Photo by Ellen Miller

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Congress must protect water quality, forestry jobs in Oregon

Congress must protect water quality, forestry jobs in Oregon
Guest Columnist 
By Bruce Hanna and Arnie Roblan

There's an environmental success story in Oregon's timber industry you may not know about -- one that's helped forest owners protect our rivers and streams from pollution for more than 35 years while supporting tens of thousands of critical jobs in Oregon. That success story is the Oregon Forest Practices Act. Since 1971, this policy has helped protect soil, air, water, fish and wildlife, as well as forest resources, while also supporting one of Oregon's top-producing industries: timber. But this balance between protecting our environment and supporting a critical natural-resource-based economy is at risk. 

In 2010, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed more than 30 years of practice and ruled that forest roads are a "point source" of water pollution. That new classification would require forest owners to undergo an unnecessary, rigorous permitting process intended for other point sources such as sewage plants and factories. 

The court's decision to reclassify forest roads represents a break from judicial precedent, which has upheld the Environmental Protection Agency's authority under the Clean Water Act to identify the industries that present the greatest pollution threats to our waterways. The EPA has determined that forest roads are not a major contributor to pollution and are better managed by best forest practices established in each state -- such as Oregon's Forest Practices Act. 

The current regulatory process is working and the timber industry needs certainty that it can continue, but if the 9th Circuit's ruling is allowed to stand, Oregon would lose more than 5,000 jobs and $150 million in wages in our already depressed rural communities. The result would be new, unnecessary rules that do nothing to strengthen Oregon's already stringent water quality protections, thousands of jobs lost and a further blow to an already struggling industry. Under this ruling, there would be no benefit to Oregon, only hardship. 

Last week the EPA tried to address the uncertainty this ruling presents with a proposal for an administrative rulemaking process. While the stated intent is laudable, administrative rulemaking is not the answer. First, rulemaking does not protect the industry from the inevitable lawsuits that litigators are waiting to file, which are costly and would put an indefinite halt to timber-related business activity in Oregon. Second, rulemaking does not address the issue of forest roads as "non-point sources" of pollution. Third, there is still the option that a new rule could require new and unnecessary industrial discharge permits, which would cost Oregon jobs and wages. 

At this point, the only true path to protect a regulatory system that works and supports a sustainable timber industry in Oregon and across the nation is an act of Congress. Congress and the Obama administration have provided leadership on this issue before, and they need to again. Last December, Congress passed legislation that temporarily prevented the 9th Circuit's ruling from taking effect, but that protection expires in September. We need Congress and the president to make that legislation permanent, providing legal certainty for an important American industry and the tens of thousands of workers it employs. Anything short of permanent legislative action would lead to ongoing and costly litigation, lengthy administrative processes and lingering uncertainty for the timber industry, our state and our nation. 

Oregonians are committed to maintaining healthy, sustainable forests. It's not only the right thing to do, but it's necessary for the long-term viability of the timber industry and rural communities. These unnecessary threats of increased costs, lost jobs and years of litigation could force forest owners to convert their land into other uses with far fewer benefits to water quality and our economy. 

The bottom line is that rules exist that have protected rivers and streams in forestland from pollution for more than 30 years. Congress needs to protect these rules, rather than allow an uncertain rulemaking process to be subject to years of court battles or to allow the 9th Circuit's misguided decision to muddy the water. 

Bruce Hanna and Arnie Roblan are the co-speakers of the Oregon House of Representatives. 


