President Donald Trump’s ban on new offshore wind leases won’t halt giant wind farms already planned off California’s coast, but industry officials say the policy shift is a blow to a renewable energy industry still working to gain a foothold.

Environmentalists say the moratorium amounts to “kneecapping” California’s offshore wind projects and puts an important source of clean energy in “mortal peril.” The Biden administration had promoted offshore wind as critical to providing cleaner power and reducing climate-warming greenhouse gases.

“I hereby withdraw from disposition for wind energy leasing all areas within the Offshore Continental Shelf,” which encompasses all federal waters off the United States, Trump wrote in an order on Monday. He said it was effective immediately and temporarily prevents “any new or renewed wind energy leasing for the purposes of generation of electricity or any other such use derived from the use of wind.”

The order has no immediate effect on leases already authorized, including two large areas off California’s coast. Trump wrote that “nothing in this” order “affects rights under existing leases in the withdrawn areas.”

In 2022, the federal government leased 583 square miles of deep ocean waters 20 miles off Morro Bay and Humboldt and Del Norte counties to energy companies. Capturing offshore wind energy is considered essential to achieving California’s ambitious goal of electrifying its grid with 100% zero-carbon energy by 2045.

The Trump order also prohibits any new approvals, permits or loans for both land and offshore wind projects until his agencies conduct “a comprehensive assessment,” including the economic costs and effects on birds, marine mammals and other wildlife.

Existing offshore wind leases are not safe from future actions by the new administration. Trump ordered “a comprehensive review” of “terminating or amending” offshore wind leases and ordered his agencies to identify “any legal basis” for eliminating them.

Trump has a longstanding animosity toward all forms of wind energy, and as a candidate he often vowed to stop the turbines. He also has said, without evidence, that offshore wind platforms kill whales. The president reiterated his opposition after his inauguration on Monday. “We’re not going to do the wind thing,” Trump said. “Big ugly windmills, they ruin your neighborhood.”

The potential environmental effects of the California projects are unknown, especially since no other floating wind farms have been built in such deep ocean waters so far from shore. Developers are still studying the feasibility of the technology and must analyze the environmental impacts before gaining state and federal permits.

The technology has its critics beyond the Oval Office, including many residents and local officials in Morro Bay, who worry that the wind farms and onshore development to support the projects will industrialize their coast.

California’s wind farms would contain hundreds of giant turbines, each about 900 feet high — as tall as a 70-story building. While the platforms would mostly be unseen from the shoreline, some may be visible at night in some areas. In addition, the projects will require expansion of ports in Los Angeles, Long Beach and Humboldt Bay for storing, staging and assembling parts.

Making the moratorium one of his first orders of business is an unwelcome signal to an industry reliant on state and federal support. Experts in California say consistent public policy is critical for developers to raise funds to invest in the projects.

Ken Alex, who was the climate change advisor to Gov. Jerry Brown and former director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, said offshore wind’s complex and novel technology requires a long-term commitment from the industry and regulators.

“The timeframe for floating offshore wind is longer than other forms of renewable energy, in part because of technological challenges, in part because of environmental review,” said Alex, who is director of Project Climate at UC Berkeley. Any interruption in policy and financial support is disruptive, he said.

“It takes time, it takes resources and it takes consistency. The industry abhors uncertainty.”

Offshore wind developers already have been buffeted by financial troubles: Because of lack of industry interest, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees offshore wind projects, canceled a lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico and sold only half of the leases available in the Gulf of Maine last October.

California’s offshore wind projects are in early planning stages but would be part of the state’s goal of producing 25 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2045, powering 25 million homes and providing about 13% of the state’s power supply.

The areas off California with the strongest winds are far from shore and too deep for traditional platforms, so developers are planning clusters of floating platforms in waters more than a half-mile deep and tethered by cables. 

The depth, distance from shore and new floating technology drive up the costs and complicate an already expensive process. Massive infusions of private and public money will be needed, officials say, underscoring the vulnerability of the industry to Washington’s shifting priorities. 

