A long-running procedure by State Water Quality officials to address Pacific Lumber’s logging effects on whole watersheds was ground to a screeching halt late Tuesday, when a Superior Court Judge granted the timber corporation’s last-minute plea for a restraining order to stop a hearing that would take evidence of harm caused by logging. The Court’s intervention comes nearly two years after a decision by the Regional Water Board to draft permits called Watershed Wide Waste Discharge Requirements that would promote recovery of Freshwater Creek and Elk River - two North Coast drainages which are heavily clogged with Pacific Lumber’s logging-induced sediment. PL says the permits will cause them financial harm.

In court Tuesday, PL attorneys accused the water board of “parroting” local environmental and property rights groups, and threw out accusations of a conspiracy designed to “cripple” Pacific Lumber. Nick Stern, an attorney with the Attorney General’s office deflected the accusation, citing the State Water agency's April 27 report which shows that the timber giant’s precarious financial position “is the result of the risky business model that (Texas parent company) MAXXAM has chosen to follow.”

At dozens of meetings over the last eight years, watershed residents have expressed frustration at slow regulatory reaction to what they describe as on-going harm stemming from PL’s high logging rate, and say the permits are long over-due. Pacific Lumber’s claims in court that they are victims of unfair regulation added to that frustration. “Here is another cynical ploy by Maxxam to obstruct regulatory efforts to reign in the reckless overcutting that has been their standard practice since the hostile takeover of PL in 1985,” said Larry Evans, President of the Environmental Protection Information Center.

North Coast Water Board