The family of Virginia Mae Kernen is sad to announce her passing on June 29, 2024, at 95 years of age.  Virginia (Ginny) was born March 16, 1929, to Herbert Paul and Marjorie Fay Dickson (nee Osburn) in Newton, Kansas.  She was immensely proud to be from Kansas.  Her family moved frequently as her father followed work.  While in high school, she lived with and cared for a woman in town during the week for room and board.  This way, she didn’t have to get dropped off at school at 6:00 AM on her dad’s way to work.  She had one day off after high school graduation and then started school at the Wichita – St. Joseph’s School of Nursing to become a registered nurse.  She sold her cow and steer to pay for tuition.

In June 1950, she and good friend, Anne Berry, took jobs as nurses in Del Norte, Colorado.  There Virginia met Calvin Harold Kernen on a blind date.  They were married the following December and spent over 73 years together.  She missed him very much after his recent passing in February 2024.  After living in Del Norte for a year, they lived briefly in Southern California near Cal’s sister where Virginia immediately got a job as a nurse.   They then moved to Humboldt County and purchased rural property and a home surrounded by Redwoods and hummingbirds, which she loved. Virginia quickly got a job as an OB/GYN nurse at Trinity Hospital, currently the Trinity Annex housing the Children’s Center at Cal Poly Humboldt.   After taking time off to be at home with her children, she worked years for doctors Todd, Portalupi, and Menda.  She loved being a nurse and generations of families have expressed their appreciation for her caring and kindness.  Virginia also served as the neighborhood nurse and treated many rashes, cuts, and scrapes.  She was proud to hold registered nurses’ licenses in three states. 

Virginia and Cal raised chickens, rabbits, pigeons, and sheep, adding pigs and steers for their son’s and grandchildren’s 4-H and FFA projects.  From their large garden and fruit trees, they enjoyed sharing produce with friends and family.  After working a full day as a nurse, Virginia would make jam and can fruits and vegetables.  She especially loved canning with her good friend, Barbara Applewhite.  Virginia participated in all her children’s activities, especially 4-H and FFA.  She was a sewing leader at the Arcata Bottom 4-H Club with Gerry Warren.  She spent hours helping her daughters sew and prepare garments for 4-H Dress Revues and the summer fairs.  Virginia was a master at crocheting and frequently took first place and Best of Show at local fairs with her amazing doilies.  She taught her daughters how to crochet and eventually quit entering the fairs so as not to compete against them.  Virginia and Cal were devoted supporters of the Junior Livestock Auction.  

Virginia prepared all family meals from scratch and used what the family grew and raised as ingredients.  Anyone who came at mealtime was welcome at the table.  She was a skilled baker, and her pies and trays of various cookies are legendary.  She gave plates of cookies to friends and family at Christmas and took cookies to all events.  Virginia and Cal were proud members of the Swiss Club, and they spent years serving as officers, preparing and serving food for the events, and cleaning and fixing items at the Swiss Hall.  Virginia was the scholarship chairperson for years.  She brought homemade pickles to Swiss Club dinners and donated baked items and beautiful doilies for their fundraisers.   They cherished the friendships they made at the Swiss Club, especially with Charlie and Pat King.

After retiring, Virginia and Cal enjoyed trips to Alaska, the east coast to see the fall colors, and to Switzerland.  Virginia had great memories of their last trip to Kansas to visit her family, made possible with their son’s help.  She and Cal enjoyed their last visit to his birthplace, a celebration for his 90th birthday shared with generations of family.  Virginia also appreciated her niece, Theresa, and husband, Stan, accompanying her sister, Joyce, to Arcata to visit when Virginia could no longer travel.  

Virginia was a caring and loving wife, mother, and grandmother.  She was hardworking, generous, and kind to all.  She was frank, and you always knew where she stood.  She babysat all of her grandchildren, passing on cooking, baking, canning, and crafting skills.  She is survived by her daughters, Karla (Steve) Darnall and Kay (Don) Becker, her son, Kurt (Sandra) Kernen, grandchildren:  Matthew Darnall (Kathleen Kiernan), Kathryn (Oliver) Helms, Reuben (Nickie) Rail, Diego Rail, Jeffrey (Ivy) Holmes, Christopher (Lauren) Holmes, Terris Becker, Kelsey Becker, Jess (Olivia) Kernen and Reid Kernen.  Her great-grandchildren include Hozana, Miranda, Rowan, Aurora, Hailey, Henri, Dylan and Hazel.  She is also survived by her dear sister, Joyce Bender, and numerous nieces and nephews and their families throughout the Midwest.  

