A remarkable group of us had gathered for this decisive hearing. We were waiting to see if our timber industry opponents would gather in force as well, but they didn't. Only a few young timberworkers were there and these seemed unusually quiet and polite. This was a marked contrast from the auditorium that had been filled with loggers and their families, all decked out in their yellow ribbons, at the hearing in Ft. Bragg three years ago. This was very different from the hearing only a few months ago where the auditorium was packed with bussed-in workers from the GP mill. They had come in force to the Ukiah hearing in an attempt to intimidate the Supervisors into voting against the special County rules. This was different from all the other hearings about County rules we'd been to over the course of the last five years. Today, the Board of Forestry would make the decision. Today, the industry need not worry, nor even show up.
I looked at the familiar faces gathering in the hall. Five years of effort would culminate today and we were there to share it. Supervisors Henry, Sugawara, de Vall, Supervisor-elect Peterson and consultant Linda Bailey were there as officials for the County. Betty and I were pleased to be there among a host of County rules supporters including Hans and Hanna Burkhardt, Meca Wawona, Chris and Stephanie Tebbutt, Bill Johnson, Chuck Henderson, Karen Scott, Mike Tyrrell, and Nick Wilson. Jesse Noel had driven down from Humboldt County and Richard Hart came all the way from Oregon to be with us. Together we filed from the hall into the auditorium.
The nine members of the Board of Forestry, and CDF Director Richard Wilson, came onto the stage, sat down in their plush chairs behind a giant table, and the show began. Robert Kerstiens, Chairman of the Board of Forestry, called the meeting to order. He first acknowledged the presence of Mike Anderson in the audience. Anderson is a former member of the Board of Forestry, a millionaire gypo-logger and an outspoken opponent of the special forest practice rules proposed for Mendocino County. Then Chairman Kerstiens called for Terry Gorton. "Isn't Terry Gorton here? Where is Terry Gorton?" Terry Gorton is the former Chair of the Board of Forestry and a favorite of Governor Pete Wilson. Gov. Wilson had appointed Terry Gorton to the Board of Forestry a few years back. Then the Gov. appointed Terry Gorton to a position which he created just for her; Deputy Secretary of the State's Resources Agency. Terry Gorton wasn't ready to address the Board of Forestry at that moment, but said she would do so later.
The Board, and the rest of us, didn't have long to wait. Terry Gorton was back to speak to the Board well before the lunch break. What she said reflected the course the rest of the day would take. She couldn't come right out and say that the Governor was hereby instructing the Board of Forestry to reject Mendocino County's request for special forest practice rules; that would be illegal. However, in language far less subtle and delicate than one might expect of a State dignitary skirting the law, that's pretty much what she did. No wonder Chairman Kerstiens, at the opening of the hearing, was so anxious to hear from Terry Gorton. It wasn't that the Board of Forestry hadn't already decided what to do. It was important, though, to know that the Governor's office agreed. And it was important to Chairman Kerstiens, or so it would seem, to send an early signal, to friend and foe alike, as to the outcome of the hearing.
At lunch, we were still in good spirits. We questioned whether we would lose by a vote of 5 to 4; 6 to 3; 7 to 2? Some still held out hope that, after rejecting the County's request for special rules, the Board would approve a severely compromised set of special rules which had come to be called "Option B". Those who had yet to speak at the hearing polished their speeches and compared notes to make sure that everything needed in the record would be placed there. By the end of the day, all of the rules supporters would speak very well. There was very little new to say. After five years and seemingly countless hearings, everything was basically in the record already. Even so, impressive last minute pleas were made by one and all.
