Darlene Hodgson Phillips was born December 13, 1935 to Lew and Elva Hodgson in Stockton. She was the first of three children, later joined by her sister Joy Barraco and baby brother Lew Hodgson Jr. The family moved to Eureka in 1946. She graduated from Eureka Senior High School in 1953. She attended college in Pasadena.

Upon her return from college she met a soldier on leave, Rodney Phillips, on a blind date. They fell in love and married within six months, staying married for 64 years. They had three children, Denise, Kevin, and Brenda Phillips. When her youngest daughter started school, Darlene went to work with the school system, as a teachers aide, where she stayed for 25 years.

When she and Rod retired they enjoyed traveling with Cal and Lois Phillips, and snow birding in Mesa, Arizona. Darlene loved to volunteer her time, and did weekly at the Discovery shop in Henderson Center for over 15 years. She was also very active in her church, the Faith Center, where she attended and volunteered in the nursery. In her own words she “felt so fortunate to live in such a beautiful world her god created.”

Darlene felt extremely blessed to have an amazing husband and wonderful children. Her icing on the cake were here four grandchildren Kristen Webb, Tayler, Emily, and Justin Phillips, and later her great-grandchildren Danica Phillips and Prince Bean. She was excited to meet her newest great-grandbaby, due in late November.

Darlene went peacefully to heaven on October 18, 2022 to join her loving husband and youngest daughter Brenda.

She is survived by her two children Denise and Kevin, her grandchildren Kristen, Tayler (Brandon), Emily and Justin. Her great grandchildren Danica, Prince and Baby Bean. Her siblings Joy and Lew, and her best friend of many years Val Christensen. She is also survived by many loving family members, whom will miss her very much.

A private family interment will be held in December, followed by a celebration of life in the new year.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Darlene Phillips’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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For Humboldt makers and crafters, especially those who prefer upcycling materials, it was a sad day when beloved creative reuse store SCRAP Humboldt closed its doors. But now a new space is opening up in Old Town to fill the hole left in our hearts. 

Makers Apron – a new creative reuse center led by Kati Moulton, Eureka City Councilmember, former SCRAP director and Kinetic royalty (known to many as Kati Texas) – will soon open at 317 E Street in Old Town Eureka, selling the same types of reusable supplies that SCRAP did. 

“It’s definitely a spiritual successor to SCRAP,” Moulton told the Outpost on Thursday, as she was readying the space to open during this Saturday’s Arts Alive. 

For those who may not be familiar with SCRAP Humboldt, it was a nonprofit that carried donated items – including yarn, fabric, paints, picture frames, postcards and all sorts of random trinkets – that people could use for art, crafts or anything that they could think of! Creative reuse, also known as upcycling or repurposing, aims to reduce waste by encouraging people to find a new use for items that might ordinarily be thrown into the landfill, while also helping creative types find materials that fit into their budget. 

Kati Moulton inside the new Maker’s Apron space

When SCRAP permanently closed its doors in July, 2020, Moulton had the idea to start another reuse center to fill the need in the community. SCRAP donated some items to Moulton to help with her effort and she purchased some of SCRAP’s items too. But it was a difficult process trying things going right away (you know, a global pandemic and all that.) Luckily, Recology offered to store the stuff for Moulton and has been holding on to it for the last two years. 

In 2021, Moulton was able to launch the Makers Apron nonprofit with help from the Ink People’s DreamMaker Program. Moulton then started fundraising to help cover the costs to open the storefront. Recently Moulton met her $3,000 goal and very recently — as in, earlier this week —she officially moved into the E Street space and Recology helped move the stuff over from storage. 

Moulton wants Makers Apron to be very similar to SCRAP, with the bulk of the inventory consisting of donated supplies. But Moulton also wants to feature upcycled products from local makers. Since Old Town gets a lot of tourism and holds events like Arts Alive, Moulton thinks it makes sense to have some pre-made items that people can purchase as gifts. She also plans to stock some new items – mostly tools, like embroidery needles or crochet hooks – so that people can find everything they need to start a project. SCRAP did not usually have many tools in stock, because people don’t donate them very often. 

