Newly elected Republican Representative Tom McClintock will be in Quincy, CA tomorrow morning, May 11, 10:30 am in Plumas County (that's nearly 4 hours north of Sacramento) to appear at a forum at the fairgrounds, in front of a small town whose workers have just been devastated by Sierra Pacific Industries sawmill closing, forcing layoffs. The small log mill is closing. Indications from McClintock's advance PR show he will blame environmentalists, the spotted owl, and the Endangered species act, and ignore the housing building meltdown which has cut the demand for lumber.
According to one of McClintock's bloggers, who is now using a pen name,"Kool Aid Man," McClintock is now "taking on the Montgomery/Charlie Brown Power Base." Quincy and Plumas county picked Brown over McClintock. Elections, to the remaining hard- core Republican base, are all about payback.
Sierra Pacific Industries, whose owner, "Red" Emerson, is planning to lay off about a 1000 workers over the course of this year out of about 5000, has been a long time supporter of former Rep. John Doolittle.
McClintock has also been a beneficiary of Sierra Pacific Industries logging company, getting at least $4600 in 2008.
Mountainous and lovely Plumas County was one of 3 in the district that came through for Democrat Charlie Brown in the November 2008 election, where he beat McClintock 5,603 to 5,146. (The other 2 were Nevada and Sierra Counties.) Currently, according to the county registrar's site, the voter registration in Plumas county has the combination of Democrats and DTS (independents) outnumbering the Republicans about 6,900 to 5700.
Quincy's in- town population is only around 1,865 people (circa 2007) and its economy is mostly dependent on timber harvesting and the lumber mill, and associated support jobs, and a small bit of tourism. It has the Feather River Community College with 564 students, and Plumas Hospital, a library. 12% of the homes burn wood for heat. http://www.city-data.com/...
You cannot look at a picture of Quincy or the surrounding forested landscape and claim there are no smaller diameter trees to cut. It's ludicrous. The mill companies want to cut larger diameter, old growth logs which are repositories for endangered species. But it is the smaller diameter, younger trees that burn more easily in the dry season, that need to be cleared to prevent forest fires on public land. There is a regulatory process to try to supervise this, called the "Quincy Library Group," or "QLG." http://www.qlg.org/ (it's called that because they first met in the Quincy Library so they couldn't yell at each other). During the Bush administration, the mill owners wanted to cut more big logs, and they ended up getting sued to make them cut small logs, too. Sierra Pacific Mill claims they can't get small logs now, so they're closing their small log mill in Quincy.
I believe part of the reason Republicans like Doolittle and Pombo lost or didn't run for re election was their constantly baiting the environmentalists as whackos more concerned about spotted owls than people, while trying to overturn the Endangered Species Act, but ignoring the real damage the Bush administration did by mucking with national forest policy, whereby the logging companies knew there would be less regulation enforcement, and that it would trigger more lawsuits. The lawsuits slow everything down and aggravate the public and the loggers, who depend on seasonal work. Doolittle was notorious for his "Evergreen" letter he wrote at the beginning of the Bushwhacking period, where he asked what he could do to overturn all environmental regulations.
excerpts from Doolittle'sThe Evergreen Letter
http://www.rep.org/...
Feb 29, 2000
Dear Friend:
When I speak before or meet with Americans concerned by the extremism of the so-called environmentalist movement, I often find myself counseling only defensive action. But rather than complaining and beating back Clinton Administration proposals, we may soon have the chance to take the initiative with a new Republican president.
I would like to assemble a list of Executive Orders and rule changes that a new president can enact immediately upon taking office to go on the offensive against the extreme environmentalists. The real changes enacted by a new administration occur in the first year or so. By putting together a master plan now, we can ensure that this tremendous opportunity is not wasted.
What I’m looking to do is not merely reverse the damage done but to enable the executive branch to work its will to counter that entire movement and undercut their sources of power. We must force them to spend money and resources, weakening their influence. Further, we should promote our own vision of proper stewardship of God’s green earth.
I’m including issues related to forests, grazing, water, air, endangered species, minerals, energy, and livability. Free-market environmental ideas are especially welcome. //
Here’s another possibility: a story was in the papers a couple weeks ago detailing how the EPA funds several anti-highway groups to convince Americans not to use their automobiles. Similar cases abound. We need to cut off this taxpayer funded propaganda. We must prevent Washington’s entanglement in local affairs under the pretense of the livable communities initiative. We might think of turning forest management over to the states.
Be creative and think offensively....
I am calling this "Project Evergreen."
Office of John T Doolittle
Just in case you missed everything else I've written on Rep. McClintock, he is worse than Doolittle on the environment, if that's possible. Doolittle at least understood where water comes from and where it goes, and that agriculture uses it for irrigation. I'm not sure that McClintock, the district's poster child for global warming denial, grasps that concept.
Back to the present, the two Democrats, Montgomery and Brown, that McClintock and "Kool Aid Boy" have decided to try to paint as "extremists?" That's a bunch of bunk, as I have heard Brown MORE than once call for sanity in the logging process and a reduction in small overgrowth and tree thinning to prevent forest fires. I have also heard the former Placer County Supervisor who lost to Jennifer Montgomery, Bruce Kranz, claim that environmentalists are happy when they see people's houses burning down in forest fires, which I think is disgusting, and is one of the reasons why he lost the election.
You have to read this link if you are interested in this topic:
1/21/2009 Plumas County News - Supervisors hear Quincy Library News update and prognosis
http://www.plumasnews.com/...