Monday, May 28, 2012

Timber Country -- seeing beyond the trees


Timber Country -- seeing beyond the trees

Sixty-seven years ago, when Allyn Ford's father opened his first sawmill in Roseburg, he found a straightforward way to make money: A grinding, steel maw chewed through locally cut trees, spitting out millions of board feet of lumber annually.
Those days are long gone. Today, trees from nearby state and federal forests are nearly as scarce as spotted owls.
Nine states
The "Nine states of Oregon" project was originally published in The Oregonian in November 2003.Editors have republished the complete series in response to readers' requests.
Now, Ford's family-owned Roseburg Forest Products is betting its future on high-tech home-building materials and tight relationships with customers. Trouble is, Ford's competitors in South America, Canada and Asia are all vying for the same markets.
"We'd better be good," says Ford, an affable man with a Stanford University M.B.A. who admits to healthy revenues but elusive earnings. "We're competing with everyone in the world."
Similar stories echo through Timber Country, which stretches along the western face of the Cascades, curls west around Eugene and brushes the Coast Range. Survival of the fittest applies equally to the flora and fauna of the Elliott State Forest's mist-filled hills and the struggling mill towns of Oakridge, Mill City and Sweet Home.
Most of the trees in Timber Country belong to the federal government. During the past decade, in response to environmental regulations and lawsuits, the feds have drastically scaled back logging, dragging down harvests to record lows in 2001. Since 1989, about 160 mills statewide have closed, taking with them 35,000 jobs.
While regions such as Southern Oregon, Central Oregon and the Columbia Corridor have rallied around new industries, new residents and new identities, Timber Country has struggled, with limited success, to right itself.
The bigger towns, especially those along Interstate 5, are slowly diversifying. But they're still counting on timber companies to fortify the region. Many smaller towns, which lost their livelihoods along with the logs, are trying to turn to tourists, commuters and retirees.
The industry that once ruled Oregon's economy, politics and identity watched as Portland's 1990s boom made high-tech king. It was a financial and psychological blow that has deepened tensions in the region and made the politics of Timber Country increasingly conservative, defensive and angry.
At best, the mood in these blue-collar towns is skittish.
"Everyone's feeling insecure," says Randy Fouts, who drove a forklift for Roseburg Forest Products for 30 years before becoming a business agent for Lumber and Sawmill Workers Local 2949. "They don't know what the future holds."
Gap in wages doubles
Despite the industry's decline, Oregon remains the largest softwood producer in the country.
Wood products workers account for 15 percent of the state's manufacturing employment, compared with 20 percent in high-tech. Timber companies and their executives contribute heavily to political campaigns and maintain a powerful lobby in Salem and Washington, D.C.
The industry's resilience has forced state leaders to question economic development policies that have favored high-tech over timber. Gov. Ted Kulongoski, for instance, has signed legislation making it easier to redevelop abandoned mill sites.
And it has kept the pressure on lawmakers to balance environmental, recreational and logging interests. Last legislative session, the industry pushed a bill to increase logging on some state forests, but it died after heated debate.
Still, with most of Timber Country's forests in federal hands, state influence is limited.
"I don't think Ted can do much good," Fouts says.
Amid the clash of interests, timber companies are finding ways to survive. Roseburg Forest Products bought up private timberland, branched into a wide array of lumber products and modernized operations.
Instead of selling off its mills, as others have done, it has been investing in new ones. The latest is a highly automated $75 million building products plant. Unlike its forerunners, which turned big logs into millions of two-by-fours, the plant assembles composite materials into sturdy, easy-to-use joists, beams and columns for homes and other structures.
The operation sprawls across 70 acres. A single building encloses 11 acres and contains such proprietary equipment that managers won't talk about details.
"We've decided to go big and fast," says Ford, who continues to pump millions of dollars into capital improvements.
With annual sales of about $800 million and a work force of about 3,000, Roseburg Forest Products is one of the state's largest privately held companies. For decades, it has been Roseburg's biggest employer.
Even so, the company hasn't turned a profit in the past two years. And this summer, it announced layoffs in its plywood unit, including the closure of a plant in Green on the outskirts of Roseburg.
The layoffs will leave more than 600 people -- 20 percent of the work force -- without jobs. They shocked a community still raw from a decade-long slump.
"It wasn't a pleasant decision," Ford says. "We're part of the community, and we feel it."
Judy Sherman, 60, a short, strong-looking woman with graying hair and rugged hands, learned of the layoffs -- including hers -- while buying bread in a downtown bakery.
"All kinds of things ran through my mind -- what bills hadn't I paid, how long would the money last," says Sherman, who had worked for timber companies for 30 years, the last eight in one of Roseburg Forest Products' plywood mills.
Sherman, who is single and cares for two young children and a grown grandson and granddaughter, can't afford to retire. She also doesn't expect to get her old job back. "Everything is so downsized and mechanized," she says. "We knew it was just a matter of time before our jobs were gone for good."
