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JEN KALT:

Welcome to the EcoNews Report. I'm your host this week, Jen Kalt, Executive Director of Humboldt Baykeeper. And this week's show, I'm joined by Colin Fisk, Executive Director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. Our guest this week is Mike Wilson, who is Humboldt County Supervisor for the Third District, which is where Arcata is located. And he's also the Coastal Commissioner for the North Coast District. Thanks for joining us, Mike.

Okay, so today we're going to talk about a bunch of projects that are going on on the Highway 101 corridor, as it's known, the safety corridor, which is the stretch of highway in between Eureka and Arcata that runs right along Humboldt Bay. Unless you haven't been through that area recently, you are very aware there are massive construction projects going on. A lot of these were planned quite a long time ago. And so we're going to talk about these projects and get people back up to speed on what's going on and why. The biggest project is the Indianola interchange, which Caltrans started planning at least 15 years ago. I think I wrote the first letter on it in 2010. So it was in the planning phase for many, many years. But I call it Mount Indianola because basically, in short, the highway is going to go up and over the interchange there. Mike, why don't you tell us a little bit more about that project along the whole corridor, other than the interchange, what all the changes are happening and why.

MIKE WILSON:

Well, why it's happening is because there's really a high propensity for accidents in that space on the highway. It was expanded to four lanes, I think, in the '70s. What happened was that there was all these crossings there, both at Indianola and at the Bayside Cut-Off, and also up at the airport there at Murray Field, Jacobs Avenue. Over the years, traffic has increased, as we all know. Speeds have gone up, and those crossings became much more dangerous, and there were a series of fatalities. Caltrans, in trying to address that in the way that they do, is always about expansion and more, proposed a project for an overpass there at Indianola, also a light at Jacobs Avenue, actually even more, it got pared back quite a bit. But during that process, community groups like your own, Humboldt Baykeeper and others, asked for other mitigations associated with that project, both a bay trail as part of that approval project, which is also in construction right now, as well as removal of a bunch of billboards, and some sea-level rise planning to come back to that process. There was the permits that they originally went through, and then there was the Coastal Development Permit through the Coastal Commission. I think it was in 2019 is when that came to the Coastal Commission. I remember it well. It was my first meeting as a Coastal Commissioner. That's a bit of the history, that's the litany of projects that are happening there today.

KALT:

Yeah, so the plan is once this interchange is completed, which seems like there's going to be construction for quite a while, after it's completed, all the left-turn medians are going to be closed off. So if you're trying to get from Bayside Cut-Off to Eureka, people will have to either go all the way through Bayside and Sunnybrae on the highway there, or they will go on Old Arcada Road and Myrtle Avenue and go that way. So it'll be an interesting change, but also there's quite a bit of consternation over the fact that once they finish this, it will be a full-on freeway and the speed limit will probably change. Colin, you have a perspective on this?

COLIN FISKE:

I do have a perspective on this, and I recently went back and read what some of the original environmental documents had to say about the speed limit, and I will say that they weren't all completely consistent. They all suggest that the speed limit will probably be raised afterwards. I would say that from CRTP's perspective, that's a bad idea. Speed is the number one contributor to crashes and to the outcome of crashes when they occur, so the faster you're going, generally speaking, the more likely there is to be a serious injury or a death. For the past 20 years or so, we've had this lowered speed limit. Certainly not everyone follows the speed limit. Certainly a speed limit sign is not as effective as good road design, but it does have an effect, and people do drive slower than they would if the speed limit were 10 or 15 mph higher, and so that's something that we are definitely concerned about, that Caltrans, after spending so much time and money to improve the safety of the road, might then raise the speed limit back up and counteract some of those safety needs improvements.

WILSON:

I was going to echo those concerns. I think those are valid questions that need to be

KALT:

Well, and back when the environmental documents were developed, oftentimes in the Humboldt Bay Area, there's an environmental impact report, but then the project goes to the California Coastal Commission, which is a very powerful agency that has never, as we say, been captured by the industry it regulates, because it's not really regulating any one industry. It's protecting coastal resources and coastal access, and has stayed really true to its mission since its formation in the '70s.

