PREVIOUSLY: Will Eureka Finally See Development on the Big Gravel Lots by the Boardwalk? City Looks to Declare the Parcels Surplus and Seek Proposals for Mixed-Use Project.

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After 30 years of failed attempts, the City of Eureka is embarking on yet another effort to revitalize a cluster of vacant parcels along the city’s waterfront.

The Eureka Planning Commission adopted a resolution on Monday to declare these city-owned parcels “surplus,” in accordance with the California Land Surplus Act, to allow the city to lease or sell the properties to make way for mixed-use development.

The three parcels in question occupy a four-and-three-quarter-acre stretch along the boardwalk between the C and F street plazas. The land is zoned waterfront commercial, which also allows hotels and motels as principally permitted uses. With a conditional use permit, the properties could also include professional offices, warehouses, multi-family units and upper-floor residences.

The sites may be developed individually or merged into one or two parcels, but the development must contain a minimum of 95 dwelling units ranging from “affordable” to “very low income” according to the most recent housing element of the city’s General Plan, Principal Planner Kristen Goetz explained.

Commissioner Delores Freitas asked if there were other sites available in the city for affordable to very-low-income housing. 

“If somebody has a site that’s willing to talk with us about [the city] having site control over it in one manner or another we would certainly be open to the opportunity to talk with them,” Goetz said. “They just need to keep in mind that it’s got to support a certain number of housing units and density requirements, be in the proper zoning district, those kinds of things. But we’re absolutely happy to talk to somebody about any site that they might have that’s available.”

Commissioner Michael Kraft asked if the parcels would be primarily used for affordable to very-low-income housing or if “visitor-serving mixed-used” was still on the table. “Are we still talking, potentially, about housing on the second floor and mixed-use below?” he asked.

“The RFP … will be going out very soon for all of the 11 remaining sites, not including the LINC Housing sites,” Goetz said. “Generally, I think that the descriptions for these sites are going to include …  mixed-use structures, probably not covering all three of the lots entirely, but with green space and open space and housing above [with] various kinds of mixed uses, not just retail. … We’ll have to just wait and see what developers come back with.”

Speaking during public comment, Eureka resident Dan Dion urged the city to develop the parcels, noting that “these particular properties are on the edge of blight and [are] in miserable condition.” He added that turning the vacant lots into housing would be “an incredibly sensible proposal.”

Adam Dick, co-owner of Dick Taylor Craft Chocolates, agreed that something ought to be done with the lots but asked the city to reconsider potential development on the parcel that runs parallel to the waterfront.

“I will first make it clear that I obviously have a bias in how this all develops,” Dick said, noting that his business sits on a property adjacent to the parcel in question. “When I look at these three parcels, the one that I really feel that the city should hold on to, or really reconsider the use of, is the one that parallels the boardwalk. Obviously, significant development there would affect the view – that’s fine. … But by the time you put an access corridor through there, potentially a two-way street, angled parking [and] sidewalks, you’ve really eaten into a gigantic portion of that piece of property and there isn’t a lot left for development closer to the boardwalk.”

Dick also expressed concern about building height and subsequent shading along the boardwalk. “Anything built too tall right next to the boardwalk will shade it for significant portions of the year and it’ll be really, really cold,” he said.

Robert Maxon, owner of Globe Properties in Eureka, manages properties throughout Eureka and has an office on First Street, near HealthSport. Maxon recalled the previous efforts by the city to revitalize the vacant lots, including its most recent attempt in 2016 which resulted in several potential project designs that were never realized.

“[There’s] nothing but potential for what could happen down there,” Maxon said. “When this project came before the commission [a few years ago] it was really surprising that it was so heavily weighted towards housing when previously – through the design charrette and everything – there were all these other ideas. … There was a lot of talk about hotels, housing, the parking that would be required for those kinds of things and how quickly the parking could eat up potential space. I think we do need housing down there, but it’s gonna be very important to have that mix.”

Maxon credited the city for taking the time to fix the city’s General Plan and Local Coastal Plan (LCP) before launching a request for proposals (RFP) for the project. “Let’s just keep moving forward,” he said.

Greg Pierson, president of the Pierson Company, also has connections to Eureka’s waterfront through Bayfront One, a mixed-use development on First and F Streets. He acknowledged the importance of creating more housing in Eureka but asked: “Why is our boardwalk the best place to do it?”

Pierson | Screenshot

“I worked with the city to provide property for low-income housing on the Sunset parcel with the idea that that was taking care of the low-income housing needs of the community,” Pierson said. “Now I’m seeing that the boardwalk is being possibly slated for 95 more very low-income housing units. … I’m just wondering what’s driving that because I don’t understand it and I think the community needs to understand what is required [and] what is available within the city inventory to meet those needs.”

Following public comment, Freitas said she had mixed feelings about how the parcels should be developed. “I am totally in support of it conceptually,” she said. “It is a little bit bittersweet knowing that so many people wanted so many different things for the site and it is such a prime site in the city and we just haven’t found a way in the last eight years since we did visioning to achieve some of those other dreams.”

She acknowledged Pierson’s call for more community involvement in the development process and encouraged residents to share their concerns with city staff.

Kraft agreed, noting that “the rubber meets the road at the RFP” and encouraged citizens reach out ahead of the RFP process.

