Legislature(2013 - 2014)BUTROVICH 205
03/21/2014 03:30 PM Senate RESOURCES
| Audio | Topic |
|---|---|
| Start | |
| SB160 | |
| SB28 | |
| HB161 | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
| *+ | SB 28 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| + | HB 161 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| + | TELECONFERENCED | ||
| = | SB 160 | ||
SB 28-SUSITNA STATE FOREST; SALE OF TIMBER
3:42:25 PM
CHAIR GIESSEL announced SB 28 to be up for
consideration.
3:43:12 PM
CHAIR GIESSEL moved Amendment 1.
28-GS1741\A.1
Bullock
3/20/14
AMENDMENT 1
OFFERED IN THE SENATE BY SENATOR GIESSEL
TO: SB 28
Page 2, line 11, following "chapter.":
Insert "The transportation objective for
the Susitna State Forest is to provide access
for timber management and multiple use within
the Susitna State Forest."
Page 7, line 14, through page 8, line 2:
Delete all material.
Renumber the following paragraphs accordingly.
Page 11, lines 12 - 23:
Delete all material.
Renumber the following paragraphs accordingly.
Page 14, lines 14 - 19:
Delete all material.
Renumber the following paragraphs accordingly.
Page 17, lines 11 - 27:
Delete all material.
Renumber the following paragraphs accordingly.
Page 21, lines 3 - 19:
Delete all material.
Renumber the following paragraphs accordingly.
Page 24, line 22, through page 25, line 7:
Delete all material.
Renumber the following paragraphs accordingly.
Page 27, lines 11 - 22:
Delete all material.
Renumber the following paragraphs accordingly.
Page 32, line 8:
Delete "2013"
Insert "2014"
SENATOR FRENCH objected for discussion purposes.
CHAIR GIESSEL explained that this amendment adds intent
language on page 2 of the bill and removes certain
parcels from the Susitna State Forest. The intent
language states a transportation objective for the
forest to provide access for multiple use and timber
management, and then some segments are removed from the
State Forest.
CHRIS MAISCH, State Forester and Director, Division of
Forestry, Department of Natural Resources (DNR),
Anchorage, Alaska, explained that the proposed
amendment is based on the public process they had been
going through for this bill, comments by local
government and others about concerns with needing
additional lands close to communities for potential
expansion of them, particularly near the communities of
the City of Houston, Wasilla, and up along the east
corridor of the Parks Highway. This amendment would
delete parcels on the east side strip that run North-
South, a relatively narrow corridor; this would garner
additional support for this legislation.
The other item concerned access to the State Forest
similar to the intent that already exists in the Tanana
Valley State Forest that says all parts of the State
Forests over time will by accessed with a mixture of
all-season and winter roads.
SENATOR FRENCH asked him to summarize the general
geographic changes.
3:45:22 PM
MR. MAISCH said he could tell him the block names, but
not exactly which lines they were on the map. There are
four blocks; the first is the northern parcels (the
Talkeetna block on their map); the descriptions address
the Kashwitna parcel, the Willard Cash parcel, and the
Houston parcel.
SENATOR BISHOP asked if parcels on the east side of the
highway were being stricken and the State Forest would
be on the west side.
MR. MAISCH answered yes. The stricken lands still be
managed for forestry, because they are classified in
the Area Plan as forestry land. He said it would be
easier to change the potential uses of those lands when
the Area Plans are updated.
SENATOR FRENCH withdrew his objection.
CHAIR GIESSEL, finding no further objection, announced
that Amendment 1 was adopted. She invited Mr. Maisch to
go through the rest of the bill.
3:47:42 PM
MR. MAISCH continued to explain that there are two
parts to the bill; one is the State Forest portion,
which he would speak to first, and then the part of the
bill, which specifically addresses his timber sale
authorities.
He said the State of Alaska owns and manages 9.5
million acres in the Matanuska Valley and that two Area
Plans - the Matanuska/Susitna Area Plan and the
Southeast Susitna Area Plan - currently are identified
for that area and have both recently been updated.
Both are high-level allocations for different types of
uses for state-owned land; State Forest, recreation,
habitat, and disposal are some of the general
classifications. This proposal originally suggested
663,000 acres and 33 parcels, but with the amendment
the acreage drops down to 688,000 acres and 20 parcels.
