###

Gov. Gavin Newsom today nominated to the state Supreme Court Patricia Guerrero, a San Diego appeals court justice who, if confirmed, would be the first Latina to serve on California’s highest court.

Colleagues have praised Guerrero for her on-the-job dedication — so much so that she once finished a criminal hearing brief while enroute to the hospital in labor.

“I am deeply honored by this incredible opportunity to uphold the rule of law and make a positive impact on the lives of Californians across the state,” said Justice Guerrero in a news release. “If confirmed, I look forward to helping instill confidence in the equality and integrity of our judicial system while honoring the sacrifices of my immigrant parents and demonstrating to young people that anything is possible in our wonderful and diverse country.”

A native of the Imperial Valley, Guerrero graduated from University of California, Berkeley and Stanford Law School before starting her legal career. She served as an attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and as a law firm partner before being appointed to the San Diego Superior Court bench in 2013.

She has served on the Fourth District Court of Appeal since 2017. At her confirmation hearing that year, former colleague Robert Howard recalled how Guerrero finished a brief on her way to give birth to her son, and coordinated filing the brief hours later.

In nominating for the high court today, Newsom said her “wide-ranging experience, integrity, deep respect for the rule of law and lifelong commitment to public service make her a phenomenal candidate to serve as our next California Supreme Court Justice.”

State Supreme Court justices are nominated by the governor and must then be confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments, which consists of California’s chief justice, the state attorney general and the senior presiding justice of the Court of Appeal.

Guerrero would replace former Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, who stepped down to run the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Cuéllar’s resignation left no Latino representation on the state’s most diverse bench. Since then, Newsom has been under increasing pressure to appoint the state’s first Latina member.

“Newsom has a chance to make history and give a Latina her rightful place in the California Supreme Court, making the judicial system stronger and fairer,” wrote Paul Barragan-Monge, director of mobilization for the University of California, Los Angeles, in November.

Across the state, there’s a significant shortage of Latinos attorneys and judges. In four majority-Latino California counties — Colusa, Kings, Madera, and Merced — there are no Latino judges in any superior courtrooms.

And such disparities can have effects that ripple through individual lives and entire communities. Research indicates that racially diverse judges and women judges tend to assess certain cases differently, on average, from their white and male counterparts.

And while roughly 60% of white and Asian Americans said they felt California county courts were fair over half the time, only about 40% of Latinos reported feeling the same, according to a study commissioned by the California Judicial Council.

After CalMatters reported last year on the gap and the state’s struggles to get more Latino attorneys to transition into judgeships, Gov. Newsom launched the California Judicial Mentor Program to help more diverse candidates apply to serve on the bench.

###

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

###

Press release from the County of Humboldt:

The County of Humboldt has acquired an easement from California Redwood Company, a subsidiary of Green Diamond Resource Company, to develop approximately 1 mile of the Humboldt Bay Trail on the levee surrounding the Brainard mill site. The easement provides the County of Humboldt the legal right to construct the trail while California Redwood Company retains ownership of the property. Funding to acquire the easement was provided through the State Transportation Improvement Program and administered by the California Department of Transportation.

The County of Humboldt is developing the Humboldt Bay Trail South project to expand the Humboldt Bay Trail by 4.25 miles and complete the connection between Eureka and Arcata along the Highway 101 corridor. The purpose of the project is to create opportunities for active transportation and to enhance access to Humboldt Bay. The easement at the Brainard mill site is one of the last remaining elements in the right-of-way phase of the project. The County of Humboldt expects to close escrow on a separate property acquisition by the end of February. The Coastal Commission is expected to consider issuance of a coastal development permit at its meeting scheduled for April 6-8.

“The Humboldt Bay Trail is an incredible destination for residents and visitors to be physically active while enjoying the scenic beauty of Humboldt Bay,” said Virginia Bass, Humboldt County Fourth District Supervisor. “Many residents visit the Eureka Waterfront Trail and the existing Humboldt Bay Trail segment through Arcata for walking, running, biking, skating, and traveling with mobility devices. Completion of the trail connection between Eureka and Arcata will be a major step forward for enabling non-motorized transportation options in the Humboldt Bay region. And the easement provided by California Redwood Company is especially valuable because it will enable the public to view and experience a beautiful corner of Humboldt Bay that was previously inaccessible. The County of Humboldt appreciates that California Redwood Company recognizes the many benefits of the Humboldt Bay Trail and was willing to incorporate the trail into its future plans for the Brainard property.”

“The Humboldt Bay Trail, when completed, will be a beautiful scenic link between Arcata and Eureka,” said Green Diamond Vice President and General Manager Jason Carlson. “We would like to thank the Humboldt County Public Works staff for their dedication to see this project through to completion and the County Board of Supervisors for their leadership and vision to support this project.”

###

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On Feb. 14, 2022, at about 8:50 a.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies on patrol in the Willow Creek area observed a disabled vehicle and two individuals possibly in need of assistance parked at a turnout along Highway 299.

