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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And I'm joined by my friend and co-host Jen Kalt, Executive Director of Humboldt Waterkeeper.

All right. We are talking about the Humboldt Bay Harbor Recreation and Conservation District. Just call it the Harbor District. And we have the new Executive Director of the Harbor District, Chris Mikkelsen.

We have some exciting things to talk about in today's show. You probably have seen news that the Harbor District is the recipient of a big, large new federal grant to help complete Greenport terminal construction operations. And we scheduled the show before we knew that this was going to come out. And so we had a different show in mind, which is to introduce Chris to talk about Greenport. Chris, welcome to the Executive Director job. I know that you've been at the Harbor District before this. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to running a public Harbor District.

CHRIS MIKKELSEN:

Yeah, so I joined the Harbor District in 2019. I came out of the private development sector and property management. I'm a born native, born here in 1971. My grandparents and my home was on the corner of Second and I, so I could testify to you that I literally grew up on the waters of Humboldt Bay. A lot of my early childhood memories are walking down to the shoreline and picking crabs out of the rocks with my cousin Marcus. They're excellent memories. We had very strong relationships with a number of fishermen, so we got to troll out on the waters of Humboldt Bay periodically and come back in. So yeah, being a young boy with a lot of my growing up occurring in an old town, it's pretty neat to come to get to work on the waters of Humboldt Bay. Pretty exciting.

I started in the auto service business. My parents owned a lumber mill and I wasn't really interested in working in the timber industry. My grandmother, for my high school graduation, bought me a Volkswagen. I washed and waxed that car every day. I just loved it. Ultimately, I got the attention of the Volkswagen dealer and I went to work for them. Wrote service in the service department. Learned how to work on VWs. Really enjoyed that. That took me into a stint in the tire business. Worked for quite a number of years. A lot of people know me as their tire man and I was joking on Monday Morning Magazine recently with one of our commissioners who hosts that, Pat Higgins, about there aren't many people I don't cross paths with in town. I can tell you their tire size. So still a little bit of trivia, but it happens all the time.

Then I met a man who owned ranch lands and real estate all across the United States and I went to work for him. After quite a few years there, I got invited to return back home, get off the airplane, if you will. My wife and I were starting our family in those days. It was nice to not travel. I worked for a local family that are private developers. Probably one of my most favorite jobs ever was working for them. I had the opportunity to restore some of the treasures of Humboldt County and also to build housing. It's there that I met Director Oetker, my predecessor. By some weird fate, a job came up that encouraged me to throw my name in the ring, and I did. The man I sat in for was Larry Oetker. That's kind of my legacy and how I came here. I recognize my property management background and the development background. I think that's really what qualifies me for this role and helps me to look at things a slight bit differently.

WHEELER:

Project development and seeing things through that's gonna be important the next couple years as we have some major things going on at the Harbor District tell us about the Harbor District. It's a government agency that some listeners might not be intimately familiar with so

MIKKELSEN:

We were formed in, I believe, 1973. Many people recognize us most commonly with the Little Island Marina, which was built in about 1981. The Harbor District was built in 1973. We are under the authority of the Harbors and Navigations Code. Our job is really to manage Humboldt Bay. It's more than just the bay. So we have, you know, we have tidelands and other things.

Many folks don't know that our footprint is the entire geography of Humboldt County. And one of the assets we manage is Shelter Cove. Our commissioners are elected. We have a body of five to the same geographic footprint as our Board of Supervisors. As a side note, this is an election year. We have, I think, three people that are going to be up for reelection. That's coming our way later on this year.

But what we do, we manage the harbor. When we talk about the harbor, that's the Port of Humboldt Bay. Sometimes you'll hear us called the Humboldt Bay Port Authority, or the Port of Humboldt Bay. And in the harbor operations, we have dredging. We work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They're obligated to maintain the shipping channels. So in Humboldt Bay, we have the Samoa Channel, which is a federal channel. That's the channel that runs from the entrance along the western side of the bay. It goes up to the Samoa Bridge. There's a turning basin there. We have the Eureka Channel, which is essentially that same channel, and then it turns and transverses along the Eureka waterfront. And then we have the Mid Channel, and that's more of the recreation channel, which goes up between the two navigational channels.

