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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And joining me is my coworker here at EPIC, Luis Neuner, Decarbonized North Coast Advocate at EPIC. And some of my favorite people -- Caroline Griffith, the Executive Director of the North Coast Environmental Center. And Jen Kalt, the Director of Humboldt Baykeeper.

JEN KALT:

Hey, hi, everybody. So great to be here in person with you all.

WHEELER:

Yeah, this is really fun. And we are talking about offshore wind energy development, comma, port development. So if you have been tracking the news, you know that the harbor district is moving forward with their port plans. They are beginning what's called the notice of preparation, which is also sometimes called scoping. And this is the kind of formal kickoff for the CEQA process for port development. And we're going to break down what all that means in this show. So if you're confused, if these are all new words and terms for you, don't worry, we'll let you know what's going on. So let's begin by talking about what this is not, right? We're talking about port development. What are we not talking about, Luis?

LUIS NEUNER:

Well, I think the biggest thing that people think of when they think of wind is what happens off the coast. And that's exactly what this is not about. This is what happens inside of our bay, right? So you gotta, in order to bring turbines out to sea, you need to assemble them, you need to put them on floaters, and then you need to, you need to do that all in a port in order to pull them out to sea. So that's the basic concept of that is that this is what's happening inside the port. So that what happens outside of the port off the coast is able to effectively take place.

WHEELER:

Legally, these are two distinct processes, right? So we have the feds, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management or BOEM. They are leading the environmental review process for those wind turbine operations, the spinning things that are going to create electrons. And here we have the Harbor District as lead agency doing its environmental analysis under state law, under the California Environmental Quality Act.

CAROLINE GRIFFITH:

And I just want to add that one other aspect of this will also be the transmission lines, which will be regulated under a different entity, which that will be the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Independent Systems Operators. So there's going to be a lot for people to track over the next decade as all of this is happening. But this is the first thing, the first fun thing that we get to track.

WHEELER:

And all three kind of need to happen in order for us to have offshore wind energy development, right? If we don't have ports to build the turbines, the turbines can't exist. If we don't have the energy infrastructure, if we don't have the transmission lines to move the power. They're not going to construct turbines because that would just be stupid. All right, Jen, I know that you teach at Cal Poly Humboldt environmental impact analysis. So I'm going to call you my expert here on what a notice of preparation is. So this is the start of a sequel process. This isn't the only opportunity, but it is an important opportunity for feedback to the Harbor district. Can you tell us about the notice of preparation? What are we talking about here? What are the sort of things that the Harbor district is asking for from the public in their public comments?

KALT:

The notice of preparation is exactly that it's notifying the public that the Harbor District is preparing an environmental review. So they're in the very beginning stages of doing that. And they're asking the public, what do you think we should consider? What sort of impact should be addressed? What sorts of avoidance or mitigation strategies should we consider? Alternatives, all that sort of stuff. And a good planner that has a positive attitude towards public input will regard this step in the process as a way to really improve the project by getting input from people who have what a lot of people call lived experience. Like, I care a lot about commercial fishing in and around Humboldt Bay. It's a big part of Humboldt Baykeeper's mission is to keep the waters healthy for people to swim, drink and fish. And that includes commercial and recreational fishing. But I am not a commercial fisherman myself. So I want to hear from them what their concerns are, because I can't just sit in a room and imagine them. So this is that opportunity. It's a chance to get questions answered, to pose your own questions and then raise concerns.

WHEELER:

So, the Harbor District, in their notice of preparation, has provided somewhat of a rough sketch of what the harbor could look like in order to facilitate offshore wind energy development. Does anybody want to take on the task of trying to describe, and I know that this is kind of hard, but what a full build-out at this moment might look like?

GRIFFITH:

I have some of the maps in front of me, and I see that Luis does as well, that the Harbor District has put out. And people can find these on the Humboldt Bay Recreation, Conservation, Harbor Districts. It's got a long name, Humboldt Bay Harbor District, you can find it on their website. And so it's going to be taking, what is it, Redwood Marine Terminal 1, and building it up to support the construction of these floating offshore wind turbines. The bases of them are rather large, so they have to construct them onshore, put them out into wet storage, is what they call it, actually, in the bay. So there's going to be multiple berths, and what they call wet storage, where they will keep these. And one of the things that I think all of us have kind of raised as concerns is some of the dredging in the bay that will need to happen in order to facilitate some of the storage.

