This report would not have been possible had it not been for the numerous experts, activists and community leaders who gave freely of their time and advice. In particular, the authors would like to thank: Amelia Jenkins, Steve Holmer, Sean Cosgrove, George Draffin, Doug McDonald, Rich Pulchelski, Diana Rhoades, Janine Blaeloch, Charlotte Fox, Deryck Spooner, Dana DuBose, Liz Butler, Alix Davidson, Stephanie Jowers, Brett DiResta, Sheila Krumholz, Mat Jacobson, Francis Etherington, James Johnston, Craig Gehrke, George Sexton, Tom Vodivitch, Dave Werntz, Jon Owen, Scott Hofmann-Black, Jake Crylick, Paul Spitler, Bethany Walder, Jeff Jewell, Dave Picheko, Frank Ambrose, Dana Smith, Doug Murray, Ray Vaughn, Devon Shrubel, David Allanberge and David Carl.

More thanks go to Anna Aurilio, Allison LaPlante, Jim Amspacher, Rick Trilsch, Elke Sporseen, Erin Drennen and Kimberly Larson for their help in the creation, production and distribution of this report.

Cover design by Public Interest GRFX.

Clear-cut cover photo by Craig Gehrke.

The United States Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) is the national lobby office for the State PIRGs. PIRGs are non-profit, non-partisan watchdog organizations, working for environmental, consumer and government reform in more than thirty states.

Gene Karpinski, Executive Director

Copies of this report may be ordered by sending a check or money order for $25.00 to:

U.S. PIRG
218 D St. SE
Washington, DC 20003

Executive Summary.....................................................................................i

Introduction: Public Loss, Private Gain........................................................1

Chapter I: Our National Forests: Heritage at Risk........................................4

Chapter II: Who Cut How Much?...............................................................7

Chapter III: Taxpayer Handouts to Timber:......................................·.......12

How we lose trees and dollars on our National Forests

Chapter IV: Timberâs Toxic Legacy.................................................·.......17

Chapter V: Big Timber Goes to Washington: .................................·.........21

The influence of timber company fat cats and their K street lobby shops

Chapter VI: The Hall of Shame.......................................................·........27

Chapter VII: Recommendations........................................................·......42

Appendices:

Appendix A: EPAâs TRI Releases in 1997 & Data From the SFIP, 1997-1998

Appendix B: Total TRI Reported Releases to Air, Land and Water, 1997

Appendix C: EPA Sector Facility Indexing Project (SFIP) by facility and state, 1997-1998

Appendix D: Total House recipients of Big Timber contributions, 1993-1998

Appendix E: Total Senate recipients of Big Timber contributions 1993-1998

How much has been logged and at what cost?

· Over the last five years the timber industry purchased over 13.6 billion board feet of taxpayer subsidized timber from our National Forests. In simple terms, 13.6 billion board feet is equal to more than 13 million 100 foot tall trees, or 2.7 million fully loaded logging trucks of timber.

· Boise Cascade Corp. was the top purchaser of taxpayer-subsidized timber over the past five years, purchasing more than 4%--or more than half a million board feet of timber--of the total timber logged on National Forests. During that same period of time, the Forest Service timber program lost approximately $1.7 billion.

· Boise Cascade bought nearly one third of the timber sold in Forest Service Region 4 (ID, NV and UT) over the last five years, a region which lost more than $79 million from 1995 to 1997 alone.

· Just the top ten timber purchasers combined accounted for more than 20% of the total board feet sold over the last five years, or nearly 3 billion board feet of timber.

· The Southern Region (Region 8) was the largest producer of timber with more than 3 billion board feet sold from 1994 to 1998. Weyerhaeuser was the largest purchaser in the region with 149 million board feet purchased. Over a shorter but overlapping timeframe, that region lost $55 million of taxpayer money (1995 to 1997).

· The Pacific Northwest was the second largest timber producing region with an alarming concentration of 2.7 billion board feet purchased from only two states: Oregon and Washington. The largest purchasers in the Pacific Northwest region were D.R. Johnson lumber and Boise Cascade. The Pacific Northwest was also the largest money losing region from 1995-1997 with over $467 million in losses.

Timberâs Toxic Legacy

According to the EPAâs Toxics Release Inventory, these same timber companies also pollute our air, ground and water with toxic pollution:

· Three out of the top five timber purchasers--Boise Cascade, Weyerhaeuser and Louisiana-Pacific--were also major toxic polluters of our air, land and water.

· According to the TRI, companies who purchased timber on public lands also released more than 149.6 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, land or water in 1997. More than 2 million residents live within 3 miles of the plants that released these toxic chemicals.

· Among those releases were more than 15.5 million pounds of carcinogens, which are chemicals that are known or suspected to cause cancer.

· Based on the latest TRI data, the top five public timber purchasing polluters in 1997 were (in order) International Paper, Georgia-Pacific Corporation, Weyerhaeuser Company, Stone Container and Champion International.

The political influence of Big Timber

The major companies who purchase and cut timber on our National Forests have also pushed for an anti-environmental agenda to increase levels of logging and timber roadbuilding in our National Forests, continue subsidies for the timber industry and rollback major environmental protections. To achieve these goals, these companies gave millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Congressional election campaigns coffers and to political parties. They also used a multi-million dollar war chest to hire powerful Washington D.C. lobby firms to influence and manipulate the political system.

· Over the past three election cycles (1993-1998) the timber companies that log our National Forests have contributed at least $4.37 million to political action campaigns (PACs) and $1.46 million to political parties in unregulated "soft money," for a total of $5.8 million in political contributions.

· Additionally, these same companies and trade associations spent over $22.5 million to hire at least 35 different lobby firms or "in house" lobby shops, and over 141 lobbyists to take their agenda directly to the decision-makers in Washington D.C.

· Members of Congress who signed or voted against saving taxpayer dollars and protecting our National Forests received an average of 58 times more timber PAC money than those members who voted to save taxpayer dollars and to protect National Forests.

· All five of the top five timber purchasers contributed heavily to election campaigns or hired lobbyists to further their agenda on Capitol Hill. Together, the top five companies (Boise Cascade, Sierra Pacific Industries, D.R. Johnson Lumber, Weyerhaeuser Co. and Louisiana-Pacific) spent more than $1.1 million to influence the political system.
 
 
 
 

The Hall of Shame

We chose eight of the worst timber companies who log on our National Forests for our hall of shame, highlighting them for their anti-public interest record. We looked at some of the largest timber cutters, polluters and political contributors. Our Hall of Shame is composed of: Boise Cascade; Sierra Pacific Industries; Weyerhaeuser; Louisiana-Pacific; International Paper; Georgia-Pacific; Champion Paper and Plum Creek Timber Co. From overcutting our forests, to toxic pollution to political corruption, these companies appear to put profit before the public health.

Recommendations

We must protect Americaâs National Forests. To that end, two key policy changes must be made.

First, the Forest Service needs to protect those untouched and unroaded areas in the most danger. The Forest Service is currently drafting a proposal that will only provide guidance on how to build better roads in our National Forests, but fails to protect roadless areas themselves. The Forest Service must issue a policy that protects all remaining 60 million acres of pristine roadless areas in our National Forests.

Second, we must eliminate taxpayer subsidies to the timber industry. Below-cost timber sales and the timber roadbuilding program must be halted to protect both the American taxpayer and the environment.

Ultimately, we must end all commercial logging on our National Forests. With over half of our National Forests already scarred by clearcuts and timber roads, our forest are in serious jeopardy. Nothing short of complete and permanent protection will allow them to flourish again and to continue to perform the myriad of functions and values they provide to the public, our environment, and the economy.

As hundreds of thousands of Americans join the call to protect our remaining wild places, our National Forests continue to be destroyed by chainsaws and bulldozers. This report examines why we lose more and more of our National Forests every day and who is behind the attack. "Public Loss: Private Gain" exposes how big timber companies devastate our National Forests at the taxpayerâs expense.

This report identifies the timber corporations who are profiting at the publicâs expense. Through manipulation of our political system, these companies perpetuate a system of corporate welfare. Meanwhile, they prove themselves to be poor corporate citizens by emitting toxic pollution and using their financial clout to exert undue influence over the political process.

While this report is not an exhaustive account of every bad actor that logs on our National Forests, as there are many stories of abuse which will remain untold, it does describe the number of taxpayer subsidized timber purchases, give evidence of major pollution, outline political contributions and highlight other anecdotal instances of poor corporate citizenship.

Chapter I: Our National Forests: Heritage at Risk examines the values National Forests hold for every American and the direct threats to their survival. By providing clean water, habitat for wildlife, recreation for millions and a refuge for our last remaining old growth forests, our National Forests are more valuable as intact forests than as clearcuts. Yet, only 18% of these forests are protected from logging, roadbuilding and other forms of development. Clear-cutting and roadbuilding continue to strip away our forests, destroy wildlife habitat, create erosion, choke rivers and streams and fragment ecosystems. The result is that over half of our National Forests have been destroyed or degraded by these activities.

Chapter II: Who Cut How Much exposes the timber companies behind this attack on our National Forests and how much timber they purchased. Nationally, timber companies have purchased more than 13.6 billion board feet of timber, roughly 13 million 100 foot tall trees, from our national forests over the last five years. This is enough to fill 2.7 million logging trucks.

The top five timber purchasers nationally were: Boise Cascade; Sierra Pacific Industries; D.R. Johnson Co.; Weyerhaeuser Co.; and Louisiana Pacific. These five companies purchased one-fifth of the total timber purchased from 1994 to 1998. We also examined the companies that logged the most on a regional basis (their total purchases and the concentration of board feet production).

Chapter III: Taxpayer Handouts to Timber: How we lose trees and dollars on our National Forests explores the timber sale program and how it simultaneously loses taxpayer dollars and destroys our National Forests. The Forest Service timber sale and roadbuilding program is not just an environmental disaster, but also an outrageous handout to the timber industry. According to the General Accounting Office (GAO), taxpayers are forced to pay an estimated $340 million every year to subsidize the sale of our National Forests. From 1992 to 1997, the Forest Service lost $2.04 billion of taxpayer money.

The Forest Service continues to subsidize money-losing timber sales and road-building, forcing taxpayers, not the timber industry, to pick up the tab. For example, over the last five years, Boise Cascade bought nearly one-third of the timber sold in Forest Service Region 4, which lost more than $79 million from 1995 to 1997 alone.

Chapter IV: Timberâs Toxic Legacy investigates the pollution records of all companies who have cut timber on our National Forests. Many timber companies who log our National Forests also own pulp and paper mills, sawmills, chip mills, veneer plants and other various types of processing facilities that produce and release an enormous and unacceptable amount of toxic chemicals. This report found that three out of the top five timber purchasers--Boise Cascade, Weyerhaeuser and Louisiana-Pacific--were also major toxic polluters of our air, land and water.

