Community Coastal Column: 2021 Roundup
2021 by the Numbers
In 2021 Northcoast Environmental Center volunteers collected 13,814 pieces of trash across Humboldt County. That included 2,996 fireworks, 2,337 cigarette butts, and 1,225 plastic pieces. Cigarette butts are typically our top...
Solutions Summit | February 2022
CLEANING UP TRASH ISLANDS
In October 2021, 27-year-old inventor-entrepreneur Boyan Slat and his team at The Ocean Cleanup collected 9,000 kilograms (roughly 20,000 pounds) of plastic pollution from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on their...
Get on Board for the Climate: A Heretical Proposal
Civilization's only hope, so far, for getting out from under the deadly greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels is to build many wind and solar arrays. That won't mean an environmental Age of Aquarius....
DIY ZERO: Biochar: Good for the Garden, Good for the Earth
You’ve probably heard of biochar, and thought it sounded like a good thing. But you may not have realized how easy it is to convert burn piles to biochar production with a couple of...
Eye On Washington: Looking Back at 2021 with Hope
By many, if not most, measures of conservation progress, 2021 was a welcome change. After the last few years of an administration that took the nation on a reverse conservation course, it was inspiring...
The High (Energy) Cost of Farmed Fish
Nordic Aquafarms California, LLC is proposing to construct a land-based finfish recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility on the Samoa Peninsula. The facility, which would be built on the site of the decommissioned Freshwater Tissue...
No Coal Humboldt: Waiting & Watching
In early January the City of Eureka passed an ordinance prohibiting the storage and handling of coal on city-owned properties. Shortly before that, Senator Mike McGuire’s bill SB 307 unanimously passed in the Senate...
Sea Level Rise in Action: What Will Become of the 101 Corridor?
Humboldt is experiencing one of the fastest rates of sea level rise on the West Coast. This has major impacts for the Eureka-Arcata corridor of Highway 101, as it is a primary transportation hub...
In Memoriam: Edward Osborne (E.O.) Wilson, 1929 – 2021
Studying nature since the age of nine and becoming the curator of entomology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology might be accomplishment enough for most scientists. E.O. Wilson, however, continued his entire life...
Where Does Your Water Come From?
Where does your drinking water come from? If you live in Eureka, Arcata, McKinleyville, or Blue Lake, it comes from the sand beds underneath the Mad River, courtesy of the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water...
Elwha: A River Reborn and a Vision of What’s Possible
“And, always, there is the river,” begins author Lynda V. Mapes, staff reporter for the Seattle Times newspaper, in the 2013 publication of Elwha: A River Reborn. This natural history book, compiled in coffee...
NEC Library Unveiling
Those of you who have known the NEC for decades probably have a mental association between the NEC and the written word. Besides publishing EcoNews, we have also historically had a large lending library...
Now for Some Positive Developments
Colin Fiske, Executive Director
As an environmentalist “development” has long seemed like a dirty word to me. I spent a lot of my childhood in a suburban environment on the East Coast where development meant,...
California Native Plant Society | February 2022
Evening Programs
February 9, Wednesday. 7:30 p.m. “Silvery Phacelia, Rare Coastal Dune Beauty of Del Norte County.” Silvery Phacelia exists only in the dunes of Tolowa Dunes State Park and Lake Earl Wildlife Area near...
Urgent Call to Enforce Existing Plastic Laws
Maggie Gainer, Zero Waste Humboldt
Zero Waste Humboldt joined a growing coalition of organizations and businesses urging California Governor Newsom and State Attorney General Rob Bonta to enforce existing laws on labeling of plastic bags...
Post-Fire Logging and the Hazard Tree Loophole
Felice Pace, North Group Water Chair
I have sometimes wondered if the U.S. Forest Service has an evil genie locked in a windowless office in Washington, D.C., tasked with thinking up new reasons to log...
The North Coast Holds Together Through Redistricting
Tom Wheeler, EPIC Executive Director
Redistricting is complete. For more than six months, EPIC has asked for your help in testifying before the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, our non-partisan and citizen-led commission charged with redrawing...
King Tides Photos Help Envision the Future
Jen Kalt, Humboldt Baykeeper Director
The Humboldt Bay King Tides Photo Initiative began in 2011 as a community science project to document the highest tides of the year in areas vulnerable to rising sea level....
Radical Refuge: Earthseed Laboratories
On 40 acres up Highway 299, HSU associate professor of English Renée Byrd is working to create a radical space of healing that is grounded in abolition ecologies and BIPOC land justice. Named Earthseed...
Pueblos Indígenas Desaparecides y Asesinades
Chelsea Miraflor Trillo (Mindanaoan/Visayan)
traducido por Carlrey Arroyo
Los Pueblos Indígenas son parte integral de la Tierra porque somos de Ella. Es por eso que los Pueblos Indígenas Desaparecides y Asesinades (MMIP) es la violencia contra...
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples
Chelsea Miraflor Trillo (Mindanaoan/Visayan)
Indigenous Peoples are integral to Earth because we are of Her. That is why Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples (MMIP) is violence against Earth embodied. Multiple factors facilitate MMIP, however, my...
Letters to EcoNews: The Past Hasn’t Passed
Thank you EcoNews for featuring Samantha Gaiera's insightful and blistering critique of our nation's century-old compulsory schooling experiment. Its legacy of historic increases in college graduates and poverty was documented decades ago, (Schooling In...
Caroline Griffith: New Kid In Town
Elena Bilheimer, EcoNews Journalist
Caroline Griffith, NEC Executive Director
The following is an interview with the Northcoast Environmental Center's new Executive Director, Caroline Griffith.
How did you develop a passion for environmental justice issues?
I think it came...
News from the Center | February 2022
Larry Glass, NEC Board President
Caroline Griffith, NEC Executive Director
Nordic Aquafarms
The long-awaited draft EIR for the proposed fish farm on the Samoa Peninsula has finally been released. Our early takeaways from review of the document...