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May 22, 2003
PL
casts a wide net against protesters
by
EMILY GURNON
Protesters attempting to stop
Pacific Lumber Co. from cutting its trees must contend, these
days, with more than just criminal trespassing charges.
In the last two years, the company
has targeted more than 110 people in four separate civil suits,
arguing that those who trespass on their land, provide food to
treesitters or raise funds for them are guilty of "acts
designed to interfere with [PL's] lawful business operations."
The lawsuits ask for damages in the hundreds of thousands of
dollars, in some cases.
Jim Branham of Pacific Lumber
did not return phone calls on the lawsuits for the Journal.
The company's law firm, Mitchell, Brisso, Delaney and Vrieze
of Eureka, referred questions back to Pacific Lumber.
But PL's Mary Bullwinkel was
quoted here 18 months ago as saying the suits' intent was "to
send a message to people with no respect for the law that we
will take whatever steps are appropriate to see they do not interfere
with our legitimate right to do business."
One of the estimated 41 targets
of the latest lawsuit, involving Freshwater treesitters and their
supporters, was Jeanette Jungers, a 50-year-old special education
teacher from Eureka.
Jungers said that for many of
the protesters -- young people with few assets -- the lawsuits
are little more than a minor hassle. They figure, "I don't
have anything, so what can they take?" she said.
For people like her, however,
it's a different story.
"From my perspective, it
means a great deal, because I have a home, I have children, I
don't want them to attach my wages, I don't want to lose my home,"
she said.
Jungers said she provided weekly
meals for treesitters Nate Madsen and Jeny Card, aka Remedy,
for three years. On the day PL-hired climbers removed Card from
the ancient redwood she named "Jerry," Jungers locked
herself to a nearby tree and was arrested.
The longtime Humboldt resident
said she has already had to pay $250 to file an initial court
document, and, since she has a job with an annual income of about
$40,000, she is required to pay $65 an hour for the court-appointed
public defender.
Failure to file the appropriate
documents can lead to a default judgment against a defendant.
In Junger's case, that would mean owing Pacific Lumber $335,000.
"They're trying to intimidate
people to stop any type of public participation," said Card,
also a target of the Freshwater civil suit.
Defendants call this kind of
action a SLAPP suit, or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.
Also known as a harassment suit,
the tactic has been used occasionally by Pacific Lumber and other
corporations over the years to discourage people from exercising
their freedom of speech, said Karen Pickett, director of the
Berkeley-based Bay Area Coalition for the Headwaters.
"But for a company to file
one lawsuit right on the heels of another and try and cast this
wide net so that they're tangling everybody up in their nefarious
legal web is particularly outrageous," she said. "The
courts should see the frivolous nature of these lawsuits and
kick Pacific Lumber out on its corporate butt right out the court
door."
The goal is intimidation, Pickett
said. "The corporations know darn well that the people they're
suing have far fewer resources than them, and even if people
aren't scared away, the [suits] effectively tie people up because
you have to meet this plethora of deadlines and jump through
these hoops on time."
Pickett herself was sued after
being arrested in Freshwater on March 18, the first day Pacific
Lumber climbers went in to remove treesitters. She said she was
not trespassing but simply taking photos. Pickett and others
were handed copies of the civil suit at the time of their arrest
by the same sheriff's deputies who were arresting them on the
criminal charges.
The first SLAPP suit was filed
in April of 2001 against more than 60 protesters in the Mattole
watershed. The complaint against one defendant, Ellen Taylor,
was thrown out when the court determined that the suit was filed
"to chill the valid exercise of the constitutional rights
of freedom of speech," the court wrote. Taylor, a 60-year-old
Petrolia resident, did not take part in trespassing or civil
disobedience; she merely spoke about the actions on KMUD radio,
she said.
Other protesters in that case
are now in settlement negotiations with Pacific Lumber and other
plaintiffs, which include Steve Wills Trucking, Lewis Logging
and Columbia Helicopter, Inc.
