? The property inspection conducted earlier this month came nearly six months after neighbors started filing code enforcement complaints and more than two months into the Outpost’s investigation, which uncovered dozens of emails, inspection reports and photos documenting complaints, citations and negotiations dating back years. That includes a 2023 stop-work order from county code enforcement for this same infraction: unpermitted grading work within a stream-side management area. 

Duncan was not yet the owner of the parcel at the time, but he was the person county staff communicated with to resolve the matter. 

“As I understand the situation, the house was being built for Mike Duncan even though he was not yet the property owner,” Ford explained. Duncan officially took ownership of the parcel last May, according to records on file with the county assessor. Incidentally, the people he bought it from, Anthony Schuler and Brandy Langer, had purchased the property four years earlier from Travis Schneider and Stephenie Bode, the local couple responsible for Humboldt County’s highest-profile code enforcement scandal in decades.

Both the county and the Water Board board received complaints about the property on Blue Tree Court in March 2023. The one submitted to the county reported a range of potential code violations, including:

• grading within a live stream channel on a steep slope without adequate erosion control measures,
• grading topsoils to bare exposed mineral earth,
• construction of building pad, with maximum cut banks exceeding 8-10 feet,
• two excavated pits and two uncovered spoil disposal areas,
• major riparian and wetland vegetation removal in the coastal zone
• large spruce trees felled, with some remaining in the creek, inhibiting natural flow patterns and sediment transport, and
• grading without a county permit or stormwater pollution prevention plan.

Here are a few photos that were submitted with the complaint:

###

After reviewing the photos, the water board emailed county code enforcement with concerns, including “potential impacts to waters of the state and sediment delivery.”

A county code enforcement investigator did some research and wrote back, saying there was a building permit on file — for a single-family residence with attached garage — but it did not allow for such grading.

Code enforcement conducted a site visit on April 26, 2023, and posted a stop-work order for unpermitted grading in a stream-side management area.

###

Humboldt County Chief Building Official Keith Ingersoll met with Duncan and told him that, in addition to applying for a retroactive grading permit, he’d need to submit a new site plan, a grading erosion and sediment control plan prepared by a professional engineer and a biological report and remediation plan.

Efforts to address the damage onsite were complicated by the discovery that May of a massive water main leak uphill from the property, near the intersection of Blue Spruce Drive. Once that was resolved, Duncan contracted with local landscape design firm Samara Restoration, and in July 2023 the county lifted its stop-work order.

Duncan later submitted his remediation plan, which was later altered a bit to accommodate changes suggested by CDFW, and the work was completed. 

Less than six months later, though, the county’s code enforcement office received another complaint, and a subsequent inspection found trouble.

“The erosion control measures that were put in place have failed, and as a result, drainage issues have arisen, which could potentially cause pollution in the state’s water sources,” the code inspection report says. “Immediate action must be taken to address this problem.”

###

Over the next few months, Duncan worked with CDFW and the county to resolve the issues.

“I don’t want any problems,” Duncan wrote to the county’s chief building official in June 2024. “We had to have dirt removed when this all started,” his email said. “I want this done right so I don’t have to have any calls or surprises.”

It’s not clear exactly when Duncan started bringing more dirt onto the property, but as documented by the all-seeing satellites of Google Earth, a huge volume of soil had been deposited onsite by the following May. A few months later, neighbors started submitting official complaints.

And yet, somehow, the first county employee to investigate those complaints said he found nothing amiss. It was Humboldt County Building Inspector Ross Eskra, who reported to Ingersoll and Quenell on September 29:

I visited 89 Blue Spruce today and there was nothing whatsoever going on up there related to the complaint. I was on site 2 weeks ago to final the house for Mr. Duncan and the site is the same today as it was then. Keith, can we close out this case now that the building final [inspection] has been completed?

The county did sign off on the building inspection, but three days later another complaint was filed — the one with video evidence. On October 2, the county issued Duncan another stop-work order, again citing unpermitted grading in a stream-side management area. 

