[00:00:02] Speaker A: KMUD Podcast presents.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to another EPIC edition of the KMUD Environment Show. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information center, or EPIC as we are better known in these parts. And joining me is a friend, friend and neighbor. We're recording this from the hotspot of Hillsdale street in Eureka, California, Dana Stolzman, the executive director of Salmonid Restoration Federation. Hey Dana, how are you?
[00:00:41] Speaker C: Hi Tom. From your living room to mine.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
So Dana, I know you have deep roots in southern Humboldt and have been on came out of Dun, but in case people are living under a rock, introduce us to you and to the Salmonid Restoration Federation, or srf, as I'm sure we will invariably call your organization throughout.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: Okay, so my name is Dana Stolzman. I lived in the southern Humble area and you know, kind of the epicenter near K mud for Gosh, 20, 25 years. And feel extremely connected to KMUDs community both in southern Humboldt and northern Humboldt, and was a Bryceland resident for a very long time. Have been a resident of the South Fork eel. And about 20 years ago, after working with EPIC and on different environmental campaigns, I was hired by Salmonid Restoration Federation, which were a statewide nonprofit or organization. But SRF was founded in Humboldt county and our, I would say primary constituency is still Humboldt county. Even though we put on the largest salmon restoration conference in California. A colleague recently teased me and they said, I think it's safe to say the largest salmon restoration conference in the Pacific Northwest. So that was kind of a fun reality check. We really do put on a pretty large interdisciplinary four day conference.
But the one of the main programs that SRF has had for about 14 years now is looking at flow enhancement opportunities in the South Fork Eel.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: And so South Fork Eel, critically important tributary to the Eel River.
Why? Why is it so important? Why South Fork Eel? Let's give some context.
Why the Eel river in general?
[00:02:54] Speaker C: So the Eel river is one of the largest watersheds, you know, certainly in, in Northern California, but one of the largest watersheds in the state, I think. What is it, Tom? Like five or six counties the Eel river touches upon. But the South Fork Eel has always been critically important for coho salmon. And it's probably the second or third largest coho bearing river in California. But it's critically important for the recovery of coho salmon which are now listed as threatened and endangered species.
And the South Fork Eel is really a critical link for the Southern Oregon Northern California Coast Recovery Unit. When you think about salmon recovery, it's kind of broken into these evolutionary significant units. And the South Fork Eel, one of the reasons it still retained a lot of high intrinsic recovery potential is that there are so many cold water forested tributaries that flow into the South Fork Eel, so there's the opportunity for juvenile salmonids to thrive if conditions are right. And one of the things that's so significant, and you know, particularly people that are familiar with KMUD's, you know, home base and the tributaries surrounding it, is that Redwood Creek and Sproul Creek and many of the other tributaries that flow into the South Fork Eel still really provide significant habitat and still have cool enough water. But as we all know, there's also a really big lack of municipal water infrastructure in the South Fork Eel. So during the extended drought years, many residents, you know, were reporting for the first time ever that they were running out of water. So we're talking about these tributaries that are mostly rurally populated. In the case of Redwood Creek, there's, you know, less than 400 parcels, but there's only one small municipality. So most people are managing their own water systems. So it you really realize the collective, you know, importance of working with your neighbors and being conscientious about your water stewardship when you live in a situation where you're managing your own water for day to day use, but also for fire protection.
So being a long term resident of Redwood Creek and living in the Bryceland area, I really admired the work of Sanctuary Forest. And you know, I remember just the, the inception of their storage and forbearance program when they were kind of identifying, you know, the ability for landowners to voluntarily store water in the wintertime for use in the summertime. And it's a, a pretty simple idea, but in order to, you know, have an effective program, it really takes like years of building capacity.
So after several years of like, you know, being inspired by the work of Sanctuary Forest, discussions with Tasha McKee and other staff, people with Sanctuary Forest SRF kind of worked with some community members, most notably Bill Eastwood, who is kind of a longtime restoration legend.
And we wanted to understand the feasibility of, you know, kind of a technology transfer, kind of expanding that storage and forbearance concept and practice in Redwood Creek.
And we quickly learned that Redwood Creek is just fundamentally and geologically a really different type of watershed than the Mattole. So one of the keys to the success of the Sanctuary Forest program was they had enough buy in from landowners in what's called a losing reach of the creek, an area that would, you know, would drain down very quickly. So having, you know, many people along kind of their initial, you know, half mile of the Matol headwaters and then a mile and they've really built it out made a big difference. But because Redwood Creek, so many more people were reliant on springs, which is hard to quantify, or wells, which is not really regulated.
