After more than 30 years toiling in obscurity in the ultra-complex world of battery technology, Kurt Kelty and the other chemists, electrical engineers and minerals experts racing to design the next generation of electric vehicle batteries are at last having their moment.

Kelty, who ran Tesla’s battery cell team for more than a decade, now heads battery engineering at Sila Nanotechnologies, a Bay Area startup experimenting with new designs for EV power. When he started his career in the 1990s, Kelty avoided telling people at social gatherings he was in the battery industry because “you were relegated to the corner section of the cocktail party.”

“Now you go to parties and you are the center of attention,” he said. “Everyone wants to know what’s going on with batteries.”

Do they ever. For all of the policy hurdles and consumer reluctance bedeviling California’s transition to all-electric transportation, unlocking the battery puzzle is the most critical element to jump-starting the post-fossil fuel revolution.

Failure to deliver safe, affordable and efficient batteries for electric cars could mean that California fails to meet its landmark mandate, enacted last summer, to phase out new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.

As California enforces its first-in-the-world zero-emission requirements for cars, the state is navigating a policy path strewn with unique obstacles: international human rights and environmental issues, global resource constraints and fast-moving technologies.

The industry’s imperatives: Making cheaper, faster-charging and more durable EV batteries. Breaking China’s stranglehold on the industry, where 85% of batteries are produced or assembled. And discovering new sources of rare earth minerals to replace lithium mines in countries with unsafe labor practices and poor environmental oversight, and cobalt mines where human rights groups say children are mining ore with their bare hands.

Standing between the dream and the mandate are potential global supply chain disruptions, rising prices of materials, shifting geopolitical alliances and a profound retooling of a venerable industry.

Materials for electric car batteries come from mines and factories around the world, including Africa, Australia, South America and Asia. Future exploration is contemplated in the Arctic Circle and the planet’s deep seabeds for mining rare-earth minerals.

Automakers are ramping up EV development and production, and some have already announced their intention to stop selling gasoline and diesel cars and electrify their entire fleets: General Motors set a 2035 goal, while Volvo and Mercedes set even more aggressive targets — full electrification by 2030. Ford so far has made a 2035 pledge to go electric only for models sold in Europe.

But the hill that automakers must climb is treacherous and quite steep. California officials have been planning for an electric future for decades, envisioning clean transportation that is sustainable, carbon free, better for the environment and affordable. That journey begins with batteries, and the road to get there is decidedly tricky.

The favored technology of the moment, lithium-ion batteries, can be dirty and dangerous during their lifecycle — from the mines in Chile and Australia to the cell factories in China and South Korea to the landfills where they can leak toxic substances.

Last month, Ford encountered a battery problem and was forced to temporarily suspend production and shipments of its popular all-electric 2023 F-150 Lightning pickup. A battery caught fire in a single truck during a pre-delivery check, the company said. The fire came after Ford issued a notice to EV pickup truck owners about “performance degradation” problems with the battery module that affected about 100 trucks. General Motors, Tesla, Hyundai and BMW, among other manufacturers, have also dealt with battery problems.

“Growing pains” doesn’t come close to describing the challenges that could thwart ambitions to fully electrify California’s transportation, at least in the short term. The sunny projections about an EV revolution are running into harsh, unavoidable reality.

“We do have a problem,” said Daniel Sperling, a UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies professor who served on the California Air Resources Board that enacted the zero-emission car mandate last summer.

That problem, he said, is that the air board and other optimistic state officials did not adequately factor in the volatility of global markets, the impact of a worldwide pandemic and the cautiousness of industrial titans.

“The American automobile industry has lagged and has been slow to embrace adoption of EVs, never mind the materials issues. The legacy (car) companies, not just the American ones, have been slow to anticipate all the issues — supply chain, materials,” Sperling said.

“We thought that all of this would be so easy a glide path to 100%,” he said. But supply chain problems are “just one thing that went wrong. There’s going to be other things that will go wrong.

“It will make it harder to get to 100%,” Sperling said, “but we will get it figured out.”

Mining ‘white gold’ and ‘blue gold’

As the world races to build electric cars, the competition to source battery raw materials has buffeted the world market, primarily lithium, cobalt and nickel. Lithium, known as white gold, is a highly efficient metal for storing energy. Cobalt, called blue gold, provides lithium-ion batteries with their range and durability. Nickel, like lithium, has high energy density.

Demand for these vital metals has yo-yoed their prices along with their supply. Even though the supply picture changes from month to month, experts say, for now, the near-term availability of battery materials is stable.

“I don’t see major issues in terms of getting supply to match demand,” said Kevin Mak, who analyzes automotive electronics markets for the U.K.-based firm TechInsights Inc. “No one is in a panic or hand-wringing. Challenges are there — nickel, Chinese supply vendors, reserves of lithium and moves toward getting supplies elsewhere.”

However, a report from the International Energy Agency found a mixed picture: Lithium and cobalt may be in surplus in the near-term, but supplies from existing mines and those under construction may meet only half of the demand by the end of the decade.

“These risks to the reliability, affordability and sustainability of mineral supply are manageable, but they are real,” the report concluded. “How policy makers and companies respond will determine whether critical minerals are a vital enabler for clean energy transitions, or a bottleneck in the process.”

“Bottleneck” was how Caspar Rawles, chief data officer at the London-based firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, described the demand for lithium. Hunger for the metal is a response to California’s mandate to phase out gasoline cars and the global industry’s ramping up of EV production.

“If you look at the various timeframes, there’s going to be a bottleneck as this gets ramped up,” Rawles said. “Pre-COVID, the cost of lithium was about $7 to $8 a kilo. It increased to $65 to $70 a kilo, purely due to massive demand.”

Demand for lithium has been sluggish lately, driven by a variety of market forces, and prices dropped about 12% last month. Chinese suppliers of lithium concentrate halted a planned auction. The volatility makes auto companies nervous.

