Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:
On March 16, 2023, at about 7:35 p.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a multi-residence property on Ole Hanson Road near Eureka for the report of an assault.
Moran.
Deputies arrived at the property and located an 18-year-old female victim with serious facial injuries. The victim was transported to a local hospital for medical treatment. During their investigation, deputies learned that the suspect, 54-year-old Bernelle Fay Moran, reportedly forced entry onto the property. Moran reportedly threatened multiple individuals on the property and then attacked the victim with a metal bar in the presence of a small child. The child did not sustain physical injuries from this incident. [The suspect] fled prior to deputy arrival.
While investigating, deputies received information that Moran was in the area of the 1700 block of Anderson Avenue in McKinleyville. Moran was located and taken into custody without incident.
[The suspect] was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm (PC 245(a)(1)), child endangerment (PC 273A(b)), criminal threats (PC 422), exhibiting a deadly weapon (PC 417(a)(1)), burglary (PC 459/461(a)), battery with serious bodily injury (PC 243(d)) and entering a property without consent (PC 602.5).
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.
A 9.5-megawatt floating wind turbine deployed at the Kincardine Offshore Wind project, located off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland. Photo: Principle Power.
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The wind resource beyond Humboldt Bay is among the best in the United States, with strong, consistent wind speeds that are ideal for commercial development. There’s just one problem: electrical transmission.
Getting the power from the floating offshore turbines to the shore is one thing; getting the power to communities throughout the region and across the state is another. Wind developers can run big, subsea cables from their offshore wind projects to land with relative ease, but once that power comes ashore it encounters an electrical grid that wasn’t designed to handle it.
Image: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)
The Humboldt Wind Energy Area (WEA), located approximately 20 miles west of Eureka, will host as many as 100 floating wind turbines across 200 square miles of deep ocean waters. The Humboldt WEA will capture a mere fraction of the state’s renewable energy potential. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates the state’s offshore winds “have the technical potential to produce … approximately 150 percent of California’s annual electricity load.”
The problem is, local capacity is extremely limited, and the North Coast region is relatively isolated from California’s electrical load centers. As you can see in the map below, there are only a handful of transmission lines running in and out of Humboldt County, none of which have the capacity to accommodate the power generated by a commercial offshore wind development.
California’s power grid. Thicker lines = higher capacity transmission. Zoom in for greater detail. Data: California Energy Commission.
Matthew Marshall, executive director of Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA), likened the state’s electrical transmission system to a network of roads, offramps and highways. The highways, or bigger transmission lines, can carry more electricity.
“Here in Humboldt, we’ve got little two-lane, winding roads like State Route 36 going in and out of the county, but what we need is, like, Interstate 5 through Los Angeles, because the potential for power generation is at a state level of significance,” Marshall explained. “It’s an exciting opportunity for us, not only to meet our own climate goals but to be an exporter of clean power and to help further the state’s goals. It’s going to be a huge undertaking, not to just build the wind farms but to also build up the infrastructure needed to handle the power being generated.”
In fact, parts of the county are already at capacity. Late last year, Pacific Gas and Electric informed the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors that it had all but reached its limits to transmit electricity to new projects throughout the Eel River Valley and Southern Humboldt.
“That line that travels south through the county is very small and it needs upgrades to provide more service,” Marshall said. “When we look at offshore wind and the scale of our energy use here, there is no way our existing infrastructure can accommodate the energy the offshore wind farm will produce. Our local energy demand is, like, 10 percent of what the Humboldt [WEA] could generate.”
Upgrading the line from 60 kilovolts (kV) to 115 kV would alleviate existing transmission limitations, said Arne Jacobson, executive director of the Schatz Energy and Research Center at Cal Poly Humboldt, “but it won’t be big enough for what is required for large-scale offshore wind development.”
“There are basically three state agencies involved in the energy transmission aspect of offshore wind: the California Energy Commission (CEC), the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the California Independent System Operator (CAISO),” Jacobson explained.“The CPUC issued a decision at the end of February to order reliability procurements. Essentially what it’s doing is ordering the CAISO to develop transmission lines for offshore wind.”
CAISO, the entity that manages the flow of electricity on high-voltage powerlines and oversees infrastructure planning across the state, estimates the total cost of transmission development over the next 20 years – including transmission line and substation upgrades across the state – to clock in at a staggering $30.5 billion.
The report, 20-Year Transmission Outlook, notes that some existing transmission lines could be used for the Morro Bay WEA but the North Coast area will need “significant” upgrades to integrate offshore wind into the state’s grid.
