Nathaniel O’Lee Hawk
February 25, 1986 – December 7, 2024

Nathan was born at home in Elk River. He passed away unexpectedly just before his 39th birthday. He grew up on his family’s ranch in Humboldt County, where he spent his childhood exploring the Redwoods, and fishing with his dad and brother. Nathan enjoyed a childhood of making mischief and loved being outside—hiking, fishing, riding motorcycles and skim-boarding. As he got older, he enjoyed backpacking, golfing, softball, disc golf, boxing and hunting for marbles.

Nathan was a natural athlete and excelled in school. He attended Pine Hill Elementary, Winship Junior High, Eureka High School, College of the Redwoods, Grossmont Community College in San Diego, and Humboldt State University. His studies focused on engineering and business, and he had a special interest in astrophysics and marine biology. He worked on getting patents for apps he developed.

Nate was an extrovert and always wanted to be surrounded by friends. He also loved dogs and had a special bond with his canine companions. Kujo and Blue.

He leaves behind his family that loved him dearly — father Dan Hawk (Renee); brother Gabriel Hawk (Samantha); niece Sonja; aunts Lisa Backus, Cindy Christiansen (Gary), Wendy Stone, Jensine Bard (Dan); uncles Art Stone (Brenda), Austin Backus (Belinda); cusins Zack and Ben Christiansen, Jennifer and Merrick Stone. He was preceded in death by his mother Cindy Stone, grandmother Sonja Heaton, and grandmother Mora Stone. A private celebration of life will be held for family and friends. Contact Dan Hawk for more information. Donations in Nathan’s memory can be made to the Sequoia Humane Society or another animal rescue.

Happy Heavenly birthday, son.

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

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A standing-room-only crowd packed the Blue Lake Fire Hall on Sunday to voice opposition to a controversial project that, if approved, would turn the city’s defunct power plant into a lithium-iron-phosphate battery energy storage facility. The Blue Lake City Council is expected to make a decision on the proposed project at a meeting tomorrow night.

The project proposal, submitted by Texas-based energy developer PowerTransitions, outlines plans to demolish and remove some of the existing infrastructure at the disused power plant, though the transformer and substation would be repurposed for a 20-megawatt (MW) battery energy storage system (BESS). Under the proposed agreement, the city would sell two acres of the Powers Creek District site to PowerTranstions and their staff would handle the costs associated with site clean-up, which would cost the city up to $1.5 million to complete. 

Once it’s fully built out, the BESS would include 10-20 battery units that would store renewable energy for local providers, including the Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA).

The project has drawn criticism from many Blue Lake residents who fear the facility would have “catastrophic consequences for [the] beautiful small city,” as stated in an online petition against the project that has gained 119 signatures. Some residents fear the facility would contaminate the water supply if a flood were to occur, while others worry that a system failure or a nearby fire could cause “explosions and release toxic gases,” similar to what happened last month at the Moss Landing Vistra Power Plant in Monterey County.

Speaking at Sunday’s contentious meeting, PowerTransitions Senior Advisor Jeff Goldstein went over the various benefits of the project, which would provide a five-day energy supply during a long-term outage. He also said he was “keenly aware of all of the risks associated with this technology,” adding that the Blue Lake BESS would use lithium-iron phosphate batteries, not lithium-ion batteries that can be dangerous if damaged or overcharged. He shared the following slide to illustrate his point.

“What happened at Moss Landing is a tragedy [but] the rules and regulations that we are being held to didn’t exist when [that] project was built,” Goldstein said to the crowd of 100-plus residents, adding that the Moss Landing Power Plant was 750 MW whereas the project proposed for Blue Lake is only 20 MW.

Other residents took issue with PowerTransitions CEO Sean T. Long who used to work for Enron, which filed for bankruptcy in 2001 following a massive accounting scandal that upended the national energy industry. Goldstein was quick to defend his boss, noting that Long’s “ethics are impeccable.”

“Some people here have said ‘You have a corrupt CEO! He worked for Enron, a company that went bankrupt.’ Well, let’s get the truth out,” he said. “This guy was in his 30s … he wasn’t an officer of the company, he was an officer of the region in Africa. Okay? He had nothing to do with what happened in Enron.”

