Eastern District of California Blog

Ninth Circuit Affirms EDCA Court In Rejecting Challenge To Forest Service Rules on User-Created Roads

In Friends of Tahoe Forest v. U.S. Forest Service, No. 14-15336, the Ninth Circuit yesterday affirmed Judge Mendez's grant of summary judgment in favor of the U.S Forest Service and other federal defendants on claims that they violated the National Environmental Policy Act in evaluating the environmental impacts regarding motor vehicle use on 869 miles of "user-created" roads and trails in the Tahoe National Forest.

EDCA Court Refuses To Dismiss Claim Over Lake Tahoe Logging

A federal judge refused to dismiss a professor's claim that the U.S. Forest Service is damaging the Lake Tahoe watershed by clearing timber and brush and depositing the slash in streams and wetlands.

U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr. ruled Tuesday that the Forest Service's argument was based upon faulty evidence and that plaintiff Dennis Murphy, Ph.D., did not waive his legal challenge to the Upper Echo Lakes Hazardous Fuels Reduction Projection by failing to comment during a public comment period.

Courthouse News, 4/3/15

EDCA Lawsuit Challenges Ban on ATVs in Plumas National Forest

Two counties and a coalition of advocates are challenging the government’s sharp reduction of trails and roads in the Plumas National Forest available to motorized recreational vehicles.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday in Sacramento federal court alleges that thousands of roads and trails open for decades to the public are now unlawfully off-limits to personal vehicles such as ATVs, motorcycles, snowmobiles, trucks and jeeps.

The suit accuses the U.S. Forest Service of violating two federal laws by blocking access to these roads and trails “without a careful, factually specific review of environmental impacts, including consequences for the public.”

Sac Bee, 3/18/15

Legal Sparring In Rim Fire Criminal Case

Lawyers for Keith Matthew Emerald want to know why officials failed to record a phone call in which he recanted his admission to starting a campfire believed to have sparked the Rim fire that burned into Yosemite National Park last year.

Emerald’s lawyers also want to examine personnel files of U.S. Forest Service investigators who interviewed Emerald to question their credibility as witnesses.

Lawyers on Wednesday sparred in U.S. District Court in Fresno over documentation that could be used in Emerald’s trial. He faces multiple counts of starting a fire on Aug. 17, 2013, that grew beyond his control in the Clavey River Canyon in Stanislaus National Forest. The Rim fire grew to 257,000 acres, the third largest in California history.

Fresno Bee, 12/3/14

U.S. Attorney Moonlight Fire Case Cover-Up Alleged

Here's bits and pieces from today's front page story in the Sacramento Bee:

The incendiary legal battle over responsibility for the Moonlight wildfire, which scorched 65,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada seven years ago, has flared anew with charges of corruption and cover-up leveled at federal prosecutors, and state and federal investigators. [2:09-CV-2445-KJM].

The allegations are contained in hundreds of pages of documents filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento seeking to wipe out a 2012 settlement calling for timber giant Sierra Pacific Industries to pay the federal government $47 million and deed it 22,500 acres of its land to compensate for the devastation of more than 40,000 acres in two national forests in Plumas and Lassen counties, as well as the U.S. Forest Service’s firefighting costs.

* * *

On Thursday, the company took the rare step of asking Mueller to “vacate the settlement” due to “fraud upon the court.”

* * *

It insists in its motion that the investigators’ origin-and-cause report is a fraudulent document that omits or distorts all information that might have hurt the government’s case.

One of the documents Sierra Pacific filed is a declaration from a veteran former assistant U.S. attorney, who says he was forced to give up his position as the government’s lead lawyer in the Moonlight case, apparently because he rebuffed pressure from a superior to “engage in unethical conduct as a lawyer.”

* * *

His declaration describes his conclusion in connection with another wildland fire recovery matter in 2009 that he was ethically obligated to disclose a document to the defense that called into question the viability of the government’s prosecution.

