Transcripts

LEIF ENGER: At first, Becker County Land Commissioner Chip Lohmeier didn't know how bad the storms were. A couple of his lawn chairs blew into the ditch, but he didn't lose any trees.

Then reports started coming in of blocked roads, people stranded without power. And it wasn't until days later, when he recruited a private pilot to fly him over the county, that he realized the extent of the damage.

CHIP LOHMEIER: You could see it from about 10 to 20 miles away that there was something different up ahead. And everything was gray. You didn't have that green color from the leaves. You had gray. You were seeing the trunks of the trees laying down.

LEIF ENGER: The storms flattened a quarter of a million acres of forest over two separate areas of Minnesota, a section in the northeast near Grand Rapids and another here in the Northwest. In Becker County alone, almost 40,000 acres were lost. While most of the blocked roads have been cleared now and electricity restored, the local government finds itself in a jam.

Like many northern counties, Becker depends on the timber industry for revenues, but the storms took down as many trees as the county would have harvested in 20 years. The supply of available timber, that which must either be harvested now or rot on the ground, suddenly dwarfs the demand.

CHIP LOHMEIER: Before the storm, we had a timber sale. And we were getting, on average, $22.90 a cord for Aspen. We've had some salvage auctions since then, and we're averaging somewhere around $2.85 a cord, or roughly 10% of what we were getting before.

LEIF ENGER: Deep in what used to be a mature Aspen forest in the northern part of the county, logger Ken [? Schultz ?] leads the way through a boneyard of tipped and twisted trees, some with their roots in the air, some broken off, some bent back like catapults with the weight of others.

Though, he paid just a few dollars per cord for the right to salvage here. [? Schultz ?] says, he'll only get half as much saleable timber from this job, as he would have had the trees been standing. Much of this wood is split, or corkscrewed, and Schultz's customers, the paper and fiberboard mills accept only clean lengths of 100 inches or more.

[? KEN SCHULTZ: ?] We'd have to cut this back, like two feet, and then we can get an eight-foot chunk out of there. And it'll be waste on that end, too, because at least eight feet in each one of those trees that's ruined, if not more.

LEIF ENGER: Besides the unavoidable waste, logging under these conditions is dangerous. Stand up timber is harvested by huge machines these days. But here, there's a lot of chainsaw work, cutting up trees that are under pressure and might spring or roll unpredictably.

Some loggers, fearing injuries and insurance premium hikes, won't even bid on salvage contracts. Many others, like Schultz, feel they have to. It's work, after all, for the next month or so. And when it's over, logging jobs might be scarce in Becker County for years to come.

KEN SCHULTZ: About 20 years of our allowable cuts probably went down in this county alone. So it affects everyone. The plants and the local people who rely on the employment from this, and the counties and townships who rely on that money from a tax base.

LEIF ENGER: In fact, most of Becker County's timber revenues go straight to the land department, which uses them to maintain forest trails, develop logging and conservation policies and husband wildlife. Any profit beyond the land budget, and sometimes it's a lot, goes to the county's general fund and to townships and

Commissioner Carolyn Engebretson says, townships have often used those funds to give property owners some tax relief, now, that cushion is gone for the foreseeable future. Not only that, but taxpayers may face a new burden, paying for a land department that, until now, has been self-supporting.

CAROLYN ENGEBRETSON: We're saying, well, maybe for a while, we're going to-- I don't know, use tax dollars. I hate to say that because that has not been the history, but we've never had a storm like this either.

LEIF ENGER: It's also possible Becker County will sell off some property and pay for the land office that way. Ironically, the department that lost its funding in the storms is now needed to help the county recover. The blow down, messed up plans for how much timber to cut and where to cut it, that policy must be built again from scratch. And the county, which has taken pains to harvest trees out of the sight of tourists, now finds clear cuts open to view.

The wind, says Land Commissioner Lohmeier, didn't worry about their well-laid plans. For now, his top priority is getting as many downed trees as possible off the ground. Or by next spring, they'll become potent fuel for a fire season, no one here wants to think about.

Leif Enger, Main Street Radio.