Press release from the Sequoia Park Zoo Foundation:

The Sequoia Park Zoo Foundation (SPZF) is a 501(c)(3) established in 2004 and is the philanthropic, nonprofit partner that has proudly supported the City of Eureka’s Sequoia Park Zoo for over 20 years. In two decades SPZF cultivated over 26,000 donors and innovative partnerships, and inspired collaborative community engagement through fundraising, promotions and events. SPZF has raised nearly $15 million since its inception and has been successful in securing and organizing funding for many capital projects to enhance the zoo experience including:

• 2004: Barnyard and Contact Corral
• 2005: The Arkley Pavillion
• 2007: Bill’s Garden
• 2008: Hilfiker Aviary Renovation
• 2010: The Red Panda and Muntjak Habitat
• 2011: Flamingos, Cavies, and Screamers Habitats
• 2014: Watershed Heroes Project
• 2016: McClean Raptor Aviary
• 2017: Lamoree Learning Lab
• 2019: Vintage Snack Cart Renovation
• 2020: The Redwood Sky Walk
• 2022/23: The Bear and Coyote Habitat

It is with a heavy heart that the Sequoia Park Zoo Foundation announces the end of an era in its decision to dissolve the organization in the coming months.

Over the last several years, the Sequoia Park Zoo has grown and changed to become the premier community and tourist destination SPZF intended when the organization formed as the philanthropic partner to the City of Eureka. With the launch of world-class interpretive experiences such as the Watershed Heroes Project, the Redwood Sky Walk and the new Bear and Coyote Habitat, the zoo has seen —and continues to see— record attendance with visitors from all over the world. The City of Eureka reports over $2.6 million in zoo revenue in 2023 alone. It is this positive and successful growth and development of our neighborhood zoo nestled in the redwoods that has piqued interest from the City of Eureka to assume greater responsibility for ongoing fundraising, membership, promotions, marketing and events at the zoo. SPZF has decided to gracefully pass the baton.

Over the coming months, SPZF will map out the strategic sunsetting of the organization by drafting its plan for dissolution, articulating how remaining assets will be distributed and specifying how remaining liabilities will be addressed. SPZF is committed to ensuring that our community’s generous donations are directed toward the projects for which those funds were given. You may follow updates regarding the dissolution process at www.spzfoundation.org and in SPZF’s eChatter Newsletter.

The Sequoia Park Zoo Foundation’s impact at Sequoia Park Zoo was and continues to be the successful legacy of all of our esteemed stakeholders, community leaders, partners, donors, board members, patrons and volunteers. It has been a privilege to support the zoo in becoming the international attraction it is today, working alongside those devoting time, talent, and funds over two decades.

PREVIOUSLY: 

• 11/17/23: Sequoia Park Zoo Foundation Welcomes New Executive Director Alegria Sita
• 9/23/22: Sequoia Park Zoo Foundation Welcomes New Executive Director David Reed

UPDATE, 3:28 p.m.: 

Alexandre Family Farm provided the following statement to the Outpost in response to the Farm Forward report and the story in The Atlantic:

Alexandre Family Farm has been targeted as part of an ongoing campaign by an animal rights activist group questioning the validity of humane farming certifications. The organization collaborated with a well-known writer who is a self-described radical vegan to publish an article in The Atlantic that contains allegations against Alexandre Family Farm.

As soon as we learned of the allegations, we contacted the activist organization to ask for a copy of their report so we could investigate thoroughly, as we would any allegation of mistreatment on our farms. We were denied the opportunity to view any of the allegations until the report was shared publicly on their website.

We also invited the organization to visit our farm but received no reply to our invitation.

We have an open-door policy on our farm. We actively invite anybody and everybody to come visit our farm at any time to meet us and see our animals.

Our mission on our family dairy farm over the past 30 years has been to farm in harmony with nature, honoring the Earth and all the animals under our stewardship. Caring for our animals is the foundation of what we do. We take any allegation of mistreatment on our farm very seriously. Every time we are alerted to a problem, we take action to improve.

