PORT ANGELES — A new committee that will study state management of Clallam County timberlands will gather for the first time today.
The Clallam County Trust Lands Advisory Committee will appoint officers, review expectations and consider adding more members when it meets at 1:30 p.m. in Room 160 of the Clallam County Courthouse.
Over the next year, the ad hoc panel will examine the potential reconveyance of state trust lands back to the county for management.
Absent that measure, which would require legislative action, the committee was tasked by the Charter Review Commission to prod the state Department of Natural Resources to “promptly and adequately” fulfill its trust obligations to the county, junior taxing districts and citizenry.
The motivation behind the effort is arrearage — timber that the DNR identified for sale in 2004 but did not sell.
Forestry industry officials have said the 245 million board feet of arrearage on the 92,500 acres of DNR-managed timberland in Clallam County has resulted in mill closures and a considerable loss of revenue for trust beneficiaries.
“There have been political and social decisions made in Olympia in the last 20-plus years that have ended up reducing the amount of land we have available for harvest activity,” said former Clallam County Commissioner Phil Kitchel, who was hired as a consultant for the trust lands committee, in a Monday report to the current board.
A final report from the committee will be delivered to the three commissioners by the end of 2016.
The 15-member trust lands committee consists of representatives from diverse backgrounds, including environmental groups, industry advocates, political parties, junior taxing districts and DNR itself.
Kitchel, whose $2,500-per-month contract runs from Sept. 1 to Dec. 31, has assembled copious data for the committee, including revenue reports from timber sales that benefit the county and junior taxing districts like schools, hospitals and fire departments.
According to April statistics from DNR, there were 247 million board feet of timber in arrears on the North Olympic Peninsula in the past decade.
Of that, 218 million board feet was on the West End, 27 million board feet was in central and east Clallam County, and 2 million board feet was in east Jefferson County.
Forks Attorney and Planner Rod Fleck, a member of the charter review and trust lands committees, has said arrearage represents a loss of millions of dollars to Clallam County and hundreds of thousands of dollars to the junior taxing districts.
In a series of public presentations this year, Fleck said arrearage contributed to the demise of the Interfor sawmill in Beaver and planer mill in Forks, the Green Creek mill in west Port Angeles and the Allen Logging Co. mill south of Forks.
“It goes beyond the money,” Kitchel told commissioners. “It goes to the personal impact.”
“When we’re sitting on the kind of inventory, the kind of economic opportunity, it is beyond absurd that we’re not harvesting that [timber],” Kitchel said.
“We need to do something about that, and that’s going to be up to you folks.”
Commissioner Mike Chapman, who voted against the committee’s formation, took umbrage with the notion that arrearage is all DNR’s fault.
Chapman said the agency has “done a really good job” in managing county trust lands and provided a steady stream of revenue to the county and other beneficiaries, even in the middle of a deep recession.
“I think it’s patently unfair to just lay all of the lack of revenue at DNR’s feet, because I can guarantee you there were site sales they have put up [for sale] in the past, and there were no bidders,” Chapman said.
Market conditions during the recession drove down demand for wood because houses were not being built, Chapman said.
“So what are they supposed to do?” Chapman asked Kitchel.
“Put wood up for sale and sell it for pennies on the dollar? I think that they actually did a pretty good job of managing their trust lands.”
Chapman also took issue with Kitchel’s suggestion that lower harvest levels have made it more difficult for school districts to pass bonds.
He noted that the recent Sequim school bond garnered 59.55 percent support in November’s election — a landslide in most elections — but needed a 60 percent supermajority to pass.
“Don’t equate school bonds to DNR’s lack of harvest,” Chapman told Kitchel.
Kitchel maintained that there is a connection between timber harvests and schools bonds.
“If you have a greater match coming in from the state, you’re going to run that school bond project for a lower dollar value, which then increases your probability it will pass,” Kitchel said.
Chapman said DNR must comply with state and federal laws, which have changed since the early 1990s.
“Some of these lands are probably unharvestable because of the law changes,” Chapman said.
“That’s something that the public needs to understand, too.”
Private companies must comply with the same laws, Kitchel said.
He added that more than 50 percent of DNR timberland can’t be harvested, while only 15 percent to 20 percent of private timberland is locked up.
Kitchel said he did not mean to be critical of an agency that employs or has employed many of his friends.
“This all has become so wrapped around the axle of politics that the trust mandate, trust issues and stuff are being left behind,” Kitchel said.
Commissioner Jim McEntire, who leaves office at the end of this month, has served on the six-member state Board of Natural Resources that guides DNR resource management.
“The board has, to a person, expressed the desire not to be back 10 years hence where we are today with a substantial number of acres in arrears,” McEntire said.
“The board unanimously has expressed a wish — not that any of them will be there at that point to make the decision 10 years from now — but we don’t want to leave a future board the same set of difficulties that we’re coping with right now.”
Commissioner Bill Peach, one of two finalists for McEntire’s seat on the DNR board, said he, too, would work to eliminate arrearage in the next decade.
“I don’t think we’re going to get there unless we’re able to talk to each other,” Peach said.
“The old approach with ‘My bat is bigger than yours’ didn’t get us anywhere.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