We kind of looked at a suite of restoration opportunities or, you know, what types of flow enhancement could effectively improve flow conditions in Redwood Creek. And we were very fortunate to partner with Stillwater Sciences pretty early on in our flow monitoring effort. And have they developed a feasibility study that took like two or three years of research of. On, you know, dry. What's called dry mapping, you know, mapping the creeks in the summertime, looking at the creeks during different flow levels, developing rating curves. So we really, for the first time had an understanding of, you know, what level of flows are available in the wintertime and really what kind of the low flow trajectory was. And now that we've been monitoring, I think we're been monitoring now for 14 years, pretty early on, we saw the pattern of that the creek would become disconnected, and that would mean stranding hundreds, if not thousands of juvenile salmonids during these periods, you know, usually starting in July or August, where the creek would become connected.
And that feasibility study included identifying priority projects in Redwood Creek. And very quickly, the Marshall Ranch flow enhancement project emerged as kind of the project of the greatest potential in Redwood Creek. The Marshall ranch is over 3,000 acres. It's been in the Marshall family since the 1800s.
And when the matriarch of the family passed away, Elizabeth Marshall started doing research and trying to understand how she could protect this, you know, beautiful historic ranch. And with her, you know, persistence and faith, they were able to come under conservation easement and protect the ranch as a working ranch with the opportunity to have what's called conservation envelopes, which is a kind of a term in the conservation easement world, which meant that there could be kind of dedicated activities geared towards restoration and recovering ecological function.
So we were super lucky to, you know, work with the Marshall Ranch and, you know, develop a project that we built last year, last summer.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Well, let's talk about that project. So Marshall Ranch, huge, beautiful organic ranch where they still run cattle.
It is near Redwood Creek.
Tell us what you did.
[00:10:31] Speaker C: Well, first, I do really want to acknowledge how amazing this is, that the, you know, kind of largest landowner in the watershed, and if anyone has not kind of driven past part of the Marshall Ranch, it's this kind of this beautiful saddle that spans both sprawl Creek and Redwood Creek. And basically we designed a very large pond project that was going to be dedicated, is dedicated to, to flow releases. So technically it's what's called a flow augmentation project.
Initially it was designed as one large pond, but there were several community members and neighbors that, you know, really didn't feel safe with a project of that scale. And we got a lot of community input and held community meetings. And because we had kind of a target flow, because we had all these years of looking at the low flow scenario in Redwood Creek, we knew that in order for the project to be meaningful, it would have to be able to at least release, you know, 30 to 50 gallons of water per minute during the dry season. So we pivoted based on some of the community input that we received, but also because we were approached with another project at Lost Coast Forest Land, which is in the headwaters of Redwood Creek that could potentially offset, you know, and provide additional flow augmentation. That project, you know, is in its planning phase, but we felt confident that we would eventually be able to achieve our 50 gallons a minute, you know, release. And the way we pivoted was we moved from one 15 million gallon pond to approximately two 5 million gallon ponds. One on what we refer to as the lower terrace and, and one on the upper terrace. And one thing that I'd love to clarify is the Marshall Ranch, this is literally the most geologically stable part of the watershed. We did a ton of geotechnical research over a period of two or three years, brought in experts from UC Berkeley and worked with an engineering firm, SHN and just did a lot of testing to feel confident about what the bedrock stratigraphy was and, and what the ponds would be able to hold.
We had a technical advisory committee with you know, just incredible scientists, different agency personnel. And we basically, when we kind of pivoted and went to that two pond design, at that point, things moved pretty smoothly. Like that we were able to like accomplish all of our permitting. And because Wildlife Conservation Board had paid for the planning part of the grant, they were, you know, really familiar with the site, the project team, the long term commitment that the Marshall Ranch had made, that the ranch would be managed in perpetuity, you know, in alignment with the conservation easement. So we were able to secure funding pretty quickly at that point. And the project, the primary construction happened in 2023.
That was both ponds were built.
The there was some large wood installed to kind of like, you know, create deeper pools.
We treated all of the incised gullies at that Time, an infiltration gallery, a really kind of unique feature is that the water is released from the deepest point. So the is much colder even than the creek water and kind of slowly percolates down through the infiltration gallery, which was these treated incised gullies that were built up and it slowed the water and at sometimes even like peak air temperature and water temperature was effectively cooling the water by about 15 degrees, which is really significant because coho salmon have lower threshold, they need to, you know, they survive in cooler water.