So a lot of projects change a lot when they get to the Coastal Commission, thankfully. In 2013 was the first review of the 101 Safety Corridor Improvement Project, it was called. So when the environmental review happened, there was no Bay Trail, Caltrans had no intention of putting in a trail. So raising the speed limits on a section of highway where people are walking and bicycling was especially upsetting to a lot of people. So now what happened in 2013 was the Coastal Commission had this initial hearing where they directed Caltrans to build the Bay Trail. So that is happening, it's fantastic, and they did some other great improvements to the project. So let's talk about the Bay Trail a little bit now. People have seen that about 40% of the eucalyptus trees on the highway have been removed to build that trail, and the trail will go around the former California Redwood Company mill there, so the eucalyptus trees along the front of the mill are going to stay, at least as far as I know. How exciting.

WILSON:

It is, it is good. A little bit of history around this. As you know, in 2005, I ran for office for the Harbor District. At that time, there was a big push, a lot of the local electives around the rebuilding of a rail line from the Bay Area here. As we know from the history of that and the documentation, the economics around that just wasn't going to fly due to the, not just to the issue around what you would put on that train if it existed, but also just the geologic and other engineering challenges associated with that. In looking around for an opportunity with relationship to that, the rails to trails was a concept that was out there. It had been talked about in other parts of the county as well as all over the nation. It was brought up as an option to connect Arcata and Eureka.

At the time, the idea that this great Redwood Trail that people talk about now, all the way down to Marin, was fantastical at that time. But in this moment, it just seemed like at least something worth looking at. In 2006, as part of a Bay Trail planning process for Humboldt Bay region, that section was looked at as an option. At that time, a rail to trail option was looked at. It was going to take five years to build and $5 million. A rail with trail project, meaning keeping the rails where they are as opposed to the option moving them around, that was too complicated for many people's understanding of how that works, but was $20 million and will probably take 20 years. It turned out that that report wasn't far off. For the most part, this trail is in conjunction with really a mostly defunct rail prism. It's going to be about $25 million, but much more complicated because in order to expand the prism, which by prism we mean the base of where the trail is and the rail is, you have to fill wetlands and a lot of traffic issues and all kinds of stuff.

That's where the extra cost comes in. In order to preserve the rail, whatever's left of the rail, which is really mostly non-functional, Caltrans and the state paid probably about $20 million extra. It's a pretty expensive add-on to a trail because this is a trail project. You still don't get a rail. You still don't have a functioning rail. Even if you paid the extra $20 million, all you get is something next to it. It's a lot of money, but it is what it is. Those were the agreements and the arrangements made at the time because of mostly the political momentum in that space. That has changed because the North Coast Rail Authority has converted into the Great Redwood Trail. That entity has trails as its primary goal. We're really working on that as a community and as a region to do that.

That's really where we're at. The money has come in. The project should be done in the fall of 2024, at least connecting Arcata and Eureka. At that point, that connectivity will be expanding out from there. Eureka is looking at expanding to CR from King Salmon area. Arcata is looking at moving forward to the river park there at Mad River. There's a lot of connectivity. We're really grateful that this has been moving forward. The eucalyptus trees were posing a danger to bicyclists and to pedestrians, but also honestly, the trail had to move closer to the highway in order to preserve the rail corridor. That made the eucalyptus trees even more dangerous in this situation. That was another reason why those had to go. Right now, the trail, in its alignment, goes out and around the mill site there. That's also another reason why it was difficult to keep the trail straight on the rail corridor by the mill. It was just a very tight space in order to maintain that rail corridor.

FISKE:

I just want to take a minute to just reflect on the fact that we're finally going to have this safe route for people walking and biking between the two biggest communities in the region. CRTP was founded in 2015, thanks to all of the advocates and people who came before us, like you were talking about, Mike, who, who got this thing started and really got it over the finish line. This is a really momentous thing to finally have this happening. One question that I have, a concern, I guess, that I've heard is that for a lot of the trail that's already been built in the Arcata city limits on the north part of the corridor, there are some cable barriers between the highway and the trail, and I've heard that the county had requested that for the rest of the part that's being built, the final four miles, but that that was not approved. And so obviously this is still going to be a pretty safe and comfortable route being separated from the highway on the trail, but do you know anything about the barrier and why that wasn't included in the project?

