Business as usual in the Van Duzen

For the past six years I have been deeply involved in Van Duzen watershed issues with the Headwaters Agreement, the Habitat Conservation Plan, and the Pacific Lumber Co. Watershed Analysis. I am the community coordinator of a grass-roots organization, Friends of the Van Duzen, and I ran for Humboldt County Supervisor 2nd District with a platform emphasizing restoration and corporate responsibility.

In a move consistent with past actions, Pacific Lumber Co.'s final Watershed Analysis for Freshwater, Van Duzen and the Eel banned public comment from their July 29 meeting. Concerned residents in Freshwater and the Van Duzen have attempted to participate in what has become a grueling process for the past four to five years. Three years ago, in what was supposed to be a process with public input, residents of the Van Duzen were asked to sign letters of confidentiality to continue participating in the Watershed Analysis. They refused. In Freshwater, scientific evidence presented by the Redwood Science Lab and biologist Patrick Higgins was not given equal consideration. You can't debate "good science," you can only keep searching for it!

In last week's meeting, the public was limited to listening and asking simple questions about watershed prescriptions rather than addressing serious public concerns. In advance, I requested time on the agenda but was denied. The meeting was held without a proper public comment component, with only four days notice of the meeting, and without prior disclosure of relevant materials for discussion. It was a travesty of a supposed public process!

Information seems to be a one-way street. Throughout the process, citizens of the watersheds have had to continually invoke the Public Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act to gather data about the coho or the marbled murrelet. With both species hovering on the brink of extinction in the Van Duzen, properly functioning conditions are not being met. Science has taken a back seat to politics as conditions in Freshwater, Van Duzen and the Eel do not warrant significant buffer reductions in the critical riparian zones.

Under the guise of the Habitat Conservation Plan, Pacific Lumber Co. has accelerated their rate of harvest in the Van Duzen. Upon approval of the newest set of 2,912 acres of plans, 8,097 harvest acres of Pacific Lumber Co.'s 21,400 acres in the Van Duzen will be affected. This would impact 38 percent of the designated Watershed Analysis study area in only six to seven years, and have a negative impact on the beneficial uses of water in the Van Duzen watershed. With no Sustained Yield Plan, with no Option A long-range cumulative plan approved by the California Department of Forestry, and at their present rate of harvest, Pacific Lumber will liquidate 50 percent of their holdings in the Van Duzen in the first decade from 1999-2009.

Watershed Analysis and the Habitat Conservation Plan had the potential to establish long-range, attainable species protection with healthy riparian zones; a sustainable economic and ecological plan; and to develop a more positive, unique interaction between timber and environmental groups. Friends of the Van Duzen believes that it has failed on all accounts, and lodges serious objections to a process and an agreement that negatively impacts the beneficial uses of water in the Van Duzen, especially: sport fishing; recreational; rare, threatened or endangered species; wildlife habitat; marine habitat; and migration of aquatic organisms.

After Palco's four years of studying the Van Duzen 303(D) sediment impaired watershed; after a Palco/Tetra Tech study showing that 29 percent of sediment delivery in the Watershed Analysis area was management related; and after determining that 25 out of 33 geomorphic units studied on the Van Duzen did not meet properly functioning conditions for key indicator amphibians and reptiles due to fine sediment; the monitoring strategy for the Watershed Analysis now sets a new five-year plan to study sediment delivery.

The team of Palco and the agencies were unable to find a sediment threshold because everything is impaired and impacted! The Watershed Analysis and the Monitoring Plan seem to be at odds with the Basin Plan and the Clean Water Act, which prohibits excessive discharge of sediment into impaired waters.

In closing, according to law, meetings with state and federal officials require an agenda, and a public input component. Inadequate notice of this meeting and nondisclosure of relevant materials for discussion purposely blocks the exchange of information vital to the health of our North Coast watersheds.

Sal Steinberg is a member of Friends of the Van Duzen. He lives in Carlotta.