Virginia was predeceased by her beloved husband, Cal, her parents, and siblings, Archie, Lloyd, Grace, Beulah, Gilbert and their spouses, brother-in-law, Dale Bender, and niece, Rhonda.  Also, by Cal’s parents, Friederick Alfred and Mary Albertina (nee: Gerber) Kernen and his siblings Lloyd, Hilda, Irene, Bertha, Madeline, and John and their spouses, and Kernen nephews Jim, Fred and Bob.

Virginia was so grateful to the dear friends who visited over the years, especially after Cal’s passing.  The family would like to thank Dr. Alison Palacios, the staff at Mad River Healthcare, Suite 3, and the staff at Especially You for their caring of Virginia.  Donations in Virginia’s name can be sent to St. Jude Children’s Hospital, or an organization related to the healthcare profession of your choice.  Arrangements are under the direction of Ayres Family Cremation.

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

A series of lightning strikes Monday evening resulted in a number of wildfires in eastern Humboldt. The largest of these is the Hill Fire located roughly 11 miles south of Willow Creek in the Mosquito Creek Drainage, which has now grown to roughly 2,000 acres in size, according to Cal Fire. 

“[The] fire is burning in steep, inaccessible terrain, with heavy timber and dry vegetation,” Cal Fire says. “Multiple tankers and copters are currently assigned and are working the fire.”

In response, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office has issued the following evacuation order:

EVACUATION ORDER Issued for Zone HUM-E077A: Due to the Hill Fire, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office has issued an immediate evacuation order for zone HUM-E077-A North of White Oak Creek/Grouse Creek, South of Friday Ridge Road, Forest Route 6N08A, East of Titlow Hill Rd, Twin Lakes Creek, West of Mosquito Creek/Madden Creek. Those in this zone should leave now for their safety.

EVACUATION WARNING Issued for Zone HUM-E077-B: Due to the Hill Fire, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office has issued an evacuation warning for zone HUM-E077-B North of PG&E Rod, Grouse Creek, South of Madden Creek, Forest Route 6N06, East of Mosquito Creek/Madden Creek, West of Trinity County Line. Prepare for potential evacuations, including personal supplies and overnight accommodations. Those in this zone should prepare to leave at a moment’s notice. More information will follow if an evacuation order is issued.

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Above: Timelapse video of the Hill Fire taken from the south. 

PREVIOUSLY: 

• 50 or More Lightning Strikes Ignite Wildfires Near Orleans and Willow Creek

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Facing rising business costs in a rapidly consolidating industry, Redwood Meat Co., the only USDA-certified slaughterhouse for nearly 200 miles in any direction, recently stopped processing animal carcasses, including beef, hogs, lambs and goats. The shutdown not only brings a halt to a family-run business that has been in operation since 1951; it has also had reverberating impacts across the local farming, ranching and retail sectors.

Unless an outside investment comes through soon — which is a long shot, according to Redwood Meat plant operator Ryan Nylander — then Redwood Meat Co. will likely close permanently, leaving the region’s numerous small-scale meat producers with limited options and increased costs.

Nylander didn’t have much to say when reached by phone Monday morning, offering brief replies to a series of questions. He said rapidly increasing bills for essentials such as insurance, water and utilities simply grew unsustainable.

“It was already a marginal business,” Nylander said, “but once the cost of doing business went up so much, you can’t even charge enough at our capacity [to break even].”

His uncle and longtime co-owner John “Punk” Nylander was even more succinct. 

“PG&E got us,” he said. “California got us. We’re just not running enough stuff through here to pay the bills.”

As recently as nine months ago, Redwood Meat Co. had 14 employees, according to the younger Nylander. But layoffs became necessary even before the recent shutdown. The business, which is located on the outskirts of Eureka’s Myrtletown neighborhood, slaughtered and butchered farm animals across the region, including lambs from Ferndale, organic pork from Del Norte County’s Alexandre Family Farms and beef from ranchers in Willow Creek, the Eel River Valley and beyond.

Local ranchers reached by the Outpost say that the loss of Redwood Meat Co. could threaten their own ability to make a profit selling meat, and if another option doesn’t come along soon they may be forced to make dramatic changes to their businesses. And small-scale producers are the hardest hit.

For example, Liz and Hugo Klopper are the owner-operators of Bear River Valley Beef, a family-run cattle-farming operation that sells beef directly to the public, including online and at farmers’ markets, along with some sales to local grocery stores including Wildberries. Redwood Meat Co. slaughtered and processed all of the beef they produced for the past 20 years, and Liz Klopper said she’s not sure what her farm will do now that they’ve shut down.