[CLARIFICATION: After the publication of this story, one of our readers shared a link to an article published in the Houston Chronicle that details court proceedings in which Merrill Lynch executives were convicted for aiding Enron in fraudulent accounting practices, including the infamous Nigerian barge deal. The article includes testimony from Long, who “headed Enron’s African investment division … in 1999” and admitted to engaging in “wrongful conduct” and “assisting in the takeout of Merrill Lynch.”]

Unfortunately for Goldstein, many of the meeting attendees didn’t seem interested in hearing what he had to say. The video recording of the meeting — linked below — is almost impossible to understand at some points because Zoom has a tendency to mute when people talk over one another during virtual meetings. Still, it was clear that people weren’t happy. 

Reached for additional comment via email, Blue Lake City Manager Amanda Mager was eager to dispel misinformation surrounding the battery storage facility. She emphasized that the proposed project “in no way resembles Moss Landing,” adding that battery storage technology is a critical component in “fully harness[ing] the benefits of renewable resources … .”

“I don’t know anyone in our community that would ever advocate for something resembling that project,” Mager told the Outpost. “The proposed project is not in an enclosed building, does not include the same type of batteries and isn’t anywhere near the size of that facility. The project proposed for Blue Lake is community scale and has been replicated all over the world.”

Mager added that the city has been working with the RCEA for years to find a way to transition the power plant. “[W]e entered into an MOU with RCEA to act in an advisory role to the City to specifically look at a small-scale BESS for future investment. As RCEA has been acquiring renewable energy resources as part of the local energy portfolio, it was hoped that the City could leverage the inter-connect that exists on the property to help us clean up the property and to participate in the renewable energy industry.”

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The Blue Lake City Council will consider an agreement to move forward with PowerTransitions’ proposal at Tuesday’s meeting. The council will meet at 6:30 p.m. at the Skinner Store — 111 Greenwood Road in Blue Lake. The full agenda and remote viewing/participation instructions can be found at this link.

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A Humboldt County Superior Court judge today issued a temporary restraining order against Eureka property owner Anil Dwivedi and his company, Dwivedi Tower, LLC, preventing them from implementing illegally large rent increases on tenants of the Hillsdale Apartments, a three-story apartment building he owns on E Street in Eureka.

The order also restrains Dwivedi and his company from evicting tenants without just cause and refusing to provide relocation assistance as required by law. 

Dwivedi’s attorney, Randall Davis, told Judge John T. Feeney that his client has already orally rescinded the rent-increase notices he’d issued to plaintiffs Don Swall and Vanessa Vachon, who live in the Hillsdale Apartments.

“I don’t think that a restraining order is necessary,” Davis said. “As early as today, I believe, Mr. Dwivedi is going to serve all the other tenants at Hillsdale with notices that will explain to them that the rent is increasing in April, but only by 8.8 percent.” That’s the maximum amount that rent can be increased in Humboldt County during any 12-month period for tenants who have lived in their residence for at least a year, per the terms of the California Tenant Protection Act.

Davis said Dwivedi has also agreed to cancel any and all lease agreements that tenants signed agreeing to much larger rent increases. He asked Judge Feeney to omit another apartment building Dwivedi owns — the Eureka Central Residence at 333 E Street — from any court order since rents there are dictated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). 

Plaintiffs Swall and Vachon were represented by Jeffrey Slack and Megan Yarnall with the Eureka firm of Janssen Malloy, LLP, and in response to Davis’s arguments, Slack said Dwivedi’s stated intentions aren’t good enough. 

“The key word that I heard in Mr. [Davis’s] argument is ‘will,’” Slack said to Judge Feeney. “Relief is still needed today.”

Slack went on to argue that some tenants signed leases with unlawful rent increases while others have refused to sign, and those tenants may still be vulnerable to eviction without a restraining order.

“What we’re asking the court to do is to make assurances to these tenants so they’re not faced with an impossible choice of trying to scrape enough money to [pay for] an unlawful rent increase, or else be evicted from their homes, which in some cases they’ve resided in for over 10 years now,” Slack said.

“Many of these folks are low income and elderly,” he continued. “We haven’t had anything in writing from defendants today … indicating that they will not be evicted come Friday of this week.”