Alex Stern, executive director of the industry group Offshore Wind California, said that while federal approvals are still required, the California projects will rely on state agencies to shepherd many of the next phases.

 “As an industry we’re focused on what is advancing offshore wind in California, and right now most of that is happening at the state level,” Stern said.

Jana Ganion, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s senior advisor for offshore wind, was unavailable for comment about Trump’s order.

California has been bullish about offshore wind, with multiple agencies expediting reviews and planning. Voters approved a climate bond that included $475 million for offshore wind-related development at California ports and the state’s grid operator last year approved a $4.6 billion plan to build infrastructure to carry offshore wind power to the grid.

Developing offshore wind energy requires dozens of other initiatives working in concert, including upgrading and redesigning ports and harbors and updating and expanding much of California’s aging transmission infrastructure. Approval for the development has been contingent on programs to train and employ residents in local communities and among tribes. The depth, distance from shore and new floating technology drive up the costs and complicate an already expensive process. Massive infusions of private and public money will be needed, officials say, underscoring the vulnerability of the industry to Washington’s shifting priorities. 

Onshore wind power in the United States accounts for nearly 10% of the nation’s electricity. Those installations are largely on private land, led by Texas, Iowa and Oklahoma. Landowners earn money from the projects and the industry has a robust manufacturing and jobs sector.

“This is bad for American workers,” said Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “The growing U.S. wind industry and its manufacturing supply chain are creating quality jobs and growing local economies along our coasts and across the Midwest. This announcement put those investments — and the jobs that go with them — at mortal risk.”

Much of the policy and permitting responsibilities for wind energy fall to the Interior Department. Trump’s orders mean the agency will have to conduct extensive reviews and prepare a report regarding wind energy. 

During his Senate confirmation hearings, Trump’s Interior nominee, former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, committed to the current “all of the above” strategy for a diversified energy portfolio and said if existing leases “make sense and they’re already in law, then they’ll continue.”

As a governor and part of the Western Governors Association, Burgum signed on to the group’s Energy Policy Resolution that included a recommendation to continue support for offshore wind projects.

Another of Trump’s first-day executive orders was to open all of Alaska’s federal lands to oil exploration and do away with the “punitive restrictions” that delay or halt drilling. 

Alex of UC Berkeley noted that the same environmental impacts that Trump said he was worried about with wind energy are not taken into account with oil and gas projects.

“This kind of doublespeak is right out of ‘1984,’” he said.

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

For days since President Donald Trump announced his intent to travel to Los Angeles to survey fire damage, a question has hung over his planned visit: Will Gov. Gavin Newsom be with him?

Tension between the newly reinstalled Republican president and California’s Democratic governor — longtime political nemeses who nevertheless routinely worked together on disaster recovery during Trump’s first term — exploded alongside the fires that have burned through Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other swaths of the Los Angeles region over the past two weeks. The clash has appeared to put federal support for California at risk, even as Newsom publicly offered an olive branch to Trump.

Furious over the early response to the disaster, Trump has repeatedly railed against the governor he dubbed “Newscum,” spread misinformation about the causes of the fire and suggested that California will not receive the typical federal aid for recovery unless it changes its water policy. Or its forestry policy. Or its immigration sanctuary policy.

Though the governor quickly extended an invitation to Trump to visit Los Angeles, an effort to lower the temperature on the unusually politicized furor surrounding a natural disaster, Newson acknowledged late Thursday afternoon that he had still not heard back from the president, less than a day before his expected touchdown in California.

Excluding Newsom would be a stinging rebuke of the governor, who met with Trump when he traveled to California fire zones in 2018 and 2020. On Wednesday, the president indicated to Fox News host Sean Hannity that he might not offer Newsom the same courtesy this time around: “I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about it,” Trump said.

But Newsom struck an optimistic tone with reporters Thursday, after approving $2.5 billion in fire recovery funds that he hopes will eventually be reimbursed by the federal government. He promised to be at the airport today to greet Trump — even if a spokesperson said his office didn’t yet know which airport. And Newsom said he expected the president would ultimately “do the right thing” for Los Angeles.

