Firm Seeks to Alter Headwaters Forest Accord

To the dismay of North Coast environmentalists and California lawmakers, a timber firm is attempting to alter key provisions of an agreement that was the cornerstone of a historic deal protecting the Headwaters Forest in Humboldt County.

Pacific Lumber wants to revise the conservation plan in part so it can push logging closer to several of the rivers and tributaries that cut through its 217,000 acres.

The habitat plan was a key part of the company’s 1999 sale of the Headwaters Forest, a thicket of towering old-growth redwoods that had been targeted for the chain saw.

Pacific Lumber received $480 million from the state and federal governments in exchange for the forest, which now is a protected reserve. The company also agreed to operate under tight environmental rules on its remaining timber acres.

Now the firm’s scientists say exhaustive research on Pacific Lumber’s vast holdings over the last five years has determined that it can safely boost logging along waterways without harming fish or other aquatic life.

That argument has been met with suspicion by environmentalists on the North Coast, who consider the effort by Pacific Lumber an attempt to circumvent the 1999 agreement. It also has drawn the attention of state Sen. Byron Sher (D-Stanford) and Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco), who played a pivotal role in the Headwaters negotiations.

“There’s a real question in my mind whether we should deviate from the process we negotiated,” said Sher, chairman of the Senate environment committee. “I don’t want to say they’re acting in bad faith. They’re saying they’re doing what they need to do for business reasons.”

Burton last week threatened to sue the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger if the habitat plan was altered from the 1999 agreement. During a confirmation hearing for Michael Chrisman, the governor’s new resources secretary, Burton received an assurance from Chrisman that the administration would reject any changes.

“These guys made out like bandits. They did very, very well,” Burton said of Pacific Lumber and the Headwaters agreement. “There were conditions that were imposed upon them that maybe they weren’t crazy about, but I would just hope they would not allow them to make changes to the [habitat plan], because we will sue.”

Officials at Pacific Lumber, long a focus of controversy because of its aggressive logging in an old forest considered sacred by environmentalists, acknowledged that they hoped to boost the timberland they could harvest by as much as 30,000 acres. But they stressed that they believed the additional land could be logged without harming the environment.

“We have new science that we think makes the case that we can do things differently on our land to facilitate our economic needs but still not compromise any of the environmental goals,” said Jeffery Barrett, the company’s chief scientist.

Without the additional logging, the firm could be in trouble, Barrett said. “It’s my understanding that the changes we proposed are critical to our economic survival.”

Environmentalists are not sympathetic. “They may need this to stop the bleeding sore, but they created this mess in the first place by mismanaging the company and over-cutting,” said Sharon Duggan, an environmental attorney.

Duggan said Pacific Lumber reaped a handsome profit in the Headwaters sale, a deal many North Coast environmentalists considered a flop because the company was allowed to continue logging in several river watersheds already hit hard by sediment runoff.

She said the company had already failed to meet a deadline to complete environmental analyses of all the watersheds on its property. Now, she said, it was trying to wiggle out completely.

“They struck a deal. They had their eyes wide open and their hands in the cookie jar,” she said. “They got the money, they got the permits. They got everything they wanted. Now they’re trying to back out on it.”

Pacific Lumber has been battling environmentalists since Texas financier Charles Hurwitz purchased the firm in 1986 and dramatically boosted the rate of logging. More recently, the Scotia, Calif.-based company drew environmentalists’ anger by bankrolling the unsuccessful March recall of the Humboldt County district attorney after he accused Pacific Lumber of fraud.

Sher and Burton wrote about the habitat plan in an April 16 letter to Chrisman, whose agency could play a key role in any decision. The senators raised concerns over Pacific Lumber’s proposal to reduce no-cut buffer zones along streams, cap its costs for storm-proofing roads and financing monitoring programs, and ease restrictions on logging steep slopes susceptible to landslides.

The senators said several of the changes “would represent a fundamental abrogation of the law” and undermine the agreement forged during the 1999 Headwaters Forest deal.

Loris Ryan Broddrick, state Fish and Game director, said the state would give the proposals a rigorous review.

Broddrick said he did not expect a decision before mid-June. “In terms of who we make happy with this, I think the science has got to speak for itself.”

Barrett of Pacific Lumber said the 1999 environmental agreement tied up about 60% of the company’s timber volume.

He said company officials agreed to those limits only because they retained the option to ease restrictions if research showed that no harm would come to salmon, birds and other wildlife.

Barrett said studies on half the company land were consistent enough for the same conclusions to be applied to Pacific Lumber’s remaining turf.

The most controversial item in the company’s plan is the proposed reduction of streamside buffers. Pacific Lumber wants to reduce the no-cut zone along big streams from the current 170 feet down to 100 feet, Barrett said. On smaller tributaries, the company wants to shrink the buffer of trees to 75 feet from the current 130.

In a related development, a civil fraud complaint filed against Pacific Lumber by the Humboldt County district attorney survived its first major court challenge.

Superior Court Judge Christopher G. Wilson ruled last week that the $300-million fraud complaint was filed in a timely manner and could proceed to trial despite fierce legal opposition from the company.

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Times staff writer Robert Salladay contributed to this report.