Public service announcement from the Hoopa Office of Emergency Services:

WARNING!!

Trinity River flows are increasing! The water will be swifter and colder than usual.

Please be extra cautious when recreating along the river and ensure you use proper floatation equipment.

Due to increasing rates of disease detected in returning salmon, dam releases to the Trinity River will increase from 450 cfs (cubic feet per second) to 1,200 cfs starting Friday, August 28th, 2026. The flow will remain elevated into mid-September depending on fish and disease response.

Stay safe and be mindful of the conditions!

###

What a beautiful shot of sunrise in Trinidad, right? The image, captured by Tehama County resident Ashley Fox, was recently announced as the winner of the Rural County Representatives of California’s (RCRC) 10th annual Rural County Photo Contest. Congrats, Ashley!

But some of you, no doubt, are having the same thought we had last week when the announcement was made: Isn’t that lighthouse in the wrong place?

The Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse sat atop the bluffs overlooking Trinidad Bay for nearly 70 years, but a slow-moving landslide in 2017 threatened to send it tumbling to the rocky coastline below.

Relocation plans triggered protests from the Yurok Tribe and the Tsurai Ancestral Society due to the structure’s position atop a traditional Yurok village site and cemetery. But an accord was eventually reached, and in January 2018, the lighthouse was lifted by a big crane, transferred to a flatbed tractor trailer and given a ride down the hill to a spot near Trinidad State Beach, where it remains to this day.

So as we appreciated the dramatic lighting in Fox’s photo (including the illuminated Fresnel lens, which has since been removed and stored), the perspective seemed off. We asked ourselves: Fake? AI?

We made a few calls to folks up in Trinidad in hopes of solving this mystery. Eventually we reached Fox herself, who explained that the photo is real (she’s a professional photographer), though she did take it 10-plus years ago. 

“I was doing a few shows in Humboldt and needed more ocean pictures, so I went through my 1000’s of pictures knowing I had this one,” this said in a message to the Outpost. 

Mystery solved! If you’re wondering, the official rules for the contest do prohibit the use of AI-generated images but have no provisions restricting the age of the image. Fox said she didn’t use AI to edit the shot, though she did touch it up with Adobe Lightroom.

Today, the county government issued its own press release, which we’ve reproduced below. Scroll down to see the second- and third-place finishers. 

Here’s the press release from the County of Humboldt:

The Rural County Representatives of California (RCRC) recently held its 10th annual Rural County Photo Contest and Humboldt County took top honors again.

RCRC’s photo contest encourages participants to submit photos that capture the essence of life in rural California, highlighting the landscapes, activities, communities, history and charm of RCRC’s member counties. Both amateur and professional photographers from all over California are invited to submit entries, capturing the splendor of the state’s rural counties. 

This year’s contest received a record 327 entries from 160 photographers. Ashley Fox took first prize with her beautiful photo of the historic Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse overlooking Humboldt County’s stunning Pacific coastline. Humboldt County previously took top honors in in 2017 and 2024 with photos taken by Miranda Moore and Lisa Wilhelmi-Perkins, respectively.

Fox is a resident of Tehama County who visits Humboldt County frequently. Her winning image, taken years ago, captures sunlight bursting through coastal clouds across the ocean, illuminating the lighthouse and surrounding shoreline. Her photograph showcases the contrasting glow of the lighthouse beacon with the sky, rocky sea stacks and a forested coastline beyond, highlighting the incredible natural beauty of Humboldt County.

“Thanks to Ashley Fox for visiting Humboldt and helping Humboldt County take the top spot in RCRC’s Rural County Photo Contest for the third time in its ten-year history,” said Humboldt County First District Supervisor and RCRC Board Delegate Rex Bohn. “Ashley’s photograph of the Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse beautifully captures the breathtaking scenery, historic architecture and coastal character that makes Humboldt so special. It’s a remarkable example of the extraordinary places found here in Humboldt and throughout rural California.”

