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# A Letter to Georgia-Pacific the City Kept Confidential for Nearly 12 Years
- URL: https://www.mendolocal.news/a-letter-to-georgia-pacific-the-city-kept-confidential-for-nearly-12-years/
- Published: 2026-08-24T15:13:37.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-24T15:15:44.000Z
- Description: The two-page letter was written to end a lawsuit. But its most important passage concerns the contaminated water body at the center of the town's fight over its coastline, and what the city told the company it would, and would not, ask the state to do about it.
- Author: Elise Cox
- Tags: Fort Bragg, Mendo Local enterprise

On Sept. 10, 2014, the City of Fort Bragg sent a letter to Georgia-Pacific, the company whose lumber mill left a legacy of contamination on the coastal bluffs at the edge of town.

The two-page letter, signed by then-Mayor Dave Turner and addressed to a Georgia-Pacific senior vice president, was written to end a lawsuit. But its most important passage concerns Pond 8 — the old Mill Pond, the contaminated water body at the center of the town's fight over its coastline — and what the city told the company it would, and would not, ask the state to do about it.

Georgia-Pacific was worried, the letter acknowledges, that once "the threat of litigation is removed, the City will urge the Department of Toxic Substances Control to require active remediation in Pond 8." Turner offered reassurance. "I am informed by the City Manager that neither she nor the City's consultants anticipate that active remediation should or will be required in Pond 8 but that some monitoring may be required," the letter reads.

"The City does not intend to advocate for a remedial action that is more extensive than required by the scientific and engineering evaluation of the site," the letter states. And then the letter's most striking line: "While the Remedial Action Plan for OU-E has not yet been prepared, as of today, we understand that neither science, engineering nor the public interest require active remediation of Pond 8."

Though Turner is the sole signatory, the text makes clear he had the council's full backing. "The City Council accepted this recommendation and authorized me to send this letter conveying it." At the same time, the letter is careful to note the limits of the council's approval. "Please understand that I cannot bind future City Councils, and I can only speak with regard to the facts as we know them today," Turner wrote.

The offer itself was a mutual walk-away — each side would dismiss its claims against the other, with prejudice, and each would pay its own legal costs. In October 2014, that is what happened.

The letter carried two stacked headers — "CONFIDENTIAL MEDIATION COMMUNICATION" and "CONFIDENTIAL SETTLEMENT COMMUNICATION (FED. R. EVID. 408)" — and for nearly 12 years its text stayed out of public view.

A lawsuit by Mendocino Railway forced it into the open. The Skunk Train operator bought the mill site from Georgia-Pacific in 2021, and, together with Sierra Northern Railway, is now suing the city in federal court over who should pay to clean up the site. In February 2026 the railways subpoenaed Georgia-Pacific for the 2014 letter. The city fought to keep it from being produced, asserting a mediation privilege that Georgia-Pacific itself never claimed. Georgia-Pacific declined to comment for this story.

On July 6, 2026, U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar ordered Fort Bragg to turn the letter over. But Tigar let the city produce it under a protective order — meaning the document would be stamped "confidential" and handed to the plaintiffs' attorneys directly, seen by the railways' lawyers but shielded from the public.

The letter would have remained hidden from view, but on Aug. 10, 2026, the City Council voted unanimously in closed session to release it outright. The letter was provided to *MendoLocal.News* upon our request with a written statement.

In that statement, the city framed the release as a matter of transparency and played down the letter's significance. "In response to public interest in the 2014 letter, the City Council authorized the release in the interest of transparency," the city said. "The letter was written in the context of settlement discussions with Georgia-Pacific nearly twelve years ago and reflected the information available to the City at that time."

The city stressed what the letter does not say: "Importantly, the letter does not state that the City accepted responsibility for contamination or cleanup of the Mill Ponds. It specifically acknowledged that future City Councils could not be bound and that decisions regarding remediation would need to be based on the scientific and engineering information available."

The city argued the document changes nothing: "The letter does not materially change the City's current position or the ongoing legal and environmental issues surrounding the Mill Ponds."

Two of those claims are reflected in the letter's own text. The letter admits no liability, names no dollar figure, and does not accept responsibility for the contamination, and it states plainly that it "cannot bind future City Councils."

Here's what has changed since the letter was written. In 2014, the city told Georgia-Pacific that it did not expect Pond 8 to need active cleanup and would not push the state's toxics regulator to require one — an assurance offered five years before the engineering study of the pond existed.

Three years later, the city's public position reversed. Georgia-Pacific saw it coming: on Nov. 16, 2017, a company senior vice president warned the council in writing that petitioning DTSC would put the city in "breach" of the settlement. The city didn't blink.

Eleven days later, on Nov. 27, 2017, the council voted 5-0, on Turner's own motion, to adopt a resolution asking DTSC to require the thorough cleanup the 2014 letter had called unnecessary.

Georgia-Pacific never sued.

A 2019 feasibility study prepared for Georgia-Pacific by its own consultants, and submitted to the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, the agency overseeing the cleanup, selected monitoring and land-use controls for Pond 8 rather than active excavation — roughly the outcome predicted by the 2014 letter. Dioxin and one metal remain above unrestricted-use levels, and the site carries permanent land-use covenants, underscoring that it has not received a clean bill of health.

Two years later, the mill site itself changed hands, passing to Mendocino Railway. The railways' 2024 lawsuit now pleads that cleaning the Mill Pond could cost $10 million to $50 million. While the remedy is still undecided, the fight over who will pay is moving toward trial: a 20-day jury trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 2, 2028, in federal court in Oakland.