So we're really thrilled. We've been doing snorkel surveys the last few years. And last year there were only, gosh, a handful of coho salmon. In this year there were hundreds. This was the first time throughout the summer, we did two separate snorkel surveys, one in July and one in September. And this was the first time in the last, like 10 or 12 years that flows stayed connected downstream of the Marshall Ranch.
You know, I, I don't know if that if all the way to the South Fork, but certainly the two, at least two miles downstream of the project. And I, you know, I would have to double check, but it's. It's possible that they. The flows stayed connected all the way to the South Fork.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: That's, it's very cool. So I think you said just to go back that you began kind of noodling on this 14 years ago. That that's when you began talking with Tasha.
That's pretty remarkable. And so, you know, big congratulations to get the project accomplished. And you know, you had concerned locals who you effectively dealt with that issue. And you've persevered and you've overcome.
So I'm very thrilled. And what a unique partnership too, that we have a ranching family, a historic ranching family, working together with enviros to do this big flow enhancement project.
[00:16:40] Speaker C: One thing I want to say is that, I mean, the Marshall ranch, the family members are descendants not just of ranchers, but also of Elizabeth maybe. Marshall is a indigenous person. She's has both, you know, tribal ancestry and kind of people that settled that land. And her, I think it was like her great great grandmother was Jenny Piner, who was a known local indigenous midwife. And I think a lot of Elizabeth's values are really instilled, you know, has. She's always had this kind of stewardship ethic. And she's also a person of faith. And she had a lot of faith in this project and our project team, even times when we did not.
And the property manager, David Sanchez, he works very closely with the Wailockie tribe and their non profit that, you know, focus is on conservation and environmental issues. And I think if it wasn't for them, this, you know, arrest restoration projects is like not for the faint of heart, like you know, the four. I remember an early conversation with Tasha that I was like, oh, how long is it? How many years were you monitoring before you kind of came up with this tanks and forbearance idea? And she's like, oh, 10, 14, 15 years. I was like, oh no, we don't have that kind of time. Well, you did, yeah, but it's like you don't know at the beginning, you know, I think it's really presumptuous, presumptuous for anyone in the restoration field to think that they know the answers at the beginning. Right. Like you. Yeah, it's a journey. And part of that journey is, you know, bringing in experts, getting community input, kind of seeing how other projects are responding. Not just, you know, like if they are actually producing water or slowing the flow of water, but also what the fish response is, how it might affect lamprey, what are, you know, some of the legacy impacts that we're trying to address. And you're constantly, you know, receiving this information, letting it percolate, like learning from other people. I can't express how generous so many colleagues were, particularly people involved with the Porter Creek flow enhancement project, because flow augmentation as a flow enhancement strategy is a very novel concept.
As far as I know, the Marshall Ranch is the only project in California that is 100% dedicated to flow enhancement to flow augmentation. The other really large project in California that has a flow augmentation component is the Porter Creek project that's on a Gallo vineyard property and that 90, 95% of that water is used for the vineyard. So I cannot emphasize enough what a unbelievably selfless thing this was for the Marshall Ranch because they, they basically gave up the most marketable part of their property, the part that could have become literally, you know, 200, you know, parcels they really didn't want, like to sell to potentially what would become a big cannabis situation, big grow. They wanted to preserve the property, but they also have the unique ability to be thinking not just about their current needs, but what the river is going to need in the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years. So I cannot express enough how much awe I have for landowners that are willing to kind of take a risk and in their situation with no real direct benefit to the ranch.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: So you were inspired by sanctuary forest you had a lot of help from the folks who did the Porter Creek project. I imagine that your project will be one that people will now look to as a source of inspiration for other, for other areas that, you know, we have an overburdened or overtaxed creek and we need to have better summer flows or we need to have some sort of flow enhancement. What are the lessons that you think that you've learned from this project that you can then kind of impart on other future projects?
[00:21:27] Speaker C: I think that's a really great question.
We, we are starting to not just spread the word, you know, locally. We've done a lot of different field tours, but kind of in larger scientific circles and also recognizing that the water savings has to be preserved. So the Marshall ranch project, the 10 million gallons, it's, you know, equivalent to 50.
Gosh, my math, I say I believe it's 50. 200,000 gallon projects, right?
So no, wait, I'm doing that backwards. 250. Well, you get, you get my point. Like a lot of, a lot of small projects that would have been, you know, scattered throughout the landscape and not necessarily integrated. So one thing we're really excited about and grateful that we were able to partner, like have this rolled out. Immediately after the Marshall Ranch construction is we've started a storage and forbearance program in Redwood Creek.
