Response to SJWC Mailer to Homes 9/24

NAIL Members and Residents,

Many of you may have received the latest attempt by San Jose Water Company to position themselves to you with regard to their logging plan. This single page mailer seeks to assure residents that the logging is a good thing, and that concerns raised by you and by NAIL are groundless.

Alleging that they are presenting the reader with "facts" the public relations writers of this piece attempt to play down or obscure the carefully researched information presented to you on September 11 by NAIL. The mailer states that they want "to give people the opportunity to know the facts before they make up their minds." NAIL believes the facts are very important, and here is one that SJWC did not tell you about in their mailer:

Given that to-date their plan still has not been submitted, there is no factual source to back up the claims made in their mailer. Without the true facts as submitted in their plan, the mailer you received serves no purpose except as a spin document designed to convince you that you need not be concerned.

Here is another fact that was not mentioned:

Once the plan is submitted and endures the review process, SJWC can change the plan, either because they have been required to do so by the reviewing agencies, or because they themselves decide to make changes.

Additionally, once a Non Industrial Timber Management Plan (NTMP) is approved, the submitter can still make changes afterwards. What SJWC is asking you to believe is the intent of their plan today holds no guarantee that the plan will not be altered many times in the future. And you won't know.

Despite SJWC's friendly assurance that this logging plan is a truly wonderful opportunity for our forests, our water quality, our property values and our personal environment, NAIL continues, with strong conviction, to stand behind the following:

- Cutting the big trees increases fire risk
- Logging will be harmful to the water supply
- We want no helicopter logging in our neighborhoods and we are a large neighborhood
- Logging trucks are dangerous, cause a high percentage of fatal accidents, and damage the roads
- These trees are 115 years old, and they need to be protected
- SJWC should use money from sources other than chopping down the tall trees to take care of the fire
protection efforts they should have managed on these acres years ago

- Show us The Plan

We hope you will continue to communicate with each other, with NAIL, and with your public representatives to express your opposition to SJWC's plan to make a redwood supermarket out of this beautiful and important land.

Sincerely,

NAIL Steering Committee

Terry Clark
September 25, 2005