SACRAMENTO — 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."
