Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 19, 1993 TAG: 9312190101
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium
It appears to be the first time a judge has halted commercial logging in the 1.1 million-acre forest, George Washington spokesman W. Terry Smith said. Usually, fights over timber sales end when administrative appeals within the Forest Service are exhausted.
Environmentalist Steve Kirchbaum, who filed the complaint along with a couple living along a stream that flows from the wetland, said Friday that he took the next step into the court system because a special area is threatened.
Deeds Brothers Timber Co. of Millboro paid $67,500 for permission to build a temporary road and remove timber from an area a few hundred yards from Clayton Mill Spring, one of 38 tracts in the forest designated as a special biological area.
Danny Deeds said the restraining order would put his five-man logging team out of work through the Christmas season.
There have been roads built and timber cut in other areas surrounding Clayton Mill Spring in southwest Augusta County, and Kirchbaum said the ecosystem could be damaged if the Deeds Brothers logging, which started last week, proceeded.
"The Forest Service hasn't obtained the proper information to know how to manage that area," Kirchbaum said. He added that there are only four mountain wetlands in the George Washington National Forest.
The urgency was caused in part, Kirchbaum said, because the husband and wife who filed the complaint, Kim and Shea Clanton, get drinking water from the stream that would cross the temporary logging road.
U.S. District Judge James H. Michael's restraining order issued Wednesday halts logging on the 84-acre Marble Valley tract until Jan. 3, when he plans to hold a full hearing on the complaint. Kirchbaum will seek a permanent injunction against logging in Marble Valley.
An environmental analysis of the area sanctioned the cut in October. Kirchbaum appealed, but his appeal was denied by the Forest Service's regional office in Atlanta.
"Mr. Kirchbaum has a record, a history, of appealing frequently, and none of his appeals has ever been upheld," Smith said. "He finds fault with everyone. He doesn't want a stick cut."
Loggers cut 35.2 million board feet in the George Washington National Forest in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 1993, Smith said. Overall, timber companies worked fewer than 4,000 acres of the 1.1 million-acre forest.
Kirchbaum, a Staunton resident who represented himself in the court appeal, is a member of Virginians for Wilderness and Preserve Appalachian Wilderness. Virginians for Wilderness founder Ernie Reed and Kirchbaum said that as far as they know the legal action is unprecedented.
But Kirchbaum said, "I think more of this will happen because the Forest Service refuses to respond to public concerns."
by CNB