Moulton also wants to focus a lot on education, and has been working with some local teachers to offer creative reuse classes and workshops at local schools, clubs and other community groups. There will also be workshops and workspaces for people to craft in the storefront location. 

Once the retail and education pieces are running smoothly, Moulton also wants to focus on “community redirection of waste,” she said, which consists of making connections with local businesses to help find a use for products that they might regularly throw away, either finding an individual or another business that wants it.  

If all goes to plan, Moulton expects Makers Apron to be up and running by the end of January.  Though Moulton isn’t ready to fully open the business yet, she wanted to have something going for the December Arts Alive. So she reached out to local makers who reuse materials and will be holding a crafts and gifts pop-up in the space this Saturday, Dec. 3. From 6 to 9 p.m. 

Moulton holding a chicken headband knitted by Esther Trosow

The featured makers will include Lifestyle Art by Jess, who makes shopping bags out of plarn (yarn made from plastic bags); Esther Trosow, who knits chicken headbands and other whimsical accessories from upcycled yarn; Q Crafted, which crafts knives and other utensils from scrap metal and wood; Put a Cork in It, which makes decorations out of wine corks, and more. 

Moulton is really looking forward to opening the space to the public and is excited for the Old Town location, which she thinks will get a lot more foot traffic than the old SCRAP location on south G Street in Arcata. 

“My heart is in Arts Alive, in Old Town and in the art community supporting each other,” Moulton told the Outpost. “We can reach a lot of different parts of the community from here, that I don’t think we could [by] the Arcata Marsh.” 

Christmas has come early, Humboldt! 

More than four years in the making, the fine folks at Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate are ready to unveil their brand new chocolate factory on Eureka’s waterfront. The big reveal will take place at their new cafe storefront – 333 First Street – from 6 to 9 p.m. during this Saturday’s Arts Alive. 

There’s still a bit of work to do before the factory is fully functional. The owners, Adam Dick and Dustin Taylor, say it will take a few more months to move operations from their current Fourth Street location to their new Old Town home. Humboldt Bay Coffee roasters will move into the same building in the coming months. 

“You know, there were periods where we would refer to this place as our Never Never Land,” Taylor told the Outpost in a recent interview. “It has taken us years to get to this point, so it’s really, really exciting to see the space come together. Once we get the sidewalk done and Humboldt Bay moves in we’ll have a big block party.

The duo purchased the former Co-op building in January 2021. Its previous owners, Pierre LeFuel and Karen Banning, began renovations on the structure a little over six years ago, but those efforts ceased following LeFuel’s untimely death. Shortly after, Banning fell ill and offered to sell the building.

“The previous owners bought it and they did a lot of the rehab work … so they really gave us that launchpad to get over a lot of the structural work,” Dick said. “We’ve wanted this building for a long time, even when it still had a big huge six-foot sag in the wall and we’re like, ‘That place is cool!’ We’ve done a tremendous amount of work but the previous owners’ work was what allowed us to get it going.”

The new space is about twice as big as their current location. Down the line, they hope to expand operations even more.

“We’ve been in this limbo state with needing a bigger space and moving has really put the brakes on buying new equipment and adding more efficiencies, so this will help us further out plans of really going into bulk chocolate,” Taylor said. “Craft chocolate is really expanding all over the world and we’ve been blessed to be a part of that.”

They’re hoping to bring back tours and tasting events once things settle down and promote their lineup of chocolate confections. 

“We’re really hoping the retail and cafe experience will bring people back who haven’t participated in the tours or the tastings in the last couple of years,” Dick said. “When we first started we were more of this wholesale business and we weren’t as focused on Humboldt County and we never put that much effort in marketing here. But we’ve really pivoted and, sure enough, you people eat a lot of chocolate. … I think we’ve always wanted to do more education and make this more of a customer-facing thing.”

