D.A. Took On Loggers and Ran Into a Buzz Saw

EUREKA, Calif. —  Barely three months in office, Dist. Atty. Paul V. Gallegos faces a recall campaign, threats of lawsuits and court sanctions -- all after he brought civil fraud charges against a powerful timber company that has become a symbol of a beleaguered way of life.

An emigre from Southern California, Gallegos is a political neophyte in a north coast county that, since the mid-1980s, has been a battleground over logging practices that imperil some of California’s last giant redwoods.

Although he doesn’t view himself as an environmentalist and was elected last year with broad support, he now finds himself undercut by a local establishment that links him to the anti-logging counterculture.

“Mr. Gallegos is stirring up trouble,” said Robin Arkley Sr., a former timber mill owner who pledged $5,000 to launch the recall campaign. “He’s threatening our way of life.”

Arkley, 78, said he and other “good ol’ boys” are fed up with Gallegos and his kind. “It’s us against them,” he said. “We’re going to take back the county from the ardent environmentalists, the college community and the hippies.”

Lawyers for the timber company, Pacific Lumber Co., known here as “Palco,” say the D.A.’s suit has no merit and have threatened to countersue if he doesn’t drop it. Officials of the two state agencies responsible for overseeing logging practices also have questioned the merits of the suit.

Gallegos said he thought he was doing what he had been elected to do when he charged Pacific Lumber Co. in a civil action with deceiving the California Department of Forestry by failing to disclose that its timber-cutting plans could cause landslides.

Having concealed that information, Gallegos contended, Pacific Lumber was allowed to cut 100,000 giant redwoods, profiting handsomely at the expense of wildlife and downstream neighbors who have suffered from mud flows, flooding streams and other damaging effects of stripping redwoods off steep, unstable slopes.

In leveling such accusations, Gallegos has stepped into a long-running fight in this community and taken on a formidable adversary. Pacific Lumber has been engaged in a herculean struggle to log as it sees fit on its own land -- 211,000 acres that are home to the largest stands of ancient redwood trees that are not in parks or preserves.

Pacific Lumber’s owner, Houston financier Charles Hurwitz, has made one major concession to anti-logging forces, and that was for a handsome price. In 1999, the state and federal governments paid Pacific Lumber $480 million to set aside a 7,500-acre Headwaters grove of ancient redwoods. Gallegos’ lawsuit may turn on language in that deal that dictated how the company could log the rest of its land.

Gallegos, 41, a USC graduate, moved to Eureka nine years ago after he and his wife fell in love with the sparkling air and the beauty of Humboldt Bay, with its backdrop of towering trees.

The upbeat district attorney, whose youthful exuberance puts a bounce in his stride, is part of the latest wave of white-collar newcomers to arrive in what was once a county dominated by fishing and logging.

Humboldt County’s economy today is driven by jobs in government, tourism and service industries. Even Pacific Lumber’s payroll is down to 800 employees -- from a peak of 1,500 -- as it continues to lay off workers and shift logging work to outside contractors.

Gallegos practiced criminal defense law, took up surfing and coached T-ball and soccer in Eureka, where he lives with his wife and three young children. Then he decided to run for district attorney last year.

He insists that he hadn’t fallen in with any faction in Humboldt County: the third-generation loggers, the Green Party and other left-leaning interests associated with Humboldt State or the aging hippies who arrived during the 1970s’ back-to-the-land movement and established deep roots as small-business owners or backwoods pot growers.

Gallegos opposed a recently stepped-up tree-sitting campaign, and he prosecutes trespassing activists who try to save old redwoods from Pacific Lumber’s chainsaws by scampering up the massive trunks and locking themselves to the trees’ boughs.

Gallegos refrains from calling himself an environmentalist, although he said he is concerned about the sustainability of “lifeboat Earth” and the “need to do everything in a sustainable fashion so our kids will have a place to live.”

His campaign for district attorney focused on a fair and practical application of the law, and didn’t bring up the environment -- although his campaign did receive some assistance from Green Party members. He upset 20-year incumbent Dist. Atty. Terry Farmer and won 52% of the vote.

Within days of taking office in January, say Gallegos and his top assistant, Timothy Stoen, they were presented information by a local landowner about Pacific Lumber that raised a suspicion of corporate malfeasance rather than violations of environmental law.

