Court halts Fred's, Power fire logging, Mountain Democrat
By Roger Phelps
January 13, 2005
Timber cuts are stalled by a new court action for trees killed by Fred's Fire and the Power Fire on the
An appeals court ruling Wednesday granted an emergency injunction in the lawsuit Earth Island Institute v. U.S. Forest Service. Loggers from Sierra Pacific Industries have been cutting since summer on the two salvage logging operations. The Fred's Fire burned near Kyburz and the Power Fire burned a remote area near the El Dorado-Amador county line. Forest Service officials announced Thursday that roughly 60 percent of logging remains to be done on the Power Fire site, and roughly 20 percent remains on the Fred's Fire site.
“And currently, there are logs on the ground, decked, on both sites,” said agency spokesman Frank Mosbacher. “We're seeking clarification on whether those can be removed.”
The Wednesday court order bars “all logging operations” on the sites.
The two operations involve millions of board feet of timber and millions of dollars in revenue to the Forest Service, which proposes to use the revenue largely for restoration work in the burned areas. In addition, the cuts have boosted the incomes of local contract-logging truck drivers.
Plaintiffs contend the cuts got inadequate environmental review. A brief injunction was granted last summer, but a court after a review of the complaint did not extend the early injunction, and logging began.
Plaintiffs appealed, and sought to bar cutting pending the appeal. That motion originally was denied. However, the current injunction by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit grants the request for a stay of operations pending ruling on the appeal.
“We reconsider our Sept. 21, 2005 order denying plaintiff Earth Island's request for an emergency injunction pending appeal,” the judges' panel announced Wednesday. “We hereby grant the injunction and order the U.S. Forest Service and Sierra Pacific Industries immediately to cease all logging operations in the areas encompassed by the Fred's Fire Restoration Project and the Power Fire Restoration Project, pending our determination of the appeal on the merits.”
On the two fire sites combined, SPI contracts with the Forest Service call for logging of around 160 million board feet of killed timber on approximately 8,239 acres of national forest land. The company agreed to pay $10.1 million.
Officials now worry about lost value from the trees not being marketed.
“There will probably be adjustments to contracts,” Mosbacher said.