The price of cobalt more than doubled from mid-2021 to 2022, but has fallen drastically. At the same time, production is booming. Forecasts project the Democratic Republic of Congo will mine almost 40% more cobalt this year and Indonesia is poised to become a major producer.

“These risks to the reliability, affordability and sustainability of mineral supply are manageable, but they are real.”
— The International Energy Agency

Prospecting for and processing these metals can also be problematic. Lithium is commonly derived via open-pit hardrock mining, much of it in Australia, or in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert, by allowing expansive, lithium-rich brine lakes to slowly evaporate to yield the raw material.

In either case, the mining can leave indelible scars on the landscape and pollute air and water.

The process of evaporation of briny water scatters salt, ruining soils for farming and contaminating streams. One report found that in northern Chile, lithium extraction has consumed 65% of the region’s water supply.

Cobalt carries similar environmental baggage, although its critics more often cite the mines’ impacts on workers. Researchers at Northwestern University studying social and environmental consequences of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo found widespread problems.

The mining “was associated with increases in violence, substance abuse, food and water insecurity, and physical and mental health challenges,” the report says. “Community members reported losing communal land, farmland and homes, which miners literally dug up in order to extract cobalt. Without farmland, Congolese people were sometimes forced to cross international borders into Zambia just to purchase food.”

Rawles, who analyzes the global lithium supply chain, said auto companies have been slow to invest in raw materials and are now paying the price, literally.

“There are companies that could have bought the whole industry,” he said. “There’s a massive learning curve while EV manufacturers spend time learning about lithium, cobalt and nickel.”

In attempts to address these global issues and immunize themselves against supply chain volatility, some automakers are directly investing in mines, partnering with battery manufacturers or building their own plants.

Experts single out Tesla — with its close control of materials and battery manufacturing — as being well-positioned to avoid supply chain and battery disruptions.

“Localizing the manufacturing of more electric vehicles in the United States, along with greater localized sourcing of parts and materials, will not just help reduce our emissions footprint. It will make our business stronger and more sustainable,” said Ashwani Gupta, chief operating officer of the Nissan Motor Co. in a February statement.

General Motors announced a $650 million investment in the Thacker Pass mine in Nevada, the largest known source of lithium in the U.S. The company estimates that lithium carbonate produced at the mine will be sufficient to power a million cars.

Another promising U.S. lithium source is at California’s Salton Sea, where companies are beginning to extract lithium, as well as manganese and zinc, from brine pulled up by geothermal plants near the lake, which is close to the US-Mexico border. State officials established a Lithium Valley Commission, envisioning a future juggernaut where EV batteries are built from side-by-side extraction, processing and assembly facilities.

The commission reported that the Salton Sea region has the world’s highest concentration of lithium contained in geothermal brines. Generally, the process piggybacks on existing power plants that pull up superheated water and convert it to steam. The additional step would extract lithium from the brine then reinject the remaining water back into the ground.

One difficulty is the federal Inflation Reduction Act, which includes rebates for car buyers but requires that at least half of the battery components must be sourced in the U.S. or from a trading partner country by next year, ramping up to 80% in 2026. Federal officials have not released final guidance to the car companies.

“China has scale. At the moment, no one can compete.”
Kevin Mak, TechInsights Inc.

China understands that these policies are directed at its supremacy in electric battery and vehicle production, an advantage that Mak of TechInsights said is at least a decade in the making.

“China has scale,” Mak said. “At the moment, no one can compete.”

In response to the Inflation Reduction Act requirement, automakers are constructing their own domestic battery supply chains or partnering with existing producers. For instance, Ford is licensing technology from a leading Chinese battery maker and joining with it to operate a battery plant in Michigan. It’s unclear if that business relationship will meet the federal guidelines for domestic production.

Battery durability: Extending their life

While carmakers paint a generally sunny picture in public pronouncements regarding the coming stampede of new EV models, they present a more sober outlook when pushing back against what they say are California’s accelerated battery performance standards.

The Air Resources Board got an earful from automakers before its regulation was enacted last summer. The companies said current battery technology would not easily or cheaply meet the proposed standards for durability, which require batteries to maintain a certain range over time.

How far cars will go on a single charge is a critical element that allows consumers to feel comfortable about electric vehicles as a comparable replacement for gas-fueled cars.

Joshua Cunningham, who oversees the Air Resources Board’s Clean Cars program, said carmakers asked for more time to source batteries that could maintain their power longer, while not making them too large and heavy and driving up the cost of EV ownership.

“There’s a massive learning curve while EV manufacturers spend time learning about lithium, cobalt and nickel.”
— Caspar Rawles, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence

The air board modified its proposal to reduce battery durability requirements to 70% for model years 2026 through 2029, increasing to 80% in 2030 — which means that as batteries age, they must retain 80% of their originally-designed range.

Complying with California’s durability standards will add between $400 and $1,200 to the cost of an electric car, according to the air board. However, the board predicts that electric cars will become cheaper than gasoline-powered cars by 2030.

Automakers told regulators that they were less about the future supply of lithium and cobalt than retooling EV batteries to meet California and international requirements. Companies told the air board they had already locked in battery types for the coming models and needed more time to adjust.

“The primary area where the industry pressured us on was the cost side of batteries.” Cunningham said. “They would bring up issues about scaling up capacity and supply. We felt our proposal was reasonable.”

Making a better battery through chemistry

Batteries in electric vehicles are a bit like chemistry sets. The minerals are mined, processed, turned into cathodes and anodes — the positive and negative sides of the battery — and packed into individual cells. They are then laced with all manner of sophisticated electronic controls and sensors to monitor the performance of each cell in the battery pack.

Manufacturers are tinkering with the chemical makeup of new EV batteries to solve a few problems: lessen the reliance on rare and costly minerals, produce a battery that more specifically suits the needs of different drivers and, especially, find a way to make them more cheaply. Batteries account for as much as 40% of the cost of an electric vehicle.

