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City forester briefs council on watershed stewardship, timber sale revenue and carbon-project reverification
Summary
City Forester Ben Hayes told the Astoria City Council on April 7 that watershed stewardship, a recent timber sale and the city’s voluntary carbon project continue to generate funding used for road maintenance and mitigation work in the 3,700-acre municipal watershed.
Ben Hayes, the city forester, gave a yearly update April 7 on operations in the city-owned drinking-water watershed about 10 miles east of Astoria. The watershed covers roughly 3,700 acres that the city has owned since the 1950s and provides the city’s municipal water supply.
Hayes told councilors the watershed requires significant road maintenance to limit sediment delivery into source water; the city spent about $65,000 last year on mainline road maintenance and is moving to an annual scope of work that will include resurfacing, rebuilding and decommissioning where appropriate. He described a recent variable retention timber sale that did not require new roads and returned approximately $485,000 in net revenue.
Most of Hayes’s presentation focused on a voluntary carbon project administered under the American Carbon Registry that covers the watershed. That project, he said, began in 2015 and uses five-year inventory and verification cycles during a 40-year crediting period. The city is in a reverification year for 2025: staff plan fall forest inventory work, winter modeling and documentation, spring verification and summer 2026 potential credit issuance and sale. Hayes said staff anticipate generating about 40,000 credits in this cycle with net revenue to the city in an estimated $350,000 to $500,000 range; prior carbon proceeds have been placed in a watershed reserve fund used for stewardship costs, such as pre-commercial thinning, road repairs and mitigation work.
Hayes also reported the city continues Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) group certification and periodic desk audits, and he noted mitigation needs at washed-out roads such as “Spur 12” where previous emergency repairs lacked fish passage and triggered ODFW mitigation obligations. He said staff have a range of mitigation options under review, but the cost and schedule are not yet determined.
Councilors did not ask follow-up questions after the presentation. Hayes said he would answer further questions by email and is coordinating RFPs for inventory and verification contractors.
