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Posted on 03/20/2013 8:56:20 AM PDT by jazusamo
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with timber interests in a dispute over the regulation of runoff from logging roads in western forests.
In a 7-1 vote, the court reversed a federal appeals court ruling that held that muddy water running off roads used in industrial logging is the same as any other industrial pollution, requiring a Clean Water Act permit from the Environmental Protection Agency.
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
Scalia’s dissent is absolutely scathing in its criticism of the government. He knew that his vote wasn’t necessary to the outcome of the case, so he took the opportunity to point out how absurd the Court’s practice of giving defference to an administrative agency’s interpretation of its own authority is.
I’d bet you’re right, that would explain it.
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I left Jacksonville 1.5 years ago. I know of which you speak.
will wonders never cease?
Nonsense. I put in logging roads twenty years ago or better. Properly ditching and culvert installation was paramount, not only to Fed, State, and private owners, but was inherently important to the road builder. Roads are expensive to maintain or reinstall, so care was taken to preserve the road, with the expectation that it would be used for access again in the future.
Once the road settles in, there is very little runoff, because the drainage works to preserve the road.
But now that logging is non-existent, those roads are no longer passable. The machinery once owned by the loggers and road-builders that used to be employed on those roads to fight fire is gone too. You want to see runoff problems? See what a quarter-million acres of burnt forest produces.
Alongside of that, your position is cry-baby BS.
...reversed a federal appeals court ruling that held that muddy water running off roads used in industrial logging is the same as any other industrial pollution, requiring a Clean Water Act permit from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Ah yes, the famous Spotted Owl. Smoked over an open flame it tastes almost as good as a Bald Eagle.
The timber industry has come a long way over the past decades for which they have been given very little credit. Growing up in Southern Oregon I used to go into the woods near my home and find red clay logging roads that had become ditches with sides taller than I was. And the mills would empty their log ponds into the creek and it would turn black for weeks. The Environazis will never be happy until timber industry is dead! And what gets me is those groups are funded by contributions from idiots that have never, now will ever, set foot in the State.
I’ve seen whole mountain sides come down into the river because of logging. Perhaps it wasn’t the roads. See Deer Creek, North Fork of the Stillaguamish.
TRUE. And I am not saying that such things do not occur. What I am saying is that such things are relatively rare, and of far less impact than natural processes which can/do/will occur in the absence of any logging.
As I said, look at what a hot fire will do - where it not only destroys the canopy, and the under brush, but the grasses too, and even the root systems have been reduced to carbon... and over a vast area. Logging damage is incidental by comparison.
Impact to waterways is comparably insignificant - Even if citing an event like a whole mountainside sloughing off... Had that same slope been subjected to an hot fire, the same sort of event would have undoubtedly occurred, and would have likely been worse (since roots, grasses, and underbrush are gone too, bringing retention down to '0' for all practical purposes). And that fire would not be limited to that mountain, but would go on and on for miles.
But now that logging is gone, the big cats are gone... the huge workforce of logging labor is gone... The roads that provide access are in disrepair, and will be useless in another decade or two (are pretty useless now)... And because these things are gone, big fires run unopposed and unabated.
That really is true.
Growing up in Southern Oregon [...]
I have been here in the Flathead Valley (NW MT) since I was about 10-12 years old...
I used to go into the woods near my home and find red clay logging roads that had become ditches with sides taller than I was. And the mills would empty their log ponds into the creek and it would turn black for weeks.
True, but even if, one can go where our grandfathers did their work - You can find them easily in that they did not pull their stumps, and some of those stumps are still there, even to this day - you would be hard pressed to find the 'damage' they did now. For the most part, even the logging I participated in is long healed over, a beautiful woodland, and is ready to be logged again. I can hardly even find the roads, and I know where they are.
And while our grandfathers and fathers did do damage, it is largely limited to concentrated sites where, even if they did know they were doing irreparable harm, there was no alternative solution present at the time. Those who fault them always accuse them of greed, and never take ignorance into account, or that the level of technology was insufficient to address the problems they knew they had...
I would equate it to our current problem with plastics (as a particular example, but hardly limited to that alone), which are having enormous impact on the environment, and which we have no solution for...
The Environazis will never be happy until timber industry is dead! And what gets me is those groups are funded by contributions from idiots that have never, now will ever, set foot in the State.
They will not be happy even then. It isn't about environment - It is about control. Taken as a whole, our forefathers were better stewards than we are, and they did not have the supposed advantage of environmental sciences, or our much vaunted technologies. The folks that live on the land, they that are dependent and interdependent with the land tend to be closer to that land, and understand it better than those afar off who seek to control them.
Thx for your reply.
In any case, the steel industry took a dive in the 80's because of exorbitant labor costs not "the fish choice."
The newest proposal is to list the Pacific Fisher (a weasel like creature.) The enviros are no dummies, In the west, between the listing of the spotted owl, wolf and the fisher (proposed,) Their mating and early rearing prtections will leave approximately three weeks out of the year that anyone could log in the forests. Obviously, no one can maintain the hundred thousand dollar equipment that takes, costs of permitting and labor that such would take.
There will soon be no logging in the forests of the PNW and N. CA. With USFS Chief Tidwell’s announcement that the National Forest Service is returning to a “let it burn” policy, we may yet look like a WWI battlefield.
Excellent info, thanks.
Have you not heard? - Obama has just recalled the Secure Rural Schools payments under the sequestration. This will likely collapse a couple of Oregon forest counties. It will wreak havoc on forest County schools and road depts throughout the West. I am sure it was calculated to maximum hurt rural counties which tend to be Republican in voting patterns.
How utterly juvenile, mean and vindictive this Administration is.
Having gone to school with a daughter of a steel mill owner, I am aware that America still has steel mills. What it no longer has is the number of mills and the annual tonnage relative to population and relative to other nations.
Having also been on the Florida Sierra Club’s Executive Committee, I can assure you that enviro “claim” has been carefully designed to be a ‘drain’ on the American system of business.
Goal: destroy American economic function so that collectivism can replace individualism.
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