Other jobs, such as those with Dell Computer's new call center in Roseburg, have helped offset declines in timber employment. But service-oriented jobs generally are lower-paying and can be ill-suited to mill workers' skills.
From 1990 to 2000, the gap between the county's average wage and Oregon's more than doubled to $3,688. The divide between county and national average wages: $7,604.
Sherman hopes to go back to school, using money from a federal aid program for dislocated workers, to earn a degree in early childhood education.
She says she should have changed her career years ago. Even so, she doesn't understand why federal policies have come down so hard on harvest levels.
"There's no reason or rhyme why they can't harvest and replant and harvest," she says.
Looking for income, federal help
When Paul Ehinger, 80, worked for Edward Hines Lumber in Westfir, the company ran a sawmill, a plywood mill and a logging operation, dominating the bustling town east of Eugene.
Today, the company's office is a bed-and-breakfast.
Runaway costs shut down Westfir's timber operation by the early 1980s. The town where Ehinger raised his family has dwindled to 307 people and three businesses: the bed-and-breakfast, a U.S. post office and a massage therapist.
The most vulnerable mills lay in small towns like Westfir -- next to, or within, federal forests and heavily dependent on publicly owned trees. Boring, Estacada, Lyons, Idanha, Sweet Home, Oakridge, Dillard, Drain, Creswell, all suffered mill closures. Like Westfir, many have found little to fill the void.
"The ones in the center of government forests have pretty much disappeared over the horizon," says Ehinger, now a private timber consultant in Eugene.
State employment economists say almost half of the timber workers who lost their jobs in the 1990s fell off employment rolls for good. They moved to other states or retired or became part of "a cadre of chronically underemployed rural residents," labor expert Art Ayre wrote in a June article in the Journal of Forestry.
When harvests in Oregon peaked in 1986 at 8.7 billion board feet, 56 percent of the logs came from federal lands. At the low in 2001, the share had plummeted to 5 percent.
The hardships have laced communities with bitterness and a sense of betrayal. Politics are more polarized and conservative, Ehinger and others say.
"We're Republican-based but labor-friendly. That's a tough mix," says Fouts, the union leader. "Add environmental issues, and that's really a problem."
Many blame the federal government for shoddy forest management. They blame environmentalists for extremist tactics in the courts and in the forests. They blame Portland for forgetting its roots and fostering liberal attitudes unsympathetic to Timber Country's problems.
"I'm not saying they're ignorant. They just don't understand," Fouts says.
Republican state Rep. Susan Morgan has lived for 25 years in Myrtle Creek, a onetime timber town south of Roseburg. She's looking to Congress to increase federal timber harvests -- not to the levels of the past, but substantially above those of today.
The forest fires that have raged through the West in recent years have fueled the Bush administration's efforts to thin more trees and increase harvests. After Bush visited Oregon this summer to promote his cause, Timber Country residents began talking more optimistically about federal policies easing.
"There's hope here that we can regain some of the losses," Morgan says. "There has to be some kind of rational approach to managing the federal forests."
Counties also are lobbying for the continuation of their timber subsidies, put in place in 2001 and due to expire in 2006.
Yet analyst Ehinger remains cautious. "Honestly," he says, "I don't see the environmental movement turning over and playing dead in the sand."
Timber Country tries to diversify
Like many towns, Oakridge isn't banking on timber's return.
In the mid-1990s, the city bought the abandoned Bald Knob sawmill at the edge of town, eager to tear it down and forget about the past.
But the community, which lies in the lush Willamette National Forest southeast of Eugene, hasn't been able to lure a new manufacturing tenant to the site. So the mill gathers rust, its pale green sides ripped and ragged, its rafters dripping rain.
"The pigeons rent it," says Jay Bennett, a former city administrator.
Government money helped Oakridge buy the 220-acre site, which the town plans to turn into a campuslike industrial park. Some of the work is done, and a few small businesses have moved in.
Bryan Huber, chief executive of Creative Composites, came to Oakridge to build high-end snowboards, but he ended up manufacturing aircraft parts for the U.S. Air Force, a more lucrative niche. With annual sales approaching $1 million and employment growing, he plans to expand the business into an available building at the industrial park.
Huber is a sailor, as well as a snowboarder and businessman. He says Oakridge, resting in a tight valley pocket within the forest, is the perfect spot to play and make money. Highway 58 brings travelers to nearby rivers, lakes and the Willamette Pass ski area.
Randy Dreiling, chamber of commerce president and owner of Oregon-adventures.com, is convinced the town can become a destination for mountain bikers, rivaling hot spots like Bend in Deschutes County.
Dreiling tried to get traction for his business back in the early 1990s. But the mill had recently closed, and laid-off timber workers were in no mood for the peddlings of forest-loving mountain bikers.
" 'Tree-hugger' was the politest thing they called us," Dreiling recalls.
Now, many of the timber families are gone. And the townspeople who remain seem more receptive to new ventures, Dreiling says. Early this year, he moved to Oakridge from Eugene, set up a Web site and began organizing mountain-bike tours.
With 500 miles of trails winding through the surrounding forests, "the atmosphere up here is great for biking," he says. "It's just a matter of time."
-- Gail Kinsey Hill