“I have no easy answer,” she said. “Redwood Meat is what we call critical infrastructure for local beef, and it’s gone.”

Beef, pork and other meats can’t be sold commercially unless the animals were slaughtered at a facility that’s been certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Now that Redwood Meat Co. is shut down, the nearest USDA-certified kill facilities are in Yreka and Sonoma County.

“And none are particularly viable for small operators,” Klopper said.

While Redwood Meat Co. could process a few head of cattle whenever they were delivered, local ranchers need to ship their animals out of the area and wait at least a day or two for them to be slaughtered and processed before having the meat shipped back up here to Humboldt in trucks with refrigeration or freezer trailers.

“Truck and trailer costs are pretty expensive for any operation, small or big,” Klopper said. “Redwood Meat had pretty reasonable prices, and they offered a lot of services — local deliveries, storage in their freezer locker, transportation to people like Taylor’s Sausages [in Cave Junction, Ore.] with value-added products. To find an all-in-one shop like that is pretty difficult.”

Some local ranchers were caught completely off guard by Redwood Meat’s closure. Melanie Cunningham of Shakefork Community Farm (near Carlotta) said that as a medium-sized farm that includes a cattle operation, they only get beef processed once per year, and ever since COVID they’ve had to make their appointments a full year in advance. 

“We found out two weeks after our scheduled dates that all [Redwood Meat Co.’s] dates had been canceled,” Cunningham said. “It put us all in a panic.”

Shakefork and other ranching operations in the area were notified via email back in May that Redwood Meat Co. may soon be sold, but the notice said that there shouldn’t be any interruption in service, according to Cunningham.

After learning that their dates had been canceled, Cunningham and her partners heard rumors — first that Redwood Meat had shut down entirely, then that they were still processing carcasses for some suppliers on request. “So it’s really up and down; we were in limbo,” she said.

Ultimately, the farmers at Shakefork had to pivot away from selling their beef commercially.

“Most of what we produce we can consume among family and friends,” Cunningham said. “But it does reshape our marketing plans. We will no longer be selling to farmers markets or [providing meet] to CSA [farm shares] and direct sales. It’s gonna really reduce availability.”

Larger operations may have an easier time adapting to the loss of a local slaughterhouse facility, but it’s still having a negative impact on operations, said Humboldt Grassfed Beef President and Owner Sarah Mora.

“When you lose infrastructure — which is what I would consider Redwood Meat Co., like Humboldt Creamery and the sawmill, anywhere you can take raw products turn them into consumer products — it hurts,” she said. “It doesn’t just hurt me, it hurts everybody.”

Humboldt Grassfed has been using a mobile slaughtering facility based in Petaluma for the past few weeks but will soon transition to Yosemite Valley Beef in Merced. The added logistical challenges have inevitably increased costs, though Mora said Ayres Distributing has been able to ship their products to existing customers in the Bay Area, Sonoma County and elsewhere. 

“Probably for us this challenge is something we can meet,” Mora said. “The people who really are going to be hurt are the smaller producers. … It’s not just that we’re losing [local] harvesting.  [Redwood Meat] is also a USDA cut facility, and there’s not another in Humboldt County, so we’re losing out on two fronts.”

The rising costs for local producers will only exacerbate the impacts of a nationwide spike in beef prices in recent years, a trend that’s been fueled by multiple factors, including fewer beef cattle, drought and higher grain costs.

Thomas Nicholson Stratton, who operates Foggy Bottoms Boys in Ferndale with his husband, Cody, said they’re now shipping product to and from both Modesto and Yreka for processing.

“It’s very challenging, but nonetheless it’s something that has to be done if we want to keep working as a company,” he said. The additional shipping costs have added at least $1.00 to $1.50 per pound to the company’s own costs, according to Nicholson Stratton. That forced Foggy Bottoms Boys to raise meat prices for the first time since the pandemic. 

Nicholson Stratton said that if no one comes in to save Redwood Meat Co. or establish a new local option, it could jeopardize their business and many others in the region.

“If we can’t hold things in, specific to our fuel costs and [finding] more efficient transportation, then it will be a threat to our business,” he said. “Not only that, it’s also a threat to the growth of our business.” Foggy Bottoms Boys has been looking to expand and diversify by offering pork sausage and other value-added meat products. They have several pending grant applications that they hoped would allow them to do further processing at their own farm.

“But we have to have USDA meats to be able to do that,” Nicholson Stratton said.