Dick and Taylor were kind enough to let the Outpost take a sneak peek of their new digs ahead of Saturday’s festivities. Scroll for more pictures.

At the end of a year in which Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed several bills that would have fundamentally changed how California prisons operate, CalMatters conducted a Q&A with the 2022 recipient of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology, which Stanford University’s Institute of International Studies calls “equivalent to the Nobel in criminology.”

That recipient, Francis Cullen, is a former president of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and his research has been cited tens of thousands of times. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has brought him in to address its administrators, particularly concerning community corrections programs.

Cullen discussed how California went from being an international model for rehabilitation to being a cautionary tale. Among his thoughts: This state needs to learn the difference between liberal and stupid.

This interview has been condensed for clarity and length.

Q: The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation — In its most recent update to a federal court mandate that it reduce its prison population — reported that its facilities were filled to 112% of their capacity. Even that is a big improvement over the drastic overcrowding that prompted the order. Can you help put in context how California got into this situation?

A: It used to be the model of prisons in the country. Even when Ronald Reagan was the governor of California, he cut the prison population from about 26,000 to 18,000. They used to have a big treatment orientation, they hired social workers, and basically it was at the forefront of a rehabilitative model of incarceration.

And then in the ‘60s and into the ‘70s, there was an attack on rehabilitation, for a whole bunch of reasons. But the biggest reason is, if you have a rehabilitation model, then you give a lot of discretion to judges and parole boards. In 1976, California … went to determinate sentencing, and basically gave up rehabilitation as a part of their mission. And you gotta understand, liberals went along with that, because they didn’t like parole. They felt the parole boards were keeping in people that were politically active and weren’t letting them out.

(“Rehabilitation” would be added to the prison system’s name in 2006.)

California became punitive with its politics. The things that were done, not just in California, but generally, were all justified on the notion that we want inmates to suffer. The more they suffer, the less likely they will be to reoffend, which actually isn’t true. But that was the logic. And the result, I think, was a disaster. When you get rid of rehabilitation, you take the conscience out of the system.

In California this year, we had what has been called the “Norway Prison Bill,” which would have created a pilot program in prisons, with campuses that resemble the prisons in Norway — prisoners who were chosen could cook their own meals and live in communal spaces while getting job training. Newsom vetoed it along with two other measures related to prisons. His veto message wasn’t that these won’t work. His veto message was we cannot afford to spend the money right now. How do you respond to that assertion?

It was stupid to veto that legislation for this reason: the Norway model works. Now, would it work here in the United States, where you have issues of race and other conflict in prison? We have a different population here, we have racial conflict, we have other issues. But having said that, why not do an experiment?

That is, if you did a Norway unit in our prison, you could have studied it for its effectiveness. Can I say definitively that it would have worked here? No. Do I think it would have? Yes, because the principles make sense.

We have had court cases showing that the medical treatment of inmates is insufficient and the conditions in prison are bad. The recidivism rate is high, and there’s a lot of (probation) revocations. It seems to me that arguing that we shouldn’t spend money is a pretty weak rationale. We spend money on punishment, building prisons and locking people away for a long time. So why can’t we spend money on things that are humane and effective?

The other problem with this is, if you don’t invest in people and they come out and they commit crimes, do people understand the cost of that? There was one study that looked at the cost of, if somebody is a juvenile and becomes a serious offender for a number of years, it’s like $1.3 million dollars.

Not wanting to spend money, when spending money is the only way you invest in people and make them less criminal — it saves money later on. How much is that worth to you?

California had a major prison realignment in 2011. Now, the sheriffs who run county jails say that realignment simply shifted prison populations — and prison politics and prison gangs — into jails. You’ve written, specific to realignment, that “successful downsizing must be liberal but not stupid.” What’s a liberal idea here, and what in your view is a stupid one?

What we’re basically saying by liberal is concern for social justice, not focusing on punishment. An attempt to see that crime is rooted in diverse factors, whether it’s poverty or mental health concerns, rather than saying that crime is just simply a choice, that we need to get tough.