“Staff is [currently] putting together a draft of that RFP,” Goetz said. “It will go to the city council, I’m shooting for the first meeting in April. That would be a time when members of the public can provide comments, either to the council in written form before the meeting or come to the meeting and provide comments at the meeting. Staff is happy to listen to any thoughts or ideas that folks have.”

After a bit more conversation, Freitas made a motion to approve staff’s recommendation to declare the city-owned parcels “surplus,” which was seconded by Kraft. The motion passed in a unanimous 4-0 vote, with Vice-Chair Craig Benson absent.

The Eureka City Council is expected to discuss the item early next month.

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At the beginning of Monday’s meeting, Commission Chair Meredith Maier noted that staff had removed an item from the agenda that would declare another Old Town parcel as surplus. Formerly home to the Liberty movie theater, the 3,145-square-foot brick building, known as Nealis Hall, now houses an annex to the Clark Historical Museum next door. The Outpost noted in a previous story that if the building were to be declared surplus by the city, it could be acquired by the museum for continued use as an annex, or it could be remodeled into something else entirely.

Well, that news prompted the Clarke Historial Museum to issue a call to action via social media to save the museum. A subsequent Instagram post noted that the City of Eureka agreed to pull the item from the commission’s agenda as a result of public outcry and “the Clarke team taking action.”

Good work, everyone! Nealis Hall is safe!

HUMBOLDT TODAY: Humboldt’s flood waters are expected to recede and there may even be consecutive days of sunshine, if you can believe. Plus, four people have been arrested on child pornography charges. And the latest on California’s canceled salmon season. Those stories and more on today’s newscast with John Kennedy O’Connor.

FURTHER READING: 

• Beloved LoCO Mascot ‘Coney’ Has Been Fully Assimilated Into the Caltrans Borg
• HUMBOLDT CONVERSATIONS: Catching Up With New County Clerk/Recorder/Registrar Juan Pablo Cervantes
• Student Housing: State’s Promise to Build More Dorms Hits Setbacks
• No California Salmon: Fishery to Be Shut Down This Year
• As Emergency Aid Flows to Flooded-Out Californians, Will Cannabis Farmers Be Left Out?

HUMBOLDT TODAY can be viewed on LoCO’s homepage each night starting at 6 p.m.

Want to LISTEN to HUMBOLDT TODAY? Subscribe to the podcast version here.

Well, here’s something.

Coney warning LoCO readers about poor highway road conditions in January 2016.

Longtime LoCO readers no doubt hold a special place in their heart for “Coney,” the beloved road conditions spokesperson who made his debut in these pages in January 2016, as best we can tell.

Coney was a smash viral hit for a while there, and Outpost readers came to depend on the goofy dude for stable, sober road condition updates when required. To this day, you can still see his phiz cluttering up the LoCO Highways page.

Back then Coney was so popular, in fact, that Caltrans HQ wrote to ask us to use his brilliant image in their internal communications. LoCO granted this request, and maintain in our legal files examples of such communications dated October 2017, with proper attribution. (See, inter alia, here and here.)

This asshole. Image: Caltrans.

Coney went quiet for awhile. There were rumors around the office that he did a stint at a Beverley Hills rehab facility, fame having been thrust on him at a too-tender age. We don’t want to talk about it.

But then recently we got word that Caltrans had got itself a new mascot, and … whaddaya know! Rising up from the sewers like the underground-dwellers in Us comes the dipshit you see on your right! 

“What on Earth is that abomination?” you ask. “Did they learn nothing from Poochie?” Great questions. The answers: That abomination is a thing that Caltrans is calling “Safety Sam,” and no they did not.

“Safety Sam.” Cool hat, bro!

“Safety Sam” got his name from a statewide Caltrans contest open to young people. A precocious Huntington Beach child was declared the winner, after that child’s name was drawn from a hat filled with the names of 27 children to submit “Safety Sam” into the contest.

So get used to “Safety Sam,” everyone! He’s going to be clogging up all your socials soon, and there is even a six-foot tall animatronic version of him that they’re going to wheel out to special events to terrify babies with.

Yesterday, the Outpost caught up with Juan Pablo Cervantes, the county’s new Clerk-Recorder/Registrar of Voters, to see how his tenure in the office has gone so far.

Cervantes spoke with the Outpost’s John Kennedy O’Connor about a wide range of subjects, including ranked-choice voting, campaign finance reform and how he’s managing the clerk-recorder section of his bifurcated office — a relatively blank area of his resume, which garnered him some criticism on the campaign trail last year.

Video above. Transcript below.

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JOHN KENNEDY O’CONNOR:

Well, I’m really pleased to welcome to Lost Coast Outpost.com Juan Pablo Cervantes, who’s the County Clerk Recorder and Registrar of Voters. Actually very new in the position: Last time we spoke you were actually in the election process, so congratulations on winning that election.

Now during that election your opponent did make a bit of a campaign issue with the fact that you had a lot of election experience but you didn’t have much in terms of the County Clerk Recorder. So how has that side of it been going for you since you’ve been elected? 

JUAN PABLO CERVANTES:

It’s been great. Going well. One of the other candidates in the race early on, Ben Herschberger, was promoted as interim manager. And so he’s been overseeing the day-to-day operations. I help when it comes to the vision or the broader outlook of where the office is going and how it’s transitioning. But a lot of my work right now is catching up in those places. I have a pretty strong confidence in my knowledge here [in the Elections Office]. It’s picking up where I’m weak, which is over there.

