Calling the economic impacts “prohibitive and extremely detrimental” to local businesses and residents, Cowlitz County Commissioners are asking the state forest practices board to not to approve a proposed expansion of riparian protections around streams across western Washington.
Commissioners voiced their opposition to a proposed rule the state board is considering that would bar logging on private forest land at least 50 feet from non-fish bearing streams.
The letter signed by each of the three commissioners cites a study conducted by the Washington Farm Forestry Association estimating Cowlitz County would see $245,379,803 worth of private timber in the county that would no longer be able to be harvested.
“The cost is prohibitive and extremely detrimental to Cowlitz County, Cowlitz businesses and Cowlitz County citizens,” the commissioners wrote in their letter dated Aug. 12. They argue that the proposed rule “bypasses the state’s Adaptive Management Program, specifically created to ensure forest policy is based on peer-reviewed science.”
Prior to issuing the letter, Cowlitz County commissioners heard from a wide variety of critics opposed to the proposed buffer zone expansion in meetings conducted Aug. 6 and 12. The hearings focused on how tax revenue would be impacted by the buffer zone expansion.
Earlier this summer, the Forest Practices Board held public hearings in Longview, Sedro-Woolley, Port Angeles and Olympia.
According to an email from Washington State Department of Natural Resources spokesperson Will Rubin, the state agency reviewed public comments that came in on Aug. 12, but any potential vote would not occur until later this year. The Forest Practices Board will consider rulemaking next steps at a meeting scheduled for Nov. 12.
The proposal
The state Forest Practices Board is considering the added protections to certain riparian areas near streams that flow year-round and don’t have fish — classified as non-fish-bearing perennial” or “Type Np” under the guidance of findings from the Washington State Department of Ecology.
“Under the current rules, there are often areas near these streams that do not have enough trees to provide shade to help prevent the water from warming after harvest,” The Department of Ecology stated on a July blog about the proposal.
Even though fish aren’t in these streams, the water could affect aquatic life throughout the water system.
The Department of Ecology bases its grounds for stronger protections based on studies conducted in 2018 and 2021, which showed that the current buffer is not protecting streams from warming.
Earlier this month, the Department of Ecology issued a draft analysis stating proposed protections were “likely to protect many Type Np waters” from warming more than beyond 0.3 degrees Celsius, or by an increment of half a degree Fahrenheit.
“Following our review of the best available science, we determined the proposed rule is likely to protect streams from warming in many instances,” the Department of Ecology states in the report’s executive summary. “However, the proposed rule is still likely to result in water temperature increases of 0.3 degrees C or greater under certain regional and site-specific conditions.”
Timber industry projections
Wade Boyd, who once worked as a senior vice president of timber for Longview Fibre Company and said he helped negotiate the state’s landmark Forests & Fish law 26 years ago, urged the commissioners to speak out against the proposal in an Aug. 12 work session. He estimated that based on the Washington Farm Forestry Association’s report the state would see $9.8 million less timber revenue.
Boyd calculated the county’s lost 4% excise tax revenue at $288,000 per year. He drew that number based on the assumption of 800 fewer acres of timberland harvested per year, a 35-year rotation to cycle through 28,000 acres and a volume of roughly 20 million board feet per acre.
The Washington Farm Forestry Association’s report, which drew from land data through the University of Washington’s Natural Resources Spatial Informatics Group, Cowlitz County’s projected $245 million in lost timber is 6.8% of a surveyed $3.59 billion currently harvestable in the county. The calculation is derived from roughly 28,000 acres impacted out of a total available 539,961 in the county.
Cowlitz is listed as the third most impacted county behind Lewis County with a projected $371 million and Pacific County with a projected $259 million impact. Nearby Wahkiakum County ranks eighth with a $68 million impact, and Clark ranks 16th out of the 19 western Washington counties impacted with a $33 million impact.
Cowlitz Conservation District also criticizes proposal
Cowlitz Conservation District elected board member John Keatley and District Manager Darin Haupt also drew heavily from the WFFA report during a briefing with commissioners Aug. 6.
At the meeting commissioner Steve Rader asked Keatley and Haupt why the Forest Practices Board was advocating for the buffer zone expansion.
“Is it an economic thing? What’s the purpose?” Rader asked.
Haupt’s one-word answer: “Politics.”
He explained the “purported rationale,” that leaving buffers on small headwater streams could lead to decreased temperature in fish-bearing waters downstream, but he said the state’s studies don’t differ from past studies.
“Basically, what they found is what every temperature study I’m aware of found: there are numerous factors involved and it’s very difficult to flesh those out.”
Haupt argued that buffers on small headwater streams “tend to blow down anyway.”
“When they do, it has continuing effects on canopy cover, and those continuing effects do result in increases in temperatures in these small headwater streams,” Haupt said. “But in the non-harvest areas that has no effect whatsoever.”
He voiced a concern that “we may actually end up exacerbating the problem we’re trying to address.”