Redwood Meat Co.’s shutdown has also impacted local grocery stores, including the North Coast Co-op’s two locations, in Eureka and Arcata. The Co-op was the only local grocery store that received full carcasses from Redwood Meat Co. and broke them down in their own butcher operations, according to Emi Lee, the Arcata store manager. But first the animals had to be slaughtered and their carcasses gutted and cleaned at a USDA-certified facility.

“We were one of the last areas in the state that had a local processor who could do that for us,” Lee said. “We took a lot for granted having Redwood Meat here. Hopefully we can get back to that someday, but who knows when it’s ever gonna happen again.”

Consumers may already be noticing higher meat prices and missing out on products they loved. Alexandre Family Farm in Del Norte County was the longtime supplier of fresh pork to the North Coast Co-op, but Lee said the farm has been unable to find a new processor that can provide whole pig carcasses to the store.

“So we’re not able to sell their pork anymore,” Lee said. “That was really special. I’m really bummed to not be able to keep doing that.”

The Co-op is also no longer receiving full-carcass lambs from Ferndale Farms, since their meat is being processed out of the county and shipped back frozen to preserve freshness. 

“Everyone’s feeling it across the whole area,” Lee said. “Right now it’s sort of crisis mode. We need to make sure we can keep everyone in business and keep the community with locally raised beef [and other meat], even if it’s not locally processed.”

Potential solutions

Local ranchers and other stakeholders have been gathering since early May to deal with the potential loss of Redwood Meat Co., according to Portia Bramble, executive director of the nonprofit North Coast Growers’ Association.

“We have a collaborative group of producers working behind the scenes to tackle this important issue,” she said when reached by phone on Monday.

A few of those producers, along with some investment groups, expressed interest in purchasing Redwood Meat Co., but a deal has thus far proved elusive amid strict USDA regulations and the challenges of operating such an old facility that has some antiquated infrastructure. On the regulatory side, the Nylanders may need to keep the business in operation and maintain some percentage of ownership for their facilities to maintain their USDA licensing, Bramble said.

She emphasized that much of the local ranching industry’s success over the years can be directly attributed to Redwood Meat Co. and the Nylanders, who went out of their way to meet the specific and varied demands of local ranchers.

“They really had a business model that was aligned with our local producers’ needs,” she said. “That might also imply that it wasn’t the most lucrative business. There were some nuances to what they were doing. It worked for a number of years, but I’m not sure it’s a business model that could go into the future.”

Humboldt County also lacks large-scale cold storage facilities, Bramble pointed out. While some farmers, including Klopper, have installed their own walk-in freezers, many other producers struggled to line up a temperature-controlled supply chain.

”Even if they can take the time to ship animals out of the area, it’s a whole new business model for frozen [products],” Bramble said.

In meetings with local producers, including the Foggy Bottoms Boys, the North Coast Growers’ Association (NCGA) has looked for ways to keep Redwood Meat Co. afloat while also looking to the future.

”We’d like to support a new, modern facility that’s able to do more … including full-scale processing that’s also value-added,” such as making sausage, ground beef and other consumer-ready products, Bramble said. 

The NCGA has been working with the California Center for Rural Policy, the Arcata Economic Development Corporation and others on large-scale economic development planning through California’s Jobs First Regional Investment Initiative. A local initiative called Redwood Region RISE (Resilient Inclusive Sustainable Economy) has identified areas in need of investment, including meat processing.

“We’ve submitted a large-scale funding proposal to support this project of building a new processing plant on the North Coast,” Bramble said, though she noted that the process is, by design, slow and thoughtful, with input being gathered from a wide variety of business sectors. (A long-term strategic plan should be released to the public soon, she added.)

In the meantime, producers, grocers and others are hopeful that Redwood Meat Co. may yet be salvaged. In our brief phone conversation with Ryan Nylander, he said, “We’re hopeful for some investment, but if it doesn’t come through pretty quick — .” He didn’t finish the sentence.

Lee, the Arcata Co-op manager, said he floated the idea of forming an ownership co-operative to take over Redwood Meat Co., but such an endeavor would likely involve many financial and logistical hurdles, including hiring from outside the area to fill specialized positions in the slaughterhouse. In the meantime, the Co-op has had to raise meat prices to at least partially cover their own increased costs.

Meanwhile, Cunningham, of Shakefork Community Farm, said there’s one possible legislative solution on the horizon. Last year, federal legislators introduced the PRIME (Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption) Act, which would open the door to allow for legal sales of animals that have been slaughtered and processed on farms.

“We do that with chickens,” Cunningham said. “We have a federal exemption for up to 20,000 chickens on our farm, so there is a precedent.”

