Deal to Save Headwaters Could Fail

The $480-million deal to save the Headwaters Forest in Northern California hit a potentially lethal snag Thursday with federal negotiators unable to agree on how to protect forest streams and other wildlife habitat from damage inflicted by logging.

“It is fair to say that the sides have broken apart and there’s an impasse, and it’s a major impasse,” said U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The California Democrat has played a key role in the negotiations, which began two years ago when state and federal officials offered to buy 7,500 acres of ancient redwoods from the Pacific Lumber Co.

As part of the purchase plan, which now encompasses almost 10,000 acres of old-growth redwood and Douglas fir forest, Pacific Lumber agreed to come up with a conservation strategy for the rest of its land, about 210,000 acres. The conservation plan is supposed to protect salmon streams and nesting trees of an endangered seabird, the marbled murrelet, from the impacts of logging.

Key parts of the habitat conservation plan submitted by Pacific Lumber have never been acceptable to government wildlife experts. The plan remains the principal obstacle to a final agreement.

According to sources close to the negotiations, the disagreement centers on how close to certain streams logging will be permitted.

“Pacific Lumber is taking the position that the restrictions are financially untenable because they would put close to 50% of the company’s land off-limits to logging,” said one source.

Company president John Campbell blamed the breakdown in negotiations on state and federal officials.

“Government agencies made a series of substantial new demands during the last several days. While we were able to reach compromises on a number of them, in total the proposed changes would have left Pacific Lumber unable to operate effectively,” Campbell said. “We simply could not agree to a package that would threaten our ability to survive and provide job security to our employees.”

“This is especially unfortunate because scores of people have worked so hard over so many years to put together an agreement that was a victory for all involved,” Campbell added.

Among the issues in dispute is how large a buffer zone, in which no logging would take place, should be created around streams. The company originally had proposed a zone that would extend 30 feet on either side of streams where salmon spawn. The state, by contrast, has proposed expanding those buffers to at least 100 feet on either side of fish-bearing streams.

Federal officials have also proposed requiring additional logging restrictions along steep slopes above a type of stream, known as Class III, where there are no fish and where water does not flow year-round.

That proposal has been sharply criticized by the company and by state officials, who see it as a deal breaker. But experts such as Peter Moyle, a fish biologist at UC Davis, urged the government to regulate Class III streams. They argue that although those streams may not have fish in them, debris and sediment wash down the tributaries into fish-bearing streams.

Federal officials had set Thursday as a deadline for coming to an agreement in order to ensure that $250 million in federal funds Congress set aside would remain available to help pay for the trees.

“If that money goes away, no one will get it back. That’s why the pressure is on,” said a spokesman for the Department of the Interior, the federal agency leading the talks with Pacific Lumber.

Feinstein said Friday she thought the deadline could be “fudged” at least until next week, when she said she would try one more time to extract an agreement.

“The alternative to that solution is devastating,” she said. “It would be World War III in the Headwaters Forest.”

Feinstein was referring to the prospect of renewed conflict between environmental activists and Pacific Lumber. Over the past decade, the conflicts have led to mass arrests and the death earlier this year of a demonstrator who was struck by a falling tree as he attempted to block logging in one of the ancient groves.

Campbell said recently that if the deal falls through, logging can legally resume on a limited basis in those areas that were earmarked for government acquisition.

Last month, the California Department of Forestry temporarily suspended Pacific Lumber’s license to cut trees. Over the past two years, the company has been cited more than 100 times for logging practices that aggravate erosion and degrade local water quality. The company can still hire contractors to log the forest and expects the suspension eventually to be lifted.

A number of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, say no deal is preferable to a flawed one.

Some residents of neighborhoods that border heavily logged Pacific Lumber land are also skeptical of the benefits of the Headwaters deal.

“The experts that we trust say things aren’t going to be much better than they are now, logging will not be less intense and the only difference will be that the deal will deprive us of legal recourse over any future damage to our property,” said Josh Kaufman, a spokesman for the Freshwater Creek watershed group.

The group is one of several neighborhood organizations in Humboldt County that blame Pacific Lumber’s logging practices for landslides, floods and stream pollution that have damaged homes and property, polluted drinking water and fouled irrigation pumps.

Habitat conservation plans, such as the one required of Pacific Lumber, are widely regarded by conservationists as licenses to kill, since they allow logging and other activities in areas where it is almost impossible to avoid some harm to threatened or endangered species.