We accept responsibility for all animal treatment on our farm. Now that we have had a chance to read the report, we have determined that many of the allegations are either totally false or fabricated half-truths. If we uncover areas for improvement, we will take appropriate steps to address them. We have already taken significant steps to improve protocols, increase employee training and provide whistleblower access to ensure all employees are following protocols for proper treatment.

We are guided by a deep care for our animals as well as protocols established by experts in the treatment of farm animals. Our adherence to these animal welfare standards is backed up by hundreds of pages of inspection reports from independent organizations that have conducted regular as well as random inspections on our farm over the years. These reputable organizations include Certified Humane, Validus, American Humane, CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers), Regenerative Organic Certified, and the National Dairy FARM Program.

In addition to certifications, audits, and surprise inspections, we have an animal nutritionist, local veterinarians and national experts in animal welfare who visit our farm on a regular basis. Hundreds of visitors tour our farm every year. We literally have thousands of eyes witnessing our farm and we continue to follow our purpose of serving the health of our animals, the Earth and our consumers whose trust and nutritional needs are what we work for daily.

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Original post:

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A new report published by the nonprofit organization Farm Forward, whose mission is to end factory farming, takes aim at Crescent City-based Alexandre Family Farm, which the report describes as “arguably the leading higher welfare, Organic, and Certified Humane dairy operation.”

Contrary to the implications of such certifications, the report says investigators uncovered “systemic deception, cruelty, and animal abuse” at the company’s farming operations, which are run by the Alexandre family on sites in Del Norte and Humboldt counties.

A story published concurrently by The Atlantic (here’s a link, though there’s a paywall if you’re not a subscriber) comes to similar conclusions, describing a number of gruesome incidents and ailments among the farm’s dairy cows and blaming regulatory agencies for lax oversight.

The Atlantic piece, by reporter Annie Lowrey, notes that organic certification by the USDA, for example, prohibits milk producers from giving their cows antibiotics. While the purpose of this rule is “to prevent farmers from providing the drugs prophylactically, which facilitates overcrowding and contributes to antibiotic resistance,” it winds up “lead[ing] farmers to withhold medicine from sick animals, too,” Lowrey reports.

While visiting the main operation in Crescent City, Lowrey asked owners Blake and Stephanie Alexandre to respond to the report. From The Atlantic:

[T]hey questioned the motivations of the whistleblowers, speculating that they were disgruntled former employees and associates, and ventured that some of the photographs might have been staged or doctored. They described some of the depicted incidents as false, implausible, or exaggerated, while saying that others were tragedies or accidents to which they had responded with corrective action.

Below is a video released by Farm Forward. Be warned: some of the footage is graphic and disturbing:

Our Wild Rivers Outpost reporter Jessica Andrews plans to follow up on Farm Forward’s report next week, so check back for updates.

Hundreds of homes in Joe Patterson’s Northern California Assembly district burned to the ground in the Caldor Fire.

In the three years since that devastating summer, many of those rebuilding homeowners have ended up on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars, thanks to state laws that require solar panels on new homes — even on those that didn’t have them before they burned down.

“Trust me when I say this: $25,000 to build solar onto a house where people do not have solar is 100% an impediment to rebuilding,” Patterson, a Republican from Rocklin, told the Assembly Natural Resources Committee earlier this week.

Patterson’s Assembly Bill 2787, which passed the committee unanimously, would give some of those poorly-insured, low- and middle-income homeowners rebuilding after a natural disaster a break from the state’s solar-panel building requirement.

The bill would exempt homeowners at or below the median income for their county from the state’s building codes that require new solar on homes if they’re damaged or destroyed in a natural disaster. The legislation, which would expire in 2028, also would limit the benefit to those who don’t have an insurance plan that would cover the costs of the upgrade to new solar.

The bill now moves to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, where it faces an uncertain future. Last year, that committee killed a similar bill by Republican Assemblymember Jim Patterson of Fresno.