This was the first year of construction. Three projects have been built this summer. One, finally we have dry enough conditions that like a project tanks are being installed this week. And then the fifth project will happen probably in February if there's a good dry weather window. So I think one of the things that we're really looking at is that it takes a, you know, a really understanding the geology and land use, you know, factors and, you know, level of diversions in a watershed, but also looking at like what strategies and techniques are really suitable based on your landscape. So not every site is going to be conducive obviously to two 5 million gallon ponds.
But one of the things, for example, we're looking at higher up in the watershed is, you know, what are ways to kind of slow the release of water. Because it's a bit of a mystery why the upper part of the watershed that does not have many diversions become so dry. And part of it is just the legacy of industrial logging on the upper part of the watershed.
Areas that were directly applying what we've learned. We have two other really big projects, well, several other projects, but two that are particularly large in the South Fork Eel in the Ladenville area. We're really thrilled that we're going to be building 4 million gallons of storage at the iconic Black Oak Ranch this summer. If all, if all goes well, we're really like queuing up for 2025 construction season.
Almost a million gallons of that is going to be tied in with their existing potable water supply. And then there will be a 4 million gallon pond.
Wait, am I getting that right? Yeah. So It'll be total 5 million gallons. And then there's another project that we're working on at a really special property called Mendocino magic, which is 600 acres and that is actually the largest private reservoir on the north coast. And a really receptive landowner. And we are, gosh, we have like a three year planning grant that we're in year two of and that's going to entail like a lot of potential infantry infrastructure improvements because there's some failing infrastructure there. But the idea is that there would be a flow augmentation component there. And the water is so cold at the bottom of that reservoir. So there's also a forest health component and native revegetation. So one of the things, it's a pretty small community, those who are working in this flow enhancement kind of technical field. So people are really great about sharing their results and kind of learning from each other's successes and, you know, experiments.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: It must have been a trip for you too, to be an environmentalist whose, you know, work has been, you know, focus on water and trying to preserve it and slowing it, spreading it and sinking it, to then have this big project where you have big teasel machines carving a big pond. It must have felt somewhat.
[00:26:07] Speaker C: Oh, no. I mean, you are absolutely right. And it was, you know, I endured some personal attacks during, you know, the time where there were, you know, community members where I know lots of people probably felt I was misguided. And one of the things that is a really hard thing to accept in watershed restoration or kind of addressing ecological issues is, you know, sometimes solutions have to be proportionate to the scale of, you know, the impacts to a watershed. And there were definitely times during the construction season when I would, you know, go and, and check in. And nobody really ever wants to see how sausage is being made, right?
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:26:52] Speaker C: And I can't. I still am stunned how quickly like the native seeds took. How, I mean, both ponds last year were filled by, I think it was January 21st, and this year I think it was by January 8th, which was literally eight days after we were allowed to start diverting. So we do not have a Shortage of water. It's an issue of timing and you know that. Yeah, I will say this. I know we're getting up to 7:30, but early on there was like the first really big rain. There was a tiny bit. We covered the east pond with native gravel because we want to have the liners last as long as possible. Right. And we don't want them to deteriorate. And I remember I was with Dorothy Hoagland of the Wailocky tribe and, and David Sanchez, the property manager and I was like, oh no. When I saw a little bit of like sediment runoff into the, the pond and he's like, isn't your role trying to make the landowner feel I was being this squishy environmentalist? But the reality is that, you know, the mitigations and like the construction period was, gosh, over two, two and a half months for, you know, decades of flow enhancement that I think is really going to see the coho salmon population continue to be elevated in Redwood Creek. So I think, I think it was well worth it. And I think any of these projects are really about the long term operations. Like it's not just like you put in a structure and hope it performs. It's really about, you know, preserving that water and, and maintaining that water quality.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: So Dana, unfortunately we are getting towards the half hour mark, but I wanted to give you a quick maybe 30 seconds to a minute to plug the conference this year.
[00:28:53] Speaker C: Yes, yes. So we, as I mentioned at the earlier part of the show, SRF is primarily known for putting on a really large salmon restoration conference. We do it in different regions each year. And we're going to be on the central coast in Santa Cruz. We're actually doing several sessions on water, groundwater and you know, flow enhancement opportunities. And it's gosh, we, I think we have eight technical workshops, six field tours, 15 or 16 concurrent sessions, mentor, mentee program, a poster session, all these like evening film screenings, book signings. It's, it's kind of a big thing.
