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Water Board Ignores Duties, Votes More Logging
Pacific Lumber wins more logging with threats and intimidation.
Santa Rosa, Ca - California Water officials voted Wednesday to allow further damage to water quality. Voting in favor of the Texas based Maxxam Corporation, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board acted against the interests of damaged downstream residents and ignored their obligation to protect and restore the waters of the state of California. The 5-3 vote (with one member absent) will allow additional timber harvesting in Freshwater Creek and Elk River, adding to the number of logging plans approved last month. Freshwater and Elk are listed as sediment impaired under the Clean Water Act since 1997.
The contentious public meeting was the first for four new members of the nine member board.
Damaged residents who have been working for eight years to seek relief from logging-induced flooding are frustrated that new, uninformed members would vote in favor of a company whose pattern of illegal logging violates water quality laws and jeopardizes health and safety of downstream landowners.
Chairwoman Beverly Wasson began the meeting by revealing that Board’s Executive Officer was threatened with the loss of her career if Maxxam’s Pacific Lumber was not granted 100% approval for its redwood logging plans in Freshwater and Elk. Threats to Water Quality officials would not be tolerated, she said.
However, threats to flooding-affected residents will continue, as shown by the Board’s final vote to allow additional logging in the impaired areas. The successful motion was brought by board member John Corbett, who seemed more concerned about Pacific Lumber's self-induced financial crisis than protecting water quality or defending local residents whose health and safety are compromised by upstream clear-cuts. But even with the enrollment of additional logging plans under a General Waiver of waste discharge (in this case, sediment), there is no guarantee that PL will avoid bankruptcy, according to retired PL vice-president and general counsel Jared Carter.
In other words, extreme damage to the already impaired rivers will continue for decades to come while the company avoids responsibility by filing bankruptcy.
The Water Quality Board has been considered a “last hope” by downstream residents seeking relief from the consequences of Maxxam’s liquidation logging. While other state agencies are contractually bound to defend Maxxam/PL’s logging-at-all-costs, the Water Quality Board is under no such obligation. However, this board continues to ignore the duties they are charged with in favor of serial polluter Maxxam/Pacific Lumber.
The contentious public meeting was the first for four new members of the nine member board.
Damaged residents who have been working for eight years to seek relief from logging-induced flooding are frustrated that new, uninformed members would vote in favor of a company whose pattern of illegal logging violates water quality laws and jeopardizes health and safety of downstream landowners.
Chairwoman Beverly Wasson began the meeting by revealing that Board’s Executive Officer was threatened with the loss of her career if Maxxam’s Pacific Lumber was not granted 100% approval for its redwood logging plans in Freshwater and Elk. Threats to Water Quality officials would not be tolerated, she said.
However, threats to flooding-affected residents will continue, as shown by the Board’s final vote to allow additional logging in the impaired areas. The successful motion was brought by board member John Corbett, who seemed more concerned about Pacific Lumber's self-induced financial crisis than protecting water quality or defending local residents whose health and safety are compromised by upstream clear-cuts. But even with the enrollment of additional logging plans under a General Waiver of waste discharge (in this case, sediment), there is no guarantee that PL will avoid bankruptcy, according to retired PL vice-president and general counsel Jared Carter.
In other words, extreme damage to the already impaired rivers will continue for decades to come while the company avoids responsibility by filing bankruptcy.
The Water Quality Board has been considered a “last hope” by downstream residents seeking relief from the consequences of Maxxam’s liquidation logging. While other state agencies are contractually bound to defend Maxxam/PL’s logging-at-all-costs, the Water Quality Board is under no such obligation. However, this board continues to ignore the duties they are charged with in favor of serial polluter Maxxam/Pacific Lumber.
For more information:
http://www.contrast.org/treesit
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Water agency overrules staff's sharp cut in timber cutting
Thursday, March 17, 2005
By MIKE GENIELLA
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
A state water board Wednesday overruled its own staff and gave Pacific Lumber Co. approval to log even more in two impaired North Coast watersheds.
The 5-3 vote on a compromise motion culminated a five-hour Santa Rosa hearing, marked by testy exchanges, conflicting scientific studies and accusations that the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board had caved in to intense political pressure.
"They didn't split the baby. They mutilated the baby," declared Richard Geinger, a Humboldt County forestry activist.
