Thumbnail photo courtesy of Del Norte County. Video: Darcy Walton talks to Redwood Voice's Heather Polen about what residents of "The Swamps" go through. | Video by Heather Polen Like many Del Norters, Heather Polen found the footage Gasquet Mike posted to YouTube in early July hard to ignore. The videographer had flown his drones over the wetlands south and east of Crescent City, capturing a bird’s-eye view of derelict RVs and vehicles, tarps and piles of garbage. Though these videos are no longer available to the public on YouTube as of Monday, the still images were published in the Del Norte Triplicate and posted to the Triplicate website on July 18. Knowing there is more than one side to any story, Polen, executive director of KFUG Community Radio and Redwood Voice Community News, took her own video camera beyond the county-erected barriers. Darcy Walton, who works with Del Norte Mission Possible and helps those living in the area access services, gave Polen a tour of the marshy area many people call home. “That’s household [garbage], you can tell,” Walton told Polen in a July 12 video. “There’s laundry detergent, diapers — they just dump it. And who’s going to pick it up is the homeless out here.” This video and another, part of a new Redwood Voice project, “Voices From the Swamps,” are being released ahead of a public hearing on Tuesday focusing on whether or not the area should continue to be blocked to vehicles. District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short proposed blocking Union Street, Broad Street, National Boulevard and Madison Avenue in February 2024 to curtail illegal dumping and “serious continual criminal activity.” But the problem persists, he says in a report he will deliver to his colleagues on Tuesday. Short is proposing extending the road closure another 18 months. “During this period, the county’s emergency shelter is expected to be completed, providing housing for individuals currently residing illegally in the area,” Short states in his report. “All closures have been implemented except for the gate on Union Street, which will be installed once the shelter is operational.” Though he didn’t have the statistics readily available, Sheriff Garrett Scott told Redwood Voice on Monday that his deputies respond to a variety of calls in the area. They might range from a dispute over property to a medical call to reports of smoke seen in the area. Nathan, who has lived at the end of Waldo Street for about three years, picks up garbage, not only for the little rewards like gas vouchers Del Norte Mission Possible offers, but to keep his space clean. | Video by Heather Polen “There are quite a few people that were living back there,” he said, estimating that there are “at least 500 people in that area.” “And the idea is it’s really not designed for camping or people, and so that’s why I support blocking it. And the other problem is the environmental impact is just, in my opinion, probably going to be dramatic with cars that catch on fire and RVs that get towed back there in the middle of the night.” As part of his report to his colleagues, Short included letters of support from Scott and California Highway Patrol Lt. Cmdr. F.L. Castro. According to Short’s Board report, $50,000 in Measure R dollars were allocated to Code Enforcement in November 2022 for abating violations on South Bend Avenue, which is also in the Ruth Compound area along Elk Valley Road. Of that funding, $14,524 remains to facilitate installing the gate and continuing to abate illegal dumping in the closed areas. Short’s Board report cites California Vehicle Code 21101.4 and 21101.6 in support of his proposal to continue closing those roads. He said that blocking those roads off is permissible since they’re considered collector streets in the county’s general plan. If the closure is extended first responders and Pacific Power crew will be able to access Union Street from Iowa Street and Elk Valley Road. Pedestrian access will also be open, according to Short’s staff report. The current closure of Union and Broad streets, National Boulevard and Madison Avenue expires on Aug. 27. On Feb. 27, 2024, Short and three of his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors approved allocating $50,000 in Measure R tax dollars to purchase locked gates and K rail off those streets. At the time, supervisors Dean Wilson and Chris Howard said the barriers were a “first step” toward cleaning up that area and addressing the number of calls for service that originate from there. But District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey said the barriers were a bandaid and instead called for ensuring the sheriff could better attract and retain deputies. At that meeting on Feb. 27, 2024, Roy and George Ruth, whose family owns the Ruth Compound, raised concerns about being able to access their property, saying most of the people who live on Union Street are not on their property. “They’re on the road right-of-way,” Roy Ruth told supervisors in February 2024. “I don’t know what to do about that.” Scott told Redwood Voice that he’s concerned that shutting down access to the area will “push these folks to other areas.” He said they’re not able to move far and he’s worried they might impact residential areas such as the Bertsch Tract. When asked if he thought the debris in the area was household trash or evidence of encampments, Scott said it was difficult to tell. “There is a lot of household garbage that gets dumped back there, but it’s really hard to decipher whether that household garbage came from some residence two miles away or from some of the campsites a quarter mile away,” he said. When she took Polen beyond the barriers on July 12, however, Walton picked up an envelope among the debris from Del Norte Ambulance addressed to someone named Christine. Walton said she often finds pieces of mail and prescription pill bottles with addresses. She said she takes pictures and takes those to the police department. “Normally it’s an older person that hires somebody to clean up their garbage [or] yard, because they’re elders, and they pay them to take it to the dump,” Walton said. “Instead what they’re doing is they go and gamble it or whatever, they don’t end up taking it where it belongs.” Though Short’s staff report states that emergency personnel are able to access the area via the two gates, on July 12, Walton told Polen that they weren’t able to go beyond the barriers to help someone who was seriously injured. Walton said she saw it happen. “She got burnt and the ambulance couldn’t come in and we tried to pick her up over the barriers and I couldn’t pick her up high enough because she said it hurt,” Walton told Polen, adding that paramedics don’t come past the barriers. “The next day I got more people and we walked her out to my car and I got her to the hospital then. Twenty percent of her body was burnt and it said ‘life-threatening condition.’” The Del Norte County Board of Supervisors meets at 10 a.m. Tuesday in the Flynn Center, 981 H Street in Crescent City. The public hearing will be held at 10:30 a.m. For access to the agenda packet, click here. Board Report-24Download Attachments A-E-1Download