Over the past couple of years, the Department of Forestry has been rewriting their statewide programmatic vegetation management plan. This plan is intended to provide an overall analysis of the impacts of massive statewide fuel load reduction efforts. While we agree that fire hazard reduction is a necessary activity, the draft analysis anticipated massive herbicide use across the state as part of the activity.

When challenged about the fact that the impacts of such massive herbicide usage were never adequately analyzed, the CDF removed all references to herbicides from the final document. However, herbicides will still be used, and they were just removed from the analysis document in a half-hearted attempt to avoid the issue.

This case was filed in state court in San Francisco on August 31, 2000. We have recently been in contact with the Department of Forestrys attorneys and potential settlement discussions are scheduled for the near future.