He said the primary purpose of the State Forest, by
statute, is for timber management that allows other
multiple uses of the forest to continue. One of the key
concerns they heard in various public meetings and
other discussions with local governments was that they
wanted to be assured that the same type and same scale
of use would continue to occur on the State Forests,
and that is the case. In fact, they feel over time, as
additional access is developed that many uses of the
State Forest will benefit, particularly from a hunting
and habitat management standpoint, which is where many
of those comments came from.
3:49:51 PM
MR. MAISCH recapped that the primary use for the State
Forest is timber management consistent with multiple
use and sustained yield principles. It is governed by
the Alaska Forest Resources and Practices Act, which
also affects state, municipal, and private lands, and
which is primarily designed to protect fish habitat and
water quality. So, mandatory stream buffers are
required in harvest units with a large number of rivers
already having the recreation corridors along them
(that in the Valley are a quarter mile on each side of
the river).
He said the Forest Management Plan for the State Forest
must be completed within three years of the Forest
being established and that is has a very extensive
public process, including establishment of the Citizens
Advisory Committee to give advice on uses and any
potential conflicts that could develop. The Tanana
Forest already has an advisory committee, but not the
Southeast State Forest or the Haines State Forest,
because they are much smaller in size, and in the case
of the Southeast State Forest, very remote, so there
aren't a lot of different users using those lands.
MR. MAISCH said it was left up to their discretion as
to whether to establish that Citizen Advisory Committee
or not; it would have 12 members that would mirror the
Board of Forestry that has 9 members, but it would
represent a range of constituents, users - business and
local government in the Valley - and they would be
advisory and appointed by the Division of Forestry.
He said the Management Plan will address future
transportation planning, timber sales, and kind of all
the standard things one would like to see in a plan
about how they intend to manage that property.
3:51:05 PM
MR. MAISCH said there had been extensive public
outreach consisting of community meetings as part of
the Area Planning process where the State Forest
concept was discussed starting in 2009 and six open
houses across the Valley in that timeframe, in 2012
there were 12 public meetings in communities up and
down the Valley, and 10 meetings in 2013 including 2
webinars which tried to reach the remote areas of the
borough where people couldn't easily travel into the
community meetings. It was so successful that they plan
to continue those. They also had 11 different news
articles, radio stories, or other topics in the Valley
in publications statewide on the topic of the State
Forest. So, it has been well-vetted and discussed among
the different interest groups. They also recently
received support from the Matanuska Susitna Borough at
their Tuesday Assembly meeting with a vote of 6-1 for a
resolution in support of the State Forest concept.
Numerous other letters in the record do the same thing.
He paused for questions.
3:52:29 PM
SENATOR MICCICHE asked what the primary species is in
that area.
MR. MAISCH replied spruce and white birch for hard wood
and black cotton wood and cotton wood, and an
occasional tamarack and aspen.
SENATOR MICCICHE asked what the state practice is for
reforestation after harvest.
MR. MAISCH explained that three different regions in
the state are under the Forest Practices Act, which
requires reforestation of harvested lands within five
years; that's in a "free-to-grow" state, a seedling
that is essentially growing aggressively and vigorously
and not overtopped by vegetation and grass.
Finding no further questions on the forest portion of
the plan, she invited him to go on to the timber sale
provisions and authorities.
3:53:43 PM
MR. MAISCH said some background on the department's
authorities would help put into context what they are
trying to do with this change. Currently, the Division
of Forestry has five different statutes that allow it
to sell timber using different methodologies in Title
38.05.115 and .117. The sale method used most
frequently statewide is the competitive sale process in
.120; those are sealed bid or oral outcry sales offered
in their different area offices. They are competitive
with the sale going to the highest price.
A couple of other sales methods encourage local and
domestic manufacturing; in Southeast Alaska if they
offered all the timber sales by the .120 process, all
the logs would go to the round log export market,
because it is a much more valuable market against which
the domestic market cannot compete. So they have
developed other alternatives that still have a
competitive piece on the front end, but then allow them
to negotiate the sale. Mr. Maisch explained that they
tried to do just round-log export restrictions in the
late 70s and that case found its way all the way to the
U.S. Supreme Court where the state lost it, because
they were trying to regulate inter-state commerce,
which a state cannot do. That is where the other
authorities have sprung from: creative ways to
encourage domestic processing, create jobs and more of
an economy in the local communities.
