SACRAMENTO -- Environmental groups hailed a Humboldt County Superior Court judge's unexpected ruling ordering a temporary halt to logging by Pacific Lumber Co.
Judge John Golden ordered the halt after state agencies that oversee timber harvests delayed three years before submitting a formal administrative record. The judge said that record purportedly encompasses "about 75,000 pages of material contained within 47 cardboard 'bankers boxes."'
The agencies then asked for more than 400 exemptions to the court-ordered disclosure, claiming attorney-client and other privileges. Golden said he must now begin "extensive evidentiary hearings" on those claims, including public testimony and a private review of each of those documents.
Golden rejected arguments that the delay would hurt the company and northwest California's regional economy. The ruling affects 211,000 acres owned by the Scotia-based company, Golden noted in his 14-page ruling Thursday.
Without a court-ordered stay, Golden said logging would continue that could hurt timberlands and wildlife. He rejected arguments that the state agencies sufficiently took those environmental concerns into account in their decisions.
Under the circumstances, the judge ruled halting logging "is not against the public interest, but, to the contrary, serves the public interest."
Jim Branham, Pacific Lumber's director of government affairs, said he was aware of the case but not the ruling late Thursday, and couldn't comment. Department of Forestry Deputy Director Louis Blumberg said he also was unaware of the ruling late Thursday and couldn't comment.
Spokesmen for the Environmental Protection Information Center and the Sierra Club, which filed the suit, hailed what they said was an unexpected ruling.
Golden also rejected the company's contention that any such logging halt requires the environmental groups to post a "substantial" bond to cover the company's potential losses.
No such bond is needed, he ruled, in part because "the stay is issued for the protection of the public interests."
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