◼ DA opines, gets feedback from McKinleyville Chamber - by KEITH EASTHOUSE/North Coast Journal Oct. 9, 2003
It wasn't an earthshaking meeting, just Humboldt County's DA out in the community keeping in touch with the people who elected him.
Or not.
The latter seemed most likely with this group, about 10 members of the McKinleyville Chamber of Commerce who spent an hour clustered around a table with Paul Gallegos at the Village Pantry restaurant on Central Avenue Monday afternoon. They were civil, even courteous, but the customary deference, even obsequiousness, normally accorded someone occupying Gallegos' powerful position was noticeably absent.
The elephant in the living room was the ongoing effort to force a recall election of Gallegos. Did the DA, as he talked with these folks and looked them in the eye, wonder how many of them want him ousted? Or has he compartmentalized things to such an extent that the issue never arose for him?
Regardless, he seemed his normal self: engaging, honest to a fault, combative when challenged. But still a little coltish, still a little unsure. Which would probably be the case even if there wasn't a recall movement afoot. Being elected DA is one thing; projecting the authority of the office takes time. Even Terry Farmer would admit that.
Marijuana was the first subject on the agenda; to be precise, the district attorney's new guidelines, which allow people who use pot for medical purposes to have up to three pounds. "Someone growing three pounds of pot is not a big problem compared to what we have in Humboldt County," Gallegos observed. "We have marijuana cultivation that's [on a scale of] thousands of pounds."
Gallegos said a long-term goal is greater uniformity in the medical pot guidelines that exist in California's counties. Right now, evidently, there's quite a bit of variation, although Gallegos said the guidelines in Humboldt, Del Norte and Sonoma are "identical."
Gallegos acknowledged that there has been resistance within the county to his guidelines. (He didn't specify from whom, but presumably he meant law enforcement.) "Some say their policy is still zero tolerance, but we are seeing some changes in some agencies, who say they are grateful for the clarity."
At this point, in what may have been the only time during the meeting when anyone directly praised the DA, one of the chamber members said they were "impressed" with the way Gallegos handled the medical marijuana issue.
The discussion turned next to meth. Artist Patricia Sennott wanted to know if Humboldt County was "making a dent" in tackling the drug problem. Gallegos didn't directly address the question, and instead talked about manpower limitations.
The testiest part of the meeting came when Ben Shepherd, who lost to Jill Geist in the 5th District supervisor's race last year, deftly used Gallegos' spiel about limited resources to challenge him about his fraud lawsuit against PL. "You said we have limited resources. Would putting one of our largest employers out of business help that?" Shepherd asked with an air of indignation.
Gallegos' initial response was, "I don't think we're going to put PL out of business." Then he added: "If as a result of their unlawful activities they are put in a position where they can't do business, that's a consequence they created themselves, not us."
A little later he asked, "Should I no longer prosecute marijuana cultivation because it may reduce jobs and money for this county?" To which Shepherd, clearly irritated, said, "I think you've carried that to an extreme far beyond my point."
The meeting soon broke up -- on a cordial note -- and everyone went his or her way. With, one suspects, their minds unchanged.
Showing posts with label PL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PL. Show all posts
1.02.2015
Fund for Gallegos' PL case
In The News
◼ Rush to judgment? - by KEITH EASTHOUSE & ANDREW EDWARDS/North Coast Journal March 20, 2003
The DA's case against PL is getting slammed before it reaches court
AT ONE POINT DURING LAST WEEK'S STORMY of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, County Counsel Tamara Falor tried to get the five supervisors back on point.
The focus here, she said, should be on the liability that might arise should the board approve District Attorney Paul Gallegos' request to bring in a San Francisco Bay Area firm to help in his lawsuit against the Pacific Lumber Co.
The reminder fell largely on deaf ears. Roger Rodoni had set the tone early on when he wondered whether the lead lawyer for the firm, Joe Cotchett, would want a park named after him after he put Pacific Lumber out of business. Bonnie Neely said flatly, almost impatiently, that she had serious doubts about the merits of Gallegos' case -- a sentiment that was echoed later on by Jimmy Smith. Throughout, the newest supervisor, Jill Geist, had a lot of questions, not all of them terribly relevant.
Only John Woolley seemed to recognize the obvious: that the emotional, overheated atmosphere that prevailed that day in the Supervisors' chambers -- packed as it was with agitated loggers and a much smaller number of environmentalists -- was not an ideal atmosphere in which to make a decision. The board, Woolley suggested, needed more time to chew on the proposal. He made a motion to reconsider it at the next meeting, March 25. It died for lack of a second.
Neely's motion to deny Gallegos' request, already on the table, was then voted on. It passed on a 4-1 vote, with Woolley the odd man out.
So ended one of the more contentious, and perhaps fateful, supervisors' meetings in memory. The upshot was that Gallegos and Assistant District Attorney Tim Stoen, the lawyer in charge of the case, are on their own. While Pacific Lumber has large legal resources at its disposal, the DA will have to rely on his own staff and whatever resources he can bring to bear with his $2.7 million budget.
As is well known by now, the DA is accusing Pacific Lumber of concealing critical information during the 1999 Headwaters negotiations. They say the deception enabled the company to log as many as 100,000 redwoods on unstable slopes that it otherwise wouldn't have been able to get at. They are seeking as much as $250 million in damages.
Gallegos and Stoen could come back before the Supervisors and try again to win their approval to enter into a contractual agreement with the Cotchett firm. But barring some unforeseen development that would enhance the case before it goes before a judge, there doesn't seem to be much point. Geist, perhaps, might vote differently, but Smith, Rodoni and Neely clearly have their minds made up.
While Gallegos and Stoen put a brave face on things last week, vowing to push ahead, the fact of the matter is that they lost the services of a firm that has extensive expertise in precisely the field of law they are litigating in the PL case: corporate fraud.
Referring to a high-profile savings and loan case in which Cotchett won a $1.7 billion settlement, Stoen said, not without a trace of bitterness: "That's the kind of legal talent turned down by the board."
An influential letter
To a large extent, Gallegos and Stoen were done in by a letter from the California Department of Fish and Game.
Addressed to Stoen, it arrived in the DA's office on March 10, the day before the supervisors' meeting. So late did it arrive that Stoen didn't even see it until the next morning, when he was about to go before the board. The supervisors also received copies.
When Stoen read it, and saw the assertion that "there are errors in the facts presented" in the DA's case, it didn't make his day, to put it mildly. "I felt blindsided," he said later.
The letter was a major reason the supervisors voted not to engage the services of Cotchett's firm -- despite the fact that the letter said nothing about the issue before the board, the hiring of outside counsel.
"In terms of hiring outside counsel, that's not our business," said Fish and Game Conservation Program Manager Mark Stopher, speaking from his Redding office a couple of days after the meeting. "We're not in a position to decide if the DA needs help or not."
Supervisor Smith said that in discussions with Fish and Game Regional Manager Don Koch and CDF Director Andrea Tuttle the weekend before the meeting, and through reading material forwarded by their attorneys, he had come to the conclusion that the county would be put at significant risk if the Cotchett firm was hired.
"[The California Departments of Forestry, and Fish and Game] said they were going to step up to the plate [to defend PL]," Smith said in an interview last Thursday. "I don't think it was ever perfectly clear what the cost could be to the county to take on the state and federal government, henceforth my vote was no."
It may sound like Smith was second guessing the DA on the merits of bringing a fraud case against PL. Not so, Smith said.
"If the DA chooses, and I believe him to be a man of good character, he can make that choice: that's his domain. I would never, ever second guess him on that."
Why did Fish and Game comment on pending litigation (in which its representatives might be called to testify) in the first place?
Stephanie Tom Coupe, senior staff counsel with Fish and Game and the author of the letter to Stoen, said the department wanted to make sure he knew that Fish and Game was already defending the Headwaters deal in a legal challenge brought by the Environmental Protection Information Center, a Garberville group that has long been a thorn in PL's side.
"We wanted him to understand that," Coupe said in a telephone interview from her Sacramento office. "We tried to communicate that we wanted to avoid a situation in which we would be testifying against Humboldt County."
According to Stopher, the department sent the letter because Stoen wasn't listening to reason in their first and only meeting on March 7, the Friday before the supervisors' meeting.
"We (Fish and Game) came away from that not sure whether or not they were interested in hearing what we had to say," Stopher said. "I thought maybe Mr. Stoen was already vested [in the case] and wouldn't adequately consider our comments if they were only put verbally."
A Fish and Game source said Stoen became hostile when factual errors in his 45-page legal complaint were spelled out at the meeting.
Two subsequent conference calls on the 13th and 18th were called off by the DA's office without any reason given.
"My sense is that he considers us now to be the enemy," Stopher said.
The target was Reid
The factual information recounted in the letter doesn't go to the heart of the case, alleged fraud committed by PL. But it does attack some important peripheral points.
The suit alleges that PL concealed information contained in a report on the Jordan Creek watershed, located above Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and as a result successfully persuaded then CDF Director Richard Wilson to approve a less stringent set of logging restrictions known as "Alternative 25."
That alternative, as well as the one Wilson originally chose, "Alternative 25a," are part of a key document in the Headwaters deal, the Sustained Yield Plan, which imposes limits on PL's logging rates over the next 100 years.
Coupe's letter stated that "The CDF director's decision to approve Alternative 25 did not provide additional access for PL to harvest timber on unstable areas. It did provide the ability to harvest additional timber from portions of the ownership which are not unstable."
If that's true, it cuts Gallegos' case off at the knees because he's alleging that PL's deception enabled it to access timber in areas prone to sliding.
But Coupe's statement conflicts with one contained in a letter signed by two high-ranking officials of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Dated Feb. 27, 1999, right at the time when Wilson was being pressured to approve Alternative 25, the letter said the following: "According to information received from PL, most of the difference in available harvest volume in the two alternatives is derived from the amount which can be harvested in mass wasting areas of concern." In other words, unstable areas.
Alternative 25, it turns out, does indeed allow for selective logging on unstable slopes if a geologist can figure out a way to make it work without producing undue amounts of sediment. Alternative 25a prohibits logging on unstable slopes, plain and simple.
So the DA's complaint has merit?
That would seem logical, were it not for another Headwaters document, the Habitat Conservation Plan -- designed to protect endangered species -- which trumps the Sustained Yield Plan. The HCP does not allow harvesting on slopes that have more than a high risk of producing excess sediment.
So the DA's case doesn't have merit?