The RCRC Board of Directors chose the winning photograph at their recent Board meeting with the county of origin revealed after the Board’s decision. The winning image will be prominently displayed during RCRC’s 2026 Annual Meeting in Santa Barbara County in September and may be featured in various RCRC marketing materials and publications throughout the year. The winning image can also be found on the County of Humboldt’s Facebook and Instagram pages @HumCoGov.

The RCRC Rural County Photo Contest was established to promote tourism and local economic development by showcasing the beauty of RCRC’s member counties. For more information about the contest and to find images from past winners, visit RCRCNet.org/photo-contest.

Stay Connected

Community members are encouraged to stay connected and engaged with the County of Humboldt on social media. Any community member or visitor who wants to showcase the unparalleled beauty of Humboldt County’s parks, trails and landscapes should tag @HumCoGov on Facebook or Instagram for a chance to be featured on the county’s social media pages.

About Rural County Representatives of California

The Rural County Representatives of California is a forty-member county service organization that champions policies on behalf of California’s rural counties. RCRC is dedicated to representing the collective unique interests of its membership, providing legislative and regulatory representation at the State and Federal levels, and providing responsible services for its members to enhance and protect the quality of life in rural California counties. To learn more about RCRC, visit RCRCNet.org and follow @RuralCounties on X, Facebook and Instagram.

###

Press release via the Yurok Tribe’s Facebook:

This week, three young prey-go-neesh (California condors) took their first free flights over Yurok ancestral territory.

At 3 p.m. [Wednesday], C8 (studbook 1329) left the Northern California Condor Restoration Program (NCCRP) flight pen. Just before 10 a.m. [Tuesday], F0 (studbook 1355) and F2 (studbook 1376) quickly darted out of the release facility.

“The first two birds have already made it back to the facility. F0 has flown between trees landing solidly and returned to the site to feed. She later flew off and landed on a known roosting tree. They’re doing phenomenal,” said Chris West, a Yurok Wildlife Department Senior Biologist and the NCCRP’s Manager.

F0 and F2 were the first released of seven condors brought in this year from San Diego Zoo Safari Park. It was the second largest cohort of condors in NCCRP history.

The three male and four female birds were joined by mentor B4 in the flight pen while they acclimated to the North Coast.

The NCCRP is employing a flexible approach to the next round of releases and may attempt to set another bird free as early as this weekend if conditions allow. When the releases are complete, there will be 31 free-flying condors over Northern California redwoods.

This was the first cohort NCCRP received from San Diego Zoo Safari Park, which delivered the birds in mid-July and helped NCCRP biologists and technicians, along with veterinarians from Sequoia Park Zoo, intake them, removing existing placeholder wing tags from the condors, attaching new NCCRP wing tags with local identifiers, and providing intravenous fluid to help the birds recover from the long drive from San Diego.

Over the past month, NCCRP staff monitored the condors’ acclimatization to their new surroundings and installed new GPS and radio transmitters on their wing tags to ensure the team could effectively monitor the birds after their release. The birds are faring exceptionally well in their new environment. Many of the other older free-flying condors had visited the pen to watch and interact with the new birds before they were released.

About the Northern California Condor Restoration Program

The Northern California Condor Restoration Program is a collaboration between the Yurok Tribe and Redwood National and State Parks (NPS). The NCCRP is part of the California Condor Recovery Program, which is an international multi-entity effort, led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to recover the endangered California condor by establishing robust self-sustaining populations of condors within the historical distribution. The Yurok Tribe initiated the Pacific Northwest condor reintroduction effort in 2008.

To support the condor restoration effort, please visit https://www.yuroktribe.org/yurok-condor-restoration-program

Note: for the Yurok Condor Live Feed, click here.

###

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

###

When Californians voted to reduce drug penalties in 2014, it likely had the unintended consequence of also increasing homelessness in the state, according to a new report.

