Kathleen Ellen Kelly Burgh was born in San Francisco on April 15, 1940. She went home to the Lord on July 30, 2024, due to complications from a fall. She was 84 years old. To friends and relatives, she was known as “Kathleen,” “Kit,” “Kathy” or “Kitty.” For 69 years she was a Eureka resident and faithful parishioner of St. Bernard’s Catholic Church.

Kit’s parents moved to Seattle, Washington, and then to Eureka when she was 15. She graduated from St. Bernard’s High School and attended Humboldt State College. At 23, she married the love of her life, Richard Burgh, and settled down to create and nurture what was most important to her: a healthy, loving family.

Life-long friend Genie Wood describes her as sparkling. “She’s always had beautiful hands and she used them well making jewelry. We read every cook book in print together.” She liked to sew outfits for her family; try new recipes from her cookbook collection; and indulge in handmade crafts like ceramics and beading. For decades, she gifted her creations to family and friends. Kit spent an entire year hand-stitching a gorgeous quilt as her sister’s wedding gift. Her life was about “being there” for everyone she loved. She was talkative and outgoing, considering everyone a potential new friend. Kathy had a beautiful walk of faith.

She is survived by Richard, her (hard-working), devoted husband of 60 years; her daughter, Julie Burgh, who has provided loving care for both of her parents for decades; her daughter, Kelly, and husband Paul Brochard, and their three children: Thomas; Christian; and Laura; and her sister, Pat Whittemore.

Kit successfully fulfilled her lifelong dream, leaving a family who is profoundly blessed by her life and will always love her deeply.

Funeral arrangements were made with great care and respect by Sanders Funeral Home.

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As of Thursday afternoon, the Boise Fire burning south of Orleans has burned over 10,205 acres. The fire, which ignited on Aug. 9, remains zero percent contained.

In a virtual Q&A with fire officials this afternoon, Operations Section Chief Heather McRae said fire crews have made “really good progress” on the fire, establishing direct lines on the northern edge of the fire along Antenna Ridge. Incident Command’s “number one priority” is keeping the fire away from Orleans, she said.

Screenshot from Q&A.

“Crews have been focusing their efforts today in that area, getting that line good and mopped up along the top of Antenna Ridge Road,” McRae said, gesturing to the map with a plastic skeleton hand. “When the fire did go through there, some trees came down. So, we do have some fallers in there falling trees to make sure that the crews can continue to access that area safely.”

Growth has slowed on the eastern edge of the fire along Salmon River Road near Horn Creek Gap. However, there is “still some potential for that edge to grow,” McRae said.

“[Growth] is at a slow, slow pace right now,” she continued. “We have an old dozer line that was put in during the Red Salmon Complex, and that dozer line has been reopened. We have crews in there prepping that line tonight. They’re looking at utilizing a drone to go in there and do some aerial ignition. That will allow fire that is lit directly along that line to back down into that drainage, and that will become our new containment line.”

Adrienne Freeman, a public information officer for California Team 10, said the incident command team is “going to be extremely conservative” about establishing containment lines before they’ve been tested.

“Pretty much everybody on this team has been in this environment for decades, and we know how unforgiving it can be,” she said. “We are not going to put containment on the map until we know that our lines have been tested and we are confident that they are absolutely going to hold. … We’re just being extra careful and conservative about how we call it.”

Speaking to concerns about fire retardant contaminating the water supply for residents of Pearch Creek, Freeman said fire crews and community liaisons are “taking all the necessary steps to ensure that the water supply is safe.”

“We also understand that this community has seen a lot of retardant in places that maybe aren’t strategic … and I just want to assure you that we’re being extremely thoughtful about the use of retardant,” she said. “And it’s not just water systems, there are other cultural [areas] out there that we want to make sure we’re avoiding with retardant.”

There are 22 crews, 16 engines, five helicopters and two dozers assigned to the fire. There have been no reports of firefighter injuries.

Evacuation orders and warnings remain in place for residents surrounding the fire. Evacuation details can be found at the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Facebook or at this link.

Check out the 2024 Boise Fire Facebook page for more information. A video of this afternoon’s Q&A can be found here.

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The Boise Fire as of this afternoon. The squares are satellite-detected hotspots: Red squares were detected within the last six hours, orange within the last 12 and yellow within the last 24.

Jim Hight was trying to quit weed and alcohol when he moved to Humboldt in 1996.

It was the heyday of the black market Green Rush, and as a newcomer he saw (sniffed?) temptation around every corner.

“In those days, you couldn’t walk around Arcata without smelling the grow houses – which triggered a lot of cravings for me,” Hight told the Outpost in a phone interview.

Now nearly 24 years sober with the help of 12-step programs, he has immortalized his struggles in Jonah, a character in his debut novel: Moon Over Humboldt.

Jonah is a recognizable archetype from Humboldt’s recent past. A young Earth First!-er type fresh up from the Bay to save Mother Earth, the curtain opens on his endeavoring to stay off the pot amidst an Arcata scene rife with mystery-source wafts and generous buddies. Enter Bill, a lifelong logger whose son struggles with methamphetamine addiction, and Jonah’s black-and-white worldview evolves.

Hight said that the inspiration for the two main characters, who hold predictably divergent opinions on best practices for forest management, came when he was on the bus between Arcata and Eureka.

“It was raining like heck, the windshield wipers were slopping back and forth … Driver’s going 45 or whatever,” he remembered. “And there were two people talking about the rain, different generations, young, mid-20s, and 50 or whatever.” 

As the older passenger (seemingly more experienced with the North Coast wet) reassured the younger, recalling bad floods of years past, Hight said that Bill and Jonah began to take shape in his mind. 

“I was yearning for a story of connection between people who are divided and polarized,” he said.

The social cleavages Moon Over Humboldt explores are familiar terrain for Hight. As a former staff writer for the North Coast Journal, a job he described as “getting paid to get a master’s degree in Humboldt County,” exemplars of local culture and opinion were his bread-and-butter subjects for years. As the book’s “about the author” blurb states, our area’s real-life characters – “loggers and forest defenders, fishermen and scientists, ranchers and dairy farmers, small-town mayors and tribal leaders, county sheriffs and cannabis growers” – fascinated the former Southern California city boy.

