A draft letter from the Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) to be sent to the Board of Natural Resources (BNR) states that Thurston County will not be able to produce a plan within the time given by the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to comply with a directive it was given in March 2024.
BNR directed BoCC on March 3, 2024, to develop a plan to protect the county’s “structurally complex” forests while ensuring that the timber sales beneficiaries are monetarily made whole.
Patches of forestland in Capitol State Forest totaling 197 acres, collectively nicknamed “Cabbage Patch,” were supposed to go to auction in February this year, but the BNR paused the sale due to pushback from the BoCC.
Cabbage Patch consists of "structurally complex” forest stands, which the county aims to protect the last 4,677 acres of mature forest in Capitol State Forest.
A “structurally complex” forest is a forest that is diverse in terms of tree species, sizes, and ages. According to DNR policy, “forests in these phases have varying sizes of trees, understory vegetation and lichen, downed wood and snags, etc.”
The BNR gave the BOCC until October 1 to address its directive and told that if the county did not have a viable plan by then, it would move forward with the sale of Cabbage Patch.
In the draft letter, the BoCC wrote that though it tried pursuing the development of the requested plan through various means, the county commissioners believed they could not develop it for now.
“Unfortunately, at this juncture, we do not believe it is possible Thurston County to fully satisfy the directives of the March 5 letter,” the letter stated.
The letter provided several reasons why they cannot produce a plan. One is that BoCC believes that “DNR has directly undercut the county’s efforts.”
“DNR was working actively with the forest industry to provide misleading financial information to our junior taxing districts and Economic Development Council to create unnecessary alarm and pressure us to abandon our community’s goals,” the BoCC wrote.
Due to actions that BoCC said “has eroded trust,” the BoCC stated they were skeptical that any plan they could create to protect mature, complex forests would ever be accepted or implemented by DNR.
BoCC added that investing more taxpayer resources into the plan would “likely be ill-advised.”
Another reason is that BoCC believes that a “County-generated analysis of financial impacts to beneficiaries — to keep them monetarily whole — has proved impossible.”
The BoCC wrote that their attempts to forecast timber sale revenues have been unreliable.
According to the letter, county staff looked into DNR’s reports and forecasts, as well as their remittance records, but have never accurately forecasted revenues from timber sales.
“A possible explanation, offered by DNR staff, is that once the right to harvest is awarded, actual sales can occur over multiple years, making the actual amounts received unpredictable,” the letter stated.
“Whatever the reason, we are simply not able to make specific proposals and simultaneously ensure, on a cut-by-cut basis, that every trust beneficiary is kept 100% whole,” the letter continued.
DNR has made its analysis of the financial impact if the timber from Cabbage Patch is not sold.
According to DNR, the beneficiary that would most benefit from the Cabbage Patch is the Olympia School District (OSD). Of the projected $1.26 million revenue to be received by the county from the sale of Cabbage Patch, $560,000 will go towards OSD over several years.
DNR calculated the figures based on 2024 tax rates. These figures do not account for all the revenues from Cabbage Patch, partly in Grays Harbor County.
The BoCC also wrote that any plan by October 1 would be premature as the work of the DNR Carbon and Forest Management Workgroup is not yet complete.
The March 3 letter mentioned that BNR is pausing the Cabbage Patch sale to allow the county to be informed about future recommendations by the said workgroup.
According to the BoCC, the group’s work has been delayed, so the board believes it should be able to consider the group’s findings once they have been made available.
Pausing the sale would have also allowed the DNR and BoCC to determine whether the legislation provided additional funding for protecting structurally complex older forests, according to the BNR’s March 3 letter.
The BoCC wrote that this happened when the state legislature allocated up to $5.75 million to protect structurally complex forestlands and specifically identified the county and Capitol State Forest as a recipient of 260 acres of this protection.
The letter was brought to the BoCC in a work session on Wednesday, September 25. Commissioners Carolina Mejia, Wayne Fournier, and Emily Clouse supported the draft by Commission Chair Tye Menser.
Commissioner Gary Edwards expressed concern about the education funding that would be lost should the sales not push through.
“I was okay as long as we did not affect that any of the junior taxing districts and we did not have a detrimental effect and basically take money from those entities… I’m going to say we are stealing money from the junior taxing districts, and I just can’t go along with that,” said Edwards.
Edwards emphasized that the school districts have minimal funding due to the McCleary decision.
“I don’t know if any of you had a chance to listen to the Superintendent of Public Instruction, but we’re in tough shape when it comes to education…I think he’s asking for $4 billion or something over the next year,” added Edwards.
Edwards proposed sending a response stating that the BoCC “has not come up with a plan that prevents removing money from the junior taxing districts.”
Fournier said that none of Edwards’ statements are in the letter, as the draft only contained a response to BNR’s directive.
“This letter doesn’t say we want to…take money from the junior taxing districts. This isn’t a point where the board would make some decision to pull themselves out of any actions to stop the harvest of the legacy forest; this is simply a response,” said Fournier.
Menser requested Thurston County Manager Leonard Hernandez present the letter on October 1, the exact day BNR directed the county to do so.
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hptrillium
It saddens and angers me that the Department of Natural Resources refuses to cooperate with the Thurston County Council. DNR will do everything in its power to sell off the last remaining mature stands in the state. DNR’s comeback is that the young trees will be as old as these legacy trees by 2070. We need these older forests now not in 46 years!
This is why it is so vitally important that we elect Dave Upthegrove our next Lands Commissioner. He will save the Legacy Forests and fund the junior taxing districts in other ways. He will not let DNR disregard the welfare of the people. Vote for Upthegrove on Nov 5th.
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