So we work with the Corps for dredging, keep the entrance open, keeping our federal channels open and safe for navigation. We have a strong commitment to the commercial fishing facilities and to the retention of our fisheries and improving them. We have our OSPR program that we work on with California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Coast Guard MSD, and that's our oil spill prevention and response. We have erosion control, shoreline erosion type projects. We market our port. Keep in mind, we have a very large aquaculture community in Humboldt Bay. Many people don't realize, but we grow sea vegetables. We grow oysters, clams, and we have both juvenile nurseries and we have adult grow-out space. That's a big part of the economy. These are some of the largest producers in the West.

Then we have our recreation arm. One of the things we want to do is do more development of our recreational facilities and encourage the use of Humboldt Bay. You'll see a lot of kayakers on Humboldt Bay. One of the things we've got coming up in probably the next two years is to expand our kayak launch here at Woodley Island, but we also want to enhance other opportunities for recreation. We have, as one of our recreational facilities, the King Salmon Recreation Area, or some people call it Buhne Point, and that's where the breakwater is built down at King Salmon. We have a number of trails over the dunes there, a small recreational beach. It's a favorite of dog walkers and families. And a careful balance in a bay is conservation.

So we have a number of conservation programs that we do. We're not always recognized for them as much as people probably would hope we would do in the conservation piece, but we're doing a lot. One of our big projects right now is cleaning marine debris from Humboldt Bay, from the shores of Humboldt Bay. We try to very tenderly work with encampments that might be along the bay to make sure that the waste is disposed of properly, but yet we're recognizing the lives of those citizens in a meaningful way and a respectful way. We have a large grant we received through the California Department of Transportation Clean California Initiative, where we received just over $900,000 to do community-wide enhancement programs along the Samoa Peninsula in partnership with Redwood Community Action Agency. Those are things such as nature trails, putting navigational signage, reestablishing native plants, doing some recreation in the parks, cleaning the beaches, removing other debris that are left behind, such as automobiles or abandoned boats.

And one other thing we do in our conservation program is work with the local university. We have an upcoming project with one of the professors there to help in the educational world, and we'll benefit from that because they're going to help us with some of our initiatives. Another conservation thing that we do is looking at sediment in Humboldt Bay and erosion and how we might be able to reuse the sediment, we call beneficial reuse. And that's a little more related to our dredging piece, but we can apply that and nourish our beaches and help improve our shorelines. And so those are a few projects that are coming.

WHEELER:

So awesome. Well, so diverse sets of things that you're working on. Although Jen, I think that you had a follow-up.

JEN KALT:

A lot of people don't realize that the Humboldt Bay Harbor District was actually formed by the voters of Humboldt County. There was a ballot measure back in the early 1970s and people voted overwhelmingly to form this district. What that meant was that the State Lands Commission, which normally has jurisdiction over everything below the high tide line, granted that jurisdiction to the Harbor District, except where cities have some jurisdiction. What that means is the district manages the bay up to the high tide line for public trust uses. So a lot of what Chris was just describing are public trust uses, things like navigation, conservation, recreation.

That's why it's really important for people to vote for their Harbor Commissioner. A lot of people out in the outlying areas of Humboldt County away from the bay don't realize they are represented on the Harbor District and the Commissioner's districts actually overlap with the Board of Supervisors districts as well. So there will be an election in November and we haven't heard of any challengers yet, but there's three commissioners up for re-election, so stay tuned to learn more about those candidates if there are any challengers.