‘Not stupid’ meant that whatever we do in the system should be evidence-based, based on the best science, so the interventions we use should be based on what what criminology has shown works to change people’s behavior.

The question is, when liberals make suggestions about what to do, are they making it based on ideology? Are they making it based on science? Are they looking at the research? Recommending programs that are not rooted in solid science can end up being stupid.

Let’s take bail reform. Now, I’m not against bail reform. There’s some evidence that it works, right? But some bail laws don’t pay enough attention to the risk that people pose. You’ve had problems in San Francisco, where they recalled the prosecutor (former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who had ended his office’s practice of asking for money bail.)

And maybe that was a bad thing to do. But if you implement bail reform that doesn’t have the support of the staff, that is going to end up letting people out who inevitably are going to commit serious crimes. That’s the kind of thing that can delegitimize liberal approaches. Now bail reform is being attacked all over the country.

So that would be an example of, did they do an empirical investigation of what the effect of bail would be? In other words, you can do bill reform scientifically, or you can do it politically.

Is that what you meant when you wrote, “The failure of past reforms aimed at decarceration stand as a sobering reminder that good intentions do not easily translate into good results.”

Yeah, one would probably be when we decided to pretty much empty and close down most mental institutions, the hospitals for the mentally ill.

We dumped a lot of people onto the street, and didn’t have services for them. And so it was a good thing that people weren’t in mental hospitals, right? But we didn’t create a system to care for those people in the community, so a lot of those people ended up on the street, homeless, in the jail system, in the criminal justice system. And we still haven’t completely dealt with that.

It’s one of the sources of homelessness. It’s not the only one, but that would be the biggest example of when we essentially de-institutionalized a whole bunch of people and then didn’t have any programs to deal with that.

The point is, even today, I mean we do have more (post-prison) reentry programs, but a lot of people we let out of prison, they have mental problems, they don’t have medicine, they don’t have a place to live, they don’t have a job. And it makes no sense to do that.

It seems, in California, that there’s an attitude that nothing works, and nothing will work, to reduce the prison population and improve rehabilitative outcomes. You’ve written about that sentiment in corrections, which you describe as a period of pessimism. Is there a feeling of helplessness when you study this issue?

(Cullen sighs.)

Corrections is sort of like trying to fight cancer. You gotta chip away at it, look for the small benefits. But over 20 years, it can make a difference.

It’s almost like no one whose responsibility it is to change what’s happening is doing anything about it. If no one takes responsibility, then it won’t change. There needs to be almost a social movement, a demand that we do prisons better. Any other business that was run like the prisons would be out of business. They’d be bankrupt.

We do not hold the wardens responsible for the recidivism rates of the people in their prisons. Think about this, okay: If you look at people who are released from prison, which would include both the people who are in for the first time and people in for the second, third, fourth time, you get 50 percent to 60 percent recidivism rates.

If you’re spending that much money and you’re having a failure rate of 60 percent, what does that cost us? Not just the money, but people injured and dying or property damaged? I mean, that degree of failure shouldn’t be acceptable. Think about a hospital where 60 percent of the people die or get worse.

What’s disappointing is that something as small as a Norway experiment can’t even be funded. It’s just gonna lead to a lot of misery inside institutions and a lot of high recidivism rates.

It’s like, you’re California! You should want a return to greatness. You should be the best in the world.

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

Donna Jean Mortimer, wife, mother and sister, passed away on November 3, 2022 at Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka. She was 64.

She is survived by her husband, Tim Mortimer, her brother Buzzy, sister Becky, brother Allen, her many nieces and nephews, and friends.

Donna is preceded in death by her son Chris, brother Robin and her mother and father.

Donna was born at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital to Bob and Eleanor Lind. From a young age she aspired to be an actress and performed in high school plays. Donna was of the Christian faith and attended the Alamar Foursquare church in Santa Barbara growing up. She also met for bible class every friday evening that was conducted by a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs, that were affilated with a different church.

