Thumbnail photo: The Del Norte Fire Safe Council held a workshop in March 2025 to teach people how to harden their properties against wildfire. | File photo by Ethan Caudill-DeRego
A special district previously focused on agricultural issues in the Smith River and Fort Dick areas received the green light to annex all of Del Norte County into its jurisdiction on Monday.
The Del Norte Resource Conservation District’s expanded boundaries allows for greater collaboration with organizations focusing on wildfire resiliency, stream and forest health restoration and those that support new farmers, District Manager Becky Crockett told Redwood Voice Community News.
The expanded boundaries also means the Del Norte RCD can pursue state and federal grant dollars, which in turn can lead to larger projects, she said.
“We work with tribes, we work with anybody that wants to work with us,” Crockett said. “We’re pretty open to collaborating with just about anybody including other RCDs.”
After a public hearing on Monday, the Del Norte Local Agency Formation Commission approved the Del Norte RCD’s request to annex the county within its boundaries. According to a staff report from LAFCO Executive Officer George Williamson to the commission, the annexation encompasses 15,807 parcels and includes Crescent City as well as Smith River, Fort Dick, Gasquet, Hiouchi and Klamath.
The commission’s vote concluded a process the RCD began in March 2025 when it petitioned LAFCO to extend its sphere of influence to include all of Del Norte County. LAFCO approved this request in November.
According to Crockett, the commission’s approval of the RCD’s annexation of the county into its district includes a requirement to get its website up and running.
Formed on Aug. 9, 2005, the Del Norte Resource Conservation District had initially provided assistance to projects benefitting “the land, water and life of Del Norte County” in the lower Smith River and Lake Earl areas.
A current seven-member Board of Directors meets at 10 a.m. the third Wednesday of every month at its office on First Street in Smith River.
During a presentation at the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors on April 28, Crockett said that the district’s expansion will not include new taxes.
“RCDs in California are funded through grants and sometimes gifts — if someone wants to give us gifts that’d be great,” she said. “Why expand the RCD countywide? The bottomline is it brings more federal and more state funds into Del Norte County.”
An impetus for the Del Norte RCD seeking to expand its district boundaries has to do with its participation in a collaborative of other RCDs in Northern California. It’s one reason for the district’s success with grants, Crockett said.
Those grants are often for several million dollars and are shared amongst the Northern California RCDs, she said.
Crockett noted that other RCDs were supporting wildfire prevention and forest health projects in their areas so the local Board looked at possibilities closer to home. They found the Del Norte Fire Safe Council and its leader Aaron Babcock as well as the U.S. Forest Service, she said.
“By expanding the boundary we linked up with the Forest Service, with the Del Norte Fire Safe Council and the county to do bigger projects,” Crockett said. “By us being involved it also increased the amount of money available to those other entities through the regional Northern California collaboration.”
The Del Norte RCD is pursuing a $3 million CalFire grant for shaded fuel breaks from Smith River to Gasquet, Crockett told supervisors. She said she’s working with the Del Norte Fire Safe Council, the Forest Service, Green Diamond Resource Company, the Humboldt Resource Conservation District and the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation.
Last year, the Del Norte RCD was awarded two Natural Resources Conservation Services grants for $75,000 each as well as another $50,000 for a water quality plan covering the Smith River basin, Crockett said. The Del Norte RCD also received a $250,000 block grant from the California Coastal Conservancy, she said.
At the April 28 meeting, District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey asked how the Del Norte RCD’s expansion would impact other special districts such as the Smith River Cemetery District.
Crockett said the RCD’s expansion accentuates other special districts’ ability to gain funds. She said the RCD Board of Directors is also seeking other members with one possibility being expanding its membership.
Following Crockett’s presentation, District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard called the Del Norte RCD’s efforts to help expand efforts within the county to address resource conservation needs.
“It’s really going to provide the necessary resources — monetary resources — to come in and do fuels management efforts around our important vital communities of Gasquet, Hiouchi, Smith River and Gasquet both on private and public lands from devastating catastrophic wildfire,” he said, “fire we did experience in August 2023.”
On Friday, Crockett said the Resource Conservation District is also working with the Del Norte and Adjacent Tribal Lands Community Food Council, which is working with those emerging farmers. She said she’s developing a list of local food producers, large and small, so she can provide information to them.
“At our last RCD meeting we had quite a few people that are small emerging farmers who are … trying to grow different things,” Crockett said, adding that she has a degree in crop science and grows wasabi near Brookings, Oregon. “Hopefully we’ll be able to provide some growth money so they can do a better job of getting their crops growing and out there.”
