The Bay Area Forest Activist Newsletter, Winter 2003

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Once Again, the Fox Guards the Chicken Coop

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March 1, 2003


The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is the state agency responsible for protecting North Coast rivers, streams and bays from siltation and pollution caused by industrial logging on private and state lands. But on Dec. 10, the regional water board handed the timber industry an early Christmas present by extending a blanket exemption to timber operations from waste discharge and permitting requirements under the state Clean Water Act. The controversial waiver, which the regional water board initially adopted in 1987, was due to expire Jan. 1, 2003.

In 1988 the State Water Resources Control Board entered into a Managing Agency Agreement with the Board of Forestry and the California Dept. of Forestry, delegating to the state forestry agencies responsibility for ensuring that timber operations on state and private lands comply with the state Clean Water Act to protect water quality. That has been catastrophic for North Coast watersheds, endangered fish species, and local residents as the CDF and Board of Forestry have consistently refused to adopt adequate restrictions on waste discharges by logging companies. The CDF’s timber harvest rules have been harshly criticized as defective by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Environment Protection Agency. “Often CDF procedures are not adequate to protect water quality, but any action taken by the regional water board and Fish and Game is often ineffective because CDF is more powerful in the THP process,” said veteran Humboldt watershed activist Richard Gienger.

Incredibly, the regional water board determined that exempting the timber industry from waste discharge requirements for another five years “would not have a significant impact on the environment” even though the same board has listed 85% of North Coast watersheds as “impaired” from sediment pollution caused primarily by logging operations. But for a board appointed by a California governor who received $60,000 in campaign contributions last year from the timber industry it was simply business as usual. “It was politically expedient,” said Gienger. He noted that former North Coast congressman Doug Bosco, an advisor to Gov. Davis on forestry and water quality issues and former PL lobbyist, attended the entire hearing on the waiver.

The Environmental Protection and Information Center (EPIC), Earth Justice and the Humboldt Watershed Council filed suit Jan. 16 against the regional water board for extending the waiver without requiring an environmental impact report to assess the potential adverse impacts to watersheds.

The sedimentation, flooding, and landslides caused by PL’s reckless timber operatives and accelerated rate of harvest in sensitive watersheds would be alleviated if the regional water board fulfilled its regulatory mandate under the Clean Water Act and required PL and other North Coast logging companies to obtain NPDES discharge permits as it does for other industrial dischargers, said Earth Justice attorney Michael Lozeau. He noted that discharge permit requirements have gone a long way to cleaning up water pollution from oil refineries, sewage treatment plants, agricultural waste, and storm water runoff throughout California.

Independent Panel Blames Pacific Lumber for Polluting Five Humboldt Watersheds
Just a few weeks after the regional water board extended the waiver for timber companies a report commissioned for the board by an independent panel of scientists confirmed what North Coast environmentalists and watershed residents have been warning officials for over six years. The report focussed on five Humboldt County watersheds that were declared by agencies in 1998 to be especially impaired by sediment: Elk River, and Freshwater, Bear, Jordan, and Stitz Creeks. Elk River and Freshwater are especially impacted by both increased frequency and severity of flooding and are the two principal sources of groundwater for the Humboldt Bay region. The seven scientists were unanimous in their acknowledgement that Pacific Lumber’s accelerated rate of timber harvesting and logging on steep hillsides and stream banks has caused severe soil erosion, dumping tons of muddy sediment into watersheds, polluting drinking water supplies, and causing frequent flooding. The increased flooding risk in Freshwater and Elk River affects residents who have lived there for generations.

The Independent Scientific Review Panel, the members of which were approved by both Pacific Lumber and local watershed residents, warned that stream sedimentation, flooding, and landslides would worsen and cause permanent damage to the five watersheds if PL is permitted to continue logging at its current accelerated rate, which is equivalent to 500 to 600 clearcut acres a year. For recovery of watersheds like Freshwater and Elk River, a rate of closer to 60 to 80 equivalent clearcuts is believed to be able to be sustained by the watershed without catastrophic damage.

Along with sharply decreased logging on PL’s 211,000 acres of forest land, the panel recommended a suite of options to improve water quality including: decommission of logging roads, stabilization of landslides, reforesting and seeding of highly disturbed forest areas, removal of channel obstructions in streams, and construction of sediment detention basins. Moreover, the panel recommended that an independent watershed analysis and scientific peer review be conducted before the CDF approves any THP submitted by PL. The panel noted that PL’s sediment mitigations are untested and uncertain, and stressed that PL should not delay reducing its timber harvest rate nor delay taking immediate corrective actions while collecting data.

Tragically, following a contentious public hearing Jan. 23-24, the regional water board rejected the recommendations by the scientific panel and its own staff that it adopt interim restrictions on PL’s logging to protect water quality in the five sediment-impaired watersheds. The regional board’s staff reached similar conclusions in a September 2000 report but the board never adopted them and continued to give PL carte blanche to pollute North Coast watersheds. “The taxpayers paid over $100,000 for this report,” said Ken Miller of Salmon Forever. “The expectation was that water quality, at least, could be protected if experts looked at the problem from that perspective.”

The board buckled in under threats from PL executives that the timber company would have to lay off hundreds of employees, fire its logging contractors, and shut down its two operating sawmills for a $7 million a month loss if compelled to reduce its intensive timber harvest rate in Freshwater and Elk River. PL’s sawmills consume 15 million board feet a month, said PL president Robert Manne. “We must have these plans to survive. Trust the agencies to do their job,” he pleaded. The agencies he wants to “trust” are those implementing the HCP, increasing their harvest.

State forestry and wildlife officials rallied behind PL and cautioned the water board against intruding on their regulatory turf by restricting PL’s logging operations in the five watersheds. (Those agencies are legally bound to mutual defense of the Headwaters deal.) They contended that the scientific panel’s report and recommendations were “flawed” and ignored the “progress” made in implementing PL’s Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) approved by state and federal agencies as part of the 1999 Headwaters Forest deal. The independent panel had concluded that the HCP mitigations were untested and insufficient to ensure recovery of the impaired watersheds if PL’s current rate of logging is not reduced.

North Coast activists countered by showing dramatic aerial slides of the extensive damage to the five watersheds from December’s heavy storms and reminded the board of its legal mandate to protect the public interest rather than PL’s bottom line. Richard Gienger underscored the urgency by calling for a “UN inspection team to investigate the sources of mass destruction in North Coast watersheds”, meaning that an interagency and public team needs to conduct a full-bore evaluation to recover these watersheds.

EPIC and the Humboldt Watershed Council petitioned the regional water board to fine PL for violating a December 19 board order prohibiting sediment discharges from the company’s non-exempt logging operations in Freshwater. “This company has been ripping off the public from the get go,” said Cynthia Elkins of EPIC. “The company has extracted and liquidated millions and millions and millions of dollars out of these watersheds just in the last year."



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TOC for The Bay Area Forest Activist Newsletter, Winter 2003



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