41°
January 6, 2009 in City
Timber company wants to drop road deal
U.S. Forest Service boss decries decision
Associated Press
HELENA – Plum Creek Timber Co. said Monday it no longer wants to pursue changing the easements governing its use of U.S. Forest Service roads near company lands, changes negotiated privately by the company and the agency and challenged by Missoula County officials and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.
Critics said the amendments could ease property development by Plum Creek, perhaps saddling counties with high costs to provide fire protection or other services for new subdivisions.
Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service, indicated as recently as last week the changes likely would become final before he leaves office when the Bush administration ends this month.
Seattle-based Plum Creek, the nation’s largest owner of private land, retreated Monday in a letter to Missoula County Commissioner Jean Curtiss, with copies to Rey and others.
“Although we continue to believe that the easement amendment would be beneficial to the general public, given the lack of receptivity, we have decided not to go forward with the amendment,” Chief Executive Officer Rick Holley wrote.
Rey said the decision is “not good news for the federal government or the public at large.” He had maintained that changes in the easements secured new benefits for the government rather than for Plum Creek, whose rights he said were clear in the easement language already in place. Amendments would have established new requirements for landowner responsibility in such areas as wildfire protection, Rey contended.
Rey declined to comment further on Monday, saying he first wanted to talk to Tester and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.
Tester got the General Accountability Office to look into the easement deal. Subsequently both he and Bingaman, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, sought an investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s inspector general, a request still pending when Plum Creek sent its letter.
Tester’s criticism focused on concern that the easement negotiations were held privately, without opportunities for public involvement. Missoula County used the Freedom of Information Act in filing an extensive request for information about the talks, had received documents from the Forest Service and wanted more.
“This is about transparency in government and making sure everyone impacted is at the table so they have their piece heard,” Tester said. “This is, after all, public land.”
The senator said he and Rey will meet this week.
Curtiss said Missoula County officials were “as surprised as anyone” by the letter.
“Our concern was that Rey was going to sign this at the last minute, as a ‘Here’s what you get as I go out the door’ kind of thing,” Curtiss said. She said she was unsure what motivated Plum Creek.
“I don’t know if they were tired of the bad PR, even though we’ve never really pointed a finger at them,” she said. “We’ve pointed it at the Forest Service.”
Plum Creek spokeswoman Kathy Budinick said the decision reflects the company’s desire to “be responsive to the concerns raised.” Plum Creek considered its position for a while and “we thought, what the heck, let’s just not do it at all,” Budinick said.
She said amending the easements was a controversy only in Montana, not in other places where Plum Creek owns land.
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JimMoose on January 07 at 8:28 p.m.
The real battleground in the fight against Plum Creek's development plans is at the local level in counties such as Missoula County in Montana. Unfortunately, the planning and zoning laws in Montana are much weaker than those of many other states. Montanans have historically greatly cherished their property rights, and as a result vast swaths of private land in the state remain unzoned. And Plum Creek has every intention of exercising its property rights to the fullest extent. This means that some of Montana's most beautiful and ecologically sensitive landscapes have big residential bulls eyes on them. In some of these areas, county-level zoning efforts are just getting off the ground, and county officials are thus entering into uncharted political and legal territory.
One of the worst Montana statutes gives Plum Creek, as a large owner of timber lands, the ability in some instances to exercise a veto power over zoning regulations enacted by a democratically elected county board. Thus, a for-profit business can resist environmental regulation intended to protect some of the most beautiful and ecologically sensitive lands in the lower 48 states.
Paradoxically, despite Montana's traditional solicitude for private property rights, Montana's constitution, adopted in 1972, includes language elevating environmental values to a higher level than can be found in any other state constitution. In Montana, each resident has an alienable individual right to a clean and healthful environment, and the Legislature has a constitutional duty to make this right real and enforceable.
The Montana statute giving Plum Creek this veto power seems to be of dubious legal validity in light of such inspiring constitutional language. The veto statute flouts environmental values by allowing large landowners to resist governmental attempts at environmental protection in favor of the pursuit of private profit. The statute is also patently undemocratic in that it creates a preferred class of citizens who can resist the exercise of governmental power and authority in a way that no ordinary citizen can — and at the expense of the environment. Further, the statute delegates what amounts to unbridled legislative power to private parties (including, as a practical matter, corporations) who are free to pursue their naked self interest at the expense of the public welfare. Similar statutes in other states have been struck down in court.
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