The second suit involved five
defendants who were accused of trespassing on Pacific Lumber
land near the so-called "Hole in the Headwaters." The
civil case was thrown out after the District Attorney's office
said the witnesses to the alleged trespassing could not identify
the defendants in court. The third suit involved four people
who allegedly drove to PL's main entrance in Scotia in August
2002 and locked themselves to their vehicle. A trial date for
that case is scheduled for July 17.
Slapping back
Five defendants hit with a Pacific
Lumber Co. suit related to the Freshwater protest have filed
a motion to strike the case, based on a California law known
as the anti-SLAPP statute.
One of those was Stacey Gilligan,
27, an instructional aide at Arcata High School. Gilligan said
she was standing on the public road March 18 watching the treesitters
being removed from their trees when she was arrested.
The statute, originally passed
in 1992, allows defendants to file a motion to strike when the
suit is targeting them for their exercise of free speech in connection
with a public issue. It does not help those who trespassed or
engaged in civil disobedience.
PL
logging hits major obstacle:
Judge's ruling calls into question
Headwaters deal
by
ANDREW EDWARDS
"It's a doozy, huh?"
said environmentalist Paul Mason.
He was referring to visiting
Judge John Golden's ruling Monday on the Environmental Protection
Information Center's case against the Pacific Lumber Co. and
the California Department of Forestry.
The ruling, a major victory
for EPIC, invalidates a pillar of the 1999 Headwaters Deal: the
Sustained Yield Plan, which is supposed to govern harvest rates
over the next 100 years. Judge Golden said, in essence, that
no such document exists -- at least not in a form usable by regulators
or members of the public.
The practical effect of the
ruling remains to be seen. In this same case last fall, Golden
issued an order that was read by environmentalists and others
as requiring an immediate halt to logging on PL's land. Later,
the judge essentially undermined himself when he exempted the
logging operations on the grounds that halting them could cause
undue economic hardship to the company.
One interpretation of the judge's
ruling this week is that if the SYP is invalid, then so are all
the logging permits that have been issued under its auspices.
In other words, all the logging that has been carried out on
PL lands since the signing of the Headwaters deal in the spring
of 1999 has been illegal.
EPIC's attorney Sharon Duggan
said that the ball is now in CDF's court, along with the other
state agencies that signed onto the $490 million agreement in
which the company agreed to set aside 7,500 acres containing
large tracts of old-growth redwood.
"I want to know what the
agencies are going to do about it today. I don't want to hear
about their litigation position," Duggan said. "For
four years the public has been completely snookered at the expense
of the resource, and I expect them to take the lead in this."
As of press time Tuesday, CDF
was still trying to absorb the ruling.
"All that I can say right
now is we're studying the rulings," said CDF lead council
Norm Hill, speaking by phone from his Sacramento office. "We're
exploring the options that are available to us."
PL President Robert Manne said
that Golden's rulings "could clearly have a significant
impact on our company."
The ruling could strengthen
District Attorney Paul Gallegos' controversial fraud lawsuit,
which contends that the company deceived state officials involved
in the Headwaters negotiations in order to gain access to timber
located on slide-prone slopes.
Assistant District Attorney
Tim Stoen, in charge of the case, is filing additional charges
this week related to the apparent lack of a valid SYP.
EPIC's co-plaintiff in the SYP
litigation is the United Steelworkers of America, which represents
timber workers. The union argued that the state failed to produce
a plan that would ensure a steady supply of timber to workers.
In his ruling, Golden wrote
that two things were presented to him as the SYP: the "amorphous"
80,000-page administrative record and a 2,600-page "post-hoc"
compilation cobbled together by PL and CDF last year at Golden's
request.
"The purported plans are
not SYPs conforming to the Forest Practice Rules because they
are not a consolidated, well defined and readily accessible document,"
Golden wrote.
