Eel River blues, Part I
“The Eel River is a sewer”
Redway resident John Casali appealed for help at Friday’s Code Enforcement Task Force meeting to ensure codes are enforced when it comes to garbage along the Eel River.
Casali has cleaned up literally tons of garbage from the banks of the Eel, including enough human feces to “fill a 33-gallon container.” The garbage is blamed on illegal dumping and homeless camps.
“We need your help to enforce these laws because this is not right,” Casali said. The trash he and others cleared out “isn’t regular garbage,” he said, and compared it to past encampments at the South Spit.
“The criteria for losing your tent is feces in your sleeping bag, feces in your tent and feces around your tent — you have no more tent,” he said. “And we’re getting pounded for taking their tents, too, but were actually doing them a favor because there’s human feces all over the place [going] directly into the river. Sure I’m passionate and I get crazy, but I’m sick of it. I’m just plain ass sick of this whole thing.”
[Image source.]
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The Humboldt Herald 
H, given the description of the severity of the situation, I was kind of expecting your selected image for the story would have been a screen shot from 2 Girls, 1 Cup.
Who’s the stoolie?
Too bad you didn’t give the context. Estelle Fennell came with Casali (why didn’t Daniel Mintz mention that?) and vividly described how she started covering the story for KMUD, then went with Casali and sohum Chamber of Commerce head Syd Lehman to none other than Code Enforcement Unit’s own John Desadier, who said it wasn’t up to code enforcement to take on the task. He had to have a referral from a county department. So they went to Brian Cox of Environmental Health who said that maybe they could apply to the state for a clean up grant but the health department couldn’t help. This is the same Brian Cox who testified to the Task Force that he worried about kitchen sink greywater running into blackberries at Yee Haw–Cox called it “open sewage”. Desadier organized a violent raid on babies with moms who wash dishes but couldn’t help with a major pollution and dumping problem with serious health implications. Desadier could spend hours searching out unpermitted buildings that might have grows in them, but heaven forbid he should actually do Code Enforcement rather than drug enforcement work.
Casali, Fennel and Lehman had already been to Roger Rodoni, who said it was So Hum’s own damn fault for encouraging homelessness and welcoming transients.
Estelle, Syd and John have tried for months –for more than a year now–to get county action. Nothing. So tell me why does Code Enforcement exist?
Trouble was, most of the land was county or state. There was no one for the CEU or Health to fine. They are only going to clean up when they can squeeze money out of someone.
The county totally failed.
The south jetty was an abomination. Children living in unsanitary conditions, sometimes wearing the same clothes everyday, and when they did go to school, the school breakfast and lunch sometimes were their only meals. Violence and feared ruled; sometimes resulting in homicide. It was an eyesore and not a place one would want to bring their kids. The volunteer fire department was working overtime. Needles, garbage, broken glass could be found on the beach. It took a concerted effort to clean it up. For a time, the gate to the spit was kept locked. Now the south spit is a welcoming place to visit.
John Casali needs help. I think he has done an outstanding job. If people need a place to camp, we have a number of county, state and national parks, and also private campgrounds with proper facilities for human waste.
Please provide some information for people wishing to help John.
People have to live!
Guess they all moved to Southern Humboldt, you think?
Heidi wrote, “…sometimes resulting in homicide.”.
If you’re referring to the murder of Amber Slaughter, keep in mind the guys that killed her weren’t transients and didn’t have anything to do with the south spit other than choosing it as the place to drive Amber to to kill her.
Thanks for your comments, Heidi. As the links show, the South Spit situation was not black and white. The greatest injustice I recall from those years was that the county piled its problem people for years out of sight, out of mind–while forcing the Loleta Volunteer Fire Department to provide social services that the county didn’t bother with. After the Spit was cleansed, the county started referring hard-up people to Yee Haw–then raided and shut it down too. There’s an underlying problem here.
And Heraldo, thank you for covering these particulars exposed by the Code Enforcement hearings. Much more information’s now coming out, and I’m grateful to all the media people getting focused on this wild web of a story.
Here’s John Casali’s website: http://www.eelrivercleanup.org/ He’s walking his talk, like the citizen Task Force members are. They can’t do it alone, but will succeed with our support. Yee Haw shows that plain as day, and thank heaven!
Context is seriously needed here. Some people want to spin the Task Force as trying to prevent the Code Enforcement Unit from doing its job. Actually, what Casali was asking the Task Force to do was to demand that the CEU do its job.
Estelle Fennell testified with John Casali (why have you and Daniel Mintz left that fact out?) at last Friday’s hearing. Fennell told quite a vivid story of first covering the Eel River clean up efforts for KMUD; and joining Syd Lehman of the Garberville Chamber of Commerce and Casali as a concerned citizen to ask the County for help.
Fennell says they went to none other than the CEU’s own John Desadier, who said that the CEU could do nothing unless the case was referred to them by a county department. So they went to Brian Cox, director of Environmental Health, who advised them that maybe they could get a grant from the state to do clean up, but the Health department didn’t have any authority to take on the task. This is the same Brian Cox who last month at the Task Force hearings told of the ‘open sewage” flowing at Yee Haw—a kitchen sink running into a blackberry patch. The ‘open sewage’ caused by babies with moms who wash dishes led to an armed raid by Desadier, Conner and members of the sheriff’s drug unit.
But what about the filth, feces, needles and piles of trash on the South Fork? Well, according to Roger Rodoni, whom Casali and Fennell also went to for help, it was all SoHum’s fault for embracing transients and encouraging their lifestyle. (Read Bauss’s articles.) According to Desadier Code Enforcement couldn’t get involved because they needed a case referral and Cox could come up with no good reason why Health couldn’t help.
There is a good reason, which Fennell and Casali pointed out—there’s no money in it for the County. The clean-ups the Code enforcers force all involve fining landowners and placing liens on their property. (In the case of Yee Haw it looked like they were trying to outright evict Garth from his land by forcing him into bankruptcy). The South Fork land affected is mostly county and state land. There is no money to squeeze out of landowners, so there is no motive for the county to go to work on cleaning it up.