“To facilitate the interconnection of the 4,000 MW of offshore wind in the North Coast to the ISO system, the ISO identified the need for two 500 kV [alternating current] lines connecting to the Fern Road 500 kV substation and a [high-voltage direct current] line to the Collinsville 500/230 kV substation,” the report states. “One other alternative considered in the ISO’s 2021-2022 Transmission Plan is a … deep sea cable to a new station referred to as Bay-hub located in the Greater Bay Area.”
In simpler terms, the state could increase capacity by upgrading the main transmission lines for the region – one coming in from Cottonwood to the east and the other from Laytonville to the south – or connect directly to the San Francisco Bay Area via subsea cable.
“We’re probably going to need two out of those three options to accommodate the power that will be generated by the offshore wind farm,” Marshall said. “There are other options, like, what if we went up to Oregon instead? Wind energy areas are being developed for Oregon as well. Whether we connect to a larger western grid of the California grid is definitely not decided yet. It’s probably a 10-year process between planning and permitting and then, eventually, construction.”
The future sit of the Humboldt Wind Energy Area. Map: BOEM
Another report, Transmission Opportunities for California North Coast Offshore Wind, Vol. 1: Executive Summary conducted by the folks at the Schatz Center, explores options for offshore wind development that fit within the bounds of the region’s existing transmission infrastructure. However, the study notes that “developing an economically viable offshore wind project at a small scale is challenging.” The alternatives identified in the study were projected to have financial losses over the project’s lifetime.
“While the wind resource could enable [the] development of large-scale wind farms, the existing transmission infrastructure limits the size of projects in the absence of significant investment in transmission upgrades,” according to the report. “An initial option for [the] establishment of an offshore wind industry in the region could involve [the] development of one or more small commercial wind projects that are scaled to match local loads and transmission capacity, requiring only modest investments in new transmission infrastructure.”
Marshall spoke in favor scaled approach because it would prioritize local energy needs.
“I think there’s a lot of that’s a desirable outcome to meet our local goals and potentially hit those targets for clean, renewable energy sooner rather than later,” he said. “Doing it that way, we can also learn and make sure there aren’t unanticipated environmental impacts. … But, even if it’s not entirely done in phases, the developers can’t just snap their fingers and suddenly there are a hundred turbines in the ocean. There’s going to have to be a sequential deployment because it will take a while to get the projects fully built out because of the sheer size and scale of the effort.”
Even so, state and federal lawmakers are trying to expedite the process.
“This is going to take many years,” Rep. Jared Huffman told the Outpost in a recent phone interview. “Anyone who thinks that we are very close to manufacturing these huge turbines, getting the clean power onto the grid and adding these thousands of jobs might be disappointed. This is going to take close to a decade to really bring it all forward, but I’m hoping we can speed that up.”
However, the development of offshore wind is completely dependent on California’s transmission capabilities. Those issues must be resolved before offshore wind can move forward, Huffman said.
“The developers don’t know how many of these floating platforms they’ll even be able to install until they know whether there’s enough transmission to move the power onto the grid,” he continued. “To me, that’s by far the most important bottleneck here. Until you have all that figured out, you really don’t know a lot about the economics of the project. When you’re trying to negotiate community benefits and other things, you can begin those conversations now, but you can’t sign on the dotted line until you know how big the project is, how much it’s going to cost, how profitable it’s going to be. It all depends on all of these details that tie back to questions about transmission.”
There are several bills moving through the California legislature that would ease the implementation of offshore wind and electrical transmission efforts across the state, including AB 3, AB 50, AB 80, AB 344, SB 286 and SB 319.
AB 50, introduced by Assemblyman Jim Wood, would ensure that large electric corporations adhere to electric connectivity timeframes.
“We can’t reach our housing and climate goals and expand local economies if utility companies can’t meet the demand for electricity when it is required,” Wood said. “My bill, AB 50, looks to improve the planning process for meeting the state’s electrification goals, which will be crucial in ensuring the North Coast has the infrastructure to support the development of offshore wind farms as well as to meeting California’s critical housing and climate goals.”
Similarly, state Senator Mike McGuire’s bill, SB 319, would implement “a long-term fix-it plan for [PG&E’s] antiquated system.”
“PG&E has been underinvesting in their infrastructure for decades, putting profits over people, and our communities are paying the price. This simply can’t stand,” McGuire wrote in an emailed statement. “That’s why we’re advancing critical legislation, SB 319, that would force PG&E to do their actual damn job connecting homes, businesses and green power projects with safe and reliable distribution and transmission lines.”
