FORKS — U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks on Tuesday emphasized his support for a Hoh River conservation corridor and said he is committed to satisfying the concerns of landowners in the area.
“We are working very hard to talk to all of the people in the Hoh River, the property owners, to try to make certain that their concerns are taken into account,” the Democratic congressman said in an interview with Peninsula Daily News.
He called the Hoh River Project “a positive conservation step.”
Dicks’ congressional district includes Clallam and Jefferson counties. Most of the Hoh River is in Jefferson County.
Dicks has worked with state Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland to obtain federal dollars for the project, which aims to put 10,000 acres of land along the lower 30 miles of the river into a private trust to preserve critical habitat for threatened and endangered species.
Last week, Dicks and Sutherland announced the award of a $3.7 million federal Interior Department grant for the Hoh River Trust to purchase 1,755 acres in the Hoh River valley.
The acreage has already been purchased by Western Rivers Conservancy of Portland, Ore., to transfer into the trust, which the conservancy co-created with Portland-based Wild Salmon Center.
Western Rivers first began buying land for the corridor in 2001 and now owns about 3,500 acres.
Residents, others upset
In recent months, residents of the Hoh River valley and local government leaders, including state Reps. Jim Buck, R-Joyce, and Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, have challenged the project, questioning why it qualifies for federal funding and why private conservation is needed when there are already laws in place to protect the river.
They have also said the project is leaving out critical input from Hoh River valley residents who will be directly affected.
Dicks said he has spoken with landowners in the area — including leaders of the Hoh tribe that resides at the river’s mouth — and staff from Western Rivers and the state Department of Natural Resources are currently doing the same thing.
Though the project proposes to create a conservation corridor from the boundary of Olympic National Park to the river mouth, Dicks said no one will be forced to sell his or her land, and no land will become part of the park or another federal initiative.
“There’s going to be no attempt to try to federalize this,” he said.