Millions of pounds of toxics, including those known or suspected to cause cancer, are released directly into our air, land and water every year by timber companies that log our National Forests. Led by International Paper with more than 36 million pounds in toxic chemical releases in 1997, timber companies logging our public lands released at least 149 million pounds of toxics in the same year. Several of these companies also have a pattern of violating federal pollution regulations. These include: failure to comply with established release limits; enforcement actions taken against them; and dangerous toxic spills that demonstrate both their negligence and disregard of public health and the environment.

Chapter V: Big Timber Goes to Washington: The influence of timber company fat cats and their K street lobby shops exposes the political contributions of timber companies that log our National Forests as well as the timber industryâs lobby machine. Many of the same companies which log our National Forests have routinely used their financial clout to distort and manipulate the political system that regulates them. The major companies who purchase and cut timber on our public lands have pushed for a destructive agenda that would increase logging levels in our National Forests, continue subsidies for the timber industry, and rollback major environmental protections. All five of the top five timber purchasers contributed heavily to election campaigns or hired lobbyists to further their agenda on Capitol Hill.

To achieve its political ends, the timber industry and its trade associations have amassed a multi-million dollar war chest which they readily contribute to Congressional election campaigns. Over the past three election cycles (1993-1998) these companies, through their political action committees (PACs) have contributed a total of $4.37 million to political campaigns. Additionally, they have contributed a total of $1.46 million directly to political parties in unregulated "soft money." This adds up to a total of $5.8 million worth of political clout and access to our elected officials. Additionally, these same companies spent over $22.5 million to fund 35 different lobby firms and at least 141 lobbyists to bring their agenda directly to the decision makers in Washington D.C.

Chapter VI: The Hall of Shame describes the timber companies we have selected for their anti-public interest record. We looked at some of the largest timber cutters, polluters, and political contributors. Our Hall of Shame is composed of: Boise Cascade; Sierra Pacific Industries; Weyerhaeuser; Louisiana-Pacific; International Paper; Georgia-Pacific; Champion Paper; and Plum Creek Timber Co.

Chapter VII: Recommendations discusses our solutions for protecting our forests, preventing pollution and reducing the undue influence of the timber companies on the legislative process.

We must protect Americaâs National Forests. Ultimately, the Forest Serviceâs commercial timber sale program must end if we are going to protect and restore our National Forests. However, in the interim, there are two key policy changes currently under debate which, if enacted, would take a significant step toward protecting our National Forests.

First, we must protect our remaining undisturbed and undeveloped roadless areas, frequently referred to as our Heritage Forests. The Forest Service is currently drafting a proposal that could protect these areas, but the timber and mining industries are working hard to weaken it. To fulfill the promises of the Clinton-Gore Administration, the policy must protect all remaining 60 million acres of pristine roadless areas in our National Forests.

Second, we must eliminate taxpayer subsidies to the timber industry. The below-cost timber sales and the timber roadbuilding program must be halted to protect both the American taxpayer and the environment.

To better track toxic chemical releases and promote pollution prevention, the Federal Right to Know Program should be expanded to include better toxics reporting, additional industries and reporting on persistent or bioaccumulative toxics.

To reduce the large and undue influence of industry over our political system, we support strong campaign finance reform provisions, focused on requiring candidates to raise money from the people they represent.

National Forests: Americaâs Treasure

Values of our National Forests

The National Forests of the United States stretch across 44 states and encompass over 191 million acres, an area equal to the states of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin combined. Our National Forests contain some of the most striking natural beauty on earth: from the green rainforests of the Pacific Northwest to the multi-colored groves of the Southern Appalachians; from the fjords of Southeast Alaska to the bogs and piney woodlands of the old North Woods country around the Great Lakes.

Our National Forests are more than just beautiful places, they also provide many important functions for and resources to American citizens and the environment in which we live. For example, our National Forests provide:

· Clean water - more than 920 communities get their drinking water from National Forest streams, some of the most naturally pure water in the country;

· Important habitat for fish and wildlife - one-half of our nationâs plant species and one-quarter of endangered species make their home in our National Forests. In 1997, 169 scientists urged President Clinton to support protecting the last roadless areas, writing, "Roadless areas are critical because they represent the least human-disturbed habitats in an almost universally disturbed landscape;"

· A safe haven for the last of our ancient forests - only 4% of our ancient forests remain, and nearly three quarters are in our National Forests; and

· Unique recreation - the unspoiled scenic beauty of our roadless forest lands provide a profound recreational experience for many Americans.

Americaâs Heritage Forests

All 191 million acres of our National Forests must be protected from the timber industryâs chainsaws and bulldozers. However, there are areas in our National Forests that are of particular importance and face the greatest risk of destruction. With only about 35 million acres--18% of our National Forests--protected from the ravages of road-building and clear-cutting, more than 60 million acres of pristine, undeveloped and roadless National Forest wilderness--nearly one-third of our National Forests are unprotected from logging, roadbuilding or other forms of development. Traditionally called "roadless areas," many leading conservationists call these vulnerable, unprotected wilderness areas "Americaâs Heritage Forests."
 
 

Everyday threats to our National Forests

Logging devastation

Over the last five years, 13.6 billion board feet of timber has been logged from our National Forests, an amount equivalent to approximately 13.6 million trees. This report examines the timber companies that are logging our National Forests and frequently paying below market prices. This report will describe how the timber industry has collectively bilked the American taxpayers for billions of dollars while leveling our precious forests, polluting our air and waterways and wielding enormous influence over our political system.

Clear-cut logging, the most intense form of timber removal in our National Forests, removes entire stands of trees, leaving forest slopes bare from top to bottom. Clear-cut logging is a common from of logging used by timber companies in our National Forests. With all plant life stripped from these areas, the slopes surrounding streams and rivers erode away, choking streams and rivers with silt and runoff. This erosion also leads to destructive life-threatening landslides.

Logging also destroys important fish and wildlife habitat. Clear-cutting and other methods of logging fragment forests into small isolated pieces, disrupting critical ecological processes. Contrary to the green-washing claims of timber companies, re-planting after logging does not resurrect forests, but rather replaces species diversity with homogeneous stands of same-aged trees, essentially turning our forests into tree farms.

Road to ruin

Roadbuilding has also had a devastating impact on our National Forests. Already there are over 440,000 miles of roads in our National Forests, enough to circle the planet seventeen times and eight times the length of the Interstate Highway System. A large number of the roads criss-crossing through our National Forests are timber roads, built so that timber companies will be able to access more of our land for clearcuts.

Like logging, timber roads have caused serious erosion problems that threaten lives and compromise water quality in our National Forests. Erosion causes smothering amounts of silt and mud to choke our rivers and streams. Stream-flow patterns are altered, causing abnormally low flow levels as well as devastating floods. Roads also pollute streams and rivers with construction runoff, toxic emissions, and herbicides. Erosion and water pollution has been so severe that USDA Undersecretary Jim Lyons remarked, "our number one water quality problem in the National Forest system is roads."

Timber roads also damage wildlife, fragmenting our National Forests into isolated islands of habitat. Many wild animals cannot or will not cross roads, reducing their food supply and their ability to reproduce, ultimately threatening them with extinction. Animals that do cross roads suffer high levels of mortality. For example, in Florida, road-kills are the leading cause of death for adult Florida panthers (population 50).

Finally, building roads in wild forests also opens them up to a host of destructive elements. Timber roads provide avenues for alien and invasive species, pests, and diseases that decimate native species, and accelerate logging, mining, poaching and illegal motorized vehicle use.

While the amount of timber cut on National Forests has slowly dropped in recent years, huge areas of our National Forests continue to be bulldozed and clearcut every year. Over the last five years (January 1994-December 1998), timber companies have purchased 11,169 timber sales for over 13.6 billion board feet of timber--or about 13 million mature trees--from our National Forests. That is enough timber to fill 2.7 million fully loaded logging trucks. The total bid value of those purchases was more than $2.08 billion.

Table I shows the top ten purchasers of timber from National Forest lands over the past five years. This chart includes the total sales purchased, the board feet purchased (in Mbf- thousands of board feet) and the total bid value of the sales.
 

		Table I Top Ten Timber Purchasers Nationwide  (1994-1998)*
	Company		Total Sales	Volume (Mbf)	% of National Total Mbf	Bid Value
1		BOISE CASCADE CORP.	139	578,549	4.2%	$108,853,832
2		SIERRA PACIFIC IND.	147	538,620	3.9%	$78,915,754
3		D R JOHNSON LUMBER	84	325,005	2.3%	$34,154,762
4		WEYERHAEUSER COMPANY	125	289,082	2.1%	$41,164,866
5		LOUISIANA-PACIFIC CORP.	135	254,626	1.8%	$33,047,620
6		COLLINS PINE/FREMONT/KANE	88	173,984	1.3%	$32,999,180
7		CROWN PACIFIC LP	59	172,402	1.2%	$39,440,963
8		SILVER BAY LOGGING	14	163,642	1.2%	$6,457,594
9		POPE & TALBOT	34	162,092	1.2%	$32,342,889
10		BEAN LUMBER TOTALS	119 944	149,139 2,807,141	1.0% 20.2%	$31,300,305  $438,677,765
		* According to USFS timber sale contracts as compiled by the Timber Data Company, Annual Purchaser Reports, 1999.

Out of hundreds of companies purchasing timber from our National Forests, 20% of the purchase, nearly 3 billion board feet, went to just these top ten purchasers over the last five years.

To get a regional perspective of the top timber purchasers across the country, Table II lists the top five timber purchasers in each of the nine Forests Service regions, the total sales purchased, the amount purchased in each region, and the bid value of these sales.
 
