You like Redwood decking, hot tubs, etc? You’ll be pleased that soon virtually all redwood for such products will be imported if the regulators have their way. You may have seen articles here on the FR concerning the bankruptcy filing by Pacific Lumber Co. [PALCO] of Scotia on the North Coast, near Eureka. They’ve been jammed into that position by the ever-changing regulatory positions of it’s partner, the State of California
Several years ago, PALCO, in an arrangement negotiated with the state, sold to California thousands of acres of old growth forest redwoods, The Headwaters Forest, for us taxpayers to sit on into perpetuity. [Only 3% of all old growth in CA is in private hands, the rest State or Fed owned and I suppose, "protected"] In return, PALCO would have some predictability, they thought, for some years to come to operate on their 200,000 acres of lands they still own. In doing so, they implement a Habitat Conservation Plan for endangered critters, as well as complying with Timber Harvest Plan regs. These THP’s are developed as you go and last about 3 years until they must be updated for a given harvest zone. THP’s are tremendously detailed and complex [and expensive] to develop. Oregon THP’s are usually done in a few pages. California THP’s take a feed store scale to weigh and can routinely cost $30000 to $50000 to produce. Each one is treated almost like a re-invention of the wheel.
So PALCO has bent over backward to correct the wrongs that were done in the ‘bad old days’ by previous lumber companies on the north coast. It is an area that does require a greater degree of care in logging operations than others. Nonetheless, such logging is indeed possible and even needed for forest health from tree-overcrowding and even fire-risk the further, and drier, inland you go. You would think that would be a workable agreement, what with a heavy load of regulation and regulators to watch operations as agreed.
Enter new legislation in 2003, known as SB 810 by Sen. John Burton, a known fierce opponent of redwood products logged in California. That bill, signed just before the recall by Gov. Gray Davis unleveled the playing field by adding another regulatory arm to the THP process, the Regional Water Quality Control Boards, who were given veto power over THP’s developed and approved by California Dept. of Forestry & Fire Protection and overseen by the State Board of Forestry, a system that has been working successfully in protecting forest lands and water quality for many years. PALCO is unlucky enough to be located in the jurisdiction of the North Coast RWQCB, a board whose staff is reknowned to treat those regulated like subjects and
ignoring facts and science to advance their enviro agenda of shutting down forestry and ag in that region. Even with some good and some not so good Board members themselves, the horror stories of bad treatment of honest people by these staffers is common, as is their unaccountability to their Board members, making policy as they go.
The result for PALCO is crushing water quality goal hurdles placed on them that have little or nothing to do with anything actually caused by logging operations nor does the board approve solutions that would actually help water quality on existing infrastructures.
Professional foresters, those that actually know what is best for long-term health and are trained in it, are overridden by these regs. Yet CDF and the BOF have incorporated, before SB 810, nearly 90% of the several state Regional Boards recommendations statewide. The bill’s proponents 
suggest that CDF/BOF "ignore the Water Boards concerns". Nearly 90% ain’t bad. The complaining specific to the North Coast Board was that their recommendations were being ignored over 20% of the time. Where’s Tweety Bird when you need him, "awww, the Puddy Tat [N.C. Board] fall down."
Result: Pacific Lumber files bankruptcy and is still left holding the bag on fulfilling the Habitat Conservation Plan with no way [business income] to pay for it. But we have the strong assurance from our Administration officials that they will be "dogged and unyielding" in holding PALCO up. That’s just #@%@# lovely. PALCO should sue it’s "partner", the State, for breach of contract for jerking the carpet out from under the profitability of their mutual agreement.
Result for the rest of us: More jobs lost and endangered in Humboldt County; California increases it’s import of lumber to even more than it’s 80+% now; true solutions to sediment in streams and forest health are lost…but we get us some dandy feel-good about protecting forests and streams!
Moral of the story: Don’t enter into private-public partnerships with the State of California.
These are my observations and opinions, not necessarily to be construed as those of parties mentioned in this post.