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September 1998

AFA' S TLMP Lawsuit Gains Community Support

by Jack E. Phelps

On August 11, 1998, AFA filed a complaint in Federal District Court for the District of Alaska alleging that the U.S. Forest Service violated six federal laws in its revision of the Tongass Land Management Plan which was completed last year. These violations included ignoring provisions of the Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990 (TTRA), the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The Forest Service also violated its own planning regulations at several points in the revision process, according to the AFA lawsuit.

Recently two other entities decided to join AFA in its complaint. The City Council for the City of Wrangell, Alaska, voted to join AFA as co-plaintiff in the lawsuit and agreed to contribute $25,000 toward the effort. Concerned Alaskans for Resources and Environment (C.A.R.E.) also voted to become a co- plaintiff in the action. C.A.R.E. is a Ketchikan based grass roots organization committed to the support of natural resource based industries in Alaska. The Wrangell and C.A.R.E. actions indicate a significant level of interest in the outcome of the Forest Service planning process and reflect a strong commitment to the future of the timber industry in Southeast Alaska by a broad constituency within the affected communities.

In addition to linking up with C.A.R.E. and Wrangell, AFA is holding discussions with several other communities around Southeast Alaska to determine the level of interest that exists among them. Preliminary contacts have indicated that the support is strong throughout the region. The Ketchikan Gateway Borough (KGB) has already issued a firm statement of support and is investigating other actions to assist in the success of AFA’s effort.

AFA is already a partner with Wrangell, the KGB and C.A.R.E. In addition to filing its own appeal of the revised TLMP, AFA filed a joint complaint with the two municipalities and C.A.R.E. The appeals are still pending, and a decision on them is not likely to be forthcoming this year. The prolonged delay by the government in dealing with pending appeals coupled with the fact that the Plan is being implemented in the meantime led us to conclude that waiting for the administrative process to be completed was futile and would result in further harm to the industry.

By refusing to follow the law and its own planning regulations when developing the new Tongass Land Management Plan, the Forest Service was able to remove so much commercial forest land from the timber base that it is no longer able to follow the clear intent of Congress to sell enough timber to satisfy market demand and meet the needs of Alaska’s timber industry. Furthermore, standards and guides relating to the Plan’s “wildlife viability strategy” are so unreasonable and restrictive and so limit the agency’s discretion that it is exceptionally difficult for the Forest Service to offer sales that are economic to harvest. Both our appeal and our lawsuit point out that these standards and guides were illegally adopted, since they were added to the Plan only when the Record of Decision was released and were not subject to public comment and debate during the planning process.

The timber industry has already lost two-thirds of the direct jobs we had when the Tongass Timber Reform Act was passed. TTRA was supposed to have adjusted the balance between timber interests and preservationist goals. TLMP completely destroys that balance by placing every other use of the forest ahead of timber management. Under TLMP, the Tongass will no longer be a multiple use forest in the historic sense of that term, and the people of Southeast Alaska, especially in the timber dependent communities, will suffer. If not fixed, TLMP will irreparably harm what’s left of the Southeast Alaska timber industry.

One evidence of this was seen recently in the announcement by Louisiana Pacific and Sealaska Corporation that the two companies have called off discussions on a proposed joint venture to install and operate a veneer plant in conjunction with LP’s two existing sawmills, located at Ward Cove near Ketchikan and on Annette Island near Metlakatla. The Sealaska press release referred several times to the restricted and uncertain supply of federal timber available from the Tongass as a key reason for its decision not to pursue the joint venture. As we have said several times publically, the Forest Service’s failure to plan for and offer a sufficient volume of timber from the Tongass makes it especially difficult for companies to justify the expenditure of development funds for new plants and equipment in Southeast Alaska.

Jack E. Phelps is executive director of the Alaska Forest Association in Ketchikan.

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