 
 

	Table II Top 5 Timber Purchasers by USFS Region, 1994-1998 (w/ totals for entire region)*
	Company	Total # of Sales	Volume in Mbf	% of Regional Total Mbf	Bid Value
	Region 1: ID, MT, ND
1	OWENS & HURST LUMBER	33	134,966	10.8%	$26,183,404
2	CROWN PACIFIC LP	34	104,534	8.4%	$26,238,034
3	AMERICAN TIMBER	35	99,219	7.9%	$18,256,296
4	LOUISIANA-PACIFIC CORP.	40	93,087	7.4%	$15,359,355
5	CLEARWATER FOREST/KOOSKIA Percent Total for Top Five:	23	74,510	6.0% 40.5%	$13,337,290
All	Purchaser Total for Region 1 **	1,165	1,250,261		$216,295,153
	Region 2: CO, WY, SD, NE, KS
1	POPE & TALBOT	33	160,244	25.5%	$32,209,044
2	NEIMAN TIMBER CO L.C.	21	97,821	15.6%	$18,390,348
3	CONTINENTAL LUMBER	15	75,981	12.1%	$17,171,706
4	LOUISIANA-PACIFIC CORP.	34	65,018	10.3%	$7,997,214
5	BIGHORN LUMBER Percent Total for Top Five:	23	47,217	7.5% 71.0%	$10,057,221
All	Purchaser Total for Region 2	383	628,461		$108,723,753
	Region 3: AZ, NM
1	STONE CONTAINER	20	47,389	25.7%	$4,217,621
2	PRECISION PINE & TIMBER	26	46,727	25.4%	$4,532,519
3	KAIBAB INDUSTRIES	2	14,991	8.1%	$3,552,867
4	BOISE CASCADE CORP.	2	12,852	7.0%	$2,801,736
5	REIDHEAD BROS. LUMBER MILL Percent Total for Top Five:	3	8,887	4.8% 71.0%	$604,316
All	Purchaser Total for Region 3	139	184,189		$20,076,601
	Region 4: NV, ID, UT
1	BOISE CASCADE CORP.	61	289,515	31.6%	$52,691,730
2	EVERGREEN FOREST PRODUCTS	28	124,086	13.5%	$20,722,362
3	CROMAN CORP.	21	92,231	10.1%	$17,339,428
4	ELLINGSON LUMBER/TIMBER	5	53,828	5.9%	$17,063,476
5	LOUISIANA-PACIFIC CORP. Percent Total for Top Five:	21	27,946	3.0% 64.1%	$2,291,572
All	Purchaser Total for Region 4	583	917,226		$145,838,934
	Region 5: CA
1	SIERRA PACIFIC IND.	145	525,444	28.9%	$78,801,150
2	FRANKLIN & SON LOG, RALPH	21	111,602	6.1%	$2,120,438
3	WETSEL-OVIATT LUMBER	22	100,637	5.6%	$13,485,358
4	SIERRA FOREST PRODUCTS	48	99,929	5.5%	$18,386,936
5	COLLINS PINE/FREMONT/KANE Percent Total for Top Five:	25	92,025	5.1% 51.2%	$15,920,325
All	Purchaser Total for Region 5	1,223	1,815,920		$261,492,480
	Region 6: WA, OR
1	D R JOHNSON LUMBER	75	269,266	9.8%	$29,080,728
2	BOISE CASCADE CORP.	52	187,905	6.8%	$46,412,535
3	WEYERHAEUSER COMPANY	18	130,665	4.8%	$7,709,235
4	YOUNG & MORGAN/BUGABOO	38	130,315	4.7%	$30,102,765
5	ROSBORO LUMBER CO Percent Total for Top Five:	28	115,269	4.2% 30.3%	$29,969,940
All	Purchaser Total for Region 6	1,625	2,744,426		$537,907,496
	Region 8: TX, OK, AR, LA, MS, TN, KY, AL, GA, FL, SC, NC, VA
1	WEYERHAEUSER COMPANY	104	149,452	4.9%	$32,132,180
2	BEAN LUMBER	119	149,139	4.9%	$31,319,190
3	TRAVIS LUMBER	60	111,962	3.7%	$20,153,160
4	BIBLER BROTHERS	63	106,484	3.5%	$20,551,412
5	GEORGIA-PACIFIC CORP. Percent Total for Top Five	37	92,086	3.0% 20%	$11,326,578
All	Purchaser Total for Region 8	3,962	3,044,114		$484,014,126
	Region 9: MN, IA, MO, IL, WI, MI, IN, OH, WV, MD, DE, NJ, PA, NY, CT, RI, MA, VT, NH, ME
1	JOHN A BIEWER LUMBER	76	139,214	5.2%	$11,693,976
2	POTLATCH CORP.	67	124,625	4.7%	$7,352,875
3	BOISE CASCADE CORP.	22	85,705	3.2%	$5,656,530
4	HEDSTROM LUMBER	49	73,635	2.8%	$5,375,355
5	PAYLESS AG PRODUCTS Percent Total for Top Five	33	57,544	2.2% 18.1%	$4,430,888
All	Purchaser Total for Region 9	1,925	2,655,446		$276,166,384
	Region 10: AK
1	SILVER BAY LOGGING	14	163,642	41.7%	$6,709,322
2	VIKING LUMBER	13	67,366	17.1%	$7,208,162
3	RAYONIER INC.	3	44,024	11.2%	$2,729,488
4	METLAKATLA FOREST PROD	5	22,039	5.6%	$3,085,460
5	WHITESTONE SE LOGGING Percent Total for Top Ten:	3	21,478	5.5% 81.1%	$42,956
All	Purchaser Total for Region 10	164	392,871		$24,750,873
All	Purchaser National Total	11,169	13,632,914		$2,075,265,800
* According to USFS timber sale contracts, compiled by, Timber Data Company, in the Select Purchaser Reports, 1999.
** Purchaser totals include all purchasers in a region, not just the top five listed; National Total includes all purchasers from all regions over the five year period.

Based on this data, Region 8, which spans 13 southern states, had the most timber sold over the last five years with 3.04 billion board feet sold. Region 6, which is only made up of two states (Oregon and Washington), had the second largest amount of timber sold with an alarming 2.7 billion board feet. Region 6âs concentrated harvesting was in some of the most diverse forests, which contain endangered species habitat, and in some of the highest levels of remaining old-growth forests. The number one purchaser in Region 6 was D.R. Johnson Lumber who purchased nearly 10% of the total timber offered by the U.S. Forest Service.

We found that much of the logging on our National Forests is done by only a few companies, for example, in Region 3 (AZ and NM), two companies, Stone Container and Precision Pine and Timber, purchased more than half of the total timber sold in that region.

In five out of nine regions (Regions 2, 3 ,4 ,5 and 10), the top five timber purchasers took more than half of the total cut. In three of those regions, the top five purchasers took more than 70% of the total timber sold, including Region 10, in which the top five purchasers bought more than 80% of the total timber sold.

A review of the data for individual timber companies revealed that Boise Cascade Corporation was the number one purchaser in the nation over the last five years with more than 4% of the total timber purchased from our National Forests, or more than half a million board feet of timber. Boise Cascade also appears as a top five purchaser in four out of nine Forest Service regions, notably dominating Region 4 (NV, UT & ID) with more than 31% of the total timber purchase.

Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), the second largest purchaser of timber from our National Forests, purchased 28.9% of the total timber sales in the state of California (Region 5) which was almost five times more than its nearest competitor. Notably, SPI had two of the top three largest individual purchases nationwide with 33 and 30 million board feet, both in California.

Silver Bay Logging Company bought a whopping 41.7% of the total timber sold in Alaska (Region 10) which was two and a half times more than its nearest competitor, Viking Lumber. Silver Bay purchased four of the top eight largest timber sales in the country, all of which were in Alaska. Seven of the top ten timber purchases were in Alaska, including the largest single sale of over 35 million board feet of timber to Viking Lumber.

Finally, timber giant Louisiana-Pacific was one of the top five timber purchasers in three western timber regions.

The subsidy takes at least three forms. First, the commercial timber sales program, rather than generating revenue for the U.S. Treasury, actually loses taxpayer money every year. Second, the Forest Service uses tax dollars to build roads so that timber companies will have access to their own logging sites. Third, the Forest Service misuses funds that have been set aside for purposes like reforestation, using large chunks of these funds for agency administrative costs instead.

The Commercial Timber Sale Rip-off

The Forest Service commercial timber sales program provides timber from our National Forests to companies that cut and mill lumber and other wood products. This timber, which makes up only 3.3% of the countryâs annual wood consumption, is sold at prices that do not even begin to cover the basic costs of the program, such as the cost of preparing the trees to be cut or the cost of repairing the damage to the environment caused by clearcutting and roadbuilding. As a result, the Forest Service loses money every year in every forest region in the country.

Data from two General Accounting Office (GAO) reports, released in 1995 and 1998, show that the Forest Service lost $2.04 billion of taxpayer money in the six years from 1992 to the end of 1997. According to the GAO reports, from 1995 to 1997 alone, the Forest Service lost $1.04 billion dollars. Based on these reports, taxpayers are forced to subsidize the Forest Service timber sale program with approximately $340 million each year. Cutting funding for the wasteful and destructive commercial timber program will eliminate this subsidy.
 
 

Table III is a region by region breakdown of how much money American taxpayers lost between the years 1995 and 1997.
 

Table III Regional Breakdown of Losses on National Forests (1995-97)
National Forest Region	Total loss for 1995-1997
Region 1	$122,415,317
Region 2	$42,156,520
Region 3	$41,528,871
Region 4	$79,127,519
Region 5	$190,805,603
Region 6	$467,992,753
Region 8	$55,633,815
Region 9	$27,276,907
Region 10	$72,821,034
Total loss for all Regions	$1.04 Billion
* This figure includes additional regional and national overhead costs, not included in individual region loss figures.

There are many factors involved in these losses, and we cannot directly link individual timber companies to precise amounts of the taxpayer losses in a given region. However, across the country and in several regions, certain companies, who purchased particularly large percentages of public timber over a similar timeframe, were undoubtedly the beneficiaries of taxpayer subsidies.

· Boise Cascade Corporation purchased more than 4% of the total National Forest timber from 1994 to 1998 (578,549 Mbf). During that period of time, the Forest Service timber sale program lost approximately $1.7 billion.

· D.R. Johnson Lumber was the largest timber purchaser in Region Six (OR and WA), purchasing 9.8% of the total amount of timber sold in that region from 1994 to 1998. During a shorter and overlapping time-frame, that region lost over $467 million (1995 to 1997).

· From 1994 to 1998, Sierra Pacific Industries purchased 28.9% of the timber sold in Region 5 (CA). That region lost more than $190 million during the shorter and overlapping time-frame of 1995 to 1997.

· Two companies, Stone Container and Precision Pine & Timber together purchased over half of the total timber sold in Region 3 (AZ and NM) from 1994 to 1998. That region lost $41 million in just three years during the shorter and overlapping timeframe of 1995 to 1997.

· Boise Cascade bought nearly one third of the total timber sold in Region 4 (NV, ID and UT) from 1994 to 1998. That region lost more than $79 million during the shorter and overlapping timeframe of 1995 to 1997.
 
 

Below Cost Timber Sales

One chief component of the problem of money lost through the commercial timber sale program is the practice of allowing below fair market value timber sales. This often occurs when there is only one bidder on a sale. The Forest Service advertises the value of a bid as a starting point from which the market will barter the price up to its actual value. If there are no other bidders than it is likely the price will be below fair market value. In these cases, the timber companies get truckloads of our National Forests at bargain basement prices, all coming out of the taxpayerâs pocketbook.

Using timber sale data from the top five purchasers over the past five years, we determines the approximate amount of board feet sold with only one bidder. According to our analysis of the sales that we sampled, 30% of all timber sold had only one bidder, and were therefore likely to be sold from our National Forests at less than fair market value. Where that was the case, the American taxpayer not only lost forests, but lost hard earned money as well.

