01:00 PM PST on Saturday, December 11, 2004

Associated Press

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. - On the rocky road up through Blanchard Mountain, the muffled din of chain saws can be heard through the forest canopy. A lone logger works a quarter of a mile down from the main road, felling trees - mostly Douglas Firs - that aren't marked with blue chalk, which designates trees to be left standing.

For some, especially officials with the Burlington-Edison School District, the sound is sweet, synonymous with funding for new building projects. For environmentalists and some concerned neighbors, it is the sound of wildland habitat and recreational opportunities being destroyed.

State-owned timberland on the mountain, occupying about 4,800 acres just below the Whatcom-Skagit county line, is at its logging prime. And 60 percent of the mountain's trees are of harvestable age. Therein lies the dispute.

The state constitution directs that state-owned lands be harvested to generate money for public purposes. The Department of Natural Resources manages about 2.1 million acres of state trust lands, most of which were set aside when Washington became a state to help pay for school costs.

But about one-third of the state trust lands, including Blanchard Mountain, were acquired in the 1920s and 1930s from county governments, which had seized them from the owners for nonpayment of property taxes.

The counties transferred the lands to the state, which was better able to manage them. The transfer lands are overseen by the Forest Board, which includes the state Superintendent of Public Instruction and other representatives of agencies benefiting from timber harvest revenues.

Unlike state trust land, whose timber money goes to the state, the revenue from forest board lands goes into local coffers. That includes the county general fund, local hospitals, cemeteries, and schools. In the last 10 years, Skagit County public services received about $6.5 million in timber money from Blanchard Mountain.

Environmentalists complain that the state's system of financing construction of schools and other public facilities out of timber revenue is outdated. But school district officials say they depend on the revenue to offset their building costs, at least until a better system is found.

Of Washington state counties, Skagit County is one of the biggest beneficiaries of state timber revenue. Over the last 10 years, the county has collected $95 million as its share of logging proceeds from forest board lands.

Of that, Burlington-Edison schools has received about $1.2 million. And the next 10 years promise even more fruitful returns for Burlington schools - as much as $2 million, said Finance Director Greg Thramer.

The additional cash flow will be warmly welcomed, especially as the district is planning to build a new school, Thramer said.

"People don't realize how much money schools get from logging," he said. "They want to save the trees for emotional reasons." Of Skagit County school districts, Sedro-Woolley receives the biggest share of the total forest board trust land timber revenue.

In 2000, the district received 75 percent of the Skagit timber revenue directed to schools. Other districts also received timber revenues, but in much smaller amounts.

Trust lands in other Skagit school districts haven't sparked much controversy - they are forests that have been managed with the sole purpose of generating revenue. They are generally located on flat, unimpressive terrain and seldom attract hikers, hang gliders or other people out for a walk in the wilderness.

But Blanchard Mountain, because of its breathtaking view of the San Juan Islands, its bat caves, and its close proximity to Bellingham, is a recreational haven and a subject of hot debate.

It takes time before a diminished forest becomes merchantable.

For Blanchard, it took 70 years. And in the time the forest grew up, people started visiting the mountain and developed an attachment to it.

Though Blanchard has been logged in some areas in the last three or four decades, it wasn't until recently that the DNR declared Blanchard ready for a much larger, more significant harvest. Quick to respond, locals who love the mountain banded with environmental groups to organize and protest.

The Northwest Ecosystems Alliance and the Sierra Club in Bellingham say the reliance on timber revenues to build schools is archaic and should be changed. They want the DNR to replace predicted funding from Blanchard with timber revenue from other, less recreationally popular trust lands.

But if the DNR were to shift its harvesting, Burlington schools wouldn't receive the timber revenue derived from forest board lands. School districts receive that money only when the harvesting occurs within district boundaries.

DNR Baker District Manager Jeff May has stood in the middle of the debate about how to treat Blanchard.

"There are lots of competing interests," May said. "We see this as a working forest in more of an urban setting. There is lots of public use and interest in the area, but we still have the trust responsibility and the responsibility to the beneficiaries."

Lisa McShane from Northwest Ecosystems spearheaded the environmental protest of the proposed logging. She cites Blanchard's scenic and recreational qualities as the foremost reasons for protecting most of the mountain.

"My role is to push for the kind of management that protects wildlife," McShane said. "I see Blanchard as a place where logging is going to happen, but public values should be protected." In the late 1990s, the Sierra Club asked that Blanchard be preserved as "unique" land. But in 1999, the DNR determined that Blanchard, which is in its fourth rotation of forest growth in some areas, is not worthy of natural resource status.

There is no doubt about the law - it is a clearly written mandate that requires state trust and forest board lands be logged in a sustainable fashion. Despite the rigid mandate, environmentalists have influenced logging methods over the past two decades.

On Blanchard, loggers must leave between eight and 20 trees for every 100 or so that are cut down. A 100-foot buffer must be maintained on either side of mountain streams, to preserve animal habitats and prevent stream silting due to erosion.

Long before "environmentalist" was a word, when the state was bristling with full-trunked firs, the state was setting aside land for logging to pay for school construction.

As is still the case, the DNR would hold auctions and allow the highest bidder to log the land. The revenue would be divided between the DNR, the state, and the county, and the largest portion would go to the school district on which the logging took place.

In 2000, when the Legislature bowed to environmentalist pressures to conduct a study of Blanchard Mountain, the DNR stopped clear-cutting the mountain. The Legislature wanted to see the study's outcome before allowing clearcuts, said May.

The moratorium coupled with a dismal timber market nearly dried up the Burlington-Edison School District's timber revenue for five years. In those five years, the district saw a little less than $150,000 in timber revenue.

The 79-page study on Blanchard came out in 2001. At the heart of the report was a survey of residents - most from Whatcom, some from Skagit - about whether they would pay to preserve Blanchard Mountain. Fifty-five percent said yes, results environmentalists have since used to show local support for preserving Blanchard.

But most of the respondents were from Whatcom and not residents of school districts that would lose money should Blanchard be closed to loggers.

With the study completed, the DNR set to work to complete a long-term harvest plan for Blanchard. Their plan is due out July of 2005 and will no doubt have a significant impact on the hikers, the hang gliders, and construction money for Burlington schools.