“I’m glad he’s coming out here. I’m grateful that the president’s taking the time,” Newsom said. “And I hope he comes with a spirit of cooperation and collaboration. That’s the spirit to which we welcome him.”

It’s common for presidents and governors of opposing political parties to do battle on policy differences and then come together when natural disasters strike, said state Sen. Ben Allen, a Santa Monica Democrat whose district has been badly damaged by the Palisades fire.

“It would be a delicate balance under any president and certainly, it’s more delicate under this president,” he told CalMatters. “It may appear a little messy, and perhaps it is, but it’s also an integral part of our federal system.”

Newsom is at a precarious moment in his relationship with Trump. While he initially positioned California at the forefront of a renewed resistance after Trump won a second term in November, even calling a special session to fund litigation against the incoming administration, Newsom now finds himself dependent on the goodwill of a federal government almost fully under the sway of Trump.

It’s unclear how forthcoming federal assistance will be. Since the outbreak of the Los Angeles fires more than two weeks ago, Trump has depicted them as Newsom’s fault and even demanded that he resign. With the support of many congressional Republicans, the president has also threatened to withhold or condition disaster aid.

“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down,” Trump told Hannity, a reference to inaccurate claims that Los Angeles lacked water to fight these fires because the state does not send enough water south from Northern California.

Newsom has substantially, though not entirely, pulled his punches against Trump in recent weeks. He largely kept a low profile leading up to the president’s visit, working on fire response from Los Angeles. After the president erroneously complained in Monday’s inauguration speech that the fires were burning “without even a token of defense,” Newsom issued a gentle statement that emphasized “finding common ground and striving toward shared goals” with the Trump administration.

“In the face of one of the worst natural disasters in America’s history, this moment underscores the critical need for partnership, a shared commitment to facts, and mutual respect,” Newsom said.

Yet he also, on social media, slammed several of Trump’s early executive orders on immigration and climate change, then sent an email to supporters deriding the passage from Trump’s inaugural speech as “nonsense” and “insulting” to firefighters.

Meanwhile, the governor’s special session to “safeguard California values” from the Trump administration continues on, with Democrats in the state Senate voting Thursday to advance $25 million for legal fees. Republican lawmakers have lambasted the session as a distraction from wildfire response and an unnecessary poke at the president.

Allen, the senator from Santa Monica, said he understood that Trump is fulfilling his campaign promises to the Americans who supported him, but that California politicians would be derelict if they didn’t push back, because voters had elected them with a different vision for how to run the country.

“We want, and our constituents want us, to cooperate with the federal government to help on the areas of mutual agreement and need,” he said. “The flip side is, we are also part of the loyal opposition.”

Newsom told reporters Thursday that it was important for the state to prepare to fight Trump at the same time that he is courting the president’s help, noting that Trump “already assaulted the Fourteenth Amendment” with his day one executive order challenging birthright citizenship, which California immediately sued to stop.

The governor evoked the “great relationship” he had with Trump during the COVID pandemic, when they spoke nearly every week, and said he did not expect the special session to affect that because it was “nothing personal,” but rather based on “fundamental policy disagreements.”

“This is situational. Don’t color it in any more than it needs to be,” Newsom said. “I’m here for the long haul, to support the president where we can, to defend our values where we must.”

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

Joyce Ann Harmon
March 10, 1949 – January 17, 2025

It is with deep sorrow that we announce the passing of Joyce Ann Harmon, of Arcata, who left us on January 17, 2025, at the age of 75. Joyce was born in Eureka on March 10, 1949, to Annie J. Fisher and Vern A. Martin, both of whom preceded her in death. She was raised in Fortuna and lived most of her life in Arcata. Joyce graduated as Valedictorian from Fortuna High School in 1967, later earning a BA in Journalism from Humboldt State University.