Deputies contacted the individuals, 36-year-old Melvin Louis Coffer and 29-year-old Rosamarie Ellen Louise Tello, and during the interaction observed evidence indicating the vehicle had possibly been stolen. Additionally, deputies found that Coffer had an outstanding warrant for his arrest. Coffer was taken into custody on his warrant. During a search of Coffer incident to arrest, deputies located approximately .38 grams of methamphetamine.

Upon further investigation into the status of the vehicle, deputies learned that the vehicle had false plates and was reported stolen out of the McKinleyville area. During a search of Tello and her belongings incident to arrest, deputies located drug paraphernalia.

Tello was arrested and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of possession of a controlled substance paraphernalia (HS 11364(a)) and possession of a stolen vehicle (PC 496d(a)).

Coffer was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on fresh charges of possession of a controlled substance (HS 11377(a)), in addition to warrant charges of carrying a concealed dirk or dagger (PC 21310) and possession of a controlled substance (HS 11377(a)).

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

###

The public has until Friday to review and comment on the county’s draft environmental impact report (DEIR) on the big land-based fish farm that Nordic Aquafarms plans to build on the Samoa Peninsula. The report is about 1,800 pages long, so if you’re planning to read the whole thing and haven’t yet started, best of luck!

Fortunately, local leaders of nonprofit environmental organizations have been poring over the voluminous document since it dropped on December 20, and in interviews they say they appreciate how open the Norway-based company has been to feedback and project revisions — including the decision to conduct a full environmental impact report — but they have a number of serious concerns, including the project’s massive energy demands, the effects of effluent discharged offshore, impacts to wildlife from water intakes in Humboldt Bay and more. 

The DEIR, prepared for the county by engineering firm GHD, concludes that, with mitigation measures, the project will have no significant environmental impacts. That’s the same conclusion reached in the initial study released last April. But environmental stakeholders argue that this finding is based on insufficient baseline data and analysis.

None we spoke to said they’re outright opposed to the project, for which Nordic plans to spend millions of dollars further remediating the Humboldt Bay Harbor District’s blighted former pulp mill property on the peninsula. But they’re asking for some modifications and commitments in hopes of lessening the fish farm’s environmental impacts.

To review, Nordic has proposed building the world’s largest land-based recirculating aquaculture system (RAS), a state-of-the-art facility with a 17.6-acre footprint producing tons and tons of Atlantic salmon. They’d be raised from eggs to the juvenile stage in a hatchery facility at the center of the five-building campus, then transported via underground pipes to two massive grow-out modules, where they’d swim against a steady current while growing to market size.

Simulation of a Recirculating Aquaculture System from a Nordic Aquafarms video. | via GIPHY

###

With a projected annual production capacity of up to 27,000 metric tons of fish, the plant is designed to supply West Coast markets from Seattle to Los Angeles. (The company wants to build a similar facility in Belfast, Maine, to supply East Coast markets.) The Samoa facility, which would operate 24/7, is projected to employ 90-100 employees during Phase 1 of the two-phased buildout and up to 150 under Phase 2.

Two existing sea chests on Harbor District docks would pull in 10 million gallons of Humboldt Bay saltwater per day, and two million daily gallons of freshwater would be supplied by the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District. Twelve and a half million gallons of effluent would be discharged daily through an existing mile-and-a-half-long ocean outfall pipe, which pulp mill owners were forced to install after being sued by the Surfrider Foundation and the EPA in the late 1980s.

According to the DEIR, onsite water treatment plants “will subject all inlet and wastewater to a stringent treatment process, including fine filtration, biological treatment and ultraviolet sterilization.”

If anyone was looking for a reason to doubt the strict veracity of the DEIR, the authors seem to have inadvertently provided one: Deep in the report, on page 53 of Appendix D (Marine Resources), former GHD senior scientist Ken Mierzwa is listed as one of four preparers. Trouble is, he says he was not involved.

In a Feb. 3 email commenting on the DEIR, Mierzwa says he did not contribute to Appendix D or any other part of the report. 

“Without going into detail, I wish to make it clear that I disagree with a number of the statements made in the results and conclusions of Appendix D and carried forward into the EIR,” he writes. “Many items require additional analysis and/or additional mitigation, and I would have refused to put my name on the document as written had I known that it existed.”

Asked to respond, Nordic’s executive vice president of commercial operations, Marianne Naess, forwarded a statement from GHD:

Ken Mierzwa did not contribute to the Marine Resources Biological Evaluation Report associated with the Nordic Aquafarms EIR. Including Ken’s name as an author was an administrative oversight. Mr. Mierzwa’s name will be removed from the report and documented through the California Environmental Quality Act process.

We reached out to Mierzwa and asked him to elaborate on his perspective on the DEIR’s shortcomings. Below is a rundown of some of the major concerns raised by Mierzwa and others, including a local fisherman and a variety of environmental stakeholders.

Energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions

The DEIR says the project’s anticipated annual electricity usage at full build-out is 195 gigawatt hours (GWh). That’s a difficult statistic for most laypeople to comprehend, but a pie chart in the report’s energy chapter puts the figure into perspective. It shows that the facility would use roughly as much energy as the cities of Eureka and Fortuna combined:

“It is a shocking amount of electricity,” said Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC).

Caroline Griffith, executive director of the Northcoast Environmental Center (NEC), agreed, calling this energy demand “pretty mind-blowing.”

“It gives an indication of just how impactful this project could be and how important it is that the county accurately analyzes and assesses those impacts,” she said in an email.

EPIC, NEC and others have asked Nordic to commit to using 100 percent renewable energy from Day One. The company hasn’t gone quite that far, but it has committed to using “non-carbon” energy by following the procurement policies of Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA), the joint powers authority that administers Humboldt County’s Community Choice Energy program.

Nordic also plans to incorporate roughly 15 acres of rooftop solar panels, enough to produce about 4.8 megawatts of electricity. The company says it would like to tap into any “larger or more beneficial carbon-neutral energy project [that] becomes available … such as the 4.6 gigawatt offshore wind project proposed approximately 21 miles offshore of Humboldt Bay.”

That project is still in the planning stages, and Wheeler said that while he appreciates Nordic’s stated desire to run as cleanly as possible, the county’s current energy infrastructure limits just how green the plant can be.

Humboldt County has limited import/export capacity, so while RCEA may purchase 100 percent renewable energy on the open market, most of the electricity Humboldt County customers actually use enters the grid via PG&E’s Humboldt Bay Generating Station, a 163-megawatt facility in King Salmon that runs on natural gas with propane backup. 

“If we were to be connected to the grid in a different way I think that I could accept [Nordic’s projected] amount of electricity,” Wheeler said.

By purchasing the power through RCEA, Nordic will be “greening the larger grid,” he said, “but if we don’t have enough renewable energy [accessible locally] to serve this project, I think we are doing a disservice to our climate.”

EPIC plans to ask the company to commit to purchasing renewable power — locally, when it becomes available — as a means of driving investment. “I think that the way we’re most comfortable with this project moving forward is with offshore wind as well,” Wheeler said.

Nordic has argued that despite its eyebrow-raising energy requirements, their facility on the Samoa peninsula will actually reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s because U.S. residents consume more than four times the amount of salmon we harvest, importing the vast majority of it from Europe and Latin America — a carbon-intensive journey.

Daniel Chandler, who sits on the steering committee of 350 Humboldt, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing emissions from fossil fuels, said he’s not sure exactly how well the comparison pencils out. For one thing, much of the fish currently being exported from Norway comes to the U.S. via ocean liner rather than airplane, though Nordic often uses the latter in its emissions analyses. For another, fish grown in Nordic’s Samoa facility would still need to be trucked to markets up and down the West Coast.

“That’s not analyzed in the EIR but it ought to be,” Mierzwa said.

Colin Fiske, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities, said he also has issues with the report’s greenhouse gas emissions analysis. The report bases its projections on PG&E’s self-reported 2019 figures for carbon dioxide emissions per megawatt hour, and he believes the data from 2019 was anomalously, maybe even absurdly low. 

These data “allowed them to conclude — we still think erroneously — that they had a less-than-significant impact on climate emissions where, if they had used other data, it would have been clearly significant,” Fiske said.

He also believes the report’s authors used the wrong carbon emissions threshold from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. 

“There’s two different ones: a ‘stationary source threshold’ and a ‘land-use threshold,’” he said. The former is the one cited in the report, but Fiske said that’s supposed to apply only to facilities that produce their own emissions, like a factory or power plant.

Another potential source of emissions is the fish feed. 

“It’s not discussed in the DEIR at all,” said Chandler. “There’s just no mention of greenhouse gas emissions from fish food.”

The environmental sustainability from fish food production has improved a lot in the past 20 years, he noted, explaining that is used to take about 10 pounds of other to produce one pound of salmon. That figure has dropped to a worldwide average of 1.87 pounds thanks to increased use of vegetable protein oil, insects and other ingredients, Chandler said.

Nordic has said it will source “the best available fish feed” with a goal of minimizing marine ingredients while meeting the health and welfare needs of the fish.

“We will only source our feed from accredited facilities that meet the criteria of ASC (Aquaculture Stewardship Council) or Global Gab certifications, just as we have done for our ASC- and Global Gab-certified facilities in Denmark and Norway,” Naess said in an emailed statement.

Still, Chandler would like the company to commit to buying food that has been tracked for greenhouse gas emissions and has the lowest level possible. Wheeler also identified the fish feed as an area of concern and said he’d like to see Nordic “lean in” and leverage their position as a market leader to drive innovation and further increase the amount of vegetable and insect content in fish feed.

Chandler is also worried about the use of chemical refrigerants, such as hydrofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons, which have thousands of times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. 

In responding to emailed questions from the Outpost, Naess referred more than once back to the analysis in the DEIR, saying full answers “might require much more detailed responses than would be possible to comment in a newspaper article.”

