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War in the Woods

Reluctant Radicals: Josh Kaufman says many locals have lost patience after years of meetings and lawsuits. Locals rise up against Headwaters deal By Eric Johnson AT 3AM ON A SATURDAY IN AUGUST, alarm clocks went off in the homes of more than 20 residents of the Mattole River Valley, just west of Fortuna in Humboldt County. Ellen Taylor, a 53-year-old physician's assistant who has lived along the Mattole for 25 years, packed some food, some warm clothing, and her accordion. After driving through the cold and dark on a dirt road for two hours, she arrived at Monument Gate, the locked entrance to land owned by the Pacific Lumber Company. Some of her neighbors were already there. "When we got there, it was a starry night, and we felt exuberant," Taylor says. "People were standing or sitting around talking. The kids were all tired--I think there'd been a party the night before--so there were these mounds of sleeping bags. I started playing my accordion, and there was kind of a circus mood. People were playing charades." When the first logging trucks showed up, the blockaders ignored them and refused to move. The loggers waited. The way Taylor remembers it, a couple of the guys in the lead truck joined in the game of charades. But after about an hour of cordial stand-off, a Pacific Lumber security officer gave a signal, and things got ugly. The loggers started grabbing the protesters and turning them over to Humboldt County Sheriff Deputies, who had just arrived. Some of the protesters, including Taylor, stood by the gate and refused to budge. Taylor and six of her neighbors were arrested and charged with trespassing. When she was grabbed, she says, she was playing "Nearer My God to Thee." "In the movie Titanic, that's what the band was playing when the ship went down," she says. "I thought it would have special resonance." In the paddy-wagon on the drive back down to town, Taylor says, she had a chance to chat with the sheriffs. "They explained that they were just doing their jobs, and that whatever they might think about what Pacific Lumber is doing, trespassing is a violation of the law," she says. "Issues of greater subtlety, like violations of the Forest Practices Act, were beyond them." Many longtime locals believe the Pacific Lumber Company--which ran a large but sustainable family operation here for generations--has become a rogue outlaw since being bought by Houston-based Maxxam Corporation. In recent months, they began responding to Maxxam's practices directly. Acts of civil disobedience by ordinary citizens have erupted throughout Humboldt County--completely unnoticed by the media, but not by the California Legislature, which allocated $15 million to the local community in a last-minute amendment to the Headwaters Agreement Monday night. "I hope people can understand that what is happening up here is not just a bunch of crazy radicals--that this is a popular uprising," says Taylor, who owns 240 acres of riverside property downstream from a massive Pacific Lumber timber operation and feels that her home is endangered. Deep swimming holes she's enjoyed for years have filled up with sediment. Debris floating down the creek has taken out streambanks on her and her neighbors' property, and floods have buried their fields under five feet of mud. Salmon which once filled the streams during their annual migration have disappeared. The same thing is happening throughout the region to people who call themselves "downstream neighbors" of Pacific Lumber's holdings, where accelerated logging over the past decade has radically altered the land. After years of meetings with the state Department of Forestry, county Commissioners and other governmental agencies, and after dozens of administrative appeals and lawsuits, they have begun to take to the woods to stop what they see as an attack by a rapacious corporation. Josh Kaufman, a 20-year resident of the Freshwater Creek neighborhood, says the grass-roots activism is spreading like wildfire. "It's happening all over the county," Kaufman says. "Wherever communities are adjacent to Pacific Lumber, people who've lived there their whole lives, whose families go back for generations, are becoming active." "These are people who've worked for Pacific Lumber, who do logging for a living. They're becoming radical--much more so than the environmentalists. Because their frustration and rage comes from the fact that they're seeing the direct effects of the company's shoddy practices. They feel like they're losing their homes." STATE ASSEMBLYWOMAN VIRGINIA STROM-MARTIN, (D-Duncans Mills), caught wind that old-timers were joining Earth Firsters in the northern boondocks of her district. She took a trip up north and visited with families who live near Maxxam property earlier this summer. Strom-Martin then called a hearing to allow them to voice their concerns to a joint legislative task force set up to deal with the Headwaters issue. At that hearing, 14 Humboldt County residents told lawmakers why they felt Maxxam could not be trusted. "What's at stake here is something more than redwood groves," local land-owner Mike Evenson said. "We're talking about my family's land, and a lot of families' land. We were told this deal would offer us some protection. Well, I'm taking it in the neck." Christy Wrigley, a 50-year resident of the area whose family has raised apples there for 95 years, said the Elk River, from which her family draws its water, has been destroyed by Maxxam's shoddy logging practices. "Water is a basic necessity," Wrigley said at the hearing. "We need it to live and I need it to farm. What kind of people are we that we can't stand up for what's right for everybody?" The locals were particularly incensed that the whole agreement stemmed from a lawsuit in which Pacific Lumber claimed that environmental laws were hindering the campaign efforts to make money. As far as the locals could tell, the company was permanently damaging the local economy by wrecking the area's ability to produce natural resources in a sustainable fashion. To soften their pain, Strom-Martin came up with a plan to tack $20 million onto the state's share of the deal--money the communities around Eureka, Arcata, Garberville and Fortuna could use. She enlisted Sen. Mike Thompson (D-Eureka)--usually a strong advocate of the timber industry. Thomson signed on, but reduced the request to $5 million in the Senate. For the final weeks of the negotiation, the folks of the Lost Coast seemed to be being ignored. But late Monday, the Headwaters Agreement found its way back on the floor of the Assembly. Strom-Martin's turf. Robyn Stewart, Strom-Martin's chief of staff, says her boss elected to play some hardball politics. "We decided, if this bill is gonna go in our house, we want 20 million," Stewart says. Speaker Antonio Villarigosa also became territorial, and decreed that there would be no vote in the Assembly unless Strom-Martin's constituents got their money. Humboldt residents, an independent bunch, will take the money and do what little they can with it. But they are not likely to back off. "Charles Hurwitz [Maxxam's owner] has got us all held hostage," says Ellen Taylor. "If this deal doesn't force him to abide by the law, somebody's going to get killed up here." [ San Jose | Metroactive Central | Archives ]