Published: Sunday, March 11, 2012, 10:55 PM Updated: Monday, March 12, 2012, 6:11 AM
View full sizePrivate timber operations are still going on in Curry County and logs from federal lands are also being harvested but not at the rate to make up for budget shortfalls.DeFazio, a Democrat who represents the 4th District in southwest Oregon, has joined fellow Oregon Reps. Kurt Schrader, a Democrat, and Greg Walden, a Republican, to increase logging on what's called the Oregon & California Railroad land.
In a talk to the Portland City Club on Friday, DeFazio said half of the O&C land, containing the best old growth, would be left alone, preserved except for thinning or other work needed to keep the forest healthy. The other half would be logged over time; some of it on 60- to 80-year harvest rotations and some on 120-year rotations.
DeFazio said the O&C lands are "absolutely, statutorily unique." About 2.3 million acres of timber, scattered in checkerboard pattern over 18 counties, were granted to a railroad company. When the company failed, the federal government took the land back and put it under the control of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Because the land was no longer on the tax rolls, the federal government pledged to share timber harvest revenue with counties. In the past 20 years, "gridlock" in the forest due to environmental restrictions and lawsuits has greatly reduced logging and timber sale money.
DeFazio noted that conservation groups have criticized his idea, but he said they will never be able to defend old growth against the current Congress and U.S. Supreme Court.
The situation is complicated by the loss of federal forest payments, intended to help counties that lost timber revenue from national forests managed by the U.S. Forest Service. The Senate last week gave preliminary approval to a plan that would restore funding at reduced levels for one year.
About a dozen Oregon counties face insolvency in a year or two if replacement funding isn't found. Curry County, in southwest Oregon, hopes to stave off collapse by putting a sales tax on the ballot.
DeFazio said the trouble could spread "county to county to county."
"If Curry goes down then Coos goes down, and if Coos goes down then Douglas and Lane go down, and if Douglas and Lane go down -- I say it probably doesn't stop until it gets to Multnomah," he said.
"I've been involved in the forest wars for 27 years," he said. "It started as a fight over old growth and it's going to end with preservation of old growth."
DeFazio also talked to the City Club about the country's transportation infrastructure.
"I'm going to talk about America falling apart," he began.
He said the "legacy system" of transportation infrastructure, largely built during the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s, needs extensive work. He said 150,000 bridges need repair or replacement. Forty percent of the highway system road surface has failed, DeFazio said, and there is a $60 billion backlog of work needed for existing transit systems.
The country is spending a fraction of what China, India and Brazil spend for transportation system improvements, he said.
Maintaining and improving transportation infrastructure, the systems that move people and goods, has traditionally been a bipartisan effort, DeFazio said.
"Well, it is a problem now," he said.
Some Republicans in Congress have adopted a "devolution" view that the federal government has no role in a coordinated national transportation system, that it should "devolve" to the states. He said about 80 members of the House have "bought into this nonsense."
-- Eric Mortenson
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