He sought confirmation from the U.S. Department of Justice’s professional responsibility advisory office, which “strongly supported my view. … As a result, we dismissed that action,” the declaration says.

Later in 2009, it says, a dispute arose between Wright and Shelledy in the context of another wildland fire case over whether the office had an obligation to disclose to the defense the fact that the Forest Service had miscalculated the damages, which were $10 million less than the government was claiming.

Wright again sought the advice of the professional responsibility office and again the office supported his view that the error had to be disclosed, according to the declaration.

* * *

At this point, it says, an attorney in the professional responsibility office weighed in “with a directive that could not have been clearer: ‘Part of the issue in making a false statement means not only an affirmative misstatement but deliberately withholding information which refutes the position you assert.’ ”

The information was turned over to the defense and the case settled.

* * *

Although Sierra Pacific agreed to a settlement in 2012 to end its legal fight with federal authorities, it has always contended the fire investigation was flawed and that investigators manipulated evidence and lied under oath about where and how the blaze began.

According to Sierra Pacific, the government could reach into the company’s deep pockets for a big recovery only if it could blame the company for the fire, and that is what motivated investigators to move the blaze’s place of origin to the area where the bulldozer was working and then falsely deny they had originally settled on a different location.

Environmentalists Sue Forest Service Over Rim Fire Logging

Environmentalists filed a lawsuit Thursday against a federal agency, saying it aims to protect the California spotted owl living in the burned forests marked for logging after the third-largest wildfire in state history.

The Center for Biological Diversity and two other groups seek an injunction against the U.S. Forest Service, which unveiled a plan last week to allow logging on 52 square miles of forest killed in the massive central California blaze. The Rim Fire started Aug. 17, 2013, and scorched 400 square miles of the Stanislaus National Forest, Yosemite National Park's backcountry and private timber land.

Fresno Bee, 9/4/14

EDCA Court Rules Forest Service Must Amend--Not Vacate--Plan For Sierra Nevada Region

The U.S. Forest Service must review how its amended project plan for the Sierra Nevada region will affect individual fish species, a federal judge ruled.

U.S. District Judge Morrison England refused to vacate the entire plan based on a "relatively minor" error under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

The Forest Service's 2004 Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment, also referred to as the 2004 framework," amended plans for 11 national forests covering 11.5 million acres in the Sierra Nevada region. It includes plans for more logging, more road construction, and an increase in green- and salvage-timber harvesting in the forests.

 Courthouse News, 5/1/13

EDCA Court Finds Fault In Forest Service Off-Road Vehicle Plan

A Sacramento federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Forest Service failed in its management of trails for off-road vehicles in the Stanislaus National Forest.

U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller found that a travel management plan violates federal law because it fails to minimize damage to the environment caused by off-road vehicles. She ordered a Feb. 15 hearing.

Sacramento Bee, 1/8/13

Conservation Congress Files Northern Spotted Owl Action

"Federal agencies failed to assess the environmental impact of three logging Mendocino National Forest projects, which will affect the northern spotted owl, Conservation Congress claims in court."  Courthousenews, 9/26/12; Conservation Congress v. USFS Complaint.

Ninth Circuit Affirms EDCA Dismissal Of Complaint Against U.S. Forest Service

Here's the opening paragraph of the Ninth Circuit's opinion today affirming Judge Karlton's dismissal of a complaint against the U.S. Forest Service in Public Lands for the People, Inc. v. U.S. Dept. Agriculture, No. 11-15007:

The Wild West has long conjured up images of prospectors with pack mules and pickaxes foraging for gold. The oftromanticized ways of the Wild West eventually modernized and gave way to prospecting with the aid of motor vehicles and heavy machinery. The United States Forest Service (the “Forest Service”), an arm of the Department of Agriculture, recently limited the use of motor vehicles to certain roads in the century-old Eldorado National Forest (“ENF”). Concerned about the impact of the limitation on their activities, a group of miners and prospectors challenged the Forest Service’s decision. The district court dismissed the complaint, and we affirm.