Her mother passed when Donna was 13 and she moved to Sacramento to live with her father. When she eventually moved back to Southern California she was accompanied by her son. She loved being a mother to her only and late son, Christopher Michael Lind. He loved Humboldt County and encouraged her to move up North from Ventura County. She and her husband, Timothy Mortimer moved to McKinleyville in 2004. Donna managed apartment buildings and was her husband’s bookkeeper for his plumbing buisness, Mortimer Plumbing, for many years. Tim and Donna met in 1995 and were married for 27 years. She loved spending the holidays with her family and creating a festive atmosphere.

A fond memory of her husband’s was their love of watching classic black and white movies together. They loved eachother immensely. Donna will also be remembered as a go-getter with a rebel spirit, as well as for her generous heart, love of animals, quick-wit and spontaneous personality. Donna really lived in the moment and enjoyed life!

Friends, family and others are invited to a simple service celebrating Donna Mortimer’s life will be held at the Trinidad Cemetery, located at 170 Stagecoach Rd, Trinidad on Friday, December 9, 2022 at 11 a.m. The service will be conducted by Deacon John Gai. Flowers, donations and condolences may be offered at the reception that is being held at 3068 Eagle Lane in McKinleyville.

To contact Tim Mortimer, Donna’s husband, please call (805) 290-8747.

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On Nov. 30, 2022, at about 1:12 p.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies on patrol in the Hoopa area observed a vehicle associated with a wanted felony warrant suspect.

Deputies contacted the driver of the vehicle who was confirmed to be the warrant suspect, 45-year-old William Carl Moon, in the area of south Shoemaker Road. Deputies advised Moon of his outstanding warrant and attempted to place him under arrest. Moon refused to comply with deputy orders and fled on foot. Deputies pursued Moon a short distance, then deployed a department issued taser. Moon was successfully apprehended. During a search of Moon incident to arrest, deputies located approximately 1 gram of methamphetamine.

Moon was transported to a local hospital for a medical evaluation and then was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of inflicting corporal injury on a spouse (PC 273.5(a)), violating a domestic violence court order (PC 273.6(a)), resisting a peace officer (PC 148(a)(1)) and possession of a controlled substance (HS 11377(a)).

Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity 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.

As plans to bring offshore wind to the North Coast move steadily ahead, commercial fishermen are urging federal and state regulatory agencies to pump the brakes.

“I want to make one thing clear: Fishermen are not opposing [renewable] projects up here, we’re opposing the loss of thousands of miles of fishing grounds,” Ken Bates, president of the California Fishermen’s Resiliency Association (CFRA), told the Outpost in a recent interview. “Fishermen understand what’s going on with the climate. They can see what’s going on with the ocean. They get it. … That being said, we need to exercise a little bit of caution before we just throw these projects to the wind, so to speak.”

The Humboldt Wind Energy Area (WEA) is comprised of two lease areas spanning more than 200 square miles – 28 miles north to south and about 14 miles east to west – roughly 20 miles west of Eureka, smack dab in the middle of some of the most valuable fishing grounds on the entire West Coast.

“Interestingly enough, the areas that are the windiest on the California, Oregon and Washington coasts are also the areas that are most biologically productive,” Bates said. “Some of the worst ocean conditions in the world have also been recorded off the Cape Mendocino.”

Bates has relayed his concerns to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the federal agency that oversees the development of offshore renewable energy projects, but he feels commercial fishermen aren’t being heard.

“The lease area was picked by [BOEM] without input from anybody in the fishing fleet,” he said, adding that there are only a handful of fully operational floating wind turbines in the world. “Part of what fishermen are asking for is to slow down. Let’s be careful and make sure we’re not doing more damage than we’re hoping to alleviate by implementing this technology in the ocean. …We’re scrambling to try to find a way to have some input in this process.”

Travis Hunter, president of the Fisherman’s Marketing Association, said engagement with BOEM and other federal and state agencies “has been little more than a rubber stamp.”