So if you want to learn more about the Marshall Ranch program or our annual conference, our website is calsalmon.org all.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Right, Dana Sulzman, thank you so much for joining the K Mud Environment Show. Have a wonderful night.
[00:29:52] Speaker C: Thank you. Thanks so much, Tom.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: All right, we are going to transition now to talk about biomass and I have my biomass Expert with me, Dr. Wendy Ring. Hey Wendy, how are you tonight?
[00:30:06] Speaker A: I'm doing all right.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: All right, so we had a good victory today and I believe you were in a dentist appointment during the victory. So I will Catch you up and catch up all the Cayman listeners at the same time. So we have a big project and we'll talk more about this project being proposed by a quasi governmental nonprofit called Golden State Natural Resources. And Golden State Natural Resources wants to build two pellet plants, biomass pellet plants, where they would take woody biomass from our forests, compress it using, you know, big things to compress and heat to make into pellets. These pellets would then be loaded on to trains to be brought to Stockton where it would then sit and then be loaded on to ship ships to sail across the Pacific to be burnt in power plants probably in Korea or Japan or maybe China.
And this has drawn scrutiny from over 100 environmental groups. Over 22,000 individuals have written comments on the draft environmental impact report.
And today the Board of Supervisors, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors approved a letter critical of the project that was penned by Supervisor Steve Madrone. So somewhat surprisingly, it came in a 50 vote. My guess is that Supervisors Bone and Bushnell knew that this letter would be sent because they can count the votes as well as anyone else can and so decided not to make a big deal out of it. But it is a very big deal. So now we have a local government on record expressing their concerns about greenhouse gas emissions associated with the project, about whether this is going to drive poor forest management on both private and public lands, and partnerships with a really controversial British based multinational biomass company called Drax. So I think that this was a good win. We're going to have to have a lot of good wins in order to win this campaign. But today was a good victory.
So. So, Wendy, Golden State Natural Resources. Did I do a good job explaining the basics? Did I miss anything here?
[00:32:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think the thing that a lot of people don't get is what's Humboldt County's involvement. And, and there is a, an organization of. I, I don't know what RCRC stands for. Tom, do you?
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Rural county representatives of California.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: Okay. And so it's all the rural counties and each of them sends a representative to this organization. And then Golden State Natural Resources is a product of that group.
And Rex Bone, one of our supervisors, represented Humboldt county on their board. And I don't know. This is a question I had. Does that mean that there's still a board seat for Humboldt county that's going to be filled by someone else or.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: So. Rex disclosed today that while he was on the board of Golden State Natural Resources this fall, there was controversy about his performance. I'm trying to Figure out what the best word here is. His, how he was discharging his duties in representing the county on Golden State Natural Resources. And the, the board didn't prohibit him from being part of it, but he got slapped on the wrist pretty well. And after that they actually removed him from the board of directors from Golden State Natural Resources. Now he's on some other sort of western states ranching Hoo Ha group. But that, that was also new information for us because you know, up till last week he was still listed as a director on Golden State Natural Resources.
Rex is still a the representative for Hubble county on rural county Representatives of California though, which is an organization that enviro should keep our eye on because Humboldt county as a fairly progressive rural county, we are unique, right? There are very few counties like us in the United States.
Very few counties like us in California. You know, our sister county, Mendocino county and maybe some counties around Lake Tahoe would, would probably be it in terms of, you know, reliably blue counties that also are predominantly rural and rural count rural county representatives of California. RCRC often has some kind of bad policy that they try to push. So we'll continue to keep an eye on Rex's performance there too. But, but we have a, a bit of a win there at least on Golden State gsnr, Golden State Natural Resources. Too many acronyms I'm afraid.
[00:35:33] Speaker A: So backing up a little bit too just so folks understand where we are in the process.
This letter was criticizing a draft environmental impact report which is sort of the first step along the way. There's a lot of other permits that have to be issued, but this is sort of, this is the requirement from CEQA where all of the potential environmental impacts to the climate, to the environment, to people, to environmental justice are weighed.
And then this is coming to the end of a comment period to try to comment on that draft report and try to make the final report fix the deficiencies that are in the draft. And this was an extremely deficient draft in terms of the way that it counted climate impacts, the arguments that it made about biomass being emitting less carbon than coal.
And also it was very revealing because it pretty much came out and said that while this was being promoted as forest health and wildfire prevention project, the majority of the feedstock that was going to be taken and made into pellets was not coming from fuel overloaded areas.