PL
deceit? It's happened before
by
ANDREW EDWARDS
Ever since District Attorney
Paul Gallegos filed his fraud lawsuit against the Pacific Lumber
Co. back in February, the company has asserted that the case
is devoid of merit.
That remains to be seen, but
there's no disputing that the company has a history of deceptive
practices.
In recently filed legal papers,
Assistant District Attorney Tim Stoen, who's in charge of the
fraud case, cited Marbled Murrelet v. Pacific Lumber,
a 1995 ruling in which a federal judge determined that PL had
falsified scientific data and held out information until the
last minute.
Sound familiar? It should, as
those findings are very similar to the allegations contained
in the fraud action.
Stoen's message: They've lied
before, why wouldn't they lie again?
PL attorney Ed Washburn responded
that fraud wasn't at issue in that case.
"That was over the Endangered
Species Act, over whether [PL's logging] was a take," he
said, speaking by phone from his San Francisco office. (A "take"
under the act, a federal law, is harming a protected species.)
But the attorneys who won the
case eight years ago understand why Stoen would reference it.
"Our evidence showed that
by covering up the data, intimidating some of the survey gatherers
and changing survey sheets, they skewed the data," said
Steve Crandall, a prominent environmental litigator who worked
on the case.
"You want to call that
fraud? I call that fraud," Crandall added, speaking by telephone
from his San Luis Obispo office.
The case chronicled the questionable
history of PL's search for the endangered marbled murrelet in
a 440-acre stand of virgin old-growth redwoods on Owl Creek in
Southern Humboldt.
In April 1992, PL started looking
for the bird shortly after the California Board of Forestry opened
the stand up to logging on the condition that no "take"
of marbled murrelets would occur.
PL had hired its usual team
of marbled murrelet experts, augmenting them with some college
kids looking for summer employment.
The crews went to work, getting
up 45 minutes before dawn to scout around in the morning mist
for the fast-flying seabird, but from the beginning the search
was hampered.
They were instructed to only
record a detection if they were "100 percent" sure
they had actually observed a murrelet. They were told not to
record a detection if they heard just one of the bird's distinctive
calls or the sound of its wing beats.
In addition, PL controlled when
and where the surveys would be conducted.
"The company seems to have
designed its wildlife studies in such a way that discovery of
endangered species would never happen or at least be minimized,"
said Mark Harris, an Arcata attorney who worked on the case.
Over the next two months, multiple
detections were made of the elusive seabird, 11 visual and 59
audible, despite fog and heavy rain during several of the surveys.
Curiously, despite all of that,
PL's Chief of Forestry, Ray Miller, sent a letter to the California
Department of Fish and Game on June 18 saying that "no activity
sites were found to exist anywhere with or adjacent to the plan
area," and that "timber operations will be commenced."
The very next day, before the
wildlife agency had even received the letter, logging crews rolled
into Owl Creek. They logged over a weekend, many times right
on survey sites, until the forestry department ordered them to
stop on the following Tuesday, June 23.
Fish and Game then ordered PL
to resume the surveys, which they did until July.
According to the court record,
at the end of the survey season (late July), the surveyors had
a party at the house of PL's resource manager, Thomas Herman
(now one of the leaders of the campaign to recall DA Paul Gallegos),
where they played darts using a picture of a marbled murrelet
as a target.
During October and November
PL was informed by various federal agencies that they couldn't
conduct additional logging in Owl Creek because it would hurt
the marbled murrelet. Nevertheless, on the day before Thanksgiving
the logging trucks rolled in again on the orders of PL President
John Campbell. The logging that then ensued would come to be
known in environmental circles as the "Thanksgiving Day
massacre."
One PL logging manager, Dan
McLaughlin, testified at trial that PL logged that weekend because
it was afraid that it "might be stopped again."
"[The logging crews] were
told to go right into the heart of [Owl Creek]," Harris
said. "These guys were told `get out there and cut as fast
as you can' right at the start."