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Logging roads, not logging roadblock

Logging roads, not logging roadblock

Logging roads, not logging roadblock

Published: Saturday, May 26, 2012, 2:01 PM

Nobody doubts that a gravel road cut through a forest can, under hard rain, lose some dirt that washes into a nearby stream. Neither does anybody doubt that the same road, gullied by a torrent of stormwater, could send loads of silt downhill and choke waterways that are spawning grounds for protected fish. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, charged with enforcing the Clean Water Act, has known and acted on this for decades. And that's why the agency was right last week to oppose a federal court ruling that would undercut the agency's ability to coordinate with Oregon and other states wanting to manage forest roads to their own standards. 

In 2010, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the EPA require federal Clean Water Act permits for logging roads -- a step that would classify logging operations in the same category as sewage treatment plants and further complicate logging approvals. While EPA considers forestry to be among the top 12 "probable sources" of waterway impairment, a logging operation is no sewage treatment plant. And Thursday, the U.S. solicitor general issued an opinion to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the 9th Circuit erred by not allowing EPA to interpret its own regulations and role in clean water enforcement. 

At issue is logging. Oregon can no longer afford to manage logging by lawsuits. Oregon can no longer withstand the chokehold that lawsuits have put on the prudent harvests of trees in our forests. 

A lawsuit forced the stormwater question before the 9th Circuit. And it will be another lawsuit another day that keeps logging sales from going forward, citing another federal requirement designed for another purpose. 

Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. avoided recommending that the Supreme Court review the 9th Circuit's flawed decision. That's a disappointment. But the high court may yet do so, deciding once and for all whether forest roads are, as the 9th Circuit found, "point sources" of water pollution requiring industrial discharge permits. A Supreme Court review would create the kind of certainty needed by foresters and agencies managing logging sales. 

Significantly, however, Verrilli recommended that the issue return to Congress. Last December, with Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden's advocacy, Congress had the good sense to pass a moratorium preventing the 9th Circuit Court decision from taking effect until Sept. 30. In doing so, Congress backed EPA's historic position that road building for forestry constitutes a "non-point source" of pollution, which Oregon and other states can handle through wise forestry practices. 

That position is especially defensible now. Part of EPA's proposal last week was to review best management practices by states and tribes nationally to decide who's doing theirs best. 

Oregon should be a contender in that review. And Oregon should, with Congress' help and perhaps the Supreme Court's, be able to step up the pace of logging without fear of being shut down by the next lawsuit. 

