Redwood Reader

72, Why Planning isn’t Working
As I noted when I started this blog, this is an important time in Humboldt County as many twenty year and longer plans were nearing completion. This summer there have been articles about Andrea Tuttle, Robert Manne and the developers Kramer and Johnson. Calpine came and went. The Mattole has seen no letup in logging regardless of how intently impacted residents fight; indeed there seem to be more harvest plans afoot again. The governor is scrapping the state natural resource agencies in favor of a more streamlined approach. The federal government is also loosening the regulatory strings. Basically, the environmental defenders have run out of strength because they have no solutions and the economy keeps the pressure on full time. We have created a jobless society, especially if we discount public service employees. Fifty percent public employment is fairly common in rural areas but is not a healthy economy. It gives large private employers extra clout when there is only a couple of them. But employees are very expensive, so they must defend their investments.
Not that there isn’t work that needs doing. Streams to restore, fuel loads to manage, etc, etc. We have impacted our environment in many ways and are only tackling a small part of it. Like the developers say, the regulatory process is extremely arcane and unreliable. I have been trying to get funding to repair a damaged creek in Southern Humboldt since 1989. People who started in the eighties say the day of fixing your own stream were over way back when. This year is not the first time I was approved and then not approved. Each try takes several years of agencies, interest groups, landowner and neighborhood critiquing an attempt to fix something. By the time the project is finally underway we are in danger of having our site inventories become outdated. They are afraid we are going to damage a destroyed creek. At least these jobs are not exportable.
We currently live in a regulatory environment caused by reaction to mismanagement of natural processes we were negligent about. The developers complaint about air and water quality boards misses the point that people care about the environment, and that the underlying causes of these problems are not understood. The same can be said about logging near streams, farm practices, construction site rules and almost every other land management issue of the day. The day of knowledge of glomalin has come, however, and a new reckoning can begin to emerge.
Glomalin is a fungal produced soil glue discovered in 1996 by U.S.D.A. Sustainable Agriculture Systems scientists. Their work has gone on to field crops, where this knowledge has radically altered tillage practices in less than ten years. Glomalin is so big I have devoted my blog (time) to it. When I see a sedimented stream, I see glomalin destruction and sediment movement as a result. When I see dust, I know bare soil without fungal glue is nearby, probably the road I am driving on. When I add deranged hydrology and mass wasting as a result of roads and development, I know land management practices unraveled thousands of years of acclimatization and forest system development. Insect weakened forest fires show a double dose-too little water and the bugs thrive because the trees can’t make enough sap. That also lowers fuel moisture. So do openings in the forest. The forest cover will regrow but the water table and soil moisture structure is ignored. Fire threat will remain. When I see stubble in a winter farm field I know the man is onto something.
Humboldt County can emerge as a leader in developing an understanding of glomalin and how it impacts land use. Work site restrictions on sediment, dust and wastewater are much more stringent in the East, and technologies to deal with these now illegal activities fills catalogs and adds cost to how business is done. I see little from here. The technologies are simply to prevent knowable consequences caused by regular activities. The problem is that glomalin is so fundamental it is hard to believe it has been overlooked for so long. Same with logging. Understanding glomalin precludes clear cuts. There are consequences that can be predicted and quantified. Dust remains dust until it is absorbed into the ground as soil again or reaches mobile water as sediment. So no amount of buffer feet will keep dust cut loose on a hillside out of a creek. Roads are not seen as a perpetual problem. It can be delayed but the regulation is flawed, open to abuse, and in the end ineffectual anyway.
The Humboldt County Plan should develop the city areas until the research is in on how to get along with glomalin. Developed areas are what they are, and people need development. We don’t need mindless destruction of natural resources as a consequence of ignorance,