Back at the hearing in the afternoon, we were again struck by the difference between this audience and the attendees at all of the other County rules hearings. Timberworkers were basically absent and in their place, in support of the timber corporations, were a lot of rich-looking white men in suits and ties. Many of these are professional foresters whose work seldom takes them beyond the asphalt of Sacramento. Many of these same faces can be seen at every Board of Forestry meeting. Today, they each have something to say against Mendocino's proposed rules. At other Board of Forestry meetings, many of these same men have something to say, regardless of the subject matter before the Board, in support of the timber corporation's wish to avoid any increase in or tightening of forestry regulations on State-governed timberlands. In response, the Board of Forestry throughout its 20 year history has always been careful not to do anything that would drastically alter the timber industry's ability to deforest California's non-federal timberlands.
Never mind that Mendocino, in quest of special County rules, has proven beyond a doubt before the Board of Forestry that the County's corporately-owned timberlands are depleted down to a small fraction of the timber inventory the lands should contain. Never mind the shaved hillsides, the traumatized ecosystems, the trashed waterways, the dead fisheries, the closed mills nor the epidemic unemployment. The Board, in its typical smokescreen fashion, made some new rules that just went into effect in May of '94. Never mind that there is a lawsuit against the Board because the new rules won't really help anything. The public sees that the Board of Forestry exists, that it made new rules, that it says everything will be OK. The corporations see business as usual. Environmentalists see continued unbridled depletion which threatens, in time, to trigger the collapse of the ecosystems and leave desserts where the world's redwood forests once stood.
Back at the afternoon session of the hearing, a stir goes through the crowd. LP's Western Division Manager Bobby Simpson has just entered the room. A host of his higher-ranking foresters walks with him. They take seats and seem to blend into the sea of suits and ties, but only for a moment. Division Managers don't usually show up at Board of Forestry meetings. They usually pay others to do that for them. Simpson's entrance has not gone unnoticed either by the crowd or by the Board members themselves. Soon, Simpson and his foresters are addressing the Board.
This is the stuff of which grand theatre is made. It's just the sort of stuff a TV script writer (or the Board of Forestry, or the PR hacks from the timber corporations) would want in order to cap off the day's procedings with a nice flare. What better way to promulgate the facade that there really is a government agency doing its job and holding the corporations in check - forcing the subordination of greed to the public trust? The Board members will feign to have a host of serious questions for Bobby Simpson. Bobby Simpson will seem to have serious concerns to put before the Board. They will talk about the timber inventories on LP lands. They will talk about when LP will have its Long Term Sustained Yield Plan (LTSYP) ready to submit to the Board. They will talk about LP's fantasy of building an Oriented Strand Board plant in Ukiah and feeding the plant by cutting the whole of the County's hardwood forests. They will talk about most everything except the proposed rules for Mendocino County. Much of the afternoon is consumed with this talk.
Chairman Kerstiens may as well have opened the meeting by asking, "Is Bobby Simpson here? Where is Bobby Simpson?" After all, the will of the governor's office is no different from industry's. When the banter with LP and Bobby Simpson finally reached a pause, proponents for the proposed local rules provided the last of the public testimony. Supervisors Liz Henry and Seiji Sugawara made strong and heart-felt pleas for local rules based on the County's need to restore its timber economy, its social tranquility and its forest ecology. Consultant Linda Bailey told the Board that it had heard from the best of the best and that the County had more than adequately fulfilled every requirement to gain local forest practice rules. Ukiah's ecologist, Meca Wawona, pressed the Board beyond its tolerance limit in requiring a few more minutes to finish reading her prepared statement. Supervisor Norman de Vall finished public input with a slide show depicting Mendocino's trashed forests, dead fisheries, moored fleets of fishing boats, closed mills and plummeting economy.
The public hearing was called to a close. Immediately, there was a motion to grant the proposed rule package to Mendocino County. Discussion of the motion consisted of each Board of Forestry member speaking in turn for a moment on how they intended to vote and why. Each of the first five Board members to speak seemed to have forgotten the massive amount of evidence amassed over the past five years to bring the rules proposal to this point. The attitude seemed to be that the new May rules were enough and the fact that Bobby Simpson was there to talk was surely proof of that. All five said they would vote no on the motion.