On November 22, 1975, Joyce married the love of her life, James E. Harmon, and together they raised two daughters, Ann C. Lunsford (born January 17, 1976) and Jamie M. Boltzen (born July 18, 1978). Joyce’s family was always her greatest joy, and she cherished the time spent with her two granddaughters, Samantha M. Tellez (born January 24, 1994) and Allyson D. Boltzen (born September 7, 2000).

Joyce was passionate about many things in life, including her love for the arts, travel, and spending time outdoors. She loved going to the movies, attending concerts, camping, swimming, dancing, and especially cruising to new places. She also had a deep commitment to her work and her community. Joyce spent 25 years serving as the Secretary at the Mad River Fish Hatchery with the Department of Fish & Wildlife, a position where she became well-known and respected. Prior to that, she worked at Napa State Hospital, Caltrans, and later dedicated her time to In-Home Support Services, where she cared for the elderly and disabled.

A long-standing member of the Arcata United Methodist Church, Joyce served in many capacities over the years, including teaching Sunday School, keeping attendance records, and hosting Coffee Hour. She was also the church secretary for many years, where she made countless contributions to the congregation and its mission.

Joyce is survived by her husband, James E. Harmon, daughters Ann C. Lunsford, her husband, Addison J Lunsford, and Jamie M. Boltzen, granddaughters Samantha M. Tellez, her husband Elijah B Tellez and Allyson D. Boltzen, also Joyce’s brother, James A. Martin. She will be deeply missed by her family, friends, and the many lives she touched over the years.

A viewing will be held on January 31, 2025, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Paul’s Chapel in Arcata. A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. on February 1, 2025, at Greenwood Cemetery in Arcata.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Joyce Harmon’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

Sharon Levy died on December 30, 2024 at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Eureka at age 65. She was born in Chicago, Illinois. There she attended Metro High School – an experimental “school without walls” which attracted diverse public high school students from every corner of the city. She attended Oberlin College, then University of Illinois, graduating with a degree in biology. Heading west, she attended Oregon State University, where in 1988 she completed a Master of Science degree in toxicology.

In the summer of 1988, she went to work as a seasonal wildlife biologist in the Hayfork district of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. There Sharon met Hugh Scanlon, who was working as a seasonal forestry technician for the US Forest Service. At the end of the season, Sharon returned to Oregon State as a laboratory technician and Hugh followed. Then Sharon followed Hugh to Fort Bragg when he accepted a permanent position working for CALFIRE.

While in Fort Bragg, Sharon worked as a field biologist for several consulting firms, including Buckberg & Associates, Mad River Biologists, and CH2M Hill. Her primary work was conducting field surveys of spotted owls, but also included wetlands restoration research. Sharon also began to write science-focused articles for magazines as a freelance writer. One of her first publications was an article about the Arcata Marsh, for the United Airlines in-flight magazine Hemispheres.

In Spring 1991, Sharon Levy and Hugh Scanlon were married on the Mendocino headlands. They were married for 33 years. In 1994, Hugh’s employment brought him to the CALFIRE Fortuna office. Sharon and Hugh moved to Arcata. She quickly found roles as a wildlife biologist, working for Dave Nielsen on the staff of Pacific Northwest Biological for several years. Sharon also continued publishing as a science writer.

In 1999, Sharon was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She had a long, hard battle with the disease, but was cancer-free by 2001. She decided to step away from the rigors of field biology and focus on her passion for writing. She became quite accomplished, writing for many publications including Audubon, Bioscience, High Country News, Undark, OnEarth, and Knowable magazines. Topics included: native bees, bird conservation in Hawai’i, the reintroduction of condors in the Bald Hills, and the aboriginal use of fire in the Australian outback. Several of her articles can be found at her website, SharonLevy.net.

In 2004, Sharon became a mother. She and Hugh adopted Maya Scanlon, who was then ten months old and living in an orphanage near Chongqing, China. Sharon was a good mom and was dedicated to Maya. The family has many friends in the Humboldt adoption community. In 2014, the family took a trip back to China with other families that had ties to the same orphanage.