As previously reported, tenants at the Hillsdale Apartments received notices on their doors late last month informing them that Dwivedi Tower, LLC, would implement new leases on March 1 with new rent amounts of $1,065 or $1,132, which represented an increase of anywhere from 30 percent to 80 percent or more. The notice said that any tenant who didn’t agree to those terms “can choose to vacate the property on or before February 28th.”

Judge Feeney said he was encouraged to see that matters appear to be heading toward a resolution.

“But at this point I find that the potential harm to the plaintiffs outweighs the potential harm to Mr. Dwivedi,” he said. “The plaintiffs could lose their homes for not agreeing to what appears to the court to be unlawful rent increase demands.”

Feeney agreed to issue the temporary restraining order, though it will pertain only to the Hillsdale Apartments and not the Eureka Central Residence.

After the hearing, Slack and Yarnall discussed the case with the Outpost back at the Janssen Malloy office up the street. They said that the case came to them via a social worker with Humboldt County’s Adult Protective Services program, who was concerned about possible exploitation of the elderly after reading the story we published on Feb. 7.

After their firm filed the request for a temporary restraining order on Friday, Davis reached out to say that Dwivedi had “seen the light” and agreed to rescind the rent increases, according to Slack.

“I said, ‘Get me something in writing; that’s a start,” he said.

“We’re really concerned about the whole building, not just our two clients,” Yarnall said. She said there are at least three categories of clients: those like Swall and Vachon, who held their ground and refused to sign the new lease terms; those who agreed to sign the new leases and may have already paid the excessive rents; and, lastly, those who were so intimidated by the new rent demands that they’re planning to move out — or perhaps already have.

“In some ways, those are the people I’m most concerned about,” Yarnall said. “They need relief now. They need to know from the court, ‘Hey, you don’t have to move out.’”

With the class action suit filed last week, Slack and Yarnall hope to ensure that Dwivedi not only rescinds the inflated new lease terms but also that he pays restitution and damages to any tenants who paid the higher amounts or spent money moving out.

“It’s not good enough to just say, ‘We’re not going to continue to charge these [unlawful rent amounts]; he needs to make these people whole,” Yarnall said.

When the Outpost interviewed Dwivedi earlier this month, he argued that the new lease terms he was trying to impose were not illegal because his tenants agreed to them. He pointed to a section of the notice he posted that said tenants have the right to review the proposed new lease carefully and to “negotiate lease terms within reasonable limits.”

But Slack said that notice itself was a violation of the Tenant Protection Act, which includes specific provisions that spell out exactly what information landlords must disclose to tenants about their rights when implementing a rent increase. And those tenants’ rights cannot be waived.

Yarnall agreed. “There’s a huge power dynamic imbalance between the tenants and the landlord,” she said. “And so saying to them, you know, buried in a in a scary notice, ‘By the way, if you don’t like this, you should speak up,’ it’s just not enough.”

Slack and Yarnall said that any residents of the Hillsdale Apartments who agreed to move out or who signed unlawful new leases can call Janssen Malloy and speak to them.

Judge Feeney scheduled a preliminary injunction hearing in the class action suit for March 10 at 10:30 a.m.

PREVIOUSLY:

• ‘A Game-Changer for Humboldt’: State Sen. Mike McGuire, County Officials Announce Additional Funding for Behavioral Crisis Triage Center in Arcata
• ‘This is a Big Deal for Humboldt’: State Awards $12.3 Million in Funding for Behavioral Health Triage Center in Arcata

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Press release from Providence/St. Joseph:

Providence Humboldt County is pleased to announce a check presentation event in support of the future Behavioral Health Triage Center in Arcata. This event will take place on February 28 at 4 PM in front of St. Joseph Hospital. 

The new Behavioral Health Triage Center, which will be located on land generously donated by Mad River Hospital, has recently secured funding and grant approval. This center is a critical development in addressing the local mental health crisis, offering a beacon of hope for the community. 

Providence remains dedicated to providing essential resources and support to meet the evolving needs of the community. As part of this commitment, Providence is donating $2 million through our community benefit program to the new triage center. 

