Water quality agency hesitant to get involved in logging issue
March 01, 2001
The request of local landowners to have the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board intervene in timber harvest decisions raises some difficult legal and jurisdictional questions.
At issue are primarily Pacific Lumber Co. harvest plans in the Freshwater Creek and Elk River watersheds. There is no dispute that both streams are now badly silted up, and that landowners have suffered flooding and property damage as a result.
Pacific Lumber and other timber companies contend that present-day logging, conducted under their habitat conservation plans and the state Forest Practices Act, will not cause siltation damage to creeks. This occurs, they say, mostly as a result of heavy rain falling on natural slides and on old roads and log landings left from pre-modern logging.
The landowners say that the present restrictions are not adequate to protect streams, even if they were always obeyed. They also argue that the cumulative impact of logging in the same watershed year after year is not taken into account by the California Department of Forestry when reviewing harvest plan applications.
An investigation last year by water quality staff reported that PL logging in the Freshwater watershed had indeed increased siltation and contributed to flooding of the creek, as well as to the loss of its salmon runs. PL officials have disputed these findings.
The question now is whether the Regional Water Quality Control Board should hold special hearings on the PL logging activities, and possibly issue cease-and-desist orders if they are found to be polluting the streams. The board does this in other water pollution cases, including the recently settled controversy over stream pollution from the Louisiana-Pacific Corp. particle board plant in Arcata.
Timber harvests, however, come under the jurisdiction of the California Department of Forestry. The water quality board, Department of Fish and Game and other agencies may comment on harvest plans, but they are not specialists on forestry issues.
The California Board of Forestry last year considered, and declined to make, changes in the present forest practice rules sought by the Freshwater and Elk River landowners, among others. There is a very real legal question as to whether one state agency could prohibit an activity that has been approved by another agency, if the latter has normal jurisdiction over that activity.
Another gray area of the law is whether runoff from a logging operation can be considered "point source pollution," such as a discharge pipe from a factory. The Environmental Protection Information Center has announced its intention to file suit in federal court on that issue.
Pacific Lumber's habitat conservation plan is by far the most restrictive in the state, requiring considerably stricter stream protection than does state law. Whether even this is effective in very heavily logged watersheds may be disputable -- but if it is not, timber harvesting itself may be impossible. In that case, the land will probably be subdivided for residential development, and siltation is likely to become still worse.
The Water Quality Control Board has so far managed to put off any decision on whether to open this can of worms. It cannot be delayed indefinitely, however, and whatever is decided a lot of people are going to be unhappy.