Washington: Sumas Sierra Pacific’s destruction destroys neighbors land & stream

Sierra Pacific logged the area in late 2006. In March 2007, runoff
from the logged area cut a gully three to four feet deep through a
grove of cedar trees on Mesches’s land, in a place where no stream had
been before. In its legal responses to the lawsuit, Sierra Pacific
contends it complied with all the conditions in its state-approved
logging permit, and its logging activities did not add to the runoff
across Mesches’s land “to any significant degree.”

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After the more recent floods of early January 2009, even bigger
torrents cut the gully several feet deeper. “We had about a foot and a
half of snow up there when the flood started,” Mesches said. “The
mountain just came loose.” Nearby, a small slide originating on the
clear-cut property sent rocks, logs, silt and gravel into an
intermittent stream known as Oscar Creek. It flows along the edge of
property owned by Michael Taylor, a retired University of Washington
political science professor. “It was all green down there,” Taylor
said, gesturing at the creek bed.

“Now it’s all silt and rocks. It’s
been deposited up to two feet deep throughout the whole area. … For
the first time, this whole valley down here was a raging torrent of
muck.” The debris wiped out many of the seedling cedar trees Taylor
had planted along the creek bank. Greg Chapman, another Sumas Mountain
resident who serves on the Cabrant Road Association, said the 23
homeowners in the area understand there is some risk involved in
living on or near a mountainside. They also recognize that timber
owners have a right to harvest trees. Residents wanted the logging
above them to be done more carefully, not banned outright. “We asked
for more selective logging and more attention to where this water
could go,” Chapman said. “This is what we got.

… The trees are gone. We just want to deal with where the water’s going. We want the water to go where it needs to go, and it’s not.” Mark Pawlicki, a company spokesman in Sierra Pacific’s Redding, Calif., headquarters, said the company complied with state regulations in logging its Sumas Mountain holdings.  “We think we’re following the law and managing our lands properly,”  Pawlicki said. Washington Department of Natural Resources spokesman  Aaron Toso said his boss, Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark, supports continued study of slide and erosion issues to make sure lives and
property are protected when logging occurs, on either state or private
timberlands. But at the same time, the state needs to keep timberlands
productive.  “There are balances,” Toso said.

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