April 9, 1997
THE DOGWOOD ALLIANCE UNITES TO STOP CHIP MILL INFESTATION
The Dogwood Alliance is the only unified response in the
United States to the rapid proliferation of remote high-capacity chip
mills. It is a cooperative network of more than 30 grassroots
organizations with a shared mission to halt further deforestation of our
native forests. The Alliance envisions sustainable, stable human
communities that maintain and enhance the functioning resiliency and
health of the region's native forest ecosystems--many of which are now
threatened by accelerated clearcutting to supply chip mills.
The private and public forests of the Southeast are threatened by
unsustainable logging. There are now over 140 chip mills in the
Southeast that average over 300,000 tons of chips a year, 100 of these
were sited within the last ten years. At 300,000 tons of chips per mill
per year, nearly one million acres - 1,562 square miles - of southeast
forest are being fed annually to the chip mills. And because taking as
many trees from each acre produces the greatest immediate return,
clearcutting is the most common method of logging used to feed the
mills. According to industry and USFS, the growth to harvest ratio for
softwoods in the South went negative in 1991. Hardwood harvests are
expected to exceed growth within the next 2-10 years. This is not only
evidence that the industry is unsustainable, but that chip mills are
depleting the forests, thereby impacting water quality, habitats,
ecosystem health and local forest-dependent businesses. In addition,
chip mills employ very few workers. A typical chip mill has a
sourcing radius of 75 miles yet only employs from 4 to 10 people and
the hardwood consumed by a single chip mill in one month could run
an average size sawmill for an entire year. Hardwood chip exports
increased 500% from 1989 to 1995.
EIS NEEDED TO ASSESS IMPACT OF CHIP MILLS ON
SOUTHEAST ECOSYSTEMS
Public pressure has been used successfully to force the agencies
to look at the off-site logging impacts. The TVA, the Army Corps of
Engineers and the US Fish and Wildlife Service prepared an EIS in
1993 evaluating the potential environmental impacts of three proposed
chip mills on the Tennessee River. After reviewing the evidence, the
agencies denied permits to all three facilities citing, among other
reasons, significant cumulative environmental impacts from the logging
to supply the chip mills. Since the completion of the 1993 EIS, federal
agencies have consistently refused to evaluate the full impacts of other
proposed chip mill facilities.
NEPA mandates that agencies study the potential environmental impacts
of major federal actions. The USF&WS has stated that permitting
facilities which encourage logging to supply the proliferating number of
chip mills constitutes a major federal action. ESA mandates that the
Corps and the TVA consult with the USF&WS, to ensure that their
activities are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of
threatened or endangered species. The USF&WS has stated that the
logging to supply the proliferating number of chip mills in the southeast
needs to be studied because of its adverse impacts to threatened and
endangered species.
The Dogwood Alliance: Communities United Against Chip
Mills, is calling for a region wide environmental impact study on
the cumulative economic and environmental impacts of permitting
high capacity chip mills and supporting whole log loading
operations on our navigable waterways. You can support this
effort to conduct a regionwide EIS by calling or writing the
Environmental Protection Agency to: Carol Browner, EPA, 401 M
St. SW, Washington, DC 20460, 202-260-2090 and U.S. EPA
Region 4, Atlanta Federal Center, 61 Forsyth Street, Atlanta, GA
30303, 404-562-8357
(
geocities.com/rainforest)