How had Eskra missed this during his prior visits to the property? He tried to explain it in another email to Ingersoll and Quenell, sent on January 5:

My initial drive by didn’t reveal what appeared to me to be any fresh dirt, large piles, etc. (which is what I was assuming there to be). There was just a lot of straw laid out for erosion and sediment control as I had previously recalled.

I made a case note and sent an email internally incorrectly stating that I did not observe anything substantiating the complaint. The complainant’s [sic] reached out to me by phone on October 1st asking about my findings, and I told them that I hadn’t substantiated anything.

They said they had evidence, photos and a video and I said that they could email it to me. … It turned out that it was an accurate complaint, and that a large amount of import and grading had been carried out effectively destroying the retention basin.

###

Among the 575 documents the Outpost obtained through our Public Records Act request, one struck us as particularly unusual. It was a seven-page pdf that reads like a conversation without any attribution:

“How you doing?” it starts out. “Oh, not too bad for Monday. Right. Right. Oh, man. Well, not too bad. Never long enough, but it was nice. Yeah. Yeah.”

And so on.

We reached out to the county for help deciphering it. After a few days, Public Information Specialists Cati Gallardo wrote back, explaining, “This document is an AI-generated transcription from a routine meeting between Humboldt County Chief Building Official Keith Ingersoll and Code Enforcement Investigator Warren Black regarding the Blue Spruce matter. The transcript was auto-generated solely for note-taking purposes, so please be aware that some parts may not accurately reflect the exact wording of the conversation.”

Judging by the tone of the conversation, it seems likely that the two men didn’t know that their conversation was being recorded, or maybe they just didn’t expect the transcript to be released publicly. The document doesn’t differentiate between the two speakers — it’s just one long paragraph of text — but they seem to be on the same page. 

The meeting was recorded on January 5.  Below are a few excerpts, with line breaks added for clarity:

I don’t know if you were aware of that 89 Blue Spruce. They did a bunch of grading in the subdivision, built the house. Then the guy, when we go, they called for final inspection. So we finaled it, he had his road control, everything. But then we got a bunch of complaints over that weekend or two after, of several hundred dump trucks, supposedly. Basically, he leveled the, he did what he shouldn’t have done, dumped a bunch of fill, raised it. So we opened a new case. …

The guy hired Samara to help him do the plan. He had it all. Then he goes thinking, oh, now I can level my yard. Nope. And he did. And all the same complainants are complaining. Now we know he’s going to get hammered.

Well, yeah, especially with the state agencies right there.

But we had it figured out and now the guy just threw all that out. …

Yep. So he basically built a brand new house, got permits, dealt with the stop work order for the violation of the grading, then thought he could pull a fast one. And he did, and now he’s caught again. And this one, this time it’ll be hard to fix.

One of the two men in the meeting said the situation reminded them of Travis Schneider. 

When we reached Duncan by phone on Tuesday, we asked if he could address the violations on his property and the county’s recent notice to abate.

“I don’t really think I want to talk about — I don’t know if there’s anything to really talk about,” he said. “I brought back the dirt that I had taken off the property. So I’m not sure, but I think probably not.”

We brought up the Wiyot Tribe’s concerns about impacts to their property. He thanked us for letting him know.

“I have people, friends at the Wiyot Tribe, so I’ll reach out to them and talk with them.”

We asked again if he could address the history of violations on the property.

“I’d really rather not,” he said.

Yesterday afternoon, we followed up with Ford to ask whether Duncan has complied with the terms of the county’s notice of violation and, if not, whether he’s being assessed the threatened fines of $2,000 per day. We’ll update this story if and when we hear back.

Duncan’s parcel.

Check out this amazing video that the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury Association produced approximately one million years ago.

###

Press release from the Humboldt County Superior Court:

The Superior Court of California, County of Humboldt asks that the public submit applications for the upcoming 2026/2027 Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury term (July 1-June 30). The Humboldt Superior Court empanels 19 citizens to act as an independent body of the judicial system each year. The Court accepts applications from citizens representing a broad cross-section of the Humboldt County community and also encourages citizens to apply and be considered to serve as alternates if and when vacancies occur during the term of service. The Civil Grand Jury is currently meeting in-person one day a week and via Zoom one day a week (their weekly meeting schedule is TBD and time commitment may vary from 10-30 hours).