That, too, would seem logical were it not for another possibility: the HCP itself is flawed. According to Ken Miller, a vehement PL critic, there is disagreement to this day, even with the restrictions imposed by the HCP, about what constitutes a stable area and what constitutes an unstable area. That uncertainty might have been avoided had the work of Leslie Reid, a leading expert on the cumulative impacts of logging, carried more weight. Reid, of the U.S. Forest Service's Redwood Sciences Laboratory in Arcata, studied the Bear Creek watershed immediately adjacent to the Jordan Creek basin in the late 1990s. She ended up recommending a methodology to determine sustainable logging levels that Pacific Lumber blanched at because it was too restrictive. It was to prevent Reid's "methodology" from being generalized to Jordan Creek and the rest of the 211,000 acres under PL ownership that PL carried out its deception.
That, at least, is what Stoen says in his complaint.
Public input thwarted
Stoen, for his part, essentially called the Fish and Game letter a red herring.
"Frankly, it doesn't address the fundamental issue," Stoen said.
Which is, he said, the apparent fact that when Wilson ditched Alternative 25a in favor of Alternative 25, he did so not knowing that Pacific Lumber had, at the eleventh hour, given correct data on Jordan Creek to a mid-level CDF official in Fortuna. Had Wilson known that, he would have recirculated a document called the Environmental Impact Report to various state and federal agencies and to the public for input. That input, in turn, could have led to stricter logging restrictions. But he didn't know about the new data (the official in Fortuna, according to Stoen's complaint, never passed it up the chain of command) and as a result, the report was never recirculated.
Therefore, according to Stoen, the report, which the Headwaters deal hinged on, was fraudulent.
"If the EIR was fraudulent, then there's no right to cut any trees," Stoen said.
Stoen said he was angry that Fish and Game chose to release its letter just before last week's supervisors meeting. And he doesn't think that was an accident.
"It was a clever ploy to get the supervisors nervous," he said.
__________________ __________________
Tree-sitters taken down
by ANDREW EDWARDS
PACIFIC LUMBER CO. MADE GOOD ON ITS PROMISE TO TAKE DOWN TREE-SITTERS FROM their perches in Freshwater this week, launching an operation that's supposed to last several days.
On Monday long time tree-sitter Remedy and her neighbor Wren were hauled down in a day-long operation, involving six climbers, more than 15 Humboldt County Sheriffs (many working on their day off), seven correctional staff from the Humboldt County Jail to book prisoners, at least four California Highway Patrol officers and tens of activists.
Greenwood Heights Road, an offshoot of Kneeland Road that winds up a wooded mountainside just northeast of Eureka, was blocked off by Pacific Lumber personnel for several hours on Monday. The company's justification for the closure, which involved no public notification? An encroachment permit it had applied for last year.
The aim was apparently to prevent activists from gathering at the base of trees that tree-sitters occupied. But even residents were turned back. Only press, PL workers and law enforcement were allowed.
Humboldt County Supervisor John Woolley received about 30 angry calls from his constituents and looked into the matter. After consulting with Public Works (which manages county roads) Woolley concluded that the encroachment, which was solely for logging, didn't apply to tree-sitter extraction, and county attorneys notified PL that the barricades would have to come down.
"It's only there for commercial logging processes," Woolley said, adding that he was worried about lawsuits. "You could see the future, if you're dealing with an illegal encroachment permit."
County Counsel Tamara Falor said PL must give Public Works two-week notice of any road closure. Such notice was not given in this case, Falor said.
Sheriff's deputies, unaware of the wrangling behind the scene, went to work early enforcing the permit. They walked a group of activists that had gathered at the base of the tree down the road, until one of the more vocal ones, Alexander Carpenter, aka Four Winds, 26, laid down in the road and was arrested.
"I got so tired of being pushed down the hill by billy clubs I laid down and let them arrest me," Carpenter said. "I was a guilty man there."
Carpenter was back on the scene as soon as he got out of jail.
The climbers, led by the always cheerful Eric Schatz of Schatz Tree Service, threw ropes into the trees and went up after the tree-sitters, three climbers per tree. Hours passed and nothing happened. A cold wind blew.
After four o'clock the road was opened and activists began to stream back. They were herded past the tree-sits, contained by a wall of deputies.
Around 5 p.m., after hours of apparently pleasant, if fruitless, coaxing by Schatz, Remedy was brought down; they had cut the chains that anchored her in her lock box.
"If the chains had been shorter they wouldn't have been able to do that. It was kind of a faux pas on my part," Remedy said in an interview Tuesday.
The mood was emotional. People were crying. When Remedy appeared and was driven away in a cop car the crowd surged forward, blocking the road. Deputies forced them back. Finally they sat down on the road and chanted.
When Wren came down things got ugly. Activists were shoved back by batons and the crowd was pepper-sprayed. Several people were arrested.
That night, both trees were reoccupied, Remedy's by three women and Wren's as well. In the case of Wren's tree, activists reportedly climbed up PL's own rope, which had been left overnight.
The next day the climbers came to the heavily populated lower village but were only successful in removing one tree-sitter, Annapurna. She was unhurt. Her tree was immediately reoccupied by tree-sitters travelling high up on traverse lines.
In an apparent gesture of frustration at the end of the day, PL employees surrounded the tree, still occupied, and girdled it with a chainsaw, removing the bark from around the base of the tree to kill it.
Activists on the road rushed the workers screaming that the tree was occupied, almost as if in pain. Some scrambled to protect surrounding trees but the workers didn't do anything more.
After two days, three tree-sitters had been arrested, three trees reoccupied, one road reopened, one tree girdled, 11 ground-based activists arrested. Stay tuned. The battle is supposed to continue all week.
__________________ __________________
◼ Fund for Gallegos' PL case - North Coast Journal March 20, 2003
Stymied in his attempt to hire an outside law firm for his suit against the Pacific Lumber Co., District Attorney Paul Gallegos may get a bit of help from local residents.
A Redway man has started a fund to help defray the county's legal expenses in connection with the lawsuit. Jared Rossman, a landlord and property manager, sent out an e-mail urging people to "put your money where your mouth is" and donate to his "Citizens' Fund for Equal Justice."
"I was so upset by the way the Board of Supervisors handled this," he said. They could have shown support for "this independent DA." Instead, they missed an opportunity. "If the county officials are going to drop the ball then the citizens are going to have to pick it up," he said. "When the law is applied evenhandedly, the truth will win out, and that's what America was built on."
The fund was established at the Community Credit Union of Southern Humboldt in Garberville. It was unclear at press time whether it is legal for a citizens' group to earmark private donations for use by the county in a specific lawsuit.
Meanwhile, another local man has started a group called the Alliance for Ethical Business, a "citizens advocacy group concerned about corporate crime," said founder Richard Salzman. He said his group would support Gallegos' efforts to discover the truth in the Pacific Lumber case, and is organizing an event for April 9 at the Arcata Community Center in which Gallegos and Assistant DA Tim Stoen will answer questions about the lawsuit.
__________________ __________________
NOTE: Gallegos' lawsuit never made it past demurrer, though he appealed it all the way to the California Supreme Court, where he was laughed out of the room, and they denied his appeal.
The suit was a case of activists succeeding in getting an elected official they had backed to publicly file their private lawsuit, a public prosecution. But they were armed only with bumper sticker rhetoric and a layman's understanding of the issue, activist pipe dreams, as it were.
Their attempts to bring in their big gun, Bob Cotchett, were thwarted, when the Board of Supervisors refused to allocate the funds to pay his high fees. The activists concocted all kinds of scenarios where the fines per tree would pay for the lawyer, and even devised a "Trust Fund' scheme, in which they plotted to solicit, accept and use special interest money to privately fund a public prosecution.
They failed. And failed, and failed again. It seems in the end, Mr. Easthouse should eat his words.
The media also failed in this entire debacle. Many reporters followed Gallegos around with their tongues hanging out, and their glowing, loving reports must embarrass them in hindsight.
It's time for the record to be corrected.
◼ Rush to judgment? - by KEITH EASTHOUSE & ANDREW EDWARDS/North Coast Journal March 20, 2003
The DA's case against PL is getting slammed before it reaches court
AT ONE POINT DURING LAST WEEK'S STORMY of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, County Counsel Tamara Falor tried to get the five supervisors back on point.
The focus here, she said, should be on the liability that might arise should the board approve District Attorney Paul Gallegos' request to bring in a San Francisco Bay Area firm to help in his lawsuit against the Pacific Lumber Co.
The reminder fell largely on deaf ears. Roger Rodoni had set the tone early on when he wondered whether the lead lawyer for the firm, Joe Cotchett, would want a park named after him after he put Pacific Lumber out of business. Bonnie Neely said flatly, almost impatiently, that she had serious doubts about the merits of Gallegos' case -- a sentiment that was echoed later on by Jimmy Smith. Throughout, the newest supervisor, Jill Geist, had a lot of questions, not all of them terribly relevant.
Only John Woolley seemed to recognize the obvious: that the emotional, overheated atmosphere that prevailed that day in the Supervisors' chambers -- packed as it was with agitated loggers and a much smaller number of environmentalists -- was not an ideal atmosphere in which to make a decision. The board, Woolley suggested, needed more time to chew on the proposal. He made a motion to reconsider it at the next meeting, March 25. It died for lack of a second.
Neely's motion to deny Gallegos' request, already on the table, was then voted on. It passed on a 4-1 vote, with Woolley the odd man out.
So ended one of the more contentious, and perhaps fateful, supervisors' meetings in memory. The upshot was that Gallegos and Assistant District Attorney Tim Stoen, the lawyer in charge of the case, are on their own. While Pacific Lumber has large legal resources at its disposal, the DA will have to rely on his own staff and whatever resources he can bring to bear with his $2.7 million budget.
As is well known by now, the DA is accusing Pacific Lumber of concealing critical information during the 1999 Headwaters negotiations. They say the deception enabled the company to log as many as 100,000 redwoods on unstable slopes that it otherwise wouldn't have been able to get at. They are seeking as much as $250 million in damages.
Gallegos and Stoen could come back before the Supervisors and try again to win their approval to enter into a contractual agreement with the Cotchett firm. But barring some unforeseen development that would enhance the case before it goes before a judge, there doesn't seem to be much point. Geist, perhaps, might vote differently, but Smith, Rodoni and Neely clearly have their minds made up.
While Gallegos and Stoen put a brave face on things last week, vowing to push ahead, the fact of the matter is that they lost the services of a firm that has extensive expertise in precisely the field of law they are litigating in the PL case: corporate fraud.
Referring to a high-profile savings and loan case in which Cotchett won a $1.7 billion settlement, Stoen said, not without a trace of bitterness: "That's the kind of legal talent turned down by the board."
An influential letter
To a large extent, Gallegos and Stoen were done in by a letter from the California Department of Fish and Game.
