Thumbnail photo by Paul Critz
(Updated at 9:16 a.m. Wednesday to correct an error. Pacific Seafood sold about 1,300 tons of ice last year, according to Interim Harbormaster Mike Rademaker.)
Mike Rademaker thought the Crescent City Harbor’s potential takeover of the ice plant was a good solution given the impending crab season — until the plant’s previous operator decided it was going to remove the equipment.
The interim harbormaster received this news Nov. 5, about a month after Pacific Seafood vacated the premises. With the Harbor District’s legal counsel stating that its previous tenant had abandoned its equipment when it ceased operations, Rademaker locked them out of the building.
But that lockout was short-lived, he told Redwood Voice Community News on Monday.
“We were just trying to protect our interests,” he said. “We locked them out and within about two or three hours, they called us. They weren’t very happy about it, needless to say, and I tried to be conciliatory. But when you are telling us you’re going to take out the equipment, which is going to adversely impact us … we had to at least do that in the short term while we made an assessment as to what our options are.”
CCHD had been negotiating with the Clackamas, Ore.-based processing and distribution giant since they first received word on Sept. 5 that the company was leaving Crescent City.
When Pacific Seafood ceased operating the ice plant on Oct. 5, Crescent City and Del Norte County leaders rallied around the Harbor District, searching for ways to continue to provide ice for the local fleet.
Commercial fisherman Josh Mims, who has been spearheading the Community Food Council’s Sea-to-Market program, has also put Rademaker in touch with potential alternative ice sources. This includes a Seattle-based company that could provide mobile ice plant units.
Rademaker estimated that 20 to 30 people have been working on ensuring there’s a permanent source of ice for the Crescent City fleet. He said he has also spoken with politicians, members of Congress, as well as 40 to 50 engineering consultants.
These discussions also include how to best address Environmental Protection Agency violations associated with the ice plant, especially since the Harbor District had thought to take over operating it during commercial crab season, which typically starts Dec. 1 in Del Norte County.
Those efforts appear to be moot now, Rademaker said.
“Now Pacific Seafood’s decided they want to take all of the equipment out of there,” he said. “Chris Howard was working on getting money from the county and Eric Wier and Blake Inscore were working on getting money from the city. They were coalescing around this plan and it looked promising, it looked realistic and achievable, but we can’t do anything if Pacific Seafood removes their equipment.”
Chris Howard represents Del Norte County District 3 on the Board of Supervisors. Eric Wier is the Crescent City manager and Blake Inscore is the mayor.
Crescent City isn’t the only California port Pacific Seafood has left. Earlier this month, the company halted processing activity at its Eureka plant, laying off “an undisclosed number of local employees.” The seafood that had been unloaded in Eureka has been diverted to Pacific Seafood plants in Oregon, the company’s director of communications, Lacy Ogan, told the Lost Coast Outpost on Nov. 15.
Pacific Seafood operates nearly 40 facilities nationwide from Kodiak, Alaska to Miami, Fla., employing roughly 2,500 people.
At the Crescent City Harbor District’s Nov. 19 meeting, Rademaker told commissioners he learned just how difficult it was for Pacific Seafood to make a profit selling ice out of its Citizens Dock plant.
Last year, Pacific Seafood had sold about 200 1,300 tons of ice from Crescent City, generating roughly $200,000 in sales. However, with electricity that cost between $6,000 and $7,000 a month, staff salaries and those EPA violations, which, according to Rademaker, can cost more than $100,000 to rectify, Pacific Seafood’s expenses were roughly 10 times what they were taking in, he said.
One of the challenges Pacific Seafood cited when it notified the Harbor District that it was leaving was a decline in ice sales.
Rademaker told commissioners that this could have a cascading impact for the harbor.
“If boats don’t come in to ice up, they’re not going to fuel up, so then we have this cascading impact on the fuel dock,” he told commissioners. “That’s another issue down the road we need to be cognizant of and be thinking strategically about how we’re going to address that.”
With operating the ice plant seemingly off the table, the Crescent City Harbor District is still negotiating a potential purchase agreement with Pacific Seafood to buy ice in bulk from its Brookings plant and truck it to Crescent City.
This is one reason, Rademaker said, he didn’t want the lockout to go on much longer than it did. Rademaker also pointed out that the Board of Commissioners doesn’t want to get into a legal fight with the company, especially since it rents hoists and offers some processing for local fishermen.
Rademaker said he would present the new Harbor District Board with a proposal for purchasing a 20-foot and a 40-foot freezer unit at a total of about $18,000. It wouldn’t produce the flake ice that fishermen prefer, he said, but it would be an option.
“I already checked with an electrician about how we might wire that and locate it down by the existing ice plant, and [there] might be a few thousand dollars of installation costs for that,” Rademaker said. “I think the bottomline is that we will have some form of an ice plant solution for the crab season if we’re not able to negotiate something with Pacific Seafood.”
