Embattled Pacific Lumber Co. has announced plans to cut about 50 percent fewer trees over the next several years than it had hoped under the 1999 Headwaters Forest deal.

The sharply reduced timber harvests are blamed on regulatory constraints, restrictions Pacific Lumber says will significantly lessen gross revenues for the company. That in turn affects the company's ability to pay $50 million or more a year in interest-only payments on about $750 million in bonded debt.

As it is, the logging cutbacks could force more layoffs and sharply reduce company operations, which for more than a century have been the economic backbone of Humboldt County. Pacific Lumber's employment has plunged two-thirds from a high of 1,500 workers a decade ago.

Company spokesman Chuck Center declined Wednesday to elaborate on new details surrounding Pacific Lumber's mounting woes. They're contained in new filings with the federal Security and Exchange Commission.

The new information underscores the company's continuing struggles to stay afloat financially.

The documents show that Pacific Lumber may resort to extracting and selling gravel from the Eel and Van Duzen rivers to raise up to $3 million a year in new revenue.

The company has rights to extract up to 250,000 yards of gravel every year, but until now has primarily used the gravel for internal road construction needs.

In addition, Pacific Lumber said it intends to push ahead with rezoning of the historic mill town of Scotia - the last true company-owned town in the West - so it can begin to sell 300 homes in the final quarter of 2006.

Secrecy continues to shroud the company's attempts to renegotiate its way out of the high debt payments.

Talks with note holders faltered in late September, leading Pacific Lumber to publicly complain about public statements of lender representatives. Company executives threatened "to hold all parties liable for damages" if they could show that Pacific Lumber's refinancing bid had been undermined.

Note holders rejected the allegations.

Evan Flaschen, a Connecticut attorney representing 80 percent of the lenders, said Wednesday that note holders are in a "wait-and-see" mode.

In late September Flaschen said note holders would not oppose a bankruptcy filing by Pacific Lumber as long as an independent company emerges to control its 210,000 acres of North Coast timberlands.