Humboldt Court Hearing on Pacific Lumber Logging Appeal Postponed

The hearing scheduled for Friday, July 28, in Humboldt County Superior Court, on the appeal by Pacific Lumber Co. of the California State Water Resources Control Board's June 16 order limiting logging in the Elk River and Freshwater Creek Watersheds, has been postponed by the Court. The hearing has yet to be rescheduled. EPIC will update all concerned members of the public and media when the hearing is rescheduled.

However, the other matters covered in EPIC's July 27 press release are still current, including the Regional Water Board's tour of affected watersheds.

WATERSHED-WIDE WDRs AND CUMULATIVE IMPACTS
Known as waste discharge requirements (WDRs), the proposed WDRs are designed to address cumulative watershed impacts from timber harvesting activities in the two watersheds with regard to sediment delivery and nuisance flooding. Downstream residents of PL have complained of severe flooding damage to property over the last several years, and these impacts have occurred in watersheds whose rivers are already listed as impaired for sediment and temperature under the Clean Water Act.

The proposed watershed-wide WDRs would institute a new regime of watershed protection by prohibiting sediment discharges when timber harvest levels exceed a specific number of acres. The sediment prohibitions are based on scientific models designed to correlate timber harvest with watershed damage. EPIC supports the concept of the proposed WDRs and believes that correlating timber harvest levels with watershed damage is a welcome and long-overdue method for reliably predicting some of the damaging impacts of timber harvest. However, the proposed permits as written contain some "gaps" which will have to be filled before the final WDRs are adopted in order to ensure watershed protection. EPIC will submit extensive expert comments for the record.

EPIC'S REVIEW OF THESE WDRs
- The monitoring and enforcement provisions of the proposed WDRs are inadequate to ensure that the terms of the permits are followed.
The monitoring and enforcement provisions must be strengthened so as to answer, at a minimum, the following questions:
- How will the Regional Board know whether water quality is, in fact, improving in these watersheds?
- How will the Regional Board know whether channel capacity is increasing?
- How will the Regional Board enforce Cleanup and Abatement Orders pertaining to areas in these watersheds?
- How will the monitoring and enforcement process provide for public involvement and accountability?

- The proposed WDRs will apparently allow PL to log in so-called "high hazard" landslide-risk areas, which include areas protected from logging under the PL Habitat Conservation Plan's provisions for hillslope and riparian management (MWACs and RMZs). In other words, PL will be able to log in these sensitive steep slopes, albeit at a much lower level than would be harvested without the WDRs.
The proposed WDRs should be amended to strictly prohibit all discharges of sediment from high-risk areas.

- The proposed WDRs fail to address the important cumulative impacts of sediment discharges and increased flow from PL's existing and future roads in these watersheds. Existing rules and the existing Cleanup and Abatement Order issued by the Regional Board do not adequately assess or prevent cumulative watershed impacts from logging roads because sediment discharges from roads are done on a piecemeal basis, one Timber Harvest Plan at a time. The proposed WDRs should be amended to incorporate discharge prohibitions that are designed to address the cumulative impacts of logging roads throughout the watersheds.

ABOUT PACIFIC LUMBER'S PROPOSALS FOR WDRs
- PL's proposal to use mitigations alone to recover all beneficial uses in these watersheds is entirely unacceptable. Project-by-project mitigation alone cannot abate ongoing damage from the cumulative impacts of timber harvesting--only a drastically reduced level of harvest together with road closures can do that.

- PL's history of legal and regulatory violations, coupled with its history of misrepresentations and financial shenannigans, indicates that PL cannot be trusted. PL's assertions about its financial condition and its need to log timber should not be taken at face value.

- The Regional Board should stand by its staff's presentation of the best available science and thereby best ensure the recovery of all beneficial uses of water in these watersheds.

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