The high-profile dispute is being closely watched in Sacramento, where Pacific Lumber has been lobbying key members of the Schwarzenegger administration for help. The company, which has been logging on the North Coast for 136 years, attracted statewide attention when it said constraints on its logging plans could force it to file bankruptcy or even close.
At its core, the North Coast logging dispute underscores escalating conflicts between the water board, which is mandated by law to protect water quality, and state and federal agencies, which review logging operations to ensure fish and wildlife protections are met.
On Wednesday, a tenseness pervaded the hearing as Geinger and other longtime Pacific Lumber critics lashed out at logging practices in the two decades since a corporate takeover by Texas financier Charles Hurwitz. A dozen or more law enforcement officers, fearing a possible confrontation between company workers and critics, stood watch.
Wednesday's vote means Pacific Lumber can log up to 75 percent of the disputed timber volume spread across 1,100 acres. The company could gross an additional $20 million in revenue.
It represents the second major concession the Santa Rosa-based water board has made in its current tug-of-war with Pacific Lumber. In late February, the board's executive director, Catherine Kuhlman, agreed to allow 50 percent of the proposed logging the company planned. Wednesday's decision enables the company to log another 25 percent.
A throng of company employees cheered when the vote was taken, and some rushed up to thank board members for the compromise.
However, Pacific Lumber executives expressed displeasure, as did downstream land owners and environmental representatives.
"We're very disappointed," said Pacific Lumber President Robert Manne.
The latest water board concession may not be enough to end the company's financial crisis, Manne said. It could take a week or more to analyze the effects of the decision on the company, he said.
"But I don't think much has changed. We still need all of the plans. Our lenders are not likely to be satisfied," Manne said.
Kristi Wrigley, a longtime landowner along the Elk River, blasted the compromise.
"We got the shaft. They just keep giving away more and more," she complained.
Mark Lovelace of the Humboldt Watershed Council, a Eureka environmental group, said he was baffled by how the board majority came up with the 75 percent figure. "What's magical about that?" he asked.
Lovelace said his organization may appeal the decision to the state Water Resources Control Board.
"This isn't over," he vowed.
For water board staff caught in the crossfire, Wednesday's decision also was disappointing.
"It means we will spend even more time and energy on issues that should have been resolved a long time ago," said Robert Klamt, acting director of the board's timber division.
At the core of the dispute are a dozen Pacific Lumber timber harvest plans already approved by four state and federal agencies, who oversee implementation of a 1999 agreement that was supposed to assure the company of a steady supply of logs.
But the regional water board staff, which was not a participant in the so-called Headwaters Forest deal, has held up the logging plans, citing water-quality and public-health concerns. Under state law, the nine regional boards across the state operate independently of state and federal agencies, who focus on fish and wildlife concerns.
Two of the water board's four newest members voted in favor of the compromise. It was engineered by board member Gerald Cochran, Del Norte County's assessor.
The new board members were appointed in February by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, filling long-vacant seats just as the Pacific Lumber debate was heating up.
New members Heidi Harris, a Humboldt State University professor, and Dennis Leonardi, a Ferndale dairy owner, supported the compromise with Pacific Lumber, Humboldt County's largest private employer and property taxpayer.
Other board members favoring Cochran's 75 percent formula included John Corbett, a Humboldt County attorney, and William Massey, a Santa Rosa Junior College instructor.
Board chairwoman Bev Wasson, a Healdsburg grape grower; Clifford Marshall, tribal chairman of the Hoopa Valley Indian tribe; and Sonoma County engineering consultant Richard Grundy opposed the move.
Wasson, the longest-serving board member, said she's fed up with Pacific Lumber tactics.
"We should stop bending to its every whim," she said.
Gary Clark, the company's chief financial officer, urged the board Wednesday to grant the company's request.
"Virtually, our survival is at stake," he said.
Because of regulatory constraints, Clark said Pacific Lumber is facing an "extremely unstable financial condition that continues to deteriorate daily."
Lovelace mocked the company's claims of a financial crisis.
Since the 1986 takeover by Hurwitz, Lovelace said Pacific Lumber has paid nearly $1 billion in dividends to Hurwitz's Maxxam Inc. and subsidiaries.
"If the company's broke, it's because they've been shipping hundreds of millions of dollars out of the local region," Lovelace.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
By MIKE GENIELLA
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
A state water board Wednesday overruled its own staff and gave Pacific Lumber Co. approval to log even more in two impaired North Coast watersheds.
