Timber Cutting

Francis M. Wheat’s column (“Ring the Environmental Alarms,” Op-Ed Page, Sept. 20) is a cogent indictment of continuing congressional malfeasance in stewardship of our endangered environment.

Removal of federal court power to grant interim injunctive relief to halt potentially ruinous logging operations on public lands, pending a full hearing, is outrageous. The Hatfield-Adams rider to the Interior Department’s annual appropriations bill is environmental pork-barrel legislation--mischievous parochial protection for timber companies lumbering the old-growth timber in 13 national forests and other public lands elsewhere in the Northwest.

One of this country’s most respected corporate lawyers and a long-time environmentalist, Wheat presciently asks if traditional judicial protection can be removed for ancient public forests (like it also was for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline), “one wonders what sort of (other) activities Congress is being asked to put beyond the reach of the law.” It is a sad day for our democracy when lawmakers carve out a sanctuary for accused lawbreakers.

With public confidence in elected officials’ management of natural resources deservedly at an all-time nadir, Congress should demonstrate its commitment to protect the environment by repudiating the Hatfield-Adams rider and refraining from further tampering with the independent federal judiciary’s power to enforce the nation’s environmental laws.

PIERCE O’DONNELL

Los Angeles