Category Archives: Articles

Agriculture, Articles, Environment, Smith River, Tribal Affairs

(Updated) Public Asked To Weigh In On Pesticide Use In Smith River’s Easter Lily Bulb Industry

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(Updated at 3:58 p.m. with a clarification about Monday’s public meeting in Smith River from the Environmental Protection Information Center.)

Conservationists seeking to eliminate the use of “highly toxic pesticides” on Smith River’s Easter lily fields want to give residents and county officials a chance to voice their concerns next week.

Scientists with the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board also want to hear from the public as they continue work to develop water quality regulations for commercial Easter lily bulb production in the Smith River area.

The meeting on Monday will include a presentation from Water Quality Control Board staff on the waste discharge permit process and will give the public a chance to offer testimony.

Representatives with the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), the Siskiyou Land Conservancy and the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation will be part of that discussion at 6 p.m. Monday at the Smith River United Methodist Church before going before the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors.

Monday’s public forum will be broadcast live on KFUG Community Radio, 101.1 FM — listen by clicking here.

“We are hoping that affected community members will come to each of the two meetings and help make a compelling case as to why pesticide application needs to be more regulated,” Josefina Barrantes, EPIC’s Del Norte advocate, told Redwood Voice Community News on Thursday. “We want both the water board staff and the Board of Supervisors to hear how the pollution has affected the community so that it can motivate real change.”

The Water Quality Control Board will also go before the Board of Supervisors at their meeting 10 a.m. Tuesday in the Flynn Center, 981 H Street in Crescent City.

The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board will hold a public scoping meeting from 4-6 p.m. Tuesday at the United Methodist Church in Crescent City. This meeting will also be held virtually. For more information about efforts to develop waste discharge permit requirements for Easter lily bulb production in Smith River, click here.

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Alerts, Articles, Community News, Curry, Elections

75-Year-Old Woman Injured After Someone Threw an Apple at a Harris/Walz Rally in Brookings

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Curry County Democrats logo

A 75-year-old Brookings woman sustained facial injuries after someone threw an apple into the crowd at a Harris/Walz rally Friday.

The woman, who asked that her name not be used for fear of harassment, said the apple hit her left eye and fractured the orbital bone. She said she sustained scratches to her cornea and has had to put off cataract surgery. She said she had just had surgery on her right eye.

“I was just standing there waving the Harris/Walz sign and, bam!” She told Redwood Voice Community News on Monday. “We were getting some fair response — people honking horns and waving, so we were all waving back and stuff — and then, wham!”

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Articles, Community News, Education, Elections, Infrastructure, Local Government

Measure H Will Allow DNUSD To Chip Away At Facilities Master Plan, Advocates Say

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To make her case for why voters should favor Measure H, Coleen Parker drew the Crescent City Council’s attention to another proposed bond — this one aimed at improving school facilities statewide.

If Del Norters approve the $59 million general obligation bond Del Norte Unified School District placed on the ballot this presidential election, DNUSD stands a better chance at receiving state facilities money should California’s Proposition 2 succeed, Parker told councilors on Monday.

“The way the Office of Public School Construction works is … if you are in a community that has passed a bond, now your community says, ‘Yes, schools are important to us.’ They help with matching dollars in a variety of things,” said Parker, who retired from DNUSD about two years ago and is part of the Support Our Kids — Yes On Measure H Committee. “If our [Measure] H doesn’t pass and the state bond does, the chances of Del Norte seeing any of that money is very slim.”

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Activism, Articles, Humboldt, In Media Res

“Deshelve Sabra” — Marching with Protesters on Wildberries & College Creek Marketplaces

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The flier for the protest | Credit Unknown

“It’s important to remember that there’s no such thing as empires that last forever,” one protester, Ryan, declared before an assembled crowd.

Over 30 people by my count gathered at the Arcata Plaza on Oct. 4th at around 4:30 PM. They stood around one protester holding a Palestinian flag and two others carrying a large banner, reading: “Boycott Sabra Genocide Hummus.” Stragglers made their way from every side of the Plaza and a small marching band began to set up with instruments. Two protesters brought their own drums, another hand bells, to join in the making of noise.

Ryan — addressing the crowd with no bullhorn nor microphone, and who would later describe himself as “not some kind of grand leader, [just] some guy that felt strongly that this should happen,” — continued to address the growing crowd. “It’s a time where many of us feel powerless with the intensified Israeli assault on Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. But it’s important to remember that we can look back into our history, and we can look at tactics that have historically worked.”

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Agriculture, Articles, Community News, Economy, Fort Dick, Humboldt

Animal Rights Advocates Sue Alexandre Dairy Over Cruelty Allegations Farm Forward Exposé Raised In April

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A Sacramento-based nonprofit organization combating factory farming and animal abuse in the poultry industry is suing Alexandre Family Farm alleging “rampant cruelty” at their Humboldt and Del Norte County dairy operations.

Legal Impact for Chickens filed its lawsuit in Humboldt County Superior Court last week. The organization’s complaint contains the same cruelty allegations another organization, Farm Forward, outlined in a report released six months ago. In an Oct. 1 news release, Legal Impact for Chickens references that exposé and accuses the dairy of pouring table salt in cows’ eyes to treat maladies, dragging disabled animals across concrete and starving them.

“We saw the exposé and we saw that Alexandre was accused of pouring table salt into animals’ eyes and dragging cows across concrete and starving them,” Legal Impact for Chickens Executive Director Alene Anello told Redwood Voice Community News on Thursday. “Being familiar with California’s animal cruelty laws, we immediately thought to ourselves, ‘that is illegal, we need to stop them.’”