So what good does the CEU do anyway? Why was John Desadier researching unpermitted buildings and arranging pretext warrants for drug enforcement instead of addressing the health and safety issues that are Code Enforcement’s job? Why do we even had a CEU if it can only work by squeezing fines out of landowners and not address larger health issues?
I’m very happy Estelle Fennell is coming to the Task Force meetings. She’s taking the issue seriously. Mark Lovelace has come to several meetings. Clif popped in once, but has never come again. Apparently he doesn’t give a feces.
eelrivercleanup.org has stories, pictures and contact information. The website has an odd series of blank buttons under the top illustration—run your cursor over them to reveal draw down menus. Many of the news stories are from Cristina Bauss and the Independent. Donate to cleanup efforts through the Eel River Cleanup Fund, account #13129 at the Community Credit Union in Garberville.
Context is seriously needed here. Some people want to spin the Task Force as trying to prevent the Code Enforcement Unit from doing its job. Actually, what Casali was asking the Task Force to do was to demand that the CEU do its job.
Estelle Fennell testified with John Casali (why have you and Daniel Mintz left that fact out?) at last Friday’s hearing. Fennell told quite a vivid story of first covering the Eel River clean up efforts for KMUD; and joining Syd Lehman of the Garberville Chamber of Commerce and Casali as a concerned citizen to ask the County for help.
Fennell says they went to none other than the CEU’s own John Desadier, who said that the CEU could do nothing unless the case was referred to them by a county department. So they went to Brian Cox, director of Environmental Health, who advised them that maybe they could get a grant from the state to do clean up, but the Health department didn’t have any authority to take on the task. This is the same Brian Cox who last month at the Task Force hearings told of the ‘open sewage” flowing at Yee Haw—a kitchen sink running into a blackberry patch. The ‘open sewage’ caused by babies with moms who wash dishes led to an armed raid by Desadier, Conner and members of the sheriff’s drug unit.
But what about the filth, feces, needles and piles of trash on the South Fork? Well, according to Roger Rodoni, whom Casali and Fennell also went to for help, it was all SoHum’s fault for embracing transients and encouraging their lifestyle. (Read Bauss’s articles.) According to Desadier, Code Enforcement couldn’t get involved because they needed a case referral and Cox could come up with no good reason why Health couldn’t help.
There is a good reason, which Fennell and Casali pointed out—there’s no money in it for the County. The clean-ups the Code enforcers force all involve fining landowners and placing liens on their property. (In the case of Yee Haw it looked like they were trying to outright evict Garth from his land by forcing him into bankruptcy). The South Fork land affected is mostly county and state land. There is no money to squeeze out of landowners, so there is no motive for the county to go to work on cleaning it up.
So what good does the CEU do anyway? Why was John Desadier researching unpermitted buildings and arranging pretext warrants for drug enforcement instead of addressing the health and safety issues that are Code Enforcement’s job? Why do we even had a CEU if it can only work by squeezing fines out of landowners and not address larger health issues?
I’m very happy Estelle Fennell is coming to the Task Force meetings. She’s taking the issue seriously. Mark Lovelace has come to several meetings. Clif popped in once, but has never come again. Apparently he doesn’t give a feces.
Fred, there was at least one other death, involving 3 men, probably on meth, as well as the tragic death of Amber.
“…as well as the tragic death of Amber.”
Which, again, had nothing to do with the transients living at the South Spit.
well put, 9:05!
Forgive me for not directly addressing the degradation of the river that in my youth taught me the love of nature. Others here, who live closer to her, know more about what has happened to her and what must be done to restore her.
I just want to remark how strange it is that forty years after the “hippies” moved to Southern Humboldt, cursing the old “redneck”ways of dealing with the land and the rivers and promising a new way of living “in harmony” with the land, my beloved Eel River has been turned into an open sewer.
I can’t begin to tell you how that makes me feel.
It is SoHum’s fault to a certain extent. Your choices as to people you draw into your community do effect you. Happens everywhere. Drug tolerance brings people who do drugs. Marijuana growing tolerance brings every wahoo in the nation to grow big dope crops. Opening your community to mass amounts of homeless from out of the community drains social services and impacts our environment. That is just how it is.
But as for your criticism of the current CEU, much of what you say is very correct. The county turns its back on this problem because the only way to stop it is to patrol, close the area to these people etc.. That is not cheap nor is it acceptable to many members of the community that say it hurts the homeless. You have to choose folks. Protecting the environment is my choice. You can be sympathetic to the homeless without drawing everyone from every state in the nation to land in Humboldt.
But, even if you light a spark under the CEU’s ass, what are they going to do without the community’s support?
These are real problems which require real discussions and real solutions…not rhetoric.
Transients semi-permanently camped on the South Spit were responsible for many cases of child sexual abuse which were treated as confidential and never reported in the press. Those poor powerless dirty kids were prey for drug-soaked staggering toothless homeless lechers. What ever became of those people, once their self-made, local government-sanctioned hell-on-earth was finally closed down? Most important, what happened to the innocent victims of those miserable adults? What happened to those poor, sad, uneducated, neglected, (almost feral) kids?
here’s 10:43’s version of logic:
“a” happened – hippies started to move to the county about 40 years ago.
then “b” happened – too many homeless folks are crapping by the river 40 years later.
therefore “a” must have CAUSED “b.”
wow, with clear thinking like that 10:43 should have all of our problems solved in short order.
You, thorn, simple-mindedly accused me of oversimplification.
Crap floats in the Eel. This river’s banks are populated by environmentalists!
Who is tolerating this intolerable state of affairs? How did the ruling clique or majority bear it for even one day in even one place? Who let this happen to the Eel? Will someone stand up and take responsibiility?
Don’t all speak up at once!
