Environmental groups voice concerns about plan to replace county payments
By
Charles Pope
The Oregonian
January 23, 2012
Environmental groups in Oregon expressed concern Monday about emerging legislation that could lead to increased logging on 1.2 million acres of federal land in the state. They demanded that negotiations over details of the proposal be more public and open.
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WASHINGTON -- A collection of environmental groups
demanded Monday that negotiations to replace the county payment program
be more public amid concerns that an emerging agreement could open 1.2
million acres federal land in Oregon to more logging while loosening
environmental protections.
Oregon Reps. Greg Walden, a
Republican and Democratic Reps. Peter DeFazio and Kurt
Schrader have been working for months to designate
about 2.4 million acres of federal land in Oregon as public “trusts.” Half
of the acres would be managed as a conservation area wile the rest
would be designated for commercial purposes, such as logging. Revenue
from the logging would go to local counties replacing federal payments
that have sustained them for years.
In a letter to the lawmakers, the Oregon
Chapter of the Sierra Club, Oregon Wild and
five other groups said the process was a dangerous and a major
departure from traditional protections. Shrouding it in darkness
prevents the public from clearly understanding what ideas are being
considered, the letter said. Other groups signing were: Cascadia
Wildland, Coast Range Association, Geos Institute, The Larch Company,
and KS Wild.
“You are all on the record advocating that very
significant acreages of these public lands be transferred into a
logging ‘trust,’ to be governed under weakened environmental
safeguards,” the letter said. “This would be an enormous change in
public forest policy, and have severe implications for the rest of
America’s public lands system.
Specifically, the letter calls on the three
lawmakers to “Publicly commit to an open and transparent process before
attempting to move any legislation that would alter the management of
(the) lands – including scientific review and sharing of legislative
language.”
Walden did not respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Peter DeFazio is helping to draft legislation
that could bring needed funding to rural Oregon counties by increasing
logging on more than 1 million acres of federal land. Environmental
groups worry such a step would be a mistake.
Aides to DeFazio said he has had conversations with
a wide variety of interests, including those who signed Monday’s
letter. In a statement released by his office, DeFazio said, “We have
been engaged in a substantive discussion of major provisions of the
bill for the last two months with Chairman (Doc) Hastings and other
majority members of the Natural Resources Committee.
“The negotiations are not concluded and once we
have reached some agreement to move forward, we will be able to provide
more detailed text. At that point I would like to have public hearings,
markup, and observe regular legislative procedure through the
subcommittee, full committee and full House. However, that process is
up to the Republican majority,” the statement said.
No proposal has been publically released and for
now the major elements of likely legislation remain largely conceptual,
congressional aides say. But they add that designating the lands as
“trusts” controlled by local officials will allow the lands – and
activity on them – to be governed by new rules that could make it
easier and faster to cut timber while also limiting some legal appeals.
Doing that, said Steve Pedery, Oregon Wild’s
conservation director, could undermine the Northwest Forest Plan, the
landmark agreement reached in 1994 for managing federal forests in
western Oregon, Washington, and northern California.
“Treating these lands as a piggy bank is not good
policy … and it opens a Pandora’s Box,” he said.
The county payments program was created in 2000 to
reimburse counties for lost income from the sale of timber on federal
lands. The funding is critical because in most of the counties, the
federal government owns more than 50 percent of the land, pinching the
tax base and in some cases limiting the ability of local officials
develop their local economy.
The payments were also acknowledgement that the
federal government should help local governments after logging on
federal land was reduced. Counties receive 25 percent of the revenue
from timber sales but when logging plummeted, so did revenue. By law,
the money was to be used to finance public education. In 2008, $250
million poured into 33 Oregon counties from the program.