The event will feature Providence Humboldt County Chief Executive Michael Keleman presenting the $2 million check to Doug Shaw of Mad River Hospital, Connie Beck from County of Humboldt DHHS, and Connie Stewart from Cal Poly Humboldt. 

Event Details 

• Date: February 28 
• Time: 4 PM 
• Location: In front of St. Joseph Hospital 

The new triage center is expected to break ground in 2025, with a projected completion date in late 2026 or early 2027. This center will address the significant gap in Humboldt County’s behavioral health system by providing much-needed beds and services for individuals experiencing mental health or substance use crises. 

Members of the press and community are invited to join us for this important event. For further information, please contact chamia.chambers@providence.org

It was all kumbaya a couple of weeks ago, as various players in the drama over the Eel River Project stamped their seals of approval on a deal that would tear down both Scott and Van Arsdale Cape Horn dams, while at the same time continuing delivery of Eel River water to the Russian River watershed.

But Lake County — the actual home of Lake Pillsbury, the reservoir created by Scott Dam — now seems ready to throw a wrench into the gears, via a direct appeal to President Donald Trump.

At its meeting tomorrow, the Lake County Board of Supervisors will consider sending two letters — one to Gov. Gavin Newsom and one to various cabinet-level officials in the Trump administration, arguing that removal of the badly broken dams runs contrary to policy.

Backers of the deal to bring the dams down can safely ignore the former, but the appeal to the Trump administration could be a bit more serious. The media-loving, California-hating president has, in the run-up to his election and since, loudly championed his somewhat nonsensical idea that California dams need to stay in place so that water might be sent south to rehydrate parched forests. He has accounted every drop of California water that reaches the ocean as water wasted.

Alicia Hamann, executive director of the Friends of the Eel, was relatively optimistic when reached by the Outpost this afternoon. She pointed to the first Trump administration’s non-interference with removal of the Klamath dams on the grounds that private businesses — in that case, PacifiCorp — had the right to dispose of their property as they see fit.

“I would be pretty surprised if his administration stepped in,” Hamann said. “But then again I have been surprised by a lot of things lately.”

In any case, the Lake County staffers who have put together the appeal to the Trump Administration have clearly studied the president’s habit of mind, and know which buttons to push. Here’s an excerpt:

Decommissioning of the dam would put regional agriculture, fire protection, water availability, and our tourism economy at great risk. Concepts in Executive Orders signed by President Donald J Trump argue for prioritizing such human needs; we believe FERC [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] would be going against those Orders if they approved Decommissioning of Scott Dam without a degree of investment in mitigation measures PG&E is unlikely to engage in unless compelled to by FERC and other regulatory entities.

On January 24, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14181: “Emergency Measures To Provide Water Resources in California and Improve Disaster Response in Certain Areas.” In this Executive Order, President Trump requests that the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce, “immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries.” By approving Decommissioning of Scott Dam, FERC would “unduly burden” many communities that rely on Lake Pillsbury, minimizing water deliveries to our farmers and other end users, including water flows in fire hydrants.

As stated earlier: The whole Eel River hydropower system, which is owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electric, is badly broken. Leaving aside the closure of the Upper Eel to migrating salmonids, Scott Dam itself was somewhat shoddily built on top of an earthquake fault, and is at the end of its life. The power station at Cape Horn Dam — the only generator in the system — has been offline since 2021, meaning that no power has been produced by the Potter Valley Project in the last four years. PG&E wants to be rid of it.

If it approves this letter, the Lake County Board of Supervisors would be asking the Trump administration to intervene in the federal bureaucratic process that would, otherwise, result in the decommissioning and removal of the two dams. 

Though it’s easy enough to imagine the president making the most of this fresh opportunity to troll the libs, Hamann, for one, thinks that Lake County might want to consider carefully before handing it to him.

“I would really point out to them that they risk missing out on an opportunity to seek compensation for the loss of the recreation opportunity that is the reservoir,” she said.

The Lake County Board of Supervisors meets tomorrow, Feb. 25, at 9 a.m.,  in Lakeport. There may or may not be Zoom participation available; the agenda, which can be found at this link, gives instructions, but warns that if the Zoom goes down they might not bother to fix it.

