Press release from the Humboldt County Drug Task Force:
On August 14th, 2023, Humboldt County Drug Task Force Agents with assistance from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office served a search warrant on Stephen Wayne Owens (44 years old from Eureka). HCDTF Agents observed Owens travel from Humboldt County to Modesto, California.
Upon Owens’ return to Humboldt County, Agents conducted a traffic stop on his vehicle. HCSO Deputy Mckenzie and his K9 partner Rex conducted an “open air sniff” on the vehicle. K9 Rex alerted to the vehicle indicating drugs were present.
Inside the vehicle, Agents located Owens and his significant other, Cassandra Graham. Agents also located two pounds of methamphetamine in the backseat of the vehicle.
Stephen Wayne Owens was transported to the Humboldt County Correctional Facility where correctional staff discovered he had 3.5 grams of methamphetamine concealed on his person. OWENS was booked on the following charges:
HS11378- Possession of a Controlled Substance
HS11379(A)- Transportation of a Controlled Substance
HS11379(B)- Transportation of a controlled substance through noncontiguous counties
PC4573.6- Possession of drugs where prisoners are held
Cassandra Graham was released on scene but will be charged with PC182- conspiracy to commit a crime.
Anyone with information related to this investigation or other narcotics related crimes is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Drug Task Force at 707-267-9976.
Please accept your official invite from a handful of Eureka High students in the clip above and/or read the Eureka City Schools release below:
Construction of Eureka High School’s highly anticipated 40,000
sq. ft. new gymnasium is now complete, and the gym will be available for use starting the
2023-2024 school year.
To unveil the new Jay Willard Gymnasium and celebrate this monumental endeavor that’s been
in the works for more than two decades, Eureka High School (EHS) will host an official Ribbon
Cutting Ceremony and Grand Opening Event on Thursday, August 17, 2023, from 5:00 pm to
7:30 pm. The new gym is located on the EHS campus at 1915 J Street, across from the ECS
District Office.
Eureka City Schools (ECS) encourages the community to attend the event and tour the beautiful
facility, bring family and friends, and spread the word!
The new gym will benefit students, citizens of the greater Eureka area, and future generations.
It serves as a testament to our community’s commitment to wanting the best for our youth,
including but not limited to input and direction for the gym’s design and the passing of Measure
S, the $49.75 million bond that paved the way to make this project possible.
The gym has a regulation basketball and volleyball competition court with retractable seating
for more than 1,200 spectators, a multi-purpose auxiliary gym that will serve as the wrestling
room, a dedicated weight room, student locker rooms with showers and restrooms, coaches’
offices, a training room, storage for athletic equipment, and a large foyer complete with a
concession stand that can accommodate up to 240 people.
The overall Jay Willard Gymnasium project will be constructed in four phases, and the
completion of the new gym is just phase one. The following phases will be the abatement of
hazardous materials from the current facility, demolition of the existing gymnasium, and
construction of a new parking lot.
A story published Monday in Politico offers the latest look from a national publication at the nascent efforts to develop floating wind energy off the coast of Humboldt County — dramatic pause — “at a depth and scale never before attempted in the world.”
The piece notes that this $100 billion initiative (give or take some billions) could transform the peninsula and supercharge the region’s economy, creating hundreds of good-paying jobs while advancing state and federal goals to boost renewable energy production, though the story also outlines some of the major challenges and potential pitfalls of those efforts.
Noting Humboldt County’s low per-capita income and our history of economic boom-and-bust cycles, reporter Wes Venteicher says “a gust of optimism has arrived” on our shores. He quotes Rep. Jared Huffman, who says, “It’s a lot of good-paying jobs if we do it right. This can be part of lifting up the regional economy in a way that is better than anything to come along in decades.”
As previously reported here and elsewhere, Humboldt Bay hosts the only developed port for hundreds of miles in either direction that possesses both the channel depth and vertical clearance necessary to assemble and transport the massive turbines, which means we could eventually supply wind energy infrastructure up and down the West Coast.
Politico also runs through a list of challenges, including bureaucratic, economic, logistical and social, from impacts to tribal resources and fisheries to permitting amid “a widespread distrust of outsiders in a region where indiscriminate logging engendered deep resentment and where an illegal marijuana industry created a counterculture haven in the fog-shrouded mountains.”
As for our humble shores:
The land — which now hosts two seaweed farms, an oyster hatchery and temporary storage for freshly caught hagfish — would be transformed into an industrial terminal with up to 650,000 square feet of building space, lights mounted 150 feet in the air and giant cranes that crawl through the water on tank treads.
Venteicher rightly pinpoints the related challenge of sufficiently increasing electricity transmission capacity, noting that projects of this scale — sending up to 25 gigawatts of wind energy 270 miles south to the San Francisco Bay area — “have in the past taken more than a decade, and an overland line would need to run through environmentally sensitive areas as well as populated communities that may not welcome them.”
He adds, “An undersea cable is being considered, but deep underwater canyons and other features make that option logistically daunting.”
ABOVE: Imagery taken just before noon of a fire burning east of Fortuna; BELOW: The purple line illustrates the direction the camera is pointed and its location | ALERTCalifornia
Six Rivers National Forest release:
The Six Rivers National Forest received significant lightning activity across the forest last night, August 14, 2023. Currently, there are 13 reported fires located throughout the forest.
Firefighters are working to assess current fires and patrolling the area to identify other potential starts. All incidents are under a full suppression strategy with rapid and aggressive initial attack operations. Air attack is being used to perform reconnaissance on the forest and additional resources have been ordered to support these incidents.
At this time there are no closures or evacuations in place. For evacuation information please contact your county sheriff’s office.