Innovation must conform to the market. The American appetite for large SUVs and trucks, for instance, necessitates more powerful, heavier batteries that allow a vehicle to tow or carry loads. The nickel, cobalt and manganese batteries are higher density and provide for longer-range driving. Ford claims its F-150 Lightning electric truck will run 320 miles on a fully charged nickel, cobalt and manganese battery, for example.

Tesla’s high-end, long-range cars carry bespoke nickel-cobalt-aluminum batteries made for the company, exchanging aluminum for manganese. Like the nickel, cobalt and manganese types, the Tesla battery is expensive but powerful and, with the addition of aluminum, longer-lived.

On the other end of the EV food chain, smaller commuter cars may carry batteries made with lithium, iron and phosphate. These less expensive batteries have a longer life span and are expected to be charged more frequently and faster. Their lack of nickel and cobalt make them less expensive to manufacture.

“Everyone is looking for a made-in-the-USA product, and (to) have a secure supply chain.”
—SOUTH 8

The race to create the next generation battery is propelled by an overheated market eager for new batteries and, in the U.S., by federal grants that nudge innovation. The Biden administration has allocated nearly $3 billion to expand domestic EV battery manufacturing.

One recipient of a U.S. Energy Department grant was South 8, a San Diego-based tech company, which received $3.152 million to develop powerful, rapidly chargeable battery cells that, rather than utilizing solid materials, liquify gas under pressure. The result, the company says, is a less-volatile battery that will work well at low temperatures, is easier to ship and faster to charge, and is projected to cost 20-30% less than standard lithium-ion batteries.

“Everyone is looking for a made-in-the-USA product, and (to) have a secure supply chain,” said Cyrus Rustomji, South 8’s chief executive officer. The gases he is working with “are available on an industrial scale in the U.S.”

Rustomj, who expects the technology to work well in future electric cars, said the first customer is the U.S. military, which will test the batteries in extreme climates.

Giving batteries a second life

Electric car batteries are uniquely valuable for recycling, and their critical metals are not difficult to recover and reuse. That’s the good news. The not-so good news is there simply isn’t a critical mass of these batteries to make such businesses viable yet.

Experts say it will take another decade of robust EV sales — and EV retirements — for battery recycling to reach a scale that would support a viable industry. But, they quickly add, it will happen.

Since 2019, a group of California experts has quietly chipped away at the task of how to create a more useful and clean afterlife for lithium-ion batteries.

Their report was published a year ago and submitted to the Legislature. Among their recommendations reuse, repurpose and recycle. An estimated 95% of EV batteries can be recycled.

Alissa Kendall, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis and one of the report’s authors, said the approach was to recast end-of-life batteries as a solution rather than a problem.

Batteries disposed of improperly can leak toxic chemicals and in some cases spontaneously combust when overheated. Still, experts say that tossing out old EV batteries is like throwing away money.

Kendall’s group looked at the batteries’ so-called second life once they are taken out of cars — data shows there’s plenty of life left. While there’s not a large pool of retired electric cars yet, those sent to the scrap heap have on average 65-80% of battery capacity left.

That’s because, as Kendall says, the hardest job you can give a battery is to run an electric car. “The power demand is great and the performance requirements are hard to meet,” she said.

“As your battery degrades, you may not have the performance you want. But if you take that battery out, it can be useful for storage,” she said.

While there’s not a large pool of retired electric cars yet, those sent to the scrap heap have on average 65-80% of battery capacity left.

Retired EV batteries can help power small-scale operations by providing storage for excess energy. One such pilot project is underway in San Diego County, where discarded Nissan Leaf and Tesla batteries are storing energy derived from a rooftop solar system.

Kendall, a former auto engineer who worked on Ford’s first-generation hybrid-electric vehicles, said there is no need to get rid of batteries when they provide shorter range. She said she still happily drives her aging plug-in hybrid with one-quarter battery capacity.

The most promising use of old lithium-ion car batteries is to recycle them using a process that recovers the remaining lithium, cobalt and nickel, then puts the still-usable material back into new batteries. It’s an approach that some engineers refer to as “urban mining”; the already-processed minerals are more highly concentrated than the ore pulled from the earth.

“The quality of the material is very good,” said Anand Sankaran, who heads Ford’s new battery technology center. “A large percentage of what you need can be gained from the field. But we need to build an ecosystem. The last thing we want is to get the material then send it back out of the country.”

If widely scaled, reuse of the critical materials could lessen the reliance on foreign sources and bring those minerals closer to yet-to-be built battery assembly plants in the U.S.

At the moment, it’s a future vision. The EV battery recycling industry is still in its infancy. One such plant exists in Nevada, although more are promised.

“Right now battery recycling does not recover lithium. The capability exists but the economics aren’t there on its own,” Kendall said. Government grants and incentives could jump-start a nascent industry, she said. “This is where policy intervention can make a difference. “

The U.S. Department of Energy recently distributed $74 million from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to advance projects to reuse batteries.

According to Kendall and others, it’s worth it.

In what researchers say is an admittedly best-case scenario, if all new cars are electrified by 2035 — with more EV batteries available to be reused — 24% of the annual national lithium demand could come from recycled materials. In 2050, it could increase to 57%.

Automakers are retooling their companies, too

As transportation transitions from oil to electricity, an equally profound transformation is taking place within the auto industry. Batteries have replaced gasoline engines as the focal point of vehicle design, meaning cars and trucks will no longer be greasy, loud machines but quiet and clean computers.

Innovators are no longer industrial designers or mechanical geniuses but chemists and electrical engineers. Corporate organizational charts are reflecting that shift.

In an article about how the shift has transformed the auto industry, The Economist tracked the migration of managers from tech companies to car companies, reflecting the technological challenges that electric cars present.

The vulnerabilities of the industry’s reliance on outsourcing were exposed by the supply chain breakdowns during COVID-19, which prevented computer chips from reaching car manufacturing plants. Worldwide the industry is protecting itself from being caught again when it comes to batteries: Companies are now developing partnerships and investing in each step of the process.

