SUSANVILLE – Sierra Pacific Industries won approval Tuesday to rezone about 5,500 acres in Lassen County now managed for timber production.
The decision by the county supervisors is the latest action on the Anderson-based timber company's request to rezone more than 30,000 acres in five Northern California counties.
It paves the way for Sierra Pacific, owner of 1.7 million acres of California timberlands, to request future rezones that eventually could allow development.
With Lassen County's approval on 5,500 acres, Sierra Pacific has successfully withdrawn 18,839 acres from timberland production in Lassen, Sierra, Shasta and Trinity counties. A decision on 7,826 acres is pending in Plumas County.
Company officials have no plans for putting housing on any of the rezoned lands in Northern California, said Cedric Twight, a Sierra Pacific forester. They have requested the rezonings to increase management options on properties in the rural counties, he said.
"Our core mission is timber production, and it will continue to be timber production," Twight said.
All Sierra Pacific lands requested for rezoning have been in timber production zones, a designation approved by the Legislature in 1976. In exchange for automatically renewable 10-year commitments to limit activity to timber production, the company has enjoyed reduced property taxes.
New zoning designations start a 10-year countdown that ends the tax benefits and allows the company to use the land for residential or commercial development. At the end of the 10 years, county officials would have to decide on additional rezoning requests that permit development.
In Lassen County, that could mean replacing forests with housing in the headwaters of several sensitive streams, the spawning grounds for Eagle Lake trout and next to a U.S. Forest Service wilderness area, said Steve Robinson, executive director of Mountain Meadows Conservancy, a conservation group based in Westwood.
Along with providing a significant source of water for the rest of the state, these timberlands store carbon dioxide at a time when greenhouse gases are contributing to global warming, he said.
"This is a 10-year plan to develop those properties and thereby lose productive timberlands. … You are dealing with areas of significant value to the people of California," Robinson told the supervisors.
Bill Abbott, a Susanville attorney representing Sierra Pacific, argued against speculation that "something is lurking out there. … The opposition presupposes a development scenario that doesn't exist."
Adopting the company's rezoning request from timber production to agricultural forest will not change the land use.
"It positions a future Board of Supervisors with a broader range of options, with no commitment now to change the zone again in 10 years," Abbott said.
The supervisors' split decision to adopt agricultural forest zoning for four separate parcels overturns a county Planning Commission recommendation to deny the changes. Supervisor Jim Chapman cast the lone no vote.
In Shasta County, Sierra Pacific requested rezoning of 6,377 acres of timberlands. The supervisors approved a change to a timber land for 2,719 acres in July. Most of the land is in the Shingletown area where about 30 residences already have been built, said associate county planner Lio Salazar.
The Shasta County supervisors denied a rezone for 3,724 acres of timberlands.
Trinity County officials last year rezoned 3,620 acres, much of it in the Trinity Lake area. Sierra Pacific originally requested rezoning for parcels as small as 1 acre. The planning commissioners changed the zoning from timber production to open space, which does not allow development.
In Sierra County, the supervisors in March rezoned 7,000 acres of Sierra Pacific timberlands near Webber Lake from timber production to general forest, which allows some houses. The area is currently not inhabited, according to planning department officials.
Plumas County planners are developing a new zoning designation to accommodate Sierra Pacific's request to remove 7,826 acres of timberlands from its 10-year contract.
The proposed timber forestry zone would not change the parcel sizes or permitted uses, but it would separate the land use issues from the contract issues, said Jim Graham, interim assistant planning director.
"Timber companies are interested in starting the clock. They can't do anything without that," he said.
The Sierra Pacific rezone requests come at a time when the nation is losing more than a million acres of timberlands annually. By 2050, forests that now cover an area larger Maine will be converted to some form of development, according to a Forest Service study.
Despite the recent approvals to rezone 18,839 acres in four counties, Sierra Pacific has added more than 57,000 acres to the state timber production program, said Twight. The net increase reflects the company's commitment to long-term management of forests as forests, he said.
