County workshop speakers urge commissioners to oppose proposed state stream-buffer expansion

A Cowlitz County Board of Commissioners workshop on the Forest Practices Act drew timber-industry and landowner testimony on a proposed Forest Practices Board rule to expand stream buffers on small, non–fish-bearing streams.

Speakers including Wade Boyd, a forestry industry veteran, told commissioners the state Department of Ecology’s approach would bypass the adaptive-management process in the Forest and Fish agreement and impose broadly applied buffers without stream‑level study. Boyd said the change would remove tens of thousands of acres from active management and reduce county excise-tax receipts.

The proposal matters locally because timber harvest supports logging jobs, mill operations and county excise-tax revenues used for schools, roads and other local services. County officials said they are preparing formal comments and will consider direct outreach to members of the Forest Practices Board ahead of a public comment deadline.

Wade Boyd, who described himself as a private citizen with decades of experience in Washington forestry, told the commissioners, "There is no evidence that additional buffers are needed to protect small streams." He cited an analysis he said was done with University of Washington tools showing roughly 28,000 acres in Cowlitz County could be newly encumbered and estimated that restricting harvest on those acres would lock approximately $245 million in timber value — yielding roughly $10 million in lost excise-tax revenue to the county over time by Boyd’s calculation.

Boyd urged commissioners to contact Forest Practices Board members and to submit public comments before the Ecology comment deadline. He criticized what he described as the Department of Ecology’s decision to assume a potential change in stream temperature warrants an immediate, across‑the‑board buffer increase rather than following the adaptive‑management testing process established in the Forest and Fish agreement.

County staff and some commissioners said they had prepared a county letter opposing the change and would appear at the state hearing in Olympia. A county official said local conservation district leaders and the state association of counties have circulated opposition letters, and that the proposal’s comment period and a late afternoon hearing in Olympia were on an accelerated schedule.

Several local residents and landowners also spoke, saying the rule would reduce the value of properties where landowners have planted trees and planned forestry-based income streams. One landowner described a longtime family property near Castle Rock and said new buffers could prevent any future harvest on land the family has managed since the 1970s.

No formal action or vote by the board on the rule was recorded in the workshop transcript; commissioners said they would finalize and send a draft letter and encouraged concerned residents and local organizations to submit individual comments to the Forest Practices Board and Department of Ecology.

For now, the record shows county officials and industry representatives requesting state decision‑makers to maintain the adaptive‑management approach and to require stream‑specific studies before imposing broader, permanent no‑harvest buffers.