GRANTS PASS, Ore. — Sen. Ron Wyden moved forward Thursday on his plan to get two top-priority bills — one to implement Klamath Basin water agreements and the other to boost logging in Western Oregon — through the lame-duck session of Congress before Democrats lose their majority in the Senate.
The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources endorsed the bills.
One would increase logging on the federal O&C lands of Western Oregon that provide revenue to timber counties. It does not include a revival of federal subsidies to struggling timber counties, but Wyden says he remains committed to passing that legislation. The vote was 15-7.
“This legislation won’t make everybody happy,” Wyden said, “but after years of working with stakeholders from every side of this complex issue, I’m confident this bill at last will deliver everyone in the O&C counties what they need.”
The committee also passed a bill to implement long-stalled agreements to remove dams from the Klamath River to help salmon, give farmers and ranchers predictable water supplies, and restore fish habitat. The vote was 17-5.
“If we don’t succeed now, the whole deal may fall apart, which would be a tragedy for the region,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. “I have conveyed to my Republican colleagues that this is a moment of opportunity that is incredibly important to farmers, ranchers and tribes, and we’ve got to get it done.”
Wyden hopes to attach the bills to must-pass legislation and win passage in the Republican-controlled House.
Oregon timber counties were flush with plentiful federal logging revenues in the 1980s, but the money dried up in the 1990s after logging was cut to protect the northern spotted owl and salmon. The counties got federal subsidies for years, but the money has been dwindling and is about to run out. Meanwhile, voters in many of the counties have refused to fill the gap by raising taxes.
While Wyden had backing from major environmental groups like the Pew Charitable Trusts for the logging bill, Oregon Wild, based in Portland, remained opposed, arguing it would harm fish and wildlife habitat and reduce clean water protections. Many in the timber industry and some timber counties have pushed for even higher levels of logging.
The water crisis in the Klamath Basin straddling the Oregon-California border hit its peak in 2002, when drought forced the shut-off of irrigation to farmers on a federal irrigation project to protect salmon and sucker fish. The next year irrigation was restored, but tens of thousands of adult salmon died in the Klamath River. Farmers, ranchers, Indian tribes, the dam owners and fishermen overcame their longstanding enmity, and came together on three agreements covering dam removal, sharing water, and restoring habitat.
Those agreements stalled in Congress for years as House conservatives opposed the idea of removing dams.
The O&C bill provides for a harvest of more than 400 million board feet a year for 50 years on 4,375 square miles of federal land covering a checkerboard pattern in western Oregon. The harvest is an increase over previous versions of the bill, and depends on changes to protections for old growth forests.
The harvest level represents twice the timber coming off the lands currently. The bill calls for designating about half the land for timber harvest, and half for conservation. The bill includes designation of 136 square miles of new wilderness areas, where no logging would be allowed, and designation of 252 miles of wild and scenic rivers.