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DOCUMENTS:

• Lake County Board of Supervisors Agenda, Feb. 25, 2025.
• Proposed Letter to Trump Administration officials.
• Proposed Letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

We’ve been invited –- now let’s tell Coast Central Credit Union what we need.

Thanks in part to its new CEO and board of directors, Coast Central is taking a few slow steps toward allowing its member-owners to act like, well, owners.

After dismal track record for transparency, that’s a good start. We can build on that beginning, by insisting on more improvements during Coast Central’s annual meeting at 6 p.m. this Thursday, Feb. 27, in the Coast Central branch at 402 F St. in Eureka.

I write “during,” but actually we won’t be allowed to talk much during the meeting. Years ago, the nine elected members of Coast Central’s board decided they didn’t want the people who elected them to have the privilege of speaking during the annual meeting, when minutes are taken and a written record is kept.

Here’s why that’s not good enough for our community’s premier financial institution: As an owner, you deserve the convenience of being able to read a full report of what happened at the annual meeting if you weren’t able to attend. That includes meeting minutes that summarize the questions asked by your fellow owners, as well as the answers provided by your elected board or by your employees.

I ran for the Coast Central board last year partly because I’d heard about the annual meeting in 2023, when dozens of angry people showed up demanding to know the vote count in that board election, and demanding that they get responses. Attendees were gaveled into non-existence. Only informal questions and answers were permitted, and only after the meeting had already ended.

That informal approach has continued, pushing member-owner concerns into a twilight zone, where no minutes will ever note that they existed.

Coast Central’s board needs to change its bylaws this year to allow questions from the floor and answers during the meeting instead of after.

It also needs to change its repressive election rules, which impose bizarre restrictions on who can say what and in which venues.

And It needs to stop appointing people to vacant seats just weeks before its election, allowing them to run as board-approved “incumbents” when they might only have attended a meeting or two.

I campaigned on some of those issues when I ran for the board last year, and enough people agreed to award me 52.3 percent of the vote. That wasn’t enough to win, because it was a multi-seat election, but perhaps it was enough to nudge the credit union into finally releasing the number of votes each candidate received in previous board elections. Or perhaps that was my official complaint to state banking regulators after then-CEO James Sessa stood up at last year’s meeting and again explained why we weren’t entitled to know who got how many votes.

Now that it has begun releasing vote totals, Coast Central has also moved its annual meetings from a small branch lobby with limited seating to a bigger venue, with the possibility of remote attendance.

This is good stuff –- let’s be sure to say thanks at the annual meeting. But let’s offer thanks the way you would to a good employee who still has some weak spots that need fixing: “Great start; now here’s how you can do better next year.”

With close to 80,000 member-owners, Coast Central shapes our region’s economy, affecting people who are buying a home, expanding a business, or just trying to put aside a little something for their future.

Together, we own this thing –- and that includes every one of us who has an account at Coast Central. The top executives work for us. The nine-member board is elected by us. We deserve a credit union that fully includes us in conversations about our community’s financial future.

You might already have your own list of priorities. Maybe they involve Coast Central’s ATM locations, weekend hours, fees, interest rates, or dozens of other policies that affect how well our credit union serves us all.

Change won’t come unless we, the owners, insist on it. This annual meeting is our time. Please mark your calendar now for 6 p.m. on Feb. 27 at 402 F St. in Eureka. Bring a friend. Come with polite but firm questions, as well as with appreciation for the things that keep you a Coast Central member.

We own this thing. Let’s make it better.

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Carrie Peyton-Dahlberg is a retired journalist and longtime Coast Central member.

One California law was supposed to flip defunct strip malls across California into apartment-lined corridors.

Another was designed to turn under-used church parking lots into fonts of new affordable housing.

A third would, according to supporters and opponents alike, “end single-family zoning as we know it.”

Fast-forward to 2025 and this spate of recent California laws, and others like it intended to supercharge the construction of desperately needed housing, have had “limited to no impact on the state’s housing supply.”

That damning conclusion comes from a surprising source: A new report by YIMBY Law, a pro-development nonprofit that would very much like to see these laws work.