Sharon’s two books were published through Oxford University Press. Her first book “Once and Future Giants” looked at the extinction of megafauna in several area around the world, and potential lessons for future megafauna restoration. She also wrote “The Marsh Builders” which explored the importance of wetlands, and detailed the unique history of the Arcata Marsh and the area’s wastewater treatment.

Sharon was a musician. She loved to sing and play banjo. Sharon was also a quilter. She was an avid bird watcher. She loved to hike and enjoyed backpacking. She would go rowing in a single racing scull as a member of the Humboldt Bay Rowing Association. She would paddleboard at Big Lagoon. And she loved walking her dog Amos, often for 3-5 miles a day.

Sharon was active in the volunteer community. She led walks at the Arcata Marsh for Friends of the Marsh, and at the Samoa dunes for Friends of the Dunes. She also volunteered to walk dogs at the Humboldt County Animal Shelter.

Sharon is survived by her husband, Hugh Scanlon, daughter Maya Scanlon, brother David Levy (Carolina Chia), nephew Ethan, and cousin Elisa Callow. She was preceded in death by her sister Paula Levy, and parents Sol and Florence Levy of Chicago.

A celebration of life for Sharon Levy will be held on February 15, 2025, 2 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 24 Fellowship Way, Bayside. Acquaintances, friends and family are welcome to join us.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Sharon Levy’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

Night on the Newton B. Drury Parkway brings out the creatures. Giant salamanders slink across the road, quiet moist feet creeping along the asphalt. No birds except the owls cry out. Flashlights bounce off of glowing eyes in the brush. For one night back in November, six men were alone on that road, 40 miles deep into a run over 100 miles long. For some of them, that was the best part of the trip; for others, the worst; one man thought it was fun, but didn’t feel he hallucinated enough. 

The six runners gathered and left at 7 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 22 and the trip was not over for 37 hours, 48 minutes, and 44 seconds, give or take. It is 107 miles from the Arcata Plaza to the Oregon border via Highway 101. 22 of those hours were spent running. Excluding time spent resting and the seven hours they slept, they spent 12 minutes and 20 seconds running every mile. 

Those are the statistics that tell part of the story, but the runners tell the whole thing through a long series of anecdotes that range from the disgusting to the sublime. On a group run through the Arcata marsh, they shared many of them.

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“You have to ask about Colby’s feet,” West Wood said. “And the cat. Ask about the cat.” 

Wood, 22, is a surfer and an ultrarunner, but classifying him by the way he spends his time is reductive. Wood’s the man who was saddened by the lack of hallucinations while running Newton B. Drury. On other ultramarathons, he’s seen dead cats stalking him, but it’s not a thing that bothers him. 

The runners at the start. From left to right: Thomas Nolan, Colby Calabrese, Damian Morton, Austin Nolan, Max Miller, and West Wood. Photo courtesy of Thomas Nolan.

“They’re a bit gnarly,” Wood said, “but they let you know you’re working hard!”

A fierce advocate of colorful clothing and toe socks (“They were a game changer for me!”), Wood helps run the Raccoon Running Club along with Thomas Nolan, 31. The RRC is where most of the group met each other. Founded by Wood and Nolan in 2023, about 20 people meet every Monday night to crank out a couple headlamp-illuminated forest miles. It’s a space that attracts the kind of people who believe spending an entire weekend running to a different state is worth the time.

Nolan was among the six who ran up to Oregon, though it wasn’t his first time doing something similar. In 2023, he and Wood ran on as many trails as possible from McKinleyville to Crescent City, running dozens of miles through old-growth redwoods and up beaches. The November voyage was pretty much all on Highway 101, except for brief forays through Newton B. Drury and Patrick’s Point. 

Nolan has run several 200 mile races, a few “backyard” ultras (essentially a winner-takes-all, run-’til-you-drop race), and too many other mind-boggling feats of endurance to list without getting boring, but his affair with running started fairly recently. At a bar for his 25th birthday, he told some friends he was going to run 25 miles to celebrate. 

“The next day, I woke up and I was like, ‘Well, I guess I have to do it now!’” Nolan said, laughing. “It just about killed me.”