Addressed to Stoen, it arrived in the DA's office on March 10, the day before the supervisors' meeting. So late did it arrive that Stoen didn't even see it until the next morning, when he was about to go before the board. The supervisors also received copies.
When Stoen read it, and saw the assertion that "there are errors in the facts presented" in the DA's case, it didn't make his day, to put it mildly. "I felt blindsided," he said later.
The letter was a major reason the supervisors voted not to engage the services of Cotchett's firm -- despite the fact that the letter said nothing about the issue before the board, the hiring of outside counsel.
"In terms of hiring outside counsel, that's not our business," said Fish and Game Conservation Program Manager Mark Stopher, speaking from his Redding office a couple of days after the meeting. "We're not in a position to decide if the DA needs help or not."
Supervisor Smith said that in discussions with Fish and Game Regional Manager Don Koch and CDF Director Andrea Tuttle the weekend before the meeting, and through reading material forwarded by their attorneys, he had come to the conclusion that the county would be put at significant risk if the Cotchett firm was hired.
"[The California Departments of Forestry, and Fish and Game] said they were going to step up to the plate [to defend PL]," Smith said in an interview last Thursday. "I don't think it was ever perfectly clear what the cost could be to the county to take on the state and federal government, henceforth my vote was no."
It may sound like Smith was second guessing the DA on the merits of bringing a fraud case against PL. Not so, Smith said.
"If the DA chooses, and I believe him to be a man of good character, he can make that choice: that's his domain. I would never, ever second guess him on that."
Why did Fish and Game comment on pending litigation (in which its representatives might be called to testify) in the first place?
Stephanie Tom Coupe, senior staff counsel with Fish and Game and the author of the letter to Stoen, said the department wanted to make sure he knew that Fish and Game was already defending the Headwaters deal in a legal challenge brought by the Environmental Protection Information Center, a Garberville group that has long been a thorn in PL's side.
"We wanted him to understand that," Coupe said in a telephone interview from her Sacramento office. "We tried to communicate that we wanted to avoid a situation in which we would be testifying against Humboldt County."
According to Stopher, the department sent the letter because Stoen wasn't listening to reason in their first and only meeting on March 7, the Friday before the supervisors' meeting.
"We (Fish and Game) came away from that not sure whether or not they were interested in hearing what we had to say," Stopher said. "I thought maybe Mr. Stoen was already vested [in the case] and wouldn't adequately consider our comments if they were only put verbally."
A Fish and Game source said Stoen became hostile when factual errors in his 45-page legal complaint were spelled out at the meeting.
Two subsequent conference calls on the 13th and 18th were called off by the DA's office without any reason given.
"My sense is that he considers us now to be the enemy," Stopher said.
The target was Reid
The factual information recounted in the letter doesn't go to the heart of the case, alleged fraud committed by PL. But it does attack some important peripheral points.
The suit alleges that PL concealed information contained in a report on the Jordan Creek watershed, located above Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and as a result successfully persuaded then CDF Director Richard Wilson to approve a less stringent set of logging restrictions known as "Alternative 25."
That alternative, as well as the one Wilson originally chose, "Alternative 25a," are part of a key document in the Headwaters deal, the Sustained Yield Plan, which imposes limits on PL's logging rates over the next 100 years.
Coupe's letter stated that "The CDF director's decision to approve Alternative 25 did not provide additional access for PL to harvest timber on unstable areas. It did provide the ability to harvest additional timber from portions of the ownership which are not unstable."
If that's true, it cuts Gallegos' case off at the knees because he's alleging that PL's deception enabled it to access timber in areas prone to sliding.
But Coupe's statement conflicts with one contained in a letter signed by two high-ranking officials of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Dated Feb. 27, 1999, right at the time when Wilson was being pressured to approve Alternative 25, the letter said the following: "According to information received from PL, most of the difference in available harvest volume in the two alternatives is derived from the amount which can be harvested in mass wasting areas of concern." In other words, unstable areas.
Alternative 25, it turns out, does indeed allow for selective logging on unstable slopes if a geologist can figure out a way to make it work without producing undue amounts of sediment. Alternative 25a prohibits logging on unstable slopes, plain and simple.
So the DA's complaint has merit?
That would seem logical, were it not for another Headwaters document, the Habitat Conservation Plan -- designed to protect endangered species -- which trumps the Sustained Yield Plan. The HCP does not allow harvesting on slopes that have more than a high risk of producing excess sediment.
So the DA's case doesn't have merit?
That, too, would seem logical were it not for another possibility: the HCP itself is flawed. According to Ken Miller, a vehement PL critic, there is disagreement to this day, even with the restrictions imposed by the HCP, about what constitutes a stable area and what constitutes an unstable area. That uncertainty might have been avoided had the work of Leslie Reid, a leading expert on the cumulative impacts of logging, carried more weight. Reid, of the U.S. Forest Service's Redwood Sciences Laboratory in Arcata, studied the Bear Creek watershed immediately adjacent to the Jordan Creek basin in the late 1990s. She ended up recommending a methodology to determine sustainable logging levels that Pacific Lumber blanched at because it was too restrictive. It was to prevent Reid's "methodology" from being generalized to Jordan Creek and the rest of the 211,000 acres under PL ownership that PL carried out its deception.
That, at least, is what Stoen says in his complaint.
Public input thwarted
Stoen, for his part, essentially called the Fish and Game letter a red herring.
"Frankly, it doesn't address the fundamental issue," Stoen said.
Which is, he said, the apparent fact that when Wilson ditched Alternative 25a in favor of Alternative 25, he did so not knowing that Pacific Lumber had, at the eleventh hour, given correct data on Jordan Creek to a mid-level CDF official in Fortuna. Had Wilson known that, he would have recirculated a document called the Environmental Impact Report to various state and federal agencies and to the public for input. That input, in turn, could have led to stricter logging restrictions. But he didn't know about the new data (the official in Fortuna, according to Stoen's complaint, never passed it up the chain of command) and as a result, the report was never recirculated.
Therefore, according to Stoen, the report, which the Headwaters deal hinged on, was fraudulent.
"If the EIR was fraudulent, then there's no right to cut any trees," Stoen said.
Stoen said he was angry that Fish and Game chose to release its letter just before last week's supervisors meeting. And he doesn't think that was an accident.
"It was a clever ploy to get the supervisors nervous," he said.
Tree-sitters taken down
by ANDREW EDWARDS
PACIFIC LUMBER CO. MADE GOOD ON ITS PROMISE TO TAKE DOWN TREE-SITTERS FROM their perches in Freshwater this week, launching an operation that's supposed to last several days.
On Monday long time tree-sitter Remedy and her neighbor Wren were hauled down in a day-long operation, involving six climbers, more than 15 Humboldt County Sheriffs (many working on their day off), seven correctional staff from the Humboldt County Jail to book prisoners, at least four California Highway Patrol officers and tens of activists.
Greenwood Heights Road, an offshoot of Kneeland Road that winds up a wooded mountainside just northeast of Eureka, was blocked off by Pacific Lumber personnel for several hours on Monday. The company's justification for the closure, which involved no public notification? An encroachment permit it had applied for last year.
The aim was apparently to prevent activists from gathering at the base of trees that tree-sitters occupied. But even residents were turned back. Only press, PL workers and law enforcement were allowed.
Humboldt County Supervisor John Woolley received about 30 angry calls from his constituents and looked into the matter. After consulting with Public Works (which manages county roads) Woolley concluded that the encroachment, which was solely for logging, didn't apply to tree-sitter extraction, and county attorneys notified PL that the barricades would have to come down.
"It's only there for commercial logging processes," Woolley said, adding that he was worried about lawsuits. "You could see the future, if you're dealing with an illegal encroachment permit."
County Counsel Tamara Falor said PL must give Public Works two-week notice of any road closure. Such notice was not given in this case, Falor said.
Sheriff's deputies, unaware of the wrangling behind the scene, went to work early enforcing the permit. They walked a group of activists that had gathered at the base of the tree down the road, until one of the more vocal ones, Alexander Carpenter, aka Four Winds, 26, laid down in the road and was arrested.
"I got so tired of being pushed down the hill by billy clubs I laid down and let them arrest me," Carpenter said. "I was a guilty man there."
Carpenter was back on the scene as soon as he got out of jail.
The climbers, led by the always cheerful Eric Schatz of Schatz Tree Service, threw ropes into the trees and went up after the tree-sitters, three climbers per tree. Hours passed and nothing happened. A cold wind blew.
After four o'clock the road was opened and activists began to stream back. They were herded past the tree-sits, contained by a wall of deputies.
Around 5 p.m., after hours of apparently pleasant, if fruitless, coaxing by Schatz, Remedy was brought down; they had cut the chains that anchored her in her lock box.
"If the chains had been shorter they wouldn't have been able to do that. It was kind of a faux pas on my part," Remedy said in an interview Tuesday.
The mood was emotional. People were crying. When Remedy appeared and was driven away in a cop car the crowd surged forward, blocking the road. Deputies forced them back. Finally they sat down on the road and chanted.
When Wren came down things got ugly. Activists were shoved back by batons and the crowd was pepper-sprayed. Several people were arrested.
That night, both trees were reoccupied, Remedy's by three women and Wren's as well. In the case of Wren's tree, activists reportedly climbed up PL's own rope, which had been left overnight.
The next day the climbers came to the heavily populated lower village but were only successful in removing one tree-sitter, Annapurna. She was unhurt. Her tree was immediately reoccupied by tree-sitters travelling high up on traverse lines.
In an apparent gesture of frustration at the end of the day, PL employees surrounded the tree, still occupied, and girdled it with a chainsaw, removing the bark from around the base of the tree to kill it.
Activists on the road rushed the workers screaming that the tree was occupied, almost as if in pain. Some scrambled to protect surrounding trees but the workers didn't do anything more.
After two days, three tree-sitters had been arrested, three trees reoccupied, one road reopened, one tree girdled, 11 ground-based activists arrested. Stay tuned. The battle is supposed to continue all week.
◼ Fund for Gallegos' PL case - North Coast Journal March 20, 2003
Stymied in his attempt to hire an outside law firm for his suit against the Pacific Lumber Co., District Attorney Paul Gallegos may get a bit of help from local residents.
A Redway man has started a fund to help defray the county's legal expenses in connection with the lawsuit. Jared Rossman, a landlord and property manager, sent out an e-mail urging people to "put your money where your mouth is" and donate to his "Citizens' Fund for Equal Justice."
"I was so upset by the way the Board of Supervisors handled this," he said. They could have shown support for "this independent DA." Instead, they missed an opportunity. "If the county officials are going to drop the ball then the citizens are going to have to pick it up," he said. "When the law is applied evenhandedly, the truth will win out, and that's what America was built on."