The first one is ".115 authority," which are sales for
less than 500,000 board feet. Those typically go to a
small saw mill or firewood operator. The next one is
the ".117 authority," which is for salvage sales after
a fire, insect and disease, and wind throw. It is an
expedited process to get that wood to market as quickly
as possible to salvage some of its value. The ".118
sales" are the large negotiated sales for 20-25 years,
the topic of this legislation. And the ".123 sale,"
which is value-added sales for up to 10 years, are
meant to provide raw materials to mills and facilities
that add a high level of value to the product, like the
pellet mill in Fairbanks. A list of materials that
qualify for high-value production can be found in 11
AAC 71.055.
MR. MAISCH said that their ".118 authority" has three
criteria that have to be in place to use: the census
district that the proposal is in has to have a high
level of local unemployment, it has to have an under-
utilized annual allowable cut in the timber supply, and
it has to have under-utilized manufacturing capability
at the facility that would use it. All three of those
are hard to align especially the high unemployment
piece. This bill proposes to strike all three of those
clauses, and that would make it easier to use and be
consistent across the state.
One other thing SB 28 does is that currently the
language in that statute just refers to timber, and to
make that more inclusive and clear they added, "timber
and fiber" (meaning all types of wood products).
3:58:01 PM
SENATOR BISHOP commented that Mr. Maisch did a good
overview and really knows his timber.
SENATOR FRENCH asked if this is like former Senator
Linda Menard's proposed legislation.
MR. MAISCH answered yes; the forestry proposal is
essentially the same, but it didn't have the change to
the timber piece (.118).
3:58:53 PM
CHAIR GIESSEL opened public testimony.
3:59:03 PM
WAYNE NICHOLS, Professional Forester and member, Board
of Forestry and Society of American Foresters,
representing himself, Juneau, Alaska, supported SB 28.
He said compared to other states, the Alaska State
Forest has a lot of benefits, the primary one being
that it makes good management of it possible by well-
qualified professional people of which Mr. Maisch is
"an outstanding example." His staff also have other
disciplines that relate to it. Designation as a State
Forest enables investments like planting a tree, a 100-
year investment, instead of the land being subject to
being changed for some other use. It is also valuable
in that better roads and bridges can be built. Pruning
and thinning are also long-term investments.
SENATOR DYSON thanked him for his service.
4:03:20 PM
NICK STEEN, Ruffed Grouse Society, Wasilla, Alaska,
supported SB 28. He said the president of the
Southcentral Chapter of the Ruffed Grouse Society, Dr.
Michael Fuller, recently contacted several members of
the legislature expressing opposition to SB 28 as
written. He explained that they enthusiastically
support the concept of a State Forest, however the
accelerated development in the Alaska Bowl and the
Matanuska Susitna Valley is transforming the character
of the area into an urban sprawl. A forest would
preserve public lands and resources for effective
forest management that promotes economic use of the
forest resources, enhancement of wildlife habitat close
to major population areas, and maintenance a large
block of land for public recreation. Their concern is
the fractured nature of the proposed boundaries, and
Dr. Fuller asked him to express his and the Chapter's
conditional support of SB 28.
Their Chapter has been working during the development
of the Susitna Matanuska Area Plan (SMAP) to establish
a State Forest on all unencumbered state land west of
the Susitna River between the Beluga River and the
south boundary of the Denali State and National Parks
draining into the Susitna River. They oppose the SMAP
as developed since it has designated a series of non-
contiguous lands for forest management interspersed
with land designated as mining or for disposal as
recreation and agriculture. This hampers effective
forest management and restricts public and multiple
use.
SB 28 perpetuates this approach by identifying only the
land designated for forest management by the SMAP as a
Susitna Forest. It does not address the issues of
access for effective forest management, uniform
regulations for total area management, boundary
identification for recreational use, and the loss of
public access for recreational purposes by transferring
land to private ownership. However, there is
insufficient time in their mind in the legislative
session to make the major changes needed to fix these
issues. Therefore, they feel that getting the Forest
established is critical and would like to support the
current bill, but ask their help in making it more
effective by considering modifications to the
boundaries in future legislation and directing the DNR
to suspend implementation of any land disposal programs
in the SMAP west of the Susitna River until their
concerns are addressed.
SENATOR FAIRCLOUGH joined the committee.
4:06:41 PM
ERIN MCLARNEN, member, Board of Forestry, representing
"the recreational users of Alaska", Willow, Alaska,
supported SB 28. She also personally supported the
Susitna State Forest. Not only would it create jobs and
stimulate the economy over time, but it would guarantee
all users a place to recreate.
