Q&A with Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark

This week’s Q&A is with Department of Natural Resources head Peter Goldmark. His agency manages all the state lands, timber harvest and aquatics. It is, as he said, “an enormous responsibility.” Hear how budget cuts, housing starts and geoduck have affected his agency’s budget — and how they’re working to reduce forest fires and address climate change at the same time.

Note: The interview took place on July 30, so keep that in mind for the fire references.

Q. What are the biggest issues facing the Department of Natural Resources?
A. One of the biggest issues is our duty of putting out the fires on state and private lands and helping other jurisdictions. Today, we have perhaps 30 or 40 fires; we don’t even know the exact number. We’re busily trying to get to all of them. We had a major one in Chelan – the Union Valley Fire – unusual in that it threatened a number of homes. We asked for and received federal FEMA assistance. That one will be under control later today (July 30). This time of year with the heat, the biggest threat is wind.
Fortunately, the last couple of days we’ve had an enormous number of starts, but we’ve had little wind.
We deploy one fire retardant bomber and 7 or 8 helicopters along with many different crews and trucks. We interface with all the different fire jurisdictions – for instance, municipal. There’s been a major fire — the Johnson Lake Fire. We had a Type 2 team there, which is a very sophisticated team dealing with larger fires. There’s a new threat just this morning – lighting coming in down from Canada – so federal lands coming under increasing pressure. So it’s a very dangerous time of year for fires in the state and we take our responsibility seriously.
The number of fires is probably close to a record. We’ve had over 700 fires to date, not counting yesterday. There were tens of new starts yesterday. Fortunately we’ve been able to keep the fires at a fairly small size, so we’ve been able to limit the damage and expenditures. Three-quarters of our expenditures are on large project fires.
We just got a report on the 19th of this month (July) about our expenses and they were under projection. We’ll actually be returning some funds from fiscal year ‘09. Fiscal year ‘10 and ‘11 we don’t know. We’re working hard our goal to contain costs, but weather is the driver and there’s a tremendous about of dry lighting. We have a lot of exposure right now.
I would say the second most important thing that we’re doing is sort of dealing with the aftermath of the budget reductions. But also because of the record low timber prices, we get a lot of our revenue from the management fees of forests. Those are a fraction of what they were a few years ago. It was at $260 per board foot in March and May, now it’s at about $120 per board foot, reflecting the low number of housing starts, which has driven the demand to a very low level. The agency, like the industry, has been hit hard by the depression in the building industry.
The combination of those two reductions have put more budgetary pressure on our agency than any other. The net is 85 FTEs (full time equivalents) out the door. I’ve been told that’s more than the number of FTEs going out the door at DSHS.
Q. Have cuts affected the department’s ability to function? If so, how?
A. We’re having to focus our resources where they matter most. Obviously we’re focusing a lot of our resources on fire protection right now. But we will be funded regardless of how much the fire expense costs. We don’t know the number of fires.
Our regulatory duties are very important. Where we are responsible for issuing permits of harvest of timber on private lands, we are continuing to do that. We’ve cut back some but not to the extent of other programs.
We’ve paired back our state lands that funds how we grow and manage our state’s forest back to a minimum. We actually start our own trees at a nursery — We grow something like 3 million seedlings a year. We start with seed and end where we harvest.
Revenue generating areas are different. Aquatics is relatively untouched by the budget situation because they’re funded a lot by leases.
The remarkable thing is the geoduck market has stayed very stable – the buyers are Asian and it’s a delicacy over there. Near record prices at the last auction which was a couple weeks ago. The agency – that’s been doing remarkably well.
The areas that are hurt the most would include natural areas management and natural area preserves. Those are probably hit as much as anybody is. And geology – geology has suffered quite a few hits. That’s a difficult area.
Q. What’s an example of how that cut will affect the state?
A. For instance, we won’t be looking and scoping for new areas of endangered plant species as much. We will be trying to manage and reach out to nonprofits to help us manage existing areas.
Geology also involves a lot of mapping of tsunami evacuation routes. We’ll be reducing that mapping as well. It will affect the detail of geologic info we have for land planners and hazard information development.
Q. When I talked to Department of Agriculture head Dan Newhouse recently, he said that department is on the verge of cutting entire programs. Is the Department of Natural Resources in a similar place?
A. Not quite, no, because we’re very committed to the lands that we have the responsibility to manage. We have 3 million acres of uplands to manage. We can’t really dessert those lands.
Over in Eastern Washington, you can see on the map, (points to a map on the wall) the little brown squares. Those are all individual sections that are school sections that go all the way back to statehood. Those were given to the state for educational support. Imagine trying to visit every one of those parcels to make sure that the lessees are following through on our contractual obligations. Our ability to monitor how well our lands are managed will be seriously impacted – that’s one very good example.
Also because of lower harvest prices, we’re facing problems on the east slope of the Cascades because we have available trees to sell but there’s no mill over there. The transportation cost (to the nearest mill) is higher than the value of the timber. The economics are having a terrific impact on our land management abilities.