It’s an old-school business model that harkens back to Henry Ford’s vertically integrated company: purchasing rail lines, glassworks, producing its own steel and even operating coal mines to supply the power to run the Dearborn, Michigan factory.

The modern-day incarnation of that “is a wholesale transformation,” said Mike Maten, director for electric vehicle policy at General Motors. “We are changing the fundamental structure of our business. We are transforming our products, but internally we are transforming our company from a structural standpoint to recognize the new realities of the supply chain.”

“This is a wholesale transformation. We are changing the fundamental structure of our business.”
— Mike Maten, General Motors

As an example, he said, GM used to employ two people in its purchasing department tasked with buying raw materials for EV batteries. Now the company has a center staffed with 100 people whose job is to find lithium, cobalt, nickel and other minerals.

Even with the head-snapping pace of change to electrify automobiles, industry insiders call for patience, saying what’s required to propel an industry from its infancy to its maturity goes well beyond solving battery problems.

Compare what needs to happen to the infrastructure that supports internal combustion cars, said Celina Mikolajczak, chief battery technology officer for Lyten, a San Jose-based advanced materials company developing a lithium-sulfur battery for electric cars.

“We are just starting out, in the scale of these things,” she said. “If you look at the scale of our petrochemical industry, if you look at how many rigs there are out there drilling, how many refineries are out there, if you look at how many gas stations there are out there, and how many pipelines to transport all this material — that is the scale of infrastructure you need to electrify all our vehicles.”

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

Nin Nickles Myers was born on July 9, 1988 in Eureka to Gilbert Myers and Shontay Basey. He was a member of the Yurok Tribe and proudly tattooed “Yurok” on his hand. Nin passed away on Saturday, February 18, 2023 in Napa, after losing his battle to an illness that took him too young and way before his time. However, as Nin would say “Just live day by day, you can go at anytime. So enjoy the time you have with family and friends.”

Nin was the third of four children born to Gilbert and Shontay. As a young boy, Nin spent part of his childhood growing up in the mountains of Tulley Creek. He would run around butt naked with only his little black rubber boots on to protect his feet as he gained the nickname “Mountain Man.” He was rarely in the house but rather outside either learning and helping his dad work on fixing vehicles, being his big brother’s shadow, gardening, hunting, fishing, teaching family how to start a fire, or peeing off the porch all with a smile on his face.

Around the age of eight, he and his younger sister Sharon, moved to McKinleyville with their Uncle Dewey. In McKinleyville, Nin participated in wrestling, basketball and football for most of his elementary and high school years. It was also in McKinleyville, he made friendships he cherished and would last him long into his adulthood. In high school, Nin found his love for woodworking. He would always be looking at or smelling different types of wood trying to identify them. Nin was always working with his hands whether it be carving, drawing, playing video games or fixing things.

Eventually Nin would make his way back to Tulley Creek, where he would enjoy fishing, hunting, smoking salmon, woodworkingrpentry, gardening and enjoying his time with family and friends. Nin also loved to be by the river. If you couldn’t find him he was most likely down by the river fishing or enjoying being in the solitude the river had to offer.

It was also in Tulley Creek, Nin started dating Sharon’s longtime friend Samantha and soon they welcomed their little baby girl Lana “Che’Che”. He had given his little girl the nickname of a little “hellraiser” which was probably a homage to his hellraising days. Nin loved his little girl and fought so hard in the hospital to be here for her. In spirit, Nin will always be with her as well as all those lives he touched and blessed by just knowing him.

Nin just had a way about him that no obituary could ever truly capture. Those who knew him know the feeling he left by just being himself. Which was a caring, playful, loving, friendly, a bit of a prankster, a confidant, a protector, someone you always wanted on your side to either watch your back or cheer you on. He was just Nin Man with a million dollar smile and a heart of gold. He will be so missed by those who loved him.

He is preceded in death by his grandparents Charles Everett Myers and Ida Mae Lewis, Margaret Frye-Carlson and Lloyd Basey; his aunts and uncles; Everett Dewey Myers, Andrea Lavato, Larry Sillaway, Frankie Erickson, Joseph Henderson and Sylvester “Louie” Myers.

He is survived by his mother and father, Shontay Basey and Gilbert Myers; his siblings, Gilbert Myers, Lorraine Myers, Sharon De Los Santos and Vernon Myers; his partner, Samantha Crutchfield; his daughter, Lana Che’ge’mem Myers; his nieces and nephews Spegi Myers, Jimmy Myers, Ida Mae Myers, Hazel Myers, Maizy Myers, Lottie Myers, Helen “Maeme” De Los Santos, Nicole De Los Santos, and Richard De Los Santos; his aunts, Everetta Myers, Bonnie Basey and Shontay “Big Shon” Mata; and his many cousins.

Pallbearers are Gilbert Myers Sr., Gilbert Myers, Spegi Myers, Jimmy Myers, Paul Vanmechlen, Richard De Los Santos, Vernon Henry- Myers, Frankie Jo Myers, Richard Myers, Andrew Myers, Dustin Latham, Sylvester Myers, Laurance Myers, and Kenek Ravago

Honorary pallbearers are Richard “Dickie” Myers, Harold Myers, Louie Myers, Dewey Myers, Charlie Myers, Anthony Lavato, Troy Myers, Richard Myers, Bret Robbins, David “Hootie” Lewis, Jamie Lewis, Willard Carlson, Pergish Carlson, Will-bear Carlson, Mike Carlson, Nikwich Carlson, Doug Paulis, Greg Donofiro, Cameron Ragain, Travis Harpe and Travis Perryman

A viewing was held on Friday, February 24, 2023 at Paul’s Chapel in Arcata. On Saturday, February 25, 2023, Nin was taken to the Requa Boat Ramp to take his last boat ride from Klamath to Tulley Creek which was followed by a graveside burial service in Tulley Creek. A special thanks to all those who helped the family during this time. It did not go unnoticed and it was greatly appreciated.

