Subsidized Logging Roads. Under the U.S. Forest Service timber program, logging companies are subsidized to build roads that allow them to cut and remove timber. Not only are taxpayers picking up the timber industry's business costs--to the tune of over $31 million a year--but these publicly financed roads are environmentally destructive, causing serious soil erosion, water pollution and disruption of wildlife. Humboldt County alone has an over seven million dollar roads bill, in part due to logging trucks and flooding, with no money in the budget to fix them.

Below Market Timber Sales.
US Forest Service "commodity" timber sales provide timber to logging companies at below-market prices. Private timber companies end up paying only $5 per tree for timber taken from public lands. In fact, the federal timber sales program actually loses money because the amounts paid to the government by the companies buying the timber do not even cover all of the costs associated with preparing and administering the sales. The program resulted in a $111 million net loss to taxpayers in 1997 and has damaged many old growth forests and wildlife habitats.

Clear-cutting is an expensive forestry tool. It costs less to get the trees out, but the real expense comes later in restoration, lost habitat and disrupted ecosystems. Mudslides emanating from clear-cuts and logging roads have crashed through homes, taken human lives, destroyed property, washed out highways, silt-choked streams, and put drinking water at risk.

The 1996 January floods were easily the most expensive in California history, totaling over $1.8 billion in damages. Nearly 300 square miles of northern California were flooded (including the Central Valley's Sacramento River), damaging or destroying 21,000 homes, 3000 mobile homes, and 1900 businesses. At the height of the emergency, 120,000 people had been evacuated. The cumulative cost, both via taxes and personal loss, is absolutely staggering.

  • Humboldt County: $16.4 million in damage and climbing
  • The lower Klamath River: 28 businesses and more than 50 homes damaged or destroyed.
  • $800,000 just to repair one section of riverbank.
Is this the future? One can only imagine the devastation that could have been avoided had more of our forests been saved or at the least, responsibly logged. This is the legacy left to us by the logging industry and their clear-cutting policies. Pacific Lumber / Maxxam continue to rob present and future generations of their birthright. It is up to us to stop them!
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