Letter from Georgia Pacific sent to North Coast Action

March 27, 2003

Dear North Coast Action,

I was able to watch the videotape of your March 4 meeting and wanted to bring you up to date on what Georgia-Pacific is doing regarding our mill site property.

First, please know that GP is pleased to know that citizens such as yourself take an active interest in their community and are concerned with helping it grow and thrive in the future. We appreciate the efforts of North Coast Action to gather input and ideas for improving the City of Fort Bragg and look forward to learning more details about specific suggestions and thoughts that emerge from your work.

Second, as we’ve demonstrated in the past, GP is ready and willing to work with the community. While we’ve kept the City of Fort Bragg informed of our progress with regard to the mill closure, we have not attended public meetings to this point. Developing a specific plan for this mill site property is a daunting task, and we have been working to formulate the steps in that process.

I am happy to inform you that we have taken the first of those steps. We have retained the services of a multidisciplinary team with expertise in land use and environmental planning, as well as engineering, economic and other disciplines. In late April and May, we will meet with the City staff to discuss an overall schedule and to identify key steps in the planning process. We will also identify additional opportunities for community input as we move forward.

If it is agreeable with you and NCA, we’d like to have some GP staff and members of our planning team attend your May 20 meeting to listen to community input. That will be especially timely, as our planning team will just be starting their studies in May and June.

Please feel free to contact me any time.

Sincerely,

Melodie Ruse
Communications Manager

cc: City of Fort Bragg