Spring 1999 Wild Califonia

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"SINKER LOGGING"
LAWSUIT MAY HAVE STATEWIDE IMPLICATIONS

by Linda Perkins

Giant Redwood Log at the Site of the Former Big River Mill

For years, "sinker loggers" have run heavy equipment through the fragile estuaries and riverbeds of Mendocino county, dragging away huge old-growth logs left lying on the river bottom by turn-of-the-century timber barons. For years, the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) has permitted this activity, despite the likelihood of direct harm to salmon and steelhead as well as significant habitat disruption.

The Mendocino Environmental Center, in conjunction with Mendocino Coast Watch, EPIC and the Coho Salmon Defense Project, filed a lawsuit challenging DFG's issuance of three permits for this activity. An initial favorable decision halted those specific operations, but the true implications of our victory only became apparent in a February 3 ruling by Mendocino County Judge Conrad Cox.

When alteration of a stream bank or river bed (by installing a culvert or dredging a channel, for instance) may affect fish, DFG must issue a permit allowing such operations to go forward. These permits are known as "1603 permits" after the section of the California Fish & Game Code under which they appear. In the past, DFG has routinely failed to conduct proper environmental review of these permits in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). CEQA provides opportunities for public review and comment, requires that no "significant" environmental damage occur without mitigation, and demands analysis of alternatives to potentially destructive projects.

To the agency's further discredit, an earlier lawsuit brought by Salmon Unlimited in Sonoma County successfully raised this same issue, resulting in a settlement requiring DFG to bring the 1603 permit process into compliance with CEQAÑin 1994. DFG apparently ignored this requirement despite having assured the court in that case that draft CEQA procedures had already been developed.

In our sinker log case, DFG asked for 17 more months to implement these procedures. Judge Cox, seeing no reason to allow further procrastination, instead issued a ruling that requires DFG to comply with CEQA by May 1. If the agency fails to meet that deadline, no further 1603 permits may be issued.

This case has tremendous implications for logging, road building, ranching, agriculture and other industries that directly impact our streams, rivers and fisheries. It is our hope that these permits, in the past routinely granted with cursory environmental analysis and no public input, will finally get the scrutiny they deserve. We'll be monitoring DFG's development of CEQA procedures very closely.

Attorneys Rod Jones and Paul Carroll represented the four plaintiff groups in this case. Linda Perkins, speaking for the plaintiffs, said, "I'm really glad our challenge to Fish and Game resulted in the withdrawal of permits for sinker salvage logging. The fisheries biologists tell us that those logs, left in the rivers, provide one of the most critically needed habitat elements for coho salmon- especially in estuaries. Any projects in our degraded rivers need the most careful scrutiny for possible impacts to aquatic species. As a result of this lawsuit that's going to be happening now all over the state."