Until we see each other again, Nin Man.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Nin Myers’ loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

Carmen Louise McCovey Moon
February 12, 1938 – February 23, 2023

Carmen passed away peacefully at home on February 23, 2023, surrounded by family.

Carmen was the 11th of 12 siblings born to Charles Jr. and Sadie McCovey at Notchko. The story was when Sydney was lying in bed with her parents, their dad told her that she was no longer going to be the baby since he had been kicked in the back by Carmen who was in her Momma’s belly. Carmen was born on Friday the 13th according to her mom, but the Government put her date as the 12th. She never knew that until she was applying for her passport, and they made her go get an official birth certificate to get the “correct” date.

Carmen always had an adventurous spirit, always willing to go on a road trip with whomever would take her. She cruised halfway across the country with her favorite son-in-law Danny and daughter Ronalda to go visit her good friend Dorothy Chezem in South Dakota. She also loved each time she went to Hawaii. The last time was for a 60th anniversary trip with a small group of 11 family members, going to see where they used to live near Sunset Beach.

She loved being a mom and loved being a grandma even more, but her favorite was being “GramGram” to her great grandbabies, who meant the world to her. She made each one of her babies feel the love she had for them, and she lit up their world with it. She loved to laugh and was well known for her giggle.

Carmen and Fred met when Ronalda was just a baby. Within the year, Carmen and Fred were married with Little Fred joining the family right after. A year later, Delores Faye dazzled this world, and two years later, on the same day, Richard came. Their baby Marjorie completed their family. Lila and Little Clyde spent a lot of time with Fred and Carmen, and being double first cousins with the kids, they were just like one of their own.

She had many hats from all the jobs she worked throughout her life. She worked at Humboldt Fire in Hoopa, then moved to working at the Nursery in McKinleyville while Fred was working his Moon’s Barbershop along Central Avenue. During her time at the Nursery, they used to go out as a fire support crew. When the nursery closed, they formed their own camp crew called “The Native’s” with Carmen, Ida Liles, sister Sydney, and niece Laura Borden. They were well known in fire camp for with their neon green hats. After retiring, she loved it when her former crew members came up to her to say hi and check in when they’d see each other.

She was proud to be a Yurok Tribal Member and loved going to her East District meetings. She was a part of the United Indian Health Service (UIHS) Board of Directors and she served on the Yurok Tribe’s Election Board for many years. At meetings, her favorite thing was when her many nieces and nephews would come up to her and say, “Hi Auntie”. Family was always such an important part of her life. She loved being a part of her church family as well, and was grateful for all the friendships that she had created with them.

Carmen lost the love of her life, Fred, two years ago. Marjorie was able to keep her busy with many adventures from driving North to visit her good friend and Sister-in-law Kayo, going on the Skunk Train ride outside of Willits, staying overnight in Redding to shop and making sure she got her pedicures and manicures too. She loved camping at Fish Lake, especially being out on the lake in a boat. Camping brought back the memories of all those years at Fire Camp with her crew.

Carmen was preceded in death by her love Fredrick Moon Sr., son Fredrick Moon Jr., nephew/son Little Clyde, grandbaby Billy Dee, granddaughter DeeFaye, grandbaby Serenity, her parents Charles and Sadie McCovey, and her siblings Allen McCovey, Bernice Roubidoux, Ramona “Coonie” Trimble, Darrell McCovey, Charles “Big Boy” McCovey, Howard “Edgie” McCovey, Stanley “Cart” McCovey, Florence “Flossie” McCovey, Marion “Shoeshine” McCovey, Delores “Dee” Reed, and her nephew/brother Allen “Buzz” McCovey.

Carmen is survived by her best friend/sister Sydney “Syd” Carroll and her sister-in-law Kayo Moon. Her children Ronalda and Danny, Delores, Richard and Tammy, Marjorie and Lila. Her grandbabies: Carmeli and Nolan “No”, Leland “Leapin’ Lee”, Christina, Medero “Hector”, Annalisa “Ducky” and Rashauna “MeMe”, Liles “Two scoops of Poopa Loops” and Yvonne, Little Richard “Cha-bon”, Meagen and Guy, Darrell and Ernie, Travis “Travi-o-so”and Chern, Jasmine and “E”, Nena, Shaleen and Bobby, Damon and Hailey, Aaron and Rochelle. Her greatest loves, her great grandbabies Raymond “Mr. Woo”, Helena “Heyney Bug”, Rylan “RC”, Eric, Melia, Little Medero, Mederiona, Emony, Prince, DiAuni, London, Brooklyn, Little Liles, Queenz, Raymond A, Dianna Faith, Naschewen, Richard, Fred, Kaycen, Kayrich, Dolly, Robert, Emily “Emmer-nemmers”, Raymond B “Old Baby”, Riley, Anjelica, Issac, Antonio, Santiago “Chago”, Jaycon, Carmen, Little Darrell, Paisley, Anthony, Malia, Malachi, Michael “Tecka”, Chai, Faith, Woodsey, David, Kylie, Kalissa “Peach”. And her great greats Alani, Cartier and Cash.

There will be a wake on Wednesday, March 1st, 2023, at the Hoopa Assembly of God Church on Tish Tang starting at 7 p.m., and the services will be held on Thursday, March 2nd, at 11 a.m., also at the Hoopa Assembly of God with Juan Armand officiating. She will be buried next to her love Fred at the Moon Cemetery on Pine Creek Road. The gathering will be at the Hoopa Trading Post following.

Pall Bearers: Leland, Darrell, Travis, Liles, Damon, Aaron, Guy, and Robert.