Three days later, in response
to an emergency request filed by the Garberville-based Environmental
Protection Information Center, a judge stopped the logging.
EPIC filed suit the next year
on behalf of the marbled murrelet.
It came out in court that PL
had altered their surveyors' sheets and had intimidated them
into "reconsidering" their detections. Miller had copied
most of the survey sheets that he handed over to CDF, deleting
relevant facts and going so far as to omit actual sightings.
PL's attorneys fought tooth-and-nail
during the trial, according to Crandall.
"That's the reputation
they want to have. It's an intimidation factor. `If you get in
a case with us you're going to have to drag us kicking and screaming
all the way,' and that's what they did," Crandall said.
"We were lucky enough to drag them across the goal line."
In the end federal judge Louis
J. Bechtle ordered a permanent injunction on logging in Owl Creek
(since then it's been permanently protected) and stated that
"the reliability" of any wildlife survey information
coming from PL was "highly suspect."
The case was one of several
that led up to the 1999 Headwaters deal and the Habitat Conservation
Plan and Sustained Yield Plan, the last of which was deemed invalid
on Monday by another judge in another EPIC legal challenge.
So, given this bit of history,
the basic question raised by the DA's fraud lawsuit -- which
pertains to alleged illegal actions committed on the eve of the
Headwaters deal -- is this: Did PL change over the next several
years, or were they still putting the government on in early
1999?
Eventually, the courts may provide
an answer.
No. 37 pulling Napa Valley
Electric interurban combination car and express car.
Photo: Pacific Lumber Collection
Logging
locomotive may return
As a first step in creating
an excursion train, the Timber Heritage Museum is raising funds
to purchase a vintage logging locomotive and bring it back to
Humboldt County.
The steam engine, Pacific Lumber
Locomotive #37, has been idle in Wilmington, Del., since the
1950s. It has been offered to the Northern Counties Logging Interpretive
Association for $48,000.
If all goes as planned, the
1925 locomotive will ferry tourists from Old Town, past the waterfront
to Arcata, to Samoa and back.
Before that can happen, grant
money will need to roll in for repairs to the ailing rails. In
addition, some environmentalists have concerns that the train
could potentially have a negative impact on the bird habitat
in the marshland through which the railway traverses.
The tourist train is still only
part of the picture. The long-term goal of the association --
which has been collecting logging industry artifacts for the
past 25 years -- is to create a museum dedicated to Humboldt's
logging history. Construction of such a facility is still years
and millions of dollars away.
If plans for the excursion train
stay on track, the PL #37 could be tugging tourists along the
redwood coast by 2006. Proposals were presented to Eureka City
Council on Tuesday night.
-- reported by Helen Sanderson
Deal
for wilderness ranch collapses
Humboldt State University has
rejected the donation of 3,800 acres of ranchland in Mendocino
County.
Sitting more than three hours
south of Arcata, just southeast of Ukiah, the Fred Galbreath
Wildlands Center, as it was called, had played host to several
wildlife biology classes in recent years while the university
finalized the donation.
"It's a really beautiful
place," said wildlife Professor Matt Johnson. "It has
really nice oaks. I really wish it could have worked out, but
things aren't always as simple as you'd like."
The deal began to break down
several months ago in negotiations with the family of the late
Fred Galbreath. According to HSU President Rollin Richmond, Galbreath
had originally promised the entire ranch -- some 4,500 acres
-- to the university. Apparently in the 11th hour Galbreath's
daughter Nancy Johnson convinced him to leave the most valuable
portion to her (about 700 acres).
"[That] significantly reduced
the value to us," Richmond said in an interview this week.
The portion she inherited included
a ranch house, the only water and utilities, as well as the road
in.
Over the last year the university
had been able to make some trips out to the center as long as
they prearranged it with Johnson.
"It was a bit inconvenient,"
said Matt Johnson (no relation to Galbreath's daughter).