KALT:

What they're proposing right now is an area of about 180 acres. And so most people don't know Redwood Marine Terminal 1 or RMT 1. That's the Harbor District's name for what used to be the Hammond Lumber Mill, which was the second biggest mill in the county in the 1950s. So it's the old dilapidated dock with a bunch of old buildings closest to the Samoa Bridge on the Samoa Peninsula. And then this area covers all the land on the shore of the bay, all the way to RMT 2, which is the dock associated with the former pulp mill that the Harbor District owns. And so an important thing for people to understand, which a lot of people don't because the Harbor District is a little under the radar for a lot of people. This is a public agency with elected representatives that cover the entire county, I believe. So the Harbor District is funded in part by property taxes. And so these are our elected officials and their districts overlap with the Board of Supervisors. So if you live in Mike Wilson's district, your representative on the Harbor District is Commissioner Stephen Coleman and so on. So even if you live in Orleans, you have a representative on the Harbor District.

WHEELER:

All right so it is the area if you're driving out to the Smoa Peninsula just to the left of the bridge the proposal as of now seems to be to kind of clear that area make it flat ish there are going to be some new structures that they anticipate building that are going to be related to the construction of these wind turbines but a lot of it's going to just kind of be open land where parts and things can be stored like the big long blades of wind turbines we have those like triangle looking boat things that are going to be put into the water how do we get a wind turbine on top of those little triangle little absolutely totally massive little boat things how do we how do we get the turbine on top of those

NEUNER:

I can hop in. So, I mean, these structures are entirely massive, right? And I don't want to understate the size because they're literally bigger than I can often imagine. They're a little bit shy of the size of the Eiffel Tower. And the floating foundations, which are these big triangles, are a little bit beyond what a normal baseball stadium size would be, right? So, the footprint of these things are entirely massive. And just the logistics of figuring out a way to stack the pieces on top of each other is really tricky, right? You need a big crane that is essentially as tall as the nasal, which is the center where all the blades are attached to. So, it has to be really freaking big, Tom. And that's...

WHEELER:

And let's talk about how tall they have to be, right? So we are talking about really big wind turbines capable of producing 15 to 20 megawatts of power, which as a comparison, that's about what COPCO 2, which has just been removed, that is about what it produced. In its prime operational period, it was about 20 megawatts of power. So these are wind turbines capable of powering small cities, just like an individual wind turbine. The tip of the point of the blade is gonna be taller than the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. So absolutely tall, absolutely massive structures, and they're gonna be here in Humboldt Bay. Well, they may be here in Humboldt Bay. Temporarily. Temporarily, before they get pulled out to sea. The crane might be permanent onshore to lift up the blades and whatnot to construct the turbines. It might be that we develop the technology that the crane is no longer permanent, but we should kind of plan for this idea that there'll be a permanent crane, more than one probably, on the site. So this is a pretty large new development on Humboldt Bay. I think that normally environmental groups, when you're talking about a large industrialization of Humboldt Bay, our groups would be tearing their hair out over something like this. Jen, do you want to give the perspective as the Baykeeper, why you are taking a project like this seriously and why a knee-jerk reaction necessarily against development is not warranted at this point?

KALT:

Well, hopefully we never just have a knee-jerk reaction against development, but it depends on the project, of course. The proposal to process gold ore here on Humboldt Bay or to import liquefied natural gas, yes, those are just big giant no's. But the offshore wind energy project is important on a global scale, and the way we think about this has to be bigger in perspective than just the localized impacts. And like Audubon Society, which their main focus is protecting birds, the perspective that they are taking on this is that, yes, there may be some localized direct impacts on some seabirds, but on a global scale, the entire species or suite of species is being threatened by sea level rise in low-lying island colonies and ocean acidification and high temperatures affecting their food sources. And so to mitigate the impacts for the whole species instead of just a couple birds here and there is really critical, but we just, I think we all realize we need to get off fossil fuels, and that's just the main thrust of all of this.