WHEELER:

We have a proposed offshore wind terminal for the construction and maintenance and operations of offshore wind turbines. This is a huge project. Humboldt Bay is unique in its capacity to house one of these offshore wind terminals because we don't have infrastructure or other things crowding the bay, making it difficult or impossible for the large wind turbines to get out into the ocean. We are particularly well-primed to be a site for major offshore wind energy development. This is something that enviro groups, labor, fishermen, all of us have a keen interest in. Some may be more supportive. Some may be more cautious. And the Harbor district is at the center of this because the plans as they exist now focus on Harbor district property, Redwood Marine Terminal one as the site for this large development. We have some exciting news, which is that it's looking like this is really going to happen because some major federal bucks are rolling in. Chris, I want you to take a victory lap here. What, what has been announced? What does that mean for the Harvard district?

MIKKELSEN:

So yesterday, a press release came out a little bit of a sneak peek preview that today.

WHEELER:

Yeah. And for listeners, this is all very fresh for us. We are keen to hear about this for the first time, Chris, just, just take it away.

MIKKELSEN:

Today at 4.30, we're going to have a press conference, and we'll be announcing, or Representative Jared Huffman will be announcing a $426,719,810 grant. It's an infrared grant, known as a mega grant, an award to the Harbor District to further the development of a heavy lift marine terminal, which will primarily support offshore winds. It's important to recognize the team that's working on this. This is a huge group of folks, right?

So we have our staff district, we have our potential private partnerships that are happening out there with Crowley, they have wind energy companies who they would be working with. We have an incredible consultant team that we're hiring through a competitive process that are helping with the design of the project and all of the engineering. We have education working on this with us. We have a number of community members. We have our environmental community. It's endless.

And one of the biggest areas that we have a huge focus on and a responsibility to focus on is recognizing that we are on ancestral lands. I'm taking a pause because I'm just so impressed and grateful and humbled by the amount of interaction and support we receive from our Native American tribes. Obviously, we're in an AP52 process, so I'm not able to comment on those, the process, but there's been a lot of great support and energy to help us do this right and to provide a quality project for our community.

In addition to that, we have our elected officials who step up and fill roles, and sometimes it's not easy to be an elected official, but the amount of time that our commission and our subcommittees have put into this that we've received the support from our other agencies such as the local cities and the county government and their staff is pretty remarkable. I think it's important that as we talk about victory laps, we all do one because the amount of community support that's been brought into this, the comments that we receive from the community to help us make this a better project are really remarkable. As we look at this grant and we celebrate it, this is still a first step. There's a ton of work left to be done, and in addition to that, there's a lot of areas in which we have opportunity to affect change.

I want to take a quick moment and note that in this mega grant, there's $1 million for a paved multipurpose trail that will be adjacent to the project site. There's $2.3 million for an eco shoreline, $10 million for a large on-site solar array to provide renewable energy to the project operations, $1.2 million for public recreation access, $6 million set aside for a community benefit program which is intended to benefit local tribes, fishermen, and nearby residents. There are many other benefits. Remember, we're a public agency. What we do is directly invested back into the community. In some cases on these community benefit programs, we're hoping this might just be the seed money for something even greater. I want to take a moment and just point that out.

WHEELER:

We are the Econews. So this $426 million something something something and $10 that the Harbor District has has won through this grant is this going to be the the complete amount necessary to do all the work for this port or is this one component amongst many funding sources?

MIKKELSEN:

We applied for this grant. One of the items related to the grant is the overall project costs and where other monies are coming from. So this particular grant application has a private match.

Currently, we're working with our, through our exclusive right to negotiate with Crowley Marine Services, or Crowley Wind Services, I apologize, to provide a level of that match. There are other grants that are out there. There's an EPA grant that is coming out very soon that we're following the notice of funding opportunity on. But as we continue to engineer a first of its kind terminal like this, an original cost estimate started in the $500 million area. It wasn't long that we were up in this 900 million to a billion area. By the time this comes online, because there's quite a bit of work left to do, we could start getting far past a billion dollars.

