Published: Saturday, July 23, 2011, 4:09 PM
Every Oregonian has a stake in the loss of federal payments to counties
and a court ruling that threatens the future of private forestry in the state
It's already tough out there in the Other Oregon, with double-digit unemployment and a housing market flat on its back. But if nothing is done to avert the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal timber payments or respond to a potentially devastating court ruling, it's going to get much worse.
The issues -- county payments, O&C lands, logging roads, the Clean Water Act -- may sound like none of your concern. But they are central to the Oregon economy and integral to school funding. And how they are resolved will shape the future of Oregon forests.
The federal program that sends several hundred million dollars annually to 33 Oregon counties and the state school fund will expire Sept. 30. This money isn't charity: The payments uphold the century-old obligation to rural areas where the federal government owns more than half the land, crimping local tax bases and economies.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and other lawmakers are fighting for an extension of county payments. At best they may win a couple of years of reduced payments. If the money is cut off, rural counties could plunge into insolvency. State Rep. Bruce Hanna, R-Roseburg, fears a cascade of counties failing and collapsing their neighbors under the weight of new obligations.
Oregon also is threatened by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that stormwater runoff from forest roads should be treated under the Clean Water Act as a discrete point source of runoff, like an industrial pipe.
If the ruling stands, it would require tens of thousands of permits for new and existing forest roads, on both public and private lands. And because the Clean Water Act allows citizen lawsuits, virtually every logging project anywhere in Oregon could be challenged. That's the last thing that the Oregon timber industry needs as it struggles to compete with timber producers in other parts of the country and the world, none of which face this regulation of forest roads.
Why should you care? The Oregon economy still relies on the timber industry, which provides 125,000 direct jobs and tens of thousands of related jobs. Moreover, where private forest owners go, so go Oregon forests. Already owners are resisting forces pushing them to sell their timberland for development. A burdensome new regulation that makes Oregon timber less competitive will cost more private forests.
Congress must get engaged both in the clean water ruling and county payments. Wyden and several co-sponsors have introduced legislation to take Clean Water Act regulation of forest roads back to the previous standard as non-point-source runoff. Some environmental groups claim the bill would roll back protections, but in fact it would simply continue the regulation that has been in effect for 35 years.
But Wyden and the rest of Congress need time. Oregon Attorney General John Kroger should seek a stay of the 9th Circuit ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio and others are pursuing a long-term plan to provide consistent timber revenue to the counties. The idea is to separate the 2.4 million acres of federal O&C lands into two trusts. The remaining old-growth and environmentally sensitive areas would be part of a conservation trust and permanently protected. The other lands would be in a timber trust, and subject to active management and logging. Leases of the timber trust lands could supply crucial funding to the local communities.
It's not an economic solution for all of rural Oregon, but it's the most promising idea we've heard for managing the forests, creating rural jobs and helping fund schools and other public services. In timber country, there's no greater priority.
and a court ruling that threatens the future of private forestry in the state
It's already tough out there in the Other Oregon, with double-digit unemployment and a housing market flat on its back. But if nothing is done to avert the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal timber payments or respond to a potentially devastating court ruling, it's going to get much worse.
The issues -- county payments, O&C lands, logging roads, the Clean Water Act -- may sound like none of your concern. But they are central to the Oregon economy and integral to school funding. And how they are resolved will shape the future of Oregon forests.
The federal program that sends several hundred million dollars annually to 33 Oregon counties and the state school fund will expire Sept. 30. This money isn't charity: The payments uphold the century-old obligation to rural areas where the federal government owns more than half the land, crimping local tax bases and economies.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and other lawmakers are fighting for an extension of county payments. At best they may win a couple of years of reduced payments. If the money is cut off, rural counties could plunge into insolvency. State Rep. Bruce Hanna, R-Roseburg, fears a cascade of counties failing and collapsing their neighbors under the weight of new obligations.
Oregon also is threatened by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that stormwater runoff from forest roads should be treated under the Clean Water Act as a discrete point source of runoff, like an industrial pipe.
If the ruling stands, it would require tens of thousands of permits for new and existing forest roads, on both public and private lands. And because the Clean Water Act allows citizen lawsuits, virtually every logging project anywhere in Oregon could be challenged. That's the last thing that the Oregon timber industry needs as it struggles to compete with timber producers in other parts of the country and the world, none of which face this regulation of forest roads.