But she also noted that all comments submitted during this public review period will be addressed in detail, as required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and the formal responses will be included in the Final Environmental Impact Report. 

Regarding Fiske’s analysis of PG&E’s self-reported emissions she said, “Nordic used figures from 2016 in the first model in the IS/MND [Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration]. This was updated in the analysis in the EIR, using the more recent 2019 calculation/figures,” which she said are “the latest available third party verified data.”

She continued:

Nordic shares the concern with regards to GHG [greenhouse gasses] and has therefore committed to follow RCEA´s goals with regards to non-carbon and renewable energy. This is clearly stated in the EIR and will be a binding condition in the Coastal Development Permit. The GHG levels in the EIR therefore reflects the actual emission levels.

Outfall discharge

Like others who’ve examined Nordic’s plans, Humboldt Baykeeper Executive Director Jennifer Kalt was struck by the sheer size of the facility. 

“It’s a huge project,” she said. “I mean, it’s massive, and it’s really got a lot of people worried that the nutrient levels — nitrogen in particular — could exacerbate the algae problems.”

She was referring to the effluent that will be pumped into the ocean via the 1.5-mile discharge pipe. This is the same pipe that Louisiana-Pacific once used to dump millions of gallons of untreated wastewater per day into the Pacific Ocean.

Nobody we spoke with thinks Nordic’s much-lower amount of treated discharge will be as harmful to marine life, but Kalt and others still worry that the effluent’s higher temperature and perennial discharge of nutrients such as nitrogen could stimulate algae growth, exacerbating the existing scourge of harmful algal blooms. 

In response to feedback from environmental groups, Nordic last year agreed to independent monitoring of the effluent once the project is online, but Kalt and others take issue with GHD’s methods of collecting baseline data, saying the measurements used in the DEIR’s modeling were taken near the mouth of Humboldt Bay rather than offshore where the effluent will actually flow.

“They think the data they use from inside Humboldt Bay is just fine,” Kalt said. “They’re using logic and rationale that makes sense to someone that doesn’t know the science. They’re saying the bay flushes [into the ocean] so the it’s probably similar [conditions]. Well, it’s not.”

Delia Bense-Kang, Northern California coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation, agreed, saying the two locations have potentially different temperatures, salinity and other conditions.

The DEIR concludes that the environmental effects of the discharge will be less than significant. This was the area of the study for which Mierzwa was erroneously listed as a preparer, and he told the Outpost that he finds the level of analysis insufficient.

“I don’t think there’s enough information to make those sweeping [conclusions] that there’s no need to mitigate,” he said. 

Asked about these issues, Naess replied, “Before we make any further comments, we would need to see the specific concerns in detail to be able to address them sufficiently. This will be addressed in detail in the reply to comments in the CEQA process.”

Bay intakes

Jake McMaster, a local commercial fisherman, said he’s also worried that the outfall pipe may cause harmful algal blooms, and he’s also concerned about the sea chests sucking up millions of gallons of water from the bay.

“Humboldt Bay is a giant estuary with all sorts of juvenile everything — juvenile smelt, salmon, crab. Have you ever seen a juvenile crab?” he asked. “They’re tiny, like tadpoles.” McMaster is worried about the potential for these little critters to get sucked up into or against the intake screens.

The permit for the bay intakes is being pursued not by Nordic but rather by the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District. The local government agency owns the sea chests along with the rest of Redwood Marine Terminal II, having acquired the former pulp mill property in 2013 for a single dollar.

The California Coastal Commission and California Department of Fish and Wildlife will have their say on that permit, but Nordic’s DEIR addresses the infrastructure, too, noting that the sea chests will be retrofitted and modernized to meet applicable design criteria. This includes the installation of fine-mesh screens to prevent impingement and entrainment of sea life.

Mierzwa said this is another area where he feels the analysis falls short. Specifically, he brought up Section 316(b) of the Clean Water Act, which requires the EPA to issue regulations on the design and operation of intake structures. 

This particular section of law has been litigated extensively, Mierzwa said, adding that it’s taken very seriously. “There’s essentially no mention of it in Appendix D in this EIR,” he said. “It needed more analysis than it was given.”

The Harbor District has begun conducting studies to analyze the impacts of these intakes. 

Naess said in an email, “This is addressed in detail in the EIR and the permit application from the Harbor District.” She noted that the screens will have a mesh size of one millimeter. 

Transportation

At full production, the Nordic facility is expected to add 205 daily automobile trips, according to the DEIR. It would also add 32 outgoing trucks each week carrying waste to secondary use processing sites. Deliveries, including fish feed, shipping materials and process chemicals, would add another 20 truck trips per week.

The DEIR concludes that the increased traffic will have no significant environmental impact, but Fiske takes issue with the baseline figures, noting that the report compares its projections to the county’s per capita driving habits.

“And when you look at the entire county, of course, the average is way high because of people who live way out in the rural areas,” Fiske said. “And so that leads them to consistently conclude that there is no significant impact.”