Adding the future value of money and inflation, you know, could we get to a billion and a half dollars? We don't know. But a billion dollars, that's kind of the minimum viable project to do a true heavy lift marine terminal with an appropriate size wharf and be able to do the staging integration, which is the intended operation we have for the site. This will be a very large lay down yard, which has 3,000 PSI ground in the perimeter and up to 6,000 PSI quayside or adjacent to the wharf. We would be erecting the largest of its kind ring crane, the largest ever built in the world, if you will, to assemble these wind turbines. And so it's, you know, your voice shakes. It's humbling to think that we're doing a very purpose-built first of its kind, but keep in mind that there's a little bit that's going on in Europe, but what's happening on the east side of the country, we have a fixed bottom type platform out there.

These are full floating, and there's only a few of these in the world. And right now they're over in Europe. And this February, one of our commissioners will be visiting one of those sites. Supervisor Arroyo and our director of development here, Rob Homeland, have both visited these sites and others of us will in time, but this is a new and emerging industry. So it's exciting. I guess bragging rights, if you will, to say we're doing a first of its kind of the largest in the world, but it's a little humbling, it's a little challenging.

KALT:

Well, and speaking of first of its kind, the environmental community has been working with the Harbor District advocating for what we call a green terminal for the better part of a year. And at the last hearing, the commissioners unanimously approved that resolution to develop. Basically, it's addressing greenhouse gas emissions. And so the goal is to develop a strategy for net zero emissions by March of 2025. But this green terminal is just basically electrifying to the extent possible. The hope is that this will be built from square one as an electrified terminal.

WHEELER:

Yeah, well, I, I just want to jump in and say, greenhouse gas is totally important that we minimize greenhouse gas emissions in electrifying. We're going to do more than just minimize greenhouse gas emissions. It's also the sulfur oxides, nitrous oxides, the particulate matters associated with diesel machinery. It's reducing noise for adjacent neighbors, right? Electric motors are a lot more quiet than large diesel, heavy diesel engines. So I think that there's, there's going to be a benefit to green port development that goes beyond just reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Because ultimately, if we get this port up and running, if we're starting to deploy offshore wind turbines up and down the West coast, we're going to be doing a great thing for our climate. And this is going to be good for Humboldt. Having a green port will be good for the neighbors. It's going to be good for the folks who are working in assembly of these wind turbines. That's like one other really big reason to be excited about this is electrification is more than just greenhouse gas emissions.

KALT:

I was going to get to the air pollution part of it. I mean, basically for the environmental groups, building a fossil fuel spilling, spewing port would be a non-starter for us. Like, of course, we want a clean port or clean terminal to go along with our clean renewable energy project, but I also want to address the fact that there will be many other impacts to the Bay and the idea of a green terminal doesn't encompass all the other issues that will be evaluated in the environmental review process. And I get a lot of questions about, oh my God, when is this going to get built? A lot of people are very concerned about the impacts to the Bay and as being Humboldt Waterkeeper, I have definitely some conflicting emotions about the excitement of getting off our fossil fuel addiction, but also how are we going to do this in ways that aren't going to have as severe impacts on the Bay as it could?

And the first step is that green terminal, but the environmental review process hasn't really even begun yet. So, I do want to ask you, Chris, to talk a little bit about the timeline because my assessment is that given all the sampling and cleanup that will have to be done at the terminal site from the former lumber mills and plywood mills that were there, as well as so many other studies that have to be done, I would guess that this wouldn't be anywhere near up and running for, what, a decade is what I would guess, or even construction being started in seven to ten years, something like that. But I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on the timeline there.

MIKKELSEN:

First, the state of California has some very ambitious goals, and goals change from time to time. There was an announcement for five gigawatts of offshore energy by 2030. That date seems challenging, but we're coming close to it very, very soon. We're in a very good process. To take it a little bit of a step back, the date to date, the district's received about $19.7 million to get our project ready for construction, and that puts us through the appropriate environmental process. Many people have attended our notice of preparation when we began the project. It helps us to start to move forward. Right now, we would hope to go to construction in 2030. It may take longer than that.

