An Honest Economy for Trinity County
Sixteen thousand people, a million acres of forest, and a river that's been robbed for sixty years
Trinity County is wild, rugged, and remote — most of it is national forest, making it the most federally dominated county in CA-2. Weaverville is the county seat, but residents live in tiny mountain communities scattered across the Trinity Alps. When the timber industry collapsed, Trinity lost its economic engine. Up to 90% of the Trinity River's flow has been diverted away from this watershed since 1963, devastating salmon runs and the Hoopa Valley Tribe's fishing economy. Today, residents drive hours for basic services and broadband is still a dream in much of the county. These three bills bring the salmon back, bring the timber jobs back, and finally give Trinity a seat at the table on its own federal land.
78% Federal Land. Zero Economic Plan. Until Now.
Trinity County is 78% federal land — the highest percentage in CA-2, called out by name in the platform as a finding that drives three separate bills. That means the federal government controls what happens to the forests, the rivers, and the economy. When Washington stopped managing the forests, the mills closed. When they diverted 90% of the Trinity River to the Central Valley starting in 1963, the salmon collapsed and the Hoopa Valley Tribe lost the fishing economy their treaty rights guaranteed. Trinity doesn't need another federal program that ignores it. It needs federal legislation written for places like this — with real funding, real jobs, and real water. These three bills deliver that.
From Seashore to Stockyard — CA-2 Food Security and Economic Resilience Act
They took 90% of Trinity's water. This bill starts putting it back — and gives the Hoopa Valley Tribe enforceable rights to what remains.
For more than sixty years, the Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley Project has diverted up to 90% of the Trinity River's flow south through a tunnel under the Trinity Divide to the Sacramento Valley. The result: salmon populations collapsed. The Hoopa Valley Tribe — whose treaty fishing rights depend on a healthy river — lost the fishery that sustained their community for millennia. Water temperatures rose so high that fish die in the river during summer. The all-bills platform names the Trinity River diversion explicitly as one of the key food and fisheries crises the platform addresses. This comprehensive food security and fishing economy bill funds Trinity River salmon habitat restoration from headwaters to estuary — spawning gravel replacement, riparian revegetation, and water temperature management across the entire watershed. It establishes Hoopa Valley Tribe fishing rights protections as the treaty obligations they are — not discretionary programs to be negotiated away. It provides commercial fishing recovery grants for tribal and non-tribal fishing families whose livelihoods depended on Trinity salmon runs. It creates accountability benchmarks for restoration progress so Trinity County residents can track whether the federal government is honoring its commitments. And it funds food hubs with cold storage in each CA-2 county — giving Trinity's ranchers and small producers the distribution infrastructure that currently requires driving to Redding or beyond.
CA-2 Comprehensive Affordability, Fair Housing, Education, and Community Health Act (CA-2 CAFE-CH)
Trinity is named in this bill. The forests need managing, Trinity needs jobs, and this bill solves both at once.
Trinity County is explicitly named as a priority county in Division M of this bill — the Redwood Country Rural Prosperity and Biomass Energy program — alongside Del Norte, Humboldt, and Mendocino. That name-in-statute status means Trinity is first in line, not competing against the entire state. The county is surrounded by the Trinity National Forest and the Shasta-Trinity National Forest — dangerously overgrown after decades of fire suppression created tinderbox conditions. Every summer the question isn't whether there will be fire, it's how bad. This bill funds the work and creates the jobs. Mass timber manufacturing grants up to $15,000,000 per facility can bring a 21st-century timber economy to Weaverville and the former mill communities — turning thinned material into high-value cross-laminated timber (CLT) and engineered wood products instead of leaving it to burn. The Biomass Circular Economy Program converts forest slash into biogas energy and compost, creating local jobs while reducing the fuel loads threatening Trinity's communities. Tri-Zonal Forest Management brings the right treatment to the right place: Zone 1 protects old-growth stands; Zone 2 thins the wildland-urban interface around Weaverville, Hayfork, and Lewiston; Zone 3 creates sustained-yield timber employment where harvest is appropriate. Indigenous cultural burning recognized as a sovereign right — honoring the Hoopa Valley Tribe, Wintu, and other nations whose fire knowledge kept these forests healthy for thousands of years. And 100/20 Mbps broadband to every home in Trinity County, because economic participation in 2026 requires internet access that large parts of the county still don't have.
Federal Lands Stewardship, Agricultural Resilience & Right of Return Act
When 78% of your county is owned by the federal government, you need a seat at the table where those decisions get made.
The platform calls it out directly: 78% of Trinity County is federal land — the highest concentration in CA-2 and one of the highest in California. The Shasta-Trinity National Forest, the Trinity Alps Wilderness, BLM grazing allotments, and other federal holdings mean that Washington administrators make the decisions that determine whether Trinity's ranchers have grazing access, whether timber harvest can happen, and how the rivers and trails that define the county's identity are managed — often with no meaningful local input. This bill changes that power dynamic fundamentally. It requires public hearings before any federal land management decision that materially affects agricultural stewards, ranchers, or rural communities — the transparency that has been systematically absent when grazing allotments are reduced or eliminated by administrative rule. It establishes a right of return for agricultural families displaced from federal lands, recognizing that multi-generational stewardship creates a legitimate claim to continued access. It mandates local coordination — Trinity County officials and ranchers must be consulted before, not after, major federal land decisions. It protects existing grazing allotments from being eliminated without Congressional authorization and full environmental review. And it formally recognizes tribal co-management authority for the Wintu, Hoopa Valley Tribe, and other nations whose ancestral relationship to Trinity's lands and waters predates federal ownership entirely — incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge alongside Western science in all management plans.
Every Bill Meets These Standards
Not campaign promises — drafted federal legislation tested against eight ironclad principles. Read the bills. Check the math. Hold me to it.
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