The 5-3 vote on a compromise motion culminated a five-hour Santa Rosa hearing, marked by testy exchanges, conflicting scientific studies and accusations that the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board had caved in to intense political pressure.
"They didn't split the baby. They mutilated the baby," declared Richard Geinger, a Humboldt County forestry activist.
The high-profile dispute is being closely watched in Sacramento, where Pacific Lumber has been lobbying key members of the Schwarzenegger administration for help. The company, which has been logging on the North Coast for 136 years, attracted statewide attention when it said constraints on its logging plans could force it to file bankruptcy or even close.
At its core, the North Coast logging dispute underscores escalating conflicts between the water board, which is mandated by law to protect water quality, and state and federal agencies, which review logging operations to ensure fish and wildlife protections are met.
On Wednesday, a tenseness pervaded the hearing as Geinger and other longtime Pacific Lumber critics lashed out at logging practices in the two decades since a corporate takeover by Texas financier Charles Hurwitz. A dozen or more law enforcement officers, fearing a possible confrontation between company workers and critics, stood watch.
Wednesday's vote means Pacific Lumber can log up to 75 percent of the disputed timber volume spread across 1,100 acres. The company could gross an additional $20 million in revenue.
It represents the second major concession the Santa Rosa-based water board has made in its current tug-of-war with Pacific Lumber. In late February, the board's executive director, Catherine Kuhlman, agreed to allow 50 percent of the proposed logging the company planned. Wednesday's decision enables the company to log another 25 percent.
A throng of company employees cheered when the vote was taken, and some rushed up to thank board members for the compromise.
However, Pacific Lumber executives expressed displeasure, as did downstream land owners and environmental representatives.
"We're very disappointed," said Pacific Lumber President Robert Manne.
The latest water board concession may not be enough to end the company's financial crisis, Manne said. It could take a week or more to analyze the effects of the decision on the company, he said.
"But I don't think much has changed. We still need all of the plans. Our lenders are not likely to be satisfied," Manne said.
Kristi Wrigley, a longtime landowner along the Elk River, blasted the compromise.
"We got the shaft. They just keep giving away more and more," she complained.
Mark Lovelace of the Humboldt Watershed Council, a Eureka environmental group, said he was baffled by how the board majority came up with the 75 percent figure. "What's magical about that?" he asked.
Lovelace said his organization may appeal the decision to the state Water Resources Control Board.
"This isn't over," he vowed.
For water board staff caught in the crossfire, Wednesday's decision also was disappointing.
"It means we will spend even more time and energy on issues that should have been resolved a long time ago," said Robert Klamt, acting director of the board's timber division.
At the core of the dispute are a dozen Pacific Lumber timber harvest plans already approved by four state and federal agencies, who oversee implementation of a 1999 agreement that was supposed to assure the company of a steady supply of logs.
But the regional water board staff, which was not a participant in the so-called Headwaters Forest deal, has held up the logging plans, citing water-quality and public-health concerns. Under state law, the nine regional boards across the state operate independently of state and federal agencies, who focus on fish and wildlife concerns.
Two of the water board's four newest members voted in favor of the compromise. It was engineered by board member Gerald Cochran, Del Norte County's assessor.
The new board members were appointed in February by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, filling long-vacant seats just as the Pacific Lumber debate was heating up.
New members Heidi Harris, a Humboldt State University professor, and Dennis Leonardi, a Ferndale dairy owner, supported the compromise with Pacific Lumber, Humboldt County's largest private employer and property taxpayer.
Other board members favoring Cochran's 75 percent formula included John Corbett, a Humboldt County attorney, and William Massey, a Santa Rosa Junior College instructor.
Board chairwoman Bev Wasson, a Healdsburg grape grower; Clifford Marshall, tribal chairman of the Hoopa Valley Indian tribe; and Sonoma County engineering consultant Richard Grundy opposed the move.
Wasson, the longest-serving board member, said she's fed up with Pacific Lumber tactics.
"We should stop bending to its every whim," she said.
Gary Clark, the company's chief financial officer, urged the board Wednesday to grant the company's request.
"Virtually, our survival is at stake," he said.
Because of regulatory constraints, Clark said Pacific Lumber is facing an "extremely unstable financial condition that continues to deteriorate daily."
