Naselle renews call to protect watershed

Even after a significant reduction in acreage from the controversial Fields Fir Timber Sale, many Naselle residents remain skeptical of the Washington Department of Natural Resources’ newly proposed Lane Creek Timber Sale.

At a public meeting held at the Naselle Community Center on Dec. 5, DNR Pacific Cascades Region Manager Padraic Callahan, Assistant Region Manager Steve Ogden, and Forest Hydrologist Jeff Keck presented their vision for the revised sale to a crowd of more than 60 people, comprising residents of Pacific and Wahkiakum counties and several Oregon-based environmental activists. The Lane Creek sale reduces Field Fir’s footprint by nearly half and includes only what the original proposal had slated for harvest adjacent to Lane Creek. The units along O’Conner Creek would remain standing for now.

“The reason for that change, obviously, was that we heard some pushback,” said Callahan. “We felt very confident in the original proposal, that it wasn’t going to impact the watershed, but we heard that [feedback], we stood down and took another look, and we decided we could moderate our pace a little bit… with our management in the watershed and hopefully put some minds at ease.”

Unease continues

As Callahan and the other DNR representatives discovered at the meeting, that was hardly the case.

In a nearly two and a half hour-long back-and-forth that remained largely civil but grew testy at times, meeting attendees peppered the DNR representatives with questions and comments about topics ranging from the presence of wetlands within the sale area, to logging road construction and rehabilitation, to the DNR’s hydrological modeling methods.

And as Keck walked the audience through a series of mathematical calculations that purported to show only a small chance of significant, post-logging sediment transport, it appeared that his empirical approach left the collective weight of lived experience and gut instinct in the room unmoved. “What time of year did you do this analysis?” asked one audience member. “Just wait till winter,” said another in the back of the room, under his breath. “It’s gonna move.”

Concerns, suggestions

But the predominant concern in the room was far less technical than any quibble over site- and sale-specific minutiae. Simply put, residents wanted to understand why, of all the places the state could log, did it have to do so in the watershed that supplied their drinking water? Why run even the slightest risk of negatively impacting their water’s quantity and quality, if the consequences to the community could be dire?

“Here’s a watershed where people drink the water… and if we screw up, the people are going to have to fix it,” said Naselle resident Rex Ziak to a round of applause. “And I just wonder why in the hell you’d want to go into a place like that rather than tell your bosses… ’They’re a small little community, but they’ve got great water, let’s just leave that alone.’”

Moreover, did the state’s ability to fulfill its fiduciary duty to its trust beneficiaries really hinge on these hundred acres above Naselle? When Ogden acknowledged that the proceeds from the sale would not return directly to the community and instead go toward a trust benefiting the University of Washington, an audible groan went through the room. Who had more at stake in those 100 acres — the university or the town?

The sentiment in the room, if pro-watershed, was not outright anti-logging either. Many in the room have lived and worked in the woods, or have close ties to people who do, and understand too that the state is trying to walk a fine line.

To that end, author and Grays River resident Bob Pyle stood up to suggest a possible solution: the DNR’s own trust land transfer process, by which third parties can leverage state-allocated funds to purchase both public lands with special value, along with replacement lands to ensure a sustainable, future logging base.

“Now, I know there’s a lot of competition every year for the trust land transfer funds… but I think this could be a very, very good candidate if an application were put in for a rather modest part of the annual budget to protect this land,” said Pyle to the DNR representatives. “That would avoid the problem, and could put your good expertise on other areas that might be better along without even the moderate level of risk that you’ve well demonstrated.”