The fund was established at the Community Credit Union of Southern Humboldt in Garberville. It was unclear at press time whether it is legal for a citizens' group to earmark private donations for use by the county in a specific lawsuit.
Meanwhile, another local man has started a group called the Alliance for Ethical Business, a "citizens advocacy group concerned about corporate crime," said founder Richard Salzman. He said his group would support Gallegos' efforts to discover the truth in the Pacific Lumber case, and is organizing an event for April 9 at the Arcata Community Center in which Gallegos and Assistant DA Tim Stoen will answer questions about the lawsuit.
NOTE: Gallegos' lawsuit never made it past demurrer, though he appealed it all the way to the California Supreme Court, where he was laughed out of the room, and they denied his appeal.
The suit was a case of activists succeeding in getting an elected official they had backed to publicly file their private lawsuit, a public prosecution. But they were armed only with bumper sticker rhetoric and a layman's understanding of the issue, activist pipe dreams, as it were.
Their attempts to bring in their big gun, Bob Cotchett, were thwarted, when the Board of Supervisors refused to allocate the funds to pay his high fees. The activists concocted all kinds of scenarios where the fines per tree would pay for the lawyer, and even devised a "Trust Fund' scheme, in which they plotted to solicit, accept and use special interest money to privately fund a public prosecution.
They failed. And failed, and failed again. It seems in the end, Mr. Easthouse should eat his words.
The media also failed in this entire debacle. Many reporters followed Gallegos around with their tongues hanging out, and their glowing, loving reports must embarrass them in hindsight.
It's time for the record to be corrected.
6.17.2010
Corporate 'right to lie'? Ludicrous
◼ link
Corporate 'right to lie'? Ludicrous
David Cobb
Article Launched: 11/25/2006 02:13:35 PM PST
Last week, Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos filed a brief in a pending fraud lawsuit against Maxxam Corp./Pacific Lumber.
The trial judge dismissed the case last year, asserting in part that Maxxam Corp. is a “person” with a constitutionally protected “right to lie” when petitioning their elected representatives. It's hard to imagine a more ludicrous argument. It would be laughable if the circumstances weren't so damned serious.
At the crux of the fraud lawsuit are allegations that the corporation intentionally submitted fraudulent and deceptive data in order to secure timber plans. At this point we cannot know if these claims are true. And as a result of the outrageous and ridiculous idea that a corporation is a “person” vested with constitutional rights, we may never know the truth.
Let's quickly review what we do know.
We know that after our elected district attorney filed the fraud lawsuit, Maxxam Corp. responded by contributing over $250,000 in an attempt to recall him.
We know that without this obscene amount of money, the effort to collect signatures for the effort would have failed miserably, because recall supporters were unable to collect sufficient numbers of signatures with volunteers.
We know that Maxxam's representatives originally insisted that they were not contributing to the recall -- which we now know was an intentional misrepresentation. We know that the people of Humboldt overwhelming rejected this heavy-handed corporate effort.
We also know that the courts and judges can be wrong.
Courts once held that indigenous people were not legally “persons.” Courts once ruled that slavery was acceptable and that women had “lesser” rights than men. Courts once ruled that trade unions were a criminal conspiracy and that Jim Crow segregation laws did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. We know that courts and judges can be utterly and profoundly wrong.
And we know that the doctrine of “Corporate Personhood” is wrong.
To quote from his order, the judge specifically acknowledged that he was basing his dismissal on “a constitutional privilege... of the right of citizens to petition their government.” He also writes that “the concept of representation depends upon the ability of the people to make their wishes known to their representatives.”
Think about that. This judge is equating a corporation filing timber harvest plans with a citizen petitioning elected representatives.
The U.S. Constitution is designed to protect flesh-and-blood people when they are exercising their political and civil rights.
That's good thing, because concentrated power and decision-making authority is a source of potential tyranny.
Of course, a corporation is itself a source of concentrated wealth and power. And corporations are increasingly wielding more decision-making authority over our lives.
And aren't elected officials elected by people to represent people? Or is the judge tacitly admitting that our government is increasingly representing corporations?
To be sure, every employee of a corporation has the right to sign petition recalls and to lobby their government. But they hold these political rights by virtue of their status as human persons in a democracy. No corporation can legitimately claim these political rights.
This unfolding scenario is just another example of the fact that unelected and unaccountable corporate CEOs have hijacked our government. They make public policy, but pretend that their decisions are entirely "private" corporate matters beyond the scope of our authority. And the courts are increasingly conspiring with the corporate elite to legitimize this usurpation.
So I join with others across the county in thanking District Attorney Gallegos for appealing the dismissal of the lawsuit. But in the court of public opinion, Maxxam has already lost.
It's time for “We the People” to assert our fundamental right to self-governance. It's time to abolish the doctrine of “Corporate Personhood.”
David Cobb was the Green Party candidate for president in 2004 and currently works for Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County. He can be reached at david@duhc.org.
Corporate 'right to lie'? Ludicrous
David Cobb
Article Launched: 11/25/2006 02:13:35 PM PST
Last week, Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos filed a brief in a pending fraud lawsuit against Maxxam Corp./Pacific Lumber.
The trial judge dismissed the case last year, asserting in part that Maxxam Corp. is a “person” with a constitutionally protected “right to lie” when petitioning their elected representatives. It's hard to imagine a more ludicrous argument. It would be laughable if the circumstances weren't so damned serious.
At the crux of the fraud lawsuit are allegations that the corporation intentionally submitted fraudulent and deceptive data in order to secure timber plans. At this point we cannot know if these claims are true. And as a result of the outrageous and ridiculous idea that a corporation is a “person” vested with constitutional rights, we may never know the truth.
Let's quickly review what we do know.
We know that after our elected district attorney filed the fraud lawsuit, Maxxam Corp. responded by contributing over $250,000 in an attempt to recall him.
We know that without this obscene amount of money, the effort to collect signatures for the effort would have failed miserably, because recall supporters were unable to collect sufficient numbers of signatures with volunteers.
We know that Maxxam's representatives originally insisted that they were not contributing to the recall -- which we now know was an intentional misrepresentation. We know that the people of Humboldt overwhelming rejected this heavy-handed corporate effort.
We also know that the courts and judges can be wrong.
Courts once held that indigenous people were not legally “persons.” Courts once ruled that slavery was acceptable and that women had “lesser” rights than men. Courts once ruled that trade unions were a criminal conspiracy and that Jim Crow segregation laws did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. We know that courts and judges can be utterly and profoundly wrong.
And we know that the doctrine of “Corporate Personhood” is wrong.
To quote from his order, the judge specifically acknowledged that he was basing his dismissal on “a constitutional privilege... of the right of citizens to petition their government.” He also writes that “the concept of representation depends upon the ability of the people to make their wishes known to their representatives.”
Think about that. This judge is equating a corporation filing timber harvest plans with a citizen petitioning elected representatives.
The U.S. Constitution is designed to protect flesh-and-blood people when they are exercising their political and civil rights.
That's good thing, because concentrated power and decision-making authority is a source of potential tyranny.
Of course, a corporation is itself a source of concentrated wealth and power. And corporations are increasingly wielding more decision-making authority over our lives.
And aren't elected officials elected by people to represent people? Or is the judge tacitly admitting that our government is increasingly representing corporations?
To be sure, every employee of a corporation has the right to sign petition recalls and to lobby their government. But they hold these political rights by virtue of their status as human persons in a democracy. No corporation can legitimately claim these political rights.
This unfolding scenario is just another example of the fact that unelected and unaccountable corporate CEOs have hijacked our government. They make public policy, but pretend that their decisions are entirely "private" corporate matters beyond the scope of our authority. And the courts are increasingly conspiring with the corporate elite to legitimize this usurpation.
So I join with others across the county in thanking District Attorney Gallegos for appealing the dismissal of the lawsuit. But in the court of public opinion, Maxxam has already lost.
It's time for “We the People” to assert our fundamental right to self-governance. It's time to abolish the doctrine of “Corporate Personhood.”
David Cobb was the Green Party candidate for president in 2004 and currently works for Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County. He can be reached at david@duhc.org.
10.27.2009
Wingnut Jeanette Jungers
http://web.archive.org/web/20040413233316/www.eurekareporter.com/Stories/op-04020401.htm
4/2/04 Sheriff’s Office Too
Cozy With MAXXAM
By Jeanette Jungers
Brenda Gainey of the Sheriff's Office, calls lawyer Ed Denson's comment that Sheriff's Office has a "cozy" relationship with MAXXAM/ PALCO "reckless and profoundly disturbing.”
When it comes to objective fairness and the ability to offer "equal protection under the law,” I find the relationship between the Sheriff's Office and MAXXAM/ PALCO to be "reckless and profoundly disturbing.”
Consider the following:
1. PALCO security chief, Carl Anderson, is a former member of the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department.
2. MAXXAM/PALCO and the Sheriff's Office planned the Freshwater tree-sit extraction for weeks. The Sheriff’s Office never verified whether MAXXAM owned the trees. It has yet to be proven.
3. The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office enforced an illegal road closure to aid MAXXAM in removing two long-term tree- sitters. The Sheriff's Office cited a permit allowing closure for eight hours. In reality, the permit allowed 20 minutes, and required 24-hour prior notice. No notice was given.
4. On March 17, 2003, sheriff’s deputies indiscriminately pepper-sprayed into a peaceful crowd of forest advocates containing women with small children in their arms.
5. Dozens of law-enforcement personnel were present but refused to witness one particularly dangerous extraction, even when frustrated residents requested them to.
6. MAXXAM provided lunch to the Sheriff's deputies during this incident.
7. Sheriff's deputies forced a woman to watch the 1,200-year-old redwood tree she risked her life to save be viciously limbed for no legitimate harvest purpose before taking her to jail.
8. Witnesses to the destruction were arrested on the orders of Carl Anderson. Charges were later dropped, as they had broken no law. One such person was a journalist with a legitimate press pass.
9. Sheriff's deputies served a lawsuit to everyone arrested on behalf of MAXXAM. Several people were dropped from the lawsuit after a judge ruled they had been prejudicially served.
10. When Judge Golden put a court-ordered "stay" on PALCO’s logging, it ignored it. Residents who presented the order to loggers were reported to the Sheriff's Department. When officers were asked to enforce the order, they responded that Sheriff's Office would not enforce the order unless Judge Golden issued a contempt-of-court ruling.
11. A deputy who hauled away one protester during the stay order announced he was a good citizen because he was "removing trash from the woods."
12. Many old-growth trees harvested along Greenwood Heights Road stood at the edge of the public road in what appears to be the easement or public right of way. Did our Sheriff’s Office help MAXXAM to steal trees that belong to the county?
