The ad, which says "cypress mulch production is destroying the coastal forests that protect America's Gulf Coast from hurricanes and flooding," also urges Lowe's, Wal-Mart and Home Depot stores to stop selling the mulch.
"These cypress systems were natural barriers for hurricanes, and those systems were taken down for short-term greed, and they're continuing to be taken down today," Kennedy said during a news conference at City Park, where more than 160 leaders of Waterkeeper organizations across the country were picnicking during their annual conference in New Orleans.
Just before the news conference, the New Orleans City Council passed a resolution urging the city's Parks and Parkways Department and city purchasing officials to avoid buying or using cypress mulch in city projects and to give preference to alternatives such as pine bark and pine straw.
The resolution, introduced by Councilwoman Shelley Midura and approved 5-0, also called on large retailers like the ones listed in the Waterkeeper ad to stop selling cypress mulch and to support "a sustainable Louisiana coast." Similar resolutions have been passed by the St. Tammany Parish Council and the Covington City Council.
Waterways activist
Kennedy -- the son of Robert F. Kennedy Sr., the former U.S. attorney general and senator who was slain in 1968 -- has focused much of his career on cleaning up the Hudson River since leaving his position as a state prosecutor in New York in the early 1980s. In 1984, he helped Hudson fishers form Riverkeeper, which began filing lawsuits against companies believed responsible for the river's environmental problems. With Kennedy's help, the organization forced more than $1 billion in cleanups and damage payments along the river.
Since then, more than 160 similar organizations have been formed on rivers, lakes and other waterways across the nation to fight pollution and other environmental issues. Each has its own patrol boat, paid staffer and access to attorneys such as Kennedy. Two such groups -- Atchafalaya Basinkeeper and Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper -- operate in Louisiana and have adopted the fight against cypress logging as one of their major targets.
During the news conference, Kennedy criticized U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., for his past support of changes in federal pollution regulations that would allow loggers to fell more cypress trees around Lake Maurepas.
"He's the mastermind behind this insanity," Kennedy said of Vitter.
"(Vitter says) we're going to treat the planet as if it's a business in liquidation," he said in characterizing the senator's stance. "We're going to convert our natural resources to cash as quickly as possible, and have a few years of pollution-based prosperity and make a few people rich by making everybody else in the region poor."
He's crazy, Vitter says
Vitter fired back a prepared statement denouncing Kennedy as "crazy." without addressing the substance of the cypress logging controversy.
"Fighting Ted Kennedy this week over the immigration amnesty bill, I thought he was the craziest leftist in the family. But he obviously has some serious competition," Vitter's statement said. "At least Ted voted for our (water resources) bill recently, which included unprecedented help with coastal restoration thanks to my work and amendments in committee." Pressed for comment on the cypress logging issue, Vitter spokesman Joel Digrado said, "I believe he wants his statement to stand as is."
The controversy over cypress logging has been raging in Louisiana since 2002, when a landowner was ordered by the Army Corps of Engineers to stop logging on property next to Lake Maurepas because he had failed to get a permit. Much of the logging would be illegal because the method used caused the release of sediment and the filling of wetlands with roads made of logs, a violation of federal law, the corps said. Corps officials suggested the landowner try a different method that uses helicopters to remove individual trees after they are cut, rather than the building of log roads for trucks through the wetland areas.
Scientists studying cypress growth around the lake said current logging methods also would exacerbate erosion in the area and add to the saltwater intrusion problems that were blocking new cypress trees from growing in the area.
Vitter tried to step in to help the logging industry but so far has failed. After that landowner and several others failed to get a permit from the corps for additional logging in the area, the Louisiana Forestry Association asked Vitter to get the law changed to allow logging in such wetland areas. Vitter added the provision to a 2005 Senate bill containing authorizations for water projects, including the corps and state proposal to build $1.9 billion in coastal restoration projects.
But he was forced to strip the measure from the bill after some senators said it would force them to vote against the bill. As it turned out, that year's version of the Water Resources Development Act didn't pass anyway. A new version of the bill without the Vitter amendment now awaits final approval by a House-Senate conference committee.
Surge claims disputed
In Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, state officials also have focused on the potential of cypress forests to reduce storm surge, and have agreed to spend almost $19 million over four years to buy conservation easements on cypress forestland, or buy the land itself, and to plant cypress in a number of coastal areas. In response to the Waterkeeper ad and Kennedy's comments, the Forestry Association called concerns about cypress logging overblown, and it also disputes contentions that cutting down trees around Lake Maurepas will increase the amount of storm surge from a major hurricane moving inland toward Baton Rouge or other communities.
"None of the cypress that's harvested is harvested in unsustainable areas," association Executive director Buck Vandersteen said. "People need to realize that when they purchase bags of mulch, it comes from sustainably managed areas and has no effect on coastal storm surges."
Indeed, Vandersteen said U.S. Forest Service statistics indicate that fewer trees were harvested in 2005 than in 2001, and at the same time the size of the state's cypress forests increased by 10 percent.
Vandersteen also said the negative ad campaign, if successful, could backfire on environmentalists by forcing landowners to abandon growing cypress trees in favor of some other kind of development that would provide a better economic return.
He agreed with Kennedy that incentives such as tax breaks or conservation easements that pay landowners not to cut down their trees might be a useful tool for protecting some areas.
"But there's not enough money out there to buy all the cypress forestland for public use," he said. "And the dollars will stretch farther if we encourage private management. The best way to do that is to give the landowners a market for the trees they're currently growing."
That provides them an incentive to make sure new trees replace those harvested, he said.
Equally helpful, Vandersteen said, is the development of salt-tolerant baldcypress trees that can be planted in areas where traditional cypress strains have not been able to reproduce.
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Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3327.