Honorary Pall Bearers: Danny, Larry Jordan, Nolan Begay, “E” Booth, LG McCovey, Ron Reed, Greg Trimble, Roy Ammon, Bob Borden, Huna Borden, Bobby Lee Tatum, Toby Carroll, Greg O’rourke, James Lee McCovey, Kenny Roubidoux, Kash McCovey, Inker McCovey, Kelly Burns, Terry McCovey, Aaron Kane, George Moon, Junior Moon, Clyde Moon, Mike Orcutt, Kevin Orcutt, Gabe Moon, Raymond Moon, Leonard “Super” Bibancos, Willie Hoaglen, Loren Norton, Marlon Sorrell, Tim Casey, Blaze Carpenter, Willy Masten, and Rod Johnson.

Please know that she loved everyone, and if we forgot your name, it was not intentional.

We have a special thank you to Heather Mace for all the love, care, and the laughs that you gave mom on your weekly visits. Thank you to Susan Walsh for all the years of helping Mom with her health care.

Arrangements are under Paul’s Chapel in Arcata.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Carmen Moon’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

HUMBOLDT TODAY: A person was found dead at an Old Town bus stop in Tuesday’s frigid morning hours. The weather continues to take its toll on our regions roadways. PG&E warns that more power outages are expected. But did you hear Humboldt’s housing woes mentioned by Stephen Colbert last night? Sigh. Those stories and more in today’s newscast with John Kennedy O’Connor.

FURTHER READING:

• TODAY IN SUPES: Board Puts $29M Jail Expansion Project Out for Bids 
• Man Found Dead at Old Town Bus Stop Early This Morning 
• Highway 299 Closed Due to Snow (Again) 

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.

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On Tuesday morning, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved plans for a $29 million jail expansion project — the future site of an adult inmate rehabilitation center — and put the project out for bids.

Years in development, the four-story, 28,500-square-foot building, dubbed a “Community Corrections Re-Entry Resource Center,” will house a minimum-security, 44-bed custody unit offering programs aimed at preparing inmates to re-enter society.

The resource center is intended to free up space in the jail for higher-security inmates who, prior to California’s Criminal Justice Realignment legislation, AB 109 and AB 117, would have been sent to prison but are instead sentenced to terms inside the county jail, often long ones. For example, one recent convict could be sentenced to 18 years in the county facility.

Sheriff Billy Honsal told the board that during the seven years that this project has been in development, the projected cost ballooned from $20 million to $28,963,516. 

The state is providing the majority of that funding with $20 million in reimbursement money for architectural design, construction and management fees. The remaining bill of $8,963,516 falls to the county, including $3.85 million previously approved by the Community Corrections Partnership Executive Committee.

However, the county is still more than $1 million short of covering the projected cost. The extra funds are available via the 2020 finance plan, according to a staff report, though staff wants to hold off on a specific budget request until after the bids come in “due to the current volatile nature of construction costs.”

Honsal said the new facility will streamline the process for inmates being released from jail. Currently they’re instructed to head over to the Probation Department’s “day reporting center,” at 404 H Street, though they don’t always follow through. 

“Sometimes they’ll go right there; sometimes they exit and go the opposite direction,” Honsal said. With the new facility, inmates can check in at the reporting center before even leaving the property. The Department of Health and Human Services will also have personnel onsite.

“We hope that that will encourage people to stick with the programs and we’re going to see less recidivism,” Honsal said.

First District Supervisor Rex Bohn, appearing remotely, said the resource center will have space for job fairs and mental health services.

“It’s a huge project and it’s kind of exciting to actually see this come to fruition,” he said.

Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell, who also Zoomed in remotely, offered Honsal congratulations on reaching this step, but she had some questions about the financing, which includes $30,000 from the general fund, more than $3 million from the 2020 finance plan and nearly $4.5 million from the Community Corrections Partnership.

Honsal noted that the county is currently paying more than $100,000 per year to rent 404 H Street, which will be abandoned once this facility is complete, and while not all of the fiscal details have been worked out yet, Honsal said the new facility will be “essentially a state building for 20 years,” after which it will belong to the county.

“So we will have a … $30 million building and it’ll be the county’s building entirety, so I think this is money well spent.”

The existing day reporting center and the Sheriff’s Work Alternative Program (SWAP) would move into the new facility to provide expanded “out-of-custody re-entry programming,” such as mental health and substance abuse services.

Bushnell said she was concerned about the increased staffing costs. The county is estimating that the new facility will require 20 more full-time employees, including 15 correctional deputies and five senior correctional deputies, to cover the resource center’s 24/7 operations. That’s expected to cost $2,376,600 per year, based on the current year’s budget, and those costs will continue indefinitely into future years. 

“I just want to clarify if you could,” Bushnell said. “The hit to [the] general fund over certain amounts of years will be around $9 million. Is that correct?”

“I’m not sure,” Honsal replied.

County Administrative Officer Elishia Hayes stepped in to say that Honsal understands the county’s current “financial constraints” and has developed a “contingency plan where he can repurpose some of his current staffing levels if so required.”

Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson observed that this is the county’s third significant new facility in a row, after the juvenile hall and the animal shelter, to be built for incarceration or “incarceration-adjacent” purposes. The county needs to “do better” and broaden its vision for new facilities and the purposes they serve, he said.

Honsal said he agrees but also feels it’s important to take advantage of state grant money when it’s offered, as it was for both the juvenile hall and the jail expansion. 

Wilson pushed back a bit, saying state grants shouldn’t absolve the county of “the lack of vision” to pursue bonds, grants and other sources of financing for facilities that serve purposes beyond locking people (or animals) up.

Fourth District Supervisor Natalie Arroyo said she’s “a little anxious” about the 20 new Sheriff’s Office positions up for approval, as well as estimated funding shortfall. 

“It sounds like the funds are available in the 2020 finance plan which can be financed … as long-term debt, but if it goes over that [projected amount], what are our options if it’s significantly more?” Arroyo asked.

“We would need to return to your board to have a bigger conversation about that,” Hayes replied.

There was some debate among the board about whether this project should technically be considered a jail expansion. Arroyo said that while she has always heard it described as a jail expansion, “My understanding from what [Honsal is] saying and from all of what I’ve read is that this is really about a step-down [facility] or an alternative way of handling certain people who could reintegrate into society differently.”