Lovelace mocked the company's claims of a financial crisis.
Since the 1986 takeover by Hurwitz, Lovelace said Pacific Lumber has paid nearly $1 billion in dividends to Hurwitz's Maxxam Inc. and subsidiaries.
"If the company's broke, it's because they've been shipping hundreds of millions of dollars out of the local region," Lovelace.
SCOTIA, Calif. (AP) - A timber harvest study commissioned by Pacific Lumber Co. shortly after Maxxam Corp. acquired it predicted landslides and flooding on Humboldt County timberland.
Pacific Lumber says landslides that have choked rivers and damaged home sites below the company's timber holdings are the result of previous logging rather than recent harvests. But a report by Pacific Meridian Resources, a consulting firm hired by Pacific Lumber in the late 1980s, predicted heavy logging would result in environmental and financial problems.
"Since Maxxam took over, they've logged the majority of the (Freshwater Creek and Elk River) watersheds," said Paul Mason of Sierra Club, adding that the report proves the company shouldn't be granted more logging permits in environmentally sensitive areas.
Company spokesman Chuck Center said the slides in the 1990s were the result of previous logging. "It was probably a combination of harvesting from the days before Maxxam bought the company and some (post-Maxxam) logging before the habitat conservation plan," he said.
Pacific Lumber was set to appear Wednesday before the state's North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board to vet its request for more harvesting approvals on Humboldt County watersheds.
Pacific Lumber says landslides that have choked rivers and damaged home sites below the company's timber holdings are the result of previous logging rather than recent harvests. But a report by Pacific Meridian Resources, a consulting firm hired by Pacific Lumber in the late 1980s, predicted heavy logging would result in environmental and financial problems.
"Since Maxxam took over, they've logged the majority of the (Freshwater Creek and Elk River) watersheds," said Paul Mason of Sierra Club, adding that the report proves the company shouldn't be granted more logging permits in environmentally sensitive areas.
Company spokesman Chuck Center said the slides in the 1990s were the result of previous logging. "It was probably a combination of harvesting from the days before Maxxam bought the company and some (post-Maxxam) logging before the habitat conservation plan," he said.
Pacific Lumber was set to appear Wednesday before the state's North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board to vet its request for more harvesting approvals on Humboldt County watersheds.
For more information:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...
Glen Martin, Chronicle Environment Writer
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
A timber harvest study commissioned by Pacific Lumber Co. shortly after Maxxam Corp. acquired it predicted the catastrophic landslides and flooding that have dogged the company on timberland in Humboldt County.
Pacific Lumber maintains the landslides that have choked rivers and damaged homesites below the company's timber holdings are a product primarily of "legacy" or past logging rather than its recent harvests.
But a report by Pacific Meridian Resources, a consulting firm hired by Pacific Lumber in the late 1980s, predicted heavy logging would result in the financial and environmental dilemmas the company now faces.
Paul Mason, the Sierra Club's forestry representative, said the report was striking in the accuracy of its predictions.
"Since Maxxam took over, they've logged the majority of the (Freshwater Creek and Elk River) watersheds," said Mason. "What they call legacy logging is their legacy, pure and simple."
He and other environmentalists say the report proves the company shouldn't be granted more logging permits in environmentally sensitive areas.
Today in Santa Rosa, Pacific Lumber will go before the state's North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, which denied the company about half of its annual projected logging plans last month, for consideration of its request for more harvesting approvals on watersheds in Humboldt County.
The board's decision for the harvest plans should be final.
Pacific Lumber claims it faces financial ruin if it isn't allowed to proceed with logging projects planned on 550 acres of steep hillside on the Freshwater Creek and Elk River watersheds.
The Pacific Meridian report provided the company with four timber harvesting scenarios. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection received a copy in 1990.
The most aggressive scenario, Alternative B, assumed harvesting levels of 394 million board feet a year, with declines predicted from 2003 to 2008 because most of the large, older trees would have been harvested.
Pacific Meridian predicted several effects from such a regimen:
-- "Mass movement events," i.e. landslides.
-- Sedimentation and flooding in rivers.
-- Elevation of water temperature in rivers. High water temperature is detrimental to salmon and steelhead.
-- Rapid reduction of virgin woodland ecosystems and vegetation diversity.