One of the things you mentioned was the potential cleanup that has to occur on some of the lands. One of the grants that we received was the $500,000 community-wide assessment grant from EPA Region 9, which is the San Francisco region, which will help us to do phase one, phase two reports, sampling analysis plan to find out what is on those parcels and what we may have to do to clean those up. There are some things that are known, and there are some things that are potentially unknown. Yes, depending on discovery, those timelines could change. There are also costs that are being incurred that get a little surprising at times. We're in an economic model right now where inflation has run costs up, and so project costs continue to climb, and we have to look at each one of those things.

Let's even take a step back further and talk about the Samoa peninsula. As most folks know, we had a pulp mill that was shuttered. The folks left literally overnight. Remember that the Humboldt Bay Harbor Recreation and Conservation District bought the former pulp mill under quite a bit of community criticism, but the goal was to secure the site and make sure that the liquors and operational materials that were left would be removed for the safety of the waters of Humboldt Bay and our community. Through good fortune, good luck, and the support of the EPA, that was achieved. That part of the peninsula has had an enormous amount of investment from EPA, the community, the Harbor District, and our tenant and potential future tenants, Nordic Aquifarms, for example, who have taken the responsibility very, very seriously, and we intend to do the same. We're essentially redeveloping what's known as an EPA brownfield site that begins at the Samoa Bridge and runs down to what we call Rebbon Marine Terminal 2, and while not all of those lands are in district control, there is cooperation and desire from other property owners to participate in it.

Keep in mind, at one point in time, we had logs going in on the north end, being turned into lumber and manufactured lumber products. The chips and the spoils then went into the other end and became pulp, a true soup to nuts operation, but there's a legacy that's left behind in a project like that. We're grateful to have the support of EPA once again to be able to assess these lands, do the work necessary to prepare them for redevelopment. Could that change the calendar? Absolutely it could, but right now we're going to keep our dates, we're going to continue to focus on them, do the very best work we can.

WHEELER:

I think that there's going to be a contingent in the community who is not excited about potential development on this port. I wanted to bring up a comment that I read in the comment section on the Lost Coast Outpost where you can find this episode and other links to more information about port development in the Harbor District. So lostcoastoutpost.com and it's from a Lincoln Hayward, which I imagine is not the person's true name. But Lincoln worries that this isn't about wind turbines, that it is about a larger kind of development of a massive regional port, that because of the project description in the notice of intent, the scoping documents for the port, which listed things like break bulk cargo, wood products, and so on, that this is just going to be money that gets funneled into something that won't ever actually result in offshore wind energy development. What do you have to say to Mr. Lincoln Hayward here?

MIKKELSEN:

Grateful for the comments of the community. Our commission meets each month. We meet on the second Thursday of each calendar month here in our chambers at Willie Island and we want the community to be a part of this and please bring your comments forward. We have a very, I'll use the term robust, we hear it a lot now, but the amount of work going into our environmental documents, there's no stone unturned. People are absolutely able to participate in that project. We held two NOP sessions when we began our notice of preparation, that is when we began our environmental review process because they wanted to make sure the community had the opportunity to comment and to be a part of the process. Keep in mind that, I'm quoting others when I say this, but we are in an existential crisis.

I go home each night and I look my children in the eyes that we've got to do something about our environment. So we may not always have a perfect project, but this is an opportunity to create a true green project that will help reduce carbon emissions and prepare a better life for our future generations. It's not going to come without some level of cost, but we have a responsibility to a number of folks that aren't just ourselves. This is an opportunity that's like no other to really contribute to that. We do a lot for people in the community as individuals. This is something we can do that is substantial for our folks and I want that to be how we look at this. We won't do it recklessly, please participate in the process, but remember the outcome of this is grand. It is great.

KALT:

Terminal is not planned to be equipped with the type of equipment you would need to have a shipping container port. Is that right?