13. A month before the Freshwater tree-sit extractions, I thought my wallet had been stolen from my car. I called the Sheriff's Office and was told my wallet was no doubt stolen by a "dirty Earth Firster!," and that the Sheriff’s Office would "take care of them" soon.
14. MAXXAM paid for the recall ad featuring a sheriff in uniform.
These are just a few points that have led people to perceive an inappropriate relationship between Humboldt County Sheriff’s and MAXXAM/ PALCO.
(Jeanette Jungers is a Eureka school teacher who is currently "Fasting for the Forest" in solidarity with Naomi Wagner, a 58-year-old grandmother of five who is serving a 40-day jail sentence for hugging an old-growth tree in defense of the Freshwater watershed.)
4/2/04 Sheriff’s Office Too
Cozy With MAXXAM
By Jeanette Jungers
Brenda Gainey of the Sheriff's Office, calls lawyer Ed Denson's comment that Sheriff's Office has a "cozy" relationship with MAXXAM/ PALCO "reckless and profoundly disturbing.”
When it comes to objective fairness and the ability to offer "equal protection under the law,” I find the relationship between the Sheriff's Office and MAXXAM/ PALCO to be "reckless and profoundly disturbing.”
Consider the following:
1. PALCO security chief, Carl Anderson, is a former member of the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department.
2. MAXXAM/PALCO and the Sheriff's Office planned the Freshwater tree-sit extraction for weeks. The Sheriff’s Office never verified whether MAXXAM owned the trees. It has yet to be proven.
3. The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office enforced an illegal road closure to aid MAXXAM in removing two long-term tree- sitters. The Sheriff's Office cited a permit allowing closure for eight hours. In reality, the permit allowed 20 minutes, and required 24-hour prior notice. No notice was given.
4. On March 17, 2003, sheriff’s deputies indiscriminately pepper-sprayed into a peaceful crowd of forest advocates containing women with small children in their arms.
5. Dozens of law-enforcement personnel were present but refused to witness one particularly dangerous extraction, even when frustrated residents requested them to.
6. MAXXAM provided lunch to the Sheriff's deputies during this incident.
7. Sheriff's deputies forced a woman to watch the 1,200-year-old redwood tree she risked her life to save be viciously limbed for no legitimate harvest purpose before taking her to jail.
8. Witnesses to the destruction were arrested on the orders of Carl Anderson. Charges were later dropped, as they had broken no law. One such person was a journalist with a legitimate press pass.
9. Sheriff's deputies served a lawsuit to everyone arrested on behalf of MAXXAM. Several people were dropped from the lawsuit after a judge ruled they had been prejudicially served.
10. When Judge Golden put a court-ordered "stay" on PALCO’s logging, it ignored it. Residents who presented the order to loggers were reported to the Sheriff's Department. When officers were asked to enforce the order, they responded that Sheriff's Office would not enforce the order unless Judge Golden issued a contempt-of-court ruling.
11. A deputy who hauled away one protester during the stay order announced he was a good citizen because he was "removing trash from the woods."
12. Many old-growth trees harvested along Greenwood Heights Road stood at the edge of the public road in what appears to be the easement or public right of way. Did our Sheriff’s Office help MAXXAM to steal trees that belong to the county?
13. A month before the Freshwater tree-sit extractions, I thought my wallet had been stolen from my car. I called the Sheriff's Office and was told my wallet was no doubt stolen by a "dirty Earth Firster!," and that the Sheriff’s Office would "take care of them" soon.
14. MAXXAM paid for the recall ad featuring a sheriff in uniform.
These are just a few points that have led people to perceive an inappropriate relationship between Humboldt County Sheriff’s and MAXXAM/ PALCO.
(Jeanette Jungers is a Eureka school teacher who is currently "Fasting for the Forest" in solidarity with Naomi Wagner, a 58-year-old grandmother of five who is serving a 40-day jail sentence for hugging an old-growth tree in defense of the Freshwater watershed.)
12.05.2008
EarthJustice Client - Humboldt Watershed Council
Ahh, the activist web - the plot does thicken...
Cases
California Logging Clean Water Exemption
In Brief: The Clean Water Act is meant to clean up the nation's waterways. In some areas, however, exemptions have been issued that have hampered the goal. One such is in California, where three water boards have ruled that loggers are exempt. Earthjustice is challenging the exemptions in court.
Staff:
Clients:
Environmental Protection Information Center
Humboldt Watershed Council
Updated: April 20, 2004
Case #11095
12.16.2007
SF Chron = May 20, 2003 - Northern logging plan tossed
Northern logging plan tossed
Humboldt pact doesn't ensure environmental protection, judge rules
Jane Kay, Suzanne Herel, Chronicle Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
A judge has struck down Pacific Lumber Co.'s state-approved 100-year logging plan, handing environmentalists a major victory in their fight to reduce cutting on the company's 211,000 acres in Humboldt County.
The tentative ruling, released Monday in Eureka by visiting Superior Court Judge John Golden, found that the state Forestry Department hasn't ensured that the plan would protect endangered species and watersheds.
Those protections were a key part of the deal for public acquisition of Headwaters Forest, 7,500 acres of environmentally sensitive old-growth redwoods.
The Environmental Protection Information Center in Garberville, the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers of America sued the state in 1999 -- 30 days after the state and federal government signed the $480 million deal to buy the ancient redwood groves from Pacific Lumber.
Part of the purchase, brokered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and called a historic model for future agreements, was the 100-year logging plan designed to preserve habitat for the imperiled marbled murrelet and the northern spotted owl, prevent excessive logging and protect streams.
In the suit, the groups charged that the state departments of Forestry and Fish and Game didn't follow the state Forest Practices Act, Endangered Species Act and Environmental Quality Act as well as the Fish and Game Code when they reviewed and approved the long-term logging plan and other permits.
The suit asked the court to rescind the Forestry Department's approval of the plan and prohibit the agency from approving any Pacific Lumber logging operations that rely upon the plan.
The judge tentatively ruled that the petition filed by environmental and union groups should be granted. Attorneys from both sides can submit legal points to the judge before he issues a final decision after June 30.
PROBLEMS WITH APPROVAL
Among other things, Golden said the Forestry Department approved two plans with different contents, which isn't authorized by law, hence "the approval never became effective."
Stanley Young, a spokesman for the state Resources Agency, which oversees the Forestry and Fish and Game departments, declined to comment until "we read the decision."
Pacific Lumber President Robert Manne issued a statement saying the company disagrees with the judge and "will be considering all legal options."
"It is impossible to speculate on the effects of this decision; however, they could clearly have a significant impact on our company," said Manne.
"We will continue to implement the stringent environmental protections required under (the plan) and continue to harvest on a sustainable basis while these matters are resolved in the courts," Manne said.
Sharon Duggan, Berkeley lawyer for the environmental groups, was elated at the news and said the judge's ruling basically said that "the whole state side of the deal crumbled."
"I believe that he found it compelling when the project manager of the Department of Forestry testified at the beginning of the (March) trial, under penalty of perjury, that Pacific Lumber had never provided to the state the consolidated (plan), required in the Headwaters deal," said Duggan.
For four years, Pacific Lumber has been logging at a high rate without the required long-term plan in place, she said.
PACIFIC LUMBER LOGGING
"During this time, they have cut in old growth at such an accelerated pace that, in our opinion, it has harmed the habitat of the sensitive species, the marbled murrelet, the northern spotted owl and coho salmon," Duggan said.
The main thrust now, Duggan said, is "what are these resource agencies going to do in the next day or week to carry out their statutory obligations to protect public resources?"
Paul Mason, forest representative for the California Sierra Club and a close observer of the Headwaters negotiations, recalls that the conditions of the 100-year logging plan were key negotiating points and at one time held up the deal.
The steelworkers joined the suit because Pacific Lumber needed to show that "its logging wouldn't result in boom-bust employment levels and would benefit the community," said Dave Foster, district director of District 11 of the United Steelworkers.
Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos, who recently has come under fire from the logging industry for filing a related suit against Pacific Lumber, said Monday's decision could have a tremendous impact on the logging industry -- and his own lawsuit.
Gallegos' suit alleges that Pacific Lumber submitted plans containing fraudulent harvesting data to government agencies.
"Every tree that's been harvested was unlawfully harvested because the (plan) should never have been granted," he said.
If Pacific Lumber has logged trees unlawfully, he said, the courts will have to decide how, and whom, to compensate -- a potentially expensive proposition in a sagging economy.
The decision calls into question the role of the state in regulating logging, he said.
"These are the people who are supposed to be policing these organizations," he said. "Who owns the police? The people or the organizations?"
E-mail the writers at jkay@sfchronicle.com and sherel@sfchronicle.com.
Humboldt pact doesn't ensure environmental protection, judge rules
Jane Kay, Suzanne Herel, Chronicle Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
A judge has struck down Pacific Lumber Co.'s state-approved 100-year logging plan, handing environmentalists a major victory in their fight to reduce cutting on the company's 211,000 acres in Humboldt County.
The tentative ruling, released Monday in Eureka by visiting Superior Court Judge John Golden, found that the state Forestry Department hasn't ensured that the plan would protect endangered species and watersheds.
Those protections were a key part of the deal for public acquisition of Headwaters Forest, 7,500 acres of environmentally sensitive old-growth redwoods.
The Environmental Protection Information Center in Garberville, the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers of America sued the state in 1999 -- 30 days after the state and federal government signed the $480 million deal to buy the ancient redwood groves from Pacific Lumber.
Part of the purchase, brokered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and called a historic model for future agreements, was the 100-year logging plan designed to preserve habitat for the imperiled marbled murrelet and the northern spotted owl, prevent excessive logging and protect streams.
In the suit, the groups charged that the state departments of Forestry and Fish and Game didn't follow the state Forest Practices Act, Endangered Species Act and Environmental Quality Act as well as the Fish and Game Code when they reviewed and approved the long-term logging plan and other permits.
The suit asked the court to rescind the Forestry Department's approval of the plan and prohibit the agency from approving any Pacific Lumber logging operations that rely upon the plan.
The judge tentatively ruled that the petition filed by environmental and union groups should be granted. Attorneys from both sides can submit legal points to the judge before he issues a final decision after June 30.
PROBLEMS WITH APPROVAL
Among other things, Golden said the Forestry Department approved two plans with different contents, which isn't authorized by law, hence "the approval never became effective."
Stanley Young, a spokesman for the state Resources Agency, which oversees the Forestry and Fish and Game departments, declined to comment until "we read the decision."
Pacific Lumber President Robert Manne issued a statement saying the company disagrees with the judge and "will be considering all legal options."