Marshall added that RCEA will continue to engage at the regulatory level to advocate for local interests.
“We want to make sure [this project] doesn’t end up just being a flyover situation where they build the wind farms and build a giant 500-kV line that just takes the power straight from the ocean and down to the Bay Area,” he said. “That would be the worst-case scenario. … To use my road analogy, it would be a shame if this brand-new highway doesn’t have any off-ramps. Hopefully, there will be local benefits as well as an investment in our community infrastructure and power grid. That would be a win-win.”
[CORRECTION: This post originally stated that the Humboldt WEA could potentially produce more than 150 percent of the state’s current demand for electricity. It has been corrected. The Outpost regrets this error.]
Multiple news outlets are reporting that McKinleyville resident Jeffery Woodke, who was taken hostage in Niger in 2016, has been released. (See: CNN, NYT, Axios, etc.)
Woodke, a graduate of Humboldt State, was an instructor at the Redwood School of Missions when he embarked on a Christian mission in the largely Muslim West African country.
It is not yet known exactly who took Woodke, news outlets report, though Woodke’s wife — Els Woodke, who still lives in McKinleyville — said that she believed an affiliate of Al Qaeda was behind the kidnapping, a 2021 Associated Press story reported.
Woodke is reportedly receiving medical evaluation in the country’s capital at the moment.
I’m gratified & relieved to see the release of U.S. hostage Jeff Woodke after over 6 years in captivity. The U.S. thanks Niger for its help in bringing him home to all who miss & love him. I thank so many across our government who’ve worked tirelessly toward securing his freedom.
A recent court ruling that favored gig work companies may have a silver lining for pro-labor groups.
Last Monday, a California appeals court ruled that Proposition 22 — a 2020 ballot measure that allowed Uber, Lyft, and other platforms to classify their workers as independent contractors rather than employees — was largely constitutional, reversing much of a lower court ruling.
But the court found that one part of the proposition wasn’t valid.
It’s a part that defined legislation on certain subjects, including unionization for app-based drivers, as amendments to the proposition. And amendments, the proposition declares, need to pass by a seven-eights majority vote of the Legislature. That super, super, super-duper majority is a steep climb.
“If the Legislature wanted to enact collective bargaining legislation today, it would be free to do so by a simple majority,” said Stacey Leyton, an attorney with Altshuler Berzon, a law firm representing the drivers and Service Employees International Union in challenging the ballot measure.
Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California, said that the drivers the union works with have “motivation and fire behind them” with the possibility of being able to unite with their coworkers and bargain collectively. Orr said there are several options that the drivers are considering in the wake of the ruling, and pursuing legislation that would allow drivers to unionize “certainly is one of them.”
But a lawyer representing the Protect App-Based Drivers and Services coalition, which includes Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart and is defending Prop. 22 in court, saw the Monday decision slightly differently.
If the Legislature passed a new collective bargaining law for app-based drivers by less than a seven eights vote, it could be challenged in court “and it would be up to a court to decide at that point if it is an amendment or not,” said Kurt Oneto, an attorney with Nielsen Merksamer, who is representing the coalition.
When reached for comment, Uber referred CalMatters to its statement about driver independence from earlier in the week.
What exactly a union representing app-based drivers could negotiate over — if the rest of Prop. 22 stands — is also potentially up for debate. The initiative established minimum pay for the time between when a driver accepts a ride or delivery and when they complete it, for example. So could a union bargain over drivers’ wages?
“To the extent that Proposition 22 establishes minimums, a union could bargain to go above those minimums,” said Leyton. Unions often negotiate wages that are above wages in minimum wage law, she said, “so I would think that a collective bargaining law could authorize that.” But, she said, there could be a legal battle over that.
If lawmakers did pass a law allowing gig workers to unionize, that could also face challenges in court, said Catherine Fisk, a law professor at UC Berkeley who filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the union and drivers challenging Prop. 22. For example, gig companies could argue that collective bargaining by workers who are not employees is price fixing that violates antitrust law, she said.
The case (probably) isn’t over yet
The fight in the courts over Prop. 22 likely isn’t over, though, and being in legal limbo impacts the political calculus around passing new laws.
If either side appeals the recent ruling, and the California Supreme Court decides to hear the case, it could still strike down Prop. 22 in its entirety or uphold the whole thing, effectively rendering Monday’s ruling moot.
