Posted on 07/02/2006 8:57:03 AM PDT by sasquatch
June 30, 2006
About half the timber land in Santa Cruz County will remain off limits to loggers after a ruling by the California Supreme Court on Thursday.
The 4-3 decision in favor of Santa Cruz County over Davenport-based Big Creek Lumber grants a local government the power to restrict timber operations to certain areas. Historically, logging was under the purview of the state; the court's ruling validates Santa Cruz County's 7-year-old law regulating where trees can and can't be logged.
(Excerpt) Read more at santacruzsentinel.com ...
The Activism sidebar is reserved for Activism, protests, news and business of Free Republic Chapters.
Not this.
Please read the following for FR's posting rules for further guidelines.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1611173/posts
Thanks,
Actually, in our county, the decision is a win. Siskiyou County has chosen not to restrict logging. As I understand it, the decision reaffirms the County's right to regulate land use, including timber harvest. We have intentionally chosen, no regulation.
Of course, this does not affect all the state specialty regulatory layers of regulation for water quality, impacts on endangered species and fish and wildlife (stream crossings, etc.)
I think the argument developed by Mr. Raffaelly went like this ---- state Timber Production Zones or TPZ (Z'Berg Nedgedley) were an off shoot of the Williamson Act, where the farmer agrees by long term (20-40 year contract) to place his land in a state restricted use open space non-development zone in exchange for a property tax break.
Most commercial lands were automatically placed in TPZ, some requested to be placed in TPZ. This defers taxes on the value of timber inventory until harvest. Initially, in exchange, the timber owner limited use to one residence and manages the land for timber production.
Like the Williamson Act, it takes 20 years to get out of TPZ unless prematurely transferring out is in the public interest.
Mr. Rafaelly's argument was that through this state zoning, the Board of Forestry began to regulate land use on TPZ lands. His argument was that the state Board of Forestry regulations were a jurisdiction attached only to this zoning and did not reach non TPZ lands, which were locally zoned for use and subject to local regulations.
Of course, the state has the other legitimate jurisdictions I mentioned over water quality and fish and wildlife.
In some cases, like Siskiyou, it might be better to remove timber lands from TPZ and the reach of a large portion of restrictive state regulation.
Apparently Williamson Act can be either - 10 0r 20 (Farmland Security Zone) http://www.co.humboldt.ca.us/planning/Williamson%20Act/WA%202005%20revisions/WA_BROC.pdf
TPZ is 10 http://www.timbertax.org/statetaxes/states/proptax/california.asp
Both are automatically renewed each year unless the owner indicates they wish to get out of the contract/zone.
I don't see why Roseberg, Fruit Growers and Timber Products would not prefer to be exempt from the Forest Practices Act. As I said, we don't have any regulations on the books for harvest and have voted down grading ordinances, viewshed ordinances, county habitat conservation ordinances and the like when presented to us. Our population, except for the south around Mt. Shasta, does not like new regulations.
I know that the current state regulations are about as unbearable as they can get. The cost of harvest in Oregon is a mere fraction of what it is in California. I know FG has been trying to divest its lands here because it can't harvest anything because of the spotted owl and coho salmon, yet Oregon also has these species and seems to manage it quite nicely.
But I see what you mean about Felice, cough cough, choke choke. Each time we have an election, we hold our breath that we will get someone really liberal elected and end up with big Board fights.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.