Clinton, Gop Agree On Salvage Logging Deal Lets President Implement Plan According To His Best Judgment

Assured the Clinton administration has dropped its opposition, the House approved a salvage logging plan Thursday night over the fierce objections of environmentalists.

President Clinton said in a statement released by the White House that he still doesn’t like the timber measure but would be willing to sign the comprehensive spending cuts bill which waives several environmental laws to allow the logging.

Clinton said that Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had promised to allow the administration “to implement these provisions according to our best judgment.”

The president said he would direct the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies “to carry out timber salvage activities consistent with the spirit and intent of our forest plans and all existing environmental laws.”

Inland Northwest lumber producers are counting on salvage logging operations to supply mills with timber.

In a letter to Clinton earlier this week, Idaho sawmill owner Dick Bennett said earlier failures to allow salvage logging had put his family’s Shearer Lumber Co. in Elk City on the brink of collapse.

“The federal agencies that used to work together as stewards of our federal forests have been devoured by the paralysis of analysis,” Bennett’s letter stated.

However, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont says timber industry doomsayers predicting widespread unemployment and fiery forests are making bogus claims. He had asked lawmakers to reject proposals to suspend environmental laws and allow logging of burned and diseased trees.

Despite industry projections of 85,000 lost timber jobs, Leahy said state employment offices in Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Colorado show a net increase of 6,000 jobs since Clinton took office.

Clinton’s agreement to accelerate the logging, insulated from legal challenges and normal environmental analysis if he so chooses, drew sharp criticism from conservation leaders and other Democrats.

“If the president signs this, it won’t be a compromise, it will be a cave-in,” said Kevin Kirchner, a lawyer for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.

“Suspending environmental laws to mow down the forests is indefensible. If he does it, he will be alienating a huge constituency,” he said.

At the climax of the raucus House debate Thursday night, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., erupted into a shouting match with GOP leaders, demanding to see details of the controversial measure intended to ease fire threats and speed the flow of dead and dying timber to sawmills in the West.

“We are being asked to accept a pig in a poke,” DeFazio screamed. “We are being told the Democratic administration has entered into a secret agreement not available in writing with the Republican majority.

“It waives about 10 major environmental procedural laws, as well as administrative and legal appeals,” he said.

Clinton earlier vetoed a similar bill, singling out the logging language as a “very bad environmental provision.

“Nobody’s worked any harder than I have to start logging again in our country’s forests in an appropriate way. Suspending all of the environmental laws of the country for three years is not the appropriate way,” Clinton said June 7.

The new measure includes practically the same timber harvest language as the vetoed bill. It would waive the Endangered Species Act and other laws protecting wildlife and would insulate the logging from legal challenges.

Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, chairman of the Resources Committee, said the only difference was to move the salvage program expiration date from September 1997 to December 1996.

The only potential hitch could come in the Senate, where sources said some Democrats were considering opposition.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., was among those who urged Clinton to veto the original bill. She was considering her options Thursday night, an aide said.

Rep. Elizabeth Furse, D-Ore., also spoke against the measure, worried that the accelerated logging could further damage stream habitat critical to declining salmon stocks in the Pacific Northwest.

Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., defended the agreement. A member of the appropriations committee, he was a key negotiator with Clinton administration officials even as the bill was being debated on the House floor Thursday night.

“I think this is a fair compromise,” said Dicks, who represents the heavily timber-dependent Olympic Peninsula.

Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman signed a letter to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., Thursday night outlining the administration’s intention to accelerate the salvage logging program on the condition that enough Forest Service personnel be budgeted to do the job, Dicks said.

“I think the changes that were made in the timber legislation were those sought by the administration … changing the dates,” Dicks said.

He said the agreement called for the Forest Service to “do the very best job they can over the two-year period” to log 1.5 billion board feet more timber than the 3 billion board feet originally planned.

“There were some on the other side of the aisle who wanted a much higher number. The administration told them this is the best we can do,” Dicks said.

“They are going to do these sales properly, in a way that won’t hurt the fish,” he said.

Backers of the logging say it is necessary to ease fuel buildups that raise the threat of catastrophic fires in national forests, especially in the West. They also want to salvage dead, dying and burned trees to provide wood for timber-starved mills.

Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, ranking Democrat on the committee, said the GOP was abusing the appropriations process “to bulldoze through the Congress major changes in environmental laws.”

Rep. Bruce Vento, D-Minn., said the bill would “repeal decades of laws that (do) and have worked.”<

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