Joe Patterson, no relation, told CalMatters he expects his bill, which is coauthored by the Fresno Republican, to make it through the committee this time since it doesn’t contain funding for a study like last year’s bill.

It’s another matter whether Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign it if the bill is also approved in the Senate and reaches his desk. In 2022, Newsom vetoed a similar bill, citing the need for solar power to reduce greenhouse gases that are a contributing factor for wildfires.

Solar power is a critical part of the state’s ambitious goal to achieve 90% carbon-free electricity by 2035 and 100% by 2045. Large-scale and rooftop solar is projected to prove more than half of the grid’s power by 2045.

“Extending this exemption would nullify these positive outcomes and instead would increase homeowner energy costs at a time when many homeowners are facing rising electric rates and bills,” Newsom wrote in his veto message.

Asked about this latest bill, Newsom’s press office responded that the governor doesn’t typically comment on pending legislation.

Joe Patterson said he hopes Newsom would support this bill, given that it’s more narrow than the one he vetoed in 2022, and because some Caldor Fire victims with poor insurance say they never received federal disaster relief cash to help them rebuild.

Meanwhile, the insurance crisis in California’s wildfire country has only gotten worse since.

After the devastating wildfire seasons of 2017 and 2018, private insurance companies have been dropping policies for hundreds of thousands of Californians, forcing many to join the state’s home insurer of last resort known as FAIR plan or risk going uninsured.Just last month, State Farm announced it wasn’t renewing 72,000 California home and apartment policies.

In his testimony before the Natural Resources Committee, Patterson said his district has seen skyrocketing numbers of constituents on the FAIR Plan.

“In 2019, we had roughly 8,100 households covered by the FAIR Plan in my district,” Joe Patterson told the committee. “Now, in 2023, we have 41,000 people covered by the FAIR Plan.”

He said the FAIR plan, at most, will only pay 10% of the costs to upgrade a destroyed home to the most current building codes including mandatory solar panels.

“And that 10% coverage really won’t go very far, especially to cover a solar system that costs about $25,000,” Patterson told the committee.

As Patterson testified, sitting beside him was El Dorado County Supervisor George Turnboo. His district includes Grizzly Flats, which was torched in the Caldor Fire.

“The costly burden on the Caldor Fire survivors trying to rebuild their lives is not worth the minimal benefit solar technology provides them in a very high snow and forest region,” Turnboo said.

Their arguments resonated with the 11 members of the Natural Resources Committee, including eight Democrats, who voted to pass the bill over objections from the solar industry.“We understand the very sympathetic plight that some of these folks are in,” said Kim Stone, a lobbyist for the California Solar and Storage Association. “But we don’t exempt them from other building code upgrade requirements.”

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

Michele (Feldman) Baughman
May 12, 1937- April 1, 2024

On Monday, April 1, 2024, at 7:42 pm, Michele (Feldman) Baughman died peacefully at home surrounded by her dearest friends. She was preceded in death by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Feldman, her brother Roland, and her beloved husband of 54 years, Don Patrick Baughman.

Michele was born on May 12, 1937, in Paris, France. Her parents owned a prestigious Jewish restaurant in Paris. In 1939, during the Nazi occupation, the family fled from France into Spain and boarded a ship to Montreal, Canada. Michele was just two years old at the time of their escape. She was born with congenital hip dysplasia and had multiple surgeries throughout her life. When she was thirteen years old her brother taught her to walk. As a young woman she moved to San Francisco where she met her “one and only”, Don, a young Army veteran from Minnesota. They fell deeply in love and were married in 1966. They came to Humboldt County in 1969.