"It is impossible to speculate on the effects of this decision; however, they could clearly have a significant impact on our company," said Manne.
"We will continue to implement the stringent environmental protections required under (the plan) and continue to harvest on a sustainable basis while these matters are resolved in the courts," Manne said.
Sharon Duggan, Berkeley lawyer for the environmental groups, was elated at the news and said the judge's ruling basically said that "the whole state side of the deal crumbled."
"I believe that he found it compelling when the project manager of the Department of Forestry testified at the beginning of the (March) trial, under penalty of perjury, that Pacific Lumber had never provided to the state the consolidated (plan), required in the Headwaters deal," said Duggan.
For four years, Pacific Lumber has been logging at a high rate without the required long-term plan in place, she said.
PACIFIC LUMBER LOGGING
"During this time, they have cut in old growth at such an accelerated pace that, in our opinion, it has harmed the habitat of the sensitive species, the marbled murrelet, the northern spotted owl and coho salmon," Duggan said.
The main thrust now, Duggan said, is "what are these resource agencies going to do in the next day or week to carry out their statutory obligations to protect public resources?"
Paul Mason, forest representative for the California Sierra Club and a close observer of the Headwaters negotiations, recalls that the conditions of the 100-year logging plan were key negotiating points and at one time held up the deal.
The steelworkers joined the suit because Pacific Lumber needed to show that "its logging wouldn't result in boom-bust employment levels and would benefit the community," said Dave Foster, district director of District 11 of the United Steelworkers.
Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos, who recently has come under fire from the logging industry for filing a related suit against Pacific Lumber, said Monday's decision could have a tremendous impact on the logging industry -- and his own lawsuit.
Gallegos' suit alleges that Pacific Lumber submitted plans containing fraudulent harvesting data to government agencies.
"Every tree that's been harvested was unlawfully harvested because the (plan) should never have been granted," he said.
If Pacific Lumber has logged trees unlawfully, he said, the courts will have to decide how, and whom, to compensate -- a potentially expensive proposition in a sagging economy.
The decision calls into question the role of the state in regulating logging, he said.
"These are the people who are supposed to be policing these organizations," he said. "Who owns the police? The people or the organizations?"
E-mail the writers at jkay@sfchronicle.com and sherel@sfchronicle.com.
10.16.2007
Lumbering to uncertainty
Company town on brink as timber firm struggles
For the past 140 years, tiny Scotia's fate has been inextricably linked to the fortunes of Pacific Lumber, long the North Coast's largest employer, landowner and community benefactor. But the futures of both are up in the air as Pacific Lumber goes through bankruptcy protection proceedings in Texas courts.
SCOTIA -- The workday begins in this old logging town the same way it has since the 1880s.
A shrieking whistle pierces the early morning quiet, calling lumberjacks, millwrights and engineers to another day sawing redwoods and Douglas fir.
The whistle is indiscriminate, a sort of townwide alarm clock, sounding through every home and building. It's a reassuring sound to residents of this company town.
But some worry about it going silent.
Over the past 140 years, no company has been more important to the economic fortunes of this region than Pacific Lumber. It has long been the North Coast's largest employer, landowner and community benefactor.
But all that history is up in the air with Pacific Lumber in bankruptcy protection.
To satisfy its creditors, the company is proposing a vast sale of its Northern California timberlands. It has reduced its once-formidable work force by more than half and shuttered mills in Carlotta and Fortuna.
The bankruptcy protection proceedings are playing out 2,100 miles away in courtrooms in Texas, home of Pacific Lumber's parent company, MAXXAM Inc.
But up here, in communities tucked among majestic redwoods, residents are wrestling with controversy sparked by the grip Pacific Lumber maintains on local politics -- influence that defies the company's decline. And small communities are left wondering how life will change if the company they depend on becomes a shadow of its former self.
"There is life after Pacific Lumber," said Erin Dunn, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce in nearby Fortuna. "But we're going to have to adapt."
A way of life is threatened
No town's fate is linked more closely to the company's than Scotia.
Scotia became Pacific Lumber's logging camp in 1883. Today, it is home to the corporate headquarters and about 275 workers and their families.
To save money, Pacific Lumber wants to sell Scotia and shed responsibility for providing the town everything from security to home repair services.
That would end a relationship that has survived fires, floods, the Great Depression and tree-sitting environmentalists. One leading proposal is to have Scotia annexed by Rio Dell, the gritty logging town across the Eel River. Another is for the town to become its own municipality. Either way, townspeople would have to buy their homes or pay higher monthly rents.
The demise of Scotia would mark the end of one of the last company towns in the United States and close a way of life for those like the Rogers family.
Joe and Deb Rogers, lifelong Pacific Lumber employees, raised two sons here: Matt is going to college on a Pacific Lumber scholarship. Grant lives just a couple of blocks away with his wife and son -- the third Rogers generation to live in Scotia -- and works for the local post office and swimming pool.
"We're unsettled," Joe Rogers said. He recently switched from carpentry to a more secure job in the power plant after watching too many longtime co-workers leave the company.
When Joe Rogers started, "you felt like if you got a job and did your part, you could retire here," he said. "We don't have that feeling anymore."
Company town in every way
Scotia today looks very much like it did in pictures from a hundred years ago. The mill looms over everything. Towering redwoods, growing atop coastal mountains, frame the shot. The town's perpendicular streets are lined with bungalows, each painted in a pale green, brown, yellow or blue, the preferred palate of a discerning former company president's wife.
Scotia seems to have everything a little town needs -- a bar, a restaurant, a theater, a supermarket. It has two churches. The town does not, however, have a mayor, a town council or any other form of local government.
Water, electricity and sewer are provided by Pacific Lumber free of charge. Residents call on the company to solve just about any problem.
If the faucet breaks, they call the company. If the garbage man is late, they call the company. If they're unhappy with their kid's homework lesson, they can take matters up with the town's elementary school principal -- whose check is signed by the company.
Grant Rogers says he wouldn't want to have grown up anywhere else. He fondly recalls sneaking down by the mill as a kid, watching the lumberjacks roll logs and high-pressure hoses peel bark off giant redwoods like an orange. He remembers how the company would christen the town's Christmas tree -- a redwood high atop a nearby mountain, draped in lights, beaming down like an angel over Scotia.
Now 24, Rogers is among a handful of young people who decided to stay in Scotia. The running joke is that bright young people like him are the region's leading export -- after marijuana. For Rogers, the choice to stay was easy. Thanks to a company subsidy, he pays around $600 a month for his three-bedroom home, far less than what he'd pay in nearby Fortuna.
Fortuna is also vulnerable
Pacific Lumber's struggles are rippling through Fortuna, as well. With a population of 11,000, Fortuna is the economic center of Pacific Lumber country. The company had a major presence in the city until last year, when it laid off 100 workers and abandoned a mill that had been running 30 years.
During the mill's heyday, sawdust would waft from the mill and collect on the roof of Clif Clendenen's cider works shop across the street.
"It was a major avuncular presence in town," Clendenen said, noting that the company routinely supported community groups and charities. "None of us wanted to see it go away."
Now Fortuna must decide what to do with the abandoned mill, on 75 acres in the city's business district.
Pacific Lumber reached an agreement in 2003 to sell the site to Roseville shopping center developer Fred Katz for $10 million. As part of the deal, the parties anticipated the city of Fortuna would kick in $7 million in redevelopment funds.
But the arrangement, details of which surfaced in Pacific Lumber's bankruptcy protection case, has been controversial: Fortuna's mayor, John Campbell, received money from Pacific Lumber while the city discussed the site's future as part of its general plan update.
Campbell, a top Pacific Lumber executive for 30 years before taking public office in 2004, has collected $519,000 in deferred compensation since 2004 and is owed $400,000 from the company, money he did not disclose on his statements of economic interest. Campbell's deal with Pacific Lumber also required he do nothing "adverse to the company's interest."
The Humboldt Watershed Council, a longtime foe of Pacific Lumber, calls the arrangement a conflict of interest and has asked the state Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate. FPPC officials won't say if they've taken up the case.
"The idea that I'm getting paid to make decisions on a proposal is just ridiculous," Campbell said. "If I feel uncomfortable or other council members feel uncomfortable, I might then recuse myself."
Hopes still pinned on company
In Scotia, there's hope Pacific Lumber can survive bankruptcy protection and remain a viable employer.
Critics blame the company's financial troubles on Charles Hurwitz, the Texas tycoon whose MAXXAM Inc. bought Pacific Lumber in 1986.
That deal altered the reputation of a company once known for its community patronage and its protection of the region's famous forests.
Hurwitz's aggressive logging in the 1990s inspired action by environmentalists and led the state and federal governments to take the rare step of purchasing an ancient stand of redwoods from the company.
Although Pacific Lumber's public relations department declined interview requests, Hurwitz has said environmental constraints pushed Pacific Lumber into bankruptcy protection.
Whatever courts and the corporate titans decide, Grant Rogers said he and his neighbors will make do.
Scotia has endured change before. He recalled, for instance, how town residents rallied to rebuild the shopping center after a fire in the early '90s. He said it is the town's ability to stick together through change that provides its sense of identity.
That, and its whistle.
Comments from the site:
MidwayMac at 5:38 AM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: Lumbering to uncertainty
My introduction to this marvelous sight was in1952, when I travelled up 101 to visit a relative in Oregon. As I viewed the marvelous scenery, there was Rio Dell and Scotia, the latter, a tiny spot that was on it's own. Then the invasion of a profiteer and the tree-huggers; has pretty much shut every thing down. What's laughable is that private forest owners are logging their forests and selling their products at steep costs. The waste products, such as slash, that's what's left when trees are fallen, run thru a saw mill, the bark and a few inches of good wood remain. Even this by-product is put to good use, by shredding it and pressing it into materials which can be used for building siding and roof underlayment.
borealfox at 8:35 AM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: How Sad
Once more the demise of something that has worked for so long so well, that's the sad part of it.