The McLean Foundation Board of Directors has approved a grant of $500,000 to the Fortuna Senior Center, (FSC) for their new building construction project on Rohnerville Rd. in Fortuna.
The poor stock market performance in 2022 negatively impacted the McLean Foundation’s ability to financially assist any projects outside of its normal giving. The markets strongly rebounded in June and July of 2023. The foundation is now able to allocate some funds that were not budgeted in order to take a fresh look at a special grant for FSC and their building project. It is anticipated that this funding will allow them to occupy their new facility by the end of this year.
The McLean Foundation has been a longtime supporter of the FSC over the years and is very enthusiastic to see the new FSC facility continue as a long-standing adult and senior program opportunity for the Eel River Valley Community for many years to come.
The FSC is currently a tenant of the Gene Lucas Community Center located on the McLean Campus off Newburg Road in Fortuna and has been there since the campus opened in 2020.
Financially helping the FSC with this special grant award not only meets the mission of the Foundation but augments the ability of FSC to see their dreams come true.
Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:
Christopher David Johnston Booking Photo | Humboldt County Correctional Facility
On Aug. 14, 2023, at about 11:06 a.m., a Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputy conducted a traffic stop for a vehicle code violation in the area of Highway 101 near Sunny Brae.
The deputy contacted the driver, 38-year-old Christopher David Johnston, and learned that he was on Post Release Community Supervision with a search clause. During a search of Johnston and his vehicle, deputies located over 5 ounces of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.
Johnston was arrested and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of possession of a controlled substance (HS 11377(a)), possession of a controlled substance paraphernalia (HS 11364) and violation of probation (PC 1203.2(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.
The parking lot in front of the vacant building at the corner of School Road and Central Avenue in McKinleyville - once a Ray’s Food Place - takes up more than 3 acres of land and includes about 350 parking spaces. That equates to almost 400 square feet per parking space. Remember, parking doesn’t only require space for the parking spaces themselves, but also space for driveways and aisles for cars to reach the parking spaces.
Even when Ray’s was still open, there were always plenty of empty parking spaces here. Now the whole 3-acre lot is always basically empty, aside from haphazardly parked U-haul trucks associated with the business next door.
More than 16,000 people live in McKinleyville, making it our region’s third largest community. This property is less than half a mile from the future Town Center, and across the street from a bus stop. It should be bustling with activity, but instead it’s an empty asphalt wasteland. As a community, we can do better than this. We can put this land to better use.
Perhaps the most obvious thing we could do is build housing here. Home prices and rents in McKinleyville and the surrounding region have shot up over the last few years, indicating an urgent need for more housing, and this would be a good place to build some of it. Simply replacing every currently vacant parking space with an apartment would provide 350 studio apartments.
But the actual potential is much greater. For example, the Eureka City Council recently accepted a proposal by the Wiyot Tribe’s Dishgamu Humboldt Community Land Trust to build affordable housing for more than 80 people on a downtown parking lot that’s less than a third of an acre. The design includes 2, 3, and 4 bedroom apartments and will create wonderful additions to downtown Eureka. The massive unused parking lot on School Road is ten times bigger. Imagine how many families could be provided a home here!
This parking lot is a particularly egregious example, but when it comes to empty asphalt it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Look carefully at satellite images of the development all along Central Avenue, and you’ll find that parking is the area’s single biggest land use. And most of those parking spaces sit empty most of the time.
This isn’t just a McKinleyville thing. A new map of Eureka’s downtown area shows that more than a third of developable land is covered by parking lots. And there are at least 2,000 parking spaces within a quarter mile of the Arcata Plaza, including the big “parking crater” at the Uniontown Shopping Center.
This documented abundance of parking may seem contrary to your personal experiences. Maybe you’ve hunted for parking near the Plaza during a Saturday farmers’ market, or failed to find a spot in front of your favorite shop in Old Town. Here’s the simple explanation: it is physically impossible to provide parking for all who want it directly adjacent to a destination. When you try, you end up with something like that old Ray’s parking lot or the one at Eureka’s Bayshore Mall, with parking lots so large that many of the spaces can be multiple city blocks from the entrance anyway. When the same parking spaces are spread out over actual city blocks you can’t see them all at once, but that doesn’t mean the empty spaces aren’t there!
Here’s another thing to consider: currently almost 100% of the parking spaces in our downtowns and town centers are free to use. Local government and private land owners pay to build and maintain all this parking, but drivers don’t pay to use it. As a society, we don’t provide even the most basic necessities like food, shelter, and medical care for free - but we provide free parking! If we charged drivers even a fraction of the true cost of parking, there would be even more empty spaces.
Look at your own neighborhood through this lens, and perhaps you’ll see something similar: a bunch of parking spaces that are offered free to drivers, but still often sit empty. And even more spaces that would be empty if we didn’t subsidize driving by providing them for free. What’s more, these underutilized spaces are sometimes concentrated in parking lots in walkable, bikeable areas near bus stops!
A mailer recently sent to Eureka residents by the Rob Arkley-led “Eureka Housing For All” group
Luckily, there are increasing opportunities to transform all this unneeded, underutilized, barren asphalt into things we really do need, like housing. Eureka is leading the way locally by offering up city-owned parking lots for affordable housing development, and their projects are shaping up to be a resounding success - as long as the city’s voters aren’t fooled by a cynical, misleading ballot initiative. Other local governments should take note of Eureka’s leadership in building on publicly owned lots. And new state laws which just took effect make it much easier to build affordable housing on commercially zoned, privately owned lots as well.
What are we waiting for? We’ve already paved these particular acres of paradise. Let’s put up something better than a parking lot.
