By Stephen Smoot
Back in May 1999, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and others celebrated a lawsuit against Allegheny Wood Products. An environmentalist blog made light of the situation and possible impact under the title “Squirrels and Bats Sue Logger.”
The following post in the blog started with “It must feel ridiculous to get sued by a squirrel!”
The suit centered around AWP’s logging of land in Tucker County, and the environmentalists’ desire to create a Blackwater Canyon National Park. Environmentalists campaigning on the issue did far more than one of their stated goals, “to make John Crites look ridiculous.”
It alleged that that “AWP’s activities in the Blackwater Canyon will harm three federally listed endangered species — the Virginia northern flying squirrel, the Indiana bat, the Virginia big-eared bat — and one threatened species — the Cheat Mountain salamander. The complaint also alleges that AWP’s activities within the Blackwater Canyon will harm essential habitat for the four species.”
Now neither the park, nor AWP, exists. Hundreds of workers now find themselves looking for work while contractors whose work supported operations now scramble for work.
In 2008, AWP started the process of obtaining an “incidental taking permit” from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. This permit required the creating of a “habitat conservation plan,” or HCP, as one of four steps to obtaining a waiver to operate in the region, which by then was said to have seven endangered species living within.
The next year, AWP sold 55,000 acres of lands, some of which may be in Pendleton County, to The Forestland Group LLC. Most of these acres were in the Cheat Canyon area of Preston County. AWP did not sell their holdings near Blackwater Canyon.
AWP in its suit claimed that the USFWS “rejected its application as statutorily incomplete after the application remained in a ‘perpetual administrative limbo’ for sixteen years.”
Additionally, AWP alleged that “it submitted multiple drafts of the HCP to the Service over the years, but that the agency was overall unresponsive or delayed in providing feedback and comments.”
U.S. Fish and Wildlife contended that AWP remained resistant to the process and failed to act on its suggestions to make the HCP “legally defensible.” It furthermore stated that AWP “did not provide sufficient information on the covered activities for the Service to fulfill its responsibility to adequately assess the impacts to the covered species – an issue the Service has previously identified to AWP in prior drafts.”
Thomas Kleeh, chief judge of the Northern District of West Virginia, found for the defendant in the case, which was USFWS. His opinion stated that AWP’s “complaint and amended complaints are dismissed with prejudice.”
His ruling came two weeks before the company’s closure later in the month.
AWP was hit with another environmentalist protest against a proposed logging fumigation center near Baker in Hardy County. AWP had received a permit from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to release 10 tons of a substance called methyl bromide per year as part of the process.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency allows that the substance dissipates quickly upon release, but such assurances did not quiet opposition from residents, elected officials, and other parts of local government.
Use of the substance requires adherence to strict federal regulations.
Fumigation kills possible biological contaminants in logs before they are exported overseas, an essential part of the former company’s market. AWP withdrew the request in May of 2023 in the knowledge that, should they have wished to construct the plant elsewhere in the state, they would have to start the permitting process over again.
Thomas Plaugher, vice president of operations for the former AWP, provided a written statement last year when the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee held a hearing at AWP’s Petersburg facility.
He stated that “in late 2021, demand for our products returned. We improved and restarted one of the mills that we had closed in 2019. We have a plan in motion for improvements to be completed and the second mill to be re-started in mid-2023.”
Plaugher added that workforce availability issues, widely believed to have been caused in part by too many stimulus checks issued during COVID, hampered AWP’s rebound. They also forced the shuttering of a number of contractors in the industry that had operated in a support role.
After Joe Biden assumed the presidency, he shut down key infrastructure and oil leases, causing the price of gasoline to leap tremendously over the historic lows of the Donald Trump presidency. This forced companies to charge higher prices or adjust their level of service.
The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee said in 2022 that “skyrocketing gas prices will now cost the average American household an extra $2,800 per year. Just this year, families will spend $5,000 on gas, a 78 percent increase from a year ago.”
Plaugher shared that “increased diesel fuel and oil cost hamper our industry at every link in the chain. From the logging and trucking contractors to the forklifts and loaders we operate, to the cost to ship our finished products. Every aspect of manufacturing is hampered by this.”
Also, overall, Plaugher shared that “regulatory agencies have ramped up attempts to come out with new initiatives and requirements that hamper permitting and place more burdens on small business at every turn.”