But under current law, as noted above, any large animal meat sold commercially has to come from a USDA-inspected facility. 

“It’s really created a bottleneck as more and more of these local abattoirs go out of business,” Cunningham said. “It really can’t pencil out these days, and it has been a story across the country, with [smaller] slaughterhouses consolidating into these massive things. We don’t want that.”

Humboldt County already has several on-farm butchers, who can be used for meat that farmers feed themselves and their friends. While some organizations, including the Safe Food Coalition, have voiced food safety concerns about the PRIME Act, Cunningham thinks the model could work well on a larger scale here in Humboldt County.

“It feels so much better to have an animal never leave our farm, never be transported — it’s just nicer way to process meat,” she said. Shipping the carcasses out the area for processing isn’t practical, economical or necessary, in her view. “It’s definitely time to rethink it if we want to have flourishing local food networks.”

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CORRECTION: This post originally misspelled Klopper, which we [okay, I] regret. —RB

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On 7/6/2024, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report of bones discovered in the South Fork of the Eel River near Redway. Upon initial investigation, photos were viewed by the Coroner’s Office and determined unlikely to be human. A deputy responded to the scene, interviewed the witness, and collected the bone for further investigation. To conduct further confirmation of the bone’s origin, the Coroner’s Office elected to have the bone examined by anthropologists, who have deemed the bone as possibly human—further examination is pending. Additional follow-up searches are underway at the scene to locate further remains, with the use of deputies and two cadaver search dogs.

Anyone with information about this case is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On 7/10/2024 in the afternoon, Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the Airport Business Park in McKinleyville for the report of a dog attack.

Deputies responded to a report of a tan pitbull attacking a person and their two small dogs. The owner of the pitbull left the scene prior to the deputy’s arrival.

In order to complete an investigation to ensure the safety of the public, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office is attempting to locate the owner of the pitbull, who is described as a Hispanic or Native American male, approximately 20-30 years old, with shoulder length dark hair.

The pitbull owner was last seen leaving the area driving a small white car with tinted windows and black rims. The victim provided a possible partial license plate number, 9BHJ97.

This case is still under investigation. The owner of the Pitbull is asked to contact the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Animal Control at (707) 840-9279.

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Press release from the U.S. Forest Service:

The Six Rivers National Forest received at least 50 lightning strikes during the evening of Monday July 15, resulting in 4 confirmed fires on the Lower Trinity Ranger District in Humboldt County. The lightning occurred primarily on the Lower Trinity, Orleans, and Ukonom Ranger Districts.

The Hill Fire is located 11 miles south of Willow Creek in the Mosquito Creek Drainage and is approximately 40-50 acres at this time. The fire is burning in steep, inaccessible terrain, with heavy timber and dry vegetation. Fire behavior is active with a moderate rate of spread.

There are several resources on scene including ground support such as engines and hand crews and air support, with more ordered. CALFIRE supported the initial attack and continues to support with additional resources due to the proximity to state land.

The Hennessy 2, Waterman, and Ridge 2 Fires are all less than a quarter acre with resources on scene making good progress constructing handline and hose lay around the perimeter of the fires. Crews and aircraft are patrolling the area scouting for any additional fires.

Mad River Ranger District fires include the Dam Fire which continues to hold within the perimeter of the fire at 0.10 acres and the Pickett Fire is approximately 12 acres with several resources on scene continuing to construct handline and hose lay. 

California will have to build public charging stations at an unprecedented — and some experts say unrealistic — pace to meet the needs of the 7 million electric cars expected on its roads in less than seven years.

The sheer scale of the buildout has alarmed many experts and lawmakers, who fear that the state won’t be prepared as Californians purchase more electric cars.

A million public chargers are needed in California by the end of 2030, according to the state’s projections — almost 10 times more than the number available to drivers in December. To meet that target, 129,000 new stations — more than seven times the current pace — must be built every year for the next seven years. Then the pace would have to accelerate again to reach a target of 2.1 million chargers in 2035.

A robust network of public chargers — akin to the state’s more than 8,000 gas stations — is essential to ensure that drivers will have the confidence to purchase electric vehicles over the next several years.

“It is very unlikely that we will hit our goals, and to be completely frank, the EV goals are a noble aspiration, but unrealistic,” said Stanford professor Bruce Cain, who co-authored a policy briefing detailing California’s electric vehicle charging problems. “This is a wakeup call that we address potential institutional and policy obstacles more seriously before we commit blindly.”