The report, released Thursday by the Public Policy Institute of California, set out to measure the long-term effects of Proposition 47 – a 2014 ballot measure that lowered some drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. It found that while the measure succeeded in reducing prison overcrowding as intended, it also appears to have contributed to an increase in people living on the street, a rise in overdoses and a drop in the number of people getting drug treatment.

The PPIC researchers determined Prop. 47 caused an estimated increase in street homelessness of about 10% between 2015 and 2019. The study suggests the measure increased drug use (as measured by overdose deaths and hospitalizations) by between 7% and 8%. The researchers also found evidence that Prop. 47 led to a 20% reduction in the number of Californians receiving drug treatment, because the courts referred fewer people into treatment programs.

The results come at a time when many Californians are disillusioned with the state’s past efforts to reduce incarceration. Voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 36 in 2024, which partially undid the 2014 reform by increasing penalties for certain drug and theft crimes. Supporters argued the 2024 measure would reduce drug use and homelessness, though it came with no funding for treatment or housing.

The new study’s findings are sure to add fuel to an already raging debate over the causes and best ways to fight homelessness: with proponents of a tough-on-crime approach on one side arguing addiction is a primary driver of homelessness and police should crack down on drug use and encampments, and homeless advocates on the other arguing the state’s sky-high cost of living is to blame and building more housing is the answer.

California counties that reduced their homeless count this year told CalMatters that increased funding for temporary and permanent housing placements was the reason. That was echoed in the PPIC study: Places with larger increases in permanent housing beds also saw larger decreases in homelessness after the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that the money California poured into homeless housing after the pandemic is working.

Studies have shown the “housing first” model, which prioritizes placing people into housing as quickly as possible without requiring them to first become sober or get mental health treatment, to be an effective way to solve homelessness.

A 2023 report by the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative found that while more than a third of homeless respondents reported regularly using drugs, that was not the driving factor of most people’s homelessness. Instead, a loss of income was the most common reason people reported for losing their last housing.

That study, which was the largest survey of unhoused Californians since the 1990s, is widely cited by policy makers, activists and homeless service providers.

The new PPIC report presents a stronger causal link between drug use and homelessness. While the PPIC report found that counties with higher rents and lower vacancies had higher rates of homelessness, changes in an area’s rents or vacancy rates did not lead to changes in their homelessness rates.

The PPIC researchers stopped far short of blaming the state’s entire homelessness crisis on prison reform.

Prop. 47 resulted in an additional 7,000 Californians experiencing “unsheltered” homelessness (sleeping in parks, tent encampments, vehicles, abandoned buildings or other places not meant for habitation) between 2015 and 2019, the researchers estimated. That’s about 20% of the state’s overall increase in unsheltered homelessness during that time, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The researchers got their results by comparing California to other states that had very similar homelessness trends before Prop. 47 passed. They also compared California counties to counties in other states with similar trends. Then they analyzed how California diverged from its peers after Prop. 47. The researchers also examined whether areas that had large decreases in drug arrests and big drops in their jail and prison populations after Prop. 47 were more likely to experience larger increases in homelessness and overdoses – and found that they were.

The researchers acknowledged several factors that could have thrown off their calculations. In 2015, California, as did the rest of the country, tried to improve the accuracy of its homeless point-in-time counts – which may have resulted in more people being counted and contributed to a perceived increase in homelessness. In addition, rent prices increased much more in California between 2014 and 2019 than in other states. The researchers attempted to account for that difference in their calculations, but acknowledged that the outsized increase could have had more of an effect than their models show.

Though the researchers focused on the effect of Prop. 47 on homelessness, they found several other factors that played major roles. For example, in the areas they studied, the researchers found declines in the number of people receiving Social Security benefits correlated to increases in local homelessness.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Press release from the Eureka Police Department:

On August 26, 2026, at approximately 12:30 p.m., officers with the Eureka Police Department served a search warrant at a hotel in the 1200 block of Fourth Street in an effort to locate outstanding warrant suspect Brian Coffman, 41, of Eureka.