The Humboldt Open Door Clinic first opened in 1971, in what is now The Tin Can Mailman Bookstore, on the corner of 10th and H St in Arcata. Michele thought it was a Veterinary clinic and brought her cat in for a check-up. She was told they could not help her cat because they were a medical clinic serving people, but they hired her on the spot. She was the first HODC receptionist and then became the primary scheduling administrator “extraordinaire” where she served the community for 30 years! Upon her retirement, CEO Herrmann Spetzler gifted her with a round trip ticket to Paris. On March 17th, 2003, she went on the trip of a lifetime to France and Italy for 17 days, accompanied by her friend, April, who wheeled Michele in her chariot over the ancient cobblestone streets of Europe. She called Don nearly every day to tell him of her adventures, even from a phone booth at the Palace in Monaco.

Michele and April met at the clinic in 1977. They became great friends for the next 47 years! When they first met, Michele was able to walk a short distance with a cane. As walking became more difficult, she used two canes, then she purchased an electric trike. She could be seen riding her “Lark” all around town. She was a reckless driver! In 1997 she bought a fancy tricycle that she pedaled with her hands. She was often spotted riding her trike all over Arcata and Bayside. She and April did the 10-mile Tour of the Unknown Coast together. Michele had a lively group of friends coined “The Breakfast Club” which often included K.T., Audrey, Terri, Cheyenne, Shelley, Theresa, Pam, Jovonne, Jeri, Connie, and April. Michele loved to dine out at Larrupin’s, Abruzzi’s, Folie Deuce, La Trattoria, and other fine restaurants in Humboldt County. She enjoyed celebrating birthdays, family holidays, clinic parties, and camping at Smith River, Klamath, Coon Creek, Forest Glen, and Yosemite National Park.

Michele was rambunctious and enthusiastic about life. She was a kind, devoted friend with a tender heart, and she was especially fond of children and animals. Her laugh was effervescent and contagious. Her fiercely positive spirit transcended all physical limitations. Her wisdom and intuition were precise. With her intelligence and razor-sharp wit, she was a force of nature to be reckoned with, and a joy to all who knew her. The strength of her character was as powerful as her love of life. After Don died on April 20, 2020, during the pandemic, she moved to Michael and April’s studio apartment, where she was able to live independently for almost four years. She loved weekly outings to the Arcata Marsh, the Farmer’s Market, Café’ Brio (for French fries), and ice cream at the Arcata Scoop.

Many thanks to Dr. Sarah Sherer, her primary care physician, and the staff at Humboldt Open Door Community Health Center, Kelli Swartz (Humboldt County Public Guardian), the nurses at Mad River Home Health, Humboldt Country Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Tong at Mad River Community Hospital (for allowing her to come home), and a very special thanks to her In-Home Health Services provider, Paul Humphry, for his continued care and devotion to Michele for the remainder of her life. (The joke’s on you, Paul. She left us on April Fool’s Day!)

A Memorial Bash will be held at The Plaza View Room in Arcata (Jacoby Storehouse, third floor) on Saturday, May 18 from 6-8 p.m., catered by Uniquely Yours. There will be a no host bar. Bring your favorite uncensored stories to share. “The Backseat Drivers” will provide the music, with love to light her way.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Michele Baughman’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.

Melvin Leon Snow Jr., also known as Mel, Ralph, or Boo, passed away on April 1, 2024, in Eureka after a hard fought battle with cancer. He was born on August 19, 1964, in Crescent City, California the year of the largest flood in recorded history in Northern California, where he grew up and raised his family.

Melvin was a versatile individual who excelled in various fields throughout his life. He worked in different jobs such as at the Fisheries in Eureka, Eureka City Schools as a janitor, mechanic, non-emergency medical transport, In-Home Supportive Services, RV repair at Santa Rosa RV, and as the Head of Janitorial for Safeway. He also had a passion for odd jobs like lawn care and working in the legal cannabis industry.

In his free time, Melvin enjoyed repairing and customizing VW bugs, being a motorcycle enthusiast, woodworking, cultivating plants, and traveling. He was often seen smoking a joint and fixing something or building in his later years. He truly was a Jack of all trades with a knack for fixing things.

Melvin was a caring and selfless individual who was always willing to lend a helping hand to his friends and family. He was known for his heroic acts, such as running into a burning building at the age of 19 to save people during a house fire. Melvin took on the role of caregiver for many, including his younger sisters, his two daughters, and his two adopted sons.

