Monitor Rafael A. Rios was asked by U.S. District Judge Carmen Consuelo Vargas de Cerezo in San Juan to com ment on the proposed accord between PRASA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before the court reaches a decision as to whether the pact is to be ratified.

PRASA, a Commonwealth govern ment agency, was fined $32 million in May last year by the U.S. District Court for its failure to fulfill an agreement to upgrade the system so as to comply with provisions of the U.S. Clean Water Act.

In his 25-page motion filed with the court, Rios said the proposal, while concentrating exclusively on construction of new facilities and finances, fails to address problems related to operations and maintenance.

Ríos was also critical of the proposal's definition of the term "completion." He recalled that, in the early 1980s, PRASA built regional plants which lacked both the trunk sewers which would bring them influents, and the ocean outfalls which had been designed for effluents. The plants were completed, but they were useless, he said.

Rios asked the court to consider rede fining "completion" as signifying "when the facilities are completed and in bene ficial use." He also said the proposed agreement gives PRASA more time than it requires to complete facilities which are to be built.

have heard, read, and seen so many
jokes about El Yunque recently that
if Bob Hope were to live for another
eighty years he would not have time
to tell them all. One joke is that the U.S.
Forest Service wants to deforest (defor-
est: to remove forests) El Yunque. For
one thing. I never knew that the Forest
Service was involved in deforestation. I
thought it was the other way around.

Back in 1983 the U.S. Forest Service
had a proposal for a silvicultural project
on some 5,800 acres of land on the lower
fringes around El Yunque which went to
public hearings, in both languages, all
over Puerto Rico. The only group to
comment on this was the Puerto Rico
Natural History Society with about fif-
teen letters, all of which were taken into
account by the Forest Service in its final
document.

The project involves the silvicultural
use of 5,800 acres of land which were
purchased by the Forest Service back in
1931. 1935 and 1943. Two thirds to three
quarters of these 5.800 acres were bare
lands and/or had been farmed at the time
of purchase. About a third of these lands
were planted to mahogany, which is not a
species of the primary forest. Another
third was thinned of roble and ausubo,
woods which are not considered very
valuable and are not part of the primary
forest either, and the other third, which
was primarily tabonuco and ausubo (not
of the primary forest either) was lightly

In the 1940s and 50s, there were tre-
mendous numbers of timber sales there:
about 2,000. Woods from these lands were
processed for charcoal at hundreds, yes
hundreds, of carboneras (charcoal ovens).
Many farmers also came here to buy
posts. And el Yunque was still green then,
is still green now, and my crystal ball
tells me it will still be green in the future.
Because, you see, what the Forest Service
is talking about is not El Yunque all. It is
the lower fringes around El Yunque,
which were not a forest nor part of the
forest when the Forest Service bought
them. These lands are a forest now and,
from the air, they seem continuous with
and indistinguishable from the lower
Yunque forest, in spite of the logging and
the cutting that has been carried out
almost continuously since the Forest Ser-
vice started planting and managing them.

When happens is that most of the
ecological experts that participate in the
public furor about these issues seem to
forget that trees are born, that trees
grow, that trees grow old, and that trees
die. They seem to believe that trees are
one-shot deals, put there at the time of
creation, and that if you chop down a tree
the whole universe will have lost a tree
forever. To them, trees cannot be planted.
To them, forests cannot be managed;
wood is not a gift of nature to man.

Silvicultural management, as has been
carried out in these lands around El
Yunque for decades, implies cutting only
those trees which are over 18 inches in

diameter. This, alas, gives younger trees
a chance to grow. (Don't tell anybody, but,
in nature, trees kill trees.) The trees to be
cut are marked by the Forest Service. If
there are five marked trees in a row, you
only cut two and leave three. By liberat-
ing small trees you can reach sustained
yields. Sustained yield means the level of
management that allows you to have a
yield year after year without harming the
forest resource. Yes, you can cut trees
and save the forest. That's what forestry
is all about. If the trees that you plant
mature in 30 years, trees that were
planted in the 1950s are now mature. You
can

manage the forest in a 15-year
cycle, as in the Forest service proposal,
and still keep your forest. This means
cutting four to five trees per acre, and in
the forest there are hundreds of trees per
acre.

