‘One last time to reach a deal’: Battle over Blue Lake water tank hits tipping point

Blue Lake’s water system is tangled in years of negotiations surrounding the property a water tank sits on.

A historic agreement to use the property for parts of the public water system expired over a decade ago, and the trustee of the property has vocally sought a new one, with increasingly dramatic tactics.

“I’m tired of not being paid for the lease,” Erin McClure told the Blue Lake City Council this week during public comment, something she’s said regularly over the past few years. On Facebook, she posted videos of the leaking water tank and accused the city of negotiating in bad faith. She attributed the lengthy discussion period to the city’s slow legal processes when speaking with the Times-Standard on Friday.

But the city attorney’s record of negotiations suggests McClure is holding up the agreement. This week, the city offered its last, best offer to her in a publicly released letter.

The letter said her positions keep shifting, causing constant redrafts, and alleges McClure has not responded to phone calls and texts throughout the drafting of the agreement, something she contests, all while publicly making claims the city is failing her.

The negotiation process has dragged on for the past 2.5 years, and both city staff and McClure say they want the agreement finalized. In the meantime, workers are locked out from accessing the tank, claims are flying on social media and in council chambers, all while water leaks from the aging tank into Powers Creek.

The state of the lease

McClure, a fifth-generation resident of the land and one of two members of a trust that owns it, said the lease was drafted by her great-great-grandmother Mary Powers in 1911, who developed the city’s first water system.

This existing agreement with the city includes a payment of $100 a year and free water for use on the ranch, which is today about 80 acres with goats, sheep, multiple homes, timber and horses used for riding lessons.

McClure said after the original lease expired. Her mother attempted in 2013 to create a new one, but it didn’t pan out.

“We’ve always asked for it to be updated for the current market value,” she said.

For reference, $100 in 1913 has the present-day buying power of $3,314 according to the U.S Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index inflation calculator. The final offer by the city includes a $6,000 annual payment adjusted by 3.2% annually, along with a lump sum and other terms.

The city’s first offer to McClure included no payment to the trust, just the easement in exchange for no-cost water. But since then, the agreement has evolved.

McClure did not want to comment on specifics of what she ultimately wanted in the agreement, including her thoughts on the final offer from the city, before consulting her representative. But she said Friday she simply wants a “fair market value lease” for use of the property. She emphasized she wanted to be treated “squarely,” not wringing the city out of money.

When meeting with the Times-Standard, McClure pointed to numerous issues she had during negotiations.

This includes an appraisal for the easement. McClure contested an early 2024 third-party appraisal, which the city paid for at her request, that pegged the use of the tank, the water line and access road around $32,000.

“It’s a home site, I could have a home here,” she said, standing near the visibly seeping water tank. In a meadow below, where the water line runs, she said there’s space for another building.

Public meeting enthusiast and Blue Lake resident Kent Sawatzky previously estimated the use of the property was worth about ten times that price. He got involved in the discussions and met with McClure and the city attorney in 2024.

“During this meeting, Mr. Sawatzky asserted that the appraisal was ‘undervalued’ and advanced several theories that were inconsistent with market appraisal standards,” city attorney Ryan Plotz said in the letter.

Plotz wrote Sawatzky’s estimates contradict the appraisal and the “historical and current zoning constraints,” including the management of the property under a nonindustrial timber management plan, the presence of the existing tank, and common valuation methodologies for utility encumbrances.

Sawatzky has since sought a public apology from the attorney’s law firm in response to the letter, and said he calculated the higher valuation based on the “Highest and Best use” of the property, according to an email forwarded to the Times-Standard.

Despite this, the letter said McClure did not offer an alternative valuation at the meeting, following Sawatzky’s estimations, and has failed to offer an alternative “despite multiple follow-up contacts from the city,” the city attorney said in the letter.

McClure contests claims of delays in responding in the process detailed in the letter, and points instead to one agreement taking eight weeks to get back to her through a city council approval process.

Access to the water tank

A key incident for McClure during negotiations is discovering technicians doing work at the tank last year.

In what she described as an attempt to hurry negotiations along, McClure told city staff she was locking the gate and staff members would need to call her before accessing the tank while she was without an updated lease, something she said the city attorney agreed to verbally.

A few days later, “the gate was wide open,” she said, and “SHN was down here drilling,” in August 2024, doing engineering work related to a grant application to install a new water tank.

She kicked the technicians off the property and made a report to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, she said. She noted that city staff publicly apologized for the incident during a city council meeting.

“I couldn’t believe it, it made me sick. Basically, I’m a single woman trying to save a family farm, and all this is happening? Because we can’t just sit down and have an agreement,” she said.

Since then, she said she has not permitted staff to access the tank. She has variously invited the city manager, city attorney, and most of the sitting council to come to the property, who have accepted her offers over the months.

McClure feels the city’s processes are too time-consuming, and wants a meeting with the city attorney, her representative and the city council to come to an agreement together, rather than the delays she sees in the current method, which involves paying fees for counsel that she said has eaten up any lump sum she will receive.

“My concern is I don’t want it to keep kicking it down the road, cause I have to keep paying for counsel. Over and over and over again, and so does the city. And it just doesn’t seem fair. It seems like we could all sit at a table and hash it over in two days,” she said.

Earlier this month McClure took to Facebook, stating she would camp at city hall until the agreement was finalized and calling for people who’ve had their water shut off to use the credit she is owed by the city to pay their bills, which she said was another attempt to move negotiations along.

The letter to McClure detailing the negotiations and the final offer was released publicly due to McClure’s Facebook posts and untrue claims about the city, the letter said. For her part, McClure said the publicly released letter made her feel bullied.

“At this point — after two years of revisions and re-opened issues, and after finally receiving a new set of demands from (Jim Able, a Registered Professional Forester) that you personally refused to confirm — the City concluded that continued negotiations are no longer seem productive or feasible. Accordingly, for all of the reasons above, the City needs to bring about a close to these negotiations. While I do not typically favor presenting a last, best final offer, I feel that such an offer is necessary,” the letter said.

McClure asserts she indeed still wants a voluntary agreement with the city. She fears the city will claim the property through eminent domain after she runs through her money paying her counsel.

“I don’t want the city to take the property. I will not let my grandfather’s property go by eminent domain, there’s no way,” she said.

‘One last time’

The final offer, which the council directed the attorney to present, includes a 40-year term and $55,000 lump-sum payment, a $6,000 annual payment with 3.2% annual escalator, 300,000 cubic feet a year of no-charge water, and various city-funded access improvements and maintenance.

Notably, Blue Lake is facing some budget struggles.

“If we do not receive your acceptance of this offer by Dec. 1, 2025, our assumption will be that you reject this offer,” it said.

She planned to tell the city’s attorney she was interested in looking at it, but her counsel is out of town until Thursday.

The letter said, “based on the lack of response to the city’s final offer and the absence of any clear position from you, the city does not believe further discussions will lead to an agreement. Nevertheless, the council desires to try one last time to reach a deal,“ in the letter.

The Blue Lake city manager did not immediately respond to emailed questions before the Times-Standard print deadline.

Sage Alexander can be reached at 707-441-0504