The Timber Roads Travesty

Historically, the Forest Service has paid for the construction of hundreds of thousands of miles of logging roads, used by the timber industry to gain access in cutting and removing trees from our National Forests. Currently, 440,000 miles of roads crisscross our National Forests, enough to circle the globe seventeen times. Two recent GAO reports show that, from 1992 to 1997, the Forest Service spent $387 million on new timber road construction. Part of this money was used by the Forest Service directly to pay for the engineering and design costs of building and reconstructing roads, and part was used for a program called the Purchaser Road Credit (PRC) program.

The PRC program allowed the Forest Service to trade public trees to timber corporations to reimburse those corporations for the cost of building roads in our National Forests to access their clearcuts. Fortunately, in 1998, both the House of Representatives and the Senate agreed to eliminate this outrageous giveaway from the fiscal year 1999 budget. This program cost taxpayers more than $50 million a year, according to both the GAO and the Congressional Research Service (CRS), so eliminating the program will mean a considerable savings for taxpayers.

Unfortunately, the elimination of the PRC program does not completely end the logging road subsidy. Congress continues to appropriate taxpayer money for the Forest Service to construct, reconstruct, and maintain timber roads which are used by private timber companies and not the general public. For FY99, the Forest Service received $39.4 million to pay for 3,400 miles of new and existing roads, and in recent years, an average of 95% of new roads built in National Forests were logging roads, while only 5% were for recreation or general purpose.

To make matters worse, the Forest Service has allowed countless miles of roads to fall into major disrepair, leading to erosion and serious environmental damage. According to the Forest Serviceâs own estimates, the current maintenance backlog would cost $8.4 billion to repair, and it would cost $1,500 a year for the Forest Service to properly maintain just one mile of forest road. Building any new roads would only add to this enormously expensive maintenance backlog looming over the heads of the Forest Service and taxpayers.

Roadbuilding is costly, but the total costs of timber roads is far greater than the costs associated with the building process alone. The ecological destruction caused by roadbuilding represents a staggering loss of resources on its own, particularly in our Heritage Forests. In a January, 1998 letter to the President, thirty-one respected economists pointed out that "(t)he fragile ecology of most roadless areas means that road construction and other forms of development with them pose serious threats to many of the economic goods and services that flow from public forestlands." The economists further recognized that the value of roadless areas "constitute a large portion of the total economic value of public forestlands."

Forest Service Slush Funds

In 1930, Congress created the Replanting Fund (known as the Knutson-Vandenburg, or K-V Fund) to provide funding for the reforestation and restoration of logged over areas of the National Forests. The K-V fund is a timber industry subsidy in itself -- taxpayers must pay to clean up the timber industryâs mess on the National Forests because the Forest Service does not charge timber companies enough to cover the costs of replanting. To make matters worse, however, the Forest Service misuses the K-V fund as an agency "slush" fund, taking money from the fund to pay for overhead costs like rent or office equipment, instead of for replanting. In 1997, the Forest Service nationwide used 35% of the K-V fund for overhead. Furthermore, the GAO reported that, between 1993 and 1997, the Forest Service illegally diverted over $220 million from this fund.

This deceptive diversion of funds has drastically cut into the replanting, habitat restoration and other forest reconstruction work needed to repair the damage from logging and timber roads. If this work is to be done, taxpayers will have to make up the difference. Even worse, the Forest Service has been allowed to replenish the K-V fund with receipts from below cost timber sales. As a result, taxpayers lose even more money from the timber program, because fewer timber sale revenues are returned to the treasury. Moreover, the Forest Service has an incentive to promote logging in order to increase the amount of money it can put into the fund it uses for overhead.

One reason the Forest Service has been able to get away with these shady practices is because the government considers the K-V fund to be "off-budget," not subject to the normal appropriations process, and not open to congressional or public oversight. If the fund were put back "on-budget," the Forest Service would be forced to be accountable to Congress and the public. In order to eliminate the replanting subsidy, however, the timber industry, not taxpayers, would have to be held responsible for restoring the damage logging does to our National Forests.

Other losses to the Taxpayer and the Forests

There are two other key elements of Forest Service management of our National Forests that timber companies often take advantage of at taxpayer expense: timber theft and land exchanges.

While not a focus of this report, timber theft occurs on our National Forests, costing Americans thousands of trees and millions of dollars every year. For several years in the early 1990s, the Forest Service had a timber theft investigation team, the Timber Theft Investigation Branch (TTIB), that successfully closed several multi-million dollar cases.

However, in 1995, then Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas abolished the TTIB, claiming the need to decentralize the investigations. This has left the majority of cases unsolved. Most often these cases are concerned with timber companies illegally cutting trees outside the timber sale contract area, including: unauthorized harvest of timber, deliberate miscalculation of quantity, illegal movement of sale boundaries, illegal export of timber and collusion from Forest Service personnel.

Land exchanges are also not a major focus of this report, but are steadily becoming a larger part of timber industry dealing on public lands. Land exchanges are the process of the U.S. Government trading large sums of pristine public lands for cut-over and abused timber industry lands. In most cases, the taxpayers lose quality land and money on the deals while the timber companies gain prime trees they will clearcut. This is little more than another subsidy for big timber.

While they are best known for the devastation they create in our National Forests, many companies who log our public lands also pollute our air, water and land with dangerous toxic chemicals. Across the country from Ketchikan, AK to Plant City, FL, and from Samoa, CA to Woodland, ME, timber companies have pulp, paper, veneer and other types of processing mills that release hundreds of millions of pounds of toxic chemicals into our environment every year.

Toxics Release Inventory Data

Under the 1986 Community Right To Know Act, these companies are required to report the direct releases of approximately 600 types of toxic chemicals to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Those reports are compiled into the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) which is regularly published by the EPA two years after the releases occurred. The information used in this report is from the 1997 TRI, the most recent data available.

· According to the TRI, companies who cut timber on our National Forests also released over 149.6 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, land or water in 1997.

· Among those totals were more than 15.5 million pounds of carcinogens, which are chemicals that are known or suspected to cause cancer.

Table IV is the list of the top ten timber companies who cut on public lands, sorted by their total reported toxic releases according to the TRI (a complete listing of releases by company is in appendix A, and a listing by facility and state is in appendix B).
 

	Table IV Top Ten Timber Polluters 1997
	Total Reported Toxic Releases to Air, Land and Water *
	Company	Releases (lbs.)
1	INTERNATIONAL PAPER	36,129,647
2	GEORGIA-PACIFIC CORP.	21,367,207
3	WEYERHAEUSER COMPANY	17,156,113
4	STONE CONTAINER	14,969,907
5	CHAMPION INTERNATIONAL	13,562,814
6	WESTVACO CORP.	11,059,176
7	MEAD CORPORATION	7,096,772
8	WILLAMETTE INDUSTRIES	6,596,994
9	BOISE CASCADE CORP.	5,459,104
10	JEFFERSON SMURFIT CORP.	5,289,767
	* According to EPA's 1997 Toxics Release Inventory

 

Table V is the list of the top ten public timber cutters sorted by their reported carcinogenic releases according to the TRI. (A complete listing of releases by company is in appendix A, and a listing by facility and state is in Appendix C)
 

	Table V Top Ten Timber Carcinogen Polluters
	Total Reported Carcinogen Releases to Air, Land and Water * 1997
	Company	Carcinogen Releases (lbs.)
1	GEORGIA-PACIFIC CORP.	3,224,924
2	WEYERHAEUSER COMPANY	2,364,617
3	INTERNATIONAL PAPER	2,362,396
4	CHAMPION INTERNATIONAL	1,435,044
5	STONE CONTAINER	1,283,217
6	WESTVACO CORP.	683,359
7	WILLAMETTE INDUSTRIES	645,176
8	JEFFERSON SMURFIT CORP.	626,566
9	BOISE CASCADE CORP.	552,674
10	LOUISIANA-PACIFIC CORP.	471,970
	* According to EPA's 1997 Toxics Release Inventory

 

While the Federal Right to Know Program is the best source of publicly available information on toxic chemical pollution, it is only a small fraction of the total pollution picture. TRI reporting covers only a limited list of facilities and practices, and only 600 of the more than 80,000 synthetic chemicals on the market today.

Another significant gap in the Right to Know program is the absence of reporting on dioxin and dioxin-like compounds. Considered by many scientists to be the most toxic chemical known to exist, dioxin has been linked to causing cancer, hormone disruption and other serious health problems in animals and wildlife, even at extremely low levels of exposure. Health effects are expected at levels of exposure on the order of picograms (trillionths of a gram). Dioxin is also particularly dangerous because it persists in the environment for years and builds up in human and animal tissue.

Dioxin is an unintentional by-product of several industrial processes including incineration, metal production, and chemical manufacturing processes that use chlorinated compound. Because TRI data does not include dioxin emissions, it is difficult to determine on a per-facility basis, how much timber industry practices contribute to the total dioxin pollution. However, EPA has made national estimates of emissions from significant industrial sectors including several timber industry related practices. One of those industries is the wood products manufacturing industry, many of whom also purchase timber from public lands.

According to the EPA, the largest single source of overall dioxin emissions nationwide is pentachloraphenol (a wood preserver) manufacturing, a process that creates dioxin as a contaminant in the product. Other industrial practices also release significant amounts of dioxin directly into air and water. Pulp and paper mills were identified by EPA as the largest single source of dioxin releases to water. Chlorine chemistry processes used to bleach paper produce dioxin as a by-product. Non-chlorine alternatives that do not create dioxin are readily available, but have only been adopted by a handful of facilities, including Louisiana Pacificâs Samoa, CA plant.

EPA is currently considering expanding TRI reporting to include dioxin emissions. The Agencyâs current proposal would add dioxin to the list of chemicals subject to reporting and change reporting thresholds to ensure that small quantities are identified. However, even the stricter reporting laid out in the proposal will still allow significant dioxin emissions to escape reporting.

Sector Facility Indexing Project Data

Another, EPA database called the Sector Facility Indexing Project (SFIP) tracks information relating to compliance with environmental regulations, enforcement actions taken, chemical spills and demographic information regarding the surrounding population. The SFIP tracks information over a two year period. In this report, we examined the information used from January 1997 to December 1998. According to the SFIP, during that time-frame, the timber companies examined in this report:

· had a total of 29 episodes of "Significant Noncompliance" (SNC), the most serious type of non-compliance;

· had some type of non-compliance of the Clean Air Act (CAA) , Clean Water Act (CWA) or the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) an average of 21% of the time they were monitored (HNC);

· committed a total of 237 violations of the Clean Water Act;

· allowed 92 accidental spills to occur, leaking a total of 1.56 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment;

· had 53 "enforcement actions" taken against them for a total of more than $1.56 million in penalties; and

· had 2,268,000 residents living within three miles of their facilities.

Specific Company "Lowlights"

· Stone Container, the number one timber purchaser in Region 3 (AZ and NM), had the highest number of "Significant Non-Compliance" incidents with 6 episodes, four times more than the average of companies examined in this report.

