Washington: 11 days ago Commissioner said he wasn’t gonna let logging slow down?
“…he plans to maintain timber harvest levels. “We’ll get less per board-foot, but we need to keep our timber mills active.” 10 days later he
announces the opposite?
The nation’s housing slump has slashed Washington state’s timber sales
projections, drastically reducing payments to counties for schools,
hospitals, parks and other local needs. Revenue anticipated by the
state Department of Natural Resources from all sources in fiscal 2009,
with timber providing the bulk, has declined from a forecast of $280
million in June 2007 to a prediction of $184 million in an interim
report that will be issued next week, Robert Van Schoorl, a budget
official with the agency, said Tuesday.
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That represents a drop of more than 8 percent from the $201.8 million
anticipated in the agency’s last quarterly economic and revenue
forecast in November. The first 50 percent of responses to a regular
survey of timber buyers indicates a further decline is likely in the
next quarterly report in March, Van Schoorl said. “The numbers are
continuing to go down,” he said. “The outlook is not good.” The
outlook is especially not good for school, hospital, park and other
local districts that rely heavily on state timber sales revenue at a
time when home building in the U.S. is at a 50-year low and lumber
prices are the lowest in more than 20 years.
With much of the current revenue coming from the sale of state-owned trees for utility poles rather than other wood products, little improvement in state timber revenue is likely before 2011, Van Schoorl said. The state agency
receives revenue from timber sales on about 2.6 million acres of
forested land, including 2 million acres that were granted in trust at
statehood and 600,000 acres the state has managed since a wave of
defaults during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Timber sales
statewide on the state-managed 600,000 acres have declined from $67.5
million in 2006 to $64.7 million in 2007 and $53.7 million in 2008.
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