The annual Soroptimist Whale Run and Walk snakes along the Coastal Trail and around the mill pond and over two buried creeks. This area is the subject of a new lawsuit by the Skunk Train. The last Soroptimist run took place on March 16, 2024. (Frank Hartzell via Bay City News)

FORT BRAGG., CA., 9/20/24 – Skunk Train operator Mendocino Railway and its parent company, Sierra Northern Railway, filed suit in August against the City of Fort Bragg. The suit alleges that toxins in stormwater from the city are contaminating the railway’s property, which comprises the bulk of Fort Bragg’s oceanfront. The case was filed in federal court in San Francisco over outflow mostly into the eight-acre mill pond in the middle of the former Georgia-Pacific mill site. The railway completed the acquisition of the site in November 2021.

Neither the city nor the railroad would comment directly on the lawsuit. The railroad, however, provided the Voice with a report by the firm Kennedy Jenks, which studied the stormwater flow in 2017.

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Frank Hartzell is a freelancer reporter and an occasional correspondent for The Mendocino Voice. He has published more than 10,000 news articles since his first job in Houston in 1986. He is the recipient...