10:35, back when the south jetty was a in a blight condition, the area attracted miscreants. It really taxed the VOLUNTEER Loleta Department. Prior to the invasion of the south jetty by transients and miscreants, the south jetty was a great place to go for outdoor recreation. The Kinetic Sculpture Race actually use to cross the bay from Fields Landing over to the south jetty and the sculptures would make the long trek down the beach to the mouth of the Eel River to Crab Park.
People who had to flee the Dustbowl in the 1930’s showed more stewardship for the Eel River when they arrived here as domestic refugees than the privileged children of the 1960’s have done. Why is that? What is wrong with us?
Despite all your hyperventilaton, 10:50, you’ve provided no evidence that more cases of child sexual abuse or neglect happened at the South Spit than in our society at large. Most child abusers are family members and other folks known to then victim, not strangers, toothless or otherwise.
As far as where the kids from the South Spit went after that encampment was broken up, some of them ended up homeless on the streets of Eureka and Arcata, where they are extremely vulnerable to violent crime, as are all homeless folks. And some of the kids and their families went into public housing projects, where those kids have plenty of opportunities to become victims of violent crime, or into the “care” of the state foster care system, which is itself notorious for warehousing and neglecting children.
Did breaking up the South Spit encampment improve life for those kids, or make them any safer? I doubt it.
Ignoring the homeless won’t make them go away. I feel for them. There are many of us that are just 1 or 2 paychecks away from joining their ranks. Patti of Patti’swagons.org has been given a hard time lately for feeding the homeless in Arcata. The old adage that if you feed them, they will multiply and won’t go away. People are hungry and not all of them choose to be homeless. To try to stop people from giving them food is cruel. If we allowed homeless camps, we could regulate where much of the feces gets dumped. It’s just that they are like Nuke plants or oil refineries, no one wants them near where they live. I don’t know what the answer is but much smaller and cheaper dwellings need to be permitted in order to start to deal with this problem. Call it transitional housing that people aren’t supposed to live in forever. You know, like the argument for a low minimum wage, they say “it’s not meant to live on, it’s for college students and such”. It would be better than feces in the river.
11:18. I saw those kids and that camp. You couldn’t do much worse by a child. Kids are all innocent. If their parents don’t protect them, someone else should try. Kudos to all who helped clean up the spit.
i just threw up. I was in that river last summer. Way to go humboldt!!! retch…retch…..hurl…hurl
11:22, you’re missing then point: they “cleaned up” the camp, but just forcing the homeless families to move to a different squatters camp somewhere else doesn’t help the kids any. It just means that you see the “cleaned up” spot and don’t see then kids there. Then, apparently, you switched off your brain and thought no more about it. Problem “solved,” right.
Actually, it will, if we’re discussing homeless tourists who stay until the rainy season hits. The proof is on the Arcata Plaza. Gone are the days of 50, count ’em, 50 transients milling around on the Plaza every day. It took very little to get them to move on… we just stopped feeding their lifestyle.
well said, tom.
I’m a strong supporter of what John is doing, but his river is what it is. It is an ‘open sewer’ because the economic artery of the North Coast rumbles through its valley from headwaters to mouth, enabling growing communities vastly larger than any hamlets in valleys on either side. That’s where the vanished water goes, not mostly to asshole hippies. It goes to people who live where they can drive easily everywhere else.
But water doesn’t just vanish from the South Fork. There’s an easy measure for river sickness which the whole North Coast is becoming familiar with. Everyone who lives along and loves the South Fork of the Eel has known for years that its savaged banks (from the ’64 flood) and diverted cricks (by homesteaders, dope growers, retired yuppies, towns, community services districts, state recreation areas) result in gobs of somewhat poisonous green algae that floats in the diminished currents. The algae used to appear in August. Now it starts earlier and earlier. It is the canary singing that our river’s running hot and dry.
But listen up: the algae’s appeared on the Klamath the last two years. You find it on the Main Stem of the Eel now. It’s appearing on the Mattole which didn’t have it before. The Trinity’s got it too. Blame climate change, blame blame blame headwaters diversions of the Eel and Trinity and Klamath to agriculture and transport south, blame cities, blame lifestyles of the rich and famous imposing upon beautiful off-grid hillsides. Blame hippies? Oh dry up.
There is a free hot lunch served every day, 365 days a year, at St. Vincent’s de Paul dining facility in Eureka.
There are places to camp: county, state and national parks, and private campgrounds. There are rules and fees, but at least there are bathroom facilities.
There are outreach groups in Eureka and shelters.
One time I was volunteering at the Loleta elementary school during the period of time when there were the encampments on the jetty. There was a little girl that lived on the jetty. She had a horrible case of conjuncitivits. Her eye was draining pus. I told her teacher that she needed antibiotics and she was treated with success.
When I was working as a nurse at RMH, we were informed that there were strains of antibiotic-resistant TB, which is highly infectious. It took the Department of Health to step-in and get the ball rolling on cleaning the place up. People were re-located to other proper campgrounds.
Heidi, makes sense. If we ignore the homeless and uninsured, we get people with terrible diseases that don’t just stay with the homeless, they can infect you too Mr. or Ms. anonymous. No one in anonymous to TB or other nasty bugs. It is up to all of us to offer help to those that need it.
If the homeless just breaks some laws, they get 3 hot meals and a shower in prison and we pay up to 200-thousand dollars a year to house them. We could buy houses for these people for that kind of money. What are our priorities?
No one is anonymous to desease.
And I meant to add, you find algae now on the famously pristine Smith River along 199 (where the people are) and not on the forks where they’re not. Damn hippies?
What this suggests to me is either: 1) rural cleansing, or 2) lifestyle changes starting with county incentives to conserve water, to store winter water for summer use, and to reduce draws from watersheds in the critical late summer months. This is what citizen groups have been working on for several years, with no help from the county.
Personally, my property can’t be cleansed until you wash it from my cold dead fingers, so I prefer county incentives for lifestyle changes. Fast. People are talking about this, and it’s long past time for the county to hear it and help it.