Farm Forward released its exposé, “Dairy Deception: Corruption and Consumer Fraud At Alexandre Family Farm” on April 11.

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Articles, In Media Res

Barbara Burke Loved You, Darling – In Media Res

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There’s a handwritten sign on the door of the Gallery of Arts and Culture across H Street from the Post Office. Though the message it conveys is simple — a straight-forward designation of a future event’s time and place — if you peer through the glass, as I did, at the Gallery’s blank walls and empty shelves, the wastes of open cardboard boxes and bare track lighting, then the piece of yellow lined paper taped to the inside of the door tells an entire story. The note informs any interested passerby that the family of Barbara Burke will be holding an estate sale this weekend. 

Barbara passed away this past spring after a brief illness. “A brief illness” is obituary-speak for that final series of events that brings a person’s time on Earth to a close, and, as phrases go, it’s about as loaded as they come. For Barbara, it meant a growing sense of confusion, followed by a car accident serious enough to require hospitalization and rehab. While in the hospital, doctors found a pancreatic mass, which she decided — at age 84 — not to treat.

The last time I saw Barbara, she was sitting in a chair in the hallway outside her room in the assisted nursing facility. I’d been visiting someone else, and was in no way prepared to see Barbara’s swoop of preternaturally jet black hair in the institutionally gray hall. I stopped, wide-eyed. “Barbara?” At the sound of her name, Barbara looked up at me, and my heart broke a little.  

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Alerts, Articles, Environment

Severe Geomagnetic Storm May Light Up The Skies & Interfere With Communication Technology

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Graphic presented during a SWPC / NOAA press briefing regarding the threat of severe space weather.

The Space Weather Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also known as SWPC, held a press conference on Wednesday October 9th to alert the media about a Severe Geomagnetic Storm Watch. This storm was ignited by a Coronal Mass ejection that erupted from our sun on the evening of October 8th, 2024.

Video coronagraph footage from the SWPC shows the Coronal Mass Ejection alongside a coincidental photobomb from the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Comet

This fast-moving solar flash sent radiation particles hurdling towards earth, with the potential to envelop earth’s magnetic field causing a G4 Class or severe Geomagnetic Storm. This particular storm was analyzed and anticipated to reach earth on October 10th. Indeed the CME arrived Thursday at 11:15 AM Eastern Time, causing SWPC to upgrade its Storm Watch to a Storm Warning.

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Articles, Community News, Crescent City, Health, Just For Fun

Pump Track Ribbon Cutting Set For Saturday, And Other City Council News

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Crescent City councilors approved bike pump track rules ahead of its Saturday grand opening.

The new rules require users to wear a helmet, elbow pads and knee pads and states that kids under age 12 must be under adult supervision, City Attorney Martha Rice said Monday. The regulations set the facility’s hours from dawn to dusk and limit its use to “non-motorized wheeled devices.”

Anyone flouting those rules will either be suspended from the facility or receive an administrative citation, Rice said. Though the ordinance won’t take effect for another 30 days, the rules will be posted at the pump track’s entrance.

The pump track grand opening will start at 11 a.m. Saturday at Beachfront Park and will include giveaways and riding demonstrations. Kids are also urged to bring their helmets and bicycles. The city and the Del Norte Trail Alliance are sponsoring the event.

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Articles, Community News, Crescent City, Infrastructure, Local Government

Muni Code Cleanup Uncovers Landscaping Standards Crescent City Councilors Didn’t Realize Existed

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An effort to set parameters for the amount of open space housing developers need to provide their residents made Crescent City councilors realize that the municipal code contains landscaping standards that likely aren’t applied consistently.

Some don’t make sense, Councilor Kelly Schellong Feola said Monday. One example she gave is a requirement that at least one tree from an approved list be planted in a residential front or side yard every 30 feet. The other is limiting the use of non-vegetative material in residential landscaping to 25 percent, Feola said.

“I know a lot of older people that can’t get out and mow their lawns,” she said. “They like to decorate their yards with river rock and such, and this is saying you can’t do that for more than 25 percent of your property.”

It’s these inconsistencies the Community Development Department and the Planning Commission have been working through, according to Ethan Lawton, a planner with SHN, a Eureka-based engineering and planning firm that is contracted with the city. When it comes to landscaping standards in residential zones, developments that are less than four units aren’t required to submit site plans to the city that verifies their landscaping plans, he said.

But, while there’s no special permit required for a single-family home, for example, under the municipal code, city staff should still review those landscaping standards, City Attorney Martha Rice said.

“No building permit should be issued unless [the development] meets these landscaping requirements,” she said.

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Articles, CC Harbor, Community News, Local Government

Del Norte’s New Fireworks Law Aims To Deter Illegal Pyrotechnics Via Fines

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Del Norte’s legal counsel called the new fireworks ordinance an administrative tool that uses fines to discourage people from bringing their Roman candles, sky rockets and other “dangerous” pyrotechnics into the community.

California law already makes it a crime to possess “dangerous fireworks,” County Counsel Jacqueline Roberts said Tuesday. These include sky rockets, bottle rockets, Roman candles, aerial shells, firecrackers and other pyrotechnics that explode, go in the air or move on the ground in an uncontrollable manner.

Possessing less than 2,000 pounds in California is “just a misdemeanor,” Roberts told supervisors.

“What this ordinance does is give the county an administrative way of dealing with them — through the fine process,” she said. “It’s sort of another tool in our tool belt to try to deal with the dangerous fireworks situation in town because, as you know, it’s difficult to prosecute criminally, especially when you’re dealing with something as low-level as a misdemeanor. But, perhaps if someone is getting a $1,000 fine, it might deter that behavior.”

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