The primary work of the civil grand jury is to investigate and review citizen complaints concerning the operations of city and county government as well as other tax supported and non-profit agencies and districts. Based on these reviews, the grand jury publishes its findings and reports recommending constructive actions to improve the quality and effectiveness of our local government. The civil grand jury does not consider criminal indictments.

Eligibility requirements for grand jury service:

• Citizen of the United States;
• 18 years of age or older;
• Resident of Humboldt County for at least one year before selection;
• In possession of natural faculties, of ordinary intelligence, of sound judgment and fair character;
• Sufficient knowledge of the English language;
• Not currently serving as a trial juror in any court in this state;
• Have not been discharged as a grand juror in any court of this state within one year;
• Have not been convicted of malfeasance in office or other high crime;
• Not serving as an elected public officer.

To fill out an application and for more information about the application process, please visit the Court’s website at this link.

Send your applications to: GrandJuryApps@humboldtcourt.ca.gov or feel free to request an application via email. Please contact Court Administration at (707)269-1204 for any questions you may have. Thank you for your interest in serving your local community!

The Outpost would like to thank Access Humboldt, the League of Women Voters and the sponsors of last night’s “Illuminate 2026!” event at the Eureka Theater for recognizing something you and I and everyone else in the county already know, which is that Isabella Vanderheiden is great at her job.

Izzy’s Ray of Sunshine award. It’s a glass marble that catches the light.

The “Illuminate” event is organized to honor and amplify Sunshine Week, a national reflection on the importance of open government. As part of the festivities, Access Humboldt presented three “Ray of Sunshine” awards to local journalists, and Izzy was the top pick for investigative journalist of the year.

Huzzah for Izzy!

As I said at the event — or attempted to say, after pulling a calf muscle while springing up to the stage — Izzy is a wonderful person and a deeply humane reporter. Her best work, the work that’s most important to her and to us, is about the effects of public policy on people at the margins. Her series on Orick — which she spent months and months researching in the run-up to publication, in between all the other work she was doing — is a prime example. Read that story here, if you haven’t already. 

Anyway, Izzy rules. We’re all lucky to have her.

Congratulations to all the other nominees. Congratulations to Humboldt County eminence Mark Larson for winning the photojournalism award. Congratulations to the Cal Poly Humboldt students representing the Lumberjack and El Leñador who shared the youth journalism award.

Back to work, now.

P.S.: It was great to meet prolific Outpost commenter “Pat,” the county’s top-ranked volunteer proofreader, at the conclusion of last night’s proceedings. Funnily enough, seeing her in person provoked none of the dread that spotting her byline in the comment section does. Give her an award next year.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

###

A record-baking heat wave is scalding California, with major consequences for the state’s most important reservoir: its snowpack.

Providing about a third of the state’s water supply, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is a vital source of spring and summer runoff that refills reservoirs when the state needs the water most.

But a warm wet storm followed February’s snow, and now, March temperatures are shattering records — prompting warnings of rapid snowmelt and swift rivers.

Historically, the snowpack is at its deepest in April. But climate change is shifting runoff earlier, leaving less water trickling down the mountains in warmer months for homes, farms, fish, hydropower and forests.

“In an ideal world, you’d have your reservoir full right now, and this additional huge snowpack reservoir that we know will help replenish and provide more water supply,” said Levi Johnson, operations manager for the Central Valley Project, the massive federal water system that funnels northern California river water to the Central Valley and parts of the Bay Area.

This year, he said, “we’re not going to have that.”

California’s reservoirs are in good shape, brimming above historic averages with many nearing capacity. But that summertime snow bank on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada is disappearing early, and fast — dropping to 38% of average for mid-March statewide.

It’s not yet the worst snowpack on record: that distinction belongs to 2015, when then-Gov. Jerry Brown stood on brown, barren slopes of the Sierra Nevada to watch scientists measure the most meager snowpack in history.

But this year’s snowpack is rapidly approaching the worst five on record for April 1st, state climatologist Michael Anderson said — and it’s likely to worsen still as temperatures climb. From early to mid-March, the snowpack has been disappearing at a rate of roughly 1% per day.