“I interviewed people on all sides of the timber controversies, and came to really respect and appreciate them,” Hight said. “People who thought clear cutting was the right thing to do and had done it for years or generations, and then people who thought it was decimating the countryside and causing flooding and exterminating species and stuff … That conflict narrative led me to imagine the characters in Moon Over Humboldt, who are totally divided.”

“But once they meet and start getting to know each other through the 12-step programs, they find that not only do they have a lot in common, but they actually really need each other in ways they don’t understand,” he continued.

As Bill and Jonah’s stories unfold over the course of a wet winter, Hight introduces readers to other personalities that may strike a familiar chord in Humboldt hearts and minds: Mike Doyle, the kind-hearted, large-bodied environmental center director; Owl, the pacifist-environmentalist; King, a retired rodeo cowboy with a ranch down Shively way … the list goes on.

To sociable readers who were around in Y2K Humboldt, some characters may ring of real people. Hight specifically shouts out Tim McKay of the Northcoast Environmental Center and Bill Boak of Boak Logging – men who “modeled courtesy and respect for their ideological opponents” – in the book’s closing gratitudes.

And for those more interested in places than faces, landmarks such as the Orick Peanut or the tree at J & 10th in Arcata bolster Hight’s realistic worldbuilding. Hight said that working on Moon Over Humboldt became a way to vicariously visit the places he missed after he and his wife fled the mold that was causing her health issues in 2018.

“It was a great joy to just drop myself into downtown Arcata, or a foggy evening in Eureka,” said Hight, who now lives in Colorado. 

For readers attuned to recent history, Moon Over Humboldt’s place in time may be perplexing: The characters’ Timber Wars stances feel more Redwood Summer (1990) than the post-smartphone, pre-Willits bypass/marijuana legalization moment the story depicts. 

But by condensing decades of cultural reference points, Hight creates a present rich with the past – a backdrop of diverse attitudes and happenings coexisting outside their own timelines as an amalgamation of the colorful histories that have landed Humboldt where we are today. 

“The book is not what you call historical fiction. It’s not. It’s fiction, fiction,” he said, adding that the book is ostensibly set around 2010.

The tensions in Hight’s literary version of the North Coast universe (old-timer vs. newcomer, earth vs. economy, New Age vs. Christian) ultimately set the stage for the story’s central themes: addiction, how it’s experienced both by those suffering and those who love them, and recovery. 

“This is where I got sober, this is where I turned my life around,” Hight said of his decision to set the book in Humboldt. 

While the author made clear to the Outpost that he does not claim membership in any particular 12-step fellowship (keeping with the programs’ tradition of anonymity), Hight’s words in and on the book show how valuable the steps have been in his life. 

And as his characters search for the strength of forces outside themselves, the power of the programs’ community – and of Humboldt’s – surfaces.

“I’ve never read fiction about the 12 steps that didn’t sound like bullshit,” reads one review in the “praise” section of the book cover. “This is no bullshit – 100% on the money.”

It is no bullshit: Moon Over Humboldt is clearly written by a journalist and recovering addict who has collected real stories of temptation, regret and redemption for recreation as fiction. 

But in the repackaging process, Hight also seemingly slipped in touches of the extraordinary.

For instance, both Bill and Jonah come off as men with above-average social graces, abnormal self-awareness and superhuman self-reflective abilities – as men who react to hard stuff with empathy and compassion when their real-life counterparts might let insecurity take the wheel. 

As Hight explained, his characters act like the man he wants to be.

“In that regard, they may be a little unrealistic, but as a fiction writer you can make people more heroic than they might be in real life,” he said.

The combination of Hight’s believable world and relatable yet aspirational characters is what makes the book such a tear-jerker of a page-turner. 

“Jimbo, I used to like you, but now that you’ve managed to make me get all choked up and cry, I’m not so sure about that,” wrote local logger and long-time Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor Mike Hess in Moon Over Humboldt praise.

Especially in an age when societal divisions and hard truths of addiction are rising to our community’s surface, it’s dang moving (and fun) to read about a world that sounds a lot like ours full of people as good as we could hope to be.

Hight will be in town at the end of this month to perform readings from, sign, sell and chat Moon Over Humboldt. Catch him at the Fortuna Library on Wednesday, Aug. 28 at 6:30 p.m., the McKinleyville Library on Thursday, Aug. 29 at 4 p.m., Northtown Books on Aug. 29 at 6:30 p.m. and Eureka Books on Friday, Aug. 30 from 5:30-8:30 p.m. 

(The Eureka Books appearance will not include a reading – just chatting, signing and selling for that one.) 

Information on local 12-step programs can be found here.

Less than two years after opening its doors, the owners of the Eagle House in Old Town have announced the closure of Tavern 1888, the high-end dining experience which currently operates in their building’s corner downstairs restaurant space. The business’s last day will be Aug. 31. 

Eagle House owner Jenny Metz revealed a bit more about the thinking behind her team’s decision in a release issued Thursday. “As the owners shift their focus back to their original business plan and passion for event production, curation, community-building, and tourism, they are eager to pass the torch to a new restaurateur with the vision and dedication to elevate Tavern 1888 to new heights,” she wrote. 

Read the full release from the Eagle House below:

Eagle House LLC, the proud stewards of the Historic Eagle House, The Inn at 2nd and C, and Phatsy Klines Parlor Lounge, announces that they are looking for a buyer for their beloved restaurant, Tavern 1888. Their last day operating Tavern 1888 under Eagle House LLC will be August 31.

Eagle House LLC is dedicated to preserving the historic charm of the Eagle House while creating a vibrant space for community events, boutique accommodations, and exceptional dining experiences. Over the past eight years, Eagle House LLC, comprised of sisters Jenny Metz and Rebecca Rex, along with their spouses Tim Metz and Tammy Rex, has revitalized the Eagle House into a vibrant community hub. Their efforts have brought new life to the property, including The Inn at 2nd & C with 23 boutique rooms, Phatsy Klines Parlor Lounge, the grand ballroom, and versatile event spaces like a yoga studio and the unique Clubhouse.