· The Mead Corporation was out of compliance approximately 45% of the time they were monitored.

· Champion International had the most Clean Water Act violations with 38.

· Weyerhaeuser was assessed three penalties for a total of $525,000, more money than any other company.

· International Paper had the most chemical spills with 28, and allowed more than 1.3 million pounds of toxic chemicals to escape into the environment.

(A complete listing SFIP data on timber companies who cut on National Forests is ordered by company in Appendix A and by state and facility in Appendix C)

History of influence

Over the past century, the timber industry has had a remarkably close relationship with the U.S. Forest Service, the authority charged with regulating it. Since its inception in 1905, the Forest Service has been influenced by the timber industry from the district ranger level to the top. This relationship was so institutionalized that it appeared the Forest Service was solely chartered to facilitate the liquidation our National Forests, for the profit of the timber industry.

As the needs of Americans changed, so did the mission of the Forest Service, but incrementally and well behind the times. In poll after poll over the past three decades, the public has increasingly supported protecting what is left of our National Forests. However, it was not until the early 1990âs that the amount of timber cut on our National Forests began to drop, partly in response to public pressure. Despite the decrease in logging, too many trees continue to be clearcut and too many roads continue to be built. This is due in part to the timber industryâs relationship and history with the Forest Service, but also in part to the industryâs influence over Congress.

By linking timber sale revenue to the budget of the Forest Service, Congress has created a strong incentive for the agency to continue to offer timber sales to the industry. This and other incentives have perpetuated the dominance of the commercial timber industry on our public lands. Increasingly, members of Congress have felt the pressure from the timber industry to maintain the status quo of taxpayer subsidized logging on our National Forests.

With big campaign contributions and an army of well-heeled lobbyists, big timber has continued to dominate the public debate over proper forest management. This Chapter examines the extent of the timber industryâs influence on Capitol Hill: how much they spent and what they got for their money.

The Big Money Givers

Over the past three election cycles (1993-4, 1995-6, 1997-8) the timber companies who log our National Forests lands made a total of $5.8 million in political contributions. The largest part of that sum was the $4.37 million in political action committee (PAC) contributions which were made directly to candidates running for Congress. Additionally, the timber industry made $1.46 million in unregulated "soft money" contributions to political parties.

According to our research, 15 timber companies made PAC and soft money contributions over the last three election cycles, totaling $5.8 million. Table VI lists those fifteen companies sorted by the total political contributions they made. Not surprisingly, some of these 15--Boise Cascade, Weyerhaeuser and Louisiana-Pacific--also logged the most trees on our National Forests.
 

Table VI Top 15 Timber Contributors to Congressional Candidates and Political Parties from 1993 to 1998
(PAC and Soft Money Contributions)*
Company	PAC Contributions	Soft Money	Total Contributions
INTERNATIONAL PAPER	$681,473.00	$423,200.00	$1,104,673.00
GEORGIA-PACIFIC CORP.	$416,267.00	$653,320.00	$1,069,587.00
CHAMPION INTERNATIONAL	$589,048.00	$83,225.00	$672,273.00
WEYERHAEUSER COMPANY	$408,975.00	$89,000.00	$497,975.00
WESTVACO CORP.	$454,500.00	$5,000.00	$459,500.00
STONE CONTAINER	$428,100.00	$12,000.00	$440,100.00
WILLAMETTE INDUSTRIES	$362,500.00	$0.00	$362,500.00
American Forest and Paper Association	$316,835.00	$1,500.00	$318,335.00
MEAD CORPORATION	$206,800.00	$18,000.00	$224,800.00
BOISE CASCADE CORP.	$159,000.00	$26,000.00	$185,000.00
LOUISIANA-PACIFIC CORP.	$81,313.00	$100,000.00	$181,313.00
POTLATCH CORP.	$151,052.00	$20,500.00	$171,552.00
PLUM CREEK TIMBER CO LP	$96,749.00	$32,000.00	$128,749.00
SUN STUDS/LONE ROCK	$16,701.00	$2,500.00	$19,201.00
KAIBAB INDUSTRIES	$7,245.00	$2,500.00	$9,745.00
Total for Top 15 Big Timber Contributors	$4,376,558	$1,468,745	$5,845,303
* According to Federal Election Commission data, as compiled by the Center For Responsive Politics, 1999.

· The number one public timber cutting polluter, International Paper, topped the list of political givers with more than $1.1 million in campaign contributions.

· Georgia-Pacific, was the number two releaser of total toxic pollution and number two releaser of carcinogens, is also the second largest campaign contributor with more than $1 million in campaign contributions.

· Weyerhaeuser made all three top five lists. They are fourth on the list of total timber purchasers, third on the list of top polluters and fourth largest political contributor with near half a million dollars in campaign contributions.

· Boise Cascade Co., the number one timber purchaser on our National Forests was also in the top ten timber political contributors.

The Big Money recipients in the House of Representatives

The amount of timber industry PAC money flowing into all House political campaign coffers totaled $1.8 million over the past three election cycles. The average contribution was $4,170. Table VII lists the top ten House recipients of public timber PAC contributions.
 
 
 

	Table VII The Top Ten House Recipients of Timber PAC $* from 1993 to 1998
	Name	State	District	Party	PAC Receipts
1	Dunn, Jennifer	WA	8	R	$45,891
2	McCrery, Jim	LA	4	R	$41,147
3	Chenoweth, Helen	ID	1	R	$40,007
4	Taylor, Charles H	NC	11	R	$38,349
5	Young, Don	AK	0	R	$35,727
6	Boehner, John A	OH	8	R	$33,925
7	Hastings, Richard "Doc"	WA	4	R	$31,860
8	English, Phil	PA	21	R	$30,973
9	Nethercutt, George	WA	5	R	$30,097
10	McIntosh, David M	IN	2	R	$29,000
	* According to Federal Election Commission data, as compiled by the Center For Responsive Politics, 1999.

(A complete listing of House recipients with the votes below is in Appendix D)

A close look at recent cosponsorships and votes in the House reveals a strong correlation between the amount of contributions made and how members made their choices. Since there have been no timber votes yet in the 106th Congress, we looked at two main efforts to protect our forests and compared the amounts that members supportive of protecting our National Forests took with those members who were not supportive of such efforts.

Beginning in April of 1999, Reps. Hinchey (D-NY), Horn (R-CA), Inslee (D-WA) and Forbes (R-NY) began circulating a letter to President Clinton urging him to direct the Forest Service to protect the remaining roadless areas in our National Forests. As of this writing, that letter has garnered the signature of 116 House members, demonstrating solid support for the preservation of our wild forests. On average, signers to the roadless letter took $599 in campaign contributions from the timber industry, while non-signers took $5,489, which is nine times more.

Another effort to protect our National Forests is currently being spearheaded by Reps. McKinney (D-GA) and Leach (R-IA). The National Forests Protection and Restoration Act of 1999 (H.R. 1396), would safeguard our National Forests from further destruction by ending the commercial timber program. The cosponsors of that bill took an average of $128 from public timber PACs while non-signers took $4,662, which is 36 times more.

In the 105th Congress, we examined three votes that, depending on how a member voted, demonstrated the memberâs dedication to protecting our National Forests and their intentions of maintaining the taxpayer subsidized timber sale program.

On July 10, 1997, Representative Dicks (D-WA) offered an amendment to the fiscal year 1998 House Interior Appropriations bill (H.R. 2107) to replace and drastically weaken another amendment offered by Representatives Porter (R-IL), Kennedy (D-MA), Kasich (R-OH), Furse (D-OR), Miller (R-FL), Minge (D-MN), and Cook (R-UT). The Porter-Kennedy amendment would have cut $41.5 million from the Forest Service timber roads program, and eliminated the $50 million Purchaser Road Credit program. The Dicks amendment significantly decreased those cuts. The Dicks amendment passed 211-209. Members who voted for the Dicks Amendment took an average of $6,980 from public timber PACs while those members who voted against it took only $1,543 on average, which is 4.5 times less.

On March 27, 1998, in an effort to increase subsidized logging on public lands, House Agriculture Committee Chair Bob Smith (R-OR) offered H.R. 2515 - the so-called "Forest Recovery and Protection Act." This bill would have increased logging under the guise of "forest recovery" and, for the first time ever, permanently authorized below-cost timber sales. The Smith bill was defeated 181-201. Those who voted for the Smith bill took on average $6,458 from public timber PACs while those who voted against it took only $1,757 on average, which is 3.6 times less.

On July 22, 1998, Representative George Miller (D-CA) offered an amendment to the Fiscal Year 1999 House Interior Appropriations bill (H.R. 4193) to prevent the Forest Service from misusing the Knutson-Vandenburg Reforestation Fund (K-V Fund). Rep. Millerâs (D-CA) amendment blocked the Forest Service from using any K-V money for overhead, but language weakening this amendment was later added to the fiscal year 1999 Omnibus Appropriations bill. The amendment passed 236-182. Members voting for the Miller Amendment took on average $2,074 from public timber PACs timber, while those voting to defeat it took $6,877 on average, which was 3.3 times more.

The Heroes vs. the Zeros

Those members of Congress who signed or voted to save taxpayer dollars and protect our National Forests on all five of these actions received an average of $125 from public timber PACs. Those members who signed or voted against saving taxpayer dollars and our National Forests received on average $7,348. That means that the timber zeros took fifty eight times more money than the forest heroes.

Big Money recipients in the U.S. Senate

Over the past three election cycles, timber companies that log our National Forest gave members of the Senate a total of $1.37 million in campaign contributions. The average contribution was $13,708. Table VIII lists the top ten Senate recipients of timber PAC money.
 
 
 

	Table VIII The Top Ten Senate Recipients of Timber PAC $ from 1993 to 1998
	Name	State	Party	PAC Receipts
1	Smith, Gordon	OR	R	$120,132
2	Gorton, Slade	WA	R	$68,628
3	Hutchison, Kay Bailey	TX	R	$49,500
4	Lincoln, Blanche Lambert	AR	D	$48,500
5	Coverdell, Paul	GA	R	$47,000
6	Collins, Susan M	ME	R	$45,999
7	Craig, Larry E	ID	R	$45,000
8	Sessions, Jeff	AL	R	$44,999
9	DeWine, Mike	OH	R	$44,500
10	Snowe, Olympia J	ME	R	$44,206
	* According to Federal Election Commission data, as compiled by the Center For Responsive Politics, 1999.

(A complete listing of Senate recipients with the vote below is in Appendix E)

In the Senate, the vote on an amendment to the FY 98 Interior Appropriations Bill (H.R. 2107) offered by Senator Bryan (D-NV) was the most recent key barometer of member support for protecting our National Forests and taxpayer dollars. Senator Bryan introduced an amendment to cut $10 million from the Forest Service timber roads program and to cut all funding for the $50 million Purchaser Road Credit. On September 17, 1997, this amendment was defeated 49-51. The amendment was immediately brought up again for a re-vote and was again defeated 49-51.

