Local group to harness timber jobs
Rachel Cavanaugh
News Editor
A shift towards pulp production and smaller-diameter wood may be needed to save Washington’s plummeting timber industry, local experts said this week.
In Klickitat County, groups have already started launching projects aimed at utilizing smaller timber for industries like post and pole production, landscaping, and pulp and chip products.
The idea is to cash in on the growing need of public lands managers to remove fire fuels from area forests.
Last week, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded a $100,000 rural business grant to a Glenwood agency for a startup small log processing project.
Local organizers will use a ten-acre, state-leased site near Camp Draper to build the yard.
“We envision everything from pole and post production to commercial firewood,” said Jay McLaughlin, Executive Director of the Mt. Adams Resource Stewards (MARS). “There are business possibilities such as landscaping materials.”
McLaughlin’s group is a non-profit organization that focuses on using community forestry to boost rural economies. He said they expect to create eight to 12 new jobs the first year, likely in manufacturing. A Goldendale man will head the first operation out of the new log yard.
Jon DeVaney, rural development state director for the Washington USDA, said keeping jobs local is a key to cultivating “economic vibrance.”
“Finding new employers in the area has been a challenge,” DeVaney said. “Having new jobs created that are local is important.”
McLaughlin said keeping the processing yard in town adds tremendous value to the product, especially with the escalating cost of diesel. In the new venture, he said, the average log will come in from just ten miles away.
In recent years, wildfire suppression and excess wood has left forests addled with insects and disease. While land managers worry about changing forest compositions, the opportunity for innovation is great.
McLaughlin said it is time for environmental groups to come together with logging advocates to seek creative solutions.
Projects like McLaughlin’s support healthier forest conditions while reducing the amount of forest slash that is burned. To be sure, there is a conservation angle, but the organizer said economic drive fuels the operation.
Moreover, the shift towards ecologically incorporated projects may soon be sheer necessity for loggers hoping to stay alive.
In the last year, the price of logs has dropped nearly 40 percent, according to the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Jed Herman, who runs the department’s timber product sales, said he has not seen a comparable recession in at least a decade.
“With the decline in housing, the bubble burst,” said Herman. “It pretty much cuts across the entire industry. Through the winter there have been a bunch of mills that have shut down – they call it a curtailment.”
“We’ve definitely seen a decline in the number of mills in the area,” McLaughlin added. “Those were very sound, quality jobs.
“Historically, people could come out of high school and make a living wage.”
In the department’s February 2008 Economic and Revenue Forecast, 19 mills in Washington and Oregon had announced total or partial shutdowns by December 2007 and mill capacity utilization dropped to 55 percent.
The same month, DNR’s lumber production dropped 10.6 percent from November, down 13.2 percent from a year earlier. In February, the department’s Douglas-fir lumber prices were down 17.5 percent.
There are two major reasons for the overnight fall. First is the housing market and the second is the price of oil.
In 2004 and 2005, mills were producing in high numbers due to a boom in housing demand. When that dropped, prices plummeted and inventory stagnated.
Although a common belief exists that environmental restrictions launched the decline long before the housing crash, Herman said that is not the case at state and national levels.
It was only in places like Klickitat County, where dependence on public land (like the Gifford Pinchot National Forest) outweighed private opportunity that availability dropped dramatically.
Herman said at the moment, pulp and paper mills are the singular counterforce working in favor of timber profits. The industry has relied on saw mill leftovers and, as operations have cut back, they’re “scrambling for materials.”
He said incorporating small wood production and staying adaptable will be the keys for success in the future of Northwest logging.
In Bingen, in fact, the SDS Logging Company has overcome area closures in part due to just that. On their website, the company credits their survival to “adaptability,” as well as an operation “strategically designed to use smaller logs.”
“I think the opportunities are going to be much more diverse than they ever have been and it’s going to be the people who can be flexible that will be able to take advantage of that,” said Herman.
First year all whistles for new school heads
Rachel Cavanaugh
News Editor
Clay Henry, who is wrapping up his first year as Goldendale High School principal, says at first the kids weren’t sure how to take him.
The exuberant educator admits to being prone to eccentricities like singing in the halls and whistling (mostly Christmas tunes, he notes.)
His first task as principal was to open up the aging suggestion box, out of which spilled gum wrappers, paper scraps, and about a year’s worth of student concerns. However, the administer immediately got cracking and says with time, they came around.
After a successful year of institutional changes like the introduction of mandatory finals, rules about eating in the halls, and bolstered accountability lists, the principal has slowly earned their respect.
“There hasn’t been a complaint in there all year,” Henry says.
Henry, who previously taught social studies and served as athletic director in Harrington outside Spokane, describes his disciplinary style as “caring,” saying he never raises his voice.
His philosophy is to teach kids real-life skills to carry out of high school.
“My goal was to make Goldendale the best high school in Washington,” says Henry. “I want it to be a place that’s safe for the kids.
“There’s been, I think, a change of climate in the school where people think they’re cared for, trusted in, and believed in – and that’s students and staff.”
Superintendent Mark Heid is also finishing his first year in the Goldendale School District and has been received with the same positive feedback. Likewise, he has dished it out.
“This is my 12th year as an administrator and my seventh year as a superintendent and this is the best year I’ve had as an administrator,” says Heid. “I’ve never been with a staff that’s been so willing to try new things.”
Both men say their debut years went great and express excitement for the one to come.
Some of the goals Henry sites for 2009 include revising the athletic code, implementing leadership classes at the high school, increasing club involvement, and bringing the junior-senior prom back to Goldendale.
KC delegate heads to Minn.
Rachel Cavanaugh
News Editor
A Klickitat County woman has been elected for the second time running as a delegate for the Republican National Convention.
Laura Cheney, a resident of White Salmon, was picked as one of three from Washington Congressional District Four to head to Minneapolis-Saint Paul in September.
There, she will join a congregation of an estimated 45,000 people to vote on behalf of the district.
“Our goal is to elect John McCain as president and to elect state party candidates like Dino Rossi and Rob McKenna,” the enthused delegate says.
Cheney, who serves as Klickitat County’s party chairwoman, says keeping the country safe, increasing the energy supply, and keeping taxes low are three of the party’s key issues at the moment. Getting Republicans back into office, she says, is the way to achieve that.
One of the candidates she is most excited to vote for is governor is nominee Dino Rossi. Cheney says his win is a key to achieving goals directly linked to Klickitat County.
“That’s the basis for real change in Washington state,” the chairwoman says. “[Rossi] would have a chance to appoint agency heads who could make a real difference when it comes to agriculture, timber.
“I think we’d see agencies that are more willing to see people be a success rather than be somewhat of an obstruction.”
Cheney is no stranger to politics. Her history stretches back to the early 1960s when she helped her mother, a Klickitat County co-chair, sell Barry Goldwater’s nomination for president. At the University of Colorado, she continued with the College Republicans and attended county and state conventions throughout the 1970s.
In the 1980s, she took a break for motherhood, but the horror of the September 11 attacks, she says, reengaged her. Cheney witnessed the events firsthand from New York.
“I saw the terror and destruction and it struck a passion in me,” the she says. “I didn’t want to see that happen in the country again. I continued supporting Bush and his war on terror and I’m still doing that.”
She was selected for the convention in 2004 as well. Cheney says the Klickitat County Republican Party is gaining strength and “moving forward.” In the meantime, she says she is proud to be following in footsteps of her mother who, at 83, is still an active voice in the party.
“She’s excited and wants to hear reports,” Cheney says. “She always wants an update.”
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