No Happy New Year for Freshwater, Elk Watersheds

Maxxam PL's imported helicopter and falling crews are poised to finish off the few remaining uncut acres in these watersheds in short order, sealing our fates for the foreseeable future. In Freshwater, prime salmon spawning habitat is vulnerable.

This year, an Independent Science Review Panel hired by our Regional Water Board found that PL's HCP is degrading water quality, and that PL's models and mitigations are inappropriate, untested and irrelevant because of PL's rapid rate of logging.

Terry Tamminen, Cal-EPA secretary, describes Freshwater and Elk as "Brownfields," or Superfund sites. He and his sidekick Jim Branham want us taxpayers to pay to fix the streams to carry Branham's old boss' sediment to the Bay faster, where taxpayers pay again for dredging. Ironically, PL argues it must log more to pay for clean-up, causing further degradation. This is not restoration economics, it is corporate welfare.

PL's logging has transformed Freshwater and Elk from recovering watersheds to Superfund sites in 15 years. Little else has happened in these valleys besides PL's logging.

The Times-Standard referred to dueling science, but there is no duel, only independent scientists sounding alarms, and Maxxam's high-priced propaganda.

In August 1998, Maxxam mortgaged all of PL's timberlands to bondholders, committing PL to a rate of harvest that will liquidate all of PL's sawlog timber to finance the new debt, and siphon hundreds of millions to Hurwitz.

Prior to the refinancing, government scientists warned that PL's rate of cut would ruin five watersheds (Elk River, Freshwater, Bear, Jordan and Stitz Creeks), cause flooding and prevent recovery, violating our water laws.

The DA has charged that to get around these laws, PL submitted bogus science to regulators in order to maintain the destructive high harvest rates required for the refinance. PL has been caught doing the same thing before.

In 1995, a federal judge found PL guilty of submitting falsified documents in order to illegally log the virgin old-growth redwood grove called Owl Creek.

In 1998, CDF pulled PL's logging license, citing "willful ... concealment and profiting from the concealment" of the illegal cutting of ancient riparian redwoods in Freshwater, when "PALCO employee Dan Callahan learned of the violation but was told by a PALCO supervisor not to report the violation."

Tom Herman was PL resources manager during these crimes, including those charged by the DA, and is now, understandably, the attorney for the recall campaign.

PL President Manne claims that there is no link between the efforts to recall the DA and the PL lawsuit. Manne says: "The DA's case against PALCO will be decided in the courts!" Unless, of course, Mr. Gallegos is recalled and the lawsuit is dropped.

Meanwhile, PL has filed suit in Humboldt Superior Court to prevent Water Quality's access to information critical for water quality protection, as PL amps up their high-priced PR campaign with transparent lies about community, cooperation and "science."

Generations of our children will continue to pay the price for Maxxam's crimes and contempt, and our naïveté and cowardiceness.

Mr. Manne threatens the specter of "economic havoc" if PL's opponents succeed in "closing our company." He is willfully oblivious to the harm from allowing Maxxam's PL to continue.

If PL is prevented from destroying, or forced to fix, Freshwater and Elk, it's up to Maxxam whether PL closes its doors. Return of only a small portion of the money Hurwitz has siphoned from this community could support PL workers to rehabilitate these watersheds and help our neighbors.

Hurwitz may think he can duck this mess with bankruptcy like he did with Kaiser Aluminum and his Texas bank. Bankruptcy may not be a legal option if the DA's case holds Hurwitz accountable and liable. Our county would be far better off with a properly managed PL, without the Hurwitz siphon.

No wonder Maxxam's PL is funding a recall effort, with no other way to get to our "Untouchable" DA.

PL's future must rest in the hands, and pockets, of Maxxam, not on taxpayers' shoulders. It is up to us whether Hurwitz and his henchmen play us, once again, for suckers.

Remember, PL's crimes are not victimless.

###

Ken Miller, a retired emergency physician who owns timberland along the Mad River, is a co-founder of Humboldt Watershed Council and a director of Salmon Forever. He lives in McKinleyville.