“That leads me to wonder whether there will be a serious push for legislation until that is resolved,” said Fisk.
The chairperson of the state Senate labor committee, Dave Cortese, doesn’t plan to take action until the case is resolved. “While we are disappointed by the court’s ruling, we are optimistic that the rights of rideshare and delivery drivers will be vindicated by the California Supreme Court. It would be premature to move legislation as we await that determination,” the Campbell Democrat said in a statement. “Regardless of the outcome in court, we will not stand for wealthy corporations buying their way out of labor laws and we are committed to pursuing all options to ensure app-based workers are protected.”
His counterpart leading the Assembly labor committee, San Jose Democrat Ash Kalra, said in a statement: “The fight to recognize gig workers as employees who deserve full protection under our labor laws is not over. As Chair of the Assembly Committee on Labor & Employment, I will continue to monitor the issue and explore all legislative options on the table.”
The clearest path for drivers to have full rights and the ability to vote for their own union would be for Prop. 22 to be struck down in its entirety, said Nicole Moore, president of Rideshare Drivers United, an association of rideshare drivers. That’s why “it’s absolutely critical that this ruling not be allowed to stand,” she said.
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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.
As I understand it, the reason most anti-abortion activists take the
stand they do is that they believe abortion is murder. And
that is based on their notion of “ensoulment,” that life begins
at conception when a bunch of rapidly-dividing pre-blastocyst cells
(the zygote) is endowed with a soul, and is therefore a person.
(After seven days, the excitement settles down into a more organized
clump, the blastocyst.) The great majority of those supposedly
soul-encrusted cells die without any human intervention: many fail to
glom onto the wall of the uterus, while of those that do, about half
are miscarried, without anyone being any the wiser. That is, most of
the supposedly ensouled zygotes never make it to first base. But
still, a few do, leading to the idea that to willfully abort a
growing set of cells anytime after conception is tantamount to
murder.
(Incidentally, talking about a “moment of conception” is a
misnomer, since fertilization takes about 24 hours.)
Week-old human (ensouled?) blastocyst. (J. Conaghan, National Institutes of Health, public domain)
If “ensoulment at conception” to justify a pro-life stance sounds
a bit ad hoc — it’s because it is. It’s certainly not found in
the Bible, which is understandable, given that two thousand and more
years ago, pregnancy wasn’t understood as the result of fertilization
of a female egg by a male spermatozoon. Aristotle, for instance,
thought that the only role for the female in the process of creating
new life was to provide a nest for the developing embryo — a man’s
semen was all she needed. He, and presumably anyone influenced by
Greek philosophy, certainly believed in ensoulment, except it
happened later: 40 days after conception for male fetuses and 90 days
after conception for female fetuses.
If Christians are to fall back on the Bible to justify banning
abortions, shouldn’t they be checking what it actually has to say
about the start of life? Like, Genesis 2:7, which says it’s all about
breath: “And the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living soul.” Breath equates with life. Not coincidentally,
this followed the ancient Greek concept of pneuma (breath),
which held that life only starts when breathing starts…nine months
after conception.
FWIW, wise old Saint Augustine, who had clearly thought this through
1700 years ago, wrote, “I have not been able to discover in the
accepted books of Scripture anything at all certain about the origins
of the soul.”
Rather than falling back on religion (not as found in the Bible but
as taught by the Catholic church hundreds of years later) shouldn’t
we be facing the issue of abortion in the light of what we know now,
not what was believed out of ignorance 2000 years ago? For instance:
About 1 in 4 women in the US have had an abortion. Of those, 60%
already have a child, half of whom have two or more children.
46% of those women who have abortions are single.
Abortion isn’t generally seen as a form of birth control: for 58%
of women getting an abortion, it’s their first one
A sexually active woman who ends up with two children has to dodge
nearly 30 pregnancies in her fertile lifetime if she wants to avoid
having an abortion
Women living below the poverty line account for half of all
abortions in the US (the only country in the “first world” that
doesn’t mandate paid family leave).
Women want abortions for many reasons, beyond the more obvious ones
of incest and rape, including: knowing they have mentally or
physically compromised fetuses, economic hardship, failed or
destructive relationships, health risks, and taking care of other
children.
Legislating against abortion won’t end it, based on pre-Roe vs. Wade
history. It will only make it more dangerous.
61% of Americans say abortion should be legal, according to a 2022
Pew survey.
