Stakes are Huge in Waterboards Delay in Addressing Destructive Forest Practices

While the North Coast Region Water Quality Control Board met inside the Wharfinger Building on the Eureka waterfront on Friday February 23, outside Earth First activists held banners and chanted Who's Water, Our Water, Waterboard Do Your Duty.

At issue is a study and report issued last year by the California Water Quality Control Boards own regional staff that recommends logging in these watersheds should "Cease and Desist". The study confirmed what citizens living in these watersheds already understood. That is, that destructive logging practices in these watersheds has increased flooding by exposing soil that has eroded into creeks and rivers, filling the channels, so that flooding now occurs even during small storms.

The local Water Quality Control Board scheduled then put off hearings on the study and report. At this point hearings have been put off indefinitely. In the meantime, it's business as usual at the California Department of Forestry and Maxxam/Pacific Lumber as Timber Harvest Plans continue to be approved for logging in these badly impaired watersheds. There is deep concern that further delay by the Water Quality Control Board, not only denies the integrity of its own staff's report, but also marginalizes its own effectiveness in upholding any standards of water quality.

Inside, citizens of these watersheds, as they have done many times before with other state agencies, described to the board how the deterioration of these streams has affected their lives by flooding their homes and property and how native fish such as Coho Salmon and Steelhead Trout have disappeared.

In the background of the photograph, across from the Eureka waterfront, is a giant pulp mill that normally belches clouds of steam laced with toxics. As a result of California's power crisis, this mill, recently purchased from Louisiana Pacific by Wisconsin-based LaPointe Partners Inc., has been shut down temporarily due to the high cost of electricity.