O’CONNOR:

Now, there was an election last week, actually, in the southern part of the county, but there’s a lot of elections coming up. So what’s coming up in the future?

CERVANTES:

So there’s potential elections. There’s a November district election that tends to not go to election because there’s not enough candidates for the special district or school board seats. And so that’s potentially coming up in November. And then beyond that, it’s election season 2024. Presidential. And so we’ll have a party primary and then a general. 

O’CONNOR:

Now, the City of Eureka did pass what’s called the Ranked Choice Voting Ordinance in 2020 ,but it wasn’t able to be implemented since we didn’t have the technology. Has that situation changed now?

CERVANTES:

Yeah, we’re working with the … the technology is currently being certified by the Secretary of State so our vendor, Hart Intercivic, based out of Austin, Texas is working on a tabulation component of it. Now, tabulation is is the math part of election. So we have a hardware and software that does everything but the math part of it. That’s at the end. That’s the thing that will generate results for us. And so they’re currently working with the Secretary of State to certify the system to do so.

O’CONNOR:

So will it be implemented for this year’s election cycle?

CERVANTES:

That’s the goal. We’ll know shortly.

O’CONNOR:

We saw it actually in practice last week at the Board of Supervisors meeting. It didn’t go particularly well, because I think they were very confused. So is there going to be an education process that people will really understand, voters will understand exactly how it really works?

CERVANTES:

I’m hoping to coordinate with the city of Eureka on that. I’m open to administering almost any type of election process, so long as it’s legal and it doesn’t disenfranchise voters. Ranked choice voting is one of those things that I could go either way.

And the thing that makes the difference is the education component of it. Voters need to not be surprised when they get their ballot. The instruction booklet that we give them with their ballot should not be how they learn how to use ranked choice voting. It’s critical for us to start developing an educational campaign today. And that can involve every stage of the process. We need to be out in schools and talking to the high school kids that are going to be first-time voters. We need to be out in the community. We need to be looking at the local stakeholders, communities of interest. And we need to be out there showing them the process, doing mock elections, just making it something that people are comfortable with when the time comes for them to cast their one vote.

O’CONNOR:

It may not be indicative, but at the Board of Supervisors, when they finally got the result, they just simply didn’t understand how it had got there. So I think that may be an issue that people really do need to understand.

CERVANTES:

Absolutely. In order to … when you make something more complicated, everybody on board needs to understand how those complications work. Otherwise it could seem like your vote is being manipulated. We need to avoid the appearance of Calvin Ball.

O’CONNOR:

Now, talking of which, and I know this is something that when we last talked you were very confident it’s not an issue, but it seems to keep going on nationally in a discourse that people are worried about voter fraud and so many national figures claim elections are being stolen because of voter fraud.

Now, you’re very confident it’s not an issue here in Humboldt County, but how can you reassure voters who may be on the side of “oh no, it’s all rigged,” that that’s just not the case?

CERVANTES:

So I only ever speak with certainty about Humboldt County. It’s the county that I have any say in how it gets administered, it’s the county that I’m familiar with.

I think a lot of those principles are true statewide, but speaking for Humboldt County, we have the gold standard of the process. We use paper ballots that you can verify. When you put your paper ballot into our ballot box, you can see and read and understand what’s going on with that ballot. And it’s an auditable paper trail for your voting. And so we use optical scanners which check that human-readable ballot. We have a 1% manual tally where we have people do a hand count of 1% of all ballots randomly selected. And so we’re checking that equipment.

And this whole process is open to the public and transparent. We invite the public to be a part of that process and work with our partners and Access Humboldt to make that more accessible to people. And I think those endeavors in being transparent and acting in such a way that ego isn’t involved, that you’re open to a process that checks your work. I think that’s key. I think when people see that, when they participate in that, I think they believe.

O’CONNOR:

I think you’re right, absolutely, that’s what Humboldt Today viewers want to know as well.

Now just very quickly, because you came hot foot to talk to us today from the Board of Supervisors meeting where campaign finance was on the agenda today. That’s an issue that you have some thoughts on as well.

CERVANTES:

Yeah, I mean, I have some thoughts. One of the privileges of my position is that I don’t create legislation, I just administer it. And so the stress is on the board of supervisors to make those kinds of calls. But the topic of campaign finance came with contribution limits. And so the board’s looking at reducing the $1,500 contribution limit to $500 or anywhere in between that. That’s their decision, and I don’t have much of an opinion on that officially.

The other bit is that there’s a special circumstance in the county ordinance where that contribution limit could get increased to $5,000 based on independent expenditures. And it gets really complicated from there. An independent expenditure is an expenditure by a party separate from the candidates without coordinating with the candidates. And if they do that above $10,000, that limit increases to $5,000. And so it’s a piece of the ordinance that may have made sense at one point, but at this point is just very confusing. So the board is seeking to clarify that.

O’CONNOR:

If they do that, what impact does that have on your work and your office?

CERVANTES:

If they remove it, it makes things simpler, because we’re who gets called to explain that piece of ordinance. And so it makes it easier for us to have that conversation with somebody running for office for the first time. That’s the only impact it has on our office.