The Historic Eagle House has become synonymous with memorable events, from winter weddings and holiday parties to concerts, festivals, and the always sold-out Halloween and New Year’s celebrations. Phatsy Klines, with its cozy, cat-themed library bar and beautiful outdoor patio, has become a favorite spot for both locals and visitors and will continue to fuel events, support the hotel, and maintain its regular hours.

Tavern 1888, introduced two years ago after an extensive year-long renovation of the former Gallagher’s space, has been a labor of love. The restaurant, born from the Phatsy Klines team’s ideas and grand plans, along with a larger kitchen space, has quickly become a favorite for hotel guests, visitors, and the community alike.

As the owners shift their focus back to their original business plan and passion for event production, curation, community-building, and tourism, they are eager to pass the torch to a new restaurateur with the vision and dedication to elevate Tavern 1888 to new heights. 
The owners remain deeply committed to the Eagle House and encourage loyalty members and gift card holders to stop by before August 31. After this date, Tavern 1888 gift cards can be used interchangeably at The Inn at 2nd & C and Phatsy Klines. They also encourage the community to continue supporting The Inn, Phatsy Klines, and the variety of events that have made Eagle House a cornerstone of the Eureka community.

For more information on the sale of Tavern 1888 and lease details, contact: Disiere and Associates at (707) 444-3007.

The Boise Fire as of this morning. The squares are satellite-detected hotspots: Red squares were detected within the last six hours, orange within the last 12 and yellow within the last 24.

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PREVIOUSLY:

• Orleans Locals Talk About Living in the Shadow of the Boise Fire as it Consumes Another 1,400 Acres Since This Morning

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Press release from the Boise Fire incident management team:

Quick Facts:

• Acres: 9,690
  
• Detection Date: August 9, 2024
  
• Containment: 0%
  
• Cause: Under investigation
  
• Crews: 22
  
• Engines: 30
  
• Dozers: 4
  
• Helicopters: 12
  
• Total Personnel: 816
  
• Fixed wing: available as needed
  
• Information: https://linktr.ee/

Headlines

• Fire information phone: 707 572-4860 or email at 2024.Boise@firenet.gov

• Get all your Boise Fire information in one mobile-friendly place! https://linktr.ee/

• Join us TODAY, Thursday, August 15 at 2 p.m. for an online Ask the Incident Commander information meeting at https://www.youtube.com/live/

• Join us TOMORROW for a community meeting in Forks of Salmon at the Community Club at 5 p.m. This meeting will not be livestreamed.

• Evacuations are in place for the Boise Fire for residents near the fire area in Humboldt County. For the most current evacuation information please visit the Boise Fire linktree or visit—

• Humboldt County: https://humboldtgov.org/356/

• Siskiyou County: https://www.co.siskiyou.ca.us/

Leader’s Intent:

The Boise Fire is being managed with a full suppression strategy.

Operational Update:

Last night was quiet on the fireline and night shift resources were able to continue mopping up and improving lines protecting the structures in Orleans, Pearch Creek, along the Red Cap Road, at Le Perron Flat, and Short Ranch. They are falling snags along the edge and removing vegetation close to the lines to ensure that containment is secure. Today, two divisions have been added to the fire on its east side, and those resources will begin working to reopen lines from the Orleans Mountain Road and working their way onto High Point Ridge via the Nordheimer Trail to determine viable options for containment. While there are few opportunities for containment in those areas, the objective is to keep the fire footprint as small as possible, and crews will take advantage of today’s favorable conditions to continue their good work.

Weather and Fire Behavior:

The weather today is expected to be similar to yesterday, with cool temperatures and increased humidity. Light winds are predicted for the afternoon, especially in east/west aligned drainages and on exposed ridges.

An environmental dispute between a Glendale construction company and its residential neighbors is driving a woman out of her home.

Located off the 299 between Fieldbrook and Blue Lake, Kernen Construction Co. offers excavating, paving, concrete, asphalt, metal fabrication and other services. From the company’s 37-acre site at 2350 Glendale Drive, employees crush, mix, transport and pile rock aggregate materials into small mountains – an understandably loud business activity – for 11 hours on weekdays and 10 hours on Saturdays.

Although Glendale has “traditionally been an industrial site,” as Humboldt County’s Planning and Building Department Director John Ford put it, the various industrial businesses along Glendale Drive are surrounded by homes. Flanked by marshy agricultural land and hilly redwood forest, residents like Glendale for its countryside feel.

Alas. “Any time you have residences and industrial uses, you’re going to have conflicts,” Ford said of the neighborhood. Even so, longtime community members say they lived in harmony with Kernen Construction – founded in 1986 – for decades. But just over a year ago, they say, living next to the company became unbearable literally overnight.

Boiled down, the residents have two concerns: the noise and the environment. Accused by its neighbors of flouting environmental protection laws and disregarding the operational conditions of its permit, Kernen Construction has attracted the scrutiny of the state water board, the county planning and building department and a lawyered-up environmental nonprofit. They’re doing what they can to investigate accusations against the company, but for Owens and her neighbors, change isn’t coming fast enough.

Kernen Construction founders Scott Farley and Kurt Kernen didn’t respond to interview requests for this story.

Lynne Owens and her boyfriend, Bill Gilmer, are in their 60s and intended to spend their golden years in Glendale. But after struggling to restore peace to her backyard for more than a year, she’s moved into her van part time. 

“I don’t live in the country,” Owens said. “I live in hell.”

A Noisy Neighbor 

“I love my little house,” Owens said while showing the Outpost around one recent afternoon, two little hypoallergenic rescue dogs in tow.  

Owens, a former traveling rock and blues musician, has lived on Glendale Drive for 10 years. Her 115-year-old house was in ruin when she bought it, and Owens used her life savings to turn the place into a charming farmhouse with fruit trees outside and a pool in the backyard. 

Owens and Gilmer don’t spend much time outside, though, because of the noise and dust originating from their neighbor to the north. Separated by Noisy Creek, Kernen Construction borders the couple’s property on two sides.

Owens invited three members of the Glendale Concerned Citizens Group to our interview. The group is an unofficial assembly of 15 or so neighbors who originally gathered to plan restoration projects for Hall Creek and Noisy Creek, two tributaries of the Mad River that border Kernen Construction. We sat around Owens’ dining room table, windows shut and classical music playing to drown out the construction outside.

