$251,000 penalty proposed for alleged North Coast water quality violations

The Eureka attorney and landowner whose post-Walbridge Fire salvage logging in the Felta Creek watershed drew criticism from neighbors and regulatory agencies alike is facing a quarter-million-dollar fine for alleged water quality violations related to erosion and runoff on the site during wet weather a winter ago.

Critics of Ken Bareilles’ actions in the hills west of Healdsburg, near the headwaters of Felta Creek, which winds among redwoods and ferns offering a last refuge to endangered coho salmon, celebrated the news.

“He’s made a career of just scoffing at the law and spreading damage wherever he’s gone,” said Lucy Kotter, a local resident and member of Friends of Felta Creek, which fought to stop Bareilles’ planned logging in the area, though he eventually was authorized under an emergency salvage exemption.

“I’m so glad that the water board is taking action.”

But Bareilles said he will contest the administrative complaint at a hearing expected to be held in Santa Rosa on June 15 or 16.

“I’m not waiving any of my rights,” he said Saturday. “I want a full evidentiary hearing.”

Among other things, Bareilles said he will subpoena witnesses who can vindicate him in the long-running debate about how he has stewarded the 106 acres at issue, including those who can provide proof that meddling in the sensitive creek bed started when Cal Fire crews were on his property in heavy machinery fighting the August 2020 Walbridge Fire.

He said some of the earth they moved in the creek was later attributed to the logging work conducted in 2021 and an illegal crossing built to aid timber removal — a bridge discovered in June 2021 during a routine Cal Fire inspection that would mark the beginning of problems on the property found during follow-up inspections and monitoring by Cal Fire, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Agency representatives found repeated fault with insufficient or absent erosion control measures that in multiple cases allowed mud and sediment to leave the steep, hillside logging site and wind up in Felta Creek or a tributary.

Apart from the fact that the Russian River and all its tributaries already are listed under the federal Clean Water Act as impaired for sediment and temperature, clouding or turbidity in the water can prevent sunlight from reaching aquatic plants, clog fish gills, reduce visibility and make it difficult for fish to find food, mates and protective cover, among other harms.

Don McEnhill, executive director of the Russian Riverkeeper advocacy, education and conservation nonprofit, said “if anyone needs to get enforced upon,” it was Bareilles.

“Everything we predicted when we were helping the Friends of Felta Creek with their comments (opposing the timber harvest plan) pretty much happened when he just ran roughshod over that property,” McEnhill said. “He’s a cut and run guy, and it sounds like he’s doing his usual.”

Regulators raised particular issues around a “bomb cyclone” that struck Oct. 24, 2021, and dropped 10.19 inches of rain in one day on Venado, 13 miles northwest of Bareilles’ site, the complaint against him says.

Water board staff identified 12 other days that winter during which 30-minute rainfall intensity reached a threshold sufficient to cause runoff.

Bareilles said most of it occurred that single October day, however, when the region was stunned by record one-day rainfall. He said where dirt got into the creek, it was his licensed timber operator who had been responsible for adequate erosion control.

He also said it was his forester’s responsibility — not his own — to file stabilization and restoration plans with the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board in response to formal Clean-up and Abatement Orders reports issued after repeated violations were observed during inspections of the logging site.

“The reports were late. That’s a fact I can’t change. But I and Linda,” Bareilles said, referring to his wife, “we can’t write the reports.”

A detailed, 56-page accounting of the proposed penalty put together by the water quality control board’s prosecution team clearly found the reporting failures critical, however.

Water board personnel also have said they consider the landowner responsible for environmental compliance and requirements for protection of waterways as stipulated by California Forest Practice Rules and other applicable regulations.

Each day one of the two documents required of Bareilles was late allows for a $1,000 per day penalty under water board rules. And it’s not just about paperwork, the complaint says, but about the delay in taking action to prevent further damage to the watershed.

The total for Bareilles is $196,000, in part for the 38 days by which he missed the Jan. 25, 2022, deadline to submit an Interim Cleanup and Stabilization Plan that would have helped ensure no further damage occurred during wet winter weather. It finally was filed March 4, one day after a related notice of violation was issued and too late to be applied during wet winter weather, the civil liability complaint says.

Bareilles also was dinged $1,000 a day for the 158 days during which he failed to act on a Long-Term Restoration and Monitoring Plan needed in response to a cease-and-desist order issued last summer.

Bareilles Complaint

The remaining penalties are related to specific water code violations for which each day of violation warrants a maximum liability of $5,000.

They include a violation from Jan. 24, when a Cal Fire inspector discovered after weeks of heavy rain that the same problem that existed last year in one area of the property had not yet been stabilized, allowing sediment to again enter a stream that leads to Felta Creek.

Weighing in factors like culpability and negligence, degree of toxicity of discharge into a waterway, actual or potential harm to beneficial uses like wildlife habitat and susceptibility to clean-up or abatement, the prosecution team has proposed a total penalty of $250,981.

McEnhill said it’s possible Bareilles does have a contractual dispute with his forester or with the licensed timber operator who worked for him at the beginning of the salvage logging. (Bareilles also is a licensed timber operator and took over partway through.)

But “at the end of the day, that’s his project and his property, and he’s signs everything. And I think he holds the bag,” McEnhill said.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan (she/her) at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.