It’s a sharp departure from the near-average conditions of last year, and presents both a challenge and a glimpse of the future for reservoir operators in the state.

Conflicting roles for reservoirs

Many of California’s reservoirs serve a dual role: stoppering flood flows and storing water for drier times ahead.

Those roles sometimes conflict — as they did at Lake Mendocino, which dried to a mud puddle during the 2012–16 drought. Rigid federal operating rules forced the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to release vital water supplies from the dam to make room for winter floods that didn’t come.

The dire water shortages that followed spurred an experimental partnership called Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations, between the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego’s Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes and state, federal and local agencies.

The program incorporates advanced forecasting and weather observations into reservoir release decisions at Lake Mendocino. It prevented the reservoir from going dry during the most recent drought, according to Don Seymour, deputy director of engineering at Sonoma Water, which co-manages the reservoir.

Now, 165 miles away in the Sierra Foothills, Yuba Water Agency is eyeing adopting the same program for New Bullards Bar, a reservoir roughly eight times bigger than Lake Mendocino that’s fed by Sierra snowmelt on the North Yuba River.

The reservoir supplies water to more than 60,000 acres of farmland in Yuba County as well as users south of the Delta. But early snowmelt is complicating efforts to store that water.

“We’re seeing snowmelt conditions in mid-March that we normally don’t see until at least mid-May,” said general manager Willie Whittlesey. “It’s pretty obvious that this is the runoff — this is the snowmelt — and it’s just happening about two months early.”

The reservoir is nearly full at 114% of average for this date and 84% of total capacity.

But when snowmelt arrives early, the agency can’t catch it once the reservoir reaches a certain level — even when no storms are in the immediate forecast. Federal rules require Yuba Water to maintain a certain amount of empty space until June to absorb potential floodwaters, according to Whittlesey.

Yuba Water is working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to update this decades-old rulebook, Whittlesey said, but until then it must request special permission to store the extra water.

Though the agency has received permission in the past, this year it’s also contending with a rupture in a major pipe to one of its hydropower facilities, which is forcing the agency to hold back more water behind the dam.

Whittlesey said he suspects that the combination of flood-control requirements and damage control after the pipe failure is likely costing them tens of thousands of acre-feet of snowmelt.

The California Department of Water Resources, which manages Lake Oroville — the state’s second-largest reservoir — told CalMatters that it’s storing water beyond its normal flood control limits, with permission from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In the Bay Area, the East Bay Municipal Utility District, California’s second-largest urban water supplier, owns and operates the Camanche and Pardee reservoirs in the Central Sierra foothills.

“We’re working to save every drop in light of the warm temperatures that we are experiencing now, and in light of all the zeros that we are seeing in terms of a rain or snow forecast,” said spokesperson Andrea Pook. “The last time that we had run off this early was in 2015.”

Pook said the district is releasing less water from its reservoirs now, in order to preserve more for the fall when salmon migrate upriver to spawn.

“We’re tracking to not necessarily be in a drought situation. But I am not convinced that we’re going to fill our reservoirs by July 1st, which is our usual goal,” Pook said.

Improved forecasts after a major miss

Even as California suffers record heat and early snowmelt, the state is better prepared than in the past.

Five years ago, state forecasters badly missed their runoff predictions — overestimating the snowmelt expected to refill reservoirs by up to 68%. Dry soils and a parched atmosphere drank up the runoff before it could flow into storage. Farms and cities scrambled in the middle of a drought as supplies fell far short of expectations.

This year is different. Major reservoirs are already above historic averages, and early season storms soaked the soil beneath the snowpack, making it less likely to swallow the runoff.

The state has also been working on better forecasts.

“Things have substantially improved,” said Andrew Schwartz, Director of UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, in an email to CalMatters.

Johnson, at the federal Central Valley Project, said that the state and federal water delivery systems are in a better spot than five years ago, and that forecasts haven’t made a major miss since.

But the season’s early melt may still leave a gap.

“It’s going to get us through this year just fine,” Johnson said. “But it’s not as ideal as having that additional snow reservoir ready to run off through summer, and replenish what we’re going to be releasing.”

