By Charlie Aker – Mendocino Commentary, July 12, 1990
A group of Greenwood/Elk residents have requested that the board of directors of the Elk County Water District enter as co-petitioner in a lawsuit against the California Department of Forestry. By the time this article hits the streets. a special meeting of the water district will have taken place where the decisive vote will be taken, and the suit. with or without the water district, will have been filed.
The driving force behind this suit has been the Greenwood Watershed Association, an ad hoc group of concerned citizens who have studied timber issues, some for many years. The Elk County Water District has also made an effort over the years to comment on pending timber harvest plans in the local Greenwood Creek watershed. Water, the lifeblood of the town, is a product of the forest. just as the trees were that fed the sawmill for which the town was founded.
It is an interesting irony perhaps that the sawmill in Elk closed in the 1960s at least in part because the big trees ran out, meaning lost jobs, devastated economy, etc. Now the reincarnation of Elk as a bed and breakfast Mecca is thirsty for clean water, which is the other forest product.
None of the timber articles we’ve seen in the mainstream media lately mention the relationship between water and the forest. The forestry laws say that the use of the forest for timber products must be balanced with be beneficial uses of the water, but in the forestry practice, it seems, for the most part, that watershed protection is just another bothersome issue brought up by “crazed zealots with pet owls.”
Thankfully, the greater portion of the public does recognize that water is worth protecting, but there are still many of us who cannot see the forestry issues in the broad view. It doesn’t take scientific insight beyond the level of high school science class to understand that without the forest you have a desert, and in a desert, the water comes only in flash floods. Each tree cut beyond the regeneration rate is an incremental step towards desertification. The majority vote of the people will always support water protection because they are sick (literally) of the continued sacrifice of the water resources worldwide for the benefit of short-term profit and greed.
CDF is being pressed in the courts, to reassess its role as sole protector of the public interests in forestry issues. Public dissatisfaction with CDF’s performance was resulted in “Forests Forever” and “Redwood Summer.” Forests Forever will no doubt pass unless the politics of greed is successful in convincing the public its asinine rhetoric is the truth. Redwood Summer is a necessary method of getting the issue out in the open. The action in the courtrooms of the timber counties are, and will continue to, bring the inconsistencies of the system out into the light where they can be dealt with; but the water issue, if the mainstream media would pick it up, is the crux of the matter in my estimation.
Elk’s water is not going to cease flowing if more trees are cut. But there is a point where the cumulative impact of generations of forest abuse will be irreversible, and the steady, perhaps rapid, change of the climate (have you noticed?) will further impact our ability to provide enough quality water.
There are alternatives for everything. Good ones. For jobs, for paper, for building materials, but nobody has come up with a replacement for water. Though I understand duPont is working on it!