Forest Restoration: Problems and Opportunities

Forest Restoration: Problems and Opportunities

By Bob Zybach

(click on link for a pdf)



It’s time to judge forest policy by its result, not by its intent

It’s time to judge forest policy by its result, not by its intent


COMMENTARY: It’s time to judge forest policy by its result, not by its intent

Rural Americans suffer while the Northwest Forest Plan fails to save owls

Published: (Sunday, May 27, 2012 04:25AM)Today
Failed federal policies implemented by unelected agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management during the past 30 to 40 years remind me of a quote from the late economist Milton Friedman: “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”
The Northwest Forest Plan enacted by President Clinton in 1994 may have had good intentions, but it has failed catastrophically.
According to Forest Service records, the volume of timber harvested on Forest Service lands declined from a peak in 1987 of 12.7 billion board feet to 4.8 billion board feet in 1994. That harvest further declined to 2.4 billion board feet in 2011. When the Northwest Forest Plan was adopted in 1994, harvest levels already had dropped by nearly two-thirds — and today are merely 19 percent of the peak harvest level of 1987.
Pacific Northwest forests in the spotted owl zone grow anywhere from 500 to 1,000 board feet per acre per year. The Northwest Forest Plan encompasses 23 million acres. Growth on those acres has been at least 16 billion board feet per year. During the past 18 years, the annual harvest has been only 3 percent of growth.
The resulting build-up of biomass in Northwest forests has led to catastrophic fires burning millions of acres. Spotted owl populations have crashed by 60 percent or more. The Northwest Forest Plan has failed to save owls and instead has caused the incineration of their habitat.
The Pacific Northwest is the premier timber-growing region in the world. Yet today, America is importing 40 percent of its softwoods from Canada.
Does this make any sense? We are in a prolonged period of high unemployment in America — and especially in Oregon, Washington and Northern California. Poverty in rural areas of the Northwest continues to fester.
More than 25 percent of rural Oregon families are on food stamps.
In Oakridge, 80 percent of our public school students qualify for free lunches based on family income.
The Oakridge School District now enrolls slightly more than 500 students, down from a high of nearly 1,200 just 30 years ago.
At least 44 businesses from the Oakridge-Westfir area have closed their doors since the late 1970s.
CEO Peter Pope of the shuttered Pope & Talbot mill in Oakridge said, “The spotted owl issue destroyed any chance to keep the Oakridge mill going.” Pope explained that a failed effort to save the species was the “death blow” to Oakridge.
These failed policies continue today. President Clinton promised that, “We must never forget the human element and local economies.” Guess what? Rural timber towns and their residents have been forgotten.
Local Forest Service officials are held hostage by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., and the policies they have created. Increased local control and stewardship is the logical answer, yet this solution is unattainable in the current top-down bureaucratic structure.
Meanwhile the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are doubling down on the Spotted Owl Recovery Plan, placing even more acreage off-limits to any timber harvests. This despite the fact that owl numbers have continued to decline rapidly, even with virtually no timber being harvested from Northwest federal forests.
Across the landscape of the rural West we see road closures; fires left to burn across vast tracts of old growth spotted owl forests; record levels of biomass to fuel those catastrophic fires; the introduction of exotic species such as wolves and bull trout; the expansion of grizzly bear populations into rural residential lands; and thousands of new “endangered” species listed.
In reality, rural Americans are the endangered species.
Mega-fires threaten communities as well as endangered species and critical habitat. Not since the Great Idaho Fire of 1910 have we seen such huge conflagrations in the West.
One example is the Biscuit Fire of 2002 that burned 499,965 acres in Southwest Oregon, a let-it-burn fire that incinerated more than 75 nesting pairs of spotted owls.
Fuel loads per acre in the Trinity National Forest in Northern California have increased from five to 30 times recommended levels. For decades, the people of Trinity County begged, pleaded and petitioned the Forest Service and the federal government to thin the underbrush, build fuel breaks and help create a safe forest for their communities. In 2007, the Forest Service allowed fires to burn 650,000 acres in Northern California, including 266,000 acres in Trinity County.
It is past time to allow local residents to sustainably use our forests again, to maintain important fish and wildlife habitat, to protect our watersheds and to provide an economic engine in a time of 20 percent unemployment.
There have been plenty of studies to show that a sustainable forest provides true benefits for all — from decreased fire danger to improved wildlife habitat, from additional economic activity to increased recreational opportunities for neighboring communities.
Studies also have shown catastrophic results from wildfires in forests overloaded with fuels.
Robert Nelson wrote an extensive article for the Hoover Institute titled “Our Languishing Public Lands.” Nelson noted that total federal revenues from all sources in the national forest system in 2010 were $953 million. Total Forest Service spending that same year was $6.1 billion.
The net cost of national forest management in 2010, borne by American taxpayers, was about $5.1 billion. Lands that make up nearly 10 percent of the surface area of the United States, lands that contain valuable natural resources, are being managed at a loss.
These large deficits are being incurred at a time when worldwide demand for minerals, agricultural products and other commodities has been soaring, driving up resource prices. How does this make any sense to anyone? When do we start to judge policies not by their intents, but by their results?
This is what Oregonians and people in other Western states must deal with every day. How long does it take to realize federal policies have failed? How long does it take for the public in rural areas to realize the true intent of these policies? We simply cannot afford continued federal inaction and gross mismanagement of our lands.
We want our lands back. It’s as simple as that. Please sign the petition to de-federalize Oregon lands at giveusourlandback.org.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Top Dem defends Elliot State Forest logging

