Wood-chipper offers $29,000 for Mat-Su timber
Published in: Anchorage Daily News (Anchorage, AK)
Date: 8/29/2007
By: S.J. Komarnitsky
The state Division of Forestry received a single bid last week on a 4,600-acre timber sale near Hatcher Pass, but opponents are challenging the sale in court.
NPI LLC, a Point MacKenzie wood-chipping company, submitted a bid at the minimum asking price of $29,000 shortly before the Thursday deadline. The company has a month to finalize the contract but could potentially start harvesting this fall, said Rick Jandreau, state forester in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.
The sale is the second offered by the state in the past two years and the second to draw objections. A parcel off Petersville Road was offered for sale in 2006 but failed to attract any bids.
State officials say this harvest will provide jobs, moose habitat and help regenerate the forest. The sale covers nearly 4,600 acres off Willer-Kash Road.
Required protections, however, reduce the actual logged acreage to fewer than 1,200 acres.
Several area residents and three community councils are on record opposing the sale. Anchorage-based Alaska Center for the Environment has also filed suit in Superior Court in Palmer appealing the state decision to go forward with the sale.
The group argues that logging would hurt local tourism, generate few jobs and is based on outdated state forestry management plans that don’t take into account the Valley’s rapid population growth.
Executive director Randy Virgin said the group would ask for a court injunction if needed to halt the logging.
He said the group objects to the $29,000 sale price, which he believes the state set artificially low to attract the NPI bid.
The price is about half that of other recent Mat-Su timber sales, he said, and noted NPI representatives said they didn’t bid on the Petersville Road sale because it wasn’t economically feasible.
“It looks to us like they (the state) are dropping the price to reach NPI’s threshold of profitability and again, for what — to make pulp,” Virgin said.
Jandreau acknowledged the price is less than that bid for other sales, but he said officials took into account the need to build several miles of road for harvesting.
Those roads, at least one of which will be year-round, would benefit the state by providing access for future timber sales and for recreationalists like fishermen and mushers, he said.
He emphasized the $29,000 bid covers the state’s direct costs of putting the timber up for sale.
Virgin, however, added he believes the state should take into account the damage numerous logging trucks could do to area arterials like Fishhook-Willow Road.
Jandreau said he could not charge the company for using state and borough roads.
“I don’t know that those roads are limited as to what kind of traffic is going to go on them,” he said.