PORT ANGELES — It’s time for Clallam County to take a good, hard look at how its forests are being managed, county commissioners say.
The three-member board plans to grant a request from the Charter Review Commission to form a trust lands advisory committee to study the forces that influence timber harvests and the possibility of reconveyance from state management back to the county.
“We’re going to be putting our foot on the accelerator in getting the committee established in the proper way and get them underway so that they can do their work,” said board Chairman Jim McEntire, who also serves on the state Board of Natural Resources.
The Charter Review Commission voted 10-4 on July 6 to send a letter to county commissioners asking them to form a committee within three months to examine the “history, issues, benefits, challenges and advantages” of reconveyance of county trust lands.
If a transfer is not recommended, the committee will help the state fulfill its obligation to the county and its taxing districts.
Commissioners will discuss the formation of the advisory committee Aug. 10.
Clallam County and its junior taxing districts are losing millions of dollars a year in unharvested timber that the state Department of Natural Resources planned to sell, former County Commissioner Phil Kitchel told the current board Tuesday.
Kitchel, who served from 1995 to 1998 and has worked closely with the timber industry, used a Treasurer’s Office report to show precipitous declines in revenue from timber sales.
The county’s operating fund, for example, had $3.3 million in timber sale receipts in 1996 compared with $640,805 in 2002.
Similar drops were seen for the various junior taxing districts — fire districts, school districts, hospitals and the like — over the same period, according to an analysis by Treasurer Selinda Barkhuis.
“We’re not talking peanuts,” Kitchel said.
“This is a significant revenue source, and if we can find ways to help the DNR get those revenues back to the more consistent level, that benefits everybody in this county.”
Timber that DNR was authorized to sell but didn’t sell is known as arrearage.
According to DNR numbers, the Olympic region had 247 million board feet of arrearage from 2004 to 2014. That’s enough wood to keep any one of the shuttered West End mills running for years, Forks City Attorney and Planner Rod Fleck has said.
In the last 10-year harvest calculation, DNR was authorized to sell 575 million board feet of timber on the Olympic Experimental State Forest, which includes Clallam and Jefferson counties.
It sold 357 million board feet on the West End, leaving 218 million board feet in arrears.
Eastern Clallam County had 27 million board feet of arrearage, and Eastern Jefferson County had 2 million board feet in arrears, according to DNR numbers.
Commissioner Bill Peach, a retired Rayonier forest manager, said the recent closure of the Allen Logging Co. mill south of Forks, coupled with the closure of the Interfor mills in Beaver and Forks and the Green Creek Wood Products mill in Port Angeles, represents the loss of about 300 jobs.
“Low-income issues and no-income issues are starting to increase and develop,” said Peach, who represents the West End.
“We’ve got a solution in front of us, and I really appreciate the support of the board.”
Peach said he hopes the subcommittee will answer the question of why the arrearage is occurring.
DNR officials have said staff shortages, legal challenges and the protection of the threatened marbled murrelet have contributed to a statewide arrearage since the last sustainable harvest calculations were made in 2004.
McEntire sits on an arrearage subcommittee of the influential state Board of Natural Resources. He said the DNR will be making “very significant, even momentous” decisions on arrearage and the marbled murrelet in the coming year.
“This is a very timely topic,” said McEntire, who represents Clallam, Jefferson and 19 other timber counties on the six-member DNR board.
Kitchel noted that the Allen mill was the only one operating for more than 50 miles in any direction.
“One mill, and that mill has a wood supply problem?” Kitchel asked.
“If that’s not the canary that died in the forest products industry, I don’t know what is. That should be sending alarms to communities across this state and to the state Legislature.”
He added: “We simply have to get those harvest levels back where they belong.”
In a Friday interview, McEntire said the trust lands advisory committee will be “well-balanced” with representatives of different geographic areas and points of view.
“Anything that comes from a sister elected body,” McEntire said of the Charter Review Commission, “needs to be treated with substantial deference, and we need to take it seriously.”
Commissioner Mike Chapman, the dean of the board with nearly 15 years’ experience, said the county has spent millions of dollars on salmon recovery, water issues, land-use planning, social services, tourism and infrastructure but “virtually nothing in support for the timber industry.”
“I think we’ve been strangely silent, expending no real funds there,” Chapman told his first-term colleagues Tuesday.
Chapman said the reduced timber harvest has raised taxes and levies because the taxing districts are collecting the same amount of revenue.
“Instead of coming from a renewable resource, it came out of people’s pockets,” Chapman said.
“So the county’s been derelict in our duty, in my opinion, over the last 15 years in looking at the issue of timber harvest.”
Beyond the economic impacts, Chapman said an increased timber harvest would reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and may help combat climate change.
“There is a school of thought out there that young, growing, healthy trees sequester more carbon than old trees that are no longer growing,” Chapman said.
McEntire said his principal focus on the county and state boards will be a return on assets.
“We’ve got a tremendous asset base here in this county and others, as portrayed by Commissioner Kitchel, as a potential to provide a renewable, constant stream of revenue that offsets the need for property taxes, sales taxes, a plethora of other revenue sources,” McEntire said.
“So let’s go get it.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.