O’CONNOR:

Well, Juan Pablo, it’s great to see you again. Congratulations again on winning the election. Good luck with the election season this year, and we’ll be in touch again very soon, I’m sure. 

CERVANTES:

Thank you.

Campus housing: Students can’t get enough of it and California public campuses can’t build dorm rooms fast enough.

And yet, Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed delaying by a year nearly $1.2 billion in loans and grants that would build housing for thousands of students at affordable rates — money the state promised campuses in last year’s state budget.

Newsom seeks the delay to help balance the state’s projected $22.5 billion budget deficit in 2023-24. But lawmakers who hold huge sway over higher-education finances are adamant that no money is pulled from the state’s recent, unprecedented multi-billion-dollar down payment on affordable student housing.

Adding to the intrigue, the Legislature’s own top policy advisor, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, proposed that the state completely drop its investment in student housing or at least change how the money is spent. One such idea? Renege on a promise to continue sending community colleges grants to build more student housing for next year.

Ultimately the state must have a balanced budget before June 30, but if the last three legislative budget hearings on higher education are any indication, how much — and when — to spend on student housing will be a key point of friction between the Democrat-controlled Legislature and Newsom.

The governor’s plans to delay housing funding is “something that we don’t support and we’re going to be looking at other options,” said Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, a Democrat from Sacramento and chairperson of the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education, at a Tuesday hearing.

“This is such a priority for the Senate and the Assembly the last couple years and just checks so many boxes: housing crisis, check; college affordability, check; enrollment growth for students, check,” he added.

If Newsom gets his way, the $750 million campus housing grants slated for 2023-24 would drop to $500 million and the remaining $250 million would become available in 2024-25. And rather than spending a combined $1.8 billion on campus no-interest loans in 2034-24 and 2024-25, Newsom proposed zero dollars in 2023-24 and spreading the funds across the subsequent two years.

“Effectively the governor’s budget maintains the overall funding commitment for these two student housing programs,” said Michelle Nguyen of the Department of Finance, an office in the governor’s administration. “But given the budget outlook, the governor’s budget proposes funding delays for these programs.”

That may be bad news for the hundreds of thousands of college students in desperate pursuit of housing — even if these state efforts can only build a fraction of the living quarters survey data say is needed.

Sparing campus-housing funding from cuts is a bipartisan sentiment in the Legislature. It’s important that “we have the funding available and not delayed… in order to build housing necessary to accommodate those students in the universities, especially when the state is requiring a certain level of enrollment for each university,” said Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, a Republican from Rancho Cucamonga, at a Senate subcommittee hearing last Thursday.

Thirty campuses remain unfazed and have submitted plans exceeding $2.1 billion to build as many as 12,700 additional dorm beds with low rents. The size of the projects varies, including 1,553 affordable beds at UC Riverside, 517 at San Jose State and 117 at Lassen Community College in northeastern California.

For the University of California, the state grants supplement plans to construct an extra 22,000 beds by 2028.

Included in the state grant mix is housing for UC graduate students — 236 dorm beds at UC Merced, a campus with just nine beds for graduate students at a time when affordable housing was a major rallying cry for students striking late last fall.

All told, the University of California’s six grant proposals pencil out to about $108,000 per affordable bed; Cal State’s three projects would cost $170,000 per bed; and the 21 plans submitted by community colleges — schools with little experience building student housing — would cost $205,000 per bed. (Overall, last year’s approved state-funded dorms were slightly more expensive per bed.)

Even if the Legislature and Newsom agree to pull no dollars from the housing grant in 2023-2024, most of those plans will go unfunded by the program. That’s because last year’s spending roadmap called for pouring $750 million into the grant in 2023-24 — so about a third of the money colleges and universities are seeking.

It’s a case of deja-vu: When the affordable housing grant program took applications from campuses for the first time in 2021, 42 campuses submitted construction bids totaling $2.8 billion — well above the $500 million the state planned to spend.

With the state eyeing a $100 billion budget surplus last year, lawmakers and Newsom nearly tripled last year’s budget for the housing grant program, in part by advancing money from future budgets, ultimately greenlighting the construction of roughly 7,300 affordable residencies for low-income students.

But with a multi-billion-dollar deficit projected across several years, the state spending more to approve a larger number of projects isn’t likely this year. The Legislature and governor’s office will pick projects based on a rubric that takes into account details such as an area’s unmet need and the number of affordable beds new construction will create.

“This is such a priority for the Senate and the Assembly the last couple years and just checks so many boxes: housing crisis, check; college affordability, check; enrollment growth for students, check.”
— Assemblymember Kevin McCarty

Plus, budgeting is an inexact science. The Cal State system is reporting that its construction costs for the nine dorms it sought to build last year rose by 14% between fall 2021 — when the system submitted their plans — and this January. A CSU senior official told lawmakers Tuesday that its campuses found most of the necessary outside funds, but the system still needs another $12 million in grant funds to pay for the projects approved last year.

UC also saw costs grow but they’re paying for those internally, a university official told lawmakers yesterday. A court ruling stalling UC Berkeley’s housing plans is another headwind for the UC.

Costs rising quickly is another reason some lawmakers don’t want to delay building student housing. It’s likely “that delays will increase costs and lessen the number of beds projects can deliver,” staff for the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education wrote.

