Paving Paradise

Because it's not good enough to set up drillling rigs in the sightline of national treasures, or poison more water, or gut the endangered species act, BushCo is upping the potential permanent damage one more notch.

In a massive FU to the people of Montana and Senators Tester and Bingaman (who've been battling this effort for months), former timber lobbyist and current Forest Service chief (for just 15 more days, thankfully), is granting Plum Creek timber company one of its fondest desires.

The shift is technical but has large implications. It would allow Plum Creek Timber to pave roads through Forest Service land. For decades, such roads were little more than trails used by logging trucks to reach timber stands.

But as Plum Creek has moved into the real estate business, paving those roads became a necessary prelude to opening vast tracts of the company's 8 million acres to the vacation homes that are transforming landscapes across the West.

Scenic western Montana, where Plum Creek owns 1.2 million acres, would be most affected, placing fresh burdens on county governments to provide services and undoing efforts to cluster housing near towns.

In one of his many visits to Montana during the campaign, Obama took aim at the Bush administration over this very proposal: "At a time when Montana's sportsmen are finding it increasingly hard to access lands, it is outrageous that the Bush administration would exacerbate the problem by encouraging prime hunting and fishing lands to be carved up and closed off." Hence, Rey's rush to push this last effort through, despite united opposition in local and state government.

Missoula County, the entity that would have to provide all those services to would-be mountain residents, has strongly objected to Rey's proposal, and has demanded to see all of the documents relating to this decision, documents which still haven't been released, and won't be, if Rey has anything to do with it, which, of course, he does.

Rey suspects Missoula County's request for documents is a tactic - "an attempt to run out the clock."

Because if a decision is not made before the Bush administration - and along with it, Mark Rey - leaves office, then perhaps the amendment push will falter.

"They're hoping they'll get a different legal decision from a different administration," Rey said, adding that "elections are meaningful in that way."

McCubbin, however, insists "you cannot amend a document that you haven't identified and they still haven't identified the documents. We made our request six months ago and they've just now made what they themselves call a ‘cursory review of the documents?' This isn't Missoula County delaying anything."
According to McCubbin, the Forest Service recently identified 176,000 documents that are "directly relevant" that have not yet been provided.

Rey said he remains committed to providing all relevant information needed to make an informed decision, which is not the same as providing "every last scrap of paper."

Like most of BushCo's midnight efforts, this one will inevitably end up in court, because there's no way Rey is not signing the easement that would allow Plum Creek's development. Missoula County has substantial ground to sue, and will very likely do so. So this is essentially an obnoxious and arrogant exercise in futility, likely to do nothing more than secure Mark Rey an extremely healthy salary with some timber interest in the not too distant future. But it's also placing a large financial burden a small Montana county that has plenty of other demands for its resources.

Update: Breaking news on this issue, via MTMofo in the comments. Plum Creek is inexplicably doing the right thing here:

Plum Creek Timber Co. is abandoning a controversial deal brokered with Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, citing strong public opposition.

"Although we continue to believe that the easement amendment would be beneficial to the general public, given the lack of receptivity, we have decided not to go forward with the amendment," Plum Creek President and CEO Rick Holley wrote Monday, in a letter to Missoula County.

They probably don't want to have their legal department tied up in knots for the foreseeable future.