Naess responded to this by saying, “Nordic believes we used the appropriate data and methodology for this study. Specific comments will be addressed as part of the CEQA process.”

‘It’s just humongous’

Several of the people we interviewed kept returning to the project’s size. 

“This is one of the biggest projects we’ve seen in the county for a long time,” Griffith observed. “There is a need to have the right information to make a correct assessment about the impacts, and I don’t know that we necessarily have all the right information.”

That said, she added that it would be great to see the site cleaned up. “That is part of what is in people’s minds: This site will eventually be used for something. We’d like to see it used in the best possible way.”

Kalt said she and others have encouraged Nordic to start smaller and then scale up when conditions warrant. “It’s just humongous,” she said of the existing plans. “We keep telling them, ‘If you make it smaller to start with, then we can see what the impacts are.’ The company has no track record of doing anything like this.”

Naess took issue with this allegation. 

“The technology is NOT untested,” she wrote in her email. A company acquired by Nordic has spent decades designing RAS facilities that are currently in operation, and Nordic has such farms of its own, “which is more than any other RAS company,” Naess said.

“As stated before, the facility consists of several ‘independent units,’ none of which are larger than the farms that we are currently operating and it will be the same size as our fully permitted Maine facility,” she continued. “The facility will also be built in two phases, which allows for Nordic to commission, operate and adjust the facility to local conditions (if necessary) before building the second half of the facility.”

Like Griffith, Kalt said she’s not necessarily opposed to it going forward. “It’s not a project that I think can’t be mitigated,” she said. “But they need to do a better analysis.”

Wheeler said this project is up there with the rejected Terra-Gen wind farm as the biggest developments proposed during his time in Humboldt.

“I think that our approach for this project has been different, because in many respects [Nordic] has been open to criticism,” he said. “They’ve been willing to listen, propose changes to the project and work with the community. I hope this continues. We’re at a really important stage here, and they’ve done well by us so far.”

The company has listened to stakeholder concerns and, in some cases, altered the project to accommodate them — “the completion of the full EIR being one of those examples,” Wheeler said. “I think the benefit of the full EIR is being shown in the kind of concerns we are now raising. We’ve been able to present more nuanced issues and drive a conversation that is better for all of us in the county.”

Naess expressed a similar sentiment:

Nordic appreciates the good dialog we have had with the environmental groups during the permitting process. They play an important role as watchdogs to protect the environment in Humboldt and have rightfully challenged the project to make it better.

Nordic listened to the environmental groups and the community and did an EIR. Nordic listened to the concerns voiced by the environmental groups and included additional monitoring. Mutual respect and collaboration is always the way to create win-win solutions and improve the outcome. Nordic wants to thank the environmental groups for their willingness to be a constructive player in this process.

Once again, you have until Friday to submit your own comments on the project. They can be sent to the Humboldt County Planning and Building Department at 3015 H Street in Eureka or via email: CEQAResponses@co.humboldt.ca.us.

###

CORRECTION: This post has been corrected to reflect that Griffith works for the NEC rather than Friends of the Eel River. The Outpost regrets the error.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Nordic Aquafarms Plans to Grow Atlantic Salmon in Land-Based Fish Farm on Former Pulp Mill Property
  
• County Declares No Significant Environmental Impact for Proposed Samoa Fish Farm; Will Receive Comments, Critiques Through May 24
• In a Surprise Move, Nordic Aquafarms Agrees to Conduct Full Environmental Impact Report for Its Land-Based Fish Farm on the Samoa Peninsula
• Local Environmental Groups Laud Nordic Aquafarms’ Decision to Complete a Full Environmental Impact Report
• (PHOTOS) Nordic Aquafarms Execs Lead Tour of the Corroding Remains of the Pulp Mill Property Where They Plan to Build a Big Land-Based Fish Farm
• PENINSULA RISING: County Creating a Financing District to Supercharge Development in and Around Samoa
• (VIDEO) Take a Virtual Tour, With a Brief History, of Nordic Aquafarm’ Proposed Peninsula Project Site
• County Releases Draft Environmental Impact Report for Nordic Aquafarms’ Fish Factory Project on the Samoa Peninsula

###

PREVIOUSLY:

• Exclusive: Cal State Blunder May Mean Loss of 3,000 New Student Housing Beds

###

After the California State University system realized it misread the fine print for a new state grant to build affordable student housing, officials went back to the drawing board, ran new numbers, and told lawmakers they have a plan to develop more discounted student homes.

The application do-over means as many as 800 more Cal State students — for a total of nearly 3,400 — may soon see heavily subsidized housing slots at a time when tens of thousands of California students are facing a dire housing crunch. The proposed housing projects would also cost the state less than what the Cal States put forth last fall — a rare instance of spending less to gain more in higher education.

The Cal State system submitted its revised plans to the governor’s office for approval in late January, two months after a 2021 CalMatters report found that the system needlessly proposed fewer affordable beds.