Lawmakers also considered whether the state should fund the no-interest loan program rather than the housing grants for the upcoming year.

An official at the Legislative Analyst’s Office, which floated the idea in a report, said there’s some merit to that because campuses could build more affordable housing with the same amount of money under the loan program. Also, as campuses repay the state, the loan fund is replenished, allowing lawmakers to approve a new generation of campus housing.

But the analyst’s office warned that some campuses that budgeted to have grant dollars may not be able to afford their projects with just a loan at no interest. Also, it’s likely that dorms built with loan money — while still affordable — will have larger rents than grant-funded housing. Typically, campuses issue bonds to build dorms and repay those with interest.

McCarty also suggested that the state should pass on funding the dorm plans that community colleges submitted this year because they “aren’t ready for prime time.” He said the state could supply community colleges the money in 18 months to two years.

A senior official at the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office disputed that assertion. “All of these projects are not in an aspirational stage,” said Lizette Navarette, interim deputy chancellor. The plans submitted have “demonstrated need, a viable financial plan, community support and extensive student need.”

Meanwhile, some students don’t want to wait on the state to produce more housing: A coalition of student groups sponsored a bill recently that would encourage more private developers to construct homes for students off-campus. Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, a Democrat from Coachella, is the author.

“The availability of off-campus housing is just as necessary,” said Zachariah Wooden, a vice president for the Student Senate for California Community Colleges, at a press conference yesterday.

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

Most summer mornings at first light, Jared Davis is a few miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge, motoring his charter fishing boat Salty Lady over the Pacific Ocean. His eyes sweep the horizon, looking for diving birds, but mostly he watches the screen of his dashboard fish-finder for schools of anchovies — a sure sign that salmon are near. When the signs look good, he throttles down to trolling speed and tells his customers to let out their lines.

“Drop ‘em down!” Davis calls out the window. “Thirty to 40 feet!”

When the bite is steady, the Salty Lady may have 20 customers on board, each spending $200 for the chance to catch salmon. On the best days, fishing rods bend double the moment the lines go down, and a frenzy of action ensues, often amid a hundred or more other boats. Hooked Chinook thrash at the surface, and the deck becomes strewn with flopping fish.

Last year, California’s commercial and recreational fishing fleet, from the Central Coast to the Oregon border, landed about 300,000 salmon.

But this year, Davis and other salmon anglers won’t be fishing for salmon at all.

In response to crashing Chinook populations, a council of West Coast fishery managers plans to cancel this year’s salmon season in California, which will put hundreds of commercial fishermen and women out of work in Northern California and turn the summer into a bummer for thousands of recreational anglers.

Last year, the industry’s economic value was an estimated $460 million for fish sales and related businesses, including restaurants, tackle shops, private fishing guides, campgrounds and other services. Salmon season usually runs from May through October.

The closure, Davis said, “is going to be devastating to my business.” He said he will “try to scrape together a season” by targeting other species, like rockfish, lingcod, halibut and striped bass, but generating interest in catching these fish will be a challenge.

“Our customers want salmon,” he said, adding that last year, his customers caught roughly 2,000 Chinook.

Davis, 53, who has fished all his life, said the thrill of salmon fishing never grows old. “There’s nothing else like a wide-open salmon bite,” he said.

Chinook salmon caught by two recreational anglers off the San Mateo County coastline in 2017. Photo courtesy of Andrew Bland.

Only in two previous years — 2008 and 2009 — has California’s salmon season been shut down completely. That closure came as the numbers of spawning fish returning to the Sacramento River, the state’s main salmon producer, crashed to record lows.

Now California’s Chinook runs have collapsed again.

Just 62,000 adult fall-run Chinook returned last year to the Sacramento River to spawn, the third lowest return on record and only half of the fishery’s minimum target.

Runs on the Klamath River, in far-northern California, also have plunged, hitting 22,000 spawning adult fall-run Chinook last year, the fourth lowest return in 40 years. Native American tribes rely on the Klamath River’s salmon for traditional foods and ceremonies.

What’s ailing the fish, scientists and state officials say, is a variety of factors, primarily in the rivers where salmon spawn. Large volumes of water are diverted for use by farms and cities. Combined with drought, this causes low flows and high water temperatures, which can kill salmon eggs and young fish. Vast tracts of floodplains and wetlands, where small fish can find food and refuge, have also been lost to development and flood control projects.

Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the quantity and quality of river water appear to drive salmon numbers.

“No doubt, water management is an issue, both allocation and delivery,” Bonham said.

Fisherman Dick Ogg coils rope aboard his boat, the Karen Jeanne, in Bodega Bay on Mar. 3, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters.

Chinook in the Sacramento River have experienced almost complete spawning failures in the past several years. This has left a generational gap in the population that the fishing industry is now facing.

“We’re looking at the runs from the juveniles that went to sea three years ago, and these are the fish missing in action,” said Glen Spain, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, which represents commercial fishers in 17 West Coast ports.

The collapse of salmon runs has stoked tensions between the fishing and agricultural communities.

“The real issue is the ability to divvy up a set amount of water between two different entities, fishermen and the farmers,” said Dick Ogg, a commercial fisherman in Bodega Bay.

