_{Thumbnail photo: Crescent City Harbor officials are seeking funding for a project to determine whether its dredge materials can be used for beach enhancement. | File photo by Gavin Van Alstine}

Crescent City Harbor officials are pursuing a grant they say may turn a dredging dilemma into a valuable resource for projects like wetland restoration and beach enhancement.

The Harbor District is seeking $500,000 in California Regional Investment Initiative grant dollars for its beneficial reuse project. This project involves depositing about 10,000 cubic yards of dredge material along the beach near Whaler Island and assessing the ecological impacts. 

If there are no adverse impacts, the Harbor District may have an answer to a challenge that’s been plaguing it for years, according to Harbormaster Mike Rademaker.

“That could help resolve both the cost challenge and the placement-site challenge that have been holding up dredging,” he told Redwood Voice via email Wednesday.

On Monday, CCHD’s contracted grant writer, Community System Solutions CEO Mike Bahr, sought a letter of support for the project from the Crescent City Council. According to him, Crescent City is one of four ports seeking to determine if their dredge tailings can be reused. The other harbors involved include the Humboldt Bay Harbor District, the San Mateo County Harbor District and the City of Santa Barbara Waterfront, he said.

The project is also one of four True North Organizing Network is pursuing $20 million in Regional Investment Initiative grant dollars for, Bahr said. Crescent City Harbor District officials found out last week that they may be eligible to receive that grant funding for the beneficial reuse project. True North Organizing Network must submit the grant application to the state by Jan. 16, he said.

“The study permit costs that the State of California put on the table are $250,000 just to get through the permit and the initial testing of what’s at the bottom of the harbor,” Bahr told city councilors. “That’s been tested before, so we know it’s pretty clean — it’s 80% sand. Then the second half is, once it’s applied on the beach, to study the beach, study clams on the beach to see that there are no ill effects from that.”

According to Bahr, the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, or GoBiz, is the state entity behind the Regional Investment Initiative program, which is offering between $5 million and $20 million in grants. 

“In this case, we have the Redwood Region for Humboldt and Crescent City. We have the Bay Area region for San Mateo County Harbor District. And we have the Central Coast region for the City of Santa Barbara Waterfront,” he said. “These harbors are working together to try to secure permits for the beneficial reuse of sediment in their harbor. There is not a way through the Regional Water Board in the North Coast or Central Coast to issue those permits — they are issued in Southern California — so we brought everybody together.”

The ability to maintain dredging at the Crescent City Harbor has been an issue for years with the ongoing challenge being finding a viable disposal site for the material. According to a staff report from a special meeting of the CCHD Board of Commissioners on Feb. 7, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had historically dredged the federal channel at the harbor, while the district had been responsible for the areas outside the channel. The Army Corps disposes of its dredge material, which is 80% sand, at Whaler Island and at the Humboldt Open Ocean Disposal Site, or HOODS, near Eureka.

The Harbor District hasn’t conducted dredging operations in more than a decade, according to that Feb. 7 staff report. At that meeting, Rademaker had proposed building on the Army Corps’ practice of depositing dredge materials near Whaler Island. 

On Wednesday, Rademaker said beneficial reuse is a regulatory term agencies use when dredge materials are treated as a resource that can be used to have a public or environmental benefit rather than waste that must be disposed of. Beach nourishment with clean sand is a classic beneficial use under the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rademaker said.

“From a regulatory and coastal-management perspective, littoral-zone placement can be beneficial because it reduces erosion risk and supports shoreline resilience (a direct public benefit),” he said, referring to the area where waves and currents move sand along and across the beach. “It also keeps compatible sediment in the system instead of losing it to deep-water disposal sites. As I mentioned, it recycles a material that is often the same sand that would naturally nourish beaches if the harbor/channel weren’t interrupting transport.”