In its initial application to claim a portion of the $2 billion Gov. Gavin Newsom set aside for student housing, Cal State incorrectly assumed that it could use that money — and only that money — to build affordable units for low-income students.

As CalMatters reported and Cal State officials later acknowledged, rules governing the grant program allowed Cal State to combine state money with outside funds. Typically, campuses build housing by borrowing money. The state grant can serve as a large down payment on that student housing mortgage. Using a mix of funds allows campuses to build more units and take out less debt than they would have otherwise, savings that are then passed onto students. It’s an approach that several University of California campuses originally sought.

Cal State’s revised plans call for $823 million in total funding for housing projects across 10 campuses — with $535 million of that money coming from the new state housing grant and the rest from outside funds.

That $535 million amount is important. By the rules of the grant, the Cal States get $600 million over the three-year life of the grant program — assuming lawmakers and the governor follow through with their promise to fully fund the program.

The Cal State system’s original proposal sought $773 million in proposals — all from the grant. So even though that original slate of plans had more affordable beds listed, not all could have been built.

The math includes a lot of moving parts but it rests on the average cost to build a bed — a whopping $225,000 for Cal States and $240,000 for the UCs, based on grant project data the systems submitted.

How the grant language defines an “affordable” bed varies by campus, but the rents can’t exceed 33% of a county’s typical wage for a low-income person. In Los Angeles and San Diego, that means rents of roughly $700 to $800 a month. At UC Berkeley, it’s closer to $1,100 a month.

However the math works out, the state needs more affordable beds for students. Numerous California public universities report long waiting lists of students seeking campus housing. San Francisco State writes in its grant application that it has space for 4,000 student beds but in recent years has had a waitlist of 2,000 students seeking housing. Other research suggests tens of thousands of college students struggle with unstable housing situations and experience homelessness.

At the same time, campuses are in the midst of a building spree, though student housing rents can still be high. Meanwhile, lawmakers are pressuring the UC and Cal State systems to expand their enrollments, which will require more student housing. Several UC campuses technically house more students than they have beds for those students.

While the Cal States stretched their grant money further, they’re still proposing to pay for most of the affordable housing units with state grant money. Had the university system proposed using an equal amount of money from the state grant and from outside resources, campuses could build another 1,100 affordable beds, said Cal State trustee Jack McGrory,a San Diego-based developer. He crunched the numbers for CalMatters with a formula other developers use.

But a financing model that uses less state grant money would have been too expensive for the campuses, wrote Toni Molle, a spokesperson for the system. “Projects would not have been financially viable at higher levels of debt co-funding,” she wrote in an email.

“I’m not going to second-guess that,” said McGrory, who shared his calculations with CalMatters after Molle’s reply. He added that as a private developer, he tries to spend no more than half of his own funds for projects, but that affordable housing requires a different calculus because there’s less rental revenue to pay back the debt.

Still, one University of California campus seeking this grant money did propose using a lot more debt to build affordable beds. As one option, UC San Diego wants to use $100 million in new state grant funding to develop 1,100 ultra-affordable units for students as part of a $365 million project. No other campus at either public university system in California comes anywhere close to building that many beds. An alternative UC San Diego plan would create just 390 affordable beds but charge incredibly low rents of $418 a month.

Other UC projects hover around 300 affordable beds, on average. The same goes for Cal State’s 10 projects, with San Francisco State proposing the most in that system — 750 affordable beds.

That makes sense given how much experience UC San Diego has with student housing construction, said Paavo Monkkonen, an urban planning professor at UCLA.

The UC’s house roughly a third of their students while the Cal State system houses less than 15% of theirs, according to a 2021 Legislative Analyst’s Office report.

There’s no obligation for campuses to use a certain percentage of debt to finance their affordable housing projects, said Rebecca Kirk, an official within the governor’s Department of Finance, which is the office responsible for reviewing the campus housing grant proposals. It’s supposed to submit its recommendations to lawmakers March 1. Construction on these projects could start as early as Dec. 31, 2022.

Looking ahead, Monkkonen said the state should better coordinate the student housing construction efforts of California’s public colleges and universities to share financing and other ideas.

“This is a very obvious place for knowledge sharing,” he said. “We’re all on the same team.”

###

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

###

Since California health officials decreed the end of the mask mandate for restaurants and grocery stores last week, frustrated parents have been asking: When can their kids take their masks off at school?

They didn’t get any answers during a much anticipated press conference Monday hosted by California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly, who said the state would wait until Feb. 28 to potentially change masking rules at schools.

The California Teachers Association, one of the state’s largest unions with over 300,000 members, supported the decision to “pause and gather more information” before revising the mask mandate for schools.

But some parents and educators, who until recently supported strict mask rules in the classroom, are losing their patience.

“I really started thinking, why aren’t we talking about the masks coming off?” said Dr. Will Sheldon, an Oakland parent and a family medicine doctor. “There was no discussion of what the off-ramps are going to be.”