We used to stop at there in the early 1950's when it took forever to go up Highway 101 through all the little towns on the way to Blue Lake. Half of my family worked for the timber companies, and they paid well while everyone lived well too. And now this too is going to pass. Damn.
tallone934 at 8:35 AM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: The end result
Since we have a huge industry of eco maniacal organizations dedicated to stopping all human endeavors regarding the use of the environment this is the natural conclusion. Non profits ripping off the taxpayers to fund fulltime naysaying employees are hard to beat. The productive people and the taxpayers get to fund both ends of these results. Tax money to maintain all these properties and tax money for the unemployed workers of the timber companies. You do-gooders better not complain when you are paying twenty bucks for a four foot board for that deck of yours.
ad50nt at 10:01 AM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: don't blame environmentalists for scotia's demise
Although the old PL did cut old growth, it was widely regarded by all as one of the best managed timber companies anywhere until Bush-buddy Hurowitz took over the company by means that were barely legal (if legal at all - we'll never know after he scrambled the financial books). Many observers predicted the sorry outcome we see today: screwed forests, screwed workers, screwed investors and screwed taxpayers. Only the principal in this crime, Charles Hurowitz, continues to laugh all the way to the bank back in Houston or Geneva or wherever he hides his money. This was a textbook corporate raid designed to a set plan: liquidate an asset purchased with someone else's money via junk bonds, and then go bankrupt leaving the bondholders with nothing but hot air. Environmentalists didn't do this, Texas money men did.
billbillbillbillbillbill at 10:08 AM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: ahem, tallone934:
Critics blame the company's financial troubles on Charles Hurwitz, the Texas tycoon whose MAXXAM Inc. bought Pacific Lumber in 1986.
That deal altered the reputation of a company once known for its community patronage and its protection of the region's famous forests.
Hurwitz's aggressive logging in the 1990s inspired action by environmentalists and led the state and federal governments to take the rare step of purchasing an ancient stand of redwoods from the company.
stevenchr at 11:46 AM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: triple the cut and the end is near
there's no mention what so ever that when hurwitz hostilely took over the family run business & tripled the cut rate in 1985, that he'd put this company out of business. he bought the company for the price he got from the headwaters scam & still owes more money for the acquisition of the com. what happend to the half billion he got for the postage stamp headwaters forest? had hurwitz let the company run along as it did before he acquired it, this scenario wouldn't even exist. but the greedy bastard sent all the monies made to houston & never paid down the debt from the original acquisition. this writing was on the wall in the late eighties after hurwitz took it over. you can log in perpetuity if you manage the forest for that, but this clown from houston let his pocket book drive the logging rate. it has absolutely nothing to do with the enviros, this is purely a business decision to run this company into the ground. yes, the environment/fisheries suffered when he tripled the cut rate
Mtrent2 at 1:07 PM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: Glad
There are plenty of differrent types of materials people can use to build with these days. Now the forest will be able to grow back. It's called progress. Move forward.
dwh at 2:20 PM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: It's both
Blame both greed and environmentalism(which in some ways is one and the same).
ridinger at 3:39 PM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: A Scotia Native
I now live in Elk Grove, but I grew up in Scotia. My folks still live there. It breaks my heart to see what has happenned. Yes, the greedy Texan and the idiotic envornmentalists are mostly to blame. I just can't help wonder why the Murphy family that founded Scotia didn't maintain majority interest in the stock to prevent this from happenning. We had state of the art gymnasiums, swimming pools, weight rooms, baseball fields, etc... We'd fish in the Eel River and ride bikes on the local trails. We'd build forts and swim all day long. The company used to bring in semi-trucks full of Christmas presents for all the children. On Halloween you would knock on every door. You always felt safe--we had the run of the town. I wish every kid had the experience I had. From the time I was 9, my folks would give me a grocery list send me on my way down the street to Hoby's Market. We had responsibilities & freedoms today's kids will never know. How do we take it back & turn it around?
sirrebral at 4:09 PM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: Sadly, this story was not a surprise...
I'm one of the area's "exports". I grew up in a town between the Fortuna and Carlotta mills, attended Fortuna High, and left to go to Sac State. Even as a 17-year old high school student, I could see that the MAXXAM acquisition spelled trouble for PL's future.
Just a few years after the MAXXAM took over PL, Hurwitz was cutting more than trees; he was slashing spending. In the past, PL gave a scholarship to *every* college-bound child of a company employee, but shortly after I left in 1989, the company announced an end to that program.
Increasing production while reducing expenses can make a company more profitable. However, In MAAXAM-controlled PL's case, this was done to the extreme, resulting in short-term financial gains at the expense of the demise of the company. Like an out-of-state landlord, Hurwitz was a disinterested party who was more concerned with profits than the impact to the citizens of the area.
Walter_E_Wallis at 5:11 PM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote:
Tax laws make family ownership of any business impossible.Tax laws also encourage debt. Blame MAXXAM for Scotia, but who do you blame for the rest of the Pacific Northwest logging towns thet closed down after the tree huggers went nuts?
billbillbillbillbillbill at 12:45 AM PST Sunday, October 14, 2007 wrote:
I don't know why I bother replying to you stupid hillbillies. You're clearly functionally illiterate.
It doesn't matter if "tree-huggers" prevent these quick-buck companies from clear-cutting the last one percent of our forests. Either logging ends now, with just a few trees left, or it ends a few years from now, with no trees left. Either way, corporate rapine destroys these communities.
Thankfully, there are still a few sensible people left in the world who see that saving at least one tiny part of our natural heritage is more important than some Texas billionaire buying another yacht.
pondo at 9:17 PM PST Sunday, October 14, 2007 wrote: A sorry story!
As a former residence of the area it hurts to read what is happening in Scotia!! As some before me have stated, it is not the tree huggers who caused this, it was the con man from Texas!! If it had been managed as in the past it would have been able to continued to have existed for years!! But no, triple cut and run with the money.
Good Luck to the people of Scotia, hope something happens to change things around for them!!
"Fortuna's mayor, John Campbell, received money from Pacific Lumber while the city discussed the site's future as part of its general plan update." Sounds like the Mayor has some explaining to do. Maybe a "Recall Election?"
info1 at 1:45 PM PST Monday, October 15, 2007 wrote: Leveraged Buy out and Republican Corporate Swindlers Caused This
The Leveraged Buyouts that the Reagan administration encouraged are what caused this. It had nothing to do with the environmentalists, which Bush/Reagan have unceasingly smeared and blamed for THEIR policies that reward the rich and screw everyone else. PL had been in business for 50 years becaused they engaged in SUSTAINABLE harvesting. Then Maxxam purchased it with basically NO MONEY and had to pay off everyone by tripling the harvest. Trees don't grow any faster just because the "owner" is a rich Republican, and a good friend to the Bush Dynasty. This is just like the S&L mess, also courtesy of the Republicans, who bankrupted retirees, and forced us taxpayers to pay the bill. One of Bush Sr's brothers bankrupted a S&L in Colorado, but of course you never hear about that. They just keep pretending to be christians and counting on the fact that the right-wing voters don't read (or think).
By Todd Milbourn - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, October 13, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A20
Print | E-Mail | Comments (14) | Digg it | del.icio.us
Company town on brink as timber firm struggles
For the past 140 years, tiny Scotia's fate has been inextricably linked to the fortunes of Pacific Lumber, long the North Coast's largest employer, landowner and community benefactor. But the futures of both are up in the air as Pacific Lumber goes through bankruptcy protection proceedings in Texas courts.
SCOTIA -- The workday begins in this old logging town the same way it has since the 1880s.
A shrieking whistle pierces the early morning quiet, calling lumberjacks, millwrights and engineers to another day sawing redwoods and Douglas fir.
The whistle is indiscriminate, a sort of townwide alarm clock, sounding through every home and building. It's a reassuring sound to residents of this company town.
But some worry about it going silent.
Over the past 140 years, no company has been more important to the economic fortunes of this region than Pacific Lumber. It has long been the North Coast's largest employer, landowner and community benefactor.
But all that history is up in the air with Pacific Lumber in bankruptcy protection.
To satisfy its creditors, the company is proposing a vast sale of its Northern California timberlands. It has reduced its once-formidable work force by more than half and shuttered mills in Carlotta and Fortuna.
The bankruptcy protection proceedings are playing out 2,100 miles away in courtrooms in Texas, home of Pacific Lumber's parent company, MAXXAM Inc.
But up here, in communities tucked among majestic redwoods, residents are wrestling with controversy sparked by the grip Pacific Lumber maintains on local politics -- influence that defies the company's decline. And small communities are left wondering how life will change if the company they depend on becomes a shadow of its former self.
"There is life after Pacific Lumber," said Erin Dunn, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce in nearby Fortuna. "But we're going to have to adapt."
A way of life is threatened
No town's fate is linked more closely to the company's than Scotia.
Scotia became Pacific Lumber's logging camp in 1883. Today, it is home to the corporate headquarters and about 275 workers and their families.
To save money, Pacific Lumber wants to sell Scotia and shed responsibility for providing the town everything from security to home repair services.
That would end a relationship that has survived fires, floods, the Great Depression and tree-sitting environmentalists. One leading proposal is to have Scotia annexed by Rio Dell, the gritty logging town across the Eel River. Another is for the town to become its own municipality. Either way, townspeople would have to buy their homes or pay higher monthly rents.
The demise of Scotia would mark the end of one of the last company towns in the United States and close a way of life for those like the Rogers family.
Joe and Deb Rogers, lifelong Pacific Lumber employees, raised two sons here: Matt is going to college on a Pacific Lumber scholarship. Grant lives just a couple of blocks away with his wife and son -- the third Rogers generation to live in Scotia -- and works for the local post office and swimming pool.
"We're unsettled," Joe Rogers said. He recently switched from carpentry to a more secure job in the power plant after watching too many longtime co-workers leave the company.
When Joe Rogers started, "you felt like if you got a job and did your part, you could retire here," he said. "We don't have that feeling anymore."
Company town in every way
Scotia today looks very much like it did in pictures from a hundred years ago. The mill looms over everything. Towering redwoods, growing atop coastal mountains, frame the shot. The town's perpendicular streets are lined with bungalows, each painted in a pale green, brown, yellow or blue, the preferred palate of a discerning former company president's wife.
Scotia seems to have everything a little town needs -- a bar, a restaurant, a theater, a supermarket. It has two churches. The town does not, however, have a mayor, a town council or any other form of local government.
Water, electricity and sewer are provided by Pacific Lumber free of charge. Residents call on the company to solve just about any problem.
If the faucet breaks, they call the company. If the garbage man is late, they call the company. If they're unhappy with their kid's homework lesson, they can take matters up with the town's elementary school principal -- whose check is signed by the company.
Grant Rogers says he wouldn't want to have grown up anywhere else. He fondly recalls sneaking down by the mill as a kid, watching the lumberjacks roll logs and high-pressure hoses peel bark off giant redwoods like an orange. He remembers how the company would christen the town's Christmas tree -- a redwood high atop a nearby mountain, draped in lights, beaming down like an angel over Scotia.
Now 24, Rogers is among a handful of young people who decided to stay in Scotia. The running joke is that bright young people like him are the region's leading export -- after marijuana. For Rogers, the choice to stay was easy. Thanks to a company subsidy, he pays around $600 a month for his three-bedroom home, far less than what he'd pay in nearby Fortuna.