According to the D.A.’s lawsuit, Pacific Lumber submitted false data showing that intensive logging on steep slopes would not cause landslides and lobbied the director of the California Department of Forestry to allow more logging on unstable slopes. Under the terms of the Headwaters deal, logging that could cause such damage was prohibited.

The deception, the lawsuit said, helped Pacific Lumber step up the rate of harvest and earn an extra $40 million a year. Prosecutors seek $250 million in damages for the allegedly illegal harvesting of an estimated 100,000 trees on unstable slopes.

Jared Carter, Pacific Lumber’s longtime attorney, said, “No effort was made to suppress” information. “There has been no harvesting on these unstable areas.” The district attorney, Carter said, is being “misled” by a group of environmental activists on a crusade to halt Pacific Lumber from harvesting timber on its own land. “What do you expect us to do, other than take every action to defend ourselves?”

The D.A.’s defenders scoff at the idea that the lawsuit is merely a tool of tree-sitters or less radical activists bent on saving every last ancient redwood.

“We’re not eco-environmental freaks,” said Kristi Wrigley, a third-generation apple farmer. “We’ve never spoken out against logging. We’re speaking up for clean water.”

She seethes over the silt and mud flowing down the Elk River that has sullied her source of fresh water, flooded her farm five times this past winter and smothered the roots of what were once her most productive apple trees.

The district attorney, she said, is “right on the mark,” but she fears “he will be strangled by politics, just as politics have strangled us. Money is going to win.”

Pacific Lumber’s detractors say the company has a history of reckless logging practices. Twice in the late 1980s, the state Department of Forestry suspended the firm’s license to cut timber, citing more than 100 violations of the state Forestry Practices Act. Most were for careless logging operations during wet weather and a failure to control erosion.

For Gallegos, the first sign of a backlash came when he arrived at work one day last month and found the Humboldt County courthouse surrounded by logging trucks and a picket line of loggers carrying placards that read: “Recall the D.A.”

It was later that day in mid-March that the county Board of Supervisors, in an auditorium full of rowdy loggers, rejected the district attorney’s attempt to hire a lawyer from out of town to help prosecute the civil fraud case.

Supervisor Roger Rodoni, a cattle rancher who leases 2,000 acres of grazing land from Pacific Lumber, led the 4-1 majority against paying the expenses of Joseph W. Cotchett, a Burlingame attorney with a record of winning corporate fraud cases.

Since then, the district attorney has received a letter from another firm on Pacific Lumber’s legal team, threatening to sue him and the county. He recently was served with legal papers saying Pacific Lumber would seek court-imposed sanctions to recover legal bills that, Carter said, have climbed quickly to more than $100,000.

To Cotchett, who still wants to join the prosecution, the scene is unfolding like a Jimmy Stewart movie in which a fresh-faced reformer confronts powerful vested interests.

“It’s clear they are trying to intimidate him,” said Cotchett, who believes the case has a lot of merit. “If those facts, as alleged, are true,” he said, “then Pacific Lumber has a big problem.”

But the company also has allies. Recently, both the state Department of Forestry and state Department of Fish and Game, in letters sent to the Humboldt County supervisors, have questioned the D.A.’s fundamental assertions.

Both agencies assert that the steep slopes most susceptible to landslides have been protected under other provisions of the Headwaters deal, and thus the incorrect information didn’t put these areas in jeopardy.

Yet both of these agencies, which approved the Headwaters deal, acknowledge they are bound by a paragraph-long “mutual defense pact” tucked inside the voluminous document by Pacific Lumber’s lawyers. It requires them to join with the firm to defend the Headwaters deal, including the company’s timber harvesting plans, which have been targeted by other lawsuits from environmental and labor groups.

Blocked from hiring outside legal help, Humboldt’s district attorney approached California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer for assistance in the prosecution. That help has yet to materialize.

Lockyer declined to comment, but aides pointed out a conflict he faces because of his duty to represent the two agencies -- Forestry and Fish and Game -- that have been taking issue with the case.

“We like to help local prosecutors, but we must take direction from our client agencies,” said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Lockyer. “It’s not a very comfortable situation for anyone in this office.”

Gallegos said he will not to drop the lawsuit, even if it costs him his job.

He characterized the unfolding events as politics interfering with justice in a region that needs to shake its habit of subservience to timber interests.

“This is a test for this community,” Gallegos said. “Some people think they should be exempt from the law because of how much money they have or how much they contribute to the community. I do not.”

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Times researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.