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Del Norte picks tree lighter
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SERVING DEL NORTE COUNTY SINCE 1879 www.triplicate.com
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2021
Crescent City, CA
Absences mount on school sit out day By Diana Bosetti The Triplicate
On Monday, Oct. 18, Del Norte County families opposed to Governor Newsom’s COVID vaccine mandate for kids under the age of 12 joined a grass-roots movement by not sending their kids to school. In nearby schools across the border and into Oregon, how-
ever, where COVID vaccine mandates don’t exist, attendance was predictably normal. “We had 348 more students absent yesterday compared to the week prior,” said Tom Kissinger, assistant superintendent of educational services for the Del Norte Unified School District. All told, 748 of the roughly 3,500 students in the Del Norte County Unified School District
didn’t make it to their classroom, equating to about 21.5% of the district’s student population. “It’s difficult to definitively tell why students were absent, but it appears the numbers are significant enough to indicate that the sit out had some effect,” Kissinger said. A week prior to the protest, posters and messages stating that kids are “not an experiment,”
along with rallying cries to join the sit out, started circulating on social media. Richard Nehmer, a Del Norte County resident with children under the age of 12, told the Triplicate last Friday that his family would not be sending their kids to school. “We are absolutely against the mandate for kids under 12,” said Nehmer.
Nehmer added that he is vaccinated against COVID but is against mandating the vaccine for children under the age of 12 because other vaccines are already required, and this one should be up to families to decide. “Kids are already getting Hep A and Hep B vaccines,” Nehmer said. “This one should be up to us.”
Please see SIT OUT, Page A10
Commissioners approve project to start dredging harbor By Diana Bosetti The Triplicate
Contributed photos
Sea otters have been a threatened species for many years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is doing a feasibility study to determine whether sea otters can be reintroduced along the Pacific Coast.
Sea otters could be returning to Pacific Coast By DAVID RUPKALVIS The Triplicate
Sea otters could be coming back to the Oregon and California coasts. During a meeting of Coos County, Oregon commissioners, Michele Zwartjes, a field office supervisor with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the service has been conducting a feasibility study to consider introducing sea otters to the Pacific Coast. “Oregon is the only state along
the Pacific Coast that does not have a sea otter population anymore,” Zwartjes said. “They were eliminated in the early 1900s due to hunting for the fur trade.” Zwartjes said the Fish and Wildlife Service was tasked by Congress to do the feasibility study. The study is to look at the cost, impact and ability to introduce sea otters along the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington. Congress gave the service through the end of 2021 to produce the study.
“Our final report is going to emphasize that more study is needed,” Zwartjes said. Zwartjes said hunting in the early 1900s eliminated sea otters along the Pacific Coast, but there are small groups thanks to an effort to reintroduce the otter in the 1960s. “Much of the population in existence today is a result of reintroductions that occurred in the 1960s, including one in Southern Oregon along Port Orford,” she said. “It lasted about 10 years,
and the even had pups. Some believe they migrated north and joined the California group.” Zwartjes said in the last decade there have been 24 documents sightings of sea otters in Oregon, most solo males moving south from Washington. There is a strong population of river otters in Oregon, and they can sometimes be seen resting on the beach. As part of the study, the Fish and Wildlife Service has Please see SEA OTTERS, Page A10
Contributed photos
Crescent City Police Chief Richard Griffin, Mayor Jason Greenough and newly-promoted Lieutenant Justin Gill.
Police Department continues to make improvements By Diana Bosetti The Triplicate
This week marks two years since Richard Griffin stepped up from within the ranks of the Crescent City Police Department to become its police chief. Also this week, Justin Gill was promoted from sergeant to lieutenant - the latter advancement reflecting Griffin’s intention to create a greater level of administrative and leadership structure
within the department. “I’ve got 13 years left to do this job,” said Griffin during a sit down interview last month. “Having a good number two person that I can say ‘Hey, I’m going to take a week off here and it’s in your hands’ - that is something that is gonna be needed for longevity and structure.” According to Griffin, four people turned in applications for the lieutenant position and the
candidates were vetted by him and City Manager Eric Wier. The new role will focus primarily on administrative and police department leadership. “We chose him (Gill) because of his work ethic and ability to grasp administrative duties,” said Griffin. The promotion also signifies a step forward in meeting the objectives of Measure S, a 1% transaction and use tax sales increase that was passed by voters
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in November and went into effect six months ago. In May, Griffin informed the city council that the $1,646,885 of Measure S funds would allow the police department to meet the following needs: Staffing additional police officers, including a detective and a lieutenant, as well as another K-9 officer. Please see POLICE, Page A11
On Tuesday, Oct. 19, the Crescent City Board of Harbor Commissioners unanimously voted to pay $14,000 to Portland-based GeoEngineers to provide dredge spoils management services to the port - a contract that commissioners said was a step in the right direction, but which drew criticism from others as still being too slow to fix the overall sediment problem in the harbor. “You need to face realities,” said someone from an audience chair. “You’re not serving the needs of your tenants.” The comment came after a half dozen other people left the meeting angry, including one individual who also didn’t walk up to the podium, but shouted out from his chair that statements from the commission to dredge the harbor using divers to “buy time” before fixing the sediment-clogged waterway is not going to help his business. “We are to the point where we are almost virtually out of business,” he said, prior to getting up from his seat and slamming the meeting room door behind him. Brian Stone, president of the Harbor Commission, responded by saying “Well, we moved something forward today, we actually moved to get the testing done, which is one step... step by step, and that’s the way the government is,” he said. According to GeoEngineers project proposal, the firm will do the following: PROJECT UNDERSTANDING We understand that approximately 60,000 cubic yards of sediment dredged from the Crescent City Harbor have been placed in an upland dredged material disposal site owned and operated by the Crescent City Harbor District. Sediment analytical data collected at the time of dredging indicated that some sediment contained concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that exceeded Water Board residential and industrial screening levels. Other hazardous substances were also detected in sediment. In 2013, the Water Board informed the Crescent City Harbor District that the dredge spoils constituted solid waste and those materials could not be re-used without a permit issued by the Water Board. The Crescent City Harbor District needs additional storage capacity at the upland dredged Please see DREDGING, Page A10
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