So, you see, silvicultural management
is one thing, deforestation is quite anoth-
er. What is meant as silvicultural man-
agement has been halled publicly as
deforestation. What is proposed for lands
in the lower fringes of El Yunque has
been hailed publicly as taking place in El
Yunque itself. Slight geographic and topo-
graphic miscalculation that suits political
hysteria. Facts don't help at this stage.

Another joke is that the Forest Service
is into the logging business. This is a very
good joke, because it brings with it the
stigma of commercial sales and the pros-
titution of profit. Commerce is always
sinful! The fact is, and I've already said

that facts don't help at his point, that the
Forest Service sells trees on the stump.
This means that the tree marke for
cutting is sold while the tree is still alive
and standing. If there is no buyer, the tree
is not cut.

Another joke is that the U.S. Army and
the Defense Department are behind this.
This joke is almost as good as the one
about ther submarine base in Phospho-
rescent Bay when the Parguera Sanctu-
ary was the issue, or the transfer of
Guantanamo Base to the proposed voice
of America site near Boquerón. Facts did
not help there either, nor did they help in
the Cartagena/Tortuguero offer made by
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that
was turned down because only we Puerto
Ricans can wisely manage our resources.
Is that right? The fact is (facts again')
that the Army once used El Yunque as
training ground and the Forest Service
stopped them. Too much damage.

Another joke is that the U.S. Forest
Service and the local government have
reached an agreement to the effect that
no more trees will be cut in or around El
Yunque. If forests are to be managed, it is
a mistake not to cut trees. If trees cannot
be cut, forests cannot be managed. Maybe
someone should read the agreement
again.

In my 30 years as an ecologist I have
yet to see an ecological issue in Puerto
Rico that is publicly discussed in an
objective, factual, and scientific basis.
Once it turns political, facts are no help

at all.

1 Yunque is in the news again. You see, what
happens here is that Puerto Rico's superpatriots
can't stand to have anything worth having in
gringo hands. No need to say that whatever it is
that is worth having is probably worthwhile precisely
because it is in gringo hands and that if it were in local
hands it would get botched up, but this truth always gets
me into trouble and attracts toward me the ire of our
superpatriots. My problem, they say, is that I think
Puerto Rican entities are somehow inferior adminstra-
tors or managers of public resources. Their problem is
that, under the present state of affairs, they know I'm
right. Please note that I said Puerto Rican entities. Not
just Puerto Ricans. Let's look at the record.

Our superpatriots don't want the Federal Courts in
Puerto Rico because the courts might look after drinking
water quality according to federal water quality stan-
dard and we might lose out on some of that "normal"
Puerto Rican pathological feature called gastroenteritis,
formerly diarrhea, or because the courts might look after
sewage treatment facilities according to federal stan-
dards and levy fines upon the agency that mismanages
them or lets them dump partially treated sewage into the
environment and into our water supplies and therefore
affect our drinking water quality, or because a media
circus like Ciudad Cristiana blew up in the face of some

pretty prominent cabinet members and government
officials when they could not prove in federal court their
politico-environmental hoax; or because the federal
courts might meddle into our prison system and levy
fines upon the local government for not having brought
the prison up to snuff, or because they might not go along
with the irresponsible foot-dragging regarding the back
pay, owed the 23 Mora employees who were dismissed
because they were of the wrong political color or simply
because the federal court might help soine Puerto Ricans
right a wrong commited against them by the local
government. How utterly, utterly embarrassing those
federal courts might be, even though it is Puerto Rican
judges who administer federal law. Maybe some Puerto
Ricans can call it right after all.

Regarding the environment, our superpatriots don't
want any federal meddling either. Not at the Parguera
Sanctuary boondoggle; not at the defunct Tortuguero-
Joyuda Fish and Wildlife conservation proposal; not with
the island's exclusion from the coastal barriers clause in
the Coastal Zone Management Program. In short, our
superpatriots will go along only with the absolute
disappearance of federal intervention and oversight
anywhere and everywhere on this island. Associated
Republic, here we come! Now we want El Yunque. The
Senate is holding hearings to see how we can lay our

The San Juan Star

Friday, December 4, 1987.

By MAXIMO CERAME VIVAS

hands on the only well-managed tropical forest on the
island. There are now about 14 other forests in local
government hands, but best not to say anything about the
management (?) of those.