Honsal said she is correct and that the minimum-security facility will offer program space for “low-lying offenders” while they’re in custody. 

Bohn theorized that the “misnomer” of “jail expansion” came from the facility being connected to the jail. He also quibbled with Wilson’s description of the animal shelter as an incarceration facility and said he hopes the new resource center reduces recidivism. 

The group discussion diverged from that point, but Wilson later returned to the semantics debate. 

“This is an expansion of a jail, even though we don’t call it that,” he said. “I mean, we just talked about how it creates more beds. … There’s more people that will be incarcerated. It’s just something we need to think about.”

The jail, which has been described as the county’s ugliest building, is also its largest, and Wilson said county leaders should consider “the imprint on our society with relationship to these structures and what it says about ourselves, and where we set our priorities.” That said, he added that he supports moving forward.

Fifth District Supervisor and Board Chair Steve Madrone said he thinks it’s great that the county will have a facility designed to help people move back into society. 

“I’m glad to see that the state started to provide a little bit of money along with all the prisoners they’ve been sending us,” he said. “That’s long overdue.”

Connie Beck, director of the Department of Health and Human Services, agreed, saying this facility was needed a decade ago.

“This is really going to help DHHS staff to work better and engage more people coming out of the jail,” Beck said.

Shaun Brenneman, the county’s chief probation officer, said the county has been lacking the necessary space for programs that can help people to improve their lives. 

“The thing I like to think about is, there should be no wasted days in custody,” he said. “You should always be working forward to coming back into the community, to make yourself a more successful version of yourself. We don’t have the space for those people to really do that right now, and so this [facility] will allow our reentry programs to be enhanced.”

Emi Botzler-Rodgers, the county’s director of behavioral health, said her staff is currently working with inmates while they’re in the jail, which is not an ideal setting for people who may have serious mental health issues. 

“I think this new facility would allow for an expansion, sure, but also just more humane and treatment-oriented opportunities,” she said, adding that it will be easier to coordinate with other providers on a release plan that allows for better connection to social services.

Arroyo asked whether the new facility will have space and support for inmates undergoing drug and/or alcohol detox. Honsal said there’s a medical facility inside the current jail and the 44 new beds can be configured however the county best sees fit, including focusing on mental health and detox.

“You know, when it comes to the jail, I often refer to it as ‘the gift of jail,’” Honsal said, “because … some people need that 30 days in custody in order to get sober-minded, to get back on their mental health meds, to get away from the drugs so they can be clear-headed to make a decision about what’s best for their future.”

Bushnell made the motion to approve the plans and put the project out for bids. Bohn seconded. The vote was unanimous. The county hopes to break ground on the project later this year, and if all goes to plan the facility will be built by 2025.

A man was found dead at a bus stop in Old Town Eureka early this morning, Eureka police have confirmed.

Cmdr. Leonard La France told the Outpost earlier today that police received a “man down” call at that location just after 7 a.m. today. Officers responded to the scene and quickly called for the coroner.

The subject was a male, confirmed Asst. Chief Brian Stephens. He said that the cause of death will not be known until an autopsy is complete, and did not have any information to share about the person’s housing status — though he did note that no attempts were made to resuscitate the man, indicating that he had been dead at the bus stop for some time.

The death comes on the eve of a special Eureka City Council meeting to discuss a new initiative to provide safe camping/tiny house villages for people experiencing homelessness. That meeting is at 5:30 p.m. at Eureka City Hall — 531 K Street.

When California recorded the first U.S. case of COVID-19 more than three years ago, the news was met with fear, confusion and public ire. Schools and businesses closed. State and local officials ordered people to stay home and mask up. Hospitals overflowed with sick and dying patients.

Today, on the last day of the state’s emergency order, much of public life has returned to normal. But for many communities around the state, the disappearance of COVID-19 resources is merely a reminder that the health disparities highlighted during the pandemic are long-entrenched.

“People who were in the gap are going to go back into the gap,” said Kim Rhoads, a physician and associate public health professor at UC San Francisco who has worked throughout the pandemic to make tests and vaccines more accessible to Black and brown neighborhoods in the Bay Area. “There’s going to be a noticeable difference in access.”

The end of the emergency order marks a drastic change in the state’s strategy for managing a virus that has exacted a devastating toll: 100,187 deaths. Moving forward, the state will lean on its $3.2 billion long-term COVID-19 plan, which involves stockpiling masks and vaccines, but public health agencies will no longer serve as the primary provider of COVID-19 care.

“There will be a big transition. I don’t think it will be smooth.”
— Dr. Rita Nguyen, Assistant State Public Health Officer

Already, the state has closed all but six OptumServe testing and vaccination centers, according to its appointment website. In an unsigned email, state public health officials acknowledged the “very real toll the pandemic has taken on Californians,” but remained confident its long-term strategy would be sufficient.

“California is equipped to manage the spread of COVID-19, and to continue to limit hospitalizations and deaths as much as possible,” the email stated. Health department officials refused an interview request.

Other resources have dried up as well. Community organizations and local public health departments told CalMatters that money for COVID-19 outreach and response has either already run out or will be gone by summer. Federal support will also expire when the nationwide emergency ends in May.

“After the (state of emergency) ends, there’s not going to be any more substantial money given to COVID-19,” said Bernadette Boden-Albala, dean of UC Irvine’s public health program. “All of the attempts to get information out, to vaccinate folks in harder-to-reach communities, is going to get much harder and at best will be forced into other programs.”

‘Gaps’ in COVID-19 care likely

Traditionally, public health departments have never been direct service providers. Mass vaccine clinics and test-to-treat sites were a modern-day anomaly necessitated by the virus’ aggressive infection rate. Absent funding, much of that work will stop.

During a monthly meeting with county health officers, Assistant State Public Health Officer Dr. Rita Nguyen acknowledged there will be “gaps” in services as public health steps back.

