The Forestry Corporation has been fined thousands of dollars over erosion caused by clear-felling near Coffs Harbour.

The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) said harvesting of a native forest plantation in the Tuckers Nob State Forest saw a huge amount of sediment wash into the Never Never Creek.

The EPA's regional manager Brett Nudd said not enough attention was paid to likely rainfall and soil loss during the logging, which ran from September 2014 until February this year.

"That activity involved whole scale removal of the vegetation, and exposed 95 hectares of land," he said.

"There was a significant rainfall event that resulted in a significant volume of sediment being discharged into the Never Never Creek.

"The EPA conducted an investigation and has recently issued Forestry Corporation with a $15,000 penalty notice.

"The EPA investigation concluded that the erosion controls that were implemented were inadequate and that there was inappropriate or insufficient attention paid to the level of risk posed by the works at that time of year.

"Obviously significant rainfall events happen on the coast quite often at that time of the year."

'A slap on the wrist' is how the North Coast Environment Council (NCEC) is describing the penalty notice.

The Environment Council spokeswoman Susie Russell says a $15,000 fine will not prevent similar events.

"These kind of fines don't have a big impact," she said.

"We want to see some transparency around the negotiations between the EPA and Forestry that are going to open up our forests to clear felling.

"We don't want to see licence conditions made into guidelines which allows them to be optional and pollution events just become an unfortunate collateral damage from doing business."

Ms Russell said the EPA would never have known about the logging problem if local residents had not raised the alert after pollution was spotted in the creek at the Never Never picnic ground.

"To do that right next to a public amenity area is of course a particularly stupid thing," she said.

"But this kind of thing is happening right across the region and is not being picked up by the EPA.

"What is of more concern is that the EPA is currently in negotiations with the Forestry Corporation to allow it to conduct major clear-fells of native forest right across the Mid North Coast."