Concerns over education quality

Parents and educators interviewed by CalMatters said the social and emotional harms of long-term masking need to be weighed against what appear to be the minimal benefits of masking amid rising vaccination rates and receding case numbers.

Sheldon said his daughter has had a harder time making new friends because masks cover her facial expressions. But of greater concern, he said, are the kids he sees in his clinic who are deaf or have other language delays and rely on reading lips to learn speech and reading.

Related:

“I think they were a good idea early in the pandemic,” Sheldon said. “At this point, I’m more than ready for them to change. I think we’ve gone to an extreme.”

Meanwhile, public health experts are saying masks will play a smaller role in 2022’s pandemic playbook.

“As omicron quiets down, we’re approaching a point where we can take masks off,” said Robert Schooley, a professor of medicine at UC San Diego. “But if I had a 5- to 12- year- old who wasn’t vaccinated, I would still want them to keep the masks on until they get vaccinated. It’s not always trivial when a child gets COVID.”

High-quality, tight-fitting masks have been shown to protect against transmission, but they don’t completely eliminate the risk of getting COVID-19. And with the low risk of serious illness for kids, some parents are saying it’s time to lift the mask mandate and take a step towards normalcy.

“If I had a 5- to 12- year- old who wasn’t vaccinated, I would still want them to keep the masks on until they get vaccinated. It’s not always trivial when a child gets COVID.”
Robert Schooley, professor of medicine at UC San Diego

While not all parents oppose masks in schools — CalMatters spoke to parents who thought they should embrace all measures to reduce the death count — some worry the masks are reducing their child’s enthusiasm for learning.

“I want my son to feel excited and connected,” said Patricia Johnson, an Oakland parent of a first grader. “That’s what I’ve wanted from school all along. I want him to love school.”

Jason Peplinski, the superintendent of Simi Valley Unified School District, said public health experts can’t underestimate the effect wearing masks for two years has had on kids. He hopes the mandate lifts for all students. A middle ground, he said, would be a logistical nightmare.

“What I don’t want to happen is for the governor to say if you’re vaccinated you can unmask,” Peplinski said. “That puts the onus on school districts.”

Some teachers are also calling for an end to the mask mandate.

Bevin Abbe, a vocal music teacher at Santa Susana High School in Simi Valley, said masks have been stifling her students’ creative expression for too long. She worries that more introverted students are hiding behind their masks, delaying their social development.

Abbe said debate over masking has become heated in her county of Ventura. Her district’s teachers union declined to take a position.

“Our union has chosen to respect the different views of our membership and society, at large,” said union president Amanda Hogan. “We have not taken a position on masks in the past and are unlikely to in the future.”

Public health experts endorse masks

The California Department of Public Health issued its school mask mandate in July as most of the state’s school districts were set to return to fully in-person instruction for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The mandate placed the responsibility of enforcement on local school officials.

As the omicron surge led to record case numbers among students, teachers and staff, many schools were pushed to a breaking point. But as case numbers decline, more states are starting to lift school mask mandates and taking steps towards normalcy. Lawmakers in some more conservative states are working to ban mask mandates altogether.

Simi Valley’s Peplinski and parents opposing the mask mandate say it doesn’t make sense for a vaccinated child to be able to eat at a restaurant or shop for groceries without a mask but have to put one on in the classroom. Public health experts, however, say the comparison isn’t completely valid because education is compulsory and students spend most of their time at schools.

“If you want to go to a restaurant, that’s your choice,” said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. “But kids need to be in schools, and I’d like to see them protected as much as possible.”

Noymer said masks should be required at schools to eliminate the possibility of returning to virtual instruction. That said, he thinks the mandate could be lifted in the next month or so once case numbers and hospitalization rates are back down to where they were last May.

Noymer said the state could set various thresholds for case numbers, hospitalization rates and vaccination rates that would trigger an end to the mask mandate for schools. But on Monday, Ghaly provided no concrete metrics. He said the state would continue monitoring a variety of data points for the next two weeks.

Until then, some parents will remain exasperated.

“All they did was announce that they’re having another press conference in two weeks,” said Sheldon. “It felt like they were just kicking the can down the road.”

###

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

###

Sasha Rae (Peters) Mitchell
Jan. 7, 1987 – Nov. 26, 2021

It is with great sorrow that we announce the passing of our daughter Sasha. She died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 34 the afternoon of Friday November 26, 2021 at her home in Arcata. She leaves behind her husband, Craig, and her beautiful little daughter, Jade.

Sasha was a happy, healthy child.

Sasha was born on a warm sunny morning in Eureka in January 1987 to proud parents Roger and Christie Peters. She grew up on Pleasant Avenue in Cutten. Sasha attended Cutten elementary school and Winship Jr. High. Her next door neighbor was Heather. They were best friends for life.