So it wasn't going to do anything in that regard to reduce wildfires.
And they did admit in this impact report that. And just like we're seeing now in Southern California, when you have severe wildfire weather, it does not matter what you do in terms of fuel reduction or number of firefighters or water pressure or anything because that trumps all that climate driven wildfire weather trumps all.
So that's one of the big things about this letter is basically comes out and says that the letter that came from the board of Supes states that very clearly.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: You.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: Often.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: Rely on that medical education inform your activism and part of your, part of your concerns about.
Do we have a caller? I see the.
[00:38:08] Speaker C: You were getting a little glitchy there.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: I'm not sure what happened.
[00:38:14] Speaker B: Okay, well, hopefully that's good now.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: I think.
[00:38:16] Speaker C: Yeah, it cleared up. You were just starting to get a little robot y for a moment.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: Oh, oh, oh, you were gargling.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: I was gargling.
Sorry everyone. It's good now, Wendy, you are a doctor.
So as I said before, the wood pellets would go through the port of Stockton. Stockton is a very industrial city.
The residents of Stockton suffer from a lot of pollution already. Can you talk about some of the concerns with Golden State natural resources and the impacts to the communities in Stockton and this kind of environmental justice concern here?
[00:38:59] Speaker A: I will. I want to broaden this though, because it's not just all about Stockton.
The community of concern is in south Stockton, which is right next to the port and ports are some of the largest sources of air pollution for communities around the country. Because there's a lot of diesel from trucks and trains coming in and from vessels going out.
And then this project would have wood pellets being stored in these giant silos while they were waiting to be shipped out.
And there is a huge risk from that as well of fire. And I was looking at a study that was done in 2018 looking at the 15 largest pellet plants, the newest and the largest pellet plants, the ones that were built to serve this export market. And they did a four year study and over that four year period, more than half of those 15 plants had fires in their storage silos. Big fires.
And that was their uncontrolled emissions. No pollution controls whatsoever. And those fires are really hard to put out. They can go on for days because if you try to put water on it, it just sort of forms a crust.
The fires start from deep in the pile.
And so if you put water on it, all you're doing is forming a crust that's making it harder to get down and extinguish the fire where it's burning.
So when you think about a community predominantly A community of color that already has all of these sources of air pollution.
And then you're adding on top of that, the emissions, all the transportation emissions of bringing this down there and then shipping it out and the risk of fire.
This is a significant increase in their burden of pollution. And South Stockton also, interestingly, already has a three year lower life expectancy than the rest of Stockton. So you might say Stockton is bad, but this is the worst of the worst in terms of what people who are living near the port are experiencing.
However, this is not something that is.
I mean, the air quality impacts are actually occurring all over the northern part of the state. In Lassen county, where one of the facilities would be, it would double the levels of nitrogen oxides and find particulates. And in Tuolumne county, it would triple them. And the risks of cancer would increase to 10 times higher than levels considered acceptable by, I'm sorry, not 10 times, four times high, four to six times higher than levels considered acceptable by the state of California. So that's right where the projects are. And then these pollutants don't stay put. They travel hundreds of miles, as you know, as we've all seen, with particulates and even with ozone. So 13 of the 14 air districts that are being involved in this project, either because the, because the forests would be providing feedstock, or because the pellets or the wood would be Transported through them, 13 of the 14 would have significant and unavoidable health effects from air pollution.
So bad air all around.
And then you've got the fact that this is going to be burned and you're putting large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, which is increasing warming and fanning the flames of wildfire. So this is just a terrible project.
It makes no sense.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: It is exacerbating the very thing that the project purportedly is trying to solve, right? So by worsening our climate crisis, by releasing tons of greenhouse gas emissions from foreign power plants, what we are doing is we are worsening the climate crisis, which is going to make our wildfires more difficult, larger, hotter.
So it's a lose, lose for us here in California. But if it's a lose for, you know, ordinary folks, for the climate, for our health, who might it be a win for? Wendy?
[00:43:39] Speaker A: Well, Drax.
And I mean, I think it's clearly out of scale for, I mean, I don't feel qualified as a physician and a public health professional and someone who lives in a place that isn't burning to, you know, to say whether or not we need to do fuel reduction anywhere in forests in other parts of the state. But this is, this size of this project and the way that they plan to get their materials is, is clearly out of proportion to any reasonable need to, to, to, to reduce fuels.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: And for us, so friend of the show, friend of the environment, Gary Graham Hughes, former executive director here at epic, had this fun factoid for us. So imagine the pulp plants of Humboldt Bay running at full bore, you know, back in the 90s or 80s or whenever, you know, things were really at their, their peak. This would be twice that. The, the amount of biomass required for this project would be twice of that that was being utilized here in Humboldt Bay. So an incredible amount that is going to be needing to come from our forests.