The recovery took a few weeks, but when he felt back to normal, Nolan decided he had to try running 30 miles. He did that, and 30 miles became 50, and 50 became 100. He got into Strava, a social media site tailored to endurance athletes, and founded the Raccoon Run Club. It’s a lifestyle for him, and when he saw an Instagram post from a friend with the idea to run the whole way to Oregon, he knew he wanted in. 

On Highway 101.

The idea came from Peter Ciotti, another Humboldt-based ultrarunner. Ciotti and Nolan have done some wild things together — one morning they ran 175 laps around the Arcata Plaza — but 100 miles requires a different type of strength. Ciotti wound up with a knee injury and instead brought the runners food and supplies, but his plan had some legs to it. Along with Wood and Nolan, Nolan’s brother Austin decided he’d join, as did three other people who had never run even close to 100 miles. 

Before he decided he’d join, Colby Calabrese had never run more than 31 miles in a single go, but when he heard the plan he knew he couldn’t pass the opportunity up. It was Calabrese’s last semester at Cal Poly Humboldt before he left to do Peace Corps work in Peru, and running was how he connected with Humboldt.

“I heard this idea, and I was like, ‘Well, I think I would regret it if I didn’t do it,’” Calabrese said. “I had told them I would do a 100-miler maybe about five years after my first ultra. That turned into just a few months.”

Calabrese’s inexperience hobbled him. He brought enough chocolate chips and turkey to blow out a strap on his backpack before they even hit Trinidad, but only brought a couple pairs of socks for the two-day run. By the time they shuffled into Smith River, Calabrese was ready to drop and had a case of low-grade trenchfoot. Thomas Nolan promised him a foot massage, and that was enough to get him there. When Calabrese peeled his socks off after 90 miles of running, his feet were covered in blisters and had what Nolan called “deep canyons” in the skin of his feet. Crew member Damian Morton (who ran with them until they got to Crescent City) pulled up behind them and gave them a pair of crabber’s gloves. Nolan made good on his IOU. That massage, and a random stray cat that hung out with them, got Calabrese to the end. It was another two weeks before his feet were completely healed. 

The supplies Morton and the other members of the crew brought were indispensable, as were the morale boosts. One drop-off stands out in everyone’s minds: steaming bowls of chicken noodle soup delivered to the runners underneath an awning in Orick, protected from the November rain. They’d hardly eaten anything except snacks all day, and eating the soup was nothing short of a religious experience. It was liquid euphoria for the starved athletes, and gave them the energy to push through Prairie Creek and up to Klamath to rest for a few hours. 

Starting the next day was hell. It rained most of that day, and they were forced to run through some heavy downpours. There were moments of levity in the pain; Wood found a Tesla wheel in the ditch, popped the logo off, and turned it into a necklace. The group stopped and huddled for cover in a bathroom when the clouds started dumping. The view over Crescent City from a vista point was gorgeous.

There are few types of exhaustion more total than the aches and pains ultrarunning blesses faithful adherents with. Summiting a speed bump turns into a climb that requires a Sherpa. Downhills are just as evil when legs feel like broken 2x4s. Every step is calculated, because a poorly placed foot supporting a body with no strength means an unscheduled meeting with the concrete — and then you have to rise and keep chugging. 

The last few miles were torturous. Everyone was exhausted. It was dark and foggy and painful and something had to be done. A few of them pulled their shorts down and ran in the moonlight, one could say, and in that fashion they reached the stone and wood monument that marks a different state. “Oregon welcomes you!,” it reads, and for most travellers all that means is the gas is a bit cheaper and you don’t have to get out of your car to pump it, but for the five that made it all the way it meant THE END. 

All were exhausted and ecstatic. They stopped long enough to take a few photos, hopped in the car, and came back to Humboldt. 

None of them would change too much if they did it again. Calabrese wants to bring more socks and fewer chocolate chips; Wood needs to run through the whole night, damn the sleep deprivation; and Morton thinks a bigger group would be even more fun. 

