PORT LUDLOW — The South Bay Community Association president is urging the Jefferson County commissioners to reconsider their position against a proposed state Department of Natural Resources land swap with timber titan Pope Resources.
That is not likely, with growing opposition coming from environmental organizations and Port Ludlow residents who want the land preserved.
The community association and the Port Ludlow Village Council support the land trade in which Pope is offering 4,420 acres to DNR for 2,970 acres of state land.
Among those formally adopting resolutions against the land exchange are Olympic Forest Coalition and Jefferson County Democrats, which Dan Meade, South Bay Community Association president, said were the main influences on the three elected Democratic county commissioners, including Port Ludlow resident John Austin.
“They are the ones behind it. I think they want no development or no logging or logging with restrictions,” Meade said.
Austin and Connie Gallant, a county Democratic Party precinct committee officer and Olympic Forest Coalition board member from Quilcene, deny that.
“My thought is it’s public land right now,” Austin said. “It’s accessible to the people who live there.
“I’m looking to 25 years from now when more people live there, and open space is going to be at a premium then.”
Austin sees future parks on the DNR land as opposed to a place where trees would be mostly clear-cut.
Gallant said that as an Olympic Forest Coalition member, her only intention has been to preserve the land, protecting the natural habitat.
Rock quarry
Meade, a retired Wall Street analyst and research director, said the community association’s primary concern is that a 530-acre DNR parcel south of Port Ludlow Golf Course is a within a half-mile of a proposed 142-acre rock quarry known as Iron Mountain.
“We were concerned that rather than 142 acres, they would have the whole damn thing mined,” Meade said.
Iron Mountain Quarry LLC, based in Granite Falls, north of Seattle, has proposed a basalt rock quarry on 142 acres about 2 miles southeast of Port Ludlow.
It would be developed on land it leases from Pope Resources, which developed Port Ludlow.
Port Ludlow Village Council is fighting the proposal, which is going through the county permitting process now.
Another issue is familiarity, he said. Pope Resources is a known entity, “accountable” to the Port Ludlow community, he said.
Meade said that Pope has been “very receptive” to the association’s request to create a natural buffer zone with hiking trails between the future harvest of the parcel and the golf course and surrounding homes.
Another unknown purchaser of the property, he said, might be “more magnanimous than Pope, but we don’t know. It’s an uncertainty factor.”
He also worried that “if the county deals with Pope in a hostile manner, this would not bode well with our negotiations with Iron Mountain.”
Meade’s concerns that the land could fall into the wrong hands are unfounded, Gallant said.
“DNR is a very responsible agency, and they would still have to take that through the public process,” she said.
Revenue
Another issue is revenue to a cash-strapped county such as Jefferson, Meade said.
“If the deal goes through, the county gets a check for $178,000” from Pope, he said, a land-transfer fee.
That would be the only plus for the county where DNR tree sales are dramatically down, he said, a statewide trend.
If DNR swapped the 550 acres of timberland adjacent to Port Ludlow, a replacement piece would yield timber that would generate about $80,000 a year to the county for services, Meade said, using the 47-year timber harvest cycle.
Because of the difficulty of DNR managing small isolated pieces, he said, the land has not been harvested for 77 years.
The trade would increase DNR land holdings by 49 percent, he said, which also benefits the state.
Austin, however, said he has received letters from more than 20 people in Port Ludlow, “saying they don’t want the land exchange to go though.”
State Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark last month delayed the proposed land trade, instead seeking support in the county through additional public outreach.
“This is one that we’re pausing at the current time,” Goldmark said.
“We’re not going to move forward with it. The Jefferson County commissioners are sensitive to it. We want to hear from the community and have a dialogue with the local community.”
To meet the need for more public outreach, he said at least one more informational forum would be scheduled in late summer or early fall.
________
Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
