Pacific Lumber officials argued that they have been exemplary environmental citizens and said the vast majority of silting results from logging by previous owners, dating back 140 years. Without the four permits, they said, the company could not harvest more than 8 million board feet of redwood and fir -- and would lose $8 million in sales.
"We are running out of logs," said Gary Clark, vice president of finance and administration, noting that the company two days earlier laid off 38 employees at a Fortuna mill and reassigned 11 others. Steve Will, a log hauler and timber cutter who contracts with Pacific Lumber, said his business alone stood to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. "There is nowhere else for us to log," he said. "We need these plans to ... keep our people going and feeding their families."
On Jan. 11, according to state officials, Hurwitz, Pacific Lumber president Robert E. Manne and two other company representatives met with Schwarzenegger Cabinet secretary Terry Tamminen and Cal EPA general counsel Maureen Gorsen. Two days later, Catherine Kuhlman, executive director of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, said she received a phone call from Cal EPA, the agency that oversees her own. She said in an interview that she was asked "fair and legitimate questions" about Pacific Lumber's permit requests.
"No pressure," she said in response to a question. "No pushing. No shoving. Lots of questions."
Lovelace, of the Humboldt Watershed Council, asked for and received a meeting with Tamminen -- himself a former Cal EPA secretary -- and a deputy. Lovelace made his own presentation. "I was alone and tried to make them versed in the subject, not knowing they had been briefed by the other side."
If the timber harvest permits granted or pending were carried out, state officials said, it would amount to the equivalent of about 750 clear-cut acres.
But Pacific Lumber's director of science programs, Jeff Barrett, said the company's ability to continue getting logging permits is essential for its survival and for paying for costly environmental conditions of the Headwaters deal. "For now this life-and-death struggle comes down to this limited number of permits."
Kuhlman, who is a federal EPA employee on loan to California, said there are 11 additional permit applications on her desk. She added it is "highly doubtful all 11 will be approved, because of the [cumulative] sediment impacts."
Meanwhile, people such as Jack Quirey are hoping that the rest of this winter is relatively dry. The retiree said he once had to raise the foundation of his house on Freshwater Creek by three feet after a major flood. "We had 12 inches of water in the house in 1995-1996," he said in a telephone interview. "It causes mold and fills it with silt -- and maybe snakes -- and is impossible to clean completely....There are still marks on the furniture."