“We’ve lived in harmony – semi-harmony – for 20 years,” said Dave Trobitz, a lifelong Glendale resident. “And this stuff just started last summer.” 

According to the neighbors, Kernen Construction began working around the clock for days on end in June 2023. Owens said that around that time, the company started using the workyard nearest her home more heavily than ever before.

“There’s absolutely no way you could sleep,” Owens said. “Absolutely no way.” 

It was an overt violation of the company’s conditional use permit (CUP). Issued and enforced by the Humboldt County Planning and Building Department, the CUP spells out site regulations and operational restrictions, like sound limits and what hours the company may operate (in Kernen Construction’s case, that’s 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays, according to the CUP). Kernen Construction’s CUP was issued in 2001. Neighbors believe it’s poorly written and too easy to break.

When Kernen Construction started working at night in June 2023, some neighbors tried approaching Scott Farley, who manages the company.

“First of all when Kernen Construction was a bad actor,  I would call and I would say: ‘Hey, you know, be a good neighbor. Be a good neighbor,’” said Cindy Trobitz-Thomas (Dave Trobitz’s sister). “And we get the call back from Scott and he was like, ‘Well, we’ll put you up in a hotel.’ …But he didn’t even say he was sorry.”

Owens stayed in the Blue Lake Casino Hotel for 13 nights over the course of a month and said that Kernen Construction footed the bill. She considered it a huge inconvenience. (“Not a vacation!” Owens wrote in a notes app where she documents suspected CUP violations.)

The neighbors soon turned to the Humboldt County Planning and Building Department.

“Early on we did struggle to get [Kernen Construction’s] attention about the hours of operation,” said Ford, the department’s director. “That took far too long to get resolved.” 

It improved around October, Ford said, and the company has been compliant with its hours since January. 

Yet neighbors insist that CUP violations have continued into 2024. Owens records a suspected violation whenever she hears noise coming from the property outside of work hours. She has recorded alleged violations on 12 days since the first of the year (compared to 36 days from June to December in 2023). 

The Planning and Building Department investigates every complaint. “We’ve not been able to verify that that activity was taking place,” Ford said of the more recent accusations.

The department relies on its own staff’s observations and cameras owned by Kernen Construction to investigate alleged violations. Stories corroborated by more than one community member “have increased credibility,” Ford said, and the office is considering other ways to verify accusations. He and two other staff members sometimes drive past the business during off-hours to check for activity on the site.

Ford said the department has worked with Kernen Construction to install light shields to limit nighttime shine onto neighboring properties. He’s attended a few neighborhood meetings to hear the community’s concerns, and has tried to mediate between the residents and Kernen Construction – an effort that’s “not been greatly successful,” he said. 

But Ford said he still believes in community solutions, and is feeling hopeful about a meeting between his department, the company and the neighbors later this month.

Ford and Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone, who represents the area, have visited residents’ homes to hear the industrial commotion.

“I totally get it. The noise is constant through the day,” Ford said. “But it doesn’t violate the conditions. That’s just a very difficult thing. So we continue to be responsive to complaints and concerns that are expressed.” (Supervisor Madrone didn’t respond to interview requests for this article.)

The CUP requires that noise generated by the facility must not exceed 60 decibels Ldn – which stands for “Day-Night Average Sound Level” – meaning construction can actually be quite a bit louder than 60 decibels (considered moderately loud) during a standard Kernen Construction work day. A phone app Owens uses to monitor sound from her backyard has recorded averages in the low 70s, with moments as loud as 87 decibels. 

“The struggle that we’re having is: would you want that next to you? No, probably not,” Ford said. “But is it a violation of the conditional use permit? No. We haven’t been able to document that.”

Ford said the conflict has absorbed a “tremendous amount” of county time.

“We’ve got three people who are, including myself, fairly intimately engaged with this all the time. And so this is costing the county, the taxpayers, quite a bit of money,” Ford said. 

“We’re burning money and burning a lot of money.”

One Decade, Three lawsuits, Many Allegations

Glendale residents’ concerns about Kernen Construction widened during last winter’s particularly wet storm season.

With heavy rains, Owens started to notice seemingly uncontrolled stormwater draining from the company’s work yard into Noisy Creek. According to Owens, the storms were so extreme that water knocked down a fence on Kernen Construction’s side, and several large boards are now scattered along the creek bed. 

She wondered whether the turbid-looking runoff could harm coho salmon in the Mad River. 

Owens isn’t the first to make that accusation. The nonprofit Californians for Alternatives to Toxics (CATs) has brought legal claims against Kernen Construction thrice over the last decade, filing the latest complaint just last month. Formed in 1982, CATs aims to limit pesticides and other toxic chemicals in Northern California through community organizing and litigation. 

“We’ve never done anything like that before – had to keep returning to anybody,” CATs Executive Director Patty Clary told the Outpost. “I think that’s sort of indicative of Kernen [Construction] just doing what they think they want to do, not what they are necessarily supposed to do.”

In 2016, CATs filed its first complaint for Clean Water Act violations, which ended in a settlement agreement that required Kernen Construction to prevent further harm. A second lawsuit concluded in May 2021, when the company was ordered to pay more than $2 million in civil penalties for discharging toxic runoff into Hall Creek. 

CATs filed its most recent complaint on July 5, 2024, again alleging violations of the Clean Water Act by discharging pollutant-laden stormwater into Noisy Creek and Hall Creek. 

Under the Clean Water Act, it is illegal to discharge any pollutant that exceeds specific levels into creeks and rivers. Pollutants include industrial waste, chemical wastes, heavy metals, rock and sand.

[CORRECTION 12:06 P.M.: 

After this story was published, the Outpost received a call from William Verick, an attorney representing CATs. Verick explained that discharging stormwater that exceeds benchmark levels for certain pollutants is actually not technically a violation of the Clean Water Act. Instead, the Clean Water Act aims to enforce “technology based effluent limitations,” which require industrial facilities to install technology that prevents the discharge of pollutant-laden stormwater and to implement a mitigation and monitoring program. Benchmark levels are used to determine whether a business is fulfilling that legal responsibility. When a company’s monitoring shows that its discharge contains pollutants exceeding those set benchmark amounts, the company is required by the Clean Water Act to submit plans for improved prevention technology within a certain amount of time. 