Virtually all of those impacts occurred following heavy cutting by Pacific Lumber through the 1990s. Landslides and floods on the Elk River and Freshwater Creek drainages were especially damaging to nearby residents.
Pacific Lumber notes its annual cut has declined steeply since 1999, when it sold the 7,500 acre old-growth Headwaters Forest to the state, negotiated transfers of other old-growth properties and signed a habitat conservation plan that restricted harvest on its remaining 200,000 acres of land.
The big slides of the late 1990s, said company spokesman Chuck Center, were the result of so-called legacy logging.
"It was probably a combination of harvesting from the days before Maxxam bought the company and some (post-Maxxam) logging prior to the habitat conservation plan," said Center.
Last month, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board approved harvest plans sought by the company for roughly half of the 550 acres of second-growth redwoods. At today's meeting, the board will consider approving more timber harvest plans. Both the watersheds have been heavily logged and plagued by numerous landslides in recent years.
The water board has expressed concern about further landslides and impaired water quality. Last month, Catherine Kuhlman, the board's executive director, recommended that only half the plans be approved.
Mark Lovelace, the director of the Humboldt Watershed Council, said the board will deny any major new harvest plans for the two watersheds.
Pacific Lumber, said Lovelace, continues to pursue the goal made explicit in Alternative B of the Pacific Meridian report: Complete liquidation of its marketable timber, with no real concern for environmental and social impacts.
"The Pacific Meridian report gave them several alternatives, and they chose the most destructive one," Lovelace said. "They've known all along what will happen to these steep watersheds if they logged them hard -- and Freshwater Creek and Elk River have been logged very hard."
But Pacific Lumber maintains it is bending over backward to comply with the toughest timber regulations in the state, and insists it must be allowed to proceed with its business.
"Since signing the (habitat plan), we've had a reduction in slides on our properties," Center said. "We have to log differently. We've put in tremendous road improvements. We maintain streamside buffers. We fund between seven to 10 people who act as independent auditors, evaluating our operations and telling us what we should change -- and we do what they tell us."
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
A timber harvest study commissioned by Pacific Lumber Co. shortly after Maxxam Corp. acquired it predicted the catastrophic landslides and flooding that have dogged the company on timberland in Humboldt County.
Pacific Lumber maintains the landslides that have choked rivers and damaged homesites below the company's timber holdings are a product primarily of "legacy" or past logging rather than its recent harvests.
But a report by Pacific Meridian Resources, a consulting firm hired by Pacific Lumber in the late 1980s, predicted heavy logging would result in the financial and environmental dilemmas the company now faces.
Paul Mason, the Sierra Club's forestry representative, said the report was striking in the accuracy of its predictions.
"Since Maxxam took over, they've logged the majority of the (Freshwater Creek and Elk River) watersheds," said Mason. "What they call legacy logging is their legacy, pure and simple."
He and other environmentalists say the report proves the company shouldn't be granted more logging permits in environmentally sensitive areas.
Today in Santa Rosa, Pacific Lumber will go before the state's North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, which denied the company about half of its annual projected logging plans last month, for consideration of its request for more harvesting approvals on watersheds in Humboldt County.
The board's decision for the harvest plans should be final.
Pacific Lumber claims it faces financial ruin if it isn't allowed to proceed with logging projects planned on 550 acres of steep hillside on the Freshwater Creek and Elk River watersheds.
The Pacific Meridian report provided the company with four timber harvesting scenarios. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection received a copy in 1990.
The most aggressive scenario, Alternative B, assumed harvesting levels of 394 million board feet a year, with declines predicted from 2003 to 2008 because most of the large, older trees would have been harvested.
Pacific Meridian predicted several effects from such a regimen:
-- "Mass movement events," i.e. landslides.
-- Sedimentation and flooding in rivers.
-- Elevation of water temperature in rivers. High water temperature is detrimental to salmon and steelhead.
-- Rapid reduction of virgin woodland ecosystems and vegetation diversity.
Virtually all of those impacts occurred following heavy cutting by Pacific Lumber through the 1990s. Landslides and floods on the Elk River and Freshwater Creek drainages were especially damaging to nearby residents.
Pacific Lumber notes its annual cut has declined steeply since 1999, when it sold the 7,500 acre old-growth Headwaters Forest to the state, negotiated transfers of other old-growth properties and signed a habitat conservation plan that restricted harvest on its remaining 200,000 acres of land.