WHEELER:

And Humboldt Bay, we can play a part, and we are uniquely situated to play a part in offshore wind energy development, whether we're talking about our offshore wind energy area or the construction of these wind turbines. There's something unique about Humboldt Bay. Caroline, do you want to talk about the kind of why we're here? Why are we looking at Humboldt Bay in particular?

GRIFFITH:

Yeah, well, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, they're the ones who manage the ocean energy. They put out the call for the Humboldt Wind Area and they analyzed all the bays, the ports up and down the West Coast for three different criteria. So siting and integration, operations and management. What's the third one, friends? Anybody remember? Manufacturing. Manufacturing, yes. And Humboldt Bay was the only one that was good for all three of those. So it's very uniquely situated and really kind of put all eyes on Humboldt Bay for this reason.

KALT:

Yeah, I mean, one reason is there's no obstruction at the entrance. You know, these these turbines are taller than the Golden Gate Bridge, so they can't be assembled vertically in San Francisco Bay and towed out, obviously. But the other thing is that because Humboldt Bay's port, quote unquote, port isn't really being used and it has a huge area that has been heavily impacted by all kinds of industrial uses, mostly lumber mills and pulp mills in the past century. There's a lot of space here, too. So a lot of the existing ports don't have that much space.

GRIFFITH:

Oh, and they're also with future, though Humboldt Bay and Morro Bay are the first of the leases to happen for this, there are future leases that are anticipated, potentially Crescent City and down in Mendocino County. And so the fact that we are very close to those as well and have a protected bay, that's one of the reasons we're chosen.

WHEELER:

I think you stole Luis's next line.

NEUNER:

All good

KALT:

Well, I just want to make the point that all these former lumber mill and pulp mill sites, some of them have never been cleaned up. So the pulp mill, yes, the pulp mill has had some cleanup. It's got a long ways to go, but the former Hammond lumber mill site, the Harbor District recently got a half million dollar grant from the US EPA to sample the whole area and figure out what's their soil and groundwater contamination and what needs to be done to clean it up. And people who have heard Humboldt Baykeepers views on the Nordic Aqua Farms project will be familiar with the point that a lot of these sites, if there's not some industry that wants to clean it up, pay for the cleanup and reuse it, it's just going to sit there for another hundred years or who knows how long. And so getting these sites cleaned up is really important, especially with rising sea level and rising groundwater.

WHEELER:

Econews report. We're talking about offshore wind energy development, comma, port development. Harbor District is moving forward with their port plans, beginning what's called the notice of preparation, which is also sometimes called scoping, the formal kickoff for the CEQA process for port development. So I know that for some people listening to the show, they might be somewhat alarmed that the environmental groups are so okay with this idea and concept.

(VARIOUS):

No, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Whoops.

WHEELER:

So so my point was, well, I was going to build to is, while we while we recognize that we are unique, uniquely situated, while there is this set, this land that could use rehabilitation that is toxic from past uses, that this can help to remediate. There's all of these reasons to do it. It's not that we don't still have concerns with it. So I wanted to actually get to our concerns. So without sounding too much like homers for offshore wind energy development, can we talk about what is in the NLP and what we would like to perhaps build on within the NLP to improve potential development? And Luis, I'm going to start with you. So together with other folks in this room, you, Jen, Caroline, penned an op ed in the Lost Coast Outpost about green port development and how we need to see this port development be different than ports across the West Coast, which are often associated with gross, noxious fumes from heavy diesel machinery or from crude oil burning boats. Luis, can you talk about what what the vision of a green port might look like here for offshore wind energy development?