“You know, ‘Check the box, we talked to the fishermen!’” he told the Outpost in a recent interview. “I’m not saying that there hasn’t been an opportunity for public comment; I just don’t think it’s going anywhere and our concerns aren’t being heard. … It seems like there is a push to get this done no matter what. You’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelet and, well, we’re going to be the broken eggs.”

If the offshore wind development moves forward as planned, many local fishermen – particularly the trawl and ground fishing fleets – would lose access to grounds they’ve fished for decades. 

“The trawl fleet has fished in and around the Humboldt [WEA] for generations and we’re gonna lose a lot of ground,” Hunter continued. “We may very well lose more of that area depending on how developers construct the transmission lines connecting the operation to the shore. There are a lot of unknowns in this and, sure, there are some fishermen in the area that will be much less impacted and there are mitigation measures for them, but not for all.”

Harrison Ibach, president of the Humboldt Fisherman’s Marketing Association, worries that the offshore wind development could impact upwelling, the process in which currents bring cold, nutrient-rich water from the depths of the ocean to its surface, replacing warm, nutrient-deficient water.

Preliminary results from a recent study of the Morro Bay and Humboldt Call Areas found large-scale offshore wind energy projects “[have] the potential to reduce the wind stress at the sea surface” which could adversely impact upwelling, nutrient delivery and ecosystem dynamics along the Pacific Coast. However, the study notes that changes to wind speeds in the Humboldt Bay Call Area “are substantially smaller than those seen near Morro Bay.”

“We have a very healthy ocean along our coast because we have a lot of upwelling that comes from bad weather and a lot of wind,” Ibach told the Outpost. “Fishing grounds that are that productive and that close to port are really important because you’re not looking to travel very long distances when you’re fishing in bad weather.”

As one might guess, these are the same reasons that that particular swath of sea is appealing for offshore wind development. Once construction begins, Ibach fears fleets will have to compete with developers to fish.

“We’re really concerned about the amount of traffic that will be taking place,” he said. In this case, “traffic” refers to the vessels that will be used to bring the wind turbines, which will be assembled at a full-service terminal on the Samoa Peninsula, through Humboldt Bay and out to the Humboldt WEA. “We don’t get a lot of good fishable days out of Humboldt Bay, so we may be competing with offshore wind [developers] for the best fishing weather.”

BOEM released a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) and the Final Environmental Assessment (EA) for the project earlier this year. Among other things, the FONSI determined that impacts to commercial and recreational fisheries “are expected to range from negligible to minor.”

“Marine vessels mobilizing and transiting from ports to the WEA may reduce efficiency of fishing operations due to time delays associated with congestion, but the [port] and its nearshore waters hosts a variety of marine operations and hundreds of fishers, so the expected increase in activity from project vessels would be small compared to the overall level of work,” the document states. “Potential effects to commercial fishing from the collection buoys are expected to be temporary in duration (five years or less) and would be limited to a small area of the WEA (around the buoys).”

The environmental review process still has a long way to go. After the upcoming lease auction (more on that below) BOEM will select two winning bidders. The leaseholders will then begin the “construction and operations phase” and conduct further analysis through an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) or an Environmental Impact Report (EIR).

North Coast fisheries could receive a chunk of funding from developers to make up for lost fishing grounds and other disruptions to commercial fishing efforts. 

For example, developers associated with Vineyard Wind, an offshore wind energy project currently under construction off the coast of Massachusetts, created a compensation package to reimburse impacted commercial fishermen and to fund studies and projects to improve conditions for fish in and around the facility. Developers also agreed to bury transmission cables deep enough to allow for fishing above them and to align the wind turbines in an east-west direction to better accommodate boat traffic.

The Redwood Region Climate & Community Resilience (CORE) Hub and the North Coast Offshore Wind Community Benefits Network (the Network) – a coalition of local governments, districts and agencies, tribes, environmental advocacy groups and community-based organizations – are hoping to do something similar through a bid credit package.