‘Some of us will survive, some won’t’

The Pacific Fishery Management Council announced March 10 that it is choosing between three fishing season alternatives. Each would close the 2023 season, with the possibility of a reopening in 2024. The final decision will come during a session that begins April 1.

Many fishermen and women support the closure — despite the impact on their own finances — because there are too few salmon left to catch.

“We don’t have the abundance to support any harvest,” said Sarah Bates, of Oakland, who has fished commercially in coastal waters for 15 years.

Scientists estimate that 169,800 Sacramento River fall-run Chinook — the most abundant of the river’s four Chinook runs and the mainstay of the fishery — are now swimming off the coast. It’s the lowest estimated population since 2008.

Until the 1980s, California’s salmon boats routinely brought to port nearly a million fish per season. The record catch — 1.4 million salmon — was in 1988. Recent years have seen catches of between 100,000 and 300,000.

As salmon populations have shrunk, California’s fishing fleet has shrunk, too. Nearly 5,000 commercial boats pursued California’s Chinook in the early 1980s. Now only 464 active boats are fishing commercially, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Plus, the state’s recreational anglers took about 98,000 trips last year and caught 89,000 salmon.

Still, a substantial salmon industry remains. A 2010 analysis estimated its worth at $344 million in direct fish sales and related economic activity. Cameron Speir, a U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service economist, said with inflation, that would bring the 2022 value to an estimated $460 million, although no formal estimates have been made.

The last time the fishing season was closed, fish businesses received federal disaster relief money, which is likely this year, too. Larry Collins, president of the San Francisco Community Fishing Association and formerly a salmon fisherman, said adequate compensation for the industry would amount to about $450 million. Getting it, he said, will require a plea to Congress.

Bates said a season closure will take away “the vast majority” of her annual income.

She said she can catch other fish to help make ends meet, though none of the other options — like rockfish, sablefish and halibut — provides the financial rewards that salmon fishing does.

“This will probably be pretty devastating for our local fleet,” she said. “Some of us will survive, some won’t.”

Kenny Belov, a wholesale fish supplier in San Francisco who bought 25,000 pounds of California Chinook last year, said no other local fish species commands more excitement than salmon.

“Salmon outsells everything,” said Belov, co-owner of TwoXSea.

But with a season closure imminent, Belov has already purchased futures in 31,000 pounds of yet-to-be-caught Alaskan coho. He expects to sell more salmon this summer than in previous years simply because Alaskan coho is cheaper than local Chinook, which is also called king salmon.

Eric Stockwell, a naturalist and ocean kayak fishing guide based in Humboldt County, said he wants a season closure even though it will put him out of work. He called it long overdue, given the recurring poor returns in the Sacramento and Klamath rivers.

“It’s a shame seasons have been allowed even though we haven’t reached the minimum escapement spawning goals,” Stockwell said.

Fishing, after all, has impacts on the salmon population, too.

Last summer, California’s commercial salmon fishers had an unexpectedly good year, catching two to three times more fish than managers expected. If the overall population is as low as scientists think it is, that harvest took a big chunk from the population when it was already down.

‘Without salmon, we are not Yurok people’

For many Californians, wild Chinook salmon is a rare treat. For members of California’s indigenous tribes, it is a core element of their culture and diet.

In the Klamath River basin, the Karuk, Hoopa and Yurok tribes fish for Chinook salmon for subsistence.

“The health of our people depends on having salmon,” said Bill Tripp, the Karuk Tribe’s director of natural resources and environmental policy. “Their survival in the basin is imperative. If they disappear, we could lose our ability to survive here.”

Tribes set their own catch limits, but they tend to reflect the population estimates of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, according to Barry McCovey Jr., who directs the Yurok’s fisheries program.

In 2017 — a bad year for Klamath salmon — the Yurok forfeited their subsistence catch, taking just a handful of salmon for traditional ceremonies. This year’s allocation has not yet been set, but McCovey said it will probably be another meager season for the tribes.

The Karuk, who live along the middle-lower reaches of the Klamath River, traditionally fished for salmon using dip nets.

“The health of our people depends on having salmon…If they disappear, we could lose our ability to survive here.”
— Bill Tripp, the Karuk Tribe

Downstream, toward the river’s mouth, McCovey learned to fish with his father in the 1980s and ‘90s. At the time, he said, catching salmon — whether using traditional gillnets or rod-and-reel — was relatively easy.

“Salmon were pretty abundant then,” McCovey said. Teaching his own children to fish is more challenging. “It’s a lot harder to catch salmon now,” he said.

McCovey said the Klamath once supported a million spawning Chinook each year. Now, he said, “we’re lucky if we get 100,000.”

Dams built long ago block salmon from reaching their historic spawning grounds. Agricultural diversions compete with salmon, reducing flows to lukewarm trickles that cause massive fish kills.

To McCovey, the decline is an existential threat.

“Without salmon, we are not Yurok people,” he said.

Ebb and flow of droughts

Historically as many as 2 million Chinook may have spawned most years in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and another 2 million salmon, including coho, probably spawned annually in the Klamath, Russian, Eel, Smith and other coastal rivers and streams. Steelhead trout thrived in these watersheds, too.

With the arrival of European Americans, salmon populations began to decline. Industrial gold mining denuded mountain sides and clogged rivers with mud in the 1850s, destroying habitat and causing heavy losses to salmon runs. Dams built in the 20th century blocked the fish from reaching their spawning grounds altogether, wiping out the San Joaquin River’s Chinook.