Melvin often called himself a “Gypsy”. He preferred to live in a home with wheels whether it was a converted bus or van, 5th wheel, or RV he loved to travel and be on the go. Melvin made friends no matter where he went often by offering a helping hand. His favorite place to go was Mount Rushmore and Stergis.

He is survived by his sisters, Maggie Sylvies and Cecil Sylvies, his daughters Vera Greenwood and Carolyn Snow, his grandchildren Alison, Athena, Martine, and Dylan, many nieces and nephews, as well as his roommate and close friend Angelique Humbird. Melvin was preceded in death by his mother, Caroline Sylvies, his sons Ian and Deric, and his companion dog and best friend, Kasha.

At Melvin’s request, no servuices will be held. He will be remembered for his kind and generous spirit, his love for adventure, and his willingness to help others in need. May he rest in peace.

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Melvin Leon “Mel, Ralph, Boo” Snow Jr. took his first breath on August 19, 1964 and due to an unforgiving battle to cancer took his last breath on April 1, 2024.

Melvin grew up in Humboldt County, attended Eureka City Schools and graduated from Zoe Barnum. He held many jobs since he was 18. His first job was working in maintenance for the Eureka Housing Authority. No matter what job he had he always made time to work on his motorcycles and cars. His motorcycles were the loves of his life, especially when he had his Harley.

He was a survivor of the Humboldt County 1964 flood. He was just a baby but he was a tough li’l guy. He was an unknown hero at just the age of 19. When the apartment complex his family lived in went up in flames he rushed into the fire, went to an upstairs apartment and saved an elderly lady and her son. He almost lost his own life but that was just the kind of person Mel was, always helping where help was needed and did it whole heartedly and expected nothing in return.

He became a father and he enjoyed watching his daughters grow up. Once they were grown he became a rolling stone and he traveled. He never liked to be in one place too long. He had been all over the U.S. he always seem to find his way back to Humboldt though.

Melvin had a great fur companion, Kasha. They were inseparable. When Kasha passed on he remained faithful to her. He never got another dog after her.

The past two years were his most roughest. Life got hard physically and finally last year the doctors found out why, they detected a cancer in his blood. After a year of fighting to add a little more time to his life, he passed away peacefully in his sleep.

Melvin is preceded in death by his mother, Caroline Sylvies, his son Ian,his Aunt Nancy Simmons and his beloved fur companion Kasha.

Melvin is survived by his daughter Vera Greenwood (Michael) and Carolyn Snow. His grandchildren Martine, Allison and Athena. His sisters Cecil Sylvies and Maggie Sylvies (Alejandro), his nieces and nephews Angelica, Aureli, Alejandro Jr., Natalia,  James, Fire, his great nephew Marcelo and his special friend Angelique.

Upon Melvin’s request there will be no services. He wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread in a place held special to him, the beach. His arrangements for cremation were handles by Ayers Funeral Services.

The family would like to say a special thank you to all the staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital for everything they done to make Melvin comfortable as possible in his last days.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Melvin Snow’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.

Press release from Cal Poly Humboldt:

Cal Poly Humboldt and the UC Davis School of Medicine have created the state’s first post-graduate education program to help prepare Native American students for medical school at UC Davis.
The Huwighurruk (pronounced hee-way-gou-duck) Tribal Health Postbaccalaureate Program seeks to enroll pre-med students passionate about providing health care to American Indian and Alaska Native communities in rural and urban areas.

In the Wiyot language, huwighurruk means plants, grass, leaves, and medicine. Huwighurruk scholars will be immersed in a culturally-focused framework intertwined with science courses at Cal Poly Humboldt. The program will provide eligible students with a stipend for living and tuition costs, including those associated with MCAT preparation, and mentorship with local Native physicians.

