Norman D. Dicks: “I want to stand and strongly support this legislation. In the Pacific Northwest, we have seen harvest levels reduced by…”

“I want to stand and strongly support this legislation. In the Pacific Northwest, we have seen harvest levels reduced by almost 95 to 100 percent over the last 4 years. We have been under a court injunction. At the same time, we have had blowdown, we have had burned timber, bug-infested timber that could be salvaged, and we could take that and sell it and bring money into the Treasury at a time when housing prices for lumber are sky high. It has added $5,000 to $7,000 per house because of the shortage of lumber. Mr. Chairman, I would urge my colleagues to stick with the committee. The committee almost unanimously approved this amendment, and we did it with environmental sensitivity. Every sale has to have an environmental assessment. Every sale has to have a biological opinion. If they violate that, you can still go to the Federal Court for an injunction. What we tried to do was expedite the process. Why? Because dead, diseased, dying, bug-infested logs only last for 2 or 3 years, and then they are gone. So if we went with the normal process, we would simply not get to it. What are we doing here? We are not raping anything or tearing anything apart. We have said we will not go into wilderness areas. What we are doing is doing this in a very responsible way, that will restore forest health. The ecologists have looked at this and said this is a good way to go. There are 18 to 21 billion board feet of it laying out there over the country.”