Opinion ID: 2585012
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Sufficiency of the Sustained Yield Plan for Public Review

Text: Petitioners contend that CDF failed to obtain sufficient information to authorize the SYP for public review because the Public Review Draft SYP/HCP failed to analyze individual planning watersheds and the cumulative impacts of the proposed logging on those watersheds. (10) The process of approving an SYP is described in section 1091.10 of the Forest Practice Rules: First, within 20 days after receipt of the SYP, the CDF director reviews the document to ensure that it is in proper order, and meets the informational requirements of the rules, and if so, the SYP shall be filed. ( Id., subd. (a).) Otherwise the Director is to return the document with noted deficiencies. Once filed, the Director has a 45-day or longer period to review the SYP to determine if it contains sufficient and complete information to permit further review by the public and other agencies. ( Ibid. ) After a 90-day or longer period of public review, the Director has a 30-day period to review and respond to public input and determine whether the SYP should be approved. If not, the reasons must be in writing. The Forest Practice Rules also require that an SYP contain analysis of the impacts of proposed logging on individual planning watersheds. Section 1091.6 states in part: The following watershed issues shall be addressed in a SYP: [ถ] (a) Assessment Area. The minimum assessment area shall be no less than a planning watershed. The assessment area may include multiple watersheds within a Management Unit, and areas outside the ownership may be included. [ถ] (b) Impacts Analysis and Mitigation. The Assessment shall include an analysis of potentially significant adverse impacts, including cumulative impacts, of the planned operations and other projects, on water quality, fisheries and aquatic wildlife. [ถ] (c) The SYP shall contain a description of the individual planning watersheds in sufficient detail to allow a review of the analysis of impacts. [14] Petitioners contend that the SYP failed to provide sufficient information in their watershed analysis for public review. In conducting watershed analysis, Pacific Lumber used five watershed assessment areas (sometimes WAA's) ranging in size between 55,000 and 426,000 acres, each of which consisted of a number of planning watersheds [15] โfrom approximately seven for the smallest WAA to approximately 45 for the largest. The record reflects that CDF staff found Pacific Lumber's treatment of watershed analysis and the cumulative impacts of logging on individual watersheds to be inadequate throughout the SYP preparation process. Ross Johnson, CDF's Chief of Forest Practices, requested in an April 25, 1997 letter that Pacific Lumber explain how the watershed assessment based on the very large WAAs can identify cumulative watershed effects related to timber operations, distinguish between natural and man-caused event effects, and identify the location of sensitive areas for project planning and mitigation. A letter by CDF's Deputy Director Craig Anthony written in November 1997 to Pacific Lumber, months before public review began, stated that the SYP in its then form must address the watershed assessment issues described below before it is sufficient for public review. Anthony continued, CDF concurs with other reviewing agencies that the watershed assessment areas (WAAs) are so large that potentially significant impacts from intensive management in one or more of the smaller subwatersheds may occur without those impacts being detected by the proposed monitoring system. Pacific Lumber prepared and submitted a revised draft SYP/HCP in June 1998. The Director then released this draft in July 1998 for public review. But a letter from John Munn, CDF's soil erosion studies project manager, the following year in November 1998, at a time when public review was almost over, stated that the issues described in Anthony's November 1997 letter have not been addressed. The record further indicates that Pacific Lumber and the state and federal governments had entered on February 27, 1998, into a Pre-Permit Application Agreement in Principle which, as noted, set forth a procedural framework for processing the required environmental documents, including the SYP. The agreement provided in part that Pacific Lumber was to submit to CDF an SYP that incorporated a range of timber growth estimates employing various timber management strategies. Upon the receipt of those estimates, CDF will find the SYP sufficient for public review. No mention was made in this agreement of the watershed analysis issues. As John Munn stated in a December 18, 1998 letter to Pacific Lumber, explaining his continued pursuit of the watershed analysis issues after the initial period of public review: The Pre-Permit Application Agreement in Principle ... simply says that [CDF] will find the SYP sufficient for public review. Although the Department would like to have major concerns addressed prior to public review, this is not a requirement of the Forest Practice Rules. Moreover, whether or not the public draft SYP was sufficient for public review under the Forest Practice Rules, it appears clear that the Director did not abuse his discretion when his actions are viewed in light of Assembly Bill 1986, the state legislation authorizing the Headwaters Agreement. (Stats. 1998, ch. 615.) Sections 3, subdivision (a)(1), and 4, subdivision (c) of the statute specifically contemplate that the watershed analysis process will be completed after the approval of the SYP/HCP, and that until the process is completed and site-specific prescriptions emerging from that process have been implemented by the relevant government agencies, interim measures such as 100-foot no-cut buffers for class I watercourses, [16] will be adopted. Although Assembly Bill 1986's September 1998 enactment postdated the July 1998 circulation of the Public Review Draft SYP/HCP, the statute certainly appears to legislatively ratify the decision of CDF and other government agencies to circulate a public review draft before completion of individual planning watershed analysis. We therefore conclude that the circulation of the Public Review Draft was not error.