MS. MCLARNEN said she is a 17-year long-distance dog
musher and frequently uses state forest lands for
training her dogs. These are her favorite runs for
their access and the roads created during harvest, and
she wanted more users to have those same opportunities.
She said the local Willow dog mushers have formed a
strong relationship with the Division of Forestry and
DNR, as well as the logging operators. In September
they all come together to talk about their harvest
plans for roads and then the mushers overlap their
trails onto that. A lot of the operators will actually
reroute their trails during harvest times so that those
training grounds won't be lost, actually suspending
harvest for two days for a 100-mile kids' dog race on
their trail system.
4:09:04 PM
RICK ROGERS, Executive Director, Resource Development
Council (RDC), Anchorage, Alaska, said he is also a
certified forester that had performed forestry on and
off throughout Alaska since 1981 and supported SB 28.
It represents the state committing a long-term land
base to promote long-term sustainable forestry
practices.
He said LNG is speed dating compared to forestry,
because forestry is an extremely long-term commitment.
Forest rotations in Alaska can span from 60 to 100-plus
years. So, if they are going to do the job right and
encourage long-term forest productivity and encourage
the private sector to invest in what it takes to
harvest and process that timber to generate jobs and
create wealth in our communities, then we need to
commit the land base so they know that state is
committed and that the land is going to be available.
The lands in question are already being managed for
forestry, and this bill makes it official.
MR. ROGERS also noted there were over 3 million acres
of other legislatively-designated lands for things like
parks, refuges and public use areas throughout the Mat-
Su area and a designated working State Forest is needed
to balance that out. He said this isn't a new
experiment in Alaska that already has the Tanana Valley
State Forest, the Haines State Forest, and the
Southeast State Forest, and they are all good models
from which to build one in the Susitna Valley.
He noted that Mr. Steen encouraged some future look at
boundaries and that historically the Tanana Forest has
had at least one, and maybe several, modifications over
its history. So nothing keeps them from improving on
the boundaries that are presented today. He hadn't
looked at the amendments in detail, but would give
deference to the committee and DNR for working with the
local community. If they can gain support by reducing
some of those areas, perhaps they could be considered
in the future for adding to the State Forest at a later
date.
MR. ROGERS summarized that this bill represents a long-
term commitment to good forest management and the
private sector is likely to respond favorably to that.
It is consistent with the state's constitutional
mandate to manage these resources sustainably for the
long term benefit of Alaskans.
4:13:34 PM
ANDY ROGERS, Alaska Chamber of Commerce, Anchorage,
Alaska, supported SB 28. He liked the 100-plus year
commitment and thought it was an opportunity for the
state to be a good steward of its resources and to
ensure long-term economic stability with the potential
for growth.
4:16:19 PM
CHAIR GIESSEL, finding no further comments, closed
public testimony and moved conceptual Amendment 2. She
explained that this management plan would not be as
well written as the one for the Tanana State Forest,
but adding the following language from that plan to
page 32, line 2, would resolved that:
(e) The wildlife management objective of the
Susitna State Forest is the production of
wildlife for a high level of sustained yield
for human use through habitat improvement
techniques to the extent consistent with the
primary purpose of a state forest under AS
41.17.20.
CHAIR GIESSEL explained that this amendment would
maximize the area for wildlife management and not just
for timber management.
SENATOR FRENCH objected for discussion purposes and
said he preferred to see the amendment in the bill and
to have enough time for consideration of it.
CHAIR GIESSEL responded that it goes to the Finance
Committee next.
SENATOR FRENCH withdrew his objection.
4:19:22 PM
MR. MAISCH said he supported the conceptual amendment
and that its language is currently in AS 41.17.400 (e)
for the Tanana Valley State Forest.
SENATOR BISHOP said that should go a long way to make
the Ruffed Grouse people, who would hunt grouse there,
a lot happier.
MR. MAISCH said he hoped so, too; they are serious
about habitat and forest management that really go
hand-in-hand.
CHAIR GIESSEL announced that Amendment 2 was adopted.
MR. MAISCH summarized that this is a statement about
long-term commitment and a sustainable resource that
can be managed to help Alaska's communities. It's about
the "the triple bottom line" of society, environment,
and the economy. When done right it can get good
results for the people of the state.
4:21:18 PM
SENATOR DYSON moved to report SB 28, version 28-
GS1741\A, as amended, from committee to the next
committee of referral with attached fiscal notes and
individual recommendations. There were no objections
and CSSB 28(RES) passed from the Senate Resources Standing
Committee.