Heidi, shame on you. You should know that the South Jetty encampment was completely different from the situation in Southern Humboldt. The community was organized and acted ultimately as a cohesive unit. Were there problems? Certainly. But implying they were all drug addicts and health problems is a total lie, and disgusting. Problems existed on the South Jetty well before the homeless got their. And if you haven’t noticed, they still haven’t gotten rid of the tweaker issue. The homeless set out to set up a real community with streets and homegrown services. Was is misguided or desperate? Probably. But Heidi, you are pissing me off. There was no child neglect and I know individuals who worked at Loleta full time who can vouch for that. The kids were n ever seized by CPS. But I can see how a resident of clean lily white Loleta wouldn’t want a poor child coming into your school district.
Our priorities are not to buy houses for homeless people. That solves nothing.
Step 1. Drug test. If positive, enter a treatment program or you get no services.
Step 2. Enter into a treatment program for whatever other issues you have, or no services.
Step 3. Work toward gainful employment, be it through a training program, education or whatever. Follow a timeline. Falter on the timeline and you lose services.
If you set up a program that addresses the issues that are holding people back and then expect steady progress toward self sustainability… I have no problem helping pay for housing, food, medical, therapy, training, etc. until a person is are back on his feet.
The key factor is that all help provided is temporary and results are expected. In other words, help only those people who want to be helped.
Anonymous, I partly agree with you. I mean, I’m not against offering better services for those that want to help themselves. The fact is, we all pay for the problems associated with a large homeless population. We can either deal with it head on, or deal with the problems that crop up from people crapping in your river and spreading disease. Just because you don’t want to help them doesn’t mean they wont suck money out of you. All they have to do is throw a brick through a window and you will be paying to feed, house and take care of their medical needs. It’s called jail or prison. This has nothing to do with whether or not they are nuts or on drugs, it still becomes our problem.
Longwind, you for got a third option, to stop more development in the watersheds until they regain their heath while existing landowners get their act together.
I mean health.
anon 12:23; why don’t you just say load em up in boxcars and send them off to concentration camps?
I merely require for a person whom I help to actually want my help. I realize that’s outrageous to you, but it’s what the average person wants. If a person wants to piss away their life, that’s their choice. I’m here to help them out if they want it.
But go ahead with your inflammatory divisive rhetoric about Nazism. It’s really working for you, I can see.
Anonymous, who said anything about Nazism. We (the U.S. ) did that to the Japanese during WW2. Are you saying that the U.S. is a bunch of Nazis
The only reason to affix blame for the current state of the river is to find out how it happened, so it can be fixed, and never allowed to happen again.
12:21 the Loleta School District is 25% hispanic, 25% native american, and has one of the highest poverty rates in the county. The only people responding to the jetty camp for most emergencies, all that time? Loleta’s volunteer fire department and the people at Loleta School. They simply did not have the resources to solve the problem, and the kids from the spit had all kinds of problems, some contagious.
Homelessness is a sympton of a problem or problems, it is not the central “problem”. Alcohol, drugs, abuse at home — each homeless person has his/her story. And each needs help individually, as a human being, with their problems. The “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” attitude prevailed over the problems at Humboldt Bay’s south spit, but people got real righteous when it came time for the health department to step in and insist on a solution.
BTW, the jetty is the part of the bay entrance that sticks out into the ocean. The peninsulas on either side of the entrance are “spits” – the North Spit and the South Spit.
There are many similarities to the Eel Canyon problem and the South Spit encampment. Wait ’til they start shitting in YOUR back yard.
Yeah, sorry, got a little heated reading the comments. Ummm, come on folks what we’re talking about is letting people have a piece of ground to put up a tent and sleep in a sleeping bag. Yes there needs to be supervision because we know that there are humans who would love to take encampments and use them for their own deluded reasons, we do need society at some level all the time as we live in groups, but lets not confuse supervision for control. In your neighborhood do you want someone from outside to come in and tell you how to live your life? We have city council divided into sections of the city and a council person that gets intimate(or should) with what the neighborhood wants in majority and is supposed to attend to that input. A campground that is organized and has oversight from that community itself will work better than another failed “program”. For 20 years we’ve had programs and the population of homeless is not any better off as a whole, yes kids are better taken care of but that’s about it.
That’s a bogus argument. If it were true our jails would be full of homeless people and our streets devoid of them. The truth is jail sucks more than the street and so the homeless who throw bricks through windows primarily do so because of a personality issue or other mental issue, not because they want to go to jail for free room and board. Dumpster diving is preferable to jail life.
Now, drug dependency is a separate issue. If you’ll give people free houses, will you give them free meth too? Because giving a meth-head a free house will just turn the house to shit while the meth-head continues to commit petty crime to feed the drug habit. So obviously we need to dispense free meth because, as Kate knows, it’s pure Nazism to expect people to clean themselves up.
She didn’t reference Japanese internment camps. She wrote, “load em up in boxcars and send them off to concentration camps?” and “concentration camp” is the commonly accepted term from the Nazi era. You’re launching arguments for the sake of argument Tom, and if that’s your game, there’s no point in trying to discuss issues with you.
Off Topic: Google has uploaded their “Streetview” program on Google Maps. Check it out. The South Jetty is on streetview!
Please post your off topic comments to the Quick Notes thread.
Leave it to progressives to alienate everyone in the mainstream and on the right who want to help the homeless. That\’s what they did in Arcata. It\’s what they do across the country. They are their own worst enemy. Cut off their nose to spite their face.
You must have a penchant for Hitler there anon 1:06, but if you want to keep making the comparison then the shoe must fit.
What I’m saying is there is at this time no cure for homelessness because people like you believe that humans in need of shelter must be worthy of a house and everyone knows that having money is worth (tongue in cheek of course). So what i want to know is why is it that since humans are made of the ground and therefore are kin to the earth there is not a piece of ground that they are simply entitled (anyone having trouble with that word remember George Carlin)to sleep on? Why are not campgrounds an acceptable compromise? campers pay $2-5 bucks a night as they are able. Caretakers on-site, garbage pick-up w/ recycling…..why not? What makes people so cruel that they would allow another human to be a criminal for needing a safe place to sleep?
