Few Turn Out For Roadless Plan Most Who Attend Colville Hearing Oppose Measure

Empty seats, rather than angry loggers, filled the Colville Community College auditorium Monday, at a hearing about restricting roads in federal forests.

Fifty-one people testified and 18 submitted written statements during the eight-hour hearing. The vast majority opposed the Clinton Administration proposal to keep roadless areas roadless.

“Guys are working or they’re busy, or tired,” said Dave Robinson, a Colville building contractor who spoke against the roadless initiative.

Turnout was lighter than expected for a similar hearing in Spokane last week. About 150 showed up, not the 200 to 300 people Forest Service officials had expected.

But timber workers from across Montana are expected to to pack a hearing Wednesday in Missoula. The Missoulian newspaper reported last week that as many as 2,000 people may descend on the town, many in convoys of logging trucks.

The proposal would prohibit roads on about 43 million acres nationwide. That includes 180,000 acres of inventoried roadless areas spread across 1.1 million acres of the Colville National Forest - the primary concern of folks in northeastern Washington.

Opponents of the plan said the small turnout Monday shouldn’t be interpreted as lack of concern.

Some suggested folks in timber country simply assume the government will do what it wants regardless of their testimony.

Dan Johnson of Ione, Wash., said he worries that rural residents are feeling so repressed by government that they may resort to violence.

Every day, Johnson said, he sees trucks on state Highway 31 hauling Canadian lumber to U.S. markets.

Yet the sawmill in Ione shut down several years ago, and others in the region are struggling. That’s affecting his motel and restaurant, and other Pend Oreille County businesses.

“How much more presidential abuse of power do you think these people will tolerate?” asked Johnson, who moved from Ohio six years ago.

Other opponents of the plan said they worry that fires and insects will ravage roadless areas.

“How is the U.S. Forest Service going to manage the diseased, dying and decaying forests without roads?” asked Bob Playfair.

Supporters of the roadless initiative said the nation places too little value on natural areas.

“My primary concern is the vanishing wilderness in our country,” said Todd Kowitz.

Kowitz said he frequently hikes trails along the Kettle Crest, a longtime battlefield between environmentalists and the timber industry. The roadless initiative would prohibit development of about 54,000 acres of the Kettle Range, nearly equally distributed north and south of state Highway 20.

A rugged hump of land west of Metaline Falls, Wash., would be the largest single parcel protected, at 32,000 acres. It includes Abercrombie and Hooknose mountains.

About 14,000 acres adjacent to the Salmo-Priest Wilderness Area also would remain roadless. That federally designated wilderness abuts both Idaho and Canada.

Other roadless parcels are scattered across the forest.

Les Mueller, a Chewelah resident when he’s not teaching economics at Central Washington University, said people are wrong if they think building more roads and cutting more timber in such places is the answer to rural Washington’s economic troubles. A recent University of Montana study reached the same conclusion.

“It’s a short-term (economic) solution at best, but then the roadless areas would be gone for good,” said Mueller.

This sidebar appeared with the story: MEETING Coeur d’Alene next

The Idaho Panhandle National Forest will host a hearing about the proposal to permanently bar road construction in about 43 million acres of federal forests. That hearing is 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the forest headquarters, 3815 Schreiber Way in Coeur d’Alene.