This is the first installment in what I hope will be an illuminating short series on a hot-button issue that has come and gone - and has now come back with a vengeance. Previous diaries by Land of Enchantment and EZ Writer have touched on the activities of Charles Hurwitz and his Maxxam corporations in connection with congressional GOPers John Doolittle and Richard Pombo. Those stories grew out of a broad and decisive struggle that began in the mid-80s and culminated in the late 90's to save the last unprotected remnant of California's magnificent 2,000-year-old ancient redwood forests. To understand the current situation, a bit of context is in order.
It is a long story with many players, but the group I work for, the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), based in Garberville, CA, has been fighting Hurwitz just about since the day he took over Pacific Lumber in 1986. As EPIC celebrates its 30th anniversary of grassroots organizing in Northwestern California, Hurwitz's Pacific Lumber stands a skeleton of what it had been before the Hurwitz takeover, which was a well respected family business that sustainably harvested trees while taking care of its long-term fiscal health, its workers, and its forested watersheds. Pacific Lumber and its related companies filed bankruptcy under Chapter 11 earlier this year, possibly signaling the coming end of Hurwitz and Maxxam in Humboldt County, with serious repercussions for conservation and forestry in the region.
As Hurwitz's chain saws bore down on the old-growth forests of Humboldt County in the mid-90s, a popular movement to reign in industrial logging picked up speed, and Hurwitz's mismanagement of Pacific Lumber held the center of attention. The fear on the part of some politicians of a re-run of the Timber Wars of the late 80s and early 90s, combined with the threat of a constitutional "takings" lawsuit by Hurwitz with the backing of the property-rights movement (including possibly a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, in the minds of some), formed the climate in which Senator Dianne Feinstein sat down to the table to hammer out a deal with Hurwitz. Parties to the ultimate agreement included the state and the federal governments, and the deal required state and federal appropriations. In 1996, Feinstein announced that this deal would protect the "best" of the ancient groves and also satisfy the needs of the company. The company would sell the groves for preservation and receive permits in return to harvest the volumes of timber it asserted it needed to stay in business. The agreement was consummated on March 1, 1999. It was known as the Headwaters "deal."
Where the rubber met the road, however, the business-as-usual outcome has been precisely as predicted by the grassroots groups opposed to the "deal" from the minute they heard Feinstein speak at that September, 1996 press conference. The deal gave the company a wildly inflated price ($450 million) for a relatively small museum of partially-logged groves (about 7,000 acres) in return for a license to destroy the habitat of endangered species and log its "needed" volumes on the rest of its property (about 200,000 acres). The lynchpin of the program of protecting habitat (outside the acquired groves) of the endangered marbled murrelet consists of a system of old-growth reserves that were given 50-year protections. Of course, 50 years is the blink of an eye in the process of forest succession in the redwood region. Further protections will be needed for these areas. That was just the "best" deal that could be won at the time. (DIFI, you see, has been a "dealmaker" for quite some time.)
Now, having brought Pacific Lumber into bankruptcy, Hurwitz is proposing to "unlock the values" of an important area for murrelets with a project he proposes to call the "Redwood Ranch Development," and the financial plan he calls "Project Sequoia." This proposal would convert some 22,000 acres of forestland into "Kingdom" or "Trophy" residences on 160-acre parcels, with golf courses and a lodge, and it would market many of these properties as providing access to and adjoining the protected old-growth reserves set aside for the murrelet.
The consequences for Humboldt County if this trend continues could be catastrophic as timberlands fall prey to conversions for development, and as other industrial timberholders in Humboldt County watch with keen interest in the context of a sluggish lumber market. As a result, the County Board of Supervisors has stepped in and passed a temporary moratorium of new building permits in timber-zoned lands, but the measure will expire on November 23. A powerful coalition of industrial timber companies and property-rights advocates is posed to take advantage of the coming "gap" that could open a Pandora's Box of residential developments across Humboldt County's private forestlands, sending shockwaves through the local economy and the fragile ecosystems at risk.
Even as it schemes to push through its development proposal, Pacific Lumber claims to be committed to "dialogue and transparency." If that is the case, the company could begin by publicly disclosing the extent and value of its timber inventory, which it refuses to do, so that its plans and forecasts can be evaluated for their effects on the local economy and environment. And then there is the matter of the hundreds of millions of dollars "downstreamed" to Maxxam's coffers in Houston rather than servicing the substantial debtload which Maxxam's timbering subsidiaries have been carrying all these years; once that is admitted and established, there can be a real community dialogue with a goal of creating the conditions for a responsible and profitable company not dependent on overharvesting to pay the next quarter's interest. So far, Hurwitz has been able to capitalize on secrecy and 11th-hour hardball to get what he wants. Now that the forum is a Houston bankruptcy court, it remains to be seen whether he can once again force his predatory business model onto the people of Humboldt County.
Hurwitz made out pretty well the last time there was a "deal." What's to stop him this time? I will post more soon about the many layers of this story, but for now it needs to be emphasized that Charles Hurwitz has revealed his "End Game" for Pacific Lumber - and it involves not working forests for the community but "kingdom" ranchettes and golf courses for the wealthy, with former timber workers perhaps waiting on the wealthy barons at the lodge. Right now Hurwitz has been ordered into mediation with his creditors, and that means, among other things, that we will be receiving the types of disclosures which the company previously was able to keep confidential. We know that Hurwitz has every intention of staying in the timber harvesting business while purporting to pay off his creditors with new bonds backed by the development scheme and by the remaining timber on the property. Thus, Hurwitz seeks to leverage the timber resource as ferociously as ever: the new interest payments will require a certain rate of harvest come hell or high water - literally. Just like before, which resulted in bankruptcy on top of massive, destructive flooding and landslides. For this and other reasons, the likelihood that Hurwitz will get his plan through the bankruptcy court is highly questionable. Meantime, there is a sharp focus on the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, where a divisive constituency is demanding various things of a Board of Supervisors that is struggling valiantly not to allow, among other things, its General Plan Update process to be hijacked by a sudden rash of applications to build residences in timber-zoned lands.
For our part, EPIC insists that any solution for Pacific Lumber and Humboldt County must include a one-way ticket for Charles Hurwitz and his Maxxam Corporations back to Houston, TX.
Stay tuned. Next up: more on the Pacific Lumber bankruptcy and the condition of PL's forestlands.
EPIC website: www.wildcalifornia.org