WILSON:

I do know that Caltrans has looked at that and I have advocated for that as well because I believe that those concerns are real, but their analysis says that it's not required or necessary. That doesn't mean, of course, that they're always right, but we will keep pushing on that and I appreciate CRTP in those efforts. I mean, I have to say, it's like those efforts to make this safer and better are what we need and so we'll keep working on it.

FISKE:

Just going to plug one more time that the danger is even less if we keep the speed limit lower.

KALT:

That's true. And we, you know, there have been a number of just horrendous accidents in which pedestrians have been killed or very seriously injured. And one of them was a Cal Poly Humboldt student walking in a crosswalk on campus and her life and her family's lives are changed probably forever because of this horrible accident. So I just want to put out a plea to people, please slow down. Just slow down. Don't be in such a hurry. This is Humboldt County. If you're in such a hurry in Humboldt County, you're probably not living life the right way. So everyone who's listening to the show while you're driving, please slow down.

Anyway, I want to get back to the Bay Trail because I cannot say enough about how public outcry in support of trails has led to this day. I mean, this was a dream for at least 30 years in this region. Mike ran on the platform of building trails when he ran for Harbor District. And so he won overwhelmingly. And then later on in the general plan update some years ago, you know, there was a time where the whole board of supervisors kind of changed over because property rights people wanted the general plan to be gutted. And when they tried to gut the trails plan, people came out in droves, called, emailed, and this made a huge impression on the county supervisors at that time who had no idea how popular trails were. And so public opinion and action is so important for these things.

But also this section of trail is a big part of the California Coastal Trail, which a lot of people are not aware has been in the works since the Coastal Act was adopted by the voters in California. So basically, the Coastal Trail will be continuous one day from the Oregon border to the Mexico border. And as of 2021, it was 70% complete. And it's just being built in these little sections, right? The Hammond Trail was the first section here in our region. Then the Eureka Waterfront and Hikshari Trails got built. And then the Arcata section of the Bay Trail got built. And now it's going to be complete from, you'll be able to go on a trail, well, some of it's on roads, but not busy roads, all the way from Clam Beach, all the way to the Humboldt Hill near the King Salmon Power Plant. And then as you said, Mike, the county public works department is planning the next section that will take it all the way to College of the Redwoods. And so it's being built in sections, but this is a continuous trail that the Coastal Commission envisioned back in the 1970s. So really, really cool.

WILSON:

Yeah, it is, and you're right about the connectivity. I mean, we often talk about the Great Redwood Trail and its sort of grand vision. And it's really important to keep an eye on that. And I'm hoping that it gets built in my lifetime. And and and there's no reason to expect that it won't. But I try and be reasonable in my in my expectations. But really what the creation of the Great Redwood Trail agency did was allow for and and the rail banking was allow for connections between communities. And I think that's really an important that's that's where it starts. That's the most important thing. It's a coming together of all these various agencies and having to work together. And it's just really it's really great. So.

KALT:

So just briefly you want to touch on the billboard issue because this is timely, because the county planning department is developing an ordinance around billboards now, finally, after the all these years. This is the first ordinance that was mandated from the county general plan in 2017 that's actually in development and moving forward again because of huge public outcry. There used to be, what, 22-24 billboards between Arcata and Eureka and we -- you mike and I, and Humboldt Baykeeper and Keep Eureka Beautiful and others -- Dave Meserve -- fought for years years and years and years and we got rid of billboards one at a time, three at a time and then all of a sudden the Coastal Commission back in 2013 told Caltrans, you need to get rid of the billboards to mitigate the visual impacts of building this big freeway overpass right next to Humboldt Bay and, boom, Caltrans turned on a dime and they got rid of I think 10 all at once.

But there's three left. Mike, what is the deal with the three that are left?

WILSON:

Well, I mean, if you remember our our time and working on billboards around Humboldt Bay, and I think we got rid of maybe 17 or 18 of them. So it's interesting because when you remove something, people soon forget what it looked like with the thing before and would bristle at the idea of bringing them back. Right. Or having new ones. It's just really strange. Yeah, well, I will say, you know, that was us fighting really to have billboards removed that were illegally cited as they were.

