Pacific Lumber Ordered to Stop Logging

Freshwater, CA - Pacific Lumber must cease logging operations in the impaired Freshwater Creek and Elk River watersheds following a “Stay” order issued Wednesday by the California Water Resources Control Board.

The Order followed a hearing on a petition filed by Humboldt Watershed Council, the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), and the Sierra Club after the Regional Water Board allowed additional logging in the watersheds at a March 16 hearing in Santa Rosa. The additional logging was approved based on PL’s cries of financial hardship rather than science and law, and disregarded the damage suffered by local residents as a result of heavy logging.

PL CEO Robert Manne said in a press release that the “decision further failed to recognize the economic harm to our logging contractors who will suffer financial losses and be forced to lay off employees as a result of the Stay.”

State Board member and Hearing Officer Richard Katz wrote in the Order that “it is abundantly clear that harm has resulted from timber operations in the recent past.” He concluded that “financial harm to PALCO and its contractors is largely PALCO’s fault.”

Katz understood that conditions in Freshwater and Elk River are dramatically degraded, Paul Mason of the Sierra Club told KMUD news. “Even Pacific Lumber doesn’t deny that the current conditions in these watersheds are heavily impaired. The doomsday scenario – that if (PALCO doesn’t) get these 200 acres (its) entire empire comes crashing to the ground – is not credible.”

Kristi Wrigley, whose 100 year-old family farm is the first downstream neighbor to PL logging operations in Elk River, said the finding comes with a great relief. “The acknowledgement of the harm that we residents have been experiencing,” she told KUMD news “is so meaningful.” It was rewarding for the Board to recognize that PL brought its financial problems on itself, she said.

“We’re relieved,” said Sharon Duggen, attorney for EPIC. Pacific Lumber put itself in this financial position, she said. “It’s not just a consequence of the fact that they have moved money to Texas and to the parent company, Maxxam, it’s also the fact that they have logged unsustainably. Their livelihood, apparently, if you believe what they say, depends on a very small margin, and that’s not a sustainable operation,” she said. “They’ve brought this upon themselves because of business decisions and financial decisions. No company of this size that is of the claimed caliber that they assert would stand as a credible representative of good economics if their whole operation depends upon four timber harvest plans in two watersheds covering a few hundred acres. I’m relieved that the state water board agreed with us on that issue.”

PL will request an immediate appeal to the full State Water Board, according to a statement released Wednesday. CEO Manne wonders if the decision might be very disappointing to the Schwarzenegger administration. Governor Schwarzenegger appointed PL representative James Branham to the California Environmental Protection Agency, as well as three new Regional Water Board members whose vote to give PL more logging was overturned by the Stay order.

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