Top Dem defends Elliot State Forest logging

By Daniel Simmons-Ritchie, The World |


BANDON -- Oregon's Secretary of State is defending a decision to increase logging on the Elliot State Forest, despite continued cries by environmentalists that endangered species will lose valuable habitat.
Kate Brown, speaking after a political fundraiser Saturday night, said she made the decision knowing that it would provide more revenue for Oregon and more local forestry jobs.
'I knew from every million board feet we harvested from the Elliot, we put 20 to 30 people back to work in Coos and Douglas County," Brown said.
Brown, along with the governor and the state treasurer, voted to increase logging on state land in October. The three officials manage the state's 153-year-old system of harvesting timber to support funding for Oregon schools.
But increasing the annual harvest from 500 acres to 850 acres on the Elliot, northeast of Coos Bay, has drawn stiff opposition from environmental groups. Members sat in trees last summer and launched legal challenges to protest the risk to the marbled murrelet, a threatened seabird. Last month, the new director of one group, Cascadia Wildlands, vowed he would continue to fight logging in the Elliot.
Brown counters that the state's new management plan would sufficiently protect species while generating badly-needed revenue for schools.
'I can totally understand the perspective that the protesters have, and, for me, it's about achieving a balance," Brown said.
The new forest management plan employs a system called 'take avoidance" used by private loggers. The state spends two years surveying an area of forest for threatened species before making a decision to log.
The Oregon Department of Forestry estimates the plan will increase the annual harvest from 25 million board feet to 40 million -- bolstering revenue from $7.5 million to as much as $13 million.
Those funds are re-invested into the principal of the Common School Fund. That $1 billion dollar trust, invested in the stock market, pays out about $50 million annually to Oregon's 197 school districts.
That's only a tiny sliver of the $6 billion the state spends on schools each year.
Reporter Daniel Simmons-Ritchie can be reached at 541-269-1222, ext. 249, or at dritchie@theworldlink.com.

Read more: http://theworldlink.com/news/local/top-dem-defends-elliot-state-forest-logging/article_1d18a8a4-5130-5c17-a48b-c576e1dac458.html?mode=story#ixzz1usDPzxAc

Sunday, May 6, 2012

The Great Recession’s Impact on Douglas County

The Great Recession’s Impact on Douglas County

NewsWatch 12 KDRV.com

By Brandi Smith

ROSEBURG, Ore. -- Spread over more than 5,000 acres, Douglas County encompasses the entire Umpqua River basin from Diamond Lake to Reedsport. Its economic history is as rich as the land its first settlers mined.

When the county was established in 1852, people came there looking for gold. But they found something else valuable in the soil: its ability to grow just about anything.

"Prunes grew well here. Nut crops grew well here," said UCC professor Chris Lake. "Kruse Farms had 700 acres of cauliflower a long time ago."

Over time, focus turned to another natural resource; lumber mills started popping up all over the valley. After World War II, things really started hopping.

"I think the best years were mid-50s to mid-60s," said Art Adams, owner of Nordic Veneer, Inc. "There were a lot of mills in the area then, but it was great."

Things steadied in the 1980s. The mills became a way of life for their workers, like 17-year Roseburg Forest Products employee Jeremy Wiest.

