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Humboldt Urged to Drop ‘Onerous’ Draft Low Impact Camping Rules · KMUD News

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Enabled by recent state law, Humboldt county is in the process of allowing paid camping on private properties and early feedback discourages restrictions. The state law, AB518, significantly reduces the permitting costs of what's described as low impact camping. Counties can choose to draft ordinances allowing the use, and Humboldt County's planning commission began a review process with an Aug. 20 workshop. Public commenters and commissioners agreed that overregulation could defeat the purpose of making it easier to host camping. In a presentation to the commission, county planner Megan Acevedo described some of the requirements the county has in a draft version of an ordinance.
• 0:49
  Speaker B: We considered property owner's residency in the July draft. We had required the property owner to live on site. We also considered the property manager's availability. We also required that the property manager to live on site and be available on site 24 7. We've also added a limitation of only allowing up to 50% of sites to have RVs, and the reasoning for that was to ensure that this is low impact, we've also added a maximum occupancy of six campers per campsite. We've also added the requirement for a good neighbor guide and this is to ensure neighborhood compatibility. We considered water source and requirements for that. We have campsite siting criteria.
• 1:38
  Speaker A: There's also a requirement that campsites must be within a pre existing disturbed area as of January 1, 2026, and if they're not, a biological study has to be done to see if a special permit is required. Generators are prohibited. Access roads have to be classified as at least category three. And in response to comments from the Garberville Fire Protection District, sites with fire pits have to be inspected and approved by the district. The county's Environmental Health Division is working with planning staff on allowing portable toilets. Commissioner Peggy o' Neill had doubts about the plethora of rules.
• 2:21
  Speaker C: You know you're not going to make a lot of money on these given that you can't have more than nine or, you know, maybe three or nine or whatever and you're charging 40 to $60 a night for them. So you can't put all these expensive requirements. These are just small scale operations to help a property owner or a business owner add just a little more money to the, you know, pay their property taxes basically is all you're going to get out of it.
• 2:45
  Speaker A: Noting that Acevedo's presentation included a photo of a couple camping on the coast, Commissioner Todd Fulton questioned a cell phone service requirement, saying, some of our most beautiful landscapes in Humboldt county, where people would come and want to do one of these campsites have no service. Fulton also noted a requirement to pay hotel bed taxes and described the biological study requirement as another form of taxing, adding that the overregulation of this entire thing is absurd. Similar feedback was given during a public comment period. Representatives of the county's Libertarian Party and Farm Bureau described the rules as onerous and burdensome and too costly to make hosting campsites viable. Other speakers advised against requiring property owners to live on site and described the rules as overreaching and arduous. Commissioners were receptive to the feedback, including Commissioner Noah Levy.
• 3:52
  Speaker D: I do think that we just have to reconcile the fact that this is these are supposed to be pretty low impact operations. They're going to only bring a little bit of additional revenue, most likely at the scale that we're talking about. And I'd like to sort of air in this case, which was not my position going into the cannabis ordinance, that we that we really start with the kind of closer to the minimum regulations that we think may be needed and add them based on experience. The one place that I would be most concerned about a truly bad consequence of this, as you've noted, Dr. Ford is fired.
• 4:28
  Speaker A: Planning director John Ford had described the cell phone service requirement as important for reporting fires, and Levy agreed, saying he's not so clear that I want to be as hands off about that as I probably would be about a number of other things. The workshop was continued to a date uncertain to allow staff to develop another draft version in Eureka for KMUD News, this is Daniel Mentz.