Coffman was wanted on multiple felony warrants, including warrants issued in Humboldt County and other jurisdictions, related to the sale of controlled substances. Officers located and detained Coffman without incident.

Pursuant to the search warrant, officers searched the hotel room and a vehicle associated with Coffman. During the search, officers located approximately 20 grams of fentanyl, cash, and various items consistent with the packaging and distribution of controlled substances.

Coffman was taken into custody on his outstanding warrants and was additionally arrested for possession of a controlled substance for sale, transportation of a controlled substance, and being a felon in possession of a narcotics with prior convictions.

This is an ongoing and active investigation, anyone with information related to this incident is encouraged to contact the Eureka Police Department Criminal Investigations Unit at 707-441-4300.

###

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

###

Just days after the U.S. Supreme Court gave President Donald Trump a procedural win in his effort to limit mail-in voting, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a new lawsuit intended to protect the state’s power over how elections are administered.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts on Wednesday, makes good on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pledge to sue again over Trump’s mail-in voting executive order immediately after the Supreme Court decision.

California is able to sue despite the high court’s ruling because of developments that occurred after justices took up the previous case.

The court majority this week essentially ruled that California sued too early over the executive order and it noted that the administration had not yet handed down formal rules that would affect voting.

That changed late last week when the U.S. Postal Service issued final rules requiring states to turn over a list of eligible mail voters, redesign ballot envelopes with the Postal Service’s approval and include new tracking barcodes.

Under Trump’s order, the Postal Service would not deliver ballots to voters who are not in a federal database the administration wants to build, and would not deliver ballots in states that do not comply with its rules.

Bonta called the Postal Service rules a “clear violation of the Constitution,” which designates states as the primary authority over elections.

The Democratic-led states joining with California in the lawsuit argue that because neither the president nor the Postal Service have the constitutional authority to run elections, the latest changes are unlawful and will undermine mail-in voting — including the more than 89% of voters in California who used mail-in ballots in the latest June primary.

“President Trump doesn’t get to rewrite our voting system on a whim,” said Bonta during an online press conference Wednesday. “And the United States Postal Service cannot sidestep the laws that govern the postal service just to carry out the president’s agenda.”

Although Trump uses mail-in voting himself, he is an outspoken critic of the method, citing unsubstantiated claims that it increases voter fraud. Last year he said he wanted to “lead a movement to get rid of mail-in ballots.”

Given its challenges in court, it is unclear whether the Postal Service’s new rule will affect the November elections.

###

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

###

Laura Richardson pays $450 a month out of pocket for a drug that could keep her off insulin for the rest of her life. She’s a California state senator — and even she can’t get her own insurance to cover it.

Richardson started using a GLP-1 a year ago after learning she was pre-diabetic. Her state health plan does not cover it.

“If something is available to help you to be more healthy, to avoid comorbidities … why would we want to wait till a person became diabetic to help them?” she told lawmakers in a June hearing.

Her experience is not unusual. For many Californians, popular weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy continue to be elusive despite their clinical promise. While prices are dropping, these drugs continue to be unaffordable for many; most insurers don’t cover them; and state programs, wary of costs, have rolled back access.

Senate Bill 1089, which would expand access to the class of drugs known as GLP-1s, is clearing its final hurdles this legislative session. The bill would direct the state to seek to partner with a drug manufacturer to increase competition and lower prices for GLP-1s under its CalRx program, a state program created to distribute popular, expensive drugs at a fraction of the cost.

It is unclear how long that could take, but it’d likely be a yearslong endeavor. It took the state three years to bring its $55 insulin into the market under CalRx. Today the state program also distributes albuterol inhalers and naloxone.

Richardson, an Inglewood Democrat, authored the bill, which is a watered-down version of its original, more ambitious form. Previously, the bill also sought to require that CalPERS, the health plan that insures 1.3 million public employees and retirees, cover GLP-1 drugs.

