...this is what we mean.
HELENA - The U.S. Department of Agriculture's inspector general should investigate a pending agreement between the Forest Service and Plum Creek Timber Co., Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said Friday.
Tester sent the inspector general a letter requesting the investigation into the agreement, negotiated privately, that would amend part of a long-standing deal for Seattle-based Plum Creek's use of Forest Service roads in areas where the company owns timberlands....
Missoula County commissioners have said that amending the agreement on Plum Creek's use of Forest Service roads could foster real estate development on company timberlands. Housing development could require local governments to provide public services, such as fire protection, in remote places and at high cost, the commissioners say.
Plum Creek and Rey have said the company has long had use of Forest Service roads in Montana to access corporate timberlands for any legal purpose. County officials find that conclusion overly broad.
Plum Creek secretly negotiated the agreement with one of the leading villains in the Bush administration's Forest Service, Mark Rey. Rey has been really nothing more than a timber industry plant in the Forest Service, engineering maximum profits for industry. This agreement is just more of the same, and would allow Plum Creek to transform about 1,100 miles of road in its holdings, along with 900 miles of U.S. Forest Service roads, into access for private lots. As the value of the land for timber harvest diminishes, Plum Creek wants to make what it can off of the land by selling private lots. The issue is that the land is a checkerboard of private--Plum Creek--and public land, and to access much of the private land, Forest Service roads would have to be used. The impact of development of the private lands on the adjoining public parcels could potentially be far more damaging environmentally than current logging activities/
Montana counties protested the move, saying they weren't alerted to the development plan until it was nearly a done deal, because construction of hundreds of houses in remote timber could lead to firefighting, medical service, law enforcement, road maintenance and other demands they are in no position to provide. Tester, responding to their concerns, initiated a GAO investigation last summer.
The Plum Creek amendments would represent one of the major give-aways to private interests of the Bush administration. Kudos for Tester for trying to stop it. Hopefully the IG review will delay the agreement long enough for the new administration to step in and stop it.
Cross-posted at Congress Matters.