"I think it's probably the biggest thing we have in this county, the timber industry," he said. "It was in my family. My dad worked in the industry, worked for Roseburg Forest Products."
Mills are also a way of life for their owners, like Adams. His father owned Nordic when he started working there in 1966.
"It's been a big part of my life my entire life," he said. "This pretty much defines me."

The industry also came to define the county, which made a name for itself as the timber capital of the state, the country and the world. Nearly 8 percent of the people who work in Douglas County work in wood products manufacturing. Compare that to about 2 percent of Lane County or 3 percent of Coos County.

When the 1990s rolled in, the spotted owl and more logging restrictions on federal land did too. The climate was changing -- and for Douglas County, it was not changing for the better.

"We've lost a lot of capacity due to the curtailment of harvesting on government timber lands," said RFP president Allyn Ford. "We cannot manufacture products out of air. We need trees."

Just more than four years ago, the housing bubble burst. What had always been the county's greatest strength was now clearly its greatest weakness.

"In Douglas County, the recession was especially bad because it's still somewhat dependent on manufacturing, especially wood products," said Worksource regional economist Brian Rooney.

New home construction dropped by nearly 70 percent. There were 2 million housing starts in 2007, but in 2012, that number is closer to 600,000. When demand drops that drastically, layoffs are a given. RFP handed pink slips to about 20 percent of its workers.

"Doesn't matter whether you're somebody who pours concrete, if you're a framer, if you're somebody who's in the cabinetry business," said Ford. "You work up the supply chain and into the manufacturing side, it's been devastating."

"t affects every business in this community," said Debbie Fromdahl, Roseburg Chamber of Commerce president, "because those are the folks who are actually spending money in all those different venues."

Unemployment soared from 7.4 percent in 2007 up to 16.2 percent in 2009. Even today, it's nowhere close to those 2007 numbers.

"I've been in the industry for almost 45 years," said Ford, "I guess I have hash marks up and down my sleeve that indicate I've been through quite a few of them. This one -- there's no comparison."

Monday on KEZI 9 News at 6:30, we'll look at how Douglas County's timber industry is bouncing back from the Great Recession.

Friday, May 4, 2012

At an Oregon veneer plant in Willamina, a trickle of wood products jobs may signal a slow rebound

Boise Cascade's veneer mill in Willamina
EnlargeWillamina, Oregon--April 26, 2012-- Boise Cascade's veneer mill in Willamina is one example of the continued slow comeback of the timber industry. It has hired eight people in the past year. Arnie Swan, 52, was hired at the mill in early April. Swan is a graduate of University of Oregon and has previously worked as a biology teacher and at a gospel mission. He says he needed to make at least $15.00 an hour to support his household. He is working where most new employees start at the mill, on the green chair, throwing veneer. Jamie Francis/The OregonianBoise Cascade's veneer mill in Willamina gallery (14 photos)
WILLAMINA -- The international markets didn't register a ripple, but on April 9 Arnie Swan drove 25 minutes from his home and reported to work at Boise Cascade's veneer plant.

He's a new hire, not a worker called back from one of the layoffs and shutdowns that have dogged the wood products industry for a generation. His is one of two added positions at the plant. And in the past year the company replaced six other workers who retired, rather than let the positions go dark.

It may sound modest, but plant Superintendent Mike Henderson calls the hirings a "significant pickup." The plant's 50 employees produce thin layers of veneer, which are trucked to Medford and pressed together to make plywood and beams used in housing and other construction. No one is calling it a boom, but a slow rebound from the recession may be unfolding in the decimated wood products industry. That's why the company replaced the retired workers and approved the new hires.

"I wanted to have some experienced hands on board so we're ready when things turn around," Henderson said.

Industry observers see signs of improvement. While single-family home construction lags, wood products are increasingly used in multi-family projects and multi-story commercial buildings, said Tom Partin, president of the Portland-based American Forest Resource Council, which advocates on behalf of manufacturers.

