Log Plan Faces Nafta Fight First Trade Complaint To Be Filed Against U.S. By Environmentalists

Environmentalists are asking an international panel to help block a new U.S. law that repeals fish and wildlife rules for salvage logging in national forests.

Lawyers for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund told The Associated Press they would file a complaint with the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation in Montreal today on behalf of more than 20 groups.

In an unusual twist, the conservationists say the logging law President Clinton reluctantly signed last month violates a North American Free Trade Agreement provision that his administration demanded out of concerns that Mexico would try to gain an unfair trade advantage by skimping on environmental protections.

“It is ironic that the first complaint would be filed against the United States,” said Patti Goldman, a lawyer with the defense fund in Seattle.

The logging provision suspends the Endangered Species Act and other laws to expedite salvage timber harvests in an effort to reduce wildfire threats in federally owned forests nationwide.

It also directs the Forest Service to log - free from the normal environmental constraints - some of the Pacific Northwest’s oldest forests with threatened northern spotted owls and marbled murrelets.

The logging is insulated from administrative appeals or court challenges.

“As a result, many environmental violations will be left unredressed and a great deal of on-the-ground environmental harm will occur,” the environmentalists said in a copy of the complaint.

The logging law “offends the spirit of the NAFTA admonition to avoid waiving or derogating from environmental measures to attract or retain investment,” said the groups, including the Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, The Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth and Natural Resources Defense Council.

The three-member commission, made up of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner and her counterparts in Canada and Mexico, will be asked to investigate the new U.S. law to determine whether it complies with NAFTA’s environmental side agreement, Goldman said.

The panel has no power to strike down the U.S. law. But a vote that a violation had occurred would open the door for Canada or Mexico to launch a trade complaint that could result in sanctions against the United States, Goldman said.

There was no immediate comment Tuesday from the White House, the EPA, Agriculture Department or U.S. Trade Representative’s Office, spokespersons said.