Washington: Last days of a hard-hitting investigative newspaper journalism
State forestry officials are investigating claims made about a recent
logging project conducted at a Boy Scout camp in Southwest Washington,
after a consultant who reviewed it for the Seattle P-I concluded that
it violated three state rules, including required protections to a
waterway that provides habitat to protected salmon.
Click link for full text/increase funding for writer/producer of these
words: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/398845_scoutsfolo05.html
While state geologist Charles Chesney was conducting his officially
requested review, other DNR personnel joined him at Camp Delezenne to
conduct an unauthorized “investigation.” Acting on a tip Tuesday, the
P-I traveled to Camp Delezenne and found the team conducting fieldwork
in response to issues raised in the news report. “We are doing an
investigation,” said Leslie Lingley, who described herself as “team
leader” of the state forest practices’ science team conducting the
review. “We’re just starting. We’re looking at what was raised in the
newspaper. We’ve made no conclusions.” Lingley said her group had
conducted office research the day prior, and she added the
in-the-field investigation would include taking buffer width and slope
measurements, gathering information on stream characteristics and
reviewing such data with the project’s logging plan, among other
measures.
But on Wednesday, Young — recently promoted to the
department’s chief of operations under new Public Lands Commissioner
Peter Goldmark — told the P-I he hadn’t authorized that
investigation. “That shouldn’t have happened,” Young said. “My
direction was simply for Leslie to accompany Charles out there,” said
Young. “I just asked her to accompany him because she knew the area
better. I was not aware the others were going to come out there.”
Young added Lingley may have overstated what she was doing when
describing it as “an investigation.” Goldmark has not responded to the
P-I’s repeated requests for an interview this week, including calls to
his office Wednesday. His spokesman said the new commissioner’s
schedule was simply booked solid. Channel migration zones, or CMZs,
are naturally meandering waterways in wide river valleys that require
additional tree buffers to be preserved from logging under state
forest practice rules. Among his findings, the P-I’s consultant, Chris
Mendoza, concluded Delezenne Creek constituted such a CMZ — “a
classic case,” he said. But the council’s logging plan misidentified
the stream, Mendoza said, which allowed the Scouts’ logger to cut down
more trees.
Click link for full text/increase funding for writer/producer of these
words: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/398845_scoutsfolo05.html
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