Northwest mills aggressively sought new markets in Europe and Asia, Partin said. Also, raw log shipments from the Northwest to China and Japan have slowed, which makes more timber available to domestic mills.

milloverall_9.JPGView full sizeThe veneer plant peels whole logs into strips that are pressed together to make plywood.
"We're not seeing anything earth shattering as far as the market is concerned," he said, "but there's an optimism there that hasn't been there for maybe three years."

***
Bad luck elsewhere benefited Northwest veneer and plywood mills. Tim Cochran, with the wood products journal Random Lengths, said Boise Cascade capitalized when Georgia Pacific closed pine plywood mills in the southeast. In addition, a January fire destroyed a plywood mill in Chile that exported much of its product to the U.S. and Mexico.

"It's all about baby steps," Cochran said. "The comeback is ever so slow, but we are coming back."

Oregon Employment Department reports appear to support that view. The state counted 18,100 wood products manufacturing jobs in March 2012, down 1,300 from 2011. But department economist Amy Vander Vliet said that sector is projected to add 2,800 jobs by 2020.

GS.61MILL104-02.jpgView full size
In 1990, federal restrictions severely reduced logging and mill modernization whittled the workforce, Oregon had more than 47,000 workers in wood products manufacturing.

Arnie Swan, the new hire at Willamina, is pleased to be among those employed today. He's 52, and taught high school biology for a time before spending 16 years as a drug and alcohol counselor at Union Gospel Mission in Salem. He left that job and spent a couple months receiving unemployment checks before snagging the Boise Cascade job.

He thought about returning to teaching, but said jobs are scarce except for bi-lingual or special ed.

So for now he's "throwing veneer" on what's still called the greenchain, where newly milled material is sorted and stacked.

"I grew up with ranchers, loggers and millworkers," Swan said. "I actually like working with my hands; it's not an anomaly."

Swan said he needed a job that paid at least $15 an hour in order to make his mortgage payments, and he found one. The plant pays an average of $19 an hour, said Henderson, the superintendent. Swan's wage will increase to about $17 an hour when he passes a probationary period.

"It provides a good opportunity where I can make a living," Swan said. "They're good folks, easy to get along with."

***
Boise Cascade's veneer plant in Willamina won't be mistaken for a big player in the economic scheme of things, but in many ways reflects the careening fortunes of Oregon's timber industry.

The Hurl brothers founded it as a sawmill and veneer plant nearly 60 years ago, and from Highway 18 it looks like a throwback to the days when nearly every small Oregon town had a mill and nearly anybody could land a job. For decades, that was the case in Willamina, Sheridan, Shipley, Dallas and similar burgs southwest of Portland.

Boise Cascade, then an industry stalwart, bought the mill in 1972. In 2004 it sold out to Madison Dearborn Partners LLC, based in Chicago. Dearborn subsequently sold the paper, packaging and newsprint operations, keeping its wood products plants under the name Boise Cascade LLC. In 2005 the new entity shed Boise's nationwide timber holdings. Forest Capital Partners LLC, with headquarters in Portland and Boston, paid $1.65 billion for about 2 million acres in the southeast, Great Lakes and Northwest.

As an ironic result of the deals, Forest Capital now sells logs to Boise Cascade's veneer plant in Willamina. About half the logs feeding the plant come from timberland Boise itself formerly owned.

Henderson's worked at the plant 37 years in what used to be a familiar Oregon story. Newly married, he took a break from college to support his family. He started out driving a forklift and pulling veneer on the greenchain, and never left.

mill.bike.JPGView full sizeWood products mills were a major employer in many Oregon towns, including Willamina.
The automated process still fascinates him. Logs run through a de-barker, then are cut to eight-and-a-half foot lengths. A machine grabs the log at either end and spins it against lathe blades, which require sharpening every two hours. The process reduces a thick log to a dowel-shaped rod in seconds, peeling sheets of veneer one-eighth inch thick and up to 54 inches wide. Henderson compares it to unspooling a paper towel roll.

Henderson never regretted staying and is impressed at people entering the workforce. Workers such as Swan are focused and appreciative of a having a good job in a poor economy. Another worker, a forklift driver hired a year ago, is a former Marine who served in Afghanistan.

"It's been a good ride for me," Henderson said, "and I hope it is for these guys, too."

--Eric Mortenson