Posted on 02/26/2003 9:27:22 PM PST by farmfriend
Timber Company Accused of Fraud in Deal to Save Redwoods
By DEAN E. MURPHY
AN FRANCISCO, Feb. 25 — A deal struck four years ago to save about 10,000 acres of giant redwoods in Humboldt County in Northern California was supposed to end the bitter feuding over logging there.
In exchange for $480 million from the federal and state governments, the Pacific Lumber Company agreed to turn the world's largest privately owned grove of ancient redwoods into a public reserve. The company also consented to a series of regulations on logging operations on its remaining 211,000 acres, including some additional preservation.
But from the very beginning, some environmental groups were unhappy with the so-called Headwaters deal and fought for more restrictions on Pacific Lumber, largely to no avail. Now they appear to have gained a powerful new ally in the recently elected district attorney in Humboldt County, Paul Gallegos, who took office last month.
The district attorney's office has filed a civil complaint against Pacific Lumber that accuses the company of unfair and fraudulent business practices during the contentious negotiations that resulted in the creation of the Headwaters Preserve, about 250 miles north of here.
The complaint seeks up to $250 million in penalties and the end to logging by Pacific Lumber on hillsides deemed unstable.
The district attorney's office said the complaint was not intended to undo the Headwaters deal or affect the land already set aside for preservation. Instead, it was meant to end environmentally damaging logging by Pacific Lumber and penalize the company for not revealing information during the negotiations four years ago about how that logging could create landslides and ruin water quality in streams.
Timothy O. Stoen, an assistant district attorney, said Mr. Gallegos sought a civil complaint rather than a criminal prosecution because there was no evidence that the company's deception was intentional.
"I tried to be fair," said Mr. Stoen, who filed the complaint on behalf of Mr. Gallegos on Monday, the last day allowed under the statute of limitations. "The documents came across my desk. I had a moral obligation to act one way or the other."
In a statement issued by Pacific Lumber, Robert E. Manne, the company's president, suggested that a district attorney new to his job had been misled by the company's critics. Mr. Manne said there was "no factual or legal basis" to the accusations in the complaint, which he characterized as old arguments that had long ago been rejected by the courts and government agencies.
"This is nothing more than another step to put the company out of business," he said. "We are extremely disappointed that in spite of agreeing to unprecedented environmental and monitoring restrictions, this company continues to be singled out and targeted as part of an organized effort to prevent us from operating profitably, and preserving the jobs of our employees."
Some Humboldt County groups that have been fighting Pacific Lumber for years described the district attorney's action as the most significant involvement by a public agency on their behalf since the Headwaters deal was struck in 1999.
Just last month, in a big victory for Pacific Lumber, a local water board backed off from its threat to impose new restrictions on logging by the company despite a scientific report that appeared to support the restrictions. It was one in a string of setbacks for Pacific Lumber's critics.
"We are talking about a lot of trees and a lot of money," said Dr. Ken Miller, a board member of the Humboldt Watershed Council, a local advocacy group that has sued the water board for not doing more to reduce logging along streams.
The complaint contends that Pacific Lumber provided "significant false data" that was used by state and federal officials in conducting environmental assessments of the company's timbering operations.
Based on the false data, the complaint states, the officials agreed in the 11th hour of negotiations to a logging plan that allowed the company to harvest 100,000 more trees than had been originally envisioned, resulting in $40 million in additional annual revenue for the company.
The complaint contends that the extra logging led to environmental damage to unstable slopes along several riverbeds. It also contends that "as many as a dozen ancient redwoods" might have been lost in nearby Humboldt Redwoods State Park because of channel changes on two creeks caused by the logging.
The complaint, filed in Superior Court in Eureka, Calif., seeks an injunction to stop further logging in the disputed areas and the imposition of a $2,500 penalty for each tree harvested as a result of the "deception." If the penalty was applied to all 100,000 trees, it would total $250 million, though Mr. Stoen said he did not yet know how many trees might be involved.
Cynthia Elkins of the Environmental Protection Information Center, an advocacy group in Garberville, Calif., formed to save coastal forests, said small not-for-profit groups like hers have been frustrated over the years trying to take on Pacific Lumber and its corporate parent, the Maxxam Corporation of Houston.
Earth to environmentalists...."ancient redwoods" are dead (or dying).....sheesh.
Excuse me, but the stump is still there and it's still alive (redwoods are almost impossible to kill). Because there is no load on the stump because it no longer supports the wind load of a tree, the surrounding soil is, if anything, MORE STABLE than before the logging.
I hate it when people try to fly this crap past a judge, because, all too often, it works.
Translation, we don't want to undo what we got out of the deal, just undo what the lumber company got in exchange.
You got that right...BTTT.
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