That dredging project, and the pilot study, stalled due to the substantial upfront costs, Rademaker said. According to him, initiating the pilot study would cost about $1 million upfront. However, the July 30, 2025 Kamchatka earthquake and tsunami and the emergency proclamation California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued last month changed things, Rademaker told Redwood Voice via email Wednesday.

The governor’s emergency proclamation formally recognizes that the sediment the tsunami deposited requires dredging to bring navigation channels to pre-disaster conditions, Rademaker said. As a result, it authorizes the California Office of Emergency Services to assist the Crescent City Harbor District under the California Disaster Assistance Act, he said.

“In practical terms, that creates a pathway under which funding that was previously out of reach may become available,” he said. “And it also supports a faster-track regulator posture through established emergency procedures.”

According to Rademaker, surveys the Army Corps of Engineers conducted of the entrance channel before and after the tsunami determined that it left about 40,000 cubic yards of sediment behind. The tsunami also caused shoaling among the Harbor District’s docks, which can reduce the harbor’s depth and can impact the size of the vessels that can tie up there, he said.

“Because we’re considered a shallow harbor with an average depth of about 15-20 feet, any additional sediment has a significant impact,” Rademaker told Redwood Voice in a Dec. 31 article.

The Harbor District still needs to obtain a dredging permit and meet other permitting requirements to initiate the pilot project, however, Rademaker said.

On Monday, Bahr told the Crescent City Council that True North Organizing Network has stepped in to apply for and manage the Regional Investment Initiative grant dollars received for the beneficial reuse projects the four harbors are proposing.

True North is pursuing the maximum $20 million award with the beneficial reuse being one of four projects being proposed for grant funding, Bahr said. 

“This is a competitive grant application,” he told councilors. “There’s been no award at this point in time. The state could pick a project to award $1 million (to) or they could pick to award $20 million. There are four sets of projects. Beneficial reuse is what we’ve asked the city for a letter on.”

If True North’s grant application for the entire $20 million is successful, it would receive $1.8 million, or 10%, for managing the grant, Bahr said. Any costs to an accounting firm for handling that part of the grant would come out of that 10%, he said.

Other projects that would be funded with Regional Investment Initiative grant dollars include a port-to-plate project that the Crescent City Harbor District is also taking part in. This includes expanding a fillet station at the harbor, Bahr said. Seven million dollars is available statewide for that project with Crescent City seeking $276,000, he said.

Following Bahr’s presentation the Crescent City Council voted 4-1 in favor of providing its letter of support for the project with Councilor Jason Greenough dissenting.

Greenough, complaining about the “scanty information” included about the project itself, proposed bringing the item back to the Council for a more thorough discussion at a special meeting scheduled for Jan. 14.

That motion died due to lack of a second.

“My issue with the staff report is there’s really not a lot of information that was provided beforehand,” he said. “I was not privy to where this initiative came from. It doesn’t even say it’s the State of California in the staff report. So, usually when we have something like this we get an application or something, that the organization is applying for said money, and it gives us that information, so we can take a look at what they’re doing with it.”

Crescent City Manager Eric Wier said if the pilot project proves that nearshore disposal of dredge materials is feasible, that project could be expanded to include other beaches besides Whaler Island. He spoke of a northern migration of sand and said the breakwater at the Crescent City Harbor traps that sediment.

Pebble Beach, according to Wier, had been a reliably sandy beach people once used for clamming, but now it’s been scoured.

“My opinion, my hopes, are this would prove to be a beneficial use of that sand that’s now trapped in the harbor to be placed where it can actually continue that northern migration,” he said.

Though Wier said he could bring the additional information Greenough was seeking to the Council on Jan. 14, Crescent City Mayor Isaiah Wright reiterated that the there’s currently no feasible place for the Harbor District to dispose of its dredge materials.

In response to concerns Greenough raised about whether or not the state would grant the Harbor District a permit for the pilot project, Wright said he felt the project would help bolster CCHD’s chances for obtaining a permit in the future.

“If this (grant) is part of the process of getting that permit ready, then that’s extremely needed for us,” Wright said.