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12 CapitalPress.com November 20, 2015 USFS has stepped up its reduction of forest fuels FUNDING from Page 1 9.75 million acres : Up 99.4% from the 30-year avg. doesn’t mean components of the bill won’t pass as part of a larger pack- age,” said Travis Joseph, president of the American Forest Resources Council, in Portland, a prime driver among 170 organizations backing the bill. The budget deal passed by the House, Oct. 28, makes possible a continuing resolution or omnibus appropriations package in December that could include the heart of HR 2647, he said. Chances for CEs 9.87 10 U.S. wildfire acres, 1985-present 8 (Millions of acres) 6 30-year avg. — 4.89 million acres 4 2.9 2 The administration wants the fi re- fi ghting funding issue fi xed and larg- er categorical exclusions, known as “CEs,” of the National Environmen- tal Policy Act for forest management have the best chance of passing with it, Joseph said. The exclusions exempt certain practices from the lengthy environ- mental reviews normally required. The administration approved CEs on up to 2,500 acres in the 2014 Farm Bill and USFS has used them, said Nick Smith, executive director of Healthy Forests, Healthy Com- munities, in Portland. Extending CEs to 5,000 acres and even up to 15,000 acres where proj- ects are collaboratively developed by all groups concerned, “are the heart of the bill,” said Smith, a top Republican aide in the Oregon Leg- islature before forming Healthy For- ests, Healthy Communities in 2013. CEs of 5,000 to 15,000 acres seem small when compared with 60 million to 80 million acres of federal forests nationwide that Smith says are at risk of wildfi re, insects or dis- ease. The USFS is only able, he said, to treat 5 percent of that annually. But Joseph said 5,000 to 15,000 acres actually are “pretty substan- tial” compared with USFS current practices of treating only 200 acres in a project. “Depending on funding, it can take a couple of years to complete projects and they can take up to 250 pages of environmental review. This isn’t about taking away envi- ronmental protections, but making them faster and more effi cient,” said Joseph, formerly a senior policy ad- viser to Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. Harvest levels dropped The USFS harvests about 2.5 bil- lion board feet of timber annually compared with 8 billion to 12 billion annually in the 1960s and ’70s. It’s 90 percent less than it was 20 years ago in the Pacifi c Northwest, Joseph said. Harvests dropped dramatical- ly because of “well intentioned but confl icting regulations,” but also “federal forest analysis paralysis by real or perceived threats of litiga- tion,” Smith said. There’s also the sheer cost of about $356 million annually for USFS to meet National Environ- mental Policy Act requirements for projects, he said. “The USFS is chronically cash starved, going over budget and not having the budget to manage these lands,” Smith said. “It would take decades if not centuries for the USFS to catch up (in forest management), 1.3 Source: National Interagency Fire Center Alan Kenaga/Capital Press * As of Nov. 6 0 1985 ’90 ’95 2000 ’05 ’10 2015* Courtesy of Nicole Kuchenbuch/Haeberle Ranch Black Angus cattle being herded home to Haeberle Ranch off Funk Mountain near Conconully, Wash., Oct. 25. The ranch has rescued 72 pair since the Okanogan fi re in August. Courtesay of USFS Part of the forest devastation of Black Canyon fi re, north of Lake Chelan, Wash., as seen in September. Large landscapes of the West burned in wildfi res this year. but it doesn’t have the resources.” As a result of a decline in forest management and timber harvested, there’s a build up of underbrush and thick timber fueling larger and larger wildfi res, Smith and Joseph said. “We need to look at forests more holistically, like landscapes, to make forests more healthy again and agen- cies need the tools and dollars to do that,” Joseph said. The bill would benefi t rural com- munities not only in reducing fi re fuels but in restoring mills and jobs, he said. Encouraging USFS to act “Sixty (million) to 80 million acres is a pretty steep hill to climb,” Smith said. “The sooner Congress acts on these types of reforms the better.” It also will take, he said, encour- aging the USFS to use its new au- thority for larger CEs once it gets it. Unlike, prior legislation, HR 2647 does not mandate logging, but allows the USFS to do it. The Re- storing Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act passed the House in late 2013, but died in the Senate because environmentalists labeled it a logging mandate bill, Smith said. He disagreed that what it was, point- ing out logging was required only with certain criteria met. Joseph said a provision of HR 2647 not likely to make it is one re- quiring any outside litigants to post a bond before they can sue to halt a project that’s been developed with collaboration of all interested par- ties. The bill is backed by the Ameri- can Farm Bureau Federation, the Na- tional Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Association of Realtors, the National Association of Home Builders, the National Association of Counties and many tribes, forest industry associations, water groups, wildlife