CalPERS opposed the bill and argued that the drug’s high cost would increase premiums by $28 per member per month.

Richardson added that she had discussed including GLP-1s in the CalRx program with the governor, and “he was very positively open to that.” State health officials have said that GLP-1s are among the drugs they are considering for the program.

A boom in GLP-1 spending

The bill follows California’s recent elimination of GLP-1 coverage for the treatment of obesity in its Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal. The state cited growing pharmacy costs and budget pressures for cutting the benefit. The state still pays for certain GLP-1s when prescribed specifically for diabetes treatment.

GLP-1s have helped many people to better manage their obesity and chronic healthcare conditions. Obesity is a well-known contributor to conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

State data show that the number of GLP-1 prescriptions solely for weight loss jumped from 20,000 to 700,000 between 2018 and 2023 across both Medi-Cal and commercial plans. In 2023, California spent $416.8 million on GLP-1 prescriptions for weight loss in the Medi-Cal program and commercial payers spent $405.2 million, according to state data.

An analysis by the Legislative Analyst’s Office found that during this time, California’s pharmacy spending nearly doubled, and tied that growth to drugs that treat diabetes, obesity, and inflammatory diseases.

California is not the only state feeling the burden of these drugs’ popularity and cost: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and South Carolina also recently eliminated Medicaid coverage for GLP-1s when used solely for weight loss.

Today 12 states cover GLP-1s for obesity treatment under their Medicaid programs, although Rhode Island will cease coverage in October.

Similarly, coverage of GLP-1s under private insurance varies widely; there’s no clear standard. Health plans have also pointed to costs , noting they are currently a key contributor to premium increases.

Alison Sexton Ward, an economist and research scientist at the University of Southern California, said that data show huge benefits for peoples’ health. Modeling projects long-term savings in healthcare spending as well as a narrowing of health disparities, but she noted it’s a tricky investment for insurers to make. There are significant upfront costs before plans may start to see savings because of the reduction of obesity-related health problems, and insurers may not capture those savings when people tend to switch health plans every few years, she explained.

“The thing about treating obesity is just because you lose weight today doesn’t mean that your healthcare costs go down tomorrow,” Ward said. “There’s been this unique pressure on these drugs that they pay for themselves.”

One pilot that researchers and providers are looking at is the new federal Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program, a temporary project that seeks to bring down the cost of Zepbound, Wegovy and Foundayo to about $50 a month.

Patients seeking cheaper options

Dr. Wayne Ho, an obesity specialist and researcher in Los Angeles, sees the consequences of patchwork access to the drugs in his patients. Patients who can pay cash or whose insurance covers the drugs tend to be able to better manage their health conditions. Those without access try other, less effective therapies.

“It’s really disheartening to see because we have these wonderful innovative treatments that really are life altering,” he said.

The cost is also driving some of his patients to seek cheaper, compounded versions of the drug, which some doctors warn against because they lack FDA approval.

Compounding typically involves custom-making a drug for a specific need — removing an allergen, for example. Increasingly, compound pharmacies and telehealth platforms are offering versions of GLP-1s that swap out an ingredient or two. Ho says these compounded drugs carry higher risk because they bypass the FDA’s rigorous vetting and approval process.

Nationally, calls to poison centers related to weight loss drugs increased by 1,500% between 2019 and 2025, according to data from America’s Poison Centers. Studies and reports have shown that compounded GLP-1s are more likely to cause adverse effects and have a higher risk of preparation errors. A Binghamton University study found that the odds of hospitalization were higher for compounded products. The FDA also warns of the prevalence of counterfeit products.

Ho calls GLP-1s one of the best tools he has as a provider. He remains hopeful that affordable access to the FDA-approved weight loss drugs is on the horizon. Continued efforts by state lawmakers to expand access are a critical step, he said.

“I think there’s more and more pressure to cover these medications as more and more scientific data come out to show how it affects the body in a very positive manner,” he said.

###

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.