And actually i don’t belive that iIam off target because John Casali has consistenly claimed that homeless people are the biggest problem on the river. Not only that but he has organized and been seen assissting the Sheriff in raids on homeless camps. Right now homeless people are being targeted as criminals because Casali is blaming them for the garbage on the river and wants to keep his business going good and strong for himself and gain fame. maybe he’ll run for Governor someday. Where the hell are all the garbage cans? nor organizational attempts to colllect garbage in the woods by County government because…..why? Who’s fault is it? Everybody, everyone is so quick to pass the buck and find the balme instead of correct the mistake…..sad
Anonymous, I was pointing out how much money we spend already housing drug addicts in prisons.
Do you think that money is well spent?
And as for houses for the homeless, you might recall earlier in the thread I suggested cheaper smaller dwellings for those that can’t afford a real apartment or home. Most people need a place to call their own.
If you can’t handle the argument, get off the thread.
That last line was kind of snarky. Sorry.
That’s so interesting when someone other than the blog host invites other people to leave.
The point of discussion is not to preach to the choir.
It is also interesting that when a moderate comment pops up, it gets completely ignored. Example, Anon 1:17 lamenting that “progressives” alienate mainstream people who might want to help the homeless. Another example, Anon 11:16 who too the sociological standpoint, noting that dustbowl refugees (origins of Humboldt “redneck” population) practiced better stewardship of the river than “hippie” population. Both those comments are at least attempting to look at the crippling divisiveness that our county suffers from.
So Indy what are you sayin? Should those issues be talked about rather than what was spoken of…?
i ignored the 11:16 comment about dustbowl refugees *supposedly* practicing better land stewardship than humbnoldt’s hippies precisely because it seemed like just another stupid attempt to increase the divisions in the community by simply blaming “hippies” for the river’s woes.
and then there is the fact that zero evidence was given that the dustbowl refugees were particularly good stewards. i’ll bet most of those dustbowl refugees had outhouses, for example (the old groundwater-polluting, hole-in-the-ground type and not the more ecologically-sound composting toilets of today).
speaking of composting toilets, why aren’t they common household fixtures?
Maybe if they put in some restrooms, trash receptacles, and cleaned them often they would have some affordable housing for the poor and it wouldn’t cost $Mil of dollars. Win. Win.
Kateascot, no I just thought they were both interesting comments and wanted to acknowledge them. I really do weary of the divisiveness here that seems to keep us from being able to work together with the common goal of protecting our county’s natural resources. This place is so beautiful and so troubled.
According to Government surveys, chronic homelessness has declined. They define “chronic homeless” as people with physical/mental disability or drug addiction.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/14/MNG74IRMTN1.DTL
“speaking of composting toilets, why aren’t they common household fixtures?”
For the same reason cholera and hepatitis are not common household diseases.
indie, the problem is that the 11:16 comment you highlighted as “moderate” is in fact a great example of the very sort of “crippling devisiveness” that you are complaining about.
to me, that 11:16 comment doesn’t appear to be an attempt to heal divisions, just a way to increase these divisions with a nonfactual, rather rosy view of how great the stewardship of the river was in the “good old days” and to scapegoat one particular a group – “hippies” – for the current problems.
The notion that we should enroll all these folks in appropriate programs and then withdraw services to them if/when they fail to succeed in the programs has a flaw: there aren’t enough programs.
4:13,
oops, your ignorance is showing.
there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of composting toilets in use in humboldt right now. how many cases of cholera have resulted? i have asked that question many times to those who keep obsessing about the great imaginary cholera epidemic, and the answer has been: zero. no one has been abnle to name even one case of cholera resulting from the use of composting toilets.
For what it’s worth, the old hole in the ground outhouses did result in the isolation of the waste material away from the river and in the eventual breakdown of the wastes into less and less complex bio-substances. They certainly were a better alternative than putting the poo into the water.
outhouses are not always such a bad thing, especially in sparsely-populated rural areas, but they’re certainly not as good as a modern composting toilet designs, which also keep the poo from contaminating the groundwater, which sometimes happens with those old hole-in-the-ground models. moreover, using a composting toilet changes the poo from a “waste” product to a resource.
“close the loop with your poop!”
i don’t think anyone here is arguing in favor of dumping poo in the eel river. i sure didn’t see any comments like that.
hepatitis is a household disease but its not from composting toilets.
So the devisiveness you speak of Indie, what can we do to heal? Personally i think we need to develope respect for opposing views and open up with honest dialog accepting the fact that old ways are not necessarily the best and new innovative ideas that have not been given a chance should now be taken more seriously ie; campground.
NAN; chronic homeless is someone who has been homeless more than 2 times in five years. The term chronic is deceiving, people are not getting housing like they used to so they are just staying homeless and don’t meet that criteria anymore.
A quick note to kateascot: I’ve spoken with John Casali numerous times, beginning just a couple of months after he first began his cleanup efforts. John isn’t after riches, fame, or the Governorship; he has spent thousands of his OWN dollars on cleanup efforts, and has repeatedly, REPEATEDLY entreated the county and government agencies (22 in total) for assistance with this situation. The reason he’s angry and loud is because HE CAN’T GET ANY HELP from anyone except private citizens like himself who give a shit (bad pun intended).
John estimates that about 80 percent of the garbage he has picked up – something like 130,000 pounds in the last two years – is from homeless & transients, and about 20 percent is from local households (mattresses, TV’s, appliances, etc.). I have toured some of the cleanup sites, both before and after. I’ve looked down an embankment into a gorgeous creek that was COMPLETELY COVERED with trash including feces, needles, food wrappers, cans, bottles, etc. The Southern Humboldt Technical Rescue Team – a group of VOLUNTEERS – rappelled down the embankment and cleaned it all up. Two months later, it was trash-strewn again.
