Timber sale is no sale
by Rick Nelson
It's time for Plan B, Wahkiakum County Commissioner Dan Cothren said Tuesday.
A proposed sale of county timber expected to generate around $1.2 million in revenue for county government drew no bidders when the state Department of Natural Resources put the sale up for auction last week.
Cothren said he talked with DNR regional staff after the auction and asked them to come up with another plan, for the county needs the revenue for its 2009 budget.
Cothren added that he wasn't suprised at the lack of bids. The timber is mixed species, and the main component, Douglas fir, is limby, low quality wood. The sale required a lump sum bid, which is unattractive to bidders at the moment. The timber market itself is soft with low demand.
"We have perfect fir tied up as marbled murrelet habitat in Middle Valley that would have sold well even in this tight market," he said, "so we're forced to go to this wood."
Cothren said the DNR managers contacted Cothren and said they would try to offer the sale again in May, this time on a contract based on volume harvested, not the lump sum value. The managers and Cothren agreed that the change should make the sale more attractive to loggers. However, the revenue to the county could be around $100,000 lower.
Cothren also predicted that the county won't receive as much revenue as expected from a coming sale of timber blown down in storms of the 2006-07 winter.
That wood laid on the ground all year as DNR managers developed a plan for selling it.
The market will be full of timber blown down along the Washington coast in the December 2007 storm.
"We had budgeted $200,000 from blowdown timber; we'll be lucky to get half that," Cothren said.