He went on to remind the board this was a pilot project, meaning the idea was for the Plumas National Forest to be a testing ground for whether or not logging has a future on federal land.
He (Jackson, an attorney of the QLG) said the project would be testing particular kinds of logging like watershed restoration and wildlife-management-focused cutting.
Jackson said the amount of work proposed in the project was much greater than that accomplished “because of the litigation funded by all kinds of environmental groups all around the country who do not want logging to be an appropriate use on the national forest.”
Jackson pointed out the county (Plumas) had spent $143,500 on QLG litigation since 2001, when the legal battles began.
Well, that sounds like a lot of money, until you read this: The Forest Service is spending about 3 million a year to cut wood here already.
He said the Forest Service has spent $26 million a year since 2000 on service contracts in the project area. This includes the Plumas and Lassen national forests and the Sierraville Ranger District on the Tahoe National Forest.
Jackson believes this fund allowed the Forest Service to employ two to three times as many people as it would have without QLG. He estimated the payroll in those three areas was expanded by $18 million to $20 million, meaning up to $8 million was going into the local economy in Plumas County, with the rest going into the other two areas.
Jackson said the second group of projects was the one that QLG was meant to test, where commercial loggers did the work.
He said $21 million went to timber companies, with $5 million of that amount going to schools and roads in Plumas County from timber receipts.
You got that part? That's the lawyer for the Quincy Library Group, the public/private coalition which is supposed to try to make everybody play nice at lumberjacking on public lands, telling the Plumas Board of Supes in January that 21 million dollars over time went to companies like Sierra Pacific, which just laid off 140 people in Quincy.
The "framework" that Jackson refers to, and complains about, is the 2001 Federal plan to manage the Sierra Nevada Forest, 11.5 million acres on 11 national forests.
The key aspects of the 2001 Federal Forest Framework plan are:
http://www.sierraclub.org/...
•a commitment to restoration and protection of 4.1 million acres of old growth forest habitat
•key core area protections (639,000 acres) for the California spotted owl and goshawk rangewide
•protection of all trees greater than 20” on 11 of the 11.5 million acres of public land managed by the Forest Service
•a 1 million-acre Southern Fisher Conservation Area
•a 300’ stream buffer system with 460,000 acres of critical aquatic refuges
•a fuels-reduction program that specifically conditions treatments to focus on small diameter trees, brush and surface fuels.
Seems straightforward enough. On public lands, cut down the smaller trees. Leave the bigger ones. Don't cut too close to streams, to control runoff. Leave about 6 million acres out of 11.5 alone.
Sierra Pacific, by the way, is owned by one family, the Emerson's, and owns about 1.9 MILLION acres of private forestland in CA and WA, and is the second largest lumber maker in this country. Sierra Pacific is also closing a mill in Tuolumne County that uses the Stanislaus National Forest, and the biomass electrical generation plant.
http://www.uniondemocrat.com/...
The Forest Service uses timber sales to accomplish much of its forest fire-fuel reduction work, said Deputy Forest Supervisor Kathy Hardy.
Annually, the Stanislaus National Forest attempts to reduce fuel loading on about 8,000 acres. The main way the agency does it is through timber sales, most of which are to SPI, Hardy said.
What does the general public want ? If you live here during wildfire season, where the air is choked with smoke for weeks, you know that we need brush control. Cut down the smaller trees.
We seem to have a consensus- cut down the smaller trees, dammit !
What's Sierra Pacific saying ? There are no smaller trees.
Read the comments under this March 4th story in the Redding Record:
http://www.redding.com/...
Amazing how that works. It is as if these law suits over 'small diameter old growth' started when the housing market crashed. Wow, what a coincidence.
What is McClintock going to say tomorrow in Quincy, where Sierra Pacific Mill just left the larger log sawmill open for now, and closed the smaller log mill. Anyone want to hazard a guess? Will he actually propose anything that would result in cutting down smaller trees? And then maybe using more of them for biomass for carbon neutral electrical generation ? Or other wood products, since the demand for lumber is the lowest it's been since 1982 ? Why would he do that ? There's no such thing as global warming in McClintock's world. Damn the owls, get rid of the ESA, clearcut and full McMansion Sprawldivisions ahead !
Whoops. Forgot about that housing foreclosure financial crash and developer bust. Obama is a socialist and you're all going to be living in Nuevo Europe! The state of California deserves no economic stimulus money! FreeMarket uber alles ! Yeah, that's it !
(Plumas County) Supervisor Terry Swofford said he recently visited the mill, and was stunned by the amount of logs stacked everywhere. He said he had a hard time believing the mill could afford to keep cutting, QLG lawsuits or not, if it couldn’t sell more of the product. http://www.plumasnews.com/...
Sierra Pacific Industries selected its layoff locations in this 1st round of employee cuts of about 450 at 3 mills, to have maximum political impact. Now they're talking about trying to close a mill in Camino, in Eldorado County, on June 12, cutting 164 jobs. http://www.sacbee.com/... McClintock selected his first public appearance in front of grownups instead of schoolchildren 4 hours driving time from his district office on a Monday morning for maximum geographical padding. By doing this, he can fantasize about causing extinctions, really big trees falling down, tell a bunch of laid off loggers about "personal responsibility and how you can't spend your way into prosperity," have Sierra Pacific Mills cadge for stimulous money, have Rep Wally Herger cover for him by actually doing the earmarking and then giving him more HERGER PAC money, and not have too many people show up.
"There are no trees."
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photo by diary author, Oct 2008, on the Road to Quincy, CA