The CATs lawsuit claims that Kernen Construction isn’t doing sufficient monitoring, and that monitoring it has done shows some pollutant levels that far exceed the benchmark. Despite being aware of this for years, Verick said, Kernen Construction has not adequately updated its prevention technology, which is a violation of the Clean Water Act.]

“Analysis of samples taken of Defendants’ discharges to Noisy Creek show extremely high levels of aluminum,” the complaint reads. “In addition, Defendants’ discharges of storm water from the Lower Yard contain high levels of suspended sediment.” The Mad River is classified as impaired for aluminum under the Clean Water Act. 

The complaint says that Kernen Construction’s stormwater infrastructure fails to prevent pollutant-laden runoff from reaching the creeks. 

The main goal of the lawsuit is to protect coho salmon, which have been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act since 1997. According to a 2014 coho recovery plan published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Mad River’s coho population has a high risk of extinction. 

“These are special streams,” Clary said. “There’s not a lot of streams, unfortunately, that still have coho in them.” 

Dan Free, a fish biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service West Coast Region (a branch of NOAA) said that there’s a fairly abundant population of coho salmon in Hall Creek.

Adding that the “jury is still out” on the levels of pollutants that Kernen Construction has allegedly discharged into the creeks – and that he doesn’t know what the levels are upstream of the company – Free said that salmon exposure to aluminum and copper is, in general, concerning. 

“Heavy metals can be very toxic to salmon,” Free said. “And especially coho salmon seem to be very sensitive to it.”

Aluminum can coat fish gills and cause respiratory dysfunction and death, while sediment collection in creek beds can disrupt salmon spawning habitat and limit food sources. 

“Hopefully there’s going to be more testing that would occur, so we can get a better angle on it,” Free said. 

“In my opinion, they [Kernen Construction] have an obligation to make sure that their activities aren’t harming salmon. And a good way to do that would be to help fund some of the sampling in the creek.” 

Clary put it bluntly: “You’re just not allowed to lower your cost of doing business by putting your chemicals into the waters of the United States – the waters that belong to the people, not to the company.”

The State Investigates

The California North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board (which we’ll call the Water Board from now on) has been trying to usher Kernen Construction into compliance with stormwater regulations for two years. 

The CUP isn’t Kernen Construction’s only permit. The Water Board issues and enforces the Industrial General Permit, which covers the company and is meant to regulate stormwater discharges from industrial facilities. During site inspections in June 2021 and February 2024, the agency unearthed several violations of the permit.

“The investigation is ongoing and Kernen Construction has not been fully cooperative,” said Charles Reed, a supervisor of the point source control and groundwater protection division for the Water Board. “We are considering additional enforcement.”

Enforcement started with an investigative order in June 2022, requiring Kernen Construction to submit reports about the site’s infrastructure and runoff sampling – steps to assess the scale and effect of the company’s alleged stormwater problems. 

“They didn’t fully comply with our request,” said Reed. “They didn’t ignore the request – they responded – but it was insufficient.”

In May 2024 the water board issued a notice of violation, which cited two alleged violations of the Clean Water Act and California Water Code, five alleged violations of the Industrial General Permit and four ongoing alleged violations of the June 2022 investigative order. 

The notice of violation directed Kernen Construction to act and respond in writing within 30 days. Now, a few weeks past that deadline, Kernen Construction has yet to do so. That said, Reed and Ford have been told that the company hired a consultant to help work through the violations and prepare a response.

There are many specific and tedious details to unpack in the Water Board’s inspection reports and enforcement notifications. Together, the documents show that Kernen Construciton’s alleged environmental violations are widespread and abundant, and that the company has a history of sporadically and incompletely responding to the agency’s directives to fix problems.

Kernen Construction does have stormwater runoff infrastructure, including infiltration trenches, sediment traps, stormwater ponds and other methods to contain and filter stormwater runoff. But the inspections claim that these efforts don’t do enough to prevent potentially contaminated water from seeping into groundwater or directly discharging into tributaries of the Mad. 

The February 2024 inspection was unannounced and immediately followed a storm. Noting that 36 of the site’s 37 acres are exposed to stormwater, an inspection memo from the visit notes that “construction equipment, materials, stockpiles, and construction wastes such as aggregate, asphalt grinding, and scrap roofing shingles materials are stored outside within the upper and lower yards exposed to rain.”

The inspector reported no clear capture system for pooled stormwater in some areas, oily sheen on the ground suggesting a leak or spill problem and an overall absence or misuse of “best management practices” for stormwater management, among other things.

Near the bank of Noisy Creek, on the property line between Kernen Construction and Owens’ house, the inspector found “evidence of erosion due to concentrated flow from the Facility toward and into Noisy Creek […] corroborating observation of stormwater discharge by the adjacent homeowner.” There were no “best management practices” installed to control the discharge of water and sediment into the creek.

Industrial facilities are required to identify every stormwater discharge point, but Kernen Construction never did so for this specific area. Industrial facilities are also required to collect samples of discharge when it occurs. According to the inspection memo, though, Kernen Construction claimed that there was no discharge from its property the entire reporting year, and hasn’t submitted sample monitoring reports since 2020.

Gilmer and Owens took a sample. They trudged down to the bank on Feb. 2, after watching water spill from Kernen’s property into the creek for a couple weeks. Gilmer, who was formerly Arcata’s water/wastewater superintendent, collected a sample of runoff before it hit the creek. They paid North Coast Laboratories $250 to test the water. 

The results reported 14 milligrams per liter of aluminum – nearly 14 times the benchmark limit established by the Environmental Protection Agency for industrial discharge, according to the CATs complaint.

“We may add some investigation regarding that,” Reed said of the sample. So far, the Water Board’s investigation hasn’t involved testing discharge from the facility. 

‘Bulletproof’

In the investigative order and notice of violation, the Water Board warned Kernen Construction that fines are on the table. Most notably, the company could face a fee of $10,000 for every day it releases unauthorized discharge.

More than two years after the first warning, Kernen Construction hasn’t been fined a dime for the environmental violations. 