Improved snowpack modeling and soil moisture estimates, experimental temperature measurements at different snow depths, university collaborations and incorporating weather outlooks are helping, according to the Department of Water Resources.

Still, between state budget shortfalls and federal cuts, challenges remain, Anderson said.

Efforts to install more soil moisture sensors in national forests have run into permitting slowdowns at the U.S. Forest Service, which has shed thousands of employees under President Donald Trump.

“You wait in line a lot longer,” Anderson said. “That’s been the biggest limitation of late. There just isn’t anybody there.”

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

###

A Trump administration attorney conceded “there aren’t enough Americans to take these jobs” at a federal court hearing in Fresno this week as he defended a policy that would cut pay to immigrant laborers.

The lawsuit, filed by the United Farm Workers in the U.S. District Court for Eastern California, challenges a federal wage rule tied to the H-2A agriculture visa program, which allows U.S. employers to hire temporary workers from abroad, mostly from Mexico, for agricultural jobs not filled by domestic workers.

At issue is whether that new rule lowers wages in a way that could ripple through the broader workforce and affect U.S. workers by driving down their pay. Federal law requires H-2A wages not undercut domestic pay.

The case highlights the ag industry’s dependence on immigrant labor at a time when the Trump administration is using military-style tactics to crack down on immigration, while at the same time trying to make it cheaper for growers and farmers to hire temporary foreign workers.

Growers argue that labor costs have been rising for decades, warning that without changes, some farms may shut down.

The union representing farmworkers argued in court filings that employers, especially those in agribusinesses, will expand the pay cut to every farmworker, including American workers.

U.S. District Judge Kirk Sherriff said he planned to issue a written ruling soon that would either uphold or suspend the Trump administration policy.

The new interim rule spits H-2A workers into two tiers, resulting in 92% of farmworkers being categorized as “unskilled” and setting their pay to the 17th percentile of average wages, meaning 92% of farmworkers would earn what the bottom 17% of Americans make.

The nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute has estimated the minimum wage for many farmworkers would fall to $13.70 an hour. Their average minimum wage last year was $17.43. California’s minimum wage is $16.90.

Alexandra McTague Schulte, an attorney representing the U.S. Department of Labor, argued that the government is obligated to protect American workers from the adverse effects of wages from H-2A laborers.

The labor department refused to concede that bringing in foreign labor at reduced wages would affect American workers’ wages. Schulte said the proposed lower minimum wage for H-2A visa holders would not affect citizens because farmers already can’t find enough workers, meaning the demand for labor is greater than the supply.

In an exchange, Sherriff seemed to disagree. He said setting wages for the vast majority of H-2A farmworkers at a “level way lower than similar workers, including Americans”, would undercut the market.

“Isn’t that just math?” Sherriff asked.

Schulte did not answer directly, saying, “I’m not good at math, your honor.”

Outside court, UFW President Teresa Romero said immigrant laborers are in a weak position to bargain for better pay.

“We know that many of the workers don’t speak English. We know that many of the workers are told ‘if you don’t like it, go somewhere else,’” she said, noting that many are undocumented and don’t feel they can speak up.

Balancing the need for labor with immigration policy is an issue the U.S. has wrestled with for decades, dating to the 1950s and an Eisenhower-era program named with a slur for Hispanics. The H-2A program is a direct descendant of the Bracero program, an agreement between the United States and Mexico to bring 4.5 million temporary workers to fill agricultural and railroad labor shortages during World War II.

Protestors hold up signs and flags during a rally against H-2A wage cuts in front of the Robert E. Coyle Federal Building in Fresno on March 18, 2026. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters

Today in California, temporary workers do everything from herding cattle to pushing carts and selling fruit bars and ice cream, according to federal records. The number of certified H-2A workers exploded in the Golden State until 2022, but dropped by 7% in 2023. That year, about 88,000 of them entered the U.S. with a California work destination.

Mixed signals from Trump on farmworkers

The Trump administration vowed that the “largest deportation operation in American history” would give U.S. workers better jobs and pay. But it has also quietly tried to collaborate with farmers to address their shrinking workforce. And top Trump officials have acknowledged that raids and crackdowns have led to further shortages.