Senators who voted against the amendment took on average of $21,665 from public timber PACs while those who voted for it took only $4,332, which was five times less.

Big Timberâs Foot Soldiers

Big timber companies have pushed an enormous anti-environmental agenda that includes lobbying to: weaken the roadless moratorium; allow more clearcuts on National Forests under the guise of "forest health;" expand the Forest Service timber sale budget; rollback the Endangered Species, Clean Water, Clean Air, Safe Drinking Water and Occupational Health and Safety Acts; halt the passage of global climate change provisions; rollback Superfund; stalemate the passage of new Air Quality Standards; and dilute new protections against dioxin.

To capitalize upon the $5.8 million investment of campaign contributions, big timber companies and their trade groups spent over the last three years (1996-1998) more than $22.5 million to hire at least 35 different Washington D.C. lobby shops and their own "in house" lobby operations to push their agenda. Combined, this army of at least 141 lobbyists works Capitol Hill, the White House, the Forest Service, the EPA and other agencies to further the timber industryâs agenda: increase taxpayer subsidized timber sales and eliminate any laws that hold them accountable for their logging practices, pollution, or poor corporate citizenship.

Table IX details who is behind the timber lobby machine and how much they spend to further their anti-environmental agenda. The number of lobby firms indicates the total firms that each company had on retainer over the last three years, including "in house" lobby firms. The lobby expenses indicates the reported amount the company spent on lobbying and the number of lobbyists is the total number of different lobbyists they retained during the timeframe.
 

	Table IX The Big Timber Lobby Machine *
	Company Name	Lobby Firms	Lobby Expenses		# of Lobbyists
1	AMERICAN FOREST & PAPER ASSN.	16	$8,031,000		54
2	INTERNATIONAL PAPER	2	$5,824,956		9
3	WEYERHAEUSER COMPANY	3	$2,650,000		11
4	GEORGIA-PACIFIC CORP.	5	$1,391,000		13
5	CHAMPION INTERNATIONAL	3	$1,390,000		17
6	BOISE CASCADE CORP.	2	$1,201,500		6
7	WESTVACO CORP.	2	$1,000,000		5
8	LOUISIANA-PACIFIC CORP.	4	$329,523		4
9	D R JOHNSON LUMBER	1	$240,000		2
10	PLUM CREEK TIMBER CO LP	2	$233,876		4
11	POTLATCH CORP.	1	$140,000		2
12	SIERRA PACIFIC IND.	2	$130,000		14
	Total Big Timber Lobbying	35 **	$22,561,855		141
	* According to records from Lobby Disclosure Reports, Secretary of the Senate, Filed 1996-1998. ** The timber industry and trade associations completed 43 different contracts with lobby firms or in house lobby shops, but the 8 duplicates were removed from the total.

The American Forest and Paper Association

Leading the timber cutting charge on Capitol Hill is the American Forest and Paper Association (AFPA), the mouthpiece for the timber industry. A conglomeration of all the major timber companies, AFPA contributes PAC and soft money, spins public relations, and helps the industry greenwash its image with thinly veiled efforts like "the sustainable forestry initiative."

In the last three years, AFPA spent upwards of $8 million on their lobby efforts. This money included hiring fifteen different Washington D.C. "K Street" lobby firms. AFPA retained seven of the top 40 lobby firms as listed by the Center for Responsive Politics. Among those it hired was the number one ranked firm of Verner Liipfert et al., a firm that has long fought to weaken environmental protections. In addition to the hired guns, AFPA has its own "in house" lobby shop which brings the total number of lobby firms on retainer to sixteen and the total number of lobbyists over the past three years to 54.

Timber companies large and small log our National Forests, and they all make a profit at the expense of the environment and the taxpayers. In particular, there is a set of companies whose records of overcutting, environmental abuse, political influence and general violations of the public interest are so poor, they epitomize why it is so outrageous to subsidize destructive logging and roadbuilding at taxpayer expense. This chapter examines those companies and their abysmal record of public stewardship.

The first four companies--Boise Cascade Corp., Sierra Pacific Industries, Weyerhaeuser and Louisiana Pacific--are four of the top five timber purchasers over the past five years. By virtue of their enormous purchases, and the taxpayer handouts that come with them, these companies deserved a closer examination of their environmental and political activities.

The next set of companies--International Paper, Georgia-Pacific--all purchased timber from our National Forests, and were also three out of the top four toxic chemical polluters in the industry.

Finally, the last set of companies--Champion Paper and Plum Creek Timber Co.--both purchased subsidized timber from our National Forests and are good examples of the other types of violations of the public trust committed by timber companies such as land grabs and greenwashing.

The Big Purchasers

Though their name sounds endemic to the Northern Rockies, Boise Cascade purchased timber in five different Forest Service regions in the past five years including the Southwestern and Eastern Regions.

Boise Cascade was the umber one purchaser in Region 4 (ID, NV, and UT), the number two purchaser in Region 6 (OR and WA) and the number three purchaser in Region 9 (the Eastern States).

Not only is BCC the number one purchaser of taxpayer subsidized timber, BCC also owns approximately 1.3 million acres of private land in the Pacific Northwest, about 1.4 million acres in New England and the South and holds a long term government license to log over 3.4 million acres in Central Canada.

Much of their private land was usurped from the public through the railroad "land grabs." The Northern Pacific Railroad was granted lands by the Federal Government to subsidize the trans-continental railroad. The land was supposed to be sold to homesteaders and small farmers for settlement, but the railroad kept much of it. Between 1913 and 1947, BCC received at least 172,000 acres of Northern Pacific Railroad grant land. Thought it is private now, this land was originally granted to the railroads to serve the public interest, not for timber.

Logging old-growth forests and roadless areas and other sensitive ecosystems appear to be a way of business for Boise Cascade. The Sugarloaf sale in Oregon is a prime example of BCCâs profit first mentality. Couched as a "forest health" sale, the Sugarloaf sale did little to improve fire conditions. In 1995, protests surrounding the sale resulted in over 200 arrests (including an Audubon Society vice president and a former U.S. Congressman) but the sale went forth. After the cutting, activists reported that "almost all of the large, fire-resistant overstory old-growth trees had been cut, while large thickets of fire-prone white fir remained."

Boise Cascade has worked to keep the public in the dark about their ancient forest logging and to roadblock access to public information. In 1997, The Seattle Times published parts of a letter uncovered by activists addressed to the U.S. Forest Service from Boise Cascade asking the agency not to release information about one of its destructive timber sales. In the 1995 letter, BCC said:

"We respectfully request that documents and information concerning this timber sale not be released to anybody under the Freedom of Information Act or any other laws that appear to require release." The sale that BCC was working to cover up was an 840 acre grove that, in the words of the Forest Service surveyor, "appears to be entirely old-growth from end to end."

Toxic Troubles

Unfortunately, BCCâs questionable environmental practices do not stop at clear-cutting our national heritage. The company also pollutes our environment, dumping more than 5.4 million pounds of toxic substances into our air, water and ground in 1997. What is worse, more than 550,000 lbs. of those chemicals are known to be cancer causing chemicals. Boise Cascade was number nine on the list of total toxic releases and total carcinogenic releases by public timber logging companies, according to the EPA.

According to the EPA, three chemical spills between 1997 and 1998 released an additional 31 thousand pounds of toxics into the environment. There are nearly 30,000 residents that live within 3 miles of the eight BCC facilities that released these toxic chemicals (Indiana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Alabama, Louisiana & Minnesota).

Just as BCC threatens the safety of residents near their plants from the effects of toxic chemicals, the company also has a track record of violating safety standards within the walls of their plants. According to the Council on Economic Priorities, since 1988 BCC has been charged with 350 "willful" negligence violations of worker safety rules.

Political Influence

BCC had net sales of $6.1 billion in 1998 making it the fourth largest publicly traded timber company in the country. This power has been augmented by the more than $150,000 in PAC money that BCC has contributed to congressional election campaigns from 1993 to 1998. BCC has further influenced politics by spending over $1.2 million from 1996 to 1998 to hire their own lobbyists and a Washington D.C. lobby firm to walk the halls of Congress and push their anti-environmental agenda.

Boise Cascade was number ten on the list of total contributors and number six on the list of total lobby expenditures.
 
 

The second largest purchaser of timber from National Forest lands over the last five years was Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI). SPI purchased over 538,000 mmbf (million board feet) of timber from 1994 to 1998, spending $78,915,754. SPI was the single largest purchaser of timber from National Forests in California, purchasing 28.9% of the total board feet from 1994 to 1998. This same region lost the second largest amount of money compared to the rest of the regions. Over a shorter and overlapping timeframe (1995 to 1997) Region 5 lost more than $190 million.

While the amount of timber logged by SPI on public lands has decreased over the past four years, a recently passed bill--the Quincy Library Bill--will more than double the logging on three National Forests in California.

As the major player in California state logging, Sierra Pacific Industries is a prime example of how a large timber company can influence National Forest policy-making. SPI has the third largest stable of lobbyists with 14 on retainer from 1996 to 1998. SPI was the industry force behind the "Quincy Library Group," a group of stakeholders who met in a local library to create "a compromise" forest plan for the northern Sierra Nevada forests. Spending at least $130,000 in lobby expenses, Sierra Pacific Industries was able to help push through the Quincy Library Bill which will significantly increase the amount of timber the Forest Service will offer in three California National Forests.

According to a report published by the Congressional Budget Office, the plan will increase logging by 77% over 1997 cut levels and by 187% over planned logging levels on 2.5 million acres in the northern Sierra Forests (Plumas, Lassen and Tahoe National Forests), in California. If the plan is fully implemented, taxpayers will be gouged for over $70 million.As the main logging contractor on the project, SPI will be the main beneficiary of that subsidy.

This increased logging is at odds with a recently published $7 million environmental study, published by The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project, which concluded that the Forest Service should increase forest preservation and decrease the environmental impacts of logging.

The Quincy Library bill's mandate to log up to 60,000 acres of "fuel profile zones" (which are usually mature forests) and more than 9,000 additional acres of "group selection" clearcuts up to 2 acres in size could result in ecological fragmentation of much or the northern Sierra forests. While the proponents of the Quincy Library bill claim that sustainability was their main theme, Tom Nelson, District Forester for Sierra Pacific Industries, the original mouthpiece for SPI in the group, admits that "economic certainty and stability were the prime objectives."
 
 

One of the original "cut and run" robber barons of the 20th century, timber giant Weyerhaeuser Co. has a track record of deforestation, toxic pollution an political influence. Since 1900, Weyerhaeuser has clearcut over 4 million acres of forested land and admits that 600,000 acres were never replanted. To catalogue all their transgressions over the years is an enormous project and is beyond the scope of this report. Instead, this report focuses on the reasons why Weyerhaeuser has proven itself to still be a poor corporate citizen and a threat to the public interest in just this decade alone.

