Thumbnail photo: Harbormaster Mike Rademaker and Harbor Commissioner Dan Schmidt attend a tour of the harbor's facilities in this January 2025 file photo. | Photo by Jessica Cejnar Andrews Among the items discussed at Wednesday’s Crescent City Harbor District meeting: Citizens Dock/Sea Wall projects: Construction on the seawall and Citizens Dock is expected to start May 1, 2026. But the federal government shutdown is delaying review of the environmental studies the Harbor District submitted to the U.S. Maritime Administration, Mike Bahr, CEO of Community System Solutions, told commissioners. The Harbor District is rebuilding Citizens Dock and an adjacent seawall with about $15 million in Port Infrastructure Development Program grant dollars. Bahr, who manages the district’s grant-funded projects, brought two contracts with MARAD to the Board of Commissioners for their review, but said because of the shutdown the administration’s attorneys are furloughed. “The NEPA document that was submitted and has been signed by the environmental staff at MARAD is with their attorneys, but there is nobody there to review it,” Bahr said. “We asked, ‘Well, once it ends, how long do you think that could take?’ They said, ‘Well, we’ve got projects under construction that need to have attorney review so this one hasn’t started yet, so we should be thinking two to three months that it could take them to get our documents reviewed.’” The attorneys need to review the projects’ environmental documents and issue an approval before the contract with MARAD can be signed by both parties, Bahr said. He said it could be up to 90 days before a finalized contract comes before Harbor commissioners for adoption. During Bahr’s grant update, Board Vice Chair John Evans asked about whether the projects would be able to provide “good paying jobs in our community.” Bahr said the grant narrative the Harbor District submitted to MARAD included language about “multiple union partnerships.” This includes the possibility of implementing a pre-apprentice program once the projects start. Hiring locally is also important, Bahr said, though the Harbor District Board would have to put that into a request for proposals when it comes time to find a general contractor. “You put into the RFP what you want that local number to be — 15% or 20% — and then see if they can meet it,” he said. “They may or may not be able to meet that. That’s the number we put into the grant narrative that we would like to see.” Harbor commissioners decided against sending a letter drafted by local community activist Alicia Williams to the Water Quality Control Board regarding water quality regulations and Easter lily bulbs. | Photo courtesy of the Water Quality Control Board Lily bulb letter: Harbor commissioners refused to adopt a letter that includes what its author Alicia Williams says are best practices for lessening the impact the Easter lily bulb industry has on the Smith River. Williams’ draft letter to the Northern Regional Water Quality Control Board came to the Harbor District about two weeks after a public meeting to discuss the state’s progress on its efforts to develop water quality regulations specifically for Easter lily bulb growers. On Wednesday, commissioners said pesticide use in the lily bulb industry doesn’t impact the harbor or its fishing fleet. Commissioner Rick Shepherd, a long-time commercial fisherman, said he had reviewed Williams’ letter and had done his own research. If the Harbor Board were to adopt a letter addressing the issue, he said he’d like it to include more “harbor-specific language” and delete language about agricultural best practices. “The lily bulb farmers have gone through a lot in the last 10 years and the amount of copper and chemicals is being reduced on a year-to-year basis,” Shepherd said. “The Smith River has shown a rebound of increased (salmon) runs and this year is no exception. I’ve talked with sport fishermen, they’ve been happy with sport fishing the last couple of years.” Williams said she’s part of a technical advisory group with Water Board staff and has been researching pesticide use in the Easter lily bulb industry and its impacts on salmonids and other aquatic life in the lower Smith River for about a year. In her proposed letter to Water Board Chairman Hector Bedolla, Williams cites National Marine Fisheries Service biologist Dan Free, Cal Poly Humboldt Chemistry Professor Matt Hurst, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife as well as Water Board staff. “All document the fact that copper applied annually for the past four or five decades by Easter lily growers is a contributing factor in the decline of our salmonid populations,” Williams stated. “The high copper use… combined with other pesticides deadly to aquatic life — such as phorate, metam sodium and ethoprop — are flushed from lily fields into waterways and mobilized in air and water during our powerful annual storm events.” Some of the “best management practices” mentioned in Williams’ letter, which cites the water board’s lily bulb water discharge permit, include crop rotation, consistent use of cover crops, eliminating synthetic fertilizer for organic byproducts, using biochar and implementing methods for capturing storm runoff. Williams told commissioners that they shouldn’t omit the references to best agricultural practices. “This is about water quality and the water quality with the estuary, that’s the nursery for a lot of fish species, it does impact our fishery and the economy,” she said. Water Quality Control Board staff have been working with a technical advisory group for about a year to develop the Lily Bulb Order, though efforts to address water quality date back to 2011. The lower Smith River plain produces about 80% of the world’s Easter lily bulbs. On Wednesday, Harbor Board President Gerhard Weber told Williams that the Harbor Board has no authority over water quality issues in the Smith River. He said he’s read about the elevated levels of copper in the water and about the efforts to address it. “If we are writing them a letter, it’s basically saying to those people that we recognize the situation and we want you to do a good job, and I don’t think it’s necessary,” he said. “If we are making a stand on water quality, we should make a stand on air quality, on our woods not being maintained and having fires going on because it affects us too. Everything affects us.” Hazard Mitigation Plan Contract: Commissioners approved a $17,055 contract with Irvine-based Risk Management Professionals to complete a local hazard mitigation plan for the Harbor District. The local hazard mitigation plan is the Harbor District’s plan in case of a disaster and includes the potential cost and who would be impacted, said Mike Bahr, CEO of Community System Solutions, which manages the port’s grant-funded projects. He noted that it’s a notation of “all the possible bad things that could happen in the harbor.” The contract will be paid for with the Harbor District’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program dollars, he said. Both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and California Office of Emergency Services require a plan in order to distribute relief funds after a disaster. According to Bahr, tsunamis are listed as a hazard in the plan, but predicting future tsunamis based on climate change was removed because “we were having to produce some type of science around that.” The Harbor District approved a request for proposals on Aug. 29 for a consultant to complete the hazard mitigation plan. According to Bahr, the plan should be finished by the end of the year. Fillet Station: Commissioners apologized to Andy Evanow, a commercial fisherman who said Harbor District maintenance staff accosted his son while he was using the fillet station. Evanow said his son was using the fillet station for his own personal use, which is allowed, but maintenance staff “read him the riot act.” “I understand that the cleaning station isn’t certified for commercial use, I get that,” Evanow said. “I would hope that until we do get a commercial cleaning-fish station in place, that they would be somewhat easy on people.” Commissioner Rick Shepherd, himself a commercial fisherman, apologized on behalf of his colleagues, saying that Harbor District staff shouldn’t have escalated the situation. The Harbor District had been working with the DNATL Community Food Council’s Josh Mims, who had obtained a SeaGrant to purchase a facility that would allow commercial fishermen to clean and process their catch and sell it to local consumers. However the California Coastal Commission kept rejecting Mims’ application for a permit, Bahr said. Mims left the project in February, about the time the Community Food Council became an organization independent of the Family Resource Center of the Redwoods, Bahr said. He said he would be meeting with the new person facilitating the project next week. “Our understanding is the permit has still not been issued. We’ll find out what the issue is there,” he said.