Fortuna is also vulnerable
Pacific Lumber's struggles are rippling through Fortuna, as well. With a population of 11,000, Fortuna is the economic center of Pacific Lumber country. The company had a major presence in the city until last year, when it laid off 100 workers and abandoned a mill that had been running 30 years.
During the mill's heyday, sawdust would waft from the mill and collect on the roof of Clif Clendenen's cider works shop across the street.
"It was a major avuncular presence in town," Clendenen said, noting that the company routinely supported community groups and charities. "None of us wanted to see it go away."
Now Fortuna must decide what to do with the abandoned mill, on 75 acres in the city's business district.
Pacific Lumber reached an agreement in 2003 to sell the site to Roseville shopping center developer Fred Katz for $10 million. As part of the deal, the parties anticipated the city of Fortuna would kick in $7 million in redevelopment funds.
But the arrangement, details of which surfaced in Pacific Lumber's bankruptcy protection case, has been controversial: Fortuna's mayor, John Campbell, received money from Pacific Lumber while the city discussed the site's future as part of its general plan update.
Campbell, a top Pacific Lumber executive for 30 years before taking public office in 2004, has collected $519,000 in deferred compensation since 2004 and is owed $400,000 from the company, money he did not disclose on his statements of economic interest. Campbell's deal with Pacific Lumber also required he do nothing "adverse to the company's interest."
The Humboldt Watershed Council, a longtime foe of Pacific Lumber, calls the arrangement a conflict of interest and has asked the state Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate. FPPC officials won't say if they've taken up the case.
"The idea that I'm getting paid to make decisions on a proposal is just ridiculous," Campbell said. "If I feel uncomfortable or other council members feel uncomfortable, I might then recuse myself."
Hopes still pinned on company
In Scotia, there's hope Pacific Lumber can survive bankruptcy protection and remain a viable employer.
Critics blame the company's financial troubles on Charles Hurwitz, the Texas tycoon whose MAXXAM Inc. bought Pacific Lumber in 1986.
That deal altered the reputation of a company once known for its community patronage and its protection of the region's famous forests.
Hurwitz's aggressive logging in the 1990s inspired action by environmentalists and led the state and federal governments to take the rare step of purchasing an ancient stand of redwoods from the company.
Although Pacific Lumber's public relations department declined interview requests, Hurwitz has said environmental constraints pushed Pacific Lumber into bankruptcy protection.
Whatever courts and the corporate titans decide, Grant Rogers said he and his neighbors will make do.
Scotia has endured change before. He recalled, for instance, how town residents rallied to rebuild the shopping center after a fire in the early '90s. He said it is the town's ability to stick together through change that provides its sense of identity.
That, and its whistle.
Comments from the site:
MidwayMac at 5:38 AM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: Lumbering to uncertainty
My introduction to this marvelous sight was in1952, when I travelled up 101 to visit a relative in Oregon. As I viewed the marvelous scenery, there was Rio Dell and Scotia, the latter, a tiny spot that was on it's own. Then the invasion of a profiteer and the tree-huggers; has pretty much shut every thing down. What's laughable is that private forest owners are logging their forests and selling their products at steep costs. The waste products, such as slash, that's what's left when trees are fallen, run thru a saw mill, the bark and a few inches of good wood remain. Even this by-product is put to good use, by shredding it and pressing it into materials which can be used for building siding and roof underlayment.
borealfox at 8:35 AM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: How Sad
Once more the demise of something that has worked for so long so well, that's the sad part of it.
We used to stop at there in the early 1950's when it took forever to go up Highway 101 through all the little towns on the way to Blue Lake. Half of my family worked for the timber companies, and they paid well while everyone lived well too. And now this too is going to pass. Damn.
tallone934 at 8:35 AM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: The end result
Since we have a huge industry of eco maniacal organizations dedicated to stopping all human endeavors regarding the use of the environment this is the natural conclusion. Non profits ripping off the taxpayers to fund fulltime naysaying employees are hard to beat. The productive people and the taxpayers get to fund both ends of these results. Tax money to maintain all these properties and tax money for the unemployed workers of the timber companies. You do-gooders better not complain when you are paying twenty bucks for a four foot board for that deck of yours.
ad50nt at 10:01 AM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: don't blame environmentalists for scotia's demise
Although the old PL did cut old growth, it was widely regarded by all as one of the best managed timber companies anywhere until Bush-buddy Hurowitz took over the company by means that were barely legal (if legal at all - we'll never know after he scrambled the financial books). Many observers predicted the sorry outcome we see today: screwed forests, screwed workers, screwed investors and screwed taxpayers. Only the principal in this crime, Charles Hurowitz, continues to laugh all the way to the bank back in Houston or Geneva or wherever he hides his money. This was a textbook corporate raid designed to a set plan: liquidate an asset purchased with someone else's money via junk bonds, and then go bankrupt leaving the bondholders with nothing but hot air. Environmentalists didn't do this, Texas money men did.
billbillbillbillbillbill at 10:08 AM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: ahem, tallone934:
Critics blame the company's financial troubles on Charles Hurwitz, the Texas tycoon whose MAXXAM Inc. bought Pacific Lumber in 1986.
That deal altered the reputation of a company once known for its community patronage and its protection of the region's famous forests.
Hurwitz's aggressive logging in the 1990s inspired action by environmentalists and led the state and federal governments to take the rare step of purchasing an ancient stand of redwoods from the company.
stevenchr at 11:46 AM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: triple the cut and the end is near
there's no mention what so ever that when hurwitz hostilely took over the family run business & tripled the cut rate in 1985, that he'd put this company out of business. he bought the company for the price he got from the headwaters scam & still owes more money for the acquisition of the com. what happend to the half billion he got for the postage stamp headwaters forest? had hurwitz let the company run along as it did before he acquired it, this scenario wouldn't even exist. but the greedy bastard sent all the monies made to houston & never paid down the debt from the original acquisition. this writing was on the wall in the late eighties after hurwitz took it over. you can log in perpetuity if you manage the forest for that, but this clown from houston let his pocket book drive the logging rate. it has absolutely nothing to do with the enviros, this is purely a business decision to run this company into the ground. yes, the environment/fisheries suffered when he tripled the cut rate
Mtrent2 at 1:07 PM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: Glad
There are plenty of differrent types of materials people can use to build with these days. Now the forest will be able to grow back. It's called progress. Move forward.
dwh at 2:20 PM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: It's both
Blame both greed and environmentalism(which in some ways is one and the same).
ridinger at 3:39 PM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: A Scotia Native
I now live in Elk Grove, but I grew up in Scotia. My folks still live there. It breaks my heart to see what has happenned. Yes, the greedy Texan and the idiotic envornmentalists are mostly to blame. I just can't help wonder why the Murphy family that founded Scotia didn't maintain majority interest in the stock to prevent this from happenning. We had state of the art gymnasiums, swimming pools, weight rooms, baseball fields, etc... We'd fish in the Eel River and ride bikes on the local trails. We'd build forts and swim all day long. The company used to bring in semi-trucks full of Christmas presents for all the children. On Halloween you would knock on every door. You always felt safe--we had the run of the town. I wish every kid had the experience I had. From the time I was 9, my folks would give me a grocery list send me on my way down the street to Hoby's Market. We had responsibilities & freedoms today's kids will never know. How do we take it back & turn it around?
sirrebral at 4:09 PM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote: Sadly, this story was not a surprise...
I'm one of the area's "exports". I grew up in a town between the Fortuna and Carlotta mills, attended Fortuna High, and left to go to Sac State. Even as a 17-year old high school student, I could see that the MAXXAM acquisition spelled trouble for PL's future.
Just a few years after the MAXXAM took over PL, Hurwitz was cutting more than trees; he was slashing spending. In the past, PL gave a scholarship to *every* college-bound child of a company employee, but shortly after I left in 1989, the company announced an end to that program.
Increasing production while reducing expenses can make a company more profitable. However, In MAAXAM-controlled PL's case, this was done to the extreme, resulting in short-term financial gains at the expense of the demise of the company. Like an out-of-state landlord, Hurwitz was a disinterested party who was more concerned with profits than the impact to the citizens of the area.
Walter_E_Wallis at 5:11 PM PST Saturday, October 13, 2007 wrote:
Tax laws make family ownership of any business impossible.Tax laws also encourage debt. Blame MAXXAM for Scotia, but who do you blame for the rest of the Pacific Northwest logging towns thet closed down after the tree huggers went nuts?
billbillbillbillbillbill at 12:45 AM PST Sunday, October 14, 2007 wrote:
I don't know why I bother replying to you stupid hillbillies. You're clearly functionally illiterate.
It doesn't matter if "tree-huggers" prevent these quick-buck companies from clear-cutting the last one percent of our forests. Either logging ends now, with just a few trees left, or it ends a few years from now, with no trees left. Either way, corporate rapine destroys these communities.
Thankfully, there are still a few sensible people left in the world who see that saving at least one tiny part of our natural heritage is more important than some Texas billionaire buying another yacht.
pondo at 9:17 PM PST Sunday, October 14, 2007 wrote: A sorry story!
As a former residence of the area it hurts to read what is happening in Scotia!! As some before me have stated, it is not the tree huggers who caused this, it was the con man from Texas!! If it had been managed as in the past it would have been able to continued to have existed for years!! But no, triple cut and run with the money.
Good Luck to the people of Scotia, hope something happens to change things around for them!!
"Fortuna's mayor, John Campbell, received money from Pacific Lumber while the city discussed the site's future as part of its general plan update." Sounds like the Mayor has some explaining to do. Maybe a "Recall Election?"
info1 at 1:45 PM PST Monday, October 15, 2007 wrote: Leveraged Buy out and Republican Corporate Swindlers Caused This
The Leveraged Buyouts that the Reagan administration encouraged are what caused this. It had nothing to do with the environmentalists, which Bush/Reagan have unceasingly smeared and blamed for THEIR policies that reward the rich and screw everyone else. PL had been in business for 50 years becaused they engaged in SUSTAINABLE harvesting. Then Maxxam purchased it with basically NO MONEY and had to pay off everyone by tripling the harvest. Trees don't grow any faster just because the "owner" is a rich Republican, and a good friend to the Bush Dynasty. This is just like the S&L mess, also courtesy of the Republicans, who bankrupted retirees, and forced us taxpayers to pay the bill. One of Bush Sr's brothers bankrupted a S&L in Colorado, but of course you never hear about that. They just keep pretending to be christians and counting on the fact that the right-wing voters don't read (or think).
By Todd Milbourn - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, October 13, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A20
Print | E-Mail | Comments (14) | Digg it | del.icio.us