By TOM KELLY
Editor and Publisher

Resisting what they view as unacceptable encroachments inherent in new Texas State law, and implications of the international movement toward "Green Certification" for forest products, a coalition of East Texas farm and forest landowners have set a meeting at 6:30 p.m. in Lufkin on March 14, to renew public support for private property rights.

Billed as the "Pineywoods Agricultural Producers Rally," at the Lufkin Civic Center, 601 N. Second, the public rally is sponsored by the Texas Farm Bureau, Texas Logging Council, Texas Forestry Association, poultry and cattle raisers, and private landowners in East Texas who support property rights.

In separate interviews, Nolan Alders, private landowner from Nacogdoches County, Bob Currie, executive director of the Texas Logging Council, and John Bradley, a Northeast Texas logging contractor and past Logging Council president, all told The Piney Woods Journal that they hope to see 2,000 to 3,000 people at the rally. They specifically invited Louisiana and other regional forest landowners, farmers, and others interested in private property rights to attend and support the movement.

Two nationally known speakers will address the rally, according to Alders, an organizer representing the Texas Farm Bureau. Dr. Michael Coffman, a New England based author and student of the environmental movement, will address green certification. He is founder of Environmental Perspectives, and produces a monthly newsletter, "Discerning the Times Digest," commenting on national and global political issues.

Dan Byfield, a Texan, will speak on the new State law which took effect in January, authorizing the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission (TNRCC) to engage private citizens to gather evidence for presentation in court in environmental cases pursued by the TNRCC. Byfield is president of the American Land Foundation, and Liberty Matters, two non-profit organizations dedicated to protection of constitutional principles, free enterprise, and property rights, according to information furnished by Mr. Alders.

"If we lose the right to manage our property, whether it be growing timber, raising chickens, crops, or whatever Texas demands, because of extreme environmental movements or absurd regulatory programs, the state of the economy in Texas will be threatened," Alders said.

Under the new Texas law, according to information to The Piney Woods Journal from the rally organizers and supporters, the TNRCC is given authority to train private citizens in the basics of enrivonmental regulations, and empower them to report evidence anonymously and have that evidence used in court by TNRCC in compliance enforcement and penalty cases.

This amounts to "neighbors spying on neighbors," according to both Alders and Currie in separate statements, and is not in keeping with traditional American property rights values and due process.

(The TNRCC is the regulatory equivalent of the Department of Environmental Quality - DEQ - in Louisiana, and the acronym was jokingly called "Train Wreck" by logger John Bradley, during an interview at his Jefferson, Texas business office recently.)

Alders told the Journal, "We aren't going to Lufkin to wave the Confederate flag" in a divisive confrontation. "We want to inform property owners of the potential threats to their private property rights, and to let our government representatives know that we are interested in what they do."

Currie, a resident of Kennard, a rural community about 20 miles west of Lufkin, is director of the Texas Logging Council, an affiliate of the Texas Forestry Association. Both groups are based in Lufkin, located about 60 miles west of Many, Louisiana across the Toledo Bend Reservoir, and the major city in the heart of the East Texas pine belt.

Currie told the Journal he does not view the Green Certification issue as equal in scope to that posed by the TMDL regulations which became a heated during the 2000 political climate. "That (TMDL) is still out there," he said, but the threat to forestry and agriculture operations has been abated and reasonable solutions are being sought by government regulators and industry.

However, Currie said, Green Certification has the potential for becoming the "mustard seed" that grows into a large tree. Using a metaphor from his background as a child of the Great Depression, and as a former Vocational Agriculture teacher, he said that government and social regulations governing use of private property have over time eroded these rights, "like the cow ate the grindrock - by degrees."

He said the cornerstone of the success of the American economy has been the right to own and manage private property and make a profit. Loss of that right by degrees will threaten the country's economy.

The marriage of sound economic policy, recognizing the necessity for private property rights and the profit motive, together with sound environmental stewardship policies are vital to the nation's health, Currie said. Neither should be pursued to the detriment of the other.

For specific information about the March 14 meeting, contact Texas Forestry Association at 936-632-8733, or Nolan Alders at 936-564-1096.

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