The bid credit package will be made available through an upcoming lease auction in which 43 separate entities, ranging from regional LLCs all the way up to energy giants like Shell, will bid for five lease areas along the West Coast, two of which are in the Humboldt WEA. To qualify for the credit package the bidder “must commit to mak[ing] a qualifying monetary contribution to programs or initiatives” that benefit the greater Humboldt County community.

“A bidder may target either workforce training, supply chain development, or a combination thereof for a 20 percent credit,” according to the Final Sale Notice (FSN) for the Humboldt WEA. “The Lease Area Use Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) bidding credit will be worth 5 percent of the cash bid. The General CBA bidding credit will be worth 5 percent of the cash bid.”

That means up to 30 percent of the final cash bid that is accepted during the upcoming auction could be set aside to offset impacts associated with offshore wind development.

However, the bid credit is not guaranteed. Bidders can choose to opt out of the credit on the Bidder’s Financial Form.

“Everybody is making this giant assumption that these credits are mandatory and they’re not,” Bates said. “It’s my personal opinion that fishermen won’t see any of that money from those bid credits because of the restrictive language in [the CBA]. … I wouldn’t bet on it for a second.”

Instead of counting on financial relief for fisheries, Bates suggested a three-pronged approach: avoidance, minimization and mitigation.

“What can we do to avoid the impacts that we perceive are coming?” he asked. “Part of that might be in the short-term, such as limiting wind power areas across California for the next five years or so until we see how this stuff works. … Another part of ‘avoidance’ would be working with fisheries to try to locate areas that are more important than others, but that’s always been controversial because fish move and fishermen move with them.”

The second piece, “minimization,” would seek to reduce impacts associated with offshore wind. The California Fishermen’s Resiliency Association is working on a list of things that developers and fisheries can do to work together to minimize impacts.

“That includes things like seasonality and when they might be moving turbine units on and off the fishing grounds,” Bates said. “Or, the route of the cable lanes. These turbine arrays are going to have multiple cables – anywhere from five to 12 cables – and they have to be far apart.”

The final component is “mitigation,” he said. “Mitigation is when you can’t figure out any other way to fix the problem you’ve created. At that point, it comes down to cash and that will just be a bandaid.”

BOEM did not respond to the Outpost’s request for comment regarding the fishing fleet’s apprehension.

The County of Humboldt, on the other hand, acknowledged the fleet’s “legitimate concerns about access to fishing grounds and other impacts of offshore wind development,” and emphasized the importance of a robust public process.

“While the County has little direct control over the offshore wind development process, we have been working hard to represent and support local residents, communities, and industries to ensure that offshore wind development provides community benefits, minimizes and mitigates any unavoidable impacts, and generates significant economic opportunity for the region,” Humboldt County spokesperson Sean Quincey wrote in a recent email to the Outpost. “Offshore wind energy is a key strategy to fight global climate change, and we look forward to working directly with project developers to build a sustainable approach in conjunction with local and regional stakeholders.”

The Dec. 6 lease auction is the next big step for offshore wind development. The provisional winners and the winning bid amounts will be published shortly after the auction. 

Once the post-auction review is completed sometime in March 2023, BOEM will send off three unsigned copies of the lease to each provisionally winning bidder who must sign the lease agreement, file financial assurance and pay off any outstanding balance of their bonus bid within 10 days.

“At least we’ll know what companies we’re dealing with at that point,” Bates said. “Our position is to try to work with these potential developers [to] avoid as many impacts as possible. That’s where we are right now.”

More information on the lease auction can be found here.

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DOCUMENTS:

• Proposed Sale Notice Comments to BOEM
• BOEM Final Sale Notice
• Final Environmental Assessment

PREVIOUSLY:

• Biden Administration Proposes Offshore Wind Lease Sale, Including Two Spots Off the Humboldt County Coast
• IT’S ON: Humboldt Offshore Wind Leases to Go Up For Auction on Dec. 6
• Harbor District Announces Massive Offshore Wind Partnership; Project Would Lead to an 86-Acre Redevelopment of Old Pulp Mill Site
• Offshore Wind is Coming to the North Coast. What’s in it For Humboldt?