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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (April 12, 2012)
‘THERE ARE THINGS THAT NEED TO BE CORRECTED AND IMPROVED IF IT WILL GO FORWARD.’ — ANDY STAHL, AUTHOR OF AN EARLY VERSION OF THE CONTROVERSIAL TRUST PLAN Wyden is a senior Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. MORE HARM THAN GOOD? Throw a rock at a crowd of environmentalists and you’re guaranteed to hit someone who hates the DeFazio plan — unless you happen to nail Andy Stahl. Stahl is one of the few people on the conservation side of things who sees the plan as salvageable. Stahl brandishes an 83-page printout of the draft bill, which bristles with Post- It notes, each marking a change he would make that would render the bill palatable. He criticizes the make-up of the board, the way the timber would be sold, and its language on everything from fi re suppression to dealing with endangered species such as the spotted owl. Kerr, Oregon Wild and other opponents don’t see the bill as fi xable at all. “I would view it as a turd that I wouldn’t want to try to polish,” Kerr says. Pedery says Stahl’s original proposal “rolled back the clock to 1992.” He says, “Andy has never really moved beyond the timber wars of the 1990s.” Those were the days when loggers sported bumper stickers that proclaimed “spotted owl tastes better fried.” The issue isn’t just owls, these days conservationists say it’s ecosystems. Pedery says the real policy debate has to be “whether or not we move into conservation forestry.” DeFazio says his plan allows for that. He points to the pilot projects of Northwest forestry professors Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin. He grumbles that environmentalists have stymied even those projects that are aimed at improving forest health. The proposed bill suspends environmental laws, Spivak says. The trees would be logged and the forests managed under the Oregon Forest Practices Act (FPA). DeFazio’s bill “exempts the very weak private lands protection for endangered species,” she says. DeFazio says if people don’t like the FPA, then they need to get to work changing it. The bill also raises hackles about the Clean Water Act. Spivak says it would waive requirements for pollution permits for certain logging roads and drainage ditches — logging roads create sediment that clogs salmon streams. This doesn’t just harm the fi sh; it could harm fi shing industries and affect drinking water. Also, the Oregon Forest Practices Act that applies to private timberlands, and would apply to the timber trust, has very different stream protections than federal lands logging. Logging buffers that were 170 to 340 feet under the NWFP could get reduced to as low as zero to 20 feet, depending on whether fi sh live in the stream or not. “The bill is an unmitigated hydrological disaster,” Pedery says. “One dirty little secret of the logging industry” is that the sediments it churns in water forcing cities to invest in expensive fi ltration systems, he says. Some of the lands included in the bill are lands up the McKenzie — the source of Eugene’s drinking water. “The potential for clearcutting in the McKenzie is a big one,” Pedery says. Kerr agrees. “One of DeFazio’s clearcut legacies will be dirty drinking water,” he says. DeFazio counters these concerns by pointing out that the massive amounts of logging that occurred up the McKenzie in the ’80s was “way more than we propose to cut.” The current designation of the forests in that area allows for clearcutting old growth, something his plan would prevent, DeFazio adds. Another concern for water, and for human health too, is pesticide spraying, says Kim Leval of the Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP). Pesticides are rarely used on Forest Service lands, and the BLM uses integrated pesticide management (IPM), which means spraying unwanted weeds, trees and bugs with toxic chemicals is not necessarily the fi rst step in dealing with them. The DeFazio plan calls for using IPM on the timber-trust lands, but Leval says that given the way the trust is set up, “The focus would be on getting the revenue off the land, not on careful, preventative measures and IPM.” The plan has the potential to take steps backward for endangered species, such as salmon, which are harmed by pesticides, as well as for community health, Leval says. She points out that communities like Triangle Lake in the Coast Range already deal with increased exposures to pesticides due to the private timberlands that surround them. The timber trust would face the same pressures to grow more trees faster, she says, and so the nearby communities could face the increased use of pesticides. April 22, 2012 10% OFF all Local six Products & Grower Direct Produce South Corvallis 1007 SE 3rd St, 541-753-3115 North Corvallis 29th & Grant, 541-452-3115 992 Willamette • Eugene, OR 97401 343-9661 14 APRIL 12, 2012 EUGENE WEEKLY www.firstalt.coop WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