In October, the Labor Department wrote in a regulatory filing that finding workers is more difficult following the immigration raids.

“The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal work force,” the document said, “results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers.” The document also said American workers are not interested in and do not have the skills to perform agricultural jobs.

That also contradicts U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who has said the farm workforce would one day be 100% American.

Trump’s tornado of policy changes on immigration, starting in his first hours in office, have created chaos in courts and fear and confusion at the border for legal temporary workers.

In 2025, a group of about a dozen H-2A workers who had crossed legally into the U.S. through the San Ysidro Port of Entry to harvest fruit in Fallbrook were ordered the next day to appear in immigration court and then mistakenly placed in removal proceedings. Some said they feared they would end up in an El Salvadoran prison for coming to work legally.

Trump said in June that his administration was working on “some kind of temporary pass” for immigrants who are not legally authorized to work but have jobs on farms and in hotels.

The preliminary examination for a man accused of attempted murder for allegedly attacking a 75-year-old man in the Arcata Community Forest began Thursday.

The proceedings involved questioning of witness Cameron Neff, an Arcata Police Department officer, who interviewed 51-year-old suspect Shawn Kolpak following his arrest and responded to assist with the crime scene.

Under questioning from the prosecution, Neff testified Kolpak appeared to have a problem who stacked sticks in the forest (who was referred to as “the stick person” during today’s hearing) and testified Kolpak had called Arcata police the week prior to the attack to report a person stacking sticks.

Victim Bill Spenceley’s friend had reported Spenceley would often pick up sticks off the trail to maintain the path and stack them, something he informed Neff of following the attack.

During questioning, Neff said Kolpak told him he was “annoyed by the person who was stacking sticks,” but not so annoyed he would do anything.

Deputy District Attorney Roger Rees questioned Neff on Kolpak’s general state of mind — Kolpak told Neff he stayed in the van he lived in for 20 hours a day to avoid interacting with people, and was afraid of interacting with others.

He told Neff he didn’t feel that way in custody and was relieved to be arrested —something Rees argued was evidence of at least a minimal awareness of guilt, with Deputy Public Defender David Celli strongly disagreeing.

Kolpak and Spenceley each hiked in the community forest every morning, and Neff said they exchanged good mornings. Neff said Kolpak was walking in the forest the day of the attack, January 30.

Deputy Public Defender David Celli objected to a number of pieces of the testimony — and called for it to be stricken from the record.

He noted Thursday’s testimony hinged on another officer reading his client his Miranda Rights, and Judge Kaleb V. Cockrum agreed to strike the testimony later if it were found that he hadn’t been read his rights, but allowed for the questioning to continue.

Celli questioned Neff on how many people walk in the forest — pointing out the forest has multiple access points throughout town and hundreds are on the trails daily.

He also sought to hear what Spenceley’s friend had told him about mountain lion sightings in the forest, his possible dislike of mountain bikers, and information that Spenceley had fallen recently — though Rees objected to hearsay for these pieces of evidence and many were stricken from the record.

The preliminary hearing aims to determine if there is sufficient evidence to hold Kolpak for a trial — the hearing is set to continue Friday.

Celli sought a fact-finding hearing for another case, if any information was brought up in the hearing. In this separate, open case, Kolpak is accused of assaulting an employee of Eureka Natural Foods in McKinleyville with an exercise weight.

For Spenceley’s attack, Kolpak was charged with attempted murder and aggravated mayhem, with an enhancement due to the age of the victim. Aggravated mayhem is punishable by life imprisonment in state prison.

Kolpak is being held in the Humboldt County jail without bail and appeared while in custody.

According to a Monday update from his family on GoFundMe, Spenceley remains in a “very slow recovery phase.”

“There have been moments when he responds to commands that give us hope for a full recovery. But there are also setbacks, including breathing complications that have required him to return to the ICU,” said the GoFundMe, which asked for support and prayers for the man.

The update said his loved ones are playing his favorite music and old family songs. “You can tell he hears them and is listening, which brings comfort and hope to our hearts.” The update said Bill still has a long road ahead and describes Bill as a fighter.