They all had fun pushing their personal limits and finding out what their bodies could do, they all loved trawling through dark roads crawling with the North Coast’s finest fauna, they enjoyed the scenery and the ocean’s constant pulsing, but there is no subtle way to disguise the sappy revelation that the best part was simply hanging out with a bunch of friends for a while. 

“The people were the real tickets,” Thomas Nolan said, his footsteps on marsh gravel easy and silent. “Seeing Damian run so far, and watching Colby and Max finish — those were the highlights. Nothing compares to that.”

Press release from Cal Poly Humboldt:

Cal Poly Humboldt and Eureka City Unified School District (ECS) have created a partnership to simplify the college admissions process for local high school students. The partnership, centered around a new direct admissions program, will provide students with streamlined access to Cal Poly Humboldt and support their journey to higher education.

“The Direct Admissions program marks a pivotal advancement in the University’s dedication to making higher education that’s accessible for all. We are thrilled to extend this opportunity to more California students eager to embark on a polytechnic education. In partnership with Eureka City Schools, we are forging a pathway for students to achieve their academic aspirations and flourish at Cal Poly Humboldt,” says Chrissy Holliday, Vice President of Enrollment Management and Student Success. “When admissions programs like these are layered with affordability efforts like the Green and Gold Initiative we recently announced, local students should never have to wonder whether a college education is within their grasp.”

ECS high school seniors who are on track to finish A-G coursework with at least a 2.5 GPA, or meet the California State University (CSU) standards for admissions, or who also meet the University’s current admission requirements, may qualify for direct admission to Cal Poly Humboldt. This means students will know in advance of an application that they will earn admission, reducing uncertainty about their path to college. The Direct Admissions program removes common barriers to college admissions by ensuring ECS students are prepared and eligible to enroll at Cal Poly Humboldt upon graduation. Key elements of the partnership include:

• Comprehensive support: ECS students will receive clear guidance on admissions requirements, application processes, and relevant programs.

• On-campus opportunities: Cal Poly Humboldt will host annual events to familiarize ECS students and families with university life and academic programs.

• Tailored presentations: Cal Poly Humboldt admissions counselors will visit ECS schools four times each academic year to engage directly with students and parents.

• Application fee assistance: ECS students may receive fee waivers to ensure affordability when submitting their applications.

“This partnership with Cal Poly Humboldt represents a transformative step in ensuring local students have seamless access to higher education. By removing barriers and providing personalized support, we are empowering students to envision and achieve a brighter future,” says ECS Superintendent Gary Storts.

ECS has also integrated with the California College Guidance Initiative, a statewide system for tracking student progress. This will ensure that students receive the support they need to stay on track for college and apply to Cal Poly Humboldt. It will also allow the institution to communicate more easily with qualified students and their families before admission. This collaboration marks a shared commitment to fostering educational opportunities for local students. Both institutions will work closely to ensure the program’s success and adapt to the needs of the community. Through efforts of the Redwood Coast K-16 Educational Collaborative, housed at Cal Poly Humboldt, Executive Director Angela Shull has facilitated communication between the institution and regional high schools.

The Collaborative’s mission of nurturing a college-going culture is deeply rooted in the region’s local high school students’ success at Cal Poly Humboldt. In the future, Cal Poly Humboldt will collaborate closely with other districts in the area to develop similar direct admissions programs for their students.

For more information about Cal Poly Humboldt admissions, visit admissions.humboldt.edu or contact the Admissions office by calling (866) 850-9556 or (707) 826-4402 or emailing apply@humboldt.edu. Learn more about the Green & Gold Guarantee by visiting humboldt.edu/guarantee.

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• Caltrans Completes Phase 1 of Indianola Undercrossing Project; New Traffic Restrictions to Take Effect Next Week

What’s going on with the Indianola underpass project, you ask? You’ve seen those big structures they’ve built in the safety corridor, and now you wonder what they’re up to next?

Let Caltrans project manager Jeff Pimentel fill you in via the informative video update posted above.