Wendy, something that you said earlier, which I want to emphasize is that while the project characterizes itself as driving interventions in our forest to make them healthier, the reality is, is that most of the forest biomass that will feed this project is not coming from those overstocked forests. 73% of it is going to come from everywhere else. Only 27, I believe, percent of the project is going to come from high density forests. The rest is going to come from, you know, healthy, normal forests. We have instances where Drax, one of the, the, the British biomass company that has a memorandum of understanding with the Golden State Natural Resources, has logged old growth forests in British Columbia to supply pellet mills.
We also know that the pellet mills are going to be able to accept trees 10 and a half feet in circumference at the biomass plants. In circumference, not in diameter at the biomass plants.
So these are, these are very large trees, potentially old growth trees that could be logged to, you know, kind of feed foreign power plants. And so I think it probably makes sense then why over 100 environmental groups, over 22,000 citizens have written their opposition to this plan. And Wendy, you actually did something cool the other day. Last Wednesday.
There was a day of action in Sacramento, a lobbying day in Sacramento that you attended. Can you tell us about the lobbying day and who you spoke to and kind of what the message is for the state of California?
[00:46:56] Speaker A: Well, it was a really interesting coalition of environmental groups and I was representing health end of things and our own coalition here in Humboldt county, the Humboldt Coalition for Clean Energy, which is a group of 16 local organizations who are, who believe that biomass does not have a place in the transition to clean energy. And there was also a large group, all women from Little Manila Rising, which is an organization that represents South Stockton.
And I was Only part of two of the meetings, one of them was, was with an AIDE To Senator McGuire and the other was with our Assembly, a staff person with our assembly representative Chris Rogers.
And, and it was clear that they had already gotten an earful from the, the pro pellet plant and timber industry contingent. And some of the things that they had been told were clearly wrong.
So you know, there was a lot of just trying to provide information and put this thing in context for them.
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[00:48:22] Speaker B: The Redwood region of Northern California to donate to support people powered
[email protected] so something that biomass proponents often say that drives me a little crazy is that biomass is carbon neutral. That, you know, these are coming from trees. Trees are part of the natural carbon cycle. They're taking up biomass. And if we utilize that biomass for energy, you know, it's this closed system and we're no worse off. Our climate is no worse off. Wendy, you've on the show already said that biomass can be worse for our climate than coal.
Can you talk through why biomass is a climate forcing pollutant?
[00:49:18] Speaker A: Well, I think time is the big issue here because you're talking about trees which grow rather slowly, and wood which burns really fast. And it's very clear that we're in the middle of a climate crisis right now. It's not something that's going to happen in the future. So we don't have that kind of time.
And the atmosphere doesn't care where the carbon comes from. As soon as it's emitted and it gets into the atmosphere and it start warming, that's when the impacts begin. And that's not so even if, you know, 40 years down the road, you've got re sequestration of that carbon that was released. That doesn't undo the warming and it doesn't undo all of the feedback loops that happen, such as increased wildfires and melting permafrost and release of methane and all of the other sort of cascading effects that scientists warn us or coming over the next decades.
So yeah, maybe theoretically in not the real world over a long period of time, you could make a carbon neutrality argument, but not in the situation that we're currently in. This is a crisis and we cannot have any more warming. I mean, we must avoid all of the carbon emissions that we possibly can, regardless of where they're coming from.
[00:50:47] Speaker B: So something else that is uniquely kind of problematic about this project is in contrast to something like the Scotia biomass plant. Scotia biomass plant largely burns mill waste coming from the Humboldt Sawmill There.
So you know, it doesn't have to travel a very long distance. It comes from a saw blade, gets put into a burner, pretty, pretty short travel distance here we have all of the carbon also associated with transporting it. So biomass is not a very energy dense material. It's not like gasoline, it's not like hydrogen. There's not a lot of by weight, a lot of energy contained in there. And so you're taking a relatively kind of energy poor material, you're taking it from the forest, you're bringing it to the biomass plant where you're using a lot of energy to turn it into pellets, you're chipping it, you're compressing it, you're heating it and then you make a pellet. Then you have to put that pellet onto a train. That train goes to Stockton. That pellet then gets on a boat, boat's burning barge oil and gets shipped across the Pacific. So in addition to kind of the inherent flaws in the biomass is carbon neutral argument here, we have to layer on, on top all of those other carbon costs in transport.
