MINING MENDO'S DUNES
Originally Published August 3, 2006
Every time Charlie Baxman gets an order for sand, one of his yellow
bulldozers shovels it into the back of a gravel hauler. The sand is
hauled, dumped in ditches, and delivered for underslabs in construction
projects.
For
years, this has been Baxman Gravel's routine at mile marker 65.95
on Highway One - otherwise known as the southern tip of Ten Mile Dunes,
Mendocino County's only coastal dune system.
Since
the 1950s - when Baxman began paying the property's former owner,
Tillo Galliani, 15 cents a yard for his sand - the company has mined
thousands of cubic yards of sand each year. According to County records,
Baxman is allowed to mine up to 10,000 cubic yards annually, and its
yearly take averages around 7,500 cubic yards.
But
after 50 years of mining, the 6,000 year-old dunes are disappearing.
Residents
say that where there was once a brilliant, beige ridge, there are
ground-level lumps of sand. Where there was once a slope, there are
the twisted tracks of a bulldozer. And Charlie Baxman says that he
will mine the dunes, which make up one of 27 dune systems in California,
on his 39-acre parcel until they're gone.
HEY
WILLITS, YOU WANT THE AUDIO? TOO BAD ALL THERE IS IS 30 PAGES OF PURPLE
CHICKEN SCRATCH.
Originally Published July 5, 2006
As Willits contemplated the fate of its toxic legacy last month at
the June 12 City Council meeting, there was one unanswered question
that haunted the evening’s testimony.
What happened to the audio recordings of the state's health panel
meeting?
The question, of course, referred to an “expert panel”
convened on March 29 at UC San Francisco by the California Department
of Health Services (CDHS). The panel was to discuss the future of
Willits—and what the City should do about health problems associated
with those nagging heavy metals that Remco, the chrome plating plant
now owned by PepsiAmerica, dumped into the City’s air and soil
for years. Doctors, community members and lawyers attended the meeting.
They talked for over eight hours.
On June 12, Willits City Council listened to City consultants who
attended that March meeting and, based largely on their testimony,
decided to take a $4 million deal that, if approved by Federal Judge
Susan Ilston, would absolve Pepsi from paying future damages for Remco’s
poisonous mess. The consultants said that the panel decided that medical
monitoring would be useless. The City agreed. That was that.
Unfortunately, the public was also told the audio from that March
meeting had been destroyed.
THE WHITE RANCH BUSINESS
Originally Published June 28, 2006
By Tim Stelloh & Freda Moon
Angela and Andy Harney escaped South Lake Tahoe 12 years ago. The
bumper to bumper traffic, the seasonal ski bunnies, "the rat
race," as Angela puts it, had become too much for the couple.
They wanted to raise their two daughters in a "rural lifestyle."
So they came to the Mendocino Coast, just north of Fort Bragg, and
bought a humble, two-bedroom home on Airport Road.
Surrounded by wild roses and jasmine, the Harney's house sits on a
one-acre lot in a sparse development of single-family homes. A white,
24-year-old Appaloosa horse chews grass in the family's front yard
and a massive cypress tree towers over the back.
Directly across the narrow two lanes of Airport Road is The White
Ranch-as it's been known since Gertrude and Val White bought it in
1936-an almost entirely undeveloped, 69-acre swath of marshes and
gold grassland. Three prehistoric Pomo sites dot the property, as
do black-tailed deer, red-legged frogs-a threatened, California native-and
swamp harebell, a rare, lavender, chalice-like flower.
But all that might change.
THE WHITE
RANCH BUSINESS, PART 2: RESIDENTS SAY "KEEP IT RURAL"
Originally Published July 26, 2006
By
Tim Stelloh and Freda Moon
It was only 75 minutes into last Tuesday’s three-hour White
Ranch community meeting when Jere Melo, the Fort Bragg City Councilman,
fled in a huff.
More than a dozen residents had already all but condemned the proposed
development at the White Ranch Property – which would plop 288
homes onto 69 acres of open rangeland at Airport Road and Highway
One, just north of Fort Bragg – and the mood in Dana Grey Elementary’s
gym bristled with tension.
Not one of the 70 or so people who attended the meeting openly supported
the project. And by the end of the evening the verdict was clear:
In a table-by-table survey, those at the meeting said that they wanted
the land to remain in agricultural use or to be rezoned to 5-acre
minimum lots. This would effectively squash the development proposal
that was submitted by Sacramento developer John Reynen.
TO CATCH A POACHER
Originally Published July 12, 2006
Ask a recreational abalone hunter on the North Coast about poaching,
and the reply is invariably tinged with scorn or frustration. Their
grumblings spill into Fort Bragg's Subsurface Dive Shop, light up
websites and offer clues to the Department of Fish and Game's (DFG)
"CalTIP" hotline.
Every once in a while, DFG gets a good tip. And every once in a while,
State investigators get their collar.
That's what happened late last month, when California Attorney General
Bill Lockyer announced the round up of 20 ab and sturgeon poachers
from Fort Bragg, San Francisco, Sacramento and points east. The operation
was christened "Operation Dos Robles" after two of Fort
Bragg's finest: Lance and Leroy Robles. According to Lockyer's press
release, the Robles boys hunted in a restricted zone and sold hundreds
of mollusks, which can fetch $50 a piece on the black market, to two
San Francisco restaurants-Bob's Sushi and China House.
While "Operation Dos Robles" has been a much-applauded endeavor,
it's hardly the norm on the North Coast, where abalone poachers are
as common as pot growers. In fact, most of the poachers snagged by
Fish and Game are nothing like the Robles boys. They're not from the
North Coast, nor are they exiled commercial divers, as Lance Robles
is. Most don't sell to restaurants either. But they face the same
severe fishing restrictions.
FEAR & LOATHING AT THE MENDO HISTORICAL REVIEW BOARD
Originally Published June 7, 2006
Sitting at a large table at the head of the back room at the Mendocino
Community Center on Monday night, Clinton Smith was furious.
Smith,
who looks like a scrawny Kenny Rogers (the Texan, not the infamous
Mendo Republican) yanked off a pair of gold bifocals, picked up a
sheet of paper and looked sternly at the 20-plus audience members
staring back at him.
"I
don't want to preach, and I don't have time to read both sides of
this essay, but I'd like to pass out copies and read a paragraph if
you'd indulge me," he said, holding up the sheet of paper. His
tone was fatherly, yet he seemed like he might detonate at any minute.
The essay, titled "The Quality of Mendocino City," was written
by William Penn Mott Jr., the former Director of Parks and Recreation
in California, in 1974, and is ostensibly a call to arms for the Mendocino
Historical Review Board. Clinton, who's been a Board member for nine
months, read a portion of the essay aloud.
"Carefully
defined parking areas, parking meters, sophisticated street lighting,
traffic signals, etc., must be avoided," the essay reads. "Once
this encroachment into the scene takes place, the informal rural charm
of the area is destroyed."