groups and recreationists. The USFS has stepped up its re- duction of forest fuels, increasing timber harvests 18 percent since 2008 and treating 4.6 million acres for fuel reduction in 2014, the most in one year, USFS Chief Tom Tid- well told the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry on Oct. 8. The subcommittee’s hearing re- viewed the 2015 fi re season and longterm wildfi re trends. Tidwell testifi ed the agency needs to keep increasing the amount of acreage it is treating and said 20 projects this year were a result of new authorities from the 2014 Farm bill. He said 16 projects were being litigated, but a bigger problem was lack of bids for 50 sales. Rod Haeberle, owner of Haeberle Ranch, Conconully, Wash., told the subcommittee lack of bids was due to far fewer sawmills in Washington because of the spotted owl endan- gered species listing years ago. A steady, reliable level of public sales is needed, he said. This year, USFS fi refi ghting costs reached a record high, topping $1.7 billion. Thirteen wildland fi re- fi ghters died. The USFS dealt with 54,493 wildfi res that burned 9.7 million acres, mostly in the West, ac- cording to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. It was only the fourth year since 1960 that more than 9 million acres burned. The record was 9.8 mil- lion in 2006. Just 3.2 million acres burned in 2014. Rancher sentiment A common opinion among ranch- ers and timber owners across the West is that wildfi res get huge be- cause public lands aren’t logged or thinned and fi refi ghters often use de- fensive rather than offensive tactics. The sentiment is summarized by a big sign that went up in Colville, Wash., last spring: “Public lands. Log it, graze it or watch it burn.” “Graze it. Don’t blaze it” is a slo- gan in Idaho, said Wyatt Prescott, executive vice president of the Idaho Cattle Association in Boise. He said he supports anything that streamlines management of resource lands that is too encumbered with rules and regulations. Compounding the problem, Prescott said, is agencies contem- plating what litigation may force them to do. HR 2647 seems too small and focused on forests, he said. Simi- lar application is needed for greater grazing on BLM lands to keep grass and sod fuels down and he’s working toward that end, he said. Idaho ranchers said better grazing management would have reduced the size and severity of the Soda fi re that scorched 279,000 acres in Owyhee County and part of Eastern Oregon. Sod was so thick in Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife grasslands from 20 years of no cattle grazing, that it took bulldozers two and three passes to cut fi re lines to soil, Nicole Kuchenbuch, Haeber- le’s daughter, said in last summer’s 133,450-acre Okanogan fi re. Like other ranches impacted by western fi res, the Haeberle-Kuchen- buch Ranch is still searching for missing cattle and dealing with loss of grazing lands that’s causing some to downsize herds. Ranchers’ live- lihoods have been severely hurt by wildfi re. The Okanogan and closely neigh- boring Tunk Block and North Star fi res totaled 517,506 of the 1,102,209 acres burned in Washington in 2015. Frustration and skepticism Steve Lorz, vice president of Okanogan County Farm Bureau and a former logger, said HR 2647 sounds like a step in the right di- rection but “only a teaspoon in the ocean” of need. Even if it passes probably nothing will be done with it, he said. A large amount of blow down timber was wasted for environmen- tal reasons on the last USFS harvest he worked on two years ago, he said. “To me they (USFS) have proven for 30 years that they are not able to do anything because basically they are prostitutes to the environmental movement. They throw away mil- lions of board feet of timber and are damn proud of it,” Lorz said. Smith said he hears a high level of frustration from many people in forest communities over the USFS inability to remove high fuel loads from forests. “Over the last 25 years,” Smith said, “these communities have been hit hard by fewer logging jobs and now we’re seeing the environmental consequences from declining man- agement where heavy fuel loads are fueling larger and more severe wild- fi res that destroy not only public for- est lands but private timber lands and homes, watersheds, wildlife habitat and recreation lands.” ‘The likelihood of developing another container service in Oregon is unlikely’ PORT from Page 1 “We are getting closer to a cliff,” he said. For now, though, shippers are “coping” by using trucks and trains to send goods to ports in Seattle and Tacoma, Smith said. Bill Wyatt, executive di- rector of the Port of Portland, said the longshoremen’s union, ICTSI Oregon and the port are still engaged in litigation but they’re also in “signifi cant con- versations” and he’s more opti- mistic about a resolution than six to eight months ago. Ocean carriers are looking for a signal from ILWU that they’re “welcome to return” to Portland, at which point they’re likely to renew container ser- vice at the port, Wyatt said. While the Port of Portland’s container terminal doesn’t gen- erate large revenues, it was a profi table niche for Hanjin — a major trans-Pacifi c carrier — until the work slowdowns be- gan, he said. “It is a lucrative