· Greg Address Supes
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November 6, 2007
Testimony to the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors
Re: Emergency TPZ Ordinance
By Greg King, Executive Director, Northcoast Environmental Center
Honored Supervisors and Humboldt County Staff,
It can be instructive at these moments to, as they say, “remember history,” so as to not be condemned to repeat it. Many others in this room will demonstrate the important legal work that this Board and staff have done, and should continue to do, to prevent the wholesale sell-off of TPZ lands for development. You can count me in this camp, but first I will bring some history, what I think is important history, to this discussion. In order to look forward it may be most instructive to look back, and to look south.
During the 1860s my ancestors began settling the redwood forests of Western Sonoma County. Four Irish brothers — John, William, David and Thomas — followed an uncle who had previously landed at Wages Creek, in Northwestern Mendocino County. The King Range Mountains would eventually be named for this branch of the family.
The four brothers never made it that far north, and three of them, including my great-grandfather, landed along the Russian River in areas now called Monte Rio and Cazadero. They bought up timberland and built one of the largest redwood mills in existence at that time, the King-Starrett Mill in Monte Rio. By the turn of the century they had overcut almost all of their lands, including some two thousand acres of riverfront redwood along the Russian River. Part of this land is now included in present day Bohemian Grove. William King, however, had by that time purchased a ranch in Cazadero and gave it its present name, the King Ranch, and settled in. He became a Sonoma County Supervisor and was instrumental in getting Highway 1 built along the Sonoma Coast. His 2,000-acre King Ranch remained a productive source of timber, as he became a selective logger and therefore always had trees to cut. By the time he died in the mid-20th century the King Ranch still contained hundreds of acres of old-growth redwood, pure streams full of trout, salmon and steelhead, and the 2,000 acres remained in a single ownership. His widow married a local real estate developer, and after she died he clear-cut the old-growth and began carving up the King Ranch into 40, 80, and 160-acre parcels. Today the King Ranch remains in small holdings, there is no viable timber operation in place there, the poorly maintained dirt roads are sending tons of silt into streams where today you will find almost no fish, and these streams are drying up due to this filling as well as to overuse of the water.
Further south is Occidental, which was once one of Sonoma County’s most productive redwood producers. But about 25 years ago Occidental began being carved up and sold off to wealthy second-home buyers and real estate speculators. Today 40 acres of unimproved land in Occidental will cost you between $1 million and $5 million. This is the type of price spikes that Maxxam’s “kingdoms” and other timberland conversions would eventually bring to Humboldt County. Go up to Annapolis on the Sonoma Coast and you’ll find a similar price range, but not just because wealthy people have driven prices through the roof, but also because it has been discovered as an excellent place to grow wine grapes. Search for Annapolis on Google Earth and you’ll find huge patchworks of timberlands converted to vineyards. These conversions are changing the ecology and community structure of the area, ruining streams with silt and pricing out all but the very rich. The silting of the streams, and the excessive use of water to irrigate vineyards, resulted this year in stretches of the Gualala River going dry for the first time ever.
The Sonoma County example is instructive. By the time I got out of college in 1985 and returned to the Russian River, there were very few working timberlands left. An exception was Louisiana Pacific, which still held 20,000 acres in the county. But that year I discovered that the company was planning on logging off all of this land and selling the patent parcels as real estate. My investigations and newspaper articles resulted in a 1986 lawsuit that stopped LP from its liquidation logging. The plan was clearly laid out by LP’s own forester, who told CDF forester Chuck Joiner that this third round of logging in a single decade was intended as a “real estate cut.” Much of this land has since been added to the state park system. And while I appreciate the protection, a sustainable forestry operation in these areas would have been welcomed by most of the people who fought LP on its plans.
It was also in late 1985 that I began investigating Maxxam Corporation’s takeover and liquidation of Pacific Lumber’s ancient redwood forestlands. Here we are, 22 years later, debating not only the company’s proposed carving up of this once great working forest, but whether or not Humboldt County should allow this type of conversion at all. We don’t need to look far to see what a slippery slope this is, this conversion of working forests to other uses. This year the Sonoma County Water Agency counted fewer than 100 Chinook salmon on the Russian River at the Forestville monitoring station. The Russian was once one of California’s most productive salmon streams, now it’s a ghost of its former past.
It’s clear that Humboldt County’s major timberland owners want to sell off parcels, and lots of them. They’re whipping fear into the small landowners to once again provide themselves with a populist backing for what is at its core a business plan to keep the profits rolling in now that the trees are gone. This was clear yesterday at the McKinleyville Chamber of Commerce meeting. You should have heard what Bill Barnum said about you all, and your competent and well-meaning staff. Bill is a very smart man, he knows how to use the law to his advantage, even it that use would never hold up in court. His family owns 35,000 acres in Humboldt County, but for some reason there’s not one tree old enough to log.
Barnum often cited laws to the Chamber members. But what he did more effectively was whip up animosity toward you and your good work. Bill Barnum said things like the Humboldt County staff has taken a “perverted view” of how best to regulate TPZ properties, in a “very Machiavellian” attempt, he said, to rule over timberland owners. “The process,” said Barnum, “has been hijacked.” And staff is “out of control.” He said you have “created a debacle.”
What, really, is the 20-year vision for Humboldt County that our major timberland owners speak about to each other? I think a lot of the talk is not about timber, it’s about conversion. It’s about profit.
Will Humboldt County see a Sonoma County price of one million dollars for 40 acres? Why not? That’s less than Maxxam says it can now get per acre for its “kingdoms.” Our work now is to prevent that from happening, to prevent not only a conversion of forestlands, but of community. Our calling right now is to ensure that our forests, and our jobs, are sustainable, that our rivers run clean and full of fish, that communities remain livable and wholesome. We don’t want to see a bunch of Pottervilles surrounded by hillside golf courses, “kingdoms” and McMansions. We don’t need Sonoma County up here. I’ve been there, done that. It’s time for a new way.
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Updated Wednesday, November 14, 2007 |
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