The big slides of the late 1990s, said company spokesman Chuck Center, were the result of so-called legacy logging.
"It was probably a combination of harvesting from the days before Maxxam bought the company and some (post-Maxxam) logging prior to the habitat conservation plan," said Center.
Last month, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board approved harvest plans sought by the company for roughly half of the 550 acres of second-growth redwoods. At today's meeting, the board will consider approving more timber harvest plans. Both the watersheds have been heavily logged and plagued by numerous landslides in recent years.
The water board has expressed concern about further landslides and impaired water quality. Last month, Catherine Kuhlman, the board's executive director, recommended that only half the plans be approved.
Mark Lovelace, the director of the Humboldt Watershed Council, said the board will deny any major new harvest plans for the two watersheds.
Pacific Lumber, said Lovelace, continues to pursue the goal made explicit in Alternative B of the Pacific Meridian report: Complete liquidation of its marketable timber, with no real concern for environmental and social impacts.
"The Pacific Meridian report gave them several alternatives, and they chose the most destructive one," Lovelace said. "They've known all along what will happen to these steep watersheds if they logged them hard -- and Freshwater Creek and Elk River have been logged very hard."
But Pacific Lumber maintains it is bending over backward to comply with the toughest timber regulations in the state, and insists it must be allowed to proceed with its business.
"Since signing the (habitat plan), we've had a reduction in slides on our properties," Center said. "We have to log differently. We've put in tremendous road improvements. We maintain streamside buffers. We fund between seven to 10 people who act as independent auditors, evaluating our operations and telling us what we should change -- and we do what they tell us."
For more information:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file...
Hurwitz and Emmerson could be negotiating a behind the scenes deal. This matches the pattern of Maxxam causing bankruptcy after all the assetts (trees) have been liquidated. Now that there is only a clear cut wasteland left, Maxxam can cut a deal and find some other corporation 2 takeover..
SPI meanwhile follows the pattern of continued growth. If they inherit Maxxam's new mechanized mill, they come out ahead. This is similar to the takeover of the Oroville mill from Georgia-Pacific. Just one big swap game for the corporations..
Below is the pattern of SPI's acquisitions from endgame website;
"Chronology of SPI's Acquisitions
In 1974, Louisiana-Pacific and SPI reported merger talks for L-P to acquire SPI for $68 million.
In 1992, SPI purchased timberlands and conversion facilities from RLC Industries Co.
In 1974, SPI bought an interest in the Welch Corporation.
In 1974, Champion International bought a particleboard plant from SPI chairman J.B. Crook.
In 1975, Southwest Forest Industries bought SPI's Happy Camp sawmill.
In 1976, Feather River Lumber was sold to SPI for at least $13 million.
In 1978, Times Mirror sold 69,000 acres of timberland and a sawmill in northern California to SPI for about $36 million.
In 1989, Sierra Pacific Industries acquired 49,000 acres and a cutting contract on 19,000 acres in the Truckee area from Fibreboard for $11.5 million.
In 1991, SPI acquired three mills and 33,000 acres of timberland in California from Bohemia; Willamette Industries bought all the stock of Bohemia.
In 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice approved the sale of 102-year-old Michigan- California Lumber Co. mill in Camino (Eldorado County) to SPI; the sale would save the jobs of 300 people, according to the Western Council of Industrial Workers, which represents industrial workers at the mill.
In 1995, Fibreboard Corp sold its wood products group to SPI for $245 million, including 76,000 acres of timberland and its facilities at Standard, Chinese Camp, Red Bluff and Keystone, California.
In 1997, SPI purchased from Georgia-Pacific for $320 million a sawmill and a particle-board plant in Martell, and 127,000 acres of timberland in Amador County.
In 1997, Louisiana-Pacific sold 38,000 acres of white fir and pine near Oroville to SPI for $50 million.
SPI Operations and Facilities
The SPI mill at Anderson can produce up to 800,000 board feet of lumber per day. Recently Sierra Pacific has produced about 1.3 billion board feet of lumber annually, enough to build 300 new houses every day. Only Weyerhaeuser and Georgia-Pacific produce more lumber."
above info from endgame;
SPI meanwhile follows the pattern of continued growth. If they inherit Maxxam's new mechanized mill, they come out ahead. This is similar to the takeover of the Oroville mill from Georgia-Pacific. Just one big swap game for the corporations..