Under California’s landmark electric car mandate, a pillar of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s climate change agenda, 68% of all new 2030 model cars sold in the state must be zero emissions, increasing to 100% for 2035, when 15 million electric cars are expected in California.

“We’re going to look really silly if we are telling people that they can only buy electric vehicles, and we don’t have the charging infrastructure to support that,” said Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, a Democrat from Encino who introduced a package of unsuccessful bills last year aimed at expanding access to car chargers.

“We are way behind where we need to be,” Gabriel told CalMatters.

Big obstacles stand in the way of amping up the pace of new charging stations in public places. California will need billions of dollars in state, federal and private investments, streamlined city and county permitting processes, major power grid upgrades and accelerated efforts by utilities to connect chargers to the grid.

State officials also are tasked with ensuring that charging stations are available statewide, in rural and less-affluent areas where private companies are reluctant to invest, and that they are reliable and functioning whenever drivers pull up.

In Pacific Gas & Electric’s vast service area, home to 40% of all Californians, electric car purchases are moving twice as fast as the buildout of charging stations, said Lydia Krefta, the utility’s director of clean energy transportation. Californians now own more than 1.5 million battery-powered cars.

Patty Monahan, who’s on the Energy Commission, the state agency responsible for funding and guiding the ramp-up, told CalMatters that she is confident that California can build the chargers its residents need in time.

The agency’s estimate of the current chargers is likely an undercount, she said. In addition, fast-charging stations could play a bigger role than initially projected, meaning hundreds of thousands of fewer chargers might be needed. Also, as the ranges and charging speeds on cars improve, there may be less demand for public chargers.

“California has a history of defying the odds,” Monahan said. “We have a history of advancing clean cars, clean energy, writ-large. We have naysayers left and right saying you can’t do it, and then we do it.”

Barriers to private investments: an uncertain market

On a September day last year, Monahan spoke behind a podium in the parking lot of a Bay Area grocery store. A row of newly constructed car chargers rose behind her.

“Let’s celebrate for a moment,” she said.

California had met its goal of 10,000 fast electric chargers statewide — two years ahead of a target set in 2018.

Fast chargers like the new ones at the grocery store are increasingly seen as critical to meeting the needs of drivers. They can power a car to 80% in 20 minutes to an hour, while the typical charger in use today, a slower Level 2, takes from four to 10 hours.

But installing and operating fast chargers is an expensive business — one that doesn’t easily turn a profit.

Nationwide each fast charger can cost up to $117,000, according to a 2023 study. And in California, it could be even more — between $122,000 and $440,000 each, according to a separate study, although the Energy Commission said the range was $110,000 to $125,000 for one of its programs.

Most of America’s publicly traded charger companies have been forced to seek more financing, lay off workers and slow their network build outs, analysts said. EVgo, for instance, has seen its share price crater, as has ChargePoint, which specializes in selling the slower, Level 2 hardware.

California stands apart from other states — it has by far the most chargers and electric car sales, and more incentives and policies encouraging them.

Tesla, America’s top-selling electric car manufacturer, dominates fast-charging in both California and the U.S. — but the company didn’t get into the business to sell charges to drivers; it got into the charger business to sell its electric cars. Initially Tesla Superchargers were exclusive to its drivers, but starting this year other EV drivers can use them after Tesla provided ports to Ford and other automakers.

Tesla’s manufacturing prowess, supply chain dominance and decade-plus of experience with fast chargers have given it an edge over competitors — a coterie of unprofitable, publicly traded startups, as well as private companies that often benefit from public subsidies, according to analysts.

“All the automakers joined forces with their biggest competitor,” said Loren McDonald, chief executive of the consulting firm EVAdoption. “If that doesn’t tell you how bad fast-charging networks and infrastructure were, I don’t know what else does.”

Now Tesla is showing uncertainty about the future of its charging business amid slumping car sales, and eliminated nearly its entire 500-member Supercharger team in April. Then chief executive Elon Musk said in May that he would spend $500 million to expand the network and hired back some fired workers.

In California, Electrify America, a privately held company, was created by Volkswagen as a settlement for cheating on emissions tests for its gas-powered cars. The company is spending $800 million on California chargers, building a robust network of 260 stations, with more than half in low-income communities, including the state’s worst charging desert, Imperial County.

The problem is Electrify America was ranked dead last in a consumer survey last year, and its chargers have been plagued by reliability problems and customer complaints. The California Air Resources Board in January directed Electrify America to “strive to achieve charger reliability consistent with the state of the industry.” A company spokesperson said the dissatisfaction showed “an industry in its growth trajectory.” There are signs of improvement, based on consumer data from the first three months of this year.

