Officials at Sequoia Forest Industries walked through their Dinuba mill last week handing out lay-off notices to the entire staff. The announcement came less than a month after Clinton ordered the formation of a national monument that will halt commercial timber sales, mining and some recreational activities in the Sequoia National Forest, about 30 miles to the southeast. After the workers received their pink slips, someone nailed up a large hand-painted sign in front of the mill's office: "Clinton-Gore Closed This Business." "This is one of the most painful decisions our family has ever had to make," said mill owner Glen Duysen. "For most of our employees, these are the only jobs they've ever had." Dinuba is an agricultural town of about 15,000 surrounded by the orchards and fields of California's Central Valley. Besides the low-wage seasonal field work and school system jobs that require a college education, the lumber mill is one of the largest employers in town. Clinton's plan is intended to protect the forest habitats surrounding the giant sequoia redwoods that measure up to 80 feet in diameter. The trees are some of the oldest living things in the world. The Duysen family has two mills, where towering industrial machinery reduces massive trees to two-by-fours for California's booming housing markets. They take about 40 percent of their lumber working in the newly created Sequoia National Monument, and the rest comes from the Sierra National Forest and private lands that are not included in the President's proclamation. While the other mill in Terra Bella, about an hour to the south, will remain open, Dinuba's layoffs begin in mid-July, and the mill will shut down completely by summer's end, said Sequoia Forest Industries general manager Gary Rogers. "In my mind, they traded our mill for the green vote in L.A. and San Francisco," Rogers said. But Clinton administration officials insist they left enough lumber on the 330,000 acre monument to support both mills until the laid-off employees can find new jobs. "It's unfortunate anytime somebody loses a job and we have acknowledged all along that there will be an impact on the timber harvest down the road," said Elliot Diringer, spokesman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "But we were very careful to ensure that there would be a sufficient supply for about 2 1/2 years," he said. Critics accuse Clinton of desperately seeking an environmental legacy on which to build his future aspirations and those of presidential candidate Al Gore. The declaration gave Clinton perhaps the best conservation record in the Lower 48 states since Theodore Roosevelt, generally regarded as the father of the national park system. Clinton already had carved out 2.8 million acres as federal monuments in Utah, Arizona and California. "This is not about locking lands up," the president said last month when he announced his decision. "It is about freeing them up for all Americans for all times." That's little comfort to mill workers like Mike Mitchell, a 30-year-old father who will be one of the first to go. He might find work at a giant cheese factory to be built in the next county, but that won't open for several years. For now, he despairs of finding anything nearby paying close to his current $10.56 an hour. "I'm worried the government is using a 100-year-old law as a political tool," Mitchell said, referring to the Antiquities Act that allows presidents to set aside national monuments without congressional approval. Gerald "Doc" Fennel, 65, has worked at the mill for the last 27 years and the money he earned here put all three of his daughters through college. He said he's probably too old to hire on somewhere else. "We can't do nothin' about it, he said, adding that the president's "gonna do what he's gonna do." --- On the Net: Natural Resources Defense Council:
The California Forest Products Commission:
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