CA Coastal CommissionersDonne Brownsey, Chair
Dr. Caryl Hart, Vice Chair Sara Aminzadeh Dayna Bocho Linda Escalante Carole Groom Meagan Harmon Steve Padillo Catherine (Katie) Rice Effie Turnbull-Sanders Roberto Uranga Mike Wilson North Coast District Office 1385 8th St. #130 Arcata, CA 95521 707-826-8950 CCC Headquarters in San Francisco 455 Market ST., Ste 300 San Francisco, CA 94105 415-904-5202 Send your email or letter to all of the Commissioners and cc the Northern Coast District Office.The Coastal Commission is watching the Northern Mendocino Coast. They are charged with protecting the coast. Focus now is on each community's political will and ability to get in front to climate change and all of the challenges it is bringing with resilience. whether human caused or not, changing and more extreme weather patterns, drought, erosion, emigration are facts here on the coast.
Scroll down for some of the talking points the volunteers with Save Noyo Headlands use. E-mails and letters don't have to be complex. The Coastal Commission does have representation from the Northern Coast, but for most of the Commissioners and staff, 200 years of 'owing your soul to the company store' is Merle Travis country song. TALKING POINTS:
1. Fort Bragg’s structurally unsound and toxic collection of mill ponds need to be cleaned up before they contaminate the ocean and all sea life for miles around. 2. Sea Level Rise will destroy the beach berm and undermine the dilapidated dam that contain the toxic millponds. The berm is “just a big pile of junk and debris.” The Department of Dam Safety has warned about the dam for years. The Coastal Commission should list them as sites “Of Concern.” The UC Berkeley Toxic Tides project offers an excellent approach. Read When the Berm Blows by Bill Lemos. 3. We should daylight the creeks to flow into a natural estuary. Environmental restoration in tandem with wise community development will sequester carbon. 4. Georgia-Pacific cannot be allowed to skate away from their clean up responsibilities and leave the poisons to contaminate the Noyo Headlands and then spread the toxins far into to sea? 5. The CCC’s should take a position on Mendocino Railway’s use of eminent domain to take control of the entire Headlands? We in Fort Bragg oppose this.The local train is an excursion train and not a public utility (used for transport of freight and people, which would exempt them from laws that require public hearings, environmental regulation and permitting. 6. What confidence can our community have that Mendocino Railway will be good stewards of the land? What about permits? 7. Carbon sequestration is an important part of any plan for the Noyo Headlands. 8. Mendocino Railway uses 4 acres for their operations. They could not possibly need over 360 acres for their railway operations. They really want it for real estate development and dollar extraction from our coastal community. 9. The Mendocino Railway land grab flies in the face of Environmental Justice. 10. Our community has spoken clearly that we want daylighted creeks and wildlife corridors. Mendocino Railway would make this impossible with their tracks going out to Glass Beach. Why is Mendocino Railway talking about a trash-burning operation on the Headlands? |
Fact: The Clean-Up is being stalled by G-P|Koch and Mendocino Railway.The clean-up of Noyo Headlands has been in limbo since 2018. Regardless of who owns the property, the law says that it must be cleaned up before it can be repurposed and safe for humans or wildlife (including the fishes in the sea.) Georgia Pacific|Koch and Mendocino Railroad now share the responsibility. The City of Fort Bragg is not and never has been the reason for delay. The Department of Toxic Substances Control has signed off on some of the property, albeit putting severe restrictions in place as to what can be done in those areas. The section known as OU-E (Operating Unit E), which includes the old mill ponds and crumbling berm holding ponds back from a rising ocean and the forested strip along Hwy 1 opposite Safeway has no approved action plan for remediation.
If you are interested in more background, detail, and the very real situation, here are additional sources. Reports correspondence between all parties can be found on www. savenoyoheadlands.com. The Fort Bragg Headlands Consortium is a team of scientists and professionals whose experience, training, education, and principles motivate them to look beyond rampant rumor, political hype, marketing language, and corporate greed and dig deeper for the truth. See Bill Lemos story "When the Berm Bursts" or Dave Jensen's "The Obfuscation of Averaging" Lemos's article including pictures of the rickety struture built of flotsam and already condemned by the Derpartment of Dam Safety that protects the Pacific from human ignorance, greed, disdain.... You decide. It depends on the decade we are talking about. Dave, along with a number of local experts and scientists, spend a great deal of time peeling back the layers of nonobjective studies, lengthy delays, and bottom line priority over science to come up with inadequate findings and declarations such as "The site is completely cleaned." The sign below, posted by Mendocino Railroad looks unsurprisingly like the ones posted for two decades by G-P|Koch. With the exception of the brilliant work and persistence of the City of Fort Bragg in building the Coastal Trail (Fort Bragg's biggest tourist attraction), coastal residents and visitors would have no access to the Ocean in Fort Bragg. As it is the gate to most of the headlands is still chained. 