MIKKELSEN:

Yes, absolutely. Our goal is to do staging and vertical integration of offshore marine platforms. Now, this is a multi-use terminal. It's possible that we could have other uses there. Our goal for this terminal is staging and integration of offshore wind turbines. That is what we will start with. There could be maybe some forest parks, because we are a very fiber-heavy market here, and so we could consider those as compatible uses. But at this point in time, there is absolutely no idea that we're going to be able to...

KALT:

A lot of these fears are based in past proposals from your agency, and there were many outlandish things proposed over the years, some of which were liquefied natural gas importation or giant shipping container port with a railroad, but we no longer have the fantasy of the railroad, which we had for about 30 years, this fantasy that the railroad would be rebuilt someday. All the docks in Humboldt Bay, all they were ever really used for was lumber products. So we have to face the future without abject fear of everything other than, well, climate change. I mean, when we talk about the impacts, the local direct impacts that this project may have on eelgrass and shellfish and all the critters that people care about and the fish that fishermen catch and sell for us to eat, these are all being impacted by climate change as we speak. We can't just sit on our hands and hope some other region is going to solve the problem for us because it's not happening, obviously. So hopefully we can do this as best we possibly can and view the future with some excitement as well as a little trepidation.

WHEELER:

Well, I'm excited, and let's perhaps end on a high note. Chris, what are the economic forecasts for this project? How many jobs associated with the construction of the port, construction of wind terminals, and when we have the thing up and running, what are we looking at for operations and maintenance?

MIKKELSEN:

been a lot of numbers offered around jobs. There was a bit of a scare in the community that we would have these large camps of workers coming here. That doesn't appear to be the case whatsoever. We think that we're probably going to have somewhere around a couple hundred people at any given time be working on the site, and we'll see a little bit of an upswing during the construction time, and then we'll settle out when we're actually into full operation. These are super quality, market-paying jobs with a very highly skilled set. There's a crazy amount of support coming, an overwhelming amount of support coming from the educational community to help prepare the local community for these future jobs. We understand that we'll have to bring people in in the initial stages. We'll have to bring people in to train and to do the teaching portion of it and a large part of the construction portion of it.

What an opportunity with College of the Redwoods and Cal Poly Humboldt. We have been on campus. We've worked directly with some of these leaders to understand the pathway forward to prepare for this. We know we'll start preparing the local workforce. I believe it's at the eighth grade level is when this will start getting introduced into the schools. There's a little insight and timeline for you.

KALT:

A positive note, too, as far as the job training goes, Vineyard Wind, one of the offshore wind leaseholders, just announced an opportunity for a two-year training program with tracks in commercial development and technical development, paid positions for either people in college now or recently graduated. So these are for people who are at the beginning of their professional lives. It would be a two-year work experience program to get trained to work in the offshore wind energy industry here locally, which is really exciting because I teach part-time at Cal Poly Humboldt, and I hear a lot of excitement from the students up at the university and get a lot of questions about, like, how can I prepare myself to enter this industry as it's developing? So that is really exciting.

WHEELER:

as it's saying.

MIKKELSEN:

Thanks, Jen. Understanding that we've got an emerging industry, job forecast will continue to change. And keep in mind, this is scale. The markets dictate the build out of a project, the phasing of a project. You start on a development plan. You always look at this. I have a mentor in my life who I think about all the time. And he used to say, you never know what these things are going to grow up to be. And that was a really great thing to teach because the market's going to tell us what this is going to grow up to be. And that'll really tell us how many people are going to be on site. We know we'll have no less than about 200 quality jobs from the very beginning.

WHEELER:

Well, Chris, again, congratulations. First month on the job and you nail a $400 million grant. I feel like you should go back to your board and renegotiate a pay raise. I'm not telling you what to do here. Congratulations and look forward to participating, engaging with the Harbor district throughout this whole process.

MIKKELSEN:

... about the team and we look forward for you folks to participate in that. Hopefully we can come back and visit with you.

WHEELER:

All right. Thank you listeners for joining us and join us again next week on this time channel for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.