Senate Rejects Cuts In Logging Road Funds Idaho Forests Pointed Out As What’s Wrong With Current System

An unlimited amount of national forest timber might be traded for logging road construction as a result of a key vote in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday.

While not the final word on how much the public should subsidize logging road construction, it is a victory for the timber industry, which argues that trading trees for roads is a smart and efficient way to build forest byways.

It is a narrow loss for an unusual coalition of fiscal conservatives and environmentalists, who sought to eliminate the $50 million in public timber doled out per year in so-called “purchaser credits.” Pushing an amendment offered by Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., the coalition also wanted to erase $10 million from the U.S. Forest Service’s $47.4 million direct cash outlay for additional logging roads.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman supported the amendment, citing a Forest Service study showing that roads increase chances of landslides. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., also pushed for the Bryan measure.

The Senate’s initial vote was a 50-50 tie. As president of the Senate, Vice President Al Gore could have broken that tie had he not been in New York.

“If he is there, we would have won,” said Marty Hayden of the Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund, formally known as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.

But with Gore absent, Bryan switched his vote to “no,” leaving a 51-49 tally, so as to be recorded on the prevailing side and make a motion to reconsider the vote.

On the reconsideration, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., dropped his support for the reduction in the road budget and the same tally resulted, 51-49.

That left Washington’s other U.S. senator, Slade Gorton, victorious in his attempt to lift the ceiling on how many trees the U.S. Forest Service could trade to timber companies for road construction. It has been capped at about $50 million a year.

But the House limited purchaser credits to $25 million next year. So when the bill goes to conference committee, “I doubt the House will go to zero very easily,” said Marty Hayden, of the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund.

The fund and other environmental groups are putting an optimistic face on the vote. “I’m looking at nine Republicans, several pretty conservative, that went with us on this,” Hayden said.

“I think it was remarkable we were able to come within a hair,” added Jim Jontz of the Western Ancient Forest Campaign.

Idaho’s national forests came up in the debate Wednesday. Bryan cited the high road densities on the daho Panhandle National Forest and the nearly 1,000 polluted streams in Idaho in arguing for the amendment.

The Forest Service itself has said, “the number one water quality problem in national forests is roads,” Bryan said. “This amendment…eliminates a subsidy used primarily by the timber companies that not only has negative consequences for the taxpayers but a detrimental effect on the environment.”

The Bureau of Land Management and several states successfully sell timber without the trees-for-roads swap, he said. And one Forest Service study shows the agency has overestimated road construction costs as much as 30 percent when figuring how many logs to give timber companies.

Bryan’s amendment also provided money for counties whose share of timber receipts potentially would be reduced by the elimination of purchaser credits. County governments receive 25 percent of the timber sale proceeds as long as that figure exceeds what it normally receives under the Payment in Lieu of (Property) Taxes program.

U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, had harsh words for Bryan. He predicted the elimination of purchaser credits would be a disaster for Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

Paying the counties an equivalent amount of money to what they would lose from the Bryan amendment, “is ill-conceived and won’t meet the counties’ long-term need for economic diversity and stability,” Craig said.

“This amendment does nothing more than carry out the agenda of the extreme wing of the environmental community,” Craig said. In addition, purchaser credits provides money to keep roads from sliding into creeks.

Craig blasted the administration for continually changing its position on the issue. And he said small business will be hurt the most by the elimination of the program.

Nationwide, however, large companies appear to reap most of the benefits from purchaser credits. In 1996, for example, Ketchikan Pulp - a subsidiary of Louisiana Pacific, Sierra Pacific Industries and Boise Cascade received $14 million of the $40 million in purchaser credits.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Road credits in local forests

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Ken Olsen Staff writer The Associated Press contributed to this report.