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SLO County attorney finds misappropriation, $427 million grant rescinded

August 29, 2025

By KAREN VELIE

San Luis Obispo County attorney Saro Rizzo and React Alliance President Mandy Davis asked the federal government in June to terminate and seek the return of unspent grant monies related to offshore wind energy in California because of misappropriation. Earlier today, the federal government canceled a $427 million grant it had awarded to the Humboldt Harbor District for construction of an industrial port.

Rizzo, the vice president of REACT Alliance, pointed out “ample reasons to terminate the grant and to demand a return of unspent disbursed funds from the Humboldt Harbor District.”

  • Grant eligibility guidelines require projects to be “of national or regional significance to improve the safety, efficiency, and reliability of the movement of freight and people in and across rural and urban areas.”
  • Eligible projects within the boundaries of a freight rail, water (including ports) must be a “surface transportation infrastructure project necessary to facilitate direct intermodal interchange, transfer, or access into or out of the facility and must significantly improve freight movement on the National Highway Freight Network.”
  • Humboldt Bay is not a designated national multimodal freight network facility and is not eligible for the grant funds.

REACT Alliance is a nonprofit, non-partisan volunteer organization that opposes the proposed offshore wind projects off the coast of Morro Bay.

On Friday, the Trump administration announced it was terminating $679 million in federal funding for 12 offshore wind projects, including $427 million for the California project. The money was slated to be used for staging, wind turbine assembly, and launching in Humboldt Bay.

The Trump administration is also canceling a $47 million grant for an offshore wind hub near the Port of Baltimore in Maryland, $48 million grant for an offshore wind terminal project in New York’s Staten Island, and $33 million for a port project in Salem, Massachusetts – to support offshore wind energy projects.

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Thank you Saro Rizzo for putting in the work to stop this move to pollute the ocean with low yielding, intermittent, unreliable turbines. And to stop the industrialization of Avila. Yep. Putting in the work vs commenting. Easy to just comment. That said wind turbines in the oceans are a travesty and on land as a major energy source, no better !


19

Darn, I was really hoping that we’d get to enjoy the addition of these INCREDIBLE, AMAZING structures to our local waters. I mean we already have increased the beauty of the otherwise AWFUL and HORRENDOUS CA landscape with the addition of over 5000 of these WONDERFUL structures in places such as the once TERRIBLE and HOT!!! Tehachapi pass or the previously BORING and otherwise USELESS land in the montezuma hills near rio vista. Now they are BEAUTIFUL and WONDERFUL places only because of the AWESOME and MAGNIFICENT wind turbines which have created SO MANY jobs in those areas. I mean it only makes sense to put them in the ocean where if they catch fire, they can just burn until they fall into the ocean and no more fire. BRILLIANT!!! Why would we not do this? It’s a NO BRAINER!!!


10

According to the Trump administration, “the Department of Transportation will be unleashing more reliable, traditional forms of energy and utilizing the nation’s bountiful natural resources to unleash American energy.”


In other words, more drilling for oil and natural gas, the one thing scientists and climatologists tell us we should not be doing. Failing to invest in new energy technology as the world sees ever more wildfires and floods is sheer folly. Had we invested in solar energy a decade or so ago we would have led the world in panel production. Instead, we have to import them from China.


I’ve always been optimistic about America’s future but today all I see is a declining nation that would rather give tax cuts to the uber-wealthy than invest in things that will make the nation better. Today, we can’t afford wind turbines, we can’t afford high speed trains, we can’t afford vaccines, we can’t afford to fund FEMA which is the very agency we could all be needing very soon.


-52

Ah yes FEMA. Another waste-ridden bureaucratic financial black hole. Let’s get rid of that completely as well. Glad you brought it up.


19

Sure, scrap the entire federal government and do away with any “bureaucratic financial hole” that actually provides a safety net for the unfortunate. Survival of the fittest. Let the churches take care of it. Archie Bunker mentality.


0

SMR’s. Nuclear is the future and natural gas, oil, coal the present . Solar and wind are unreliable grid busters !


14

We can’t afford the endless waste.


12

We can do better! Those batteries are NOT Green! Remember Moss Landing? They never did properly disclose the massive damage from that fire.


0

They’re actively making energy more expensive for you, while demonizing the only alternatives that could actually lower your costs in the long run. They’re not fighting a “scam”; they’re pulling off one, and you’re the one paving for it.


-52

Lmao, how’s Germany and UK energy cost these days? Has CA gotten cheaper with the flood of solar and wind?


36

I welcome this victory, but this industry is very corrupt and is addicted to BIG government money. They are stacked with an army of “consultants”, lobbyists, and other bottom feeders who suck our taxpayer monies. They just don’t go away. And in a few years, like a dormant cancer, they return. Thank you to the lawyers who have temporarily stopped this very bad idea.


51

They’re actively making energy more expensive for you, while demonizing the only alternatives that could actually lower your costs in the long run. They’re not fighting a “scam; they’re pulling off one, and you’re the one paying for it.


-51

What a relief to hear this absurd waste of grant money has been terminated. One more victory for us common sense Americans.


Good job saro and Mandy!!!


126

This is good news. It should make this a wash all things considered. This is about the same amount of money Trump is spending on a plane he plans to gift himself—Presidential Library. This project as contentious as it is was beneficial. We need power. The plane funding is coming from our troops. Republicans don’t bat an eyelash at this.


Refurbishment costs redirect defense funds. The Air Force is reportedly using funds from its Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program to help pay for the retrofit of a Boeing 747 donated by the Qatari royal family for Trump’s use.

Common sense has returned!


Could y’all be consistent for a change.


-49

YAY!!!


82

You go, Saro. Your family is a local treasure and your intentions are true and respective of our community. Thank you.


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