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Easing regulations in Washington

November 23rd, 2010

The Washington Forest Protection Association, the trade association for the state’s private forest owners, had its annual meeting last week, and the conversation veered from green building and the EPA biomass rule to development rights and conservation easements. But the buzzword was regulations, or rather, the desire for fewer regulations and a more predictable permitting process for forest landowners.

“We need to look at the regulatory web and look at how we can collapse it,” Jim Warjone, the chairman of Port Blakely Companies, told the crowd of 150 people.

“Predictability is critical,” he added.

The onus is on state lawmakers and officials to streamline the process, though this will be a difficult legislative session coming up in January. As in most other states, Washington faces a large budget deficit. Filling the $5.7 billion gap will mean making tough choices, according to Jay Manning, Gov. Christine Gregoire’s chief of staff.

Social services, corrections, higher education and health care for the poor will probably take the brunt of the impact, Manning said at the annual meeting. “We’ll be removing vast portions of these programs and it’s just sad.”

Rep. Brian Blake, D-Aberdeen, and a former logger, said it will be a “gut wrenching budget to write” but he would still like to see the state make permitting easier. “We’ve got to untie that knot,” he said.

David Nunes, the new president of the Washington Forest Protection Association, took the gavel at the end of the meeting. He said one goal should be to emulate British Columbia’s Wood First Initiative, which promotes the use of wood in the construction of public buildings, with an emphasis on wood harvested in B.C.

Washington’s state government should have a similar policy, Nunes said. “Why not Washington Timber First?”

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Posted in British Columbia, Pacific Northwest, Timber Industry, Washington, Washington Legislature

More time to have say on spotted owl plan

November 16th, 2010

As we wrote here and here, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is getting close to issuing a revised spotted owl plan and is taking public comment on the proposed plan. That 60-day comment period would have ended about now, but the feds just announced that the comment period is being extended another month, until Dec. 15th.

This is good news. The revised spotted owl plan has a lot of problems, as we outlined here, and more time will mean a few more weeks for the federal government to receive feedback and to reconsider some of the more onerous portions of the plan.

While the timber industry and members of Congress from Oregon and Washington asked for the extension, it appears that even conservation groups wanted more time, according to the Associated Press.

The timber industry and members of Congress asked for an even longer extension. They said the draft proposed significant changes to the 2008 plan, including a consideration for the first time of private lands in saving the owl from extinction.

“What’s the rush,” Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, said in a statement. “It’s as if they are trying to hide fatal flaws in the plan.”

The timber industry and conservation groups both said they wanted to see details about a system of habitat reserves that would be created to protect owl habitat.

“It’s unclear whether they will actually have reserves for the owl, or something similar to what was rejected previously by scientific peer review,” said Dominic DellaSala, president of the Geos Institute, a conservation group. “Right now we’re still waiting for what’s behind the curtain.”

Use the extended comment period to let the Obama administration know that the revised plan has serious problems. It’s critical that people who are concerned about the viability of working forests make their voices heard.

Here is where to submit comments:

Emailed comments can be sent to: NSORPComments@fws.gov. Written comments should be submitted to: Field Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon Fish and Wildlife Office, 2600 SE 98th Avenue, Ste. 100, Portland, OR 97266.

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Posted in Federal Issues, Logging Communities, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, Spotted Owl, Timber Industry

What is the EPA up to?

November 11th, 2010

This week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued guidelines for how states should interpret its new rules for greenhouse gas emissions. Earlier this year those proposed new rules were announced and if passed, they would have killed the burgeoning biomass industry because they treated biomass plants just like coal and other fossil fuels.

The new guidelines released this week at least have promise. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is saying some nice things:

Secretary Vilsack said: “EPA’s release today of guidance to the states on greenhouse gas permitting takes a meaningful step forward in recognizing the potential role that energy from biomass can play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Under the EPA guidance, states can consider the use of biomass energy as a “best available control technology” for greenhouse gases.

The EPA is expected to issue more guidance to states in early January on biomass, and will decide whether more rulemaking is needed regarding biomass energy this spring.

Secretary Vilsack emphasized the benefits for rural economies in using wood, switchgrass or other agricultural products in biomass energy facilities.