I realize John can often rub people the wrong way, but I really think it’s WAY too easy to get all over his case and assume the worst about him as an individual. Please, before you jump to conclusions… talk to him. And then come take a look at our river, and let me know if YOU’D want to drink from it, or swim in it, or let your kids walk on the riverbank littered with shit and needles.
End of rant. Not so quick after all (sorry!).
Oh, wait… no… one more thing. We must differentiate – I don’t know how, but we must – between people who are homeless but respectful of the earth, who would indeed take advantage of a campground and a toilet… and those who simply don’t give a flying fuck about the planet or anything on it, and don’t even have the common decency to dig a hole in the ground. After all, it’s not just other people who are affected. It’s every living being, including the fish and the animals that subsist on them.
Thanks Cristina. Spending a day with John Casali can change your prospective of him. He is a good and honest man. He is distressed by what is happening to his river. It is hard for him to understand why ALL people aren’t universally outraged by what is happening to it.
Those of you who don’t know Cristina should know that she is fluent in at least four languages. But, I just dearly love her command of plain English.
There has been an incredible amount of hard, unrewarding, and nasty work by Casali and crew and other volunteers that needs to be acknowledged again and again. I have watched the enormous piles he has put on display to demonstrate the enormity of the problem. I have driven to river accesses north of Redway, where in past years were local dumps and there were the ubiquitous black garbage bags of Casali and crew. I am so grateful that our area is that much cleaner and shudder to think if he had not taken this on. There are a lot of good people working to clean things up, including the homeless. This thread started with the observation that the county is in the business of creating business for itself and there is no money to be made cleaning up such messes. Greywater gets attention but not human encampments endangering rivers. Kudos for Casali and a lot of unnamed volunteers for helping to clean up Sohum!
12:21 LOLETA-CLEAN AND LILY WHITE? Must be a different Loleta that the little town I know. Heidi, good on you for telling your story.
Some of the south jetty people went to Clam Beach, some to SOHUM, some to the foot of Del Norte, some to Arcata, some behind the Bayshore Mall, some to Cooper Gulch, some to Hillfiker, some just over the train bridge behind Target, some have moved on to other rural counties with minimal social services, some remains are discovered long after they have died in the bushes in Cutten and elsewhere. The county has been an enabler to these situations for years and only seems to react when the noise level gets very loud. There are many rural counties in the U.S. that don’t have the problems we seem to have here. Why here? We have more drug problems, more poverty, more homeless. Is it real or do we think we have more? The progressives are to blame, no, it’s the business people, no its government. Who knows!
By the way all the homes in every town in Humboldt County built before 1900 had an out house. The military has been digging latrines since Rome. It is a system that works where no facilities are available. All that is needed is a shovel and a board with a hole in it. When it is 3/4 full you fill it with garbage and cover it up. Leave it for 100 years and the bottle hunters will be digging it up again. Buy them shovels!
Kateascot, I only have a moment to write and to ponder your question: what can we do to heal the divisiveness? I wish I knew the answer, but I do think we all could get more accomplished if we stopped blaming “others.” I truly believe otherness is not clear as we sometimes tell ourselves.
Thorn, I hope I didn’t sound like I was assigning blame to either group; that was opposite of my intention. Instead, that comment struck me as a reminder that unless we’re from one of the original tribes of the area, our family came here in the last 150 years. Yet I hear people denouncing “newcomers” so often. Also the similarity of fleeing something, whether it was the dustbowl in the early 20th century or mainstream society in the late 20th century (or poverty/lack of opportunity in the 19th century).
Point being: we all love and want to protect the beautiful river that runs through our county, which isn’t a political issue and shouldn’t be made into one (IMHO). Kudos to Casalis for these tremendous clean-up efforts and to others who work to make it a healthier river.
The people that own Moore Fuel adopted one of the children
found in a trailer at the south spit. Her diaper had been on
for weeks and had to be surgically removed.
OMG anonymous! That is horrific beyond imagining. :(
A quick correction to Ernie… I only speak three languages fluently (English, Spanish, and Portuguese). :) I do understand enough written French and German to order dinner and figure out bus schedules, and between the Spanish and the Portuguese I can cobble together a conversation in Italian.
Well, I consider being able to order wine as an indication of fluency. So, that makes you fluent in six languages!
I am so jealous!
Thanks again for your good work in helping John keep the river canyons clean.
Strange posts….
Started out to be about a river apparently dirtied by transients-
This of course opens the door for the hippie-haters
to chime in
Those of you who think our waterways were ‘pristine’ back when “only loggers” (sic) lived here, are at best, delusional.
WHERE do you suppose all the fine white-folk in Humboldt put THEIR waste?
Good lord! THINK before you hate and accuse-woulda?
As I write, companies whos names you have probably heard
dump toxic wastes into the rivers, the bays, the oceans.
Entire cities dump their sewage this way!
Are you suggesting hippies and transients are doing that too?
Homeless camps? Yes- they are filthy and unhealthy generally- I’d be glad to hear some solutions other than ‘go shoot ’em!’
Seriously- are YOU really going to go do that?
If so- YOU need to be locked up.
We live in a society thats has more-way more- than anyone has ever had. We continue to breed exponentially, and the planet
can only take so much.
Where does YOUR shit go?
Do you care?
Im NOT condoning the way homeless people live- just saying the ‘health hazards’ they present are a miniscule fraction of the crap WE ALL throw away- every day.
Extreme right wingers want to deny it all, close their eyes,
and it will go away (like minorities).
Extreme lefties think the whole world just needs one big commune and all will be well.
If we can curb our OWN growth, learn to tread a little less harshly on this, our ONLY home- we just might make it.
Christina i am not jumping to conclusions about Casali. i have toured these camps myself but not with casali, i go out to look for people who need help. i am disturbed with Casali because he has brought opposition against homeless people and is trying to get the county to force them out of the county instead of helping their homelessness. This man has caused people to lose all they own, feel threatened because they are told they will go to jail if they don’t leave. He has persuaded business and property owners to sign a statement that give the Sheriff the right to chase people away. He hired a thug that beats up people, etc. No solutions to homelessness just opposition and derision. i do not accept that this man is responsible or a good man, he’s a man on a mission and I’ll bet you haven’t a clue what that really is.