NEUNER:

Yeah, so going into this process, I think we've all come to the conclusion that This port needs to be done differently, right? We're starting essentially from scratch here and That's kind of a beautiful thing in some ways because there is like right now there's on the state and federal level There's a lot of movement to greenify ports. Anyways, that means Essentially those old ports that you're talking about the stinky fume II stuff They all eventually need to transition over and because we're kind of starting from scratch here We have the opportunity to build that up good from the start right and make sure that it's not another Impact to the greatest degree possible not as impactful as other ports But that we have we can do things like electrify terminal equipment that barges are Able to be towed by electric tugboats that we have on Terminal storage capacity for batteries that we can solarize the rooftops of all these big manufacturing buildings There are all these opportunities right that that are possible They're there they might be a little bit trickier to achieve than like the standard oil build-out But I think that we've all come to the conclusion that with the help of state federal and local Support we can build a vision around this project. That is not the usual, right? So that's kind of where we've come into this process. The NOP does make some mentions of Electrification but ideally we would push that further right it would in an ideal world We would have the Harbor District and Crowley which are the the designated port developers Although they haven't yet signed a lease on it Both of them agreeing upon doing this in the best most responsible way possible

WHEELER:

Well, so Jen, I saw a comment that you made to the Lost Coast Outpost about this idea where you said, well, it might be that people think that we are just absolutely silly for saying we want a zero emissions port. And you thought that that comment needed more depth than you provided to the Lost Coast Outpost. So I want to give you that same opportunity. What does zero emissions port mean to you in five years, in 10 years, in 15 years?

KALT:

It means working towards as few fossil fuels emissions as possible. So when people hear us say, we want a zero emissions port, they may think that we're just making the, the perfect, the enemy of the good. And so, you know, we're setting up a totally unachievable barrier to this project without just saying, no, we're against the project, but that's not what we're doing at all. We're looking at other ports around the state and the U.S. and, and elsewhere, really, and seeing the port of San Diego and the port of Long Beach and other ports have already made commitments to zero emissions targets by 2030 or 2040, and they're doing it, they're getting grants, multimillion dollar grants from the federal government, from the inflation reduction act to convert their ports as much as possible, but what we want is for this port to be designed fully electric as possible from the beginning. And we realized there are some things that they may not be able to have electric right away, but Crowley, the, the company, the Harbor District's negotiating with right now over a lease, they have an electric tugboat in, in, it's not just in design, their, their goal is to launch it. It's not an operation yet, but building it right now, their goal is to launch it sometime this year. So there they operate the port of San Diego where the, the elected commissioners of the port have said, we have a zero emission strategy and it doesn't matter who is using our port. We're going to get there. And to me, it just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to say, let's have this visionary 21st century offshore wind energy project, the first floating offshore wind project in the country, and not just bother to make a port that is electric and just say, Oh yeah, we'll just use fossil fuels and let everything get as bad as it is in some of these other port cities and then switch it over. It's nonsensical. So we need to start right from the beginning.

GRIFFITH:

Well, and that also sets the stage for future development, too. If this project happens and happens in this way, or if the Harbor District just steps up and says, we would like to have a zero emission strategy in general, right? And every single bit of development that happens in our port going forward happens in this way. And I guess I think of the entirety of this project, even though we're just talking about the NOP for the port development now, but the idea that this is one of the first of these projects in the West Coast, there are many others planned. And just that we have an opportunity and a responsibility to the rest of the West Coast to really set the stage for how this can be done by setting a really, really high standard for it. And in that way, to make sure that we can protect up and down the coast. What's high on my mind, we're taking down the Klamath dams right now. We're taking down an energy source that is also a non-carbon energy source that had really big impacts. So how do we do this in a way that is thoughtful and works and that will make sure that we're doing the right decision going forward.

NEUNER:

Yeah, just to piggyback off of that, I think it's easy to think about these things theoretically and oh, we should be doing this and clean energy that, and I'm all here for it, but at the end of the day, this is also a massive, massive project, right? That's going to impact not just the West Coast, but most importantly, at the end of that, it's going to impact our local communities, right? It's going to impact the town of Samoa. It's going to impact the town of Fairhaven. It's going to impact Eureka, and it's also going to impact our tribal people, right? I mean, Tulawa Island is right there, and I think that's something we often like to brush over, but it's like, these are things that are on people's minds, right, and it does have a local impact, and we can't forget that as we go throughout this process, right?

