El Dorado County – Sierra Pacific Industries’ sawmill in Camino closed its doors last Thursday, once again raising debate over the future of forest-based industries in our region and across the country. Sierra Pacific estimates 160 mill workers and 450 workers whose jobs depend on the Camino mill will lose their jobs. After recent closures in Quincy and Sonora, this becomes the third shutdown in the region, bringing the total direct and indirect job loss to almost 1200 jobs, according to Mark Luster, Community Relations Manager for Sierra Pacific Industries. As many as 25 mills have shut down through the last half-century in the Mother Lode region. “Today is a sad day for El Dorado County. The closing of Sierra Pacific’s mill is a great loss to the entire community,” said Senator Dave Cox, who represents this region. Sierra Pacific officials said the “difficult lumber market combined with reduced timber harvests on nearby national forest lands and state regulatory burdens were the primary drivers behind the decision to close the plants.” Luster said about 40 percent of the lumber needed to supply Sierra Pacific’s sawmills comes from the United States Forest Service and other private landowners. “The Forest Service has been under litigation for the last two decades or so, and their supply of timber has dropped about 90 percent in the last 20 or 30 years. That means that we don’t have the log supply to run our sawmills with,” said Luster. Some local officials, like Calaveras District 2 Supervisor Steve Wilensky are pushing for fundamental changes that will allow forest based industries to survive in the future. “It’s a boom-bust cycle that we’ve learned about in the foothills from the Gold Rush to timber to housing. We’ve really hitched our wagon to ponies that tended to go off a cliff,” said Wilensky in an exclusive TSPN interview. Wilensky traveled to Washington, DC, on May 21 to testify before a Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands in an Oversight Hearing. Wilensky is pushing for a sustainable forest economy partly based on restoration, watershed protection, and carbon sequestration. “Those things can be wrapped into an economy and could put a lot of people back to work,” he said. Senator Cox is taking a different approach to dealing with these closures. He met with the Governor and legislative leaders earlier this year to ask that the state revise its timber harvest laws with a Timber Harvest Plan/Forest Conservation Plan to allow professional foresters to manage California’s forests. “Had the Governor and Legislative leaders adopted Cox’s request, jobs in the timber industry would have been saved,” wrote one Cox spokesperson in a press release. Cox has also introduced Assembly Bill 1066, which would extend the effective period of a timber harvest plan from three years to five years. Wilenksy says that “every time we have a housing market drop we have a big argument about environmental regulations, but overall, statistically, housing starts dictate the number of board feet in this country, and the housing starts are down to nothing.” He added that “occasionally there will be places where environmental regulations keep people out of certain areas…but we’re looking to treat the Sierra as a whole so those distortions need to be balanced out.” Story by Alex Lane This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.