A recent federal court ruling and a new California
law could both curtail stream pollution by the timber
industry.
On Oct. 12, outgoing Gov. Gray Davis signed a
bill that allows regional water quality boards to veto logging
plans if they would damage streams classified by the federal
Environmental Protection Agency as “impaired due to sediment.” Pat
Veesart of the Sierra Club says the change is “very significant.”
In the past, he says, an industry-friendly California Department of
Forestry approved logging that dumped sediment into
already-polluted streams.
Then, on Oct. 14, U.S. District
Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled that logging-caused runoff
should not be exempt from the Clean Water Act. EPA policy
previously designated “natural runoff” from many logging operations
as a “non-point source” discharge that does not require a permit,
even though sediment pollution from logging enters streams through
ditches, gullies and roadways considered “point sources” in other
industries.
Earthjustice lawyer Mike Lozeau says the EPA
was, “in fact, saying, ‘Although it looks like a point source
and smells like a point source, we’re going to make believe
it’s not a point source.’”
But Jim Branham of
Pacific Lumber Company, a co-defendant with EPA in the lawsuit,
maintains that logging runoff is different than “a pipe flowing out
of a factory.” Branham, whom Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has since
appointed undersecretary of the state EPA, says his company is
still deciding whether to appeal the ruling.
The EPA is
also considering an appeal.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Logging faces new pollution controls.
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