“There will be a big transition. I don’t think it will be smooth. I think we’re all doing the best that we can to help with that transition, but (for) a lot of the services we will not be able to support at the level that we have before,” Nguyen said. “That’s where we’re trying to engage our partners and say ‘We won’t be in this space in a few months. What else can you do to keep work going in this space?’”

“We’re shoving a public health function into health care, and public health and health care are two totally different things.”
— Kim Rhoads, physician and associate public health professor at UCSF

At the county level, much of the work involving COVID-19 care has already “significantly scaled down,” said Lizelle Lirio de Luna, director of family health services in San Mateo County. Her division oversaw the vaccination program for the county and doled out more than 185,000 shots. San Mateo’s vaccine clinics will end in March, and COVID-19 grants will be used up by June.

“It’s still evolving what our role will be, but our primary role will not be how it has been where we deliver the direct vaccination service,” De Luna said.

Public health will largely return to its typical role of monitoring infectious diseases of all types, investigating outbreaks, communicating the importance of vaccination and supporting medical providers when necessary — similar to the role it plays during flu season. But local officials, while cautious, were quick to assure that some level of service will be available.

“Because there is an end of a public health emergency doesn’t mean our work ends,” said Rosyo Ramirez, deputy director of community health in Imperial County. “We’ll continue to work as we have been in trying to prevent serious illness.”

The last state-funded testing and treatment sites in Imperial County will close in the beginning of March, Ramirez said, and people will need to go to their medical provider for care. Statewide, the majority of sites closed in January. Imperial’s COVID-19 money will run out in July.

The message to the public is clear: Go see a doctor for your COVID-19 needs.

That message, however, is fraught with uncertainty, about who, if anyone, will step up to fill health care gaps that predated the pandemic. Although medical providers have far more built-in infrastructure to conduct tests and give vaccines than they did three years ago, many people struggle with regular access to health care — particularly those living in rural areas of the state, those who are uninsured and those who can’t afford out-of-pocket charges.

“Everything is moving towards commercialization,” Rhoads with UCSF said. “All of the resources for COVID are getting pushed into your doctor’s office, so you have to have a doctor…We’re shoving a public health function into health care, and public health and health care are two totally different things.”

Disparities largely unchanged

Though the state poured billions of dollars into COVID-19 emergency response and economic relief efforts — much of which focused on equity — many underserved communities are ending the pandemic in the same way they started: with an acute awareness of unmet need.

Early in the pandemic, the virus swept through the ranks of Latino farmworkers, low-wage factory employees, Filipino nurses, undocumented immigrants, Black and Pacific Islander communities, families living in multigenerational housing or cramped quarters, and others unable to work from home or without adequate access to health care. Of the more than 100,000 COVID-19 deaths to date, Pacific Islanders have the highest mortality rate, followed by African Americans and Latinos.

Vaccination rates among these groups continue to trail far behind the state average. Latino residents fall nearly 15 percentage points below the state vaccination rate when it comes to receiving the first two COVID-19 shots. Native American and Black populations fall behind by 13 and 10 points respectively, while white and Asian groups exceed the statewide rate.

When it comes to the booster and bivalent booster doses, the gap widens significantly. Latinos, with the lowest booster rate, fall 10 points below the state average, 18 points behind their white counterparts and 24 points below Asians. White Californians have the highest bivalent booster rate. (Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders have been excluded from this analysis due to anomalies in the state data, including more people reporting vaccination than are estimated in the total population.)

Similarly, the state’s vaccine equity metric shows that as subsequent doses of the vaccine were recommended, those in the most disadvantaged group became less and less likely to get additional shots compared to those in the most advantaged group. The equity metric takes into account socioeconomic variables like income and education as well as race.

The growing vaccine disparity is a reflection of decreased access, community organizers and experts say.

“Everyone wants to throw these health problems back to individuals and individual choice. That doesn’t help us serve the population,” UC Irvine Public Health Dean Boden-Albala said. “Disparities are not about the choices you make but about problems in infrastructure.”

In Delano, Loud For Tomorrow, a youth-led civic engagement group, was instrumental in hosting vaccine clinics and disseminating information by knocking on doors and phone banking. But the group’s funding for COVID-19 outreach ended last summer, said Jose Salvador Orellana, co-founder and lead organizer.

“From the beginning we knew state resources were still not at the level that we needed, and our community, specifically Spanish-speaking Latino communities, needed a different approach” including resources to combat disinformation, Orellana said.

While the state health department was an “amazing partner” in supporting Loud For Tomorrow and other groups’ efforts, most of the collaborations have since ended, Orellana said. Funding from private foundations has also dried up.

“The government relies on these nonprofits to connect to the community. They look like the community; they speak the languages our community speaks,” said Diana Otero, senior director of special projects at the Latino Community Foundation. “It’s really sad we don’t have the resources to continue to do this.”

Community groups that received emergency funding now need long-term investments to prevent disparities from worsening, Otero said. In many areas of the state where barriers like cost and distance keep people from accessing traditional brick-and-mortar health care, the COVID-19 clinics run by community organizers have become trusted resource centers.

United Against COVID-19, a coalition of seven community groups in Kern County, held its last vaccine clinic on Feb. 26. The group has vaccinated more than 9,600 people at pop-up clinics in parks and community centers around the county. Throughout the pandemic they’ve vaccinated about 100 people per weekend and continue to see similar numbers of attendees, belying official reports that demand has plummeted. In recent weeks roughly 75% of people coming into the clinics — primarily Latinos — have shown up for booster shots, said Reyna Olaguez, communications manager with Building Healthy Communities Kern, one of the coalition members.

The local health department’s contract with the vaccine provider the coalition uses expired the same day the emergency order ended, but Olaguez said they’re working with the department to use its mobile clinic van in the near future. The schedule won’t be as robust as they’ve been able to maintain — twice a month compared to twice a week — but it’s still important, Olaguez said.

“This work must continue,” Olaguez said. “When it started, it was not ordinary, but now it’s become something that our communities need to get access to health care.”

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