And so you know, if in the kind of like gradients of, of bad in biomass, this is probably the worst, you know, it is being burned far away from the original source. And that is a problem for us.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
[00:52:41] Speaker A: I'm sorry, go ahead, you go.
I mean, I think the other thing is that you have to look at is that there are, you know, we only get a certain.
What do I want to say? There's an opportunity cost here because if we invest money in biomass energy and in building biomass plants or buying, you know, signing contracts for biomass energy over the long term, then that's money that can't be used to support real clean energy.
So and, and once it's, once those things, those long term contracts are signed or that infrastructure is built that is there for a very long time. So we have to make the right decisions now because we really can get locked in.
[00:53:35] Speaker B: And that brings up kind of one of the, another one of the favorite things that biomass advocates will say is that biomass is a bridge fuel, that they also share our vision of a clean renewable energy future. And that this is one of the ways that we can move from fossil fuels to, towards that clean renewable energy future. And this is just kind of this transitory phase that they also anticipate that will eventually be phased out.
What's the problem with this kind of idea that biomass is a bridge to our clean renewable energy future?
[00:54:10] Speaker A: Well, remember they said that about fossil gas.
Look where we are, we're building more fossil gas plants.
I mean, I think this really just has a lot to do with, you know, a sense of urgency and the need to act quickly versus those who want to make as much money as they can before on, on biomass and fossil fuel before they can't do it anymore. We just don't really have that kind of time for that, you know, for that kind of greed.
[00:54:44] Speaker B: One thing that I'm concerned with here too is that we can have a situation where by commodifying the forest in this way, by creating these new markets, by creating a new biomass plant that has jobs and workers and part of the economy that we're going to need to sustain that.
And so this also kind of works against, it's just a bridge idea. When you're doing hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, you want to have some sort of long term idea that it's going to be sustained and that this can kind of lock us into ideas of the past, lock us into biomass in some sense. It can also drive poor forest management decisions because these biomass plants are going to need to produce biomass, you know, they're going to need to produce pellets. And so are we going to start logging our forest in order to burn them? I think that's a very strong case that that's what this project is proposing. We are, we are cutting down trees to burn in Asian power plants. And I think that that's a pretty raw deal for Californians. We get the air pollution, they get the energy.
[00:55:57] Speaker A: Well, they get the, not that many jobs too.
They burn it.
[00:56:00] Speaker B: Yeah, they also get the pollution.
[00:56:03] Speaker A: We're being fair. I mean the other thing though, just to, just to get us away a little bit temporarily away from the grim part of this, there's some really exciting developments for using wood fiber in climate beneficial ways.
And a lot of this has been happening in Europe on the commercial scale for decades, starting to come to the US and the one that gets me really excited is woodwall insulation, which is actual both the kind that you blow in and in panels. It's just as good as fiberglass insulation in terms of its insulating value. But it's not affected by moisture. It somehow is fireproof and there were sustainable type architects wanted it for a long time and the US couldn't afford to get it shipped here. And there is a factory making it now in Maine in a town that they're using mill waste. And it's in a town that used to have a paper mill that shut down and now they're re employing everybody and there's a big demand. It's being distribute, distributed all over the country this product. So that's one thing. And then there's some factories being developed that take wood and use it to make this kind of chemicals that we get now from petrochemicals because we're going to need alternative sources for that. And then there are all of these kind of composite wood, composite construction materials that are maybe 40, 50% wood fiber and then I mean like Trex is, is 40% wood and wood fiber and I think maybe 50% recycled plastic bags.
You know, I mean we don't love plastic but, but those bags are here and if we can save trees and, and make a product that way so there, there are a lot of alternatives that don't involve burning it up and displacing clean energy and polluting the air.
[00:58:13] Speaker B: Well, we are almost out of time. I want to let people know that if you are concerned about the Golden State Natural Resources Pellet Plant scheme we have an easy way for you to take action. You can go to wildcalifornia.org we have an action alert at the EPIC website where real easy, put your name in, put your email if you so desire and you can fire off an email and have it be part of the public record for the DEIR the draft environmental impact report. Hoping to have a really big turnout. A lot of people voicing their opposition. I think that that will be meaningful. In Sacramento.
Wendy, thank you so much for joining the Cayman Environment Show. I look forward to having you on in the future.
This has been a K mud podcast.
[00:59:05] Speaker C: To listen to other shows and more.
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