The lack of accountability is puzzling and frustrating to the neighbors.

“They [Kernen Construction] feel, basically – for lack of a better word – bulletproof,” said Trobitz-Thomas. “They can do whatever they want.”

But the Water Board said it’s normal for improvements to move slowly.

“We’re sensitive to the community members’ concerns and two years since the violations were determined may seem like a long time, but it’s not unusual for progressive enforcement to take a good while to gain compliance,” Reed said. 

The Water Board’s Water Quality Enforcement Policy defines progressive enforcement as “an escalating series of actions beginning with notification of violations and compliance assistance, followed by enforcement orders compelling compliance, culminating in a complaint for civil liabilities.”

Reed said the Water Board is considering additional enforcement, which could include cleanup and abatement order, a cease and desist order or civil liabilities (a.k.a. fines). 

“We haven’t decided on what additional action we will take and in what timeframe,” Reed said.

“The administrative civil liabilities option is usually our last tool in the progressive enforcement toolbox and the only one that includes a fine.”

The county takes a similar approach to enforcing the conditional use permit. 

“Our ambition is not to punish people […] it’s to bring them into compliance,” said Ford. “People have a difficulty reconciling that, because from a law enforcement perspective, if you do something wrong, you get punished. And that is not the approach that this county takes.”

Although some CUPs threaten fines for noncompliance, Kernen Construction’s CUP does not. “There are no repercussions written into the CUP for violating any of the conditions,” Ford said. And again: As far as the county can tell, Kernen Construction is compliant with its CUP.

“You may not like it, but unless you can prove there’s a violation, it’s very difficult to take action against the permit – especially one that’s over 20 years old.”

The neighbors, who for so long lived peacefully alongside Kernen, can’t accept that compliance is acceptable, if this is what it looks like. 

“[County staff] do not know or comprehend what the word CONDITIONAL means!” Owens wrote in a recent email blast. She wants the Planning and Building Department to amend or revoke the CUP, but Ford said it’s not that easy. 

There’s no process for changing a CUP post-approval, Ford said, unless the company itself requests a modification. 

As for revocation? It’s possible – with approval from the Board of Supervisors – but it’s a “very, very unusual event,” Ford said. Revocation would require strong evidence of a flagrant and chronic violation, which, in this case, Ford said again and again, there’s not.

“To revoke a permit, the Board of Supervisors is going to have to sit there and weigh the fact that they have a business that’s operating in Humboldt County that provides an important service,” Ford said. “Taking away their right to provide that service, or their ability to provide that service, is a big decision, and you don’t want that decision to be based upon just a few scattered pieces of complaints.”

The neighbors are at a loss. 

“Nothing’s enough evidence,” Owens said a week after moving into her van, seated at a cafe for a second interview. She’s floated giving up a few times, but it doesn’t seem like she has or will soon. “It’s consuming my whole life,” Owens said. 

She spends hours a day researching her situation, flooding the email inboxes of county staff and representatives, environmental groups, local media outlets and any one else who might care.

“I’m getting pretty depressed,” she said, eyes welling up. “Sleep deprivation for a year, and post traumatic stress… It’s so weird. I’ve always thought of myself as tough.”

Last Saturday morning, it was quieter than usual in Glendale. 

She went home to can peaches, fresh off the tree.

###

DOCUMENTS:

• June 2022 Investigative Order
• February 2024 Inspection Memo
• May 2024 Notice of Violation
• CATs Complaint
• Kernen Construction CUP
• North Coast Lab test results

In campaign mode, Kamala Harris doesn’t refer to herself as a politician, but a prosecutor.

Her rise in Democratic politics began in California’s courtrooms. Voters elected her first as San Francisco’s district attorney and then as the state’s attorney general.

She battled multinational corporations on behalf of Californians, but also oversaw the wrongful conviction of someone who was later stabbed in prison. As the state’s lawyer, she refused to defend California’s gay marriage ban, but did the opposite on the death penalty, defending the state’s policy despite her personal opposition to it.

When she first ran for president five years ago, in a time of rising skepticism about policing, she pitched herself to Democratic primary voters as not merely a prosecutor but a progressive prosecutor. Today, in a general election campaign that may hinge on winning over independents concerned about crime, she’s largely dropped the modifier. Her record as a prosecutor draws criticism from both sides: The left has criticized her for having been too tough, even as the Trump campaign charges that she was “soft as CHARMIN.”

These nine cases — some successes, some stumbles — helped define the complicated law enforcement legacy of the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee:

1. Harris faces first test when a cop is killed

The shooting of a police officer on a poorly lit street in San Francisco in 2004 would haunt Harris for decades.

Officer Isaac Espinoza and his partner were in plainclothes when they approached a man in their unmarked vehicle on April 10. Espinoza, 29, stepped out and flashed a light at David Hill, according to accounts of trial testimony.

Hill fired several rounds from an AK-47. Two struck Espinoza, killing him. Espinoza’s partner was injured, and Hill was accused of first-degree murder, along with other charges.

San Francisco Police Officer Isaac Espinoza was shot and killed while working undercover in 2004. Photo via San Francisco Police Officers Association’s X account, the platform formerly known as Twitter

The newly elected DA, Harris, declined to pursue the death penalty against Hill – consistent with her position while she campaigned for the office, but offensive to many who attended Espinoza’s funeral.

“This is not only the definition of tragedy, it’s the special circumstance called for by the death penalty law,” former Sen. Dianne Feinstein told the mourners, provoking a resounding standing ovation.

The decision immediately pitted Harris — the first woman, first Black and first Asian American district attorney in San Francisco history — against the police.

“Isaac paid the ultimate price,” said San Francisco Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes at the funeral. “And I speak for all officers in demanding that his killer also pay the ultimate price.”

After eight weeks of testimony, jurors convicted Hill of second-degree murder and attempted murder. They rejected the charge of first-degree murder, not finding the act premeditated, and Hill’s conviction and life sentence were upheld in 2011.

In her 2009 book “Smart on Crime,” Harris wrote: “The broadly held assumption that simply increasing the penalty for any crime will automatically deter more people from committing the crime is a myth. We have to understand why long sentences alone are not sufficient to rock the crime pyramid for many types of crimes.”