Sasha was a very fast learner. She could throw and catch a ball before she was two. She showed us she could read (much to our surprise) at age 4. She was reading at third grade level when she entered kindergarten. She had a surprisingly large vocabulary by age 18 months and spoke with perfect diction and clarity. We were standing by our car at Port Angeles Washington waiting for the ferry to Vancouver Island. When the ferry came into view Sasha pointed and shouted “That boat is Humungousable!” The man in the car in front of us got out, walked back to Sasha and said he just wanted to make sure he heard that correctly. Sasha repeated “That boat is humungousable!” The man said I guess I did hear her correctly. Later on the same trip Sasha impressed her aunt Karen by explaining to her that ko-a-la bears eat eu-ca-lyp-tus trees. Sasha had just turned 11 when the first Harry Potter book hit the market. We bought it and she finished it in four days. She couldn’t wait for the next one to come out. She read all the Chronicles of Narnia, Goosebumps ghost stories and all the young people’s classics. By age 12 Sasha was reading adult novels.

Sasha took English riding lessons from age 7- 12. She played girls softball in Cutten Ridgewood and Redwood Empire little league from age 8 to 16. She was a pitcher with her own windup style. She hit the ball well, played 1st and third base. She was a good all around player. She attended two summer sessions of girl’s softball camp at HSU. She spent many summer weekends at Trinity Lake with her family on Uncle Bob and Aunt Phyllis’s houseboat. There she became a very confident swimmer, learned to water ski, learned to drive a Sea Doo at an early age. She caught her first fish there. Sasha was a great hiker. She went on several backpacking trips in the Trinity Alps with her Mom and Dad and Uncle John and her cousin Evin. She loved outdoor adventures. Uncle Steve Sandeen showed Sasha the excitement of whitewater rafting down the Trinity River. Sasha lived for the annual day after Thanksgiving Christmas tree hunt up in the hills with her dad, Uncle John and her cousin Evin. She always chose the perfect trees.

Sasha traveled to many places in her young life. She saw Vancouver Island, Dallas and New Orleans by age two. At age four she flew to the Big Island of Hawaii the first time to visit Uncle Walt. There she learned to swim in the ocean and went snorkeling for the first time. She went back to the Big Island at age 7 and to Maui at age 15. She made several trips to Los Angeles to visit her Aunt Nonie (Tina), Auntie Margaret, Uncle Alex and many cousins on her mother Christie’s side of the family. She went to Disneyland and a family reunion on the Kern River. She flew to Dallas with her Grandma Billee (Munga) to see her great-grandparents and great-aunt Linda and uncle Gary. She was given a VIP tour of the Capitol building while on a trip to Washington D.C. with her dad and Bob Morelli. She went to Puerto Vallarta for a week with family. She skied and snowboarded at Mt. Rose Nevada, Mt. Bachelor and Mt. Shasta. She attended a few Giants baseball games with her mom.

In her young adult life Sasha moved around a lot. She lived in Florida for a couple years outside of West Palm Beach. She lived in the Borrego desert for four years and fought wildfires for Cal Fire and the CDC. She lived in Palm Desert for a year, then lived for a while with her Aunt Margaret in Lake Elsinore. In 2019 Sasha moved back to Eureka. She met up with her junior high school sweetheart and love of her life Craig. They were married, made a home together and had beautiful baby Jade in September 2020.

Sasha was very creative and artistic. She made wonderful pop up greeting cards for birthdays. She enjoyed re making and refinishing furniture pieces. She liked painting walls with bright colors. She could draw and was very good at calligraphy. She gave great haircuts. She loved cooking and eating exotic foods. She loved sushi, phad Thai noodles, jasmine rice, beef stroganoff and Aunt Mac’s chocolate cake. She was always munching on fresh carrots. When avocados were ripe we gave them to Sasha because she made the best guacamole. She did not like mayonnaise.

Sasha’s young adult life was riddled with mistakes and problems that are caused by a drug addiction. On Friday, November 26 she made a mistake and died from an overdose.

Sasha was preceded in death by both her grandfathers Alexander Vien III and Elvin Peters and her uncle Alex Vien IV. She is survived by her husband Craig, daughter Jade, her parents Roger and Christie Peters, Her grandmother Billee Peters, Uncles John and David Peters, her aunts Karen Wallace, Tami Peters Tina Thompson, Margaret Livingston and Debra Vien. She is also survived by her loving cousin and friend Evin Peters, cousins Kelly, Robb and Justin in Canada and cousins Rick Vien and Robert Tinsley, cousins Karli and Casey Mckenzie in Sacramento and Jeff , Little Al and Andrea in Los Angeles. Also her extended family Bob and Phyllis Morelli, Uncle Walter Smith and many others who knew and loved her much.

Sasha was a very gregarious and intelligent young woman. She made friends easily everywhere she went. Children LOVED Sasha. She was a nurturing enthusiastic mother and a loving wife. She was well read, well spoken, well travelled. She was beautiful with an athletic body and a perfect smile. Sasha was quick witted and possessed a very developed clever sense of humor. She was a fast talker and a good listener. With her honest infectious laugh and unbounded energy she could light up a room just by being there. Sasha is greatly missed and dearly loved by all her family and friends.

###