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Groups Ask Washington State To Stop Logging Burned Areas Of Methow Valley

File photo. The Carlton Complex fires burned large areas of land near Twisp, Washington, in 2014.
Anna King
/
Northwest News Network
File photo. The Carlton Complex fires burned large areas of land near Twisp, Washington, in 2014.

Recent flash flooding in theMethowValley area in northeast Washington state has critics asking the state to stop logging there.

The groups say a logged area is to blame for a recent flash flood. The Methow Valley area was scorched by the massive Carlton Complex fire last year.

With recent flash floods in an area East of Carlton and more thunderstorms moving through, residents in the Methow are edgy. Peter Goldman, director of the Seattle-based Washington Forest Law Center, said Washington’s Department of Natural Resources doesn’t have good laws on forest fire salvage logging.

He said water isn’t soaking in on these burned areas. And since February, his group has fought this timber cut and road building near Texas Creek.

“The only thing we can do is to make sure this doesn’t happen again and that the DNR is held accountable for imprudently logging this place,” Goldman said.

Washington State Department of Natural Resources Communications Director Sandra Kaiser said out of 250,000 acres of burned land, only about 1,300 acres were logged near Texas Creek, and that the loggers used best practices.

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Austin Jenkins contributed to this report.

Copyright 2015 Northwest News Network

Anna King loves unearthing great stories about people in the Northwest. She reports for the Northwest News Network, a journalism collaboration of public radio stations in Washington and Oregon that includes JPR.