I mean, so for most of the billboards, most of the ones that were removed, they were illegal in and of themselves. They were either not built to code. They weren't put in the right place. They were on public lands. Many of them were on public lands. And just the public agency just didn't want to go through the trouble of fighting to remove them or because the billboard companies are a big giant corporation, CBS Outdoor and others, they were you know, they just didn't want to go against the attorneys on that. The agency that manages signage, which is a part of Caltrans, really has very little, I think, desire often to want to get into those battles. So but but so for most of that, even the ones that Caltrans removed as part of this project were in one way or another illegal.

So the remaining billboards that are there now have entitlements and leases that extend beyond the current situation and would cost a pretty good amount of money to to have removed. And so they'll be allowed to stay there. The ones that you see, I guess, as monuments to to a time from before when people didn't value our public view sheds in the way that we value them today.

KALT:

Now the county purchased that property as part of the Bay Trail and so the county has the option to not renew the permits or that's right they need to get permits from the Coastal Commission to rebuild the footings which will never don't they'll never get those permits I don't think so well

WILSON:

It has been, you know, it has been an issue for sure around, because we've had, I mean, there was a time, I think it was 2005, there was a windstorm that blew one of the billboards onto the highway. So it is important, even if you have them, and even if you don't like them, that they should be minimally built to uniform building code, because they can, they can be a hazard, and they have been in the past and other places.

And so that's important, but it's spurred in that time, you're talking about in the general plan, the idea that we need to update the sign ordinance, not just about billboards, but in this moment, we're actually talking about, you know, the, the, the banning of LED signs, the LED billboards, those ones, those giant television type billboards, and signage in and around Humboldt County. We do know they have impacts. They're not just distracting to drivers, but they actually have nighttime impacts with relationships to, to wildlife and especially migrating birds. And then also just the aesthetic of our community does matter. We are a very beautiful place and it's part of our economy, frankly, and we need to protect that. So that, that should be coming soon, but definitely it's, it came out of the efforts around Humboldt Bay and specifically along the corridor.

KALT:

Yeah and an important component of that is protecting the dark, the night sky so people can see stars and see the Milky Way and this is, this was adopted by McKinleyville Community Service District many years ago, and I think they may have forgotten about it but streetlights and McKinleyville are supposed to be completely shielded so that the light is not going up into the sky. Eureka, the city of Eureka just recently adopted this as well for the coastal zone which I don't know why they didn't have it in the coastal zone or maybe I don't know. Anyway, so these are all things that also came out of the county general plan discussion, the protecting the night sky, wildly popular across all political spectrums.

WILSON:

And it's not a standard that's hard to meet either. And that's the other thing. I mean, it just requires awareness. And as you know, one of the fundamental controversies around cannabis is around the greenhouses that use lights. Some people's inability to screen that at night, whether it's on purpose or whatever, by mistake, we still see it. You can sometimes see it from the highways driving through different parts of that county at night. So it's something we still have to deal with not just cannabis, but also in our towns and even in our own homes. I advise people to really look at what their outdoor lighting is around their house and where they live and seek to shade the night lighting if they choose to have it.

KALT:

Yeah, and this is a big issue in the short-term rental ordinance that's being drafted, too, because people who have these short-term rentals seem to love putting tons and tons of lights outside, and I have a hard time understanding that, because I would think people vacationing would like to see the dark sky, the stars and everything, and some of these places they're coming from, you can't even hardly see the full moon, it's so lit up in big cities. Anyway, we'll keep people posted on that Billboard ordinance.

I know it's in process and has been for a while, but it's been kind of subsumed by the short-term rental ordinance, I think, maybe when that's finished. We'll keep people posted on that, but I do want to talk about sea level rise planning along the corridor, because that is also a huge shift in Caltrans that was precipitated by the Coastal Commission. One of the other projects that was recently approved in that area is the conversion of the old California Redwood Company, or it used to be Arcata Redwood Company, mill into a fence board factory. There's going to be about 16 buildings demolished on that site. The Coastal Commission permit that was approved incorporated a timeframe at the end of which sea level rise will start to impact that site, and so it's like a limited-time permit, and then they have to move from that site. You know, that used to be wetlands, it used to be tidal wetlands, then it was filled, and the Bay is going to take back all those areas. Colin, do you want to talk a little bit about the sea level rise planning that's going on now along this section of the highway and the Bay Trail? Sure.

