North Coast Journal January 17, 2008 : IN THE NEWS : SHORT STORIES

January 17, 2008

‘Fish and chips’
Ferndale Redeemed

‘Fish and chips’

After two years of sometimes tense discussion, the 26 disparate stakeholders participating in the Klamath Basin settlement talks released a proposed agreement Tuesday that they say provides for the diverse needs of irrigators, fishermen and Indian tribes.

Craig Tucker of the Karuk Tribe is calling the Proposed Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement a “fish and chips settlement.” That’s because the agreement ensures that sustainable agriculture will continue in the Upper Basin by providing for reliable allocations of water to the region’s farmers. At the same time, it lays out a comprehensive program to restore fish populations in the Klamath River to levels the settlement group says will be sufficient for tribal, recreational and commercial fisheries.

The agreement also includes a program to stabilize energy costs for farmers, ranchers and the two national wildlife refuges in the Upper Basin if and when the river’s four lower dams are removed. But that will depend on the outcome of ongoing negotiations between the settlement group and PacifiCorp, the Portland-based utility that owns and operates the dams. Although that process, known as the Hydropower Agreement, is separate from the Proposed Agreement, the settlement group believes that a basin-wide solution must include both in order to succeed.

“This agreement only works with removal of four dams,” said Troy Fletcher of the Yurok Tribe in a Tuesday afternoon press conference call.

While a majority of the stakeholders seem to be in concert now, one long-time participant — the Hoopa Valley Tribe — was noticeably absent from Tuesday’s conference call. But the tribe did lob a news release explaining its rejection of the draft agreement.

In it, Hoopa Valley Tribe Chairman Clifford Lyle Marshall called the agreement “an old West irrigation deal” with “guarantees for irrigators, empty promises for the Indians.” He said it “makes the right to divert water for irrigation the top priority, trumping salmon water needs and the best available science on the river.”

Specifically, the tribe is concerned that while the agreement specifies goals for water diversions to irrigators, it does not set specific water flows for fish. It says the agreement “altogether ignores” two independent studies on river flows and salmon needs, as well as a Congress-backed report from the Natural Resources Council in November that recommended increased flows. Instead, the agreement allows for adaptive management and the development, over 10 years, of three plans: for restoration of the river system, reintroduction of salmon above Iron Gate Dam and establishment of a monitoring program.

Tom Schlosser, an attorney for the Hoopa Valley Tribe reached by telephone Tuesday afternoon, reiterated the tribe’s concern about there being no set standards for fish restoration. For example, he said, in 1984 the Trinity Restoration Act set the goal that the fishery would be restored to conditions that existed before the Lewsiton and Trinity dams were built. In the Klamath agreement, however, he said, “all the guarantees are for the right to divert water [for irrigation], and the fish get whatever trickles down.”

Despite its concerns, the tribe is not leaving the table, Schlosser said. It’s good the draft is finally out for the public to see, he argued. Now comes the time for corrections.

But Chuck Bonham of Trout Unlimited said during the conference call that the agreement’s method of determining flows for fish makes sense. “Think about the logic of the flow part,” he said. “In drier years, when there’s less water, there’ll be less diversion of water. In wet years, there’ll be more diversion.” Another stakeholder noted that the agreement, by tying in with the parallel agreement (still in the works) to remove four dams, will put more water in the river — therefore, there’ll be a bigger pie to divide than exists now.

Craig Tucker said specific restoration targets will be arrived at through the yet-to-be-developed monitoring plan and will incorporate new information emerging from the removal of the four dams. And, he said, “It is our view that the best available science is the science produced on the river” by the tribal biologists. “We don’t need the NRC.”

— Heidi Walters and Japhet Weeks

Ferndale Redeemed

Stuart Altschuler hugs a supporter after his permit is approved. Photo by Yulia Weeks.

Ferndale therapist Stuart Altschuler got exactly what he wanted for his birthday: On Monday night the Ferndale City Council voted 4-1 to approve a home occupation permit for his psychotherapy office.

That permit has been at the center of a four-month debacle involving Altschuler, his neighbor Shannon Leonardo and Shannon’s uncle Rich Leonardo, who questioned Altschuler about his homosexuality at a Ferndale City Council meeting last fall.

The city’s planning commission approved Altschuler’s home occupation permit for a psychotherapy office in September of last year, but Shannon Leonardo later appealed that decision. The appeal was upheld by a 3-2 vote of the city council in November. The Leonardos greeted that evening’s vote in their favor with a whooping cheer. A stunned Altschuler, armed with a lawyer, put his nose to the grindstone and has since spent $3,000 in legal fees to get a permit that should have been routine.

Altschuler isn’t the only person who’s caught flack from all of this. After the now notorious City Council meeting in October, when comments made by Rich Leonardo were interpreted by many as being homophobic, Ferndale Enterprise publisher Caroline Titus took Leonardo to task over his behavior. Leonardo eventually stepped down from his position as volunteer fire chief.

Even after the appeal was upheld by the City Council and Altschuler was denied his permit, the nasty calls kept coming, Titus said in her office on Monday. With a trembling hand, she played a saved phone message from Christmas Eve: “I hope you have a merry Christmas ... Next year won’t be so happy ... Enjoy, you fucking cunt!” That was followed by hysterical laughter, like something you’d expect to hear in a creepy horror flick.

Before Titus got involved in this issue, she never locked her doors — now she does. She’s relocated her office. And she’s learned first-hand how difficult it is to run a small paper in an even smaller town when you write hard-hitting editorials about a pillar of the community.

“This has been life-changing for me,” she said. “Friends have changed. I never thought about gay rights before ... I had never witnessed personally another human being discriminated against in such a vile manner.”

Monday night’s City Council meeting was a quick affair, as the home occupation permit was not open for public comment. Each councilman explained why he was voting the way he was. Mayor Jeff Farley used the city’s general plan to argue that he couldn’t approve of a business in a residential area. As for the two other councilmen who had previously voted to deny the permit — Ken Mierzwa and Michael Moreland — they admitted that the general plan is ambiguous and needs reworking, but that based on the present version and on past home occupation permits approved by the city they couldn’t conscionably deny Altschuler now.

Atlschuler’s victory was greeted by silent relief from the crowd. No cheering. Very few people — most of whom appeared to be there for the permit issue — just got up and left after the vote. Instead, they made their way outside one-by-one or in pairs, quietly.

Altschuler had been prepared to take the city to court in the event they denied him the permit again. As for how he’s been treated over the past four months, he says he’s suffered neither threats nor harassment. And the community has been overwhelmingly supportive. He doesn’t regret even for a second having moved to Ferndale, no matter how Victorian it has proved to be.

“It just feels like everything has been swirling around me but not through me,” he said.

Standing in his newly remodeled kitchen, wearing what seems to be his trademark flannel shirt and tortoise-shelled glasses, Altschuler was, more than anything, ready to get to work. And now, with his new birthday gift, he can do just that.

— Japhet Weeks

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