He said: “Markets for woody biomass could also prove to be vitally important in allowing the US Forest Service and others to restore forests to mitigate the impacts of the bark beetle epidemic in the West and to reduce the potential for catastrophic fire in our forests.”

But what does all this really mean? The EPA’s proposed new rules would be onerous for the biomass industry, and it’s far too early to tell whether the guidelines released this week will make any difference.

Washington Lt. Gov. Brad Owen put it nicely in a recent op-ed in the Tacoma News Tribune. Owen came out against the EPA’s proposed rules and cited the widespread support for biomass among state lawmakers, Washington’s congressional delegation and Gov. Christine Gregoire. The Legislature this year also unanimously passed a bill that “encourages both a ready and ecologically sustainable supply of biomass from our state forests, a new source of revenue for our rural economies and a great mechanism to take better care of our forests.”

More from Owen’s op-ed:

We cannot afford to make choices that will increase the already significant pressure on our forest landowners to convert their lands to non-forest uses. Our national policies, especially in these rough economic times, must be set to create and maintain jobs.

…The only person who can reverse the plan is EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. Let’s hope she will take a look at the science and policy precedents — as well as the inevitable impacts this will have on rural jobs and green energy innovation —and keep us moving forward on a green path of energy development.

Business columnist Bill Virgin this week wrote a column in the Tacoma News Tribune praising biomass and the other innovations in Washington’s timber industry.
The days of building giant integrated complexes, the sort that once characterized lumber and paper mill towns, are likely gone, but that’s not the same thing as saying the industry will be gone too. In their place will be smaller, technology-intensive mills that squeeze every usable fiber out of whatever wood they work with, in the form of lumber, paper or electricity. Even big existing mills will get new leases on life if they can adapt themselves to new processes and products. The more that occurs, the more likely it is that the industry will not only arrest its decline but begin adding companies, factories and jobs.
Much of this innovation and bright future for the timber industry will not come to pass, however, if the EPA’s rules become reality without significant changes.

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Posted in Biomass, Federal Issues, Logging Communities, Pacific Northwest, Timber Industry, Washington Legislature

LEED: “A new and unloved standard”

November 1st, 2010

The U.S. Green Building Council is now in the midst of voting (Oct. 25-Nov. 23) on new rules that could potentially let other forest certifications into the LEED green building standard. But it appears that no one is happy with what the building council is considering.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and some environmental groups aren’t happy because they want a system where only FSC is allowed. And the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and other forest certifications aren’t happy because they feel the LEED standard would still be much too strict.

The New York Times called the proposed changes to LEED a “new and unloved standard” and ProSales Magazine summed it up like this:

The fight over wood-certification systems ranks among the most bitterly debated issues that the USGBC has ever confronted, and what’s up for a vote now is the fourth draft of a document that has been undergoing revisions for several years. In essence, it revolves around profound differences between environmentalists and tree-growers regarding what are ecologically responsible forestry practices.

FSC and the environmental groups say the new rules would be a “big step backwards for the green building movement.” But SFI had a much different take:

“Independent assessments globally recognize the merits of all credible forest certification programs, and in fact the United Nations recently reported that these programs generally have the same structural programmatic requirements, so why is the USGBC splitting hairs over minute details between programs?” SFI president and CEO Kathy Abusow said in a statement sent to ProSales on Thursday. “It’s time for the USGBC to heed the advice of more than 6,000 people globally, including 12 U.S. governors and 88 members of Congress, who are asking the USGBC to recognize all forest certification programs, especially those right here in our communities across North America.”

What’s odd about the USGBC’s process is the entire 17,000-member council isn’t making the decision, and the group that is making the call is a bit mysterious. According to ProSales, it’s a “consensus group” of members who had the option to opt in over the summer and is supposed to be balanced, but the USGBC isn’t saying who’s in the group or how it was determined to be balanced.

The LEED standard isn’t just being attacked for its forest certification standards. It’s much broader than that. Kevin Pierce, a respected architect and sustainable designer in Chicago, is in the midst of a multipart takedown of the LEED standard on his blog. Here are Part I, Part II and Part III.

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Posted in Green Building Standards, Timber Industry