FISKE:

I mean, I guess I'll just point out that the trail, which has been the focus of most of my attention is also, you know, part of that project involves protecting the highway from sea level rise and shoring up the, as Mike was talking about earlier, the railroad prism, which is kind of also a dike that holds the bay and has been falling apart and unmaintained for a long time. I think that's been another way that that project has been promoted is not just as a trail project, but as a sea level rise adaptation project as well. You all can probably add more details than

KALT:

Well, yeah, when the Coastal Commission approved the gave the initial go ahead on this back in 2013, there was really no sea level rise planning going on and Caltrans has made a lot of advances on planning. They have staff that are dedicated toward to sea level rise planning, and they have a major focus on this area. But in 2019, when the permit was approved, the Coastal Commission noted that the corridor is a very low lying area. It's the second lowest lying area on the 101 corridor in the Humboldt Bay area. The other one's down by Hookton Road, south of College of the Redwoods. This section between Eureka and Arcata is expected to be flooded on a monthly basis by the year 2030 based on sea level rise projections.

So Caltrans is required to do all this planning, and if the highway is impacted by floodwaters four times in a year, they need to speed it up. Caltrans takes a very long time to plan things, but they have a lot of different plans being considered. One of the plans is a county project to build what's called a living shoreline, basically extending the salt marsh that used to exist in that area, filling in the mud flats and building salt marsh back up to be able to absorb the wave action and prevent erosion. Another very expensive project that's been in the works for many years. Very interesting, but where the fill would come from and where the funding would come from are all big questions.

WILSON:

Yeah, I want to echo the sentiment that you put out there with relationship to Caltrans. Caltrans of today is not the Caltrans that was the Caltrans that actually had planned all this work from before. So a lot of what we do is the residuals of those previous planning efforts and just previous sort of worldviews. I will say that the staff at the Caltrans is just so much more receptive and understanding of the perspective around the communities that they're interacting with, as well as the multimodal transportation issues. Now, that doesn't mean that CRTP and others aren't continuing to have, I would say, help Caltrans along in this enlightenment, but I would say that the staff them themselves had different understandings and different trainings and different schooling.

So the perspective is so much better these days. And so I'm just really thankful with relationship to that. And even around sea level rise, it's like the understanding that we're looking at this piece of highway and figuring out how to protect it from sea level rise when it's really transportation technology, which is the cause for, you know, I mean, it's such a huge contributor to climate change. And so here we are trying to save literally the technology that's causing sea level rise. That irony is not lost on relationship to this. And also asking ourselves about what it means in the future. Like how upset are we when the road closes four times a year and how much do we want to spend to make sure that we believe in the entitlement of a road being open 24 hours a day all the time.

We have to remember people live under ferry schedules. We live through COVID where we changed our lifestyle so dramatically. And so oftentimes we just have to, I believe, and I'm hoping to promote the concepts around maybe we have more behavior changes rather than big projects that cost a lot of money to just maintain the status quo with relationship to these infrastructures.

FISKE:

I just want to say, I appreciate Mike's perspective there. I just want to add that CRTP really wants to make sure that after all these decades, we're finally getting this safe non-motorized facility as we look at these longer range plans for adapting to sea level rise, we are going to be advocating to make sure that, again, we're not just considering the use of that corridor by cars and trucks, but also by people walking, biking, e-biking, rolling, you know, using all those other modes of transportation.

KALT:

And thanks to CRTP, there have been some major advances all over the county. If people are not familiar with CRTP or you haven't become a member yet, I highly encourage you to check them out and become a member because everyone is a pedestrian, whether you drive a car, you're getting out of the car and walking to wherever you're going. Pedestrian safety is universally important. Thanks for your work, Colin and Mike. Thanks for your work and thanks for joining us.

This has been another edition of the Econews Report. You can join us again at this time and channel next week. Tune in wherever you get podcasts for more environmental news from the north coast of California.