The analysis, released today, studied five state laws passed since 2021 that have swept away regulatory barriers to building apartment buildings and other dense residential developments in places where such housing has been historically barred.

The laws under review include:

• SB 9 from 2021, which allows people to split their single-family homes into duplexes, thus ending single-family-home-only zoning across California. In practice, according to the report, building permits for only 140 units were issued under the law in 2023.
• AB 2011 from 2022 was designed to make it easier for developers to convert office parks, strip malls and parking lots into apartment buildings. In 2023, developers on just two projects were given local regulatory approval to start work under the law. In 2024, the total was eight. The report found no projects that have made use of SB 6, a similar bill passed that same year but with stricter labor requirements.
• SB 4 from 2024, the so-called Yes In God’s Backyard law, which lets churches, other houses of worship and some schools to repurpose their land for affordable housing. The report found no takers on that bill too.

“It’s grim,” said Sonja Trauss, executive director of YIMBY Law. Though she acknowledged some of the laws are still new, she blamed their early ineffectiveness on the legislative process which saddled these bills with unworkable requirements and glaring loopholes.

“Everybody wants a piece,” she said. “The pieces taken out during the process wind up derailing the initial concept.”

What are these requirements and loopholes that have prevented these laws from succeeding? Maybe not surprisingly, they are the frequent objects of critique by YIMBY Law and the Yes In My Backyard movement more generally.

One is the inclusion of requirements that developers only hire union-affiliated workers or pay their workers higher wages.

Another are affordability mandates which force developers to sell or rent the units they build at below-market prices.

A third is the strenuous opposition by local governments and the failure of these state laws to override it. In the two years following the passage of SB 9, for example, YIMBY Law tracked 140 local ordinances that, in the view of the report, were “designed to reduce or prevent” the bill from working on the ground. They included tight limits on the size of buildings, affordability requirements, or restrictions on which types of owners can make use of the law.

“The ADU boom stands alone. No other form of housing production took off in California during this period.”
— Law paper by UC Davis professor Chris Elmendorf and UC Santa Barbara professor Clayton Nall

Last year, the state Legislature passed a “clean up” bill meant to void some of these local add-ons.

There are plenty of other possible impediments to construction in California, which may explain why these bills have seen such tepid uptake. Sky high interest rates, chronic shortages of construction workers and high material costs (all of which could be exacerbated by current or expected changes to federal tariff, immigration and fiscal policy) all work to make residential housing development a less appealing financial proposition. Insufficient public funds and expected cuts to federal housing programs may weigh down on the affordable housing sector too.

But the report is not the first to point to the preconditions and omissions included in so many of the state’s legislative efforts to goose housing development as the reason for their lack of impact.

In a recent law paper, UC Davis law professor Chris Elmendorf and UC Santa Barbara political scientist Clayton Nall wrote that the relative success of California’s efforts to boost the construction of accessory dwelling units is the exception that proves the rule. Over the last decade, a cavalcade of state laws have stripped local governments of their ability to subject backyard cottage projects with environmental review mandates, significant fees, affordability mandates, union-hire rules, confining size or aesthetic limitations or added parking requirements.

“The ADU boom stands alone. No other form of housing production took off in California during this period,” the authors wrote. A likely reason why, they argue, is that ADU projects don’t come with nearly as many strings attached as other forms of dense development permitted by various California laws.

In 2023, the state permitted more than 28,000 ADUs, according to state data.

The history of ADU legislation in California is instructive, said Trauss. “It took about like five years of revisions before they were really getting going.”

The YIMBY Law report is based on self-reported permitting data submitted by cities and counties to the California Housing and Community Development department. The nonprofit complemented that messy database with its own internal collection harvested from its own litigation and activism. That means the data on what is actually getting built — and therefore how effective any of these laws really are — is imperfect.

That fact isn’t lost on many legislators.

The Assembly housing committee’s first hearing of the year was dedicated not to new legislation, but to evaluating the state’s existing “pro-production” laws.

“We shouldn’t just keep passing more and more bills just because we can,” Chair Matt Haney, a San Francisco Democrat, said. “We should actually look at what is working, why it’s working, how we can do more of what’s working and if it’s not working, we should do more to fix it or change it.”

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