Startups continue to jump into the charging business, with the number of companies offering fast chargers growing from 14 in 2020 to 41 in 2024, EVAdoption said. Seven carmakers formed a $1 billion venture to build a 30,000-charger network in North America. And gas stations such as Circle K are offering more charging because electric car customers spend more time shopping while waiting for their rides to juice up.

But the realization that charging is a costly business has set in on Wall Street, and that doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon. “Can public EV fast-charging stations be profitable in the United States?” the consultancy McKinsey & Company asked.

“The fervor, the excitement from the investor base, has definitely dwindled quite a bit, given the prospects that EV adoption in the U.S. is going to be slower, revenue growth is really slower, the path to profitability is going to be slower, and they might need more capital than everyone originally expected,” said Christopher Dendrinos, a financial analyst who covers electric car charging companies for the investment bank RBC Capital Markets.

The stakes are high for California when it comes to encouraging investments in expensive fast chargers: If 63,000 additional ones were built, California might need 402,000 fewer slower Level 2 chargers in 2030, according to an alternative forecast by the Energy Commission.

Billions of public dollars: Will it be enough?

Nationwide $53 billion to $127 billion in private investments and public funding is needed by 2030 to build chargers for about 33 million electric cars, according to a federal estimate. Of that, about half would be for public chargers.

Congress and the Biden administration have set aside $5 billion for a national network of fast chargers. So far only 33 in eight locations have been built, but more than 14,000 others are in the works, according to the Federal Highway Administration. California’s share of the federal money totals $384 million; about 500 fast chargers will be built with an initial $40.5 million, said Energy Commission spokesperson Lindsay Buckley.

In addition, the state has spent $584 million to build more than 33,000 electric car chargers through its Clean Transportation Program, funded by fees drivers pay when they register cars. The Legislature extended that program for an additional decade last year.

Jesus Gonzalez, 25, Los Angeles

Housing: Rented houseCar model: Mustang Mach-ECharging usage: Public chargers only

Gonzalez lives in the dense Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. He bought his electric car when his older, gas-powered car started giving him problems in 2022.Gonzalez soon realized charging his car was more complicated than he had anticipated. He initially relied on fast chargers, utilizing the free kilowatts provided by Electrify America with his car purchase. Those credits lasted him only a couple months.These days he drives 10 to 15 minutes to the nearest Electrify America station, uses a free fast charger run by his local utility or a couple of nearby slower Level 2 chargers.“At first, the time spent charging was okay,” he said. But these days, “there are longer lines. So instead of just having to wait 20 minutes charging, you have to wait maybe 30 minutes for all the cars that are charging to clear up, and then the time for you to charge your car. I think that’s the biggest pain point.”

Newsom has committed to spending $1 billion through 2028 on chargers with his “California Climate Commitment,” Buckley said. But this year Newsom and the Legislature trimmed $167 million from the charger budget as the state faces a record deficit. A lobbyist for the Electric Vehicle Charging Association said “the state pullback sends a very challenging message” to the industry.

California’s commitment to charger funding is “solid,” despite the cuts, Buckley said. They have not yet estimated the total investment needed in California to meet the targets.

But Ted Lamm, a UC Berkeley Law researcher who studies electric car infrastructure, said the magnitude of building what California needs in coming years likely dwarfs the public funding available.

State and federal programs will “only fund a fraction,” and the state needs to spend that money on lower-income communities, he said.

Another possible funding source is California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which is expected to be revised in November. The program requires carbon-intensive fuel companies to pay for cleaner-burning transportation. Utilities get credits and use that money to pay for chargers, rebates to car buyers and grid improvements, said Laura Renger, executive director of the California Electric Transportation Coalition, which represents utilities.

“I think with that, we would have enough money,” Renger said. She said the program’s overhaul could help utilities invest “billions” in chargers and other electric car programs over the next two decades.

Backlogged local permits and grid delays

One of the biggest barriers to more chargers isn’t money. It’s that cities and counties are slow to approve plans for the vast number of stations needed.

State officials only have so much political power to compel local jurisdictions to do what they want — a reality made abundantly clear by the housing crisis, for instance. California relies on grants and persuasion to accomplish its goals, and the slow buildout of chargers shows how those strategies can fall short, said Stanford’s Cain.

“The locals cannot be compelled by regulatory agencies to make land and resources available for what the state wants to achieve,” Cain said.

The same obstacles have marked the state’s broader effort to electrify California and switch to clean energy. Local opposition and environmental reviews sometimes hold up large solar projects and transmission projects for years.

