A12
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
Park
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Eagle fi le photo
Federal funding for restoration projects on the Malheur National Forest is intended to encourage ecological and economic sustainability and reduce
the risk of catastrophic wildfi res.
Forest
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jobs in the woods and generating a
steady and predictable timber sup-
ply to feed area lumber mills.
Backed by the two collabo-
ratives, the Southern Blues Res-
toration Coalition has been sup-
ported by CFLRP money since
2012. The coalition was initially
awarded $2.5 million per year and
received a bump to $4 million per
year in 2016.
According to the coalition’s
application for a federal funding
extension, it currently oversees
nearly 900,000 acres on the Mal-
heur and proposes to treat an addi-
tional 210,000 acres.
A record of success
The Southern Blues Restoration
Coalition’s work has received
praise at the national level, but its
most dramatic success story might
be Malheur Lumber, Grant Coun-
ty’s lone sawmill and largest pri-
vate employer.
In 2012, the same year South-
ern Blues was formed, Malheur
Lumber announced plans to close
down, citing an inconsistent and
unreliable timber supply. But the
coalition was able to help broker a
deal that kept the mill running.
Working with the coalition, the
Forest Service was able to accel-
erate timber sales and increase the
pace of restoration work on the
Malheur by entering into a 10-year
stewardship contract with Iron Tri-
angle, a John Day-based logging
company.
Stewardship contracts typically
involve a mix of timber sales and
restoration work while supporting
local jobs in the timber industry.
According to the coalition’s
funding application, the long-term
contract with Iron Triangle has
enabled the logging company to
add approximately 50 employees
while creating a predictable supply
of restoration byproducts to Mal-
heur Lumber, thus allowing the
mill to keep its doors open.
Diff erent funding streams
Forest Service program man-
ager Roy Walker points out that
stewardship contracting and
CFLRP are two diff erent funding
mechanisms.
He also said that stewardship
contracts are fundamentally dif-
ferent from traditional timber sales
contracts.
The Forest Service awards tim-
ber contracts by identifying an area
with commercially marketable
trees, marking the boundaries of
the proposed timber sale and esti-
mating the amount of merchant-
able wood in the sale area, Walker
said. Then the agency evaluates the
fair market value of the timber and
opens up a bidding process to com-
panies that can meet bonding and
other requirements.
According to Walker, the For-
est Service can also award ser-
vice contracts for projects that do
not include removing marketable
timber. He said this could consist
of pre-commercial thinning, trail
maintenance or stream restoration.
As the Forest Service expanded
its forest restoration, fuels reduc-
tion and thinning activities, Walker
said, it melded forest management
work, which often lacks commer-
cial value, with timber sales.
Stewardship brings the two
together, allowing the Forest Ser-
vice to award the commercial
value that loggers would ordi-
narily bid on to fi nance restoration
work on national forest land.
Webb said roughly 70 or 80%
of the commercial timber har-
vested each year on the Malheur
National Forest is through the
10-year stewardship contract.
Another 30%, Webb said,
comes from traditional timber
sales or other contract mecha-
nisms that anyone can bid on.
In a traditional timber sale,
Webb noted, the highest bid-
der gets the timber, logs it and
pays the Forest Service, which
then hands the money to Wash-
ington, D.C. One benefi t of a
stewardship contract, he said,
is that the money stays in the
county.
What’s next?
The Iron Triangle contract
expires in 2023, and it’s not clear
at this point what will happen
then.
Trulock said he’ll be discuss-
ing that topic next month at the
November meeting of Blue Moun-
tains Forest Partners. While long-
term stewardship contracts have
certain advantages, he pointed out,
there are lots of other approaches
that can work as well.
His talk to the Blue Mountains
collaborative, Trulock said, will
focus on the “suite of tools in the
toolkit.”
Long-term plans also include excavating
a portion of the riverbank to allow easy
access to the water.
“Our hope is to open that riverfront,
do a terraced approach so you can sit on
the riverfront and kids can play where it’s
safe,” Green said.
The Hill Family Park won’t offi -
cially open to the public until restrooms
are constructed and grass is seeded
next spring, he added, but the bridge
should be ready for public use by
Thanksgiving.
That’s signifi cant, Green said,
because the span provides an important
point of connection in the city’s burgeon-
ing trail network.
“It’s a key linkage,” Green said. “It
ties together the trails and neighborhoods
along the south side and the north side
(of the river).”
A new stretch of trail starting from
the north side of the bridge will connect
the Hill Park trails to the existing paved
trail at the Seventh Street Sports Com-
plex to the east, with a planned future
trail link from there to the Grant County
Fairgrounds. Work is also underway on
a new trail running west from the bridge
that will tie into the unpaved trail system
at Davis Creek Park and continue along
the river’s north bank to the John Day
Innovation Gateway site and Patterson
Bridge Road.
At full buildout, the system is
expected to encompass about 5 miles of
all-weather trails, including about 1 mile
of paved pathways.
The city purchased the land for the
new park — along with a 7-acre parcel
that would become Davis Creek Park —
from the Hill family in 2018 for a total
of $115,000.
Since then, $472,000 in state grants
have been awarded to support park
improvements, Green said, and the city is
awaiting word on an additional $150,000
in state funding.
That grant would allow the city
to fi nish surfacing the paved por-
tion of the trail system, essentially
completing the network of multiuse
paths.
“If we get this next piece, the
$150,000, we’ll pretty much be done,”
Green said.
“Were that to happen, I think we
could have the trail system completed by
the end of next summer.”
Major contractors on the Hill Family
Park project include Iron Triangle, Sisul
Engineering, Tyler Sheedy Construction
and Mike Springer of Benchmark Land
Surveying.
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Steven Mitchell/Blue Mountain Eagle
A stagecoach on display inside the Dayville Merc.
Mercantile
Continued from Page A1
personally because he and
his father both live on the
property.
Knapp said his family lost
their home east of Eugene
during the 2020 Holiday Farm
Fire, which ranked among the
largest wildfi res in Oregon’s
history.
“That was the point (after
the Holiday fi re) that I decided
that we were going to fi ght for
what was ours,” Knapp said.
“The Merc is our home.”
Knapp said it is important
to note that the Graves fam-
ily — specifi cally Jay Graves,
who Knapp referred to as the
family patriarch — worked
with him in the beginning.
But when they decided not to
renew the interest-only pay-
ment plan, Knapp said, they
left him with no other choice
but to fi le for Chapter 13
bankruptcy.
Chapter 13 bankruptcy,
which is referred to as a
“wage earner’s plan,” allows
people with regular income
to develop a plan to repay all
or part of their debts. Under
this chapter of the U.S. Bank-
ruptcy Code, debtors pro-
pose a payment plan to make
installments to creditors over
three to fi ve years.
Knapp said he had signed
a fi ve-year plan with the state,
protecting his assets and busi-
nesses, including the Merc.
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