Now the salmon are left dependent on human intervention: Gravel is dumped in rivers to replicate mountain spawning grounds, cold water is released from the depths of reservoirs and millions of baby salmon are produced in hatcheries to supplement failing wild runs. Often young fish are trucked to San Francisco Bay for release, which helps them escape the dangerous water pumps of the Delta.

These measures, at least for a time, worked reasonably well to support the fishery. Between 200,000 and 400,000 fish, or more, spawned each year through much of the post-dam era — but no longer.

Jared Davis’ boat, Salty Lady, and others are in dry dock in Richmond. The salmon season will be shut down this year. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters.

Droughts, which reduce spawning success, also pose a recurring threat. Dry years are often followed by a dip in numbers of adult salmon in the ocean a lifespan later, about three years.

The converse, said Fish and Wildlife’s Bonham, is also true: “When you have wetter years, you see the numbers jump up three years later.”

For instance, a dramatic spike in 2002 that reached almost 900,000 fall-run Chinook in the Central Valley followed a period of exceptionally wet years in the late 1990s.

If water means fish, this year’s wet winter, now shaping into a record-setter, could boost survival among salmon juveniles migrating to the ocean and lead to more adult fish in a few years.

“I hope to see them doing at least somewhat better in a few years,” said Chris Shutes, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

Droughts, which reduce spawning success, are also a threat. They are often followed by a dip in numbers of adult salmon in the ocean a lifespan later, about three years.

Marc Gorelnik, chair of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, said California’s Chinook have weathered droughts before, even emerging from the epic 1987-92 drought in relatively good shape. But, he said, the population at the time, including fish in the ocean, was six to eight times the current estimate.

“Our biggest challenge in management now is that we have so few fish to work with,” Gorelnik said.

At least two years in a row, nearly all eggs of endangered winter-run Chinook laid and fertilized in the Sacramento River have died. Many eggs have perished in lethally warm water. And an emerging threat — thiamine deficiency, which may be linked to shifting patterns in the ocean food web driven by climate change — has killed many more. Fishery advocates see little reason to think the fall-run Chinook fared much better.

Looking forward

Restoring depleted salmon runs is a goal that, along much of the West Coast, has eluded resource managers while bristling tensions between competing users of water. Some researchers feel it’s an almost hopeless endeavor, incompatible with economic growth. A 2017 report from a team of California scientists predicted that many of the state’s native salmon and trout would vanish by 2070.

Hatchery production of baby fish could help avert the disappearance of salmon — why many anglers and commercial fishers want to see the Department of Fish and Wildlife ramp up its hatchery programs. Belov said he thinks the future of the state’s salmon fishery may depend less on restoring rivers and natural spawning habitat than on hatcheries.

“If we’re going to keep growing food in the desert, then we might as well forget about wild salmon in California rivers,” Belov said. “The hatcheries need to work at 100% efficiency and put as many fish in the ocean for us to go catch.”

Ogg stows rope aboard his boat, the Karen Jeanne, in Bodega Bay. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

But on the Klamath, salmon advocates hope to rebuild naturally spawning populations. Four large dams are scheduled to be removed within the next two years. Tribes are helping direct the project, which will open up hundreds of miles of historic spawning habitat to salmon, potentially reviving the basin’s ailing runs.

Dams impounding the Central Valley’s rivers are unlikely ever to be removed, although state and federal biologists are helping Chinook repopulate the mountain tributaries upstream of Shasta Dam.

Some are optimistic about the potential for farms and fish to coexist.

“When in-river water conditions are adequate to allow the fish to return to the river to spawn and then, most importantly, wash the little fish out again, it’s still a really productive river system — definitely enough to support me and my family,” Bates said.

Spain of the fishermen’s association, though, fears things might get worse before they get better. So few fish spawned last year in the state’s major salmon rivers that “it means we can’t yet see a light at the end of this tunnel.”

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

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This story was reported and written by Lauren Hepler, Nicole Foy and Wendy Fry.

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It was late Friday morning when muddy, brown water started rushing onto Michelle Hackett’s Salinas Valley farms.

On one side of her family’s Riverview Farms cannabis business, a county-mandated retention pond overflowed. Next door, a farm abandoned by another grower — one of dozens of cannabis businesses to shut down in Monterey County in recent years — spawned another small river headed straight for Hackett and her skeleton crew.

“The water completely stopped and backed up,” Hackett said. “I thought, ‘Holy s***, this is going to flood our greenhouses.’”

Cannabis businesses like Hackett’s — along with thousands of undocumented farmworkers and the area’s unhoused residents — fear they’ll be left to fend for themselves as yet another winter storm batters California’s Central Coast, local officials and advocates say.

Cannabis businesses and undocumented workers by law are ineligible for federally funded programs such as unemployment or aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Now, after days of wind, rain and flooding displaced hundreds of people in Monterey County alone, details are lacking about how state officials would respond to calls to direct state funds and other disaster relief to these communities in the region known as America’s salad bowl.

California has stepped into the breach before, offering some support to undocumented workers during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to some cannabis farmers whose crops were damaged in wildfires.

It’s an issue complicated by competing political priorities and a projected $24 billion state budget deficit for the coming year.

As Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to visit flooded regions today, including the inundated farmworker town of Pajaro, many officials and advocates said they hope to hear how the state will help. A few lawmakers said they’re exploring legislative options.

“I think we need to step up our efforts to help those who are undocumented and can’t earn a paycheck because of the current rains and floods,” said Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, a Democrat representing Los Angeles.

He is co-sponsoring Senate Bill 227 to provide unemployment benefits to undocumented Californians. About 6 in 10 farmworkers are not eligible for unemployment benefits, according to studies.

Santiago said the current situation is frustrating because he has advocated for years for more safety net programs that could have helped families hurt by the flooding. If such legislation was in place, he said, “we’d be able to have a place where we could go get people some financial relief.”

Assemblymember Robert Rivas of Salinas, chosen by his fellow Democrats to be the next Assembly Speaker, noted in a statement to CalMatters that undocumented workers typically don’t qualify for federal assistance funds for emergency housing, home repairs, personal property loss, funeral expenses and other aid.

“My office, in collaboration with other legislative offices, is exploring immediate legislative and budget action to provide relief for these vulnerable communities,” Rivas said, noting that the workers also had been ineligible for many COVID-19 relief programs.

The state began filling some of that gap during the pandemic. Undocumented workers were eligible for $1,700 in state funds: a $500 COVID-19 Disaster Relief prepaid card and $1,200 from the Golden State Stimulus Fund.

Tuesday afternoon, groups of people remained in tents along the flooded Pajaro River. Despite large federal and state housing budgets, many of those people don’t have homes.

Many farmworker families in the flooded region are undocumented, from indigenous groups, and don’t speak either English or Spanish well, said Eloy Ortiz, a board member for the Watsonville-based Center for Farmworker Families.

That complicates attempts to apply for assistance on behalf of the legal residents in their household. Some were rejected when they applied for aid in January, Ortiz said.

“The folks who have been flooded out, if it were a normal year, they’d be starting to go back to the fields to work right now,” Ortiz said. “And now they will probably not be able to go back for months.”

More than 20,000 acres of agricultural land in Monterey County will likely sit fallow because of stormwater contamination, noted Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo, a former Assembly member from Watsonville, in a tweet.

“These are low-income Latino families, and the start of the harvest season for strawberries, raspberries and other crops is in March. Now farmworkers will be out of work,” he wrote Tuesday.

“I urge our state leaders to provide aid in the state budget for undocumented flood victims who do not qualify for FEMA assistance & additional relief for farmworkers who will be out of work due to flooded ag fields and not qualifying for unemployment insurance,” he wrote.

“The financial pain they will face will be severe & prolonged!”

As many as 8,500 people were under flood evacuation warnings in Monterey County over the weekend. The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services reported more than 300 people had stayed in five shelters across Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties Monday night, the vast majority taking shelter at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds.

In Salinas, Hackett, 32, said her choice was simple as the storm bore down: save herself, or say goodbye to a crop that has already weathered a steep drop in prices and other industry pressures. At least 56 cannabis businesses have closed in Monterey County in recent years, according to a recent estimate.

As the water rose Friday morning, Hackett and her team that normally would be busy trimming plants or readying retail products instead shut down early to reinforce storm ditches and forge cement slabs into an impromptu flood wall.

On Tuesday, as another storm knocked out power at her two adjacent 10-acre farms, Hackett said she is unaware of any aid available for cannabis businesses impacted by flooding.

“Ideally if we were any other business, we would have immediately had help,” Hackett said. “Whether it be the county, whether it be the state — someone needs to be held accountable.”

Longer term, Hackett said she fears climate change and economic obstacles will point her industry toward the same downward trajectory that wiped out many of the flower growers who once thrived in the same Monterey County greenhouses.

She isn’t alone in her frustrations.

Joey Espinoza, a Salinas-raised cannabis compliance consultant, said several of his clients were directly impacted by floodwaters, including one grower who had to evacuate plants from a flooded greenhouse. Even while the ground was still muddy, he said, many cannabis farmers have turned their attention to other pressing challenges in the industry.

As cannabis remains illegal at the national level, Espinoza said, local growers shut out of federal financial aid are now confronting storm damage after a collapse in cannabis prices and while facing a tight deadline to apply for new state licenses by the end of the year.

Industry advocates say the economic turmoil stems from a mix of overproduction of legal and illegal cannabis, as well as ever-changing taxes and regulations.

“There’s layers of issues with all of this,” Espinoza said. “And the thing to remember is, there’s not gonna be a lot of relief for cannabis in terms of FEMA and things like that.”

It was unclear exactly what the state might do.

The California Department of Cannabis Control did not respond to questions Tuesday about whether it expects to make any aid available to area farms, though it has in the past offered support for cannabis growers impacted by wildfires. Few lawmakers voiced ideas.

In the meantime, some residents took matters into their own hands.

Gabino Orozco Avila was getting ready to serve dinner to neighbors gathered on a walkway above the rushing Pajaro River late Tuesday afternoon, a stone’s throw from his daughter’s home in Pajaro. While his daughter remained evacuated, Avila, owner of a longtime food business, Tacos Los Jacona — a nod to his Michoacán hometown — had prepared carne asada, rice and beans for the community that had long supported him.

“Now that people need me,” he said in Spanish, “I’ll be here.”

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