Over the last five years (1994 to 1998), Weyerhaeuser purchased over 289 million board feet (Mmbf) of timber from our National Forests, making them the fourth largest purchaser of taxpayer subsidized timber. In this time-frame, the company purchased the most timber in the Southern Region (149 Mmbf), followed by the Pacific Northwest (130 Mmbf), then the Northern Region (7 Mmbf) and finally the Eastern Region (1 Mmbf). Weyerhaeuser purchased a steady flow of approximately 50 Mmbf per year from National Forests through the 1990âs, including 58 Mmbf in 1998. According to the GAO, over a shorter and overlapping time-frame (1995 to 1997), those regions lost a total of $673.1 million.

Nationally, Weyerhaeuser has increased its overall toxic releases in the past eight years. According to the 1989 EPA Toxic Release Inventory, Weyerhaeuser reported releasing 14.6 million pounds of toxic chemicals that year. In 1997, the company reported releasing 17.1 million pounds of toxics including over 2.3 million pounds of known cancer causing chemicals. These releases were reported at plants in WA, OR, OK, NC, GA, AR, MI, WI & WV. Over 222,947 residents live within 3 miles of the 18 Weyerhaeuser facilities that released these toxic pollutants.

According to the EPA, from 1997 to 1998, Weyerhaeuser was cited for 3 occurrences of significant non-compliance and 3 enforcement actions for a total of $525,000 in penalties. These fines totaled more than any other public timber logging company over the two year period.

Political Influence

With $10.7 billion in sales for one year (1998), Weyerhaeuser has significant clout and has effectively used this power to influence timber policy on our National Forests. Weyerhaeuser was the fourth largest political contributor and the third largest spender on lobby operations of the companies that we looked at.

While they gave nearly half a million dollars in political contributions in the last three election cycles, Weyerhaeuser brings its real financial influence to bear through its membership with American Forest and Paper Association and its extensive Washington D.C. lobby operation.

Since 1996, Weyerhaeuser has spent $2.6 million on its lobby enterprise, hiring at least ten lobbyists from D.C. lobby firms in addition to their own "in house" lobby shop. Weyerhaeuserâs extensive lobbying outfit gives them considerable access and influence over our elected officials as they ponder everything from rolling back the Endangered Species Act to increasing logging and roadbuilding under the Forest Serviceâs timber program.

To further manipulate public opinion and politics, according to the Seattle Times, Weyerhaeuser regularly spends millions of dollars on full-page newspaper advertisements extolling the benefits of industrial, intensively-managed "forest" operations, while replacing diverse natural forests with what are essentially singe-species tree farms.
 
 

With over 254 mmbf (million board feet) of timber purchased from National Forest lands in the last five years, Louisiana-Pacific (L-P), ranks fifth highest on the list of public land logging companies. This wide ranging company has cut timber in seven of the nine Forest Service regions and successfully bid on 135 timber sales, spending $33,047,620 over the last five years. In the Northern, Rocky Mountain and Intermountain regions, Louisiana-Pacific was in the top 5 of the timber companies who purchased the most timber from National Forests from 1994 to 1998.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Toxic Releases

According to the most recent data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencyâs Toxic Release Inventory, Louisiana-Pacific Corp. dumped more than 3.5 million pounds of toxic substances into our air, water and ground in 1997. 471,000 lbs. of those releases were known cancer causing chemicals.

According to The Denver Post, Louisiana-Pacific has received penalties and fines of: $65,000 by the U.S. EPA in 1998; $80,000 by the State of Colorado in 1990; and in 1993 $11 million in fines, and the requirement of $70 million in pollution controls by the EPA.

Louisiana-Pacificâs Attack on Alaska

Ketchikan Pulp Company, a subsidiary of Louisiana-Pacific, has dominated the Tongass National Forest for decades due to a 50-year "sweetheart" contract with the U.S. Forest Service. Covering over 17 million acres, the Tongass is the nationâs largest National Forest. It accounts for roughly one third of the remaining temperate rainforests in the world and is home to wolves, grizzlies, boreal owls, Sitka Spruce and all five species of Pacific Salmon.

According to the New York Times, in 1995, Ketchikan Pulp agreed to pay $3 million in criminal fines and $3.1 million to settle civil charges for air and water pollution in and around Ward Cove, AK. The company also reportedly pled guilty to 14 violations of intentionally polluting the surrounding waters, including one felony charge. The most recent data from EPAâs Toxics Release Inventory shows that the Ketchikan mill released over 776,000 pounds of toxics chemicals in 1997, of which 53,100 pounds were carcinogens.

A General Accounting Office (GAO) report found that between 1992-1994 taxpayers lost $102 million to fund the Tongass Timber Program, which is more than twice the cash deficit of any other National Forest for that period.

According to the Anchorage Daily News, for the last two years, Louisiana-Pacific and the Alaskan Congressional delegation (Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK) and Rep. Don Young (R-AK)) have been pushing Congress and the Clinton Administration to renew the Tongass L-P contract. The deal they wanted would have been more than double the amount of timber logged in 1996 (276 Mmbf) and would have required 1,100 miles of new roads. Instead, the new Clinton Administration plan for the Tongass reduced the total timber harvest, much to the outrage of the delegation. Finally, on May 6, 1999, Louisiana-Pacific announced that is was selling off its Ketchikan Pulp holdings and getting out of Alaska.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Louisiana-Pacificâs Rocky Mountain Horror Show

According to an article in the Denver Rocky Mountain News, in an April 1998 ruling, a U.S. District Court Judge sentenced Dana Dulohery, the former manager of the Olathe, CO plant, to five months in prison and a $15,000 fine for fraudulently hiding the plantâs air emissions in the 1990âs. While the judge found the manager at fault, he also said "Duloheryâs corporate masters created a company ethic that encouraged cheating and lying to maximize profits." Dulohery described his former employer as "a poor corporate citizen, a poor member of the community" and a company that "treated its employees poorly."

In May of 1998 The Denver Post reported that a federal judge levied a $37 million fine against L-P for violating clean-air laws and defrauding customers. Later, in June of 1998, Louisiana-Pacific was forced to pay $2.3 million to four Olathe, CO families who were forced out of their homes by air pollution from the nearby L-P waferboard plant.

Joanne Ditmer, an environmental and historic columnist for The Denver Post for nearly four decades, aptly sums up Louisiana-Pacificâs pattern of abuse:

"Across the nation, L-P would open plants in rural areas with poor communities, and jobs would be the Îbribeâ that led communities to overlook the degradation that came with it."

Political Influence

With nearly $3.3 billion in net sales for 1998, Louisiana-Pacific has formidable resources and influence with local and national decision makers. In addition to that political weight, L-Pâs PAC made more than $81,000 in political contributions to congressional candidates and more than $100,000 to political parties over the last three election cycles. In just the last three years, L-P has also paid over $329,000 to hire three lobby firms as well as "in house" company lobbyists to walk the halls of Congress.

The Big Polluters

According to The Los Angeles Times, Intentional Paper is the worldâs largest paper producer with operations in over 30 countries. Dwarfing its nearest competitor, IP had over $19.5 billion in sales in 1998.

While International Paper gets most of its lumber for its many pulp and paper mills from private lands, they purchased over 80 Mmbf of taxpayer subsidized timber from National Forests between 1993 and 1998. IP successfully bid on 57 sales, spending $10,571,923. Most of the sales were in the Southern Region (over 50 Mmbf), though IP also purchased timber in the Pacific Northwest (22 Mmbf) and Eastern (7 Mmbf) Regions.
 
 
 
 

A Toxic Tale

According to the EPA, in 1997, International Paper released more toxic chemicals than any other company that purchased timber from our National Forests. IP released more than 36 million pounds of toxic chemicals into our air, land and water. Even though it has fewer facilities than its nearest competitor (36 to Georgia Pacificâs 57 U.S. facilities) IP released over 30% more toxic chemicals. IP ranks third on the list of total carcinogens released by a timber company with 2.36 million pounds sent into our environment.

The following plants were the largest sources of toxic releases from IP: Mansfield, LA (4.5 million lbs., 116,776 in carcinogens); Riegelwood, NC (3.6 million lbs., 572,100 in carcinogens); Georgetown, SC (3.2 million lbs., 217,850 in carcinogens); and Domino, TX (2.9 million, 95,996 lbs. in carcinogens).

According to EPAâs SFIP data, between January 1997 and December 1998, International Paper had 28 reported toxic waste spills which leaked over 1.39 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment, 15 times greater than any other timber company that logged our National Forests.

In the same time span, IP averaged 1.3 episodes of historic non-compliance, 26 violations of the Clean Water Act, 5 occurrences of significant non-compliance and was levied with three enforcement actions for a total of $227,500 in fines. Over 266,000 people live within 3 miles of International Paperâs facilities.

Political Power

Not surprisingly, IP is number one on the list of total political contributions over the last three election cycles. The company gave $676,473 in PAC contributions to congressional candidates and $420,700 in unregulated "soft money" contributions to political parties. Combined the total contribution was more than $1.1 million. But where IPâs political machine really shines is in its lobby shop. From 1996 to 1998, IP spent $5.8 million on a Washington D.C. lobby group and its own "in house" lobbyists. This amount is more than double the amount spent by any other timber company on lobbying activities.

In the last five years (1994 to 1998), Georgia-Pacific (G-P) purchased over 124 million board feet (Mmbf) of taxpayer subsidized timber from our National Forests. G-P purchased 61 sales from three different regions (The Southern, Eastern and Pacific Northwest Regions), spending $16,005,585.

Top ranked carcinogen polluter

In 1997, Georgia-Pacific released over 21.3 million pounds of toxic chemicals into our environment, making them the second largest polluter that purchased National Forest timber. However, G-P released more cancer-causing chemicals than any other timber company. In 1997, the company released more than 3.2 million pounds of carcinogens directly into our air, ground and water.

The G-P facilities with the most overall releases were: Monticello, MS (2.83 million lbs.); Zachary, LA (2.36 million lbs.); and Ashdown, AR (2.33 million lbs.). The G-P facilities that released the most carcinogens were: Big Island, VA (361,966 lbs.); Palatka, FL (242,040 lbs.); and Bellingham, WA (277,981 lbs.).

According to the EPA, from January 1997 to December 1998, Georgia-Pacific had 24 violations of the Clean Water Act, two occurrences of "significant non-compliance," and 16 spills which leaked a reported 3,900 pounds of toxics. During this same time period, G-P received seven enforcement actions from the U.S. EPA for a total fine of $471,000.

According to the Columbus Dispatch, on September 10, 1997, one worker was killed and thirteen were injured when an 8,500-gallon kettle of toxic chemicals exploded at the Georgia-Pacific mill in Columbus, OH. The company blamed the man who died for the explosion, but the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration later fined G-P $432,500 for 22 safety violations leading up to the tragedy.