In my mind we need to quit blaming the homeless for having nowhere to put their trash. A campground is the only answer that seems possible to solve the garbage issue at least and at most it will give folks somewhere to be human instead of living like animals.
Timmay, I agree: use less, tread more lightly.
This year I have paid serious attention to how much my family uses and throws away, made changes around our home, and seen a difference. It wasn’t hard and it didn’t cost more.
I keep thinking how abundance has led us to be a wasteful society and now maybe, maybe, higher prices will make us finally become more materially conservative.
Kate, you allude to Casali being on a “mission”, so don’t be coy, be honest and just come out and say what you think his mission is.
I have a difficult time believing that anyone has to leave their shit on the ground, in a tent, or sleeping bag. Digging a hole away from a stream is always possible, at a minimum. And that goes for pee too. As for trash, if someone could carry it in to your campsite, I think you should be able to carry it out too. I’m just saying that respect for the surroundings is something we can all participate in.
NAN, “respect for surroundings is something we can all participate in.” Well said.
Kateascot, are you saying that this guy Casali has a secret mission to eradicate or run off homeless people and he shows it by hauling thousands of pounds of sh*t away from the Eel? Maybe his mission really is a clean river. I’m just saying.
“He (casali) hired a thug that beats up people, etc.”
This is just a big pile of horseshit. This kind of lie just adds to the problem, and whoever posted this comment is a major part of THE PROBLEM.
Not A Native, I think you are on to something. Punishing people for their misdeeds doesn’t create a solution – our prison system should act as evidence to that. Perhaps a more compassionate approach of helping people help themselves is called for here. Casali is known for destroying tents and camps – perhaps he could encourage problematic camps to act more responsibly? Perhaps he could help teach respect and neighborliness. Continuing to beat-down these people down simply doesn’t resolve the issue.
Additionally, I don’t appreciate Casali demanding that the government resolve this issue. There are organized river clean-ups in Fortuna and Willow Creek that do fine without the assistance of government. There is a known illegal dumping area in Myrtletown also, and guess-what… it’s not caused by homelessness. There are refrigerators, washing machines, ovens, etc. on the bank of the Eel and I doubt it was caused by the homeless. But if you demand that the government come and “do something about it” – why, then you invite them to spend our own money on telling us all how to live. They’ve already rampaged my neighborhood looking for “code violations” and the community generally didn’t think that was a good idea. Is it somehow more acceptable when you invite them into someone elses neighborhood to enforce your standards? Certainly I’m not saying that poop on the ground is okay – but the government doesn’t seem to think an outhouse is acceptable either.
I believe that the homeless are a classic scapegoat for what is a symptom of larger societies ills. To drive the homeless away doesn’t solve the underlying problem that got us, all of us, in this situation.
One commenter blamed Humboldt’s drug tolerance, yet homelessness is a HUGE problem in many cities throughout the country. Making the homeless leave our neighborhood doesn’t eliminate the problem.
I actually respect and admire Casali for his work – but I feel that he has a rhetoric that leaves much to be desired. I hope he keeps up the good work – but I deeply hope that he can find a more compassionate and humane way of going about it.
“Maybe his mission really is a clean river.”
Then why did he approach businesses about calling the cops on loiterers? These businesses aren’t exactly on the riverside – so what does loitering and river cleanup have to do with eachother? (it’s rhetorical)
Loitering is just another one of Casali’s battlefronts in the war on homelessness.
While his mission might be for a clean river, clearly he thinks that these loiterers are the cause. I’d prefer he stick to picking up trash, than circulating petitions and encouraging the police.
Mr. Casali has been successful in securing his own business of hauling off garbage from the river, he has been paid a handsome sum (don’t know exact amount) to do what he decided to do all on his own, that is commendable. But when he started complaining about the homeless camps and going to Rodoni, Chamber of commerce and the Sheriffs department to get them to run homeless out of the county he crossed a line of decency that only he knows why. Next he hired a guy to go out and intimidate homeless people, this guy actually has charges pending for punching a homeless guy in the face without provocation. This is not rumor this is fact. There is alot going on behind the scenes here than most people are aware of, time will come for all to be revealed.
are not aware of,….
That is exactly the opposite of what I understand about Casali’s actions. According to him and others, he’s spent thousands of his own dollars and mucho volunteer time to clean up the literal tons of garbage off the banks of the Eel.
What information do you have that shows he was paid “a handsome sum?”
Perhaps you should ask him Heraldo, as I have anonymous (I know them) sources. I think it was $45 grand, the total might be wrong. The point really is that something doesn’t smell right in Garberville. The county will only assist him in running off homeless people, what’s that all about?
I’m skeptical. If he’s making so much money why would he be complaining and asking for help? If he had a big scam going he would probably keep his mouth shut.
Maybe the smell in G-ville is the 33 gallons of feces.
He punched a homeless guy in the face without provocation? That sounds like some warmed-over Communist Party propaganda from the 1930’s. In other words, it sounds false on its face.
Oh, there’s nothing quite like being spoken to (or written to, as the case may be) as if I were an uncomprehending child to really get my goat. If I wanted THAT kind of treatment, I’d call my mother, thank you very much.
Kateascot, you wrote with sneering derision that John Casali is “a man on a mission and I’ll bet you haven’t a clue what that really is. ” Well, I DO happen to know what it is. IT’S TO CLEAN UP THE RIVER SO HE DOESN’T STEP IN NEEDLES AND SHIT WHEN HE TAKES A WALK ON THE BEACH IN FRONT OF HIS HOUSE.
It’s pretty simple, really.
“I have toured these camps myself but not with Casali, I go out to look for people who need help.”
I applaud you for your humanitarian work. I say that sincerely, without a scintilla of sarcasm. But before you judge Casali, I would suggest that you ALSO tour the river in Southern Humboldt with John. It’s an eye-opener.