market for the right carrier.” Until container service is restored to Portland, it’s possi- ble that agricultural shippers in Eastern Oregon and Idaho will be helped by reconfi guring the transport of goods from Lewis- ton, Idaho. When the container terminal was fully operational, barges moved product from Lewiston to Portland for loading onto ocean liners, but that service has now fallen apart, Wyatt said. The problem may be mit- igated by transloading goods sent on barges from Lewiston onto trains in Boardman, Ore., for shipment to Tacoma, he said. During the legislative hear- ing, the possibility of expand- ing Oregon ports in Coos Bay or Newport to accommodate containers was discussed, but Wyatt said this wasn’t a real- istic alternative due to huge in- vestment involved. “The likelihood of develop- ing another container service in Oregon is unlikely because the capital cost is immense,” he said. A research team, part of the state’s response to the Hanjin container shipping compa- ny ending its calls at Portland this year, last week presented six recommendations during a meeting of stakeholders in Wil- sonville. The initiatives are the result of an effort involving Business Oregon, the Port of Portland, the state departments of agriculture and transportation, and multiple producers and shippers. The rec- ommendations include: • Establishing a port trucker information system to consoli- date and streamline the fl ow of traffi c. • Truck driver training to expand the pool of available drivers. • Building satellite container yards to speed up the drop-off, pickup process. • Expanding cold storage facilities for imports, which could make more refrigerated containers available for Oregon exporters. • Building new rail inter- modal yards to add fl exibility to rail and truck container traffi c. • Monitoring Columbia Riv- er rail and barge service linking Lewiston, Wash., and Board- man, Ore., and be prepared to provide additional public fi - nancial support as it expands. About 19 percent of export containers shipped out of the Pacifi c Northwest carry agri- cultural products, according to the port. Rerouting contain- ers to the Seattle area from Portland increases the ship- ping cost by $500 to $1,000 per container, according to a trade and logistics fact sheet prepared for state offi cials. “The loudest screams are not about added cost, but about goods that are not mov- ing,” said Dan Smith of the Tioga Group Inc., a California consulting company hired to assess the situation. “If they don’t move the goods, they’re not in business.” Reporter Eric Mortenson contributed to this report. FDA estimates rule compliance will cost farmers about $366 million a year over 10 years FDA from Page 1 their employees on good hy- giene practices and ensure their equipment doesn’t con- taminate produce. The rule does not apply to produce rarely eaten raw or that undergoes commercial processing that eliminates the presence of micro-organisms. Farms that have an average annual value of produce sales over the past three years of $25,000 or less are exempt. States can apply for a vari- ance from some requirements for certain crops. The rule requires food im- porters to ensure that foreign produce is grown in a way that meets the same safety standards as domestic pro- duce. FDA estimates compliance with the rule will cost U.S. farmers about $366 million a year over 10 years. Gombas said industry’s main concern with the rule is the water testing require- ments. Farmers who receive their agricultural water from mu- nicipal sources don’t have to test and farmers who use groundwater will have to test once a year. But growers who use sur- face water will have to initial- ly test their water for gener- ic E. coli 20 times over the course of two to four years to establish the farm’s “microbi- al water quality profi le.” The farms will have to conduct a minimum of fi ve tests a year after that. The rule requires those farms to calculate a geometric mean and statistical thresh- old value to ensure their wa- ter doesn’t exceed maximum bacterial standards. “I was a math minor and I still don’t know how to do any of that stuff,” Gombas said. But the FDA did alter the water rules to address con- cerns of farmers whose irri- gation water cannot meet the standards. The fi nal rule includes a provision that allows farmers whose water exceeds the bac- terial standards to meet the crite- ria if they can show that bacteria dies off their produce at a certain rate between the last irrigation period and harvest or between harvest and the end of storage. This “die-off” provision is a huge improvement from FDA’s original proposal, which could have put bulb on- ion growers in Idaho and Ore- gon who use surface water out of business, said Kay Riley, chairman of the Idaho-Eastern Oregon Onion Committee. “The rule is onerous, there’s no question about it, and it will change the way we do things and it will add expense,” he said. “But the original rule would have put us out of busi- ness. We have a rule we can live with and I think we should be happy with that.” Farms with $25,000 to $250,000 in average annu- al produce sales have four years to comply with the rule, businesses with $250,000 to $500,000 in sales have three years and all other farms have two years.