California has created a “culture of regulation that emphasizes the need to be extra careful and extra perfect, but this takes an incredible amount of time,” Steve Bohlen, senior director of government affairs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said last month at the inaugural hearing of the state Assembly’s Select Committee on Permitting Reform.

“We’re moving into a period of rapid change, and so perfect can’t be the enemy of the good.”

Chargers aren’t as complicated as large-scale solar or offshore wind projects. But most chargers installed in public spaces do need a land-use or encroachment permit, among other approvals. California has passed laws requiring local jurisdictions to streamline permits for chargers. What’s more, the Governor’s Office of Business Development now grades cities and counties using a scorecard and maintains a map displaying who has, or hasn’t, made life easier for car charger builders. But these strategies only go so far.

“It doesn’t matter how many requirements you put on (local governments),” Lamm said. “If they just don’t have the time in the day to do it … it’s going to sit in the backlog, because that’s how it works.”

The delays have consequences. Getting a station permitted in California, on average, takes 26% longer than the national average, Electrify America reported. Designing and constructing a station in California can cost on average 37% more than in other states because of delays in permitting and grid connections. A utility on average takes 17 weeks after work is completed to connect chargers to the grid, Electric America said.

Powering large charging projects often requires grid upgrades, which can take a year or more for approval, said Chanel Parson, a director at Southern California Edison. Supply chain issues also make getting the right equipment a challenge.

Andrew Krulewitz, 37, Oakland

Housing: Single family homeCar model: Hyundai Ioniq 6Charging usage: Home chargers and public chargers

When he lived in San Francisco, Krulewtiz had access to a Tesla through his job, and relied entirely on Level 2 chargers near his home, one of which was free.“I had no parking, I parked on the street, and I had to find places to charge,” he said. He would also use Tesla’s fast-charging Supercharger network. “When talking about infrastructure, it’s (Tesla) Supercharging and everybody else.”He later moved to Oakland and drove an electric Fiat. He now owns a home, but when he lived in an apartment, he had to run a cord from his apartment building onto the street where he parked his car.A Level 1 charger, like those found in many homes, adds about 4 miles of driving range per hour of charge. “I think Level 1 is a totally unsung solution to most people’s needs, but it’s not ideal if you need to charge every night,” he said.“It used to be that public charging was more expensive than home charging, and now that has flipped — home charging can be more expensive than public charging.”

Edison, which has a 10-year plan to meet expected demand, has asked the utilities commission for approval to upgrade the grid where it anticipates high charging demand.

“Every EV charging infrastructure project is a major construction project,” Parson said. “There are a number of variables that influence how long it takes to complete the project.”

Impatient with broken chargers, bad service

Inspired to help the nation reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, Zach Schiff-Abrams of Los Angeles bought a Genesis GV60. As a renter, he has relied on public charging, primarily using Electrify America stations — and that’s been his biggest problem about owning an electric car.

Charging speeds have been inconsistent, he said, with half-hour sessions providing only a 15 to 30% charge, and he often encounters broken chargers.

“I believe in electrical, so I’m really actually trying to be a responsible consumer,” Schiff-Abrams said. “I want to report them when they’re down, but the customer service is horrible.”

For years, the reliability of charging networks has been a well-documented problem. Only 73% of fast chargers in the San Francisco Bay Area were functional in a 2022 study. The growth of the EV market has put increasing strain on public charging stations, a consumer survey found.

In January, the California Air Resources Board approved a final $200 million spending plan for Electrify America — but not before board chair Liane Randolph scolded its CEO.

Randolph — arguably one of America’s top climate regulators — told CEO Robert Barrosa about an exchange she had with his company’s customer service line after finding a broken charger at a station along Interstate-5.

“It didn’t work,” Randolph said during the board meeting. “Called the customer service line, waited like 10-ish minutes. …(The charger) was showing operable on the app and the guy goes, ‘oh, my data is showing me that it has not had a successful charge in three days.’”

“These issues are not easy,” Barrosa responded. “Our head is not in the sand,” he told board members earlier. “We are listening to customers.”

But Randolph, addressing journalists at a conference in Philadelphia, pushed back against the idea that because the transition to electric vehicles is happening gradually that it’s a failure. Many people will rely on charging at home or work, and batteries are becoming more efficient.

“The infrastructure is continuing to be rolled out at a rapid pace,” Randolph said. “It doesn’t all have to be perfect instantly. It’s a process. And it’s a process that’s continuing to move.”

Data journalists Erica Yee and Arfa Momin contributed to this report.

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