2. Harris’ office convicts the wrong man — a $13 million mistake

Actor Jamal Trulove was a contestant on VH1’s “I Love New York 2,” a “Bachelor”-style dating show in which 20 men competed for the affections of a failed reality show contestant.

A viewer who happened to have witnessed a fatal July 2007 shooting at San Francisco’s Sunnydale housing project saw the show and told police she was convinced: Trulove, she said, had been the shooter.

The witness, Priscilla Lualemaga, had initially identified a different man as the shooter. When police showed her a photo lineup, and told her the shooter in that lineup, Lualemaga said Trulove “looks like the guy who could have shot” the victim.

But after the show aired, Lualemaga said she was certain.

Jamal Trulove during an interview on the music podcast The Art of Dialogue. Image via screenshot of The Art of Dialogue’s YouTube Channel

When the case went to trial in 2010, the DA’s office put both Lualemaga and her sister in witness protection, citing alleged threats.The jury convicted Trulove of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to 50 years to life.

But on appeal, a ballistics expert testified that Lualemaga — the only eyewitness to testify that Trulove was at the scene — could not have observed the shooting from the direction she was facing, given the rounds’ trajectory.

“The prosecutor wove these points into the very fabric of her closing argument, going so far as to urge the jury to have the same ‘courage’ as Lualemaga and find defendant guilty,” wrote appellate court judges. “There was no evidence of any threats or other actual danger presented by defendant, his friends, or his family to Lualemaga or her family…”

Trulove was acquitted in March 2015, and went on to a role in the film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.”

A federal lawsuit he filed after his release — noting he was stabbed in prison when he failed to give his cell’s bottom bunk to a gang leader — cost the city and county of San Francisco $13 million.

In a new podcast interview, he recounted his conviction: “I’ll never forget, when I turned around and I looked, and I seen Kamala Harris — we locked eyes this one time, and she laughed — she literally just kinda busted out laughing,” said Trulove, who’s endorsed Donald Trump.

3. Harris vs. the mentally ill woman shot by police, then prosecuted

The Espinoza case left Harris on shaky ground with the San Francisco Police Department — tension she sought to soothe via a monthly spot in the police union newsletter. In October 2008, here’s how her office presented a case in which police responded to a mentally ill woman in crisis:

“When police were called to the defendant’s home, she allegedly attempted to assault the responding officers with a knife. The police subdued the defendant by shooting her several times.”

Put another way: Police repeatedly shot a schizophrenic woman. And then Harris prosecuted her — but the jury balked.

In August 2008, Teresa Sheehan, then 56, was living in a group home for people with mental illness. When one of the home’s workers attempted to check on her, Sheehan replied with threats and said she had a knife.

A worker summoned police. Two officers knocked on Sheehan’s private room and eventually used a key to open her door. She grabbed a knife with a five-inch blade, the officers would later testify, and said “I am going to kill you. I don’t need help. Get out.”

Teresa Sheehan during Christmas in 2013. Photo courtesy of Patricia Sheehan

The officers later testified that they retreated but, worried that Sheehan might climb out of her window and to a fire escape, they opened the door again. One pepper-sprayed Sheehan and, when she didn’t drop the knife, the other shot her twice. The first officer also shot her.

She survived, and a jury acquitted her of making criminal threats and deadlocked on assault, though 11 of 12 jurors voted for acquittal. Sheehan sued San Francisco, settling for $1 million.

“If (Harris) actually looked at it and said, ‘This is a righteous case, I want to go after a mentally ill woman who was shot,’ then you question that decision,” Laurie Levenson, a criminal law professor at LA’s Loyola Law School told CalMatters. “If she didn’t know about it, then you question her management skills.”

4. Harris vs. a ‘predatory’ for-profit college

When a 2013 U.S. Justice Department investigation turned up evidence that the for-profit Corinthian Colleges were targeting “isolated” people who were “unable to see and plan well for the future,” while falsely promising prospective students job placement rates as high as 100%, it caught the eye of Kamala Harris. As California’s new attorney general, she sued them, alleging false advertising and deceptive marketing.

The Santa Ana-based company had purchased several private for-profit colleges that were in financial trouble, including at least three in California. By 2010, it had enrolled more than 110,000 students at 105 campuses.

Soon a number of Corinthian students told the U.S. Education Department that the schools weren’t placing them in jobs at the rates Corinthian had promised, leaving them saddled with student debt. The Office of Federal Student Aid forced the schools to stop any mergers, purchases of new schools or offering new programs.

Harris said the schools were targeting some of California’s most vulnerable prospective students.

“The predatory scheme devised by executives at Corinthian Colleges, Inc. is unconscionable,” Harris said in 2013. “Designed to rake in profits and mislead investors, they targeted some of our state’s most particularly vulnerable people — including low income, single mothers and veterans returning from combat.”

In March 2016, Harris won a default judgment against Corinithian for $1.1 billion; the company never answered Harris’ legal complaint and its lawyers didn’t appear in court on the day of the verdict.

In 2022, the U.S. Department of Education discharged $5.8 billion in student loan debt to 560,000 borrowers who paid to attend Corinthian Colleges.

5. Harris vs. big banks in the mortgage meltdown

Harris’ entry into the national spotlight came at the tail end of the Great Recession in 2011, when as California’s attorney general, she rejected a settlement offer from five major mortgage lenders — one other states agreed to.

It could have jeopardized the deal, but her brinkmanship worked: The banks kicked in a lot more, allowing California to collect about $20 billion, from an initial settlement offer of $4 billion.

The agreement meant Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc. collectively reduced $12 billion in principal on loans or offered short sales to about 250,000 California homeowners who owed more on their mortgages than their houses were worth.

The story of that negotiation and settlement became a key part of Harris’ political narrative, especially during her first candidacy for president in the 2020 Democratic primaries.

But the shine has somewhat worn off that victory in the years since.

A recent Wall Street Journal analysis of the settlement found that, though Harris wanted to use the settlement money to reduce mortgage principals, about half the settlement went to banks that wrote off the mortgages on homes that had already been abandoned. Each Californian with a defaulted mortgage got a check for $1,400, which the state suggested it could use to help pay a month’s worth of rent.