WHEELER:

Well, I will be the homer for wind energy development here and point out the positive potential impact on all of this too, right? And this is where unions are very excited about offshore wind energy development. This is the Green New Deal realized. We are building our clean energy future with family wage jobs doing blue collar work. This is hopefully going to be something that is resistant to the boom and bust economic history of Humboldt County, that we have long-term good jobs in construction and manufacturing and in operations of these wind turbines. I think that that's really exciting. It's like somebody who was a big homer for the Green New Deal. This is it on a local scale. This is what the Green New Deal would look like, is stuff like this. We're not a very rich county. This is going to mean a massive influx of resources into our county for renewable energy development. So, I think that that's really kind of cool too.

KALT:

It is cool and exciting in a lot of ways. We have a lot of expertise in renewable energy in Humboldt County with the Schatz Energy Research Center. We have Redwood Coast Energy Authority is our joint powers authority for energy and there's a lot of great exciting things happening here. So I really want to reiterate that this is just the very beginning of this process. It's going to take years to get all of this done but also this is only the CEQA process for the port part of the development. The Coastal Commission will have the last say on all of this. So as many projects they start off with environmental review by a lead agency under California Environmental Equality Act but if they're in the coastal zone and below the high tide line the Coastal Commission has a whole separate process. So there's that and then there's also the State Lands Commission, the Federal Environmental Policy Act, National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA. There's going to be so many processes and we're in this for the long haul. There's going to be time to develop workforce training, apprenticeship training programs. There's going to be time to do all kinds of things to get ready for this. It's not going to get built next year or even maybe in five years. We'll see.

WHEELER:

Somebody who practices CEQA law, as you said, this is only the beginning of the CEQA process, right? This is, this is an important step, but it's not the most important, right? The rubber really hits the road when we get a draft environmental impact report. And then we can review that for the kind of sufficiency of their analysis. And we can review that for the mitigations that have been proposed and we can push back for more mitigations at that point. And those are formal kind of public participation opportunities. But all of our groups spend way too much time on this and we'll continue to spend way too much time on this, whether there are formal public participation opportunities available, right? As we're meeting with wind energy developers to talk about what we need to see in our community, about community benefits that we hope that they will provide to our community. We're meeting with elected officials. We're meeting with the Harbor District. You know, we're meeting with tribal nations. There's a lot of process baked in. And this is, again, I think one of the reasons why y'all should support Humble Baykeeper, the North Coast Environmental Center and EPIC is because we are doing this work on the daily. We are involved in these meetings in a way that the public just like practically can't. And so I really appreciate the amount of time that all of the folks in this room have spent already. And we're still a decade out from a wind turbine being constructed.

KALT:

And to put a put a what did they say on your point? Well, I want to plug the written comment deadline for the notice of preparation. It's August 3, at 5pm, you need to get in written comments to district planner at Humboldt bay.org is the Harbor District's address and you can go to the Baykeeper website and find out more information or send us emails, call us whatever. But remember, this is the early stage. And when we did the scoping process for the Nordic Aqua Farms project, I think it was over a year before the draft environmental impact report was released. And this project is far more complicated. There are so many impacts, you notice we're not going over the laundry list of potential impacts, there's going to be new dredging, there's going to be sea level rise planning that needs to be done to elevate the area. There are so many different agencies involved too. And I want to put a give a plug to all of our resource agencies too, because they do a fantastic job reviewing all this. And most people don't ever know what goes into that. And they do a great job of watchdogging these things and watching out for all the critters.

WHEELER:

All right. Well, I think that that might be a good place to end it. So August 3rd at 5pm, get your comments in. I know all of our groups are going to be submitting comments and that we're already working on our comments. We'll probably be working up to that deadline is my guess is that's EPIC's usual style. So mark your calendar if you want to see those on August 3rd. All right. Well, thank you so much. Caroline Griffith, North Coast Environmental Center, Jen Kalt, Humboldt Baykeeper, Luis Neuner, EPIC. I really appreciate all that you've done on offshore wind energy development so far and all that you will continue to do into the future. And thank you for joining us for this episode. Join us again next week on this time and channel for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.