The hope is that once students graduate from the UC Davis School of Medicine, they’ll become doctors for Native American communities in rural and urban areas that are often medically underserved due to a lack of primary care physicians. According to research from the Association of American Medical Colleges, about 50% of Native American students who apply to a medical school are not admitted; and of that, 43% never apply again. Fewer than 1% of doctors in the United States are Native American.

The Huwighurruk program is the first postbaccalaureate program in the state aimed at helping Native American students in California get into medical school while keeping a focus on Tribal traditions and values through mentorships and connections.

“In Native culture, one of the most important things is community and connection, especially feeling that connection with your family and tribe. With Indigenous peoples, we talk about the Earth, the plants, and the medicine and ceremony. It’s that connection with Native culture and the sense of community itself that students can relate to through the Huwighurruk curriculum,” says Dr. Antoinette Martinez (‘94, Psychology), a Family Medicine/OB physician at United Indian Health Services in Humboldt County and co-director of Tribal Health PRIME for UC Davis School of Medicine.

Students who complete the year-long Huwighurruk program with a 3.7 GPA or higher, score 499 or higher on the MCAT, and complete all the prerequisite courses for the UC Davis School of Medicine will receive conditional acceptance into the school, with additional funding towards tuition.

“It’s tough to get into medical school. This program aims to break down the barriers associated with applying to medical school. It’s disheartening to know that 43% of Native students never apply again, so we want to connect with those aspiring medical students to successfully recruit, retain, and train them to accomplish their goals,” Martinez says.

Martinez, along with Cutcha Risling Baldy, former chair of the Native American Studies department, will co-direct the Huwighurruk program. Biology Professor Amy Sprowles will assist with the program’s science courses. The Indian Teacher and Educational Personnel Program (ITEPP) will be the designated hub for the Huwighurruk program, which is set to begin next fall.

To apply, eligible students must be citizens or descendants of a federally recognized American Indian/Alaska Native Tribe or California Indian Roll of 1971, are residents of California, and have demonstrated a history of commitment to practice in the American Indian/Alaska Native community.

Huwighurruk is supported by a grant from the Northwest Native American Center for Excellence and funding from the UC Davis School of Medicine. In establishing the new program at Cal Poly Humboldt, UC Davis drew on its experience with a similar program called Wy’east Medicine, which is a partnership between Washington State University, Oregon Health & Science University, and UC Davis.

“We were thoughtful about choosing the right place for this program, where we knew students would be supported, where students would be able to engage with local tribes and community members, and where we would be able to come in and help support them as best we can in the building of the program. So we elected to do our program at Cal Poly Humboldt because of all the existing student resources and support,” says Charlene Green, assistant dean of admissions, outreach, and diversity at the UC Davis School of Medicine. “For us, it felt like the right decision.”

As an alumnus, Martinez attests to the excellent student resources and mentorship she received as a student at Humboldt.

“I credit Humboldt and ITEPP for supporting me through the process of completing my science coursework and believing that medical school admission was attainable. Without them, I might have given up,” Martinez said. “The connection to the ITEPP community and coursework on Native American issues helped me get through the pre-med coursework. The community and cultural integration at Humboldt are huge pluses for Huwighurruk students going through this process.”

UC Davis has been offering a successful post-baccalaureate premed program for years to assist college graduates from disadvantaged backgrounds in becoming more competitive applicants for medical school.

UC Davis’ California Postbaccalaureate Consortium will be hosting a virtual informational session for special reapplicant sessions for medical school applicants on Monday, April 22, from 3-4 p.m. For more information about the Huwighurruk program, contact tribalhealth@ucdavis.edu. 

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A week ago we wrote about severe beach erosion along the North Coast caused by the uncommonly long, El Niño-juiced winter weather pattern from which we just emerged.

Recent beachgoers near Samoa encountered more evidence of this phenomenon: two big industrial pipelines that are usually buried underground have been exposed, their girth emerging from the sand dunes to drape across the beach slope like massive, mechanized worms trying to escape into the sea. 

