Forest Service OKs Cholmondeley sale
Timber sale would create 145 jobs and require 21 miles of new roads
Officials with the U.S. Forest Service have affirmed a timber sale affecting 1,225 acres of the Tongass National Forest on eastern Prince of Wales Island after denying five separate appeals. Appellants say they may take the issue to court.
The Cholmondeley Sound Timber Sale, a 28.8-million-board-foot sale the Forest Service has said would create 145 jobs, has been nearly a decade in the making. The sale will entail the construction of about 21 miles of new road and two new log transfer sites. Now that the appeals process is over, the next step would be for the Forest Service to offer the sale to bidders.
Tongass spokesman Dennis Neill said the Forest Service theoretically can offer the sale 15 days after the affirmation, which occurred Thursday. He said the sale likely will be packaged into smaller deals to different bidders that would last between one and five years.
Opponents of the sale, including the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, local residents and the owners of two lodges in the area, say they are concerned the logging and road building might damage drinking water quality.
The owners of the Clover Bay Lodge, located in the southern portion of the sale area, are worried about the impact to their business, said Earthjustice attorney Demian Schane. Earthjustice, a nonprofit, public interest law firm, filed an appeal on behalf of the lodge owners and local residents and will decide within about a month whether or not to sue.
"We are seriously considering it, given the serious harm that's going to result on the Clover Bay folks," Schane said.
One of the log transfer facilities would be built near the lodge, but Ray Massey, spokesman for the Forest Service's Alaska Region, said the plan now calls for a "buffer strip" of vegetation to block the log transfer sight from view of the lodge.
Schane said that's not enough, arguing that visitors will see the lodge from the air on flights in and out, and while they fish or explore the area.
Massey said the Forest Service took appellants' concerns into consideration.
He said the logging company that wins the sale will be required to build large bridges over water crossings in order to avoid impacting the creeks.
In response to concerns that too much cedar will be harvested, Massey said the Forest Service will make sure harvested areas are reseeded or that other regenerative measures are taken. About half the timber sale is cedar.
The area, 15 minutes by air from Ketchikan, is exempt from the roadless rule, a Clinton-era rule that prohibits timber harvesting and road building within about 58 million acres of the 192-million-acre national forest system.
It's exempt because it was being planned before the rule took effect. About 9.6 million acres of the 16.8-million-acre Tongass has been designated roadless.
The Forest Service has proposed to exempt the Tongass and Chugach National Forests from the rule. The comment period on that proposal ended Tuesday.
Masha Herbst can be reached at masha.herbst@juneauempire.com.