Oh, and no one’s actually seen a soul, in case that makes any
difference.
Unfortunately, the
people making the anti-abortion laws are almost entirely white,
well-off men far removed from the plight of a desperate woman who is
often poor and unmarried. They’re also ignorant, as when Texas
governor Greg Abbott boasted that rape would be eliminated in his
state, so abortions wouldn’t be necessary. Which reminded me of this:
“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to
shut that whole thing down.” (Todd Akin, Missouri Republican and
Senate candidate.)
Joe Biden pilots an electric Humvee. Photo: White House. Public domain.
This week, Colin Fiske of Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities and Matt Simmons of EPIC join the show to talk about why the race to electrify cars and trucks isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to our climate woes. More - and larger - electric vehicles mean more mining lithium for batteries, which comes with social and environmental costs. And the more vehicles on our streets, the more dangerous those streets are for people walking and biking. One solution is building more housing close to where people work, shop, and study, so that we can free ourselves from auto dependency.
Jennifer May demos the 14 Sacred Mushrooms at Murphy’s. Photos courtesy 14 Sacred Mushrooms.
Mushrooms.
Some
people hate them because they taste earthy and spongy. Other people
love them for the same reasons. Jennifer May, 45, loves to make them
into a powder, mix them with spices and cacao, and sell it for you
to mix into hot drinks. She calls it 14 Sacred Mushrooms.
Originally
from Pennsylvania, May came to Humboldt County for the first time
when she was 22 years old. It was on a camping trip where she
realized that she needed to leave the East Coast and seek out the
next step in her path. It took her two months and following the band
Phish on tour to get her here.
May
originally had the intention of returning back east, but quickly found
a sense of community. She started a gig at the Bayshore Mall, where
she met her husband, and decided to stay for a while. After a few
months of dating, it became difficult to stay in the harsh Humboldt
economy of the early 2000s, so they left.
Life
took them away to Tahoe, Washington, and North Carolina as they began
to have children. They did not believe they could ever return, but
they still had ties here. Then 11 years ago, a few close friends
began to renovate a house and invited May and her family. They could
not resist so they returned with nothing but the clothes on their
backs and two kids in tow.
“We
had to live super simply,” May said.”It was some of the best
years of our lives. We didn’t have a lot and we just played in the
forest.”
Over
the years, May did photography for Coastal Grove Charter School and
provided child care, but naturally, kids grow up and things change.
May’s experience here has thematically been, “a struggle.” Maybe the Humboldt Hustle in reality is the Humboldt Struggle.
For
May, it came in two particular ways — her health and her finances.
She
felt as though all of her focus was revolving around taking
supplements so she began studying naturopathic medicine. She came
across the book, Christopher Hobbs’s Medicinal Mushrooms: The
Essential Guide: Boost Immunity, Improve Memory, Fight Cancer, Stop
Infection, and Expand Your Consciousness and decided to go all in
on mushrooms.
May
found a farmer in Washington who grows, powders and sells the 14
different types of mushrooms she was looking for. She then began
mixing and playing with ratios of spices, cacao and mushroom por
until she found her ideal replacement for coffee — or, in some cases, as
a supplement to it. She began to share her mushroom cacao blend with
friends and people were responding well to it.
Then
the struggle came in the form of veterinarian bills for the family
dog, which they could not afford. Quickly, May decided to start a
fundraiser where she would sell her mushroom cacao blends to pay for
the bills. From that, 14 Sacred Mushrooms was born.
May
rented out a kitchen to package her mixes and started selling them out
of our local grocers, including Murphy’s Markets, Eureka Natural
Foods and North Coast Co-Op. You might find her at one of these
stores demo-ing her cacao blends or selling at our local farmers
markets. [CORRECTION: Oops, not at the Farmers’ Markets. Yet! — Ed.]
14
Sacred Mushrooms has already expanded to Andy’s Produce Market in
Sebastopol, markets in Santa Rosa, and Shelton’s Natural Foods Market
in Healdsburg. May has plans to launch a website to make it easier to
find her product but for now, she has just started to use Instagram.
May
often refers to the mycelium found in mushrooms. Mycelium is a
root-like structure of a fungus consisting of a mass of branching or
hyphae that grows underground but can also thrive in other places
such as rotting tree trunks.
It
looks like webbing, but for fungi.
May
describes this webbing or networks of mycelium similarly to how she
views Humboldt as a community — all interconnected and eager to
thrive.
“Mushrooms
are our allies and they have a lot to teach us,” May said.