The president of the South Side Community Action Association, the neighborhood group formed to watchdog the plant, was quoted in the Columbus Dispatch saying that this and other chemical accidents have occurred at the plant because "theyâre concerned about the bottom line; theyâre not concerned about the community."

Finally, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, in 1996, the Department of Justice and the EPA charged G-P with under reporting air pollution emissions at 25 plants, failure to obtain permits and failure to obtain pollution abatement equipment. In July 1996, the company agreed to settle the lawsuit and pay more than $35 million in fines and overdue improvements.

Lobby power

With $13.2 billion in net sales in 1998, Georgia-Pacific has substantial political power by virtue of its size alone. Additionally, out of the major timber companies we examined, G-P contributed the second largest sum to political campaigns over the last three election cycles. The company gave $413,267 to congressional election campaigns as well as $653,320 in unregulated "soft money" contributions to political parties, for a grand total of $1.06 million.

Georgia-Pacific also built a formidable lobby team over the last three years. In addition to its own "in house" lobby shop, G-P had five different lobby groups under retainer with no less than 13 different lobbyists working for them. Between 1996 and 1998, G-P spent more than $1.39 million on this army of well-heeled lobbyists who were focused on influencing members of Congress and Administration officials.
 
 
 
 

Other Examples of Poor Corporate Citizenship

Spawned from the 19th Century railroad land grants, Plum Creek Timber Company owns more than 3.3 million acres of private lands, much of which was once owned by the public. Instead of selling the lands granted it by the U.S. Congress to homesteaders as it was mandated to do, the Northern Pacific Railroad (now Burlington Northern RR) sold off millions of acres of land to timber companies. The result is the checkerboard pattern of public and private lands found across the Northern Rockies and Cascades.

While Plum Creek owns a great deal of private land, the company is still a threat to public lands. In the last five years (1994 to 1998), Plum Creek has purchased more than 74.1 Mmbf of taxpayer subsidized forests, spending $11,875,094. These timber sale purchases were primarily in the Northern and Southern Regions.

According to the Western Land Exchange Project, a Pacific Northwest land exchange watchdog group, Plum Creek is actively pushing for several major land exchanges in an effort to increase their private land holdings. Land exchanges are deals in which timber companies often trade back the over-valued private lands (often originally granted lands) they have already logged in exchange for under-valued, healthy, forested lands.

In testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Resources subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Lands, Plum Creek Senior Vice President James A. Kraft claimed that "the end result of the land exchange process is always an improvement in management efficiencies and in the public interest." Mr. Kraft further pushed his agenda by asking Congress to expedite land exchanges for his company by removing the "restrictions that might be in place under the Endangered Species Act" and by "simplifying" the National Environmental Protection Actâs requirements by not performing the critical environmental impact statements it calls for.

Incentive systems set up within the Plum Creek management hierarchy to give the powerful executives and partners a disproportionate share of the yearly profits (in 1997 they received 25 percent of the cash proceeds) have created a strong incentive to maximize short term profits rather than long term stability. This translates into intense, urgent and unrelenting logging practices.

Plum Creekâs logging strategy is the textbook "cut and run" technique reminiscent of 19th Century timber barons. Logging at a rate of 500 Mmbf a year, Plum Creek is logging trees faster than they can grow them, as is evidenced by its 1997 Federal Tax Form 10-K which stated:

This process of "high-grade logging" strips out all of the larger, higher quality trees from the forest leaving behind a thin layer of unmerchantable timber which is highly susceptible to intense wildfires. The land then is often sold to real estate developers for a double liquidation.

In 1996, Plum Creek purchased 538,000 acres of private forest land in Louisiana and Arkansas, and, in 1998, purchased another 905,000 acres in Maineâs North Woods for logging once the company had finished logging and sold off its 1.6 million acres in Montana and 310,000 acres in Washington.

Toxics Troubles

In 1997, Plum Creek released a total of 751,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment at its Columbus Falls, MT plant. Out of that total, 443,250 pounds were known cancer causing chemicals.

Political Influence

Plum Creek does not limit its political influence to testimony at Congressional hearings. Over the last three election cycles, Plum Creek has contributed at least $96,749 to congressional election campaigns. Over the same time period, Plum Creek gave $27,000 in unregulated "Soft Money" to political parties, bringing the total contributions to $123,749. To augment those contributions, Plum Creek spent $233,876 from 1996-1998 to hire two Washington D.C. lobby firms to lobby key members Congress and the Administration.

Political Influence

Champion had more than $5.6 billion in net sales in 1998. Over the past three election cycles, Championâs PAC contributed $585,548 to congressional election campaigns and contributed $83,225 in unregulated "soft money" to political parties for a grand total of $668,773 in political contributions. However, the lobby expenses of the timber giant were much larger. Since 1996, Champion has spent $1.39 million to hire 17 lobbyists from two Washington D.C. lobby firms and their own "in house" lobby shop to push their legislative agenda in Congress. Champion is also a primary member of the powerful American Forest and Paper Association.

Toxics donât just greenwash away

According to the latest data from the EPAâs Toxic Release Inventory, Champion released over 13.5 million pounds of toxic chemicals into our environment in 1997. Among those releases were over 1.4 million pounds of known cancer causing chemicals.

From 1997 to 1998, Champion had at least 38 violations of the Clean Water Act, more than any other company who logs on our National Forests. During this same time period, Champion averaged 1.6 episodes of historic non-compliance, one occurrence of significant non-compliance, and 6 enforcement actions taken against the company for a total of $44,400 in fines. Over 622,000 people live within 3 miles of the very facilities that are releasing these toxic chemicals.

To counteract the fact that millions of pounds of toxic chemicals spew from its facilities every year, Champion International has worked hard to "greenwash" its reputation as a major polluter. A notable effort is the companyâs sponsorship of the Champion International Whitewater Series and the U.S. Canoe and Kayak Team. By associating themselves with the river running sport, Champion hopes to divert attention from its own water pollution. The series is run in Vail, CO, Durango, CO, South Bend, IN, Carlton, MN and, ironically, Hartford, TN.

According to the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, the Hartford event is on the Pigeon River which Champion has been polluting for almost 90 years from its paper mill in Canton, NC. Champion claims to have modernized the mill to meet better standards, but the most recent data shows it still released over 2.8 million pounds of chemicals in 1997, of which 126,880 pounds were known carcinogens.

To Save Our Wild Forest

Our National Forests provide habitat for wildlife, clean water, recreation for millions, and a safe haven for our last remaining ancient forests. Over the past century, these forests have been voraciously logged, roaded and developed by the seemingly insatiable timber industry which, in addition to the millions of trees consumed, has also gobbled up billions of taxpayer dollars in corporate subsidies over the years. With over half of our National Forests already scarred by clearcuts and timber roads, our forest are on the brink of survival. Nothing short of complete and permanent protection will allow them to flourish again and continue to perform the myriad functions and values they provide to the public, our environment and the economy.

Furthermore, the same companies destroying our National Forests are also seriously polluting our air, land and water with millions of pounds of toxic chemicals and corrupting our political system with millions in campaign contributions and lobby expenses.

The following are several recommendations aimed at restoring and protecting our National Forests, cleaning up our environment and ending industryâs undue influence over our political process:

1. Protect Our Heritage Forests

We must protect our most precious and most endangered forest areas. Roadless areas in our National Forests are the last bastions of unprotected wilderness and are also the first on the list of areas that must be permanently protected. A sensible, long-term forest transportation policy that protects all remaining 60 million acres of pristine roadless areas in our National Forests is the best way to safeguard our rapidly dwindling, unprotected wild forests.

There is strong public support for protecting these remaining undeveloped areas. In 1997 and 1998, a national opinion survey commissioned by the Wilderness Society found that over two-thirds (67%) of those questioned support a proposal to "stop all timber cutting in roadless wild forest areas."

Last year, President Clinton pledged to protect roadless areas in the National Forests: "These last remaining wild areas are precious to millions of Americans and key to protecting clean water and abundant wildlife habitat, and providing recreational opportunities. These unspoiled places must be managed through science, not politics."

Last January, however, the Forest Service proposed an eighteen-month moratorium, or "time out," on road-building in many of our National Forests. During the moratorium, the Forest Service plans to develop a long-term National Forest transportation policy.

Unfortunately, the Forest Service is currently considering a roadless policy that would not provide strong enough protection for our Heritage Forests. The Forest Service must issue a final rule or directive which is not just limited to how roads are constructed in our National Forests, but also includes protection of the roadless areas themselves, from logging, roadbuilding and other forms of development.

2. Cut taxpayer subsidies to the timber industry

Taxpayer subsidization of the timber industry to the detriment of our National Forests is unacceptable and should be halted immediately. Operating at a cost of $340 million each year in taxpayer subsidies, the time has come for a complete reformation of the U.S. Forest Serviceâs commercial timber sale program. The Forest Service must end the practice of offering below cost timber sales.

Furthermore, the timber roadbuilding subsides must end immediately. Taxpayers need not build the very pathways the timber industry takes to liquidate our forest heritage. Ending the Purchaser Road Credit program was a step in the right direction, but the Forest Service must now stop building timber roads at taxpayer expense.

Additionally, all of the timber trust funds, including the K-V fund, should be eliminated. These funds must be brought on-budget to increase accountability and public oversight of how this money is spent.

3. End all commercial logging on National Forests

Our National Forests are too valuable to suffer the devastation of timber industry chainsaws and bulldozers. The ecological, recreational, aquatic, spiritual and other values far outweigh the value per board foot of timber within these special places. Taxpayers lose money and the country loses an incredible living resource with every tree logged. We must protect our forest heritage for future generations.

In the long run, ending commercial logging in our National Forests makes the most sense ecologically and economically. We support efforts to end commercial logging and begin the process of repairing and restoring our National Forests. Additionally, we support efforts to provide communities dependent on timber production with a more stable and long term economy.

4. Expand our Right to Know about toxic chemicals

In order to better track toxic chemical pollution releases and promote pollution prevention, the Federal Right to Know program should be expanded to include:

· reporting on toxic chemicals used in the work place, transported through communities, and placed in consumer products;

· reporting from additional polluting industries; and

· reporting on all uses and releases of persistent or bioaccumulative toxics including dioxin, mercury and lead.

5. Campaign Finance Reform

Finally, none of these reforms will occur if the timber industry continues to have the undue influence over the political system. The data in this report show that big timber PAC and soft money play an enormous role in promoting wasteful and environmentally destructive federal programs. Under current campaign finance laws, special interests continue to get special deals in Congress. To eliminate this corrupting influence on the political process, PIRG strongly supports eliminating big money from politics.

The PIRGsâ national campaign finance platform calls for the restoration of democracy and for politicians to raise money from the people they represent. The platform also includes $100 limits on all contributions, a focus on in-district contributions, a constitutional amendment for mandatory spending limits, and free and low-cost TV, radio and mail access for candidates.