Going on to timber harvest, we’ve actually had to change our offerings – to just selling the high value timber species. The lower value timber is not being bid on. We have to take the cream off the top – it’s a really challenging time in natural resources management, particularly forestry. Because of that we are working hard to develop more revenue streams to support the agency and the school protection account.

Q. What sort of revenue streams?
A. We have the biomass initiatives. Recently we sent out a letter requesting proposals from folks interested all across the state and the nation to participate on these projects. It’s been overwhelming, the response.
We’re hoping that they’ll get started next summer. We’ll be able to convert a lot of waste material, like slash piles, that are currently torched, which creates a hazard. Imagine converting that into jobs, into a revenue stream and into — instead of releasing that carbon all at once — releasing it very slowly.
There’s a new fire on federal land close to Rim Rock Lake that’s burning in Bugkill national forest. The forest was under attack from insects. When a fire starts in that type of forest, it’s near impossible to stop. (With the biomass initiative), We could go into projects like that, clean up the forest and make them more fire proof, and we’re dealing with climate change at the same time.
We have an enormous amount of material – between slash pile and overburden material in the forest. It’s a great opportunity for the state and renewable energy.
We have more revenue streams in the works. Those are still in the formative stages and I’ll be talking about them more in the future.
The bigger picture goals are dealing with things like climate change and forest conversion. We want to be part of the effort to keep working forests working. We’ve been working on land acquisition – targeting forests that would be converted.

Q. How much timber does the state sell per year from its lands?
About 680 million board feet per year. We’re maybe going to cut even a little bit than normal this year. We might go as high as 700 million again, as I told you earlier, some of the sales that we offer have not been bid upon. We can offer, but we can’t dictate how much we sell it for.
It’s a new era in land management, particularly in selling timber products because of the glut on the market and the low prices. We’re trying to manage through this including selling high value material, and also finding niche areas.

Q. What sort of niche areas?
A. In different areas of the state, like up on the Olympic peninsula, we have larger trees with a fine grain structure to be used in Asian market. The more grains from slower growth rate, the higher structural value they have.
That is something that we’re working on right now.
FSC certification is another way to get more value and also improve the management strategy. We haven’t yet connected and been able to get more value at wholesale – so that the state gets more. All the wood (the state sells) is certified -one is FSC, the other is SFI- Sustainable Forestry Initiative — a creation of the forest products industry itself. It’s not as attractive because its not independent. We’re trying to move to FSC which is a totally independently certified.
Climate change, keeping working forests working, Puget Sound clean up – those three are enormous.
Plus, do everything we can to mitigate climate change and be as efficient as possible.

Q. Anything else you want to discuss?
The tidelands: Because of the trespasses that have cropped up, we’re working on mapping the state tidelands. It’s not a survey, it’s an assessment – We’re looking at where we have potential conflicts. We’re looking at the borders (with private owners) and that’s where we’ve found the conflict in the past. There are a number of trespasses out there and we’re hoping to resolve those over the summer.
In the aquatics area, we’ve reached out to Northwest Aggregate to work with them to develop some metrics about how they’re going to operate on Maury Island. (The previous contract with the state) was left very vague – there weren’t target metrics so that we could hold them accountable.
There are issues all over the state.

Q. One last question: How do you describe all the things your agency does?
A. We’re the state’s largest land manager and regulator of timber harvest practices – those are our major duties – land and water manager. Well, we manage land and aquatic resources. We don’t really manage water, because water volume and quality is managed by another agency. It’s an enormous responsibility.

Tags: Peter Goldmark, Q&A