But inconvenience aside it was
a boon to the university -- a different habitat for HSU students
to explore and do research in. So what happened?
"Given the distance from
the university, the problems of access, the dire financial straits
the university finds itself in, we decided it wasn't worth it,"
Richmond said. He said that Johnson had concerns about students
roaming all over her land and using the access road, which runs
right past her ranch house.
One factor in the university's
decision was that it would have had to build a new access road
just to get on the property, a six-figure expense Richmond decided
was unaffordable.
Most of the land that would
have been donated to HSU is in a "conservation easement,"
so eventually it will go to some kind of nonprofit group.
-- reported by Andrew Edwards
Ex-school
official charged with embezzlement
A former school board member
in the South Bay District has been charged with stealing more
than $10,000 from the Pine Hill Elementary School parents' club.
Gay Lois Hylton, 42, of Eureka,
who also works as a county employee in the Mental Health department,
was charged with five counts of felony forgery and one count
of felony grand theft.
She has pleaded not guilty to
all charges.
While she was serving as a volunteer
treasurer of the parents' club last year, Hylton allegedly wrote
several checks to herself out of the fund, said Deputy District
Attorney Max Cardoza.
Another member of the group
noticed a discrepancy when crosschecking the bank statements
and alerted school officials, Cardoza said.
Reached by phone Tuesday at
her county office, Hylton said that she was making restitution
in the case. "Why are you doing this to me?" she asked.
Rick Fauss, superintendent of
the district, which includes two elementary schools in Eureka,
said he asked Hylton about the checks in March when it came to
his attention. "I just confronted her about it, and she
fully admitted everything and resigned the following week"
from the school board, he said. "It was a definite blow."
Hylton had been a board trustee
for nine or 10 years, district officials said. No public announcement
was made about the reason for her departure.
The charges carry a maximum
penalty of five years and eight months in prison, although most
sentences are considerably lighter, Cardoza said.
A preliminary hearing in the
case is scheduled for May 29.
-- reported by Emily Gurnon
Dark
days on the hill
Sixty full-time positions are
being eliminated at Humboldt State University to deal with the
state budget crisis, which is forcing an $8 million reduction
in the university's budget.
Both faculty and staff jobs
are going by the wayside. In addition, the already rock-bottom
academic affairs operating budget will be slashed $1.4 million.
Course offerings are being reduced, as are services at the university
library and services designed for Native American students.
In a further cascade of numbers,
athletics will be slashed 10 percent.
Even at this late stage, with
Gov. Gray Davis's May revised budget in the can, changes could
be made. That could be good or bad. Several proposals in the
state Legislature would cut even more out of the battered California
State University system.
Death
claims two leaders
The North Coast lost two community
leaders last week, a popular physician and a former Arcata mayor.
Dr. Ted Loring Sr., a Eureka
obstetrician who delivered more than 5,000 babies over his lengthy
career, died May 11 at the age of 86.
Loring held leadership positions
in the Humboldt-Del Norte Medical Society, the California Medical
Society, the American Medical Association and the American Board
of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
He was co-founder of the Humboldt
State University School of Nursing; founder and first president
of the Humboldt-Del Norte Foundation for Medical Care; the first
physician director of the Union Labor Hospital Association (General
Hospital); and founder of the Humboldt Prenatal Clinic for Indigent
Females.
Loring's contributions to the
community extended far beyond the medical community. He was director
and past president of the board of directors of KEET-TV and held
leadership positions in Boy Scouts of America, Rotary Club of
Eureka, the Episcopal Church, the Ingomar Club and the Salvation
Army.
Loring was born in British Honduras,
graduated from Stanford Medical School in 1946 and served in
the Army Medical Corps during and after World War II. He established
his practice in Eureka in 1951.
Loring is survived by his wife
of 59 years, Ruth Loring. Services were held last week.