At this point, I felt the need for some kind of protest, regardless of how little or how late. So, with as much racket and commotion as possible, a number of us stood up, turned our backs on the Board of Forestry in the midst of its deliberation, and walked out as noisily as possible. The motion to grant special rules for Mendocino County would eventually fail by a vote of 8-1.
Later on that night, the Board of Forestry would consider yet another motion; this one to grant a horribly amended rules package to the County which had become known as Option B. During discussion of this motion, the Board again wound up in some prolonged banter with Bobby Simpson. At this point, ecologist Meca Wawona felt the need for some kind of protest, no matter how little or late. She walked to the center of the floor and began yelling some truth to the Board members, as if yelling would better enable them to hear it. Risking arrest, she shouted, "This hearing is a sham! You people are frauds! There's your boss, Bobby Simpson, over there! You just do whatever he says!"
Chairman Kerstiens called for security, "Arrest that woman, she's been making trouble all day!" The place was crawling with cops and they started forward, but Meca was too fast for them. She vanished from the room before they could get their "arrest mode" into gear. By the way, the motion to approve the sadly lacking Option B was eventually voted down.
This is the way that five years of effort, and perhaps the greatest hopes of the County, came to an end. Those who are familiar with the workings of the Board of Forestry knew five years ago that this ending was inevitable. California's Forest Practice Act was passed twenty years ago for the expressed purpose of stopping the depletion of the State's forestlands. The Board of Forestry was established with the passage of the Act. The fix was in before the Act passed. The depletion continues to this very day and the Board of Forestry is known as the most blatantly corrupt organization in the State, if not the Nation.
So, is there any way the County can continue to resist corporate control of its forests? Is there a way for us to continue to press for a halt to the depletion? Is there any hope remaining that we might still be able to gain special County rules which will mandate that the regeneration of our badly damaged forestlands begin? YES THERE IS!
There are at least two ways to continue to press for special County forestry rules. Neither one is pretty, cheap or easy. One is to sue the Board of Forestry for not giving us our special rules in the first place. The other is to pass our County rules into law by way of a State-wide ballot initiative (a County initiative won't do it; the Board of Forestry would still have final say over one of those).
The reasons to sue are many and strong, although such a suit would be time consuming and expensive. State law says that the Board of Forestry shall grant the special forestry rules a County requests provided the County proves 1) that it needs the rules and 2) that the rules are consistent with the intent of the Forest Practice Act. The County proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the need for special rules to restore the forest's productivity and to protect the employment, economic and tax base of the County. There was never any question that the proposed rules were anything but consistent with the Forest Practice Act. In addition, throughout the process with the Board of Forestry, the County was made to endure abusive and prejudicial treatment which was clearly discriminatory and unjust. Moreover, official state publications concerning the rule proposal were deliberately contrary to fact and impossible to obtain in a timely fashion. In the end, it can fairly be said that the Board of Forestry defiled the democratic process, violated the authority, duty and rights of County government and flagrantly and repeatedly violated the law.
That the County should sue the Board of Forestry in pursuit of special forest practice rules seems obvious. However, the will to continue the fight via a lawsuit is flickering and unsure. Your letter to the County Supervisors, in support of such a lawsuit, could go a long way towards strengthening this will. Address letters to: The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, Court House, Ukiah, CA 95482. Enclose five copies of your letter; one each for Supervisors Peterson, Sugawara, Henry, McMichaels and Pinches. Indicate your support by offering to share the financial burden of such a suit with the County. Tell them you'll send money if they'll file suit.
In the end, if the Supervisors cannot be persuaded, it is possible for a suit to be brought by a citizen's group. If this should come to pass, this group will require your financial assistance, probably more than would the County. Of course, should a lawsuit fail to materialize, or fail to win, that still leaves the possibility of the ballot initiative. State-wide ballot initiatives, however, are a very big deal in their own right. It is probably better, for now, to concentrate on a lawsuit. There will be plenty of time to talk about a ballot initiative, if need be, say, in '96.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1995