Another $4.7 billion was used to reduce debt on second mortgages, often home equity credit lines. Only about $4.5 billion was used to lower debt on primary mortgages.

At the time, Harris told the New York Times that in a homicide case, “you’re talking about something where the body’s cold. So the conversation is about punishment, it’s about restitution. This was not that. Every day there are homeowners in California who will either receive relief so they can stay in their home, or will be in the foreclosure process and potentially lose their home. And that always weighed heavily on my mind.”

6. When Harris defended the death penalty she opposes

When Julia Miller’s husband found her body on Aug. 25, 1992, she had been bound with a telephone cord and stabbed to death. She had two knives still in her neck. There were pieces of three other knives near her body. There was a rag stuffed in her mouth.

Evidence immediately pointed to Miller’s daughter’s boyfriend, Ernest Dewayne Jones, who had already served six years in state prison for raping his previous girlfriend’s mother.

Pamela Miller, Juila’s daughter, told the court “That bastard needs to be sentenced to death.” A judge agreed and Jones was sent to California’s death row. But Pamela Miller told an LA Times reporter that the sentencing was pointless because of how rarely executions were carried out.

Nearly 20 years later, while Jones awaited execution, a federal judge overturned the sentence, declaring California’s death penalty was unconstitutional because of the “inordinate and unpredictable period of delay” before execution.”

Harris — despite her own personal opposition to the death penalty, and over the objections of death penalty opponents — went to court to defend it. “I am appealing the court’s decision because it is not supported by the law,” Harris said in 2014, “and it undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants.”

She prevailed, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Jones’ death sentence. In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium on executions, shuttering San Quentin’s death chamber.

7. When Harris refused to defend a same-sex marriage ban

For 29 days in early 2004, San Francisco issued more than 4,000 marriage licenses. Then-mayor Newsom had decided to allow same-sex couples to marry three weeks into his first term; the number of people calling City Hall temporarily knocked out its phone lines.

The weddings were, technically, against the law. Newsom’s office expected an immediate injunction after the first wedding, but it didn’t come for a month. Among those who officiated weddings during that 29-day blitz was the city’s district attorney, Kamala Harris.

“One of the most joyful (moments of my career) was performing the marriages in 2004. Truly joyful,” Harris told The Advocate earlier this year.

The California Supreme Court nullified all of the marriages in April 2004, and voters then approved Proposition 8 to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

When same-sex couples challenged the ballot measure all the way to the nation’s highest court, then-Attorney General Harris refused to defend it, saying it was unconstitutional. “The Supreme Court has described marriage as a fundamental right 14 times since 1888,” Harris said in 2013. “The time has come for this right to be afforded to every citizen.”

Later that year, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California, Harris officiated the first wedding.

8. Cheap prison labor, defended by Harris’ office

Harris read a news story one day in 2014 and discovered that attorneys at the state Justice Department she was heading had argued against the release of minimum-security prisoners because of their value to the state labor pool.

That, at least, is how she explained it in an interview with Buzzfeed News.

“I will be very candid with you, because I saw that article this morning, and I was shocked, and I’m looking into it to see if the way it was characterized in the paper is actually how it occurred in court,” Harris told BuzzFeed News in a 2014 interview. “I was very troubled by what I read. I just need to find out what did we actually say in court.”

The inmates working in prisons as groundskeepers, janitors and cooks earned between 8 and 37 cents per hour.

A federal judicial panel overseeing California’s overcrowded prison system had ordered the state to increase the sentence reductions minimum-security inmates earned for participating in rehabilitation and education programs.

But California Justice Department attorneys had a different view, arguing that prisons needed cheap inmate labor to keep functioning.

“Extending 2-for-1 credits to all minimum custody inmates at this time would severely impact fire camp participation — a dangerous outcome while California is in the middle of a difficult fire season and severe drought,” Justice Department attorneys wrote in a September 2014 filing.

The argument, later disavowed by Harris, was part of her office’s frequent conflicts with the three-judge panel overseeing the prison system.

Harris’ attorney general’s office “continually equivocated regarding the facts and the law,” the three-judge panel wrote in 2013. “This court would therefore be within its rights to issue an order to show cause and institute contempt proceedings immediately.”

The judges said they didn’t do so because that might further delay the state’s release of nonviolent prisoners.

9. Harris, her laywers and a fake confession

A Kern County prosecutor invented two lines of incriminating testimony in a defendant’s 2013 deposition and sent the faked transcript to the defendant’s public defender.

The phony lines read like a confession from defendant Efrain Velasco-Palacios, and would have changed the potential charges of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child to penetrative sex with a child — meaning a conviction could trigger a life sentence.

When the public defender discovered the fabrication, he successfully argued to get the case dismissed.

Then, Harris’ Justice Department appealed.

Their argument: The charges shouldn’t have been dismissed because, while the prosecutor did fake the lines, he didn’t physically assault Velasco-Palacios.

“Dismissal is an appropriate sanction for government misconduct that is egregious enough to prejudice a defendant’s constitutional rights,” the California Court of Appeals found in 2015. “On appeal, however, the People dispute that (the prosecutor’s) misconduct was outrageous or conscience shocking in a constitutional sense, as it was not physically brutal.”

The appellate court justices said it found “no support” for that argument.

“If Harris really thinks that knowingly producing a fraudulent document to secure an illicit advantage isn’t ‘outrageous,’ then perhaps she slept through her legal ethics courses,” wrote Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, in 2015.

Robert Murray, the prosecutor who filed the false transcript, would later describe his actions to the State Bar Court as a joke and a prank. It recommended a two-year suspension. Murray now works at the Office of the Inspector General and has had an active law license since 2018, according to the state bar website.

In her 2009 autobiography on her years as a prosecutor, Harris wrote about the kind of crimes that motivated her.

“In nearly twenty years as a prosecutor, the last six as the elected District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco, I have spent a lot of time moving between the bright spotlight that shines on certain aspects of our criminal justice system and the darker places that the public doesn’t see,” she wrote. “I have prosecuted the manipulative predators who commit sexual assaults on children. I have prosecuted conduct that is so destructive that my first and only priority has been to remove the perpetrator from free society for as long as humanly possible. Sometimes, forever.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.