Below is the pattern of SPI's acquisitions from endgame website;
"Chronology of SPI's Acquisitions
In 1974, Louisiana-Pacific and SPI reported merger talks for L-P to acquire SPI for $68 million.
In 1992, SPI purchased timberlands and conversion facilities from RLC Industries Co.
In 1974, SPI bought an interest in the Welch Corporation.
In 1974, Champion International bought a particleboard plant from SPI chairman J.B. Crook.
In 1975, Southwest Forest Industries bought SPI's Happy Camp sawmill.
In 1976, Feather River Lumber was sold to SPI for at least $13 million.
In 1978, Times Mirror sold 69,000 acres of timberland and a sawmill in northern California to SPI for about $36 million.
In 1989, Sierra Pacific Industries acquired 49,000 acres and a cutting contract on 19,000 acres in the Truckee area from Fibreboard for $11.5 million.
In 1991, SPI acquired three mills and 33,000 acres of timberland in California from Bohemia; Willamette Industries bought all the stock of Bohemia.
In 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice approved the sale of 102-year-old Michigan- California Lumber Co. mill in Camino (Eldorado County) to SPI; the sale would save the jobs of 300 people, according to the Western Council of Industrial Workers, which represents industrial workers at the mill.
In 1995, Fibreboard Corp sold its wood products group to SPI for $245 million, including 76,000 acres of timberland and its facilities at Standard, Chinese Camp, Red Bluff and Keystone, California.
In 1997, SPI purchased from Georgia-Pacific for $320 million a sawmill and a particle-board plant in Martell, and 127,000 acres of timberland in Amador County.
In 1997, Louisiana-Pacific sold 38,000 acres of white fir and pine near Oroville to SPI for $50 million.
SPI Operations and Facilities
The SPI mill at Anderson can produce up to 800,000 board feet of lumber per day. Recently Sierra Pacific has produced about 1.3 billion board feet of lumber annually, enough to build 300 new houses every day. Only Weyerhaeuser and Georgia-Pacific produce more lumber."
above info from endgame;
For more information:
http://www.endgame.org/spi.html
As a long time Elk River citizen I have carefully watched and listened to what your concerns have been reguarding the watersheds of Elk and Freshwater. I have concerns about the enviorment where we live. I have talked and read many articles on both sides of the issue and have came to the conclusion that you and the Watershed council have no idea what you are talking about. I was embarressed to think I allowed myself to waste time reading your false statements and thinking you had scientific evidence on your side to prove the allegations you and the watershed council have made about the logging in the watersheds. My question to both of you is what is your experience in watershed health that leads you to make these false statements ? Mr Lovelace were are you coming from and what is your background? Ken Miller, did your learn about watersheds in medicial school ? You people have caused a division of our communities based on false information and your hatered for the timber industry and the people who depend on it. You have convinved a small group of our neighbors to support your hidden adgenda without proof of the issues they are complaining about. I would suggest you to butt out of our communities and go back to where you came from. That is if you can find the same rock you crawled out from under.
Talk to your neighbors, some of whom have had two feet of water in their house from nuisance flooding caused by Maxxam's excessive logging. Maybe the Coast Guard was dreaming when they had to rescue Elk River residents from quickly rising flood waters. Maxxam has admitted the damage its done by delivering drinking water to some residents whose water systems were destroyed by the high speed logging. Every independent scientist who has studied Freshwater and Elk conclude the rate of harvest is too high, and that the only way to bring both short-term and long-term relief is to drastically reduce the rate of logging.
Independent Science Review Panel Report Phase I
Independent Science Review Panel Report Phase II
Humboldt Watershed Council is comprised of residents of Elk River and Freshwater. Pointing to Maxxam's pseudo science won't convince the hundreds of people who are harmed by Maxxam's purposeful destruction of these watersheds that the damage is an illusion. (see this article on Maxxam's Pacific Meridian Report).
Independent Science Review Panel Report Phase I
Independent Science Review Panel Report Phase II
Humboldt Watershed Council is comprised of residents of Elk River and Freshwater. Pointing to Maxxam's pseudo science won't convince the hundreds of people who are harmed by Maxxam's purposeful destruction of these watersheds that the damage is an illusion. (see this article on Maxxam's Pacific Meridian Report).
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