ANCHORAGE — U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is pushing legislation to resolve several outstanding land issues between the state and federal governments, including a Southeast timberland exchange that is nearly a decade in the making.
During a Sept. 22 Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Murkowski pressed Forest Service Deputy Chief Leslie Weldon regarding the agency’s apparent lack of progress in advancing a land swap with the Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office that the trust first proposed in 2007.
Alaska’s senior U.S. senator, Murkowski chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
She said further delays in swapping roughly 17,300 acres of Alaska Mental Health Trust land for 20,500 acres in the Tongass National Forest would force the state trust to begin harvesting timber from the land it has proposed to trade, effectively killing the deal.
“The Mental Health Trust is prepared to begin harvesting in areas the communities are clearly concerned about and (the trust) has said they have no option right now,” Murkowski said to Weldon. “If they don’t see (the swap) is going to move forward they’re going to move forward with the harvest.”
Trust Land Office Executive Director John Morrison said the state authority has voluntarily held off on harvesting the parcels of timberland but was more reserved than Murkowski about future actions in an interview.
“We are and continue to be in close discussions with the Forest Service to ensure this exchange is beneficial to both sides,” Morrison said.
The proposal
The Trust Land Office manages roughly 1 million acres of land across Alaska for resource development, the proceeds of which go to fund the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority’s work to benefit Alaskans with mental health and addiction challenges.
Timber sales have accounted for roughly a third of the Trust Land Office’s income over the past 20 years, according to Morrison.
Trust Land Office revenues have varied greatly over its 20-year existence, as money from timber and land sales and other resource projects has come and gone. Since 2011, its annual revenue has been between about $10 million and $16 million.
The parcels the trust proposed for trade are mostly within close proximity to Southeast’s largest communities — Juneau, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Wrangell and Sitka — and in areas residents of those communities for the most part don’t want to see logged.
Under the proposal, the trust would turn over its properties to the Forest Service for inclusion in the Tongass National Forest and in exchange get 20,500 acres of national forestland in parcels on Prince of Wales Island and remote areas of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough.
The Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority manages about 100,000 acres of timberland in Southeast. While it has long-term timber sales similar to leases in place, there is no active harvesting of trust timberland in the region, according to Morrison.
The proposed swap is for lands of equal value, thus creating the difference in acreage.
Weldon stated in written testimony to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that the Forest Service has “worked diligently to refine the technical details of the land exchange” with the trust since Murkowski introduced the legislation in May.
However, the agency cannot support the bill without technical changes to the language, according to Weldon.
Waiting on MOU
To date, the Forest Service and the trust have been working toward an administrative exchange that must be agreed to by both sides. Shifting to a legislatively mandated exchange would change that.
In a brief response to questioning from Murkowski, Weldon said the Forest Service will do its best to be as efficient as possible to move through the exchange process.
“Our goal is to work very closely (with the trust) and to the extent that we can get the land exchange done,” she said.
Murkowski introduced the Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Exchange Act of 2016 on May 26, which directs the Forest Service to complete the swap no later than a year after the legislation is enacted and also calls for the Alaska Mental Heath Trust to pay all costs association with the exchange.
The land exchange legislation was also included in the Alaska Economic Development and Access to Resources Act, sponsored by Murkowski July 13. The latter bill includes numerous other provisions regarding oil and gas leasing on federal lands, an Alaska exemption from the Forest Service’s “Roadless Rule” and the conveyance of 2 million acres of the 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest to the state of Alaska for establishing the Tongass State Forest.
During an April interview with the Alaska Journal of Commerce, Morrison said the Trust Land Office had been waiting since June 2015 to get a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, from the Forest Service that would outline the steps the state authority would need to take to advance the exchange and comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, likely a multi-year process.
He estimated the NEPA process would likely cost the trust between $1.5 million and $2 million and added the trust likely would not have suggested the swap if leadership would have known it would take this long.
“According to my forester, there’s $60 million worth of timber that we could log that we’re currently trying to exchange. We could put a lot of people to work and make a lot of money if we started cutting trees now,” Morrison said at the time.
He said Sept. 27 that the Trust Land Office was still waiting for the MOU and had not heard what the holdup was from the Forest Service.
The Trust Land Office is also soliciting letters of support for the exchange, with the main goal of ensuring Murkowski’s legislation passes, Morrison added.
Expediting the exchange
Greater Ketchikan Chamber of Commerce Executive Director William Swift submitted testimony for the Senate committee hearing in support of the legislation. He wrote that timber sales from the prospective trust land would adequately supply the lone remaining medium-sized sawmill and help keep 150 people employed on the Southeast island.
The Ketchikan Gateway Borough also passed a resolution supporting Murkowski’s legislation Aug. 15.
In June 2015 the state authority and federal agency signed an agreement to initiate the swap, which, after almost eight years of meetings between the two and stakeholder groups, detailed the lands that would be included.
Murkowski first wrote to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in July 2013 requesting the department expedite the exchange. Doing so would benefit the trust, but would also be in keeping with a memo from Vilsack to the Forest Service a few weeks prior to “speed the transition” from old-growth to young-growth harvest practices in the Tongass.
Vilsack responded to Murkowski that November, writing that the exchange “will be properly and promptly considered.”
• Elwood Brehmer is a reporter for the Alaska Journal of Commerce and can be reached at elwood.brehmer@alaskajournal.com.
