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F
or more than four decades, 82-year-
old Howard Purkerson carefully
managed his timberland in Crow,
Oregon, choosing to selectively thin
the 90-acre forest instead of toppling
it in a more profitable clearcut. But
now almost all of the trees are gone.
And Purkerson is furious.
“I didn’t want some logging
company coming in and raping
this beautiful parcel,” he told
InvestigateWest. “If there was any
way I could balance the scales, I
would do it.”
Purkerson refused to sell to Lane County land
developers Greg Demers, Norman McDougal and Melvin
McDougal because he had heard of their well-publicized
clearcutting and mining at Parvin Butte, their burning
Pilot Rock landfill (which earned Demers a $792,062 state
environmental fine) and their efforts to obtain McKenzie
River water rights that an administrative law judge denied
as water speculation.
According to Purkerson and several other forest
landowners, Demers and the McDougals use a variety
of means to get what they want, sometimes pushing
the envelope, when it comes to buying and harvesting
timberland in Oregon. But state forestry officials are nearly
powerless to stop them, InvestigateWest has learned —
even when the developers run afoul of the law.
Purkerson says that when Demers in 2013 asked about
buying the timberland, “I told [Demers] I wouldn’t sell it
to him for any price,” he said.
But somehow the McDougals got Purkerson’s land
anyway. Shortly after rebuffing Demers, Purkerson says he
received an offer on the property from Daniel Bell, the co-
owner of a hair salon in Coburg. Bell, who indicated that
he wanted to live on the property, promised to keep the
forest standing, Purkerson says.
But that didn’t happen. According to county property
records, Bell sold the land only two months later for $10,000
more than the purchase price. The buyer: McDougal Bros.
Inc., the investment firm owned by Norman and Melvin
McDougal. Within months, the forest was gone. Purkerson
claims he was tricked, believing Bell was just an operative
of Demers and McDougal.
“He came here with a six-pack of beer and some jerky
and was just all nicey-nicey, you know?” Purkerson said.
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“At my age I should have known better. It was dumb, but
I sold it.”
In a phone interview, Bell declined to comment on the
circumstances surrounding his purchase. Asked whether
he was employed by McDougal Bros., Bell said: “I do
not presently have any relationship with Greg Demers or
the McDougal brothers.” He declined to elaborate for this
story.
Demers and the McDougals did not respond to repeated
requests for an interview. But amid their silence, other
forest landowners in Oregon shared similar regrets about
their encounters with the trio.
One such landowner is Delbert Erb of Albany, who
signed a timber contract with Demers and Oregon Land
Company, or OLC, in July 2014.
According to Erb and his neighbor Mike Stipp, a
self-trained forester who helped Erb monitor the logging
operation on Erb’s land, the loggers flouted the Forest
Practices Act from the very start. And documents from the
Oregon Department of Forestry back them up.
On Oct. 29, 2014, after Erb filed a complaint about an
inadequate culvert that created a heightened flood risk, ODF
issued two identical citations to a pair of subcontractors:
ATR Services Inc., which is run by Demers and his brother
Jeff Demers, and Rose Logging Inc., which has family ties
to McDougal Bros.
Two months later, ODF officials returned for another
inspection of the logging site, and once again they found
damage caused by the same loggers. On Jan. 5, officials
from ODF documented evidence of soil disruption and
inadequate stream protection on Erb’s property, but they
decided that the issues didn’t warrant formal citations.
Instead, ODF issued a notice of “unsatisfactory conditions”
and allowed the logging contractors to fix the problems
without penalty. Such notices often precede a formal
citation, an ODF official said, and the contractors fixed the
problems before a violation occurred.
Stipp contends that ODF should have come down harder
on the loggers. In December, Stipp took video footage of
what he says appear to be oil slicks, tire ruts and other signs
of damage to Erb’s property that would violate the Forest
Practices Act. None of those alleged violations resulted in
citations or fines.
“They just try to take advantage of you until you
make them stop,” Stipp said, referring to Demers and the
McDougals. “Not all loggers do what these guys did. Not
all of them are bad.”
Demers and his companies have been cited by ODF
at least seven times in the last three years alone, with
additional violations dating as far back as 1987.
Melvin and Norman McDougal were not named in
the state’s database of forestry citations, a state public-
records request showed. However, sometimes they hire
subcontractors to do their logging work. For example,
although inspection reports indicate that McDougal
Bros. owned the timber on Erb’s property, it was the
subcontractors Rose Logging and ATR Services that
received the citations.
RULES WITHOUT TEETH
In Oregon, ODF generally requires logging companies
that break the forestry rules to repair damages and pay a
fine. But those fines rarely amount to more than a slap on
the wrist. Under state law, ODF cannot issue a penalty
larger than $5,000 per violation, even to repeat offenders.
“When we do enforce the law, our goal is to educate
folks,” said Angie Lane, ODF’s civil penalties administrator.
“The Forest Practices Act puts a lot of responsibility on the
landowner and the logging operator to do a good job.”
But when loggers don’t do a good job, Oregon’s
$5,000 cap on fines gives ODF less leverage than other
state agencies to crack down on offenders like Demers.
The Department of Environmental Quality, for example,
slapped Demers with a $792,062 penalty for failing to
clean up an abandoned lumber dump in eastern Oregon,
where fires regularly break out during the summer and
blanket the town of Pilot Rock in smoke. (That fine remains
under appeal, but in the most recent decision, issued in
November 2015, the Environmental Quality Commission
ruled that Demers must pay.)
Oregon also has fewer safeguards than its southern
neighbor, California, to prevent logging violations before
they happen. In California, logging contractors must be
licensed by a state agency, and they must also file detailed
timber harvesting plans, which are subject to public
review and comment for more than a month before a cut
is approved. Washington employs a public review process
similar to California’s.
In Oregon, loggers are similarly required to notify the
state forester before logging trees. But complete harvesting
plans are only required in certain circumstances, and there
is no public review process. Also unlike California, logging
companies in Oregon don’t need a state license.
That leaves forest landowners with little protection
when unscrupulous loggers purchase timberland or logging
rights.
Forest landowners should ask for and check references
of logging companies with which they do business, Lane
said. Talking with other forest landowners will help protect
those doing business with a logging contractor.
“It’s really a ‘buyer-beware’ situation here in Oregon,”
Lane said. “Before you hire a logging contractor under
some sort of contract, you should do some reference
checking.”
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