Why should you care? The Oregon economy still relies on the timber industry, which provides 125,000 direct jobs and tens of thousands of related jobs. Moreover, where private forest owners go, so go Oregon forests. Already owners are resisting forces pushing them to sell their timberland for development. A burdensome new regulation that makes Oregon timber less competitive will cost more private forests.
Congress must get engaged both in the clean water ruling and county payments. Wyden and several co-sponsors have introduced legislation to take Clean Water Act regulation of forest roads back to the previous standard as non-point-source runoff. Some environmental groups claim the bill would roll back protections, but in fact it would simply continue the regulation that has been in effect for 35 years.
But Wyden and the rest of Congress need time. Oregon Attorney General John Kroger should seek a stay of the 9th Circuit ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio and others are pursuing a long-term plan to provide consistent timber revenue to the counties. The idea is to separate the 2.4 million acres of federal O&C lands into two trusts. The remaining old-growth and environmentally sensitive areas would be part of a conservation trust and permanently protected. The other lands would be in a timber trust, and subject to active management and logging. Leases of the timber trust lands could supply crucial funding to the local communities.
It's not an economic solution for all of rural Oregon, but it's the most promising idea we've heard for managing the forests, creating rural jobs and helping fund schools and other public services. In timber country, there's no greater priority.
Salmon habitat and water quality: Every Oregonian has a stake in stream protection
ReplyDeleteThe Oregonian Published: Friday, August 05, 2011, 4:45 AM
Guest Columnists
By Christopher Winter, Bill Bakke and Jim Lichatowich
The Oregonian's editorial "Timber country and you" (July 24) places the interest of the timber industry above the public's interest in clean water, wild salmon and healthy watersheds. The editorial ignored what science tells us about the impact of logging roads on the survival of wild salmon.
Those roads and stream crossings discharge large amounts of sediment pollution into salmon streams, degrading habitat and creating an impediment to the recovery of salmon across the West. A 2008 study prepared for the EPA confirmed that poorly maintained logging roads increase mortality of adult and juvenile salmon by increasing the amount of fine sediment in streams.
The recent decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, NEDC v. Brown, is a major step forward in addressing this long-standing problem. That decision will require the timber industry to get permits where they are discharging polluted stormwater from active logging roads directly to a river through a ditch or culvert. The permit program will apply to a small subset of logging roads that have the worst impacts on salmon habitat.
The court's decision in no way threatens the 25,100 jobs directly related to the timber industry (numbers from the Oregon Employment Department that conflict with the number of 125,000 claimed in the editorial). In response to the court's decision, a state-led permitting program would let local agencies such as Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality design permits for logging roads that take into account local conditions and proximity to salmon streams. The permitting process could recognize that the public has an interest in this issue and build in adequate accountability and transparency. Similar permit programs have been implemented all over the country for numerous industries, none of which have suffered dramatic job losses as a result.
Every Oregonian has a personal stake in clean water and salmon. We are investing billions of dollars in salmon recovery while at the same time we are being told to ignore one of the impediments to that goal. But it is more than just salmon recovery that is at stake; salmon-dependent communities and economies are also at risk.
The decision by the 9th Circuit Court will bring a long overdue measure of balance between two resource-extracting industries: timber harvesting and salmon fisheries. But there are those who oppose a balance and want to tilt the advantage back to the timber industry and let the salmon fisheries continue to bear the cost. Sen. Ron Wyden's proposed Clean Water Act exemption for the timber industry is clearly an attempt to circumvent the 9th Circuit's ruling and prevent any semblance of balance. It is an attempt to maintain the status quo, which has a century-long history of salmon impoverishment. It's the wrong policy and unfair to salmon-dependent communities and unfair to Oregon citizens who are spending so much of their time and money to recover local runs of native salmon.
Through its long history, The Oregonian's editorials have generally supported salmon, their wise management and their recovery. But in this case, it appears politics trumped science to the detriment of healthy rivers and salmon, both of which are important to the citizens of Oregon.
Chris Winter is an environmental attorney with the Crag Law Center who worked on the NEDC v. Brown case before the 9th Circuit. Bill Bakke is the executive director of the Native Fish Society. Jim Lichatowich is a fisheries biologist and author of the book "Salmon Without Rivers -- A History of the Pacific Salmon Crisis."