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Maybe it is time for something different?
Since 1889, the men and women of Fort Bragg have labored to put food on their tables, roofs over their heads--and to make a few men in far away cities wealthy. Is this the dream you have for your children? Perhaps we've given enough? Isn't it time to use our collaborative skills and creativity to made our own decisions about our own town?
Once the clean up has restored the 1/3 of Fort Bragg to levels required by CA Environmental Law; once Fort Bragg businesses, educational, and environmental organizations can make meaningful, fundable plans; once the property is returned as whole as can be to the community, there is no limit to what our collaborative, creative community can do.
Development? Yes.
Smart, environmentally sustainable development that is responsive to a rapidly changing planet. The Noyo Center for Marine Science and Education has plans for a top rated visitor's museum and research center. They will need more than the 11 acres they own. Take a look at the Symposium on the Blue Economy scheduled in Fort Bragg from May 19 through the 22nd. Think that the ocean hasn't anything to do with the local economy. The research the Noyo Center is doing on kelp is central to the issue our local fishery industry is facing.
North Coast Brewing and Harvest have, over the years expressed interest in expanding. No one can move forward until the clean-up is complete.
Once the clean up has restored the 1/3 of Fort Bragg to levels required by CA Environmental Law; once Fort Bragg businesses, educational, and environmental organizations can make meaningful, fundable plans; once the property is returned as whole as can be to the community, there is no limit to what our collaborative, creative community can do.
Development? Yes.
Smart, environmentally sustainable development that is responsive to a rapidly changing planet. The Noyo Center for Marine Science and Education has plans for a top rated visitor's museum and research center. They will need more than the 11 acres they own. Take a look at the Symposium on the Blue Economy scheduled in Fort Bragg from May 19 through the 22nd. Think that the ocean hasn't anything to do with the local economy. The research the Noyo Center is doing on kelp is central to the issue our local fishery industry is facing.
North Coast Brewing and Harvest have, over the years expressed interest in expanding. No one can move forward until the clean-up is complete.
Jobs? Sure.
From entrepreneurial ventures to professional jobs in critical fields such as oceanography, renewable energy, and eco-building workforce housing, the move from two centuries of depending on the extraction economy to the critical work of redesigning the human relationship with the planet for a sustainable future is creating jobs. Well-paying and meaningful jobs. Certainly there is a role for tourist services. We have a beautiful town to share. It will not solve a scarcity of jobs. Neither will a short-term building boom. Out-of-town contractors do fill up the motels for a time, but it is a short-lived and targeted economic boom.
From entrepreneurial ventures to professional jobs in critical fields such as oceanography, renewable energy, and eco-building workforce housing, the move from two centuries of depending on the extraction economy to the critical work of redesigning the human relationship with the planet for a sustainable future is creating jobs. Well-paying and meaningful jobs. Certainly there is a role for tourist services. We have a beautiful town to share. It will not solve a scarcity of jobs. Neither will a short-term building boom. Out-of-town contractors do fill up the motels for a time, but it is a short-lived and targeted economic boom.
Restoring wetlands, daylighting creeks, and creating a wildlife corridor is resilience.
Rather than going back in time, finding ways for man and nature to live in harmony is the future.There is no other future. The crisis may not come to a tipping point in your lifetime, but it will come unless society can agree to value social, economic, and environmental justice and redefine "best use," not as a euphemism or narrowly defined description of profit. The Noyo Headlands is a rare opportunity to start over—begin again to build a verdant and healthy community for all. Lack of access to the propertu has made it challenging to design these projects. This will not use all of the property. There is evidence across the world that communities who enhanced their communities in these ways benefitted economically. Golden Gate Park SF, Central Park, NYC are just two highly visible and long-time examples of what someone with an common vision left as his legacy.
Rather than going back in time, finding ways for man and nature to live in harmony is the future.There is no other future. The crisis may not come to a tipping point in your lifetime, but it will come unless society can agree to value social, economic, and environmental justice and redefine "best use," not as a euphemism or narrowly defined description of profit. The Noyo Headlands is a rare opportunity to start over—begin again to build a verdant and healthy community for all. Lack of access to the propertu has made it challenging to design these projects. This will not use all of the property. There is evidence across the world that communities who enhanced their communities in these ways benefitted economically. Golden Gate Park SF, Central Park, NYC are just two highly visible and long-time examples of what someone with an common vision left as his legacy.