http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/metropolitan/97/09/13/rally.30.html

Actor assumes new role during Maxxam rally

By BILL DAWSON

Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle Environment Writer

It was 10 minutes into Friday's rally against Houstonbased Maxxam's
redwoodlogging practices, and the organizer was still looking around
for Woody Harrelson, her star speaker.

"I don't know where he is," said Kelli Komiss, coordinator of the
Houston Coalition for Headwaters.

As it turned out, the actor and environmental activist who has made the
fight to preserve Maxxam's Headwaters Forest in California one of his
causes, had been meeting with company officials in their offices a few
blocks away.

"They were nice enough guys human beings and I enjoyed talking
with them," Harrelson said after arriving at the rally.

"We definitely seem to see things from completely different
perspectives. They look at things from a financial bottom line, and we
look at the need to preserve what is irreplaceable"

Headwaters is the last oldgrowth redwood forest in private hands, and
environmentalists like those at the rally have been campaigning to
preserve 60,000 acres of it. In a still unrealized deal with state and
federal officials, Maxxam has agreed to sell 5,600 acres for a preserve,
and says it has no wish to sell more.

A mass rally by environmentalists, planned for Sunday in Northern
California near company land, also will be based on the 60,000acre
demand. But Harrelson said he doubts a preserve that big will be
created, given the cost.

For 5,600 acres, Maxxam would receive 8,000 acres of timberland plus
$300 million in cash and other considerations from the government, but
Congress has yet to fund the pact.

Harrelson stressed he has no right to negotiate with the company on
behalf of environmental groups who disagree with each other on the
issue. But he suggested they might be able to find common ground, then
have facetoface talks with Maxxam and "work out something reasonable."

One idea he and his attorney, also at the meeting, suggested to Maxxam
was that it stop cutting all trees more than 150 years old, Harrelson
said.

He had wanted to meet Charles Hurwitz, Maxxam's chief, but Hurwitz was
said to be out of town.

"Very senior" company officials did meet with the actor and his
attorney, Maxxam spokesman Bob Irelan said. They included the company's
secondranking officer and chief legal officer.

Irelan said the onehour session was "very constructive" and "very
cordial."

"They expressed their concerns, had some suggestions, a lot of good
questions," he said. "We tried to make clear what we do, why we do it."

Irelan said "further contacts" with Harrelson and his attorney, Tom
Ballanco, are possible. Ballanco said he will again seek a meeting with
Hurwitz.

The Maxxam spokesman offered no indication, however, that more
discussions could change the company's position on the Headwaters issue.

The pending agreement with government officials is "a win win for all
concerned," Irelan said, and Maxxam has "compromised a great deal."

A short distance away, protesters were shouting slogans like "green, not
greed" in front of the Maxxam offices at San Felipe and Augusta, where
they had marched from a nightclub parking lot.

About 150 had convened at the club for a colorful gathering replete with
music, speeches, costumes and signs. Komiss announced that the
participants were struggling to protect ancient redwoods for future
generations, and Harrelson urged them to boycott redwood products "and
hit Hurwitz where it hurts, in the pocketbook."

More protesters joined the crowd as it marched about a mile to Maxxam
headquarters, producing a throng of more than 200. Marchers occupied the
two northbound lanes of Augusta, although police said a permit to walk
in the street had been denied.

Officers were tolerant, however, and made no arrests. Rally sponsors had
handed out a "nonviolence code" to participants, and the event went off
peacefully, if loudly.

Some passing motorists honked and waved to show their support, and a few
office workers joined in the applause from their vantage points in a
plaza near the building Maxxam shares with other occupants.

Harrelson spent much of the time signing autographs.