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law, the Clinton Forest Plan would still prevent local managers from treating these sites. 

 To better explain what I mean, I would like to show the subcommittee a chart that 

 illustrates the process the Clinton plan requires local forest managers to follow in order to 

 treat areas like Lick Creek and Lone Pine Ridge. 



By way of explanation, the yellow and red portions represent the additional 

 process required under Option 9 that is not otherwise required under current law. If you 

 find this process unusually complicated or long, you are not alone. So do our local forest 

 managers. I am told by the people on the ground that it is not unusual to take the full 

 three years shown on the chart to treat sites like Lick Creek and Lone Pine Ridge. This is 

 without litigation. Unfortunately, the Douglas fir and ponderosa pine trees at Lick Creek 

 will be badly deteriorated within three years. The white fir trees at Lone Pine Ridge will 

 be worthless within 1 8 months. 



When and if these sales go to bid, nobody will bid on them, because they will be 

 practically worthless. As a consequence, nothing will be accomplished on either site. Lick 

 Creek and Lone Pine Ridge will be a total loss to the forest, to local communities, and to 

 the American taxpayer. With impossible situations like these, it is little wonder that the 

 Clinton Plan has yielded in 1994 and 1995 combined only one quarter of the 2 billion 

 board feet that Secretary Babbitt, in a July 1993 press conference, promised the 

 Administration would harvest in 1994 alone. 



President Clinton's statement was true. As we lose places like Lick Creek and 

 Lone Pine Ridge, our local economies in northern California are sure to follow. In 1994, 

 the same year as the fire that burned Lick Creek, the local mill in Happy Camp, only a 

 stone's throw fi-om Lick Creek, closed permanently for lack of timber. Last May the local 

 mill in Hayfork, just to the northeast of Lone Pine Ridge, also closed permanently for lack 

 of timber. Hayfork is the 30th mill in my district to close in recent years. The tragic irony 

 of Hayfork is that the surrounding forests contain enough dead and dying timber to have 

 kept this mill operating for another IS years. 



It should come as no surprise that Trinity County, where Hayfork is located, has 

 an unemployment rate consistently ranging fi-om 15% to 24%. It should come as no 

 surprise that 80% of the children in Happy Camp Elementary School receive fi-ee or 

 reduced meals. President Clinton predicted it would happen. His forest plan and forest 

 management directives issued fi-om Washington are making it happen. 



To close, I would like to submit for the record a letter to President Clinton I 

 received recently fi-om Nadine Bailey, a former constituent of mine. Nadine tells the tragic 

 story of a promise President Clinton made to her daughter, Elizabeth, in 1993 and the 

 events that have transpired since. Time will not allow me to read the letter, so I 

 encourage every member of the subcommittee to do so. Nadine and Eliiabeth used to live 

 in Hayfork while the mill was still operating. Their story puts a profoundly human face on 

 what I have been talking about. 



