NEAH BAY — The Makah tribe has made its first purchase using funds from a $25 million settlement with the federal government by buying land for harvesting timber, Tribal Chairman Micah McCarty said Tuesday.
The tribe spent $12.5 million of the funds for about 3,000 acres near Lake Ozette in the Umbrella Creek watershed within the Olympic Range Tree Farm, which is owned by a Boston corporation, Tribal General Manager Meri Parker said.
The Makah tribe is the only one on the North Olympic Peninsula that received money from a $1 billion settlement with 41 tribes nationwide.
The settlement, announced by the Justice Interior departments in April, is for money lost in mismanaged accounts and from royalties for oil, gas, grazing and timber rights on tribal lands.
The tribe received the money as a one-time payment. No informaton was available on Tuesday as to when the money was made available to the tribe.
The Makah have complete authority over how it is spent, said Michael J. Lawrence, vice chairman of the Makah Tribal Council, in a letter sent in April to tribal members.
Settlement funds will be used to improve the tribe’s fishing-dock facilities and may be spent on enhancing the Makah’s ability to respond to oil spills and disabled vessels, McCarty said.
“We have some other ideas on economic development, but at this time, there’s nothing more concrete than land acquisition,” McCarty said.
McCarty said the recent purchase goes hand-in-hand with the mission of Makah Forestry Enterprises, or MFE, which in 2005 bought 3,811 acres from Cascade Timberlands LLC for more than $6 million.
Parker said the Cascade Timberlands and tree farm parcels had been ceded by the tribe to the U.S. government in the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay.
“We’re increasing our land base,” McCarty said.
“The expressed mission and purpose of MFE is economic development and more direct involvement in timber resources, and also increasing timber resources.”
The tribe also has dedicated $3.5 million in funds from the settlement for a fishing dock replacement project that could cost about $10 million.
It includes a new pier to replace the tribe’s 300-foot-long dock just west of Neah Bay’s town center. A warehouse and office building also will be built.
In May, the tribe was awarded a $1 million federal Economic Development Administration grant to help design the dock project and obtain permits.
The tribe generates more than $10 million in annual fishing-related revenue from the dock, McCarty said in an earlier interview.
The tribe also is considering using settlement funds to enhance the tribe’s capacity to accommodate marine salvage, firefighting and oil-skimming vessels, “anything that exists for state-of-the-art oil spill response,” McCarty said.
“We’re looking to locate as much of that as possible in Neah Bay so that the closest deep-water port to a high-risk zone has the best capacity to respond quickly,” McCarty said, adding that oil retrieval from damaged vessels is a key component of responding to high-risk events.
“That’s part of what we are working on in our long-term agenda in terms of an economic development priority area,” McCarty said.
“That translates into job opportunities for our fishermen,” he said.
“Who else would know our waters as well as our own people? It makes sense, and we have a vested interest in protection of our waters.”
The tribe is seeking investment opportunities “to create that development of a corporate culture that has the ability to integrate with existing infrastructure,” McCarty said, citing the Marine Spill Response Corp. as an example.
The tribe was notified last week that the federal Department of Transportation would not be awarding the tribe a federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery — or TIGER — grant for work on the dock project, he said.
Parker said the TIGER grant was for $5 million.
Two projects totalling $24 million in Seattle and Spokane were TIGER grant recipients in Washington state.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
