State forest agency urges expanding disaster relief to include sawmills and secondary processors

Oliver Pearson, director of forests at the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, told the House Agriculture, Food Resiliency & Forestry Committee that "the forest product sector experienced large financial losses from the 2023 and 2024 floods." He said the department supports including "forestry operations" in the relief fund language of Senate Bill 60 but urged the committee to broaden the statutory definition to cover additional business types.

The department's forest economy program manager, Catherine, presented survey results the agency collected after the July 2023 and July 2024 flood events. Catherine said the 2023 survey drew 90 respondents and produced a conservative estimated baseline of about $2,800,000 in direct financial losses; she cited survey design choices (binned loss categories) and incomplete coverage of affected businesses as reasons the figure should be treated as a minimum. For the 2024 event the agency received about 250 responses and said 110 reported significant losses, with the greatest county-level impacts reported in Essex, Orleans and Caledonia.

Why it matters: committee members are considering whether the Farm Security Special Fund (the statute…