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The northernmost pipeline is owned and operated by the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District. Its landward segment is constructed of 36-inch diameter high-density polyethylene (HDPE), with a portion still encased in the original 48-inch redwood stave pipe.  The part below the low tide line, which extends about a mile and a half out to sea, is concrete-encased steel.

This pipe was installed in the mid-1960s to discharge up to 40 million gallons per day of untreated pulp mill wastewater, which got dumped into the near-shore surf zone, causing health problems among local surfers. In the 1990s, following a legal settlement with the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the outfall line was rebuilt and extended.

Eventually, Nordic Aquafarms intends to use this outfall pipe to discharge more than 10 million gallons per day of treated wastewater in operating its land-based aquaculture facility, producing yellowtail kingfish. (The Coastal Commission approved a discharge permit in November.)

But for the time being, it’s just being used to discharge relatively small volumes of treated wastewater effluent from the town of Samoa, plus a bit of stormwater runoff from the Harbor District’s Redwood Marine Terminal II property, on the other side of New Navy Base Road.

Since the pipe is mostly empty these days, it’s not uncommon for the top to get exposed along the beach, typically in wintertime when winds from the northwest combine with large tidal swells to erode coastal sand. But this year the erosion was particularly extreme, and by late March more than 200 feet of pipe was completely exposed.

Pounded by waves, sections of the exterior redwood casing have broken off and been carried away [or, as one reader suggested, possible stolen], allowing the flexible HDPE pipe to “float” up out of the sand. Below are a couple of labeled photos from the Harbor District showing how the pipe looked on March 14.

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Reached by phone this morning, Harbor District Executive Director Chris Mikkelsen said staff was amazed by the effects of winter storms on the Samoa Beach. 

“The amount of [pipe] exposure was unbelievable,” he said.

Staff immediately called in the engineering firm of SHN and applied for an emergency coastal development permit. At tonight’s meeting of the Harbor District’s Board of Commissioners, staff plans to offer a status update on the emergency repair work that has already begun and possible options for a more permanent fix. 

The engineers at SHN have offered the following warning:

If the pipe is not secured, it will continue to move about as the waves and tides act on it, potentially damaging the HDPE pipe or causing a failure of the pipe. Vehicles also travel along this segment of beach periodically and could crash into the pipe and damage or destroy it if it is not buried and covered with protective material. 

The pipe is a critical piece of infrastructure conveying treated wastewater effluent to an approved location offshore. If the pipe were to fail or require more significant repairs, service to the Town of Samoa WWTF could be interrupted, resulting in significant hardship for the community and potential negative environmental impacts.

In order to secure the pipeline and armor it against the elements, the District enlisted SHN to conduct emergency storm damage repairs. Over the past couple of days, work crews with tractors have dug a three- to five-foot-deep trench in the beach sand alongside and slightly beneath the pipe. Once reburied, large bags of rock were placed atop the pipe to keep it from floating out of the sand again.

When we say “large bags of rock,” we’re talking about roughly four tons per bag, with bags placed along both sides of the pipe and on top of it for the entire length of its exposure.

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This emergency repair work is expected to take up to two weeks to complete. As for a longer-term fix, Mikkelsen said the Army Corps of Engineers is exploring the possibility of depositing dredge spoils from Humboldt Bay onto local beaches “to achieve beach nourishment and, over time, rebuild the beaches.”

In response to the winter storms, the county declared a state of emergency in January, and Mikkelsen said the Harbor District may seek FEMA assistance to offset the emergency repair work. 

In the meantime, Mother Nature will do some repair work of her own. Troy Nicolini, meteorologist-in-charge at the Eureka office of the National Weather Service, said the weather has already changed in a way that will benefit local shorelines, with winds and surf patterns depositing sand back on the wave slope.

“I know it seems like the end of the world,” Nicolini said regarding this year’s severe erosion, “but we’re just now switching to a summertime pattern … so beaches should be rebuilt really quickly.” 

The marine outfall pipe comes ashore on the beach just southwest of Samoa on the Samoa Peninsula.