On May 15 death claimed pharmacist
and former Arcata Mayor Ward Falor, 81, a fourth generation Humboldt
resident.
Falor served in the U.S. Army
Air Corps from 1945-47 and graduated from California School of
Pharmacy in San Francisco in 1951. He opened Falor's Pharmacy,
the first of many pharmacies in Humboldt, in 1953. Falor was
active in the effort to establish Mad River Community Hospital,
where he served as administrator in the 1970s.
Falor's political career began
with the Arcata Planning Commission in the mid-1950s. He was
elected to the City Council in 1960 and was the first chairman
of the Local Agency Formation Commission. Falor became mayor
in 1962 and again in 1966 through 1970. He had an unsuccessful
run for the state Senate in 1964.
During his time on the council,
Falor was instrumental in convincing the city not to sell the
Jacoby Creek Watershed. The creation of the Arcata Community
Pool was one of his pet projects.
He was active in Kiwanis, VFW,
American Legion, Rotary, Knights of Columbus and St. Mary's Catholic
Church. Falor is survived by his wife, Jean Falor. The family
plans to hold a memorial service at a later date.
-- reported by Judy Hodgson
Eel
River wins one
In a victory for Eel River proponents,
a California Court of Appeals struck down a plan to divert more
of the Eel's summer flows into the Russian River.
The plan was proposed by the
Sonoma County Water Agency, which wanted the water for new development
in Sonoma and Marin counties.
Even without the new diversion,
the Eel remains a troubled river. Low flows have been blamed
for the growth of deadly algae, which killed several dogs last
summer, and declining salmon populations.
A plan currently before the
Federal Energy Regulatory Committee would increase flows to help
endangered coho salmon and steelhead trout.
Environmentalists were jubilant
at the victory.
"The Eel River's salmon
and steelhead now have a fighting chance to make a comeback,"
said Nadananda, president of the Friends of the Eel River, in
a press release. "The water agency's plan would have been
the final nail in the Eel River's coffin."
Mr.
Diabetes comes to town
A man who has pledged to walk
the entire perimeter of the United States for diabetes awareness
made his way through Humboldt County this past week.
Andrew Mandell, a 58-year-old
diabetic and former marathon runner from Madeira Beach, Fla.,
has made it his mission to inform others about the devastating
disease that almost took his own life.
His main message: "There
are 11 million diabetics in this country who don't know they're
diabetic," Mandell said. His admonition: Take the simple
screening test on his organization's Web site, www.defeatdiabetes.org.
The warning signs of diabetes
may include frequent urination, excessive thirst or hunger, rapid
weight loss, fatigue, irritability, nausea and vomiting, blurred
vision, tingling in the legs or fingers and slow healing of cuts
and bruises. But those in the early stages of the disease may
have no symptoms. Children are increasing susceptible, and Native
Americans, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders are
more likely than other ethnic groups to develop the disease.
Cell
tower OK'd
A 50-foot cell phone tower slated
for the Arcata Bottoms is one step closer to reality.
In a 4-2 vote last week, the
Humboldt County Planning Commission granted Cal-North Wireless
a permit to build the tower near Moxon Road. The tower will be
disguised as a telephone pole.
The commission made its ruling
despite a recommendation from county staff to reject the project
on the grounds that it was at odds with the Bottoms' rural landscape.
Concerns were raised at a public
hearing last Thursday that radio waves produced by cell phone
towers pose a health hazard. Most commissioners said they didn't
believe such concerns were valid.
The
Russians are coming
Rotary Club of Eureka and Rotary
International are sponsoring the visit of three Russian physicians
to Eureka the first two weeks in July.
The physicians will be houseguests
of Dr. Kim Bauriedel as they meet and exchange information with
local colleagues. The trio are also interested in establishing
a sister hospital relationship with St. Joseph Hospital, according
to Bauriedel.
Last year a Russian radiologist
visited Humboldt County on a similar exchange.
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