Rising Timber Prices May Have Contributed To Falling Power Lines

Inflated timber prices are a major contributor to the power outages that continue to plague Spokane and vicinity.

So says Mark Walter, operations manager of Power City Electric Inc., a Spokane-based commercial and industrial electrical contractor that builds power plants and operates its own line crews for hire to area utilities.

He blames timber too scrawny to make decent saw logs for much of the worst damage to power lines. These culls grow tall and spindly in the shadow of marketable timber.

When the big trees are harvested, the puny stuff left standing can’t weather ice loads like those that zapped trees all over Spokane and the surrounding area.

A few years ago, there wouldn’t have been the same problem as now, simply because smaller stands of timber weren’t profitable to harvest. But that was before a shortage of saw logs drove prices higher for timber industry.

During the past few years, it has become lucrative to cut smaller and smaller tracts of timber wherever it is found - in city backyards, in suburban subdivisions, on rural lots of an acre or less - and leave the culls standing.

“When homeowners have people willing to come in and cut a load of logs off their property and pay them $3,000 for it,” said Walter, “this is what’s left - garbage. And this is the price we pay in a crunch. With their protection gone, the trash trees snap in two like matchsticks, and they bring the power lines down with them, like I’ve never seen it before.”

Tiny company challenges giants

A visiting chief executive whose firm advertises its cleaning products as non-toxic, non-polluting and “completely bio-degradable in 18 days” lit into the chemical giants last week.

“You have these huge manufacturers making hazardous cleaners,” said Jay Rutherford, “who pound their fists on the table and swear they can’t comply with our country’s environmental guidelines.

“Yet,” said the president and CEO of Ultra Shield Products International Inc., “we are a little, $3 million company that has done it. And now, we are setting out to take advantage of our ill-prepared and complacent competition, and we intend to clean their clocks in the markets.”

The company, headquartered in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., says it has succeeded in formulating the safest industrial-strength cleaners ever developed, and the only ones that meet all EPA standards. The secret, Rutherford said in an interview before addressing a gathering of area stockbrokers, is a “technological breakthrough in the cross linking of carbon molecules.”

Rutherford said he is on a promotional tour of the West pushing the company’s agenda “that safe chemicals do exist, and hazardous chemicals must go away. We as a society need to reduce volatile organic compounds that contaminate our water and air.”

Rutherford preaches that environmental responsibilities and corporate success can be merged very profitably if complacent corporate managers would only get off their duffs. Quit saying they can’t do it. And show some ability and enthusiasm instead of making excuses and wallowing in negativism.

“These corporate fat cats have been skimming the cream off the market and not investing in technology,” he charged, “and now they can’t keep abreast of the times.”

Bidders line up for combined center

A task force studying the feasibility of housing all of Spokane’s major business and economic development institutions in a single center is wading through no less than 18 bids by developers.

Task force Chairman Garman Lutz reports that three to five finalists will be picked by the middle of next month. But it will be March before the task force’s recommendations are considered by boards of the three organizations.

The new combined center would house the Spokane Regional Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Spokane Area Economic Development Council and the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce.

“Proposals will remain confidential at the request of firms that submitted them,” Lutz said with respect to the bidders. This column has reported on one of particular interest that would move the three organizations into the Davenport Hotel.

Meantime, Mayor Jack Geraghty and City Manager Bill Pupo joined a delegation of business types who visited Charlotte, N.C., in mid-November. Purpose of the trip, Lutz said, was “to learn about their regional economic development plan, urban vitality and promotion, city/county cooperation, and public affairs reach to the Capitol.”

Said Lutz, “INFO-Charlotte is a model of the kind of statement we hope to make with the Spokane Regional Business Center.”

Charlotte, a city of 465,000, has a metro population of 1.2 million. Its chamber has 4,300 member firms. In other words, it’s about twice the size of Spokane.

, DataTimes MEMO: Associate Editor Frank Bartel writes a notes column each Wednesday. If you have business items of regional interest for future columns, call 459-5467 or fax 459-5482.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Frank Bartel The Spokesman-Review