Let me tell the Senate a secret. Hey, Senate, the
transfer of El Yunque to the local government is a major
Ecological Action. Yes, Senate. Placed in the hands of the
same group that manages (?) our 14 other forests, it woud
strongly imply the degradation or the mismanagement of
a World Biosphere Reserve.

And, hey, Senate, by law a major action requires an
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Yes. By law, you,
Senate, have to prepare an EIS before you seek to
transfer El Yunque from where it is well-managed, at no
expense to us, to where it might be well-managed,
costing us. Why do you, Senate, want this transfer? Give
us a good reason other that mere superpatriotic chauvin-
istic machismo. If you did not know that you had to file
an EIS for any major action, specifically legislation
toward the transfer and endangerment of El Yunque, I
am now telling you. And if you want some further proof
or reassurance, I'll ask the federal court to tell you. And,
Senate, by law I want to look at the EIS. So, before you go
on with this superpatriotic chauvinistic machismo re-
garding El Yunque, get your legal act together. Hate to
tell you!

OFICIALES del Servicio Forestal de Estados Unidos en Puerto Rico cuestionaron la capacidad económica del gobierno estatal para administrar adecuadamente los terrenos federales de El Yunque.

Al discutir algunos aspectos del propuesto traspaso del Bosque Nacional del Caribe al gobierno del Estado Libre Asociado (ELA), incluido en la definición de estatus del Partido Popular Democrático, la preocupación principal de varios empleados administrativos de El Yunque se basó en que limitaciones económicas del gobierno local provoquen daños a los recursos naturales existentes en la zona.

Lauren Huffaker, administrador interino del bosque, que está bajo la jurisdicción federal desde principios de siglo-, dijo a la Agencia EFE que actualmente contemplan invertir sobre $14 millones en proyectos de mejoras para el bosque.

Indicó que para la administración y mantenimiento del parque, localizado en la Sierra de Luquillo, el gobierno federal dispone de $1.4 millones Ianuales y de más de dos millones para la división de investigación cientifica.

Huffaker reconoció como legitimo el reclamo de algunos sectores políticos para que El Yunque pase a manos del gobierno estatal y sólo cuestionó si un nuevo equipo administrativo se comprometerá a continuar el millonario modelo de desarrollo planificado por los federales.

LOS PLANES del gobierno federal incluyen la construcción de un centro para visitantes denominado "El Portal de El Yunque", instalaciones para adiestramiento cientifico y el inicio de un programa de recuperación para especies en peligro de extinción.

Durante las vistas celebradas el pasado jueves y viernes en el Congreso estadounidense en torno al destino político de los puertorriqueños, el senador James McClure objeto el traspaso de los terrenos federales del fortin El Morro a la jurisdicción estatal, incluido en el documento definitorio del ELA del Partido Popular Democrático.

Aunque no se discutió en las vistas, la solicitud del traspaso de El Yunque a jurisdicción del gobierno de Puerto Rico también está incluida en la misma disposición cuestionada por McClure, por lo que se presume que este reclamo sea igualmente objetado.

José Lefebre Báez, supervisor de mantenimiento oriundo de Santurce y que trabaja hace 35 años en El Yunque opinó que un traspaso administrativo en estos momentos no sería beneficioso para el bosque ni para el público debido a las limitaciones económicas por las que atraviesa el gobierno.

"AUNQUE en el gobierno estatal hay de sobra talento para administrar este bosque en toda su capacidad, dudo que algunos politicos hayan pensado tal vez seriamente en los fondos necesarios para desarrollar el trabajo realizado actualmente", apuntó Lefebre Báez.

El 90 por ciento de los 120 empleados que laboran en El Yunque son puertorriqueños, según Huffaker.

Por su parte, otro oficial administrativo que solicitó el anonimato expresó a la Agencia EFE que "algunos sectores políticos quieren aunar el bosque para ganancia partidista y no están pensando en el beneficio y bienestar del pueblo". Agregó que "aunque el bosque es administrado por el gobierno federal esto no quiere decir que no es de Puerto Rico ni pertenece a la gente de la Isla".

En un documento preparado por el oficiales del Departamento de Agricultura federal en Puerto Rico se menciona que los líderes politicos tienen una percepción equivocada sobre las metas del servicio forestal.