“I am disturbed with Casali because he has brought opposition against homeless people and is trying to get the county to force them out of the county instead of helping their homelessness. This man has caused people to lose all they own, feel threatened because they are told they will go to jail if they don’t leave.”
When I first met John, he was extremely sympathetic to the plight of many of the homeless people and transients in SoHum. He still IS sympathetic to the plight of a few – the vets, the ones who are truly mentally ill, the ones who belong in hospitals but have nowhere to go because Reagan gutted the state system when he was governor and the federal system when he was president. What John DOESN’T have any sympathy for is people who can’t even dig a hole in the ground. I mean, COME ON! To quote Carl Sagan, “Birds know not to foul their nests. It’s time humans learn the same.”
“He has persuaded business and property owners to sign a statement that give[s] the Sheriff the right to chase people away.”
This certainly didn’t start with John, and it won’t end with John. There have been several efforts on the part of the Garberville-Redway Chamber of Commerce to “run off the homeless,” going back at least 20 years. I will grant that some of it is uncalled for, but there ARE real concerns that are very difficult to address in the face of a collapsed social-services system.
“He hired a thug that beats up people, etc. No solutions to homelessness just opposition and derision.”
I’m a reporter. I want a name, a date, and a charge if this person has been arrested. Otherwise, all you’re doing is engaging in sensational rumor-mongering, and quite possibly libel. And FYI, I’ve tried to contact two of the people who are making all sorts of posts over on craigslist about Casali. One never responded. I exchanged two e-mails with the other, whose e-mail address is under an assumed name; he was supposed to set a date to meet with me and never did.
Unless you, or the people who have allegedly been persecuted, legitimately speak to the authorities (and the press, if you’d rather that the press attempt to verify your claims), then all you’re doing here is stirring up shit and “telling false tales,” as my mother would have said.
“In my mind we need to quit blaming the homeless for having nowhere to put their trash. A campground is the only answer that seems possible to solve the garbage issue at least and at most it will give folks somewhere to be human instead of living like animals.”
You know, when I need a fast lunch and I go to the Chevron station for some Aztec Grill, that food wrapper goes right into the trash after I eat my burrito. If you shoot drugs, Redwoods Rural has a needle-exchange program, no questions asked. You bring in your dirty needles in a brown paper bag, the receptionist calls a nurse, the nurse takes the dirty needles and gives you new needles. Need to shit? Dig a hole. There have been numerous instances of people using their campsites as veritable dumping grounds, collecting garbage like rats. It’s disgusting, it’s unsanitary, it’s disease-ridden, and there’s no call for it.
“Mr. Casali has been successful in securing his own business of hauling off garbage from the river, he has been paid a handsome sum (don’t know exact amount) to do what he decided to do all on his own, that is commendable.”
I happen to know how much of HIS OWN MONEY John has spent on cleanup efforts. He doesn’t broadcast the number, but suffice it to say it’s what I earn in nine months, easily. “His own business of hauling off garbage?” PLEASE. Virtually all of it is going to dump fees and paying people to pick it up.
Finally, I will repeat what I wrote in an earlier post: we need to differentiate between the people who really need help and would gladly accept it, and those who simply don’t give a damn. John has met a lot of people in the latter category in the last two years, and he’s had it with them. And you know what? I have too. I can’t get check my mail after a long day of errands in Eureka, because people have been shitting in the lobby of the Redway Post Office and now it’s locked at night. I can’t take a walk down by the river in many parts of Southern Humboldt, because the ground is littered with garbage and needles. I can’t take my lunch from Chautauqua over to the so-called “town square,” because it reeks of urine and there are usually a couple of snarly young men hanging out with their snarly young dogs.
End of rant.
If you’d like to have a real conversation about this sometime – and maybe let me in on the criminal allegations you’ve made against John – Heraldo knows how to contact me.
Christina, you will be hearing specific details soon as we have a documentary coming out that will explain details but I’m not going to give specifics here. If you knew me you would know that i am serious about what I say, I refuse to involve myself in stirring up Sh**. I work very hard trying to secure justice for people who are trampled on by people who are greedy for money and fame. Ask Casali himself if there is anything to my statements, get his answer then when the documentary is advertised be sure to see it and check the evidence for yourself.
Anybody else read the lengthy expose in the New Yorker magazine of last week by David Samuels, called “Dr. Kush”? It paints a very sympathetic picture of the Prop 215 grow and sale trade, from Venice Beach to Humboldt, with lots in between. It includes specific mention of Gallegos and local Prop. 215 pot doctor Ken Miller.
13 pages long, but no mention of the unsavory aspects of grow-related pollutants (except shitting in the woods) like generate diesel spills, poisoned wildlife, or trashed rental houses and fires from non-code indoor grows.
Ironically, the same edition has an article entitled, “The Eureka Hunt”, but that’s about brain function and insight, not the Humboldt City.
Towns must realize that there have to be bathrooms and garbage receptacles available to people in their communities. For 15 yrs the experiment has been tried of ridding towns of homeless and vagrants by closing bathrooms, taking out benches and stopping garbage collection as a way of making these communities unwelcome to poor people. These tactics have failed. Knowing this authorities have now resorted to stepping up intimidation from police and violence is erupting towards homeless from community members. Tough Love and Zero Tolerance has not accomplished its promised goal in any facet of society, in fact we are in worse shape than ever. War on this and war on that causes death and destruction of innocent people and society as a whole. Compassion on the other hand heals, we need more of that!
If someone tried to rape your mother, wouldn’t you do anything you had to do to stop it?
If someone tries to rape your river, what would you do to protect her?
I don’t think the people who love the river have done enough to protect her.
I would comment on the green algae in the river systems of the northcoast and the idea of saying it is from crapping in the river: the green algae in the river is coliform and it lives off of the petroleum products that come from the highway system and the overuse of the same by the logging industry. The same way the use of detergents use to cause algae blooms back East. Fecal matter in the rivers is a constant variable that comes from salmon, deer and other creatures that use the river besides humans
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