By Bill Barton
As a private timberland owner I strongly disagree with guest viewpoints by Brenda Woodard (Register-Guard, June 21) and Jim Torrey with Al King (July 18).
Both pieces demand public subsidies to the logging industry, edify the toothless Oregon Forest Practices Act and reiterate the lame argument that logging more trees at a loss to the taxpayers will somehow magically fix our broken tax system.
Woodard opines that all is well with the tax structure. As a retired timber sales contract officer with the U.S. Forest Service, she has overseen sales at a huge loss to the taxpaying public. The Forest Service loses tens of millions of dollars each year stripping our lands of their life-giving forests. It costs much more to lay out and administer the sales than is returned by the price paid for the trees.
The Forest Service estimates there is $10 billion of deferred maintenance to the agency’s road system alone. Where is that revenue going to come from?
Woodard also says the state Forest Practices Act adequately protects our woodlands and streams, a position echoed by Torrey and King. Her argument can be destroyed by taking a short drive up the McKenzie River to Finn Rock, turning right up Quartz Creek and driving a few miles into the hills.
The steep, bare hillsides slide yearly, dumping thousands of tons of silt and debris into Eugene’s water supply. A quick look at Google maps’ satellite view will save you a trip.
The same condition exists in many gated watersheds, where industry is stripping and exporting timber at unsustainable levels. The same industry that is exporting its timber continues to demand ours. It’s a blatant act of substitution.
While Woodard sidesteps the issue of Oregon & California Railroad lands, King and Torrey conveniently misstate the intent of the 1937 O&C Act as strictly logging and economic. The act also mandated “protecting watersheds, regulating stream flow … and providing recreational facilities” — none of which comes from industrial logging.
Opening 1.5 million acres of public land to industrial logging protected only by a narrow economic interpretation of the O&C law, as U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio proposes in his trust plan for O&C lands, is unthinkable. While the giveaway works well for the timber barons, continuing to waste our public lands at a loss is ridiculous.
Most of the logs from private lands are exported whole, and along with them go local jobs. The large timberland holders pay no severance taxes and their property taxes are minuscule.
For example, I pay approximately $1 per acre per year on some of my timberland, and a little more on some of the most productive land. Washington levies a 5 percent excise tax on all timber cut, public and private, while our state gets nothing from the owners of large tracts and only a little from the small-tract owners.
Last year, Oregon’s harvest was 3.65 billion board feet. What’s 5 percent of that value?
Then there are the more subtle subsidies. We pay to dredge the ports for log ships. We build the highways and repair the ruts worn in them by heavy truck traffic.
DeFazio recently arranged more than $30 million in taxpayer grants and loan guarantees to reopen the Coos Bay rail link. According to a recent Register-Guard article, seven of the nine users of that line are timber companies. Rail access to a deep-water port on the taxpayer’s dime works out well for them. The log trains are rolling, and they already are asking for more public money to increase train speeds. One-third of Oregon’s harvest already is exported as raw logs. How fast should we offshore our jobs and resources?
Torrey and King also trash “environmentalists” for litigating timber sales. They lament cuts to law enforcement. Yet when operatives of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management routinely break our nation’s laws, they do not say a thing. Environmental lawsuits are the only tool the greens have to fight the lawless administrative directives and the timber-addicted bureaucrats who continue to practice illegal forest management.
It’s time for Oregon to at least triple my forestland property taxes, reinstate a severance tax on large tracts, ban raw log exports and put our people to work manufacturing value-added products.
Giving over public lands to the timber companies that are already robbing us would be another crime. We cannot afford to continue the trashing of the watersheds that support us.
The time is past for the subsidized cronyism that has put us where we are. Serious and equitable changes are needed to protect our children’s future.
Bill Barton — a contractor and small timberland owner — has worked as a logger, geologic technician and environmental advocate at the Native Forest Council. He lives near McKenzie Bridge.
The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinions of MGx.
