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Wyden Pushes On With 2 Key Oregon Natural Resources Bills

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., announces his O&C timber bill during a 2013 event in the Oregon Capitol.
wyden.sen.gov
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., announces his O&C timber bill during a 2013 event in the Oregon Capitol.

As Congress prepares to adjourn this month, still unresolved is a pair of bills with wide-reaching implications for southern and western Oregon.

Over the past year, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has pushed hard for compromise measures that would address long-standing conflicts over logging and water. But now those bills are in limbo.

Just over a year ago, Wyden unveiled his plan to solve the protracted tug-of-war over logging on Oregon’s so-called “O&C” lands -- named for the Oregon & California Railroad that once held ownership to these forestlands.

“We have found a way to create good-paying jobs in rural Oregon and protect our natural treasures,” he said back in 2013, when he announced the proposal.

The bill would increase logging on those federal lands to boost local economies and restore dwindling timber payments to county governments while offering protection for sensitive forest ecosystems.

A few days later after unveiling his plan for the O&C lands, Wyden announced an agreement to settle a similarly contentious battle over water in the Klamath Basin.

Here's how he described that proposal: “We now have a game plan for economic development, agricultural prosperity and environmental restoration throughout the basin.”

The agreement, hammered out by a stakeholder’s task force, sought to balance the competing water needs of fishermen and Indian tribes with those of farmers and ranchers.

Fast forward to early December. Congressional negotiators worked out a defense spending bill that featured a variety of non-defense-related measures, including money to expand the Oregon Caves National Monument. Missing from that spending bill was both Wyden’s logging proposal and his Klamath water bill.

Wyden blames House Republican leaders for blocking both measures but says he’ll push on.

“It’s my plan to keep pulling out all the stops to move these important bills forward as soon as possible,” he said.

Why didn’t Wyden’s high-profile bills make the cut? Tom Partin likes to think he had something to do with that.

“We are being very vigilant to make sure the Wyden O&C bill doesn’t get attached to some must-pass bill like the defense authorization bill,” said Partin, who heads the Portland-based American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group.

Partin said his group and others oppose Wyden’s bill because it fails to provide key assurances both local governments and the industry need.

“We have to have some kind of certainties that it’s not going to be litigated, some certainties that you’re going to get the volume and the dollars back to the counties,” he said.

Partin and his allies much prefer an O&C timber bill co-sponsored in the House by Republican Representative Greg Walden and Democratic Reps. Peter DeFazio and Kurt Schrader. Wyden drew up his bill after deciding that Walden’s bill couldn’t pass the Democratically-controlled Senate -- and the White House pledged to veto it if it did.

But now, Partin thinks a version of the Walden bill could find a more receptive climate in the coming Republican-controlled Congress.

Walden aide Andrew Malcolm thinks so, too.

“You’re going to see a lot of members from Western states who are interested in reforming federal forest policy – Montana, Alaska, Wyoming, Colorado – and they’re going to have positions of influence,” he said.

Montana, Alaska and Colorado each has a newly-elected Republican Senator who will replace a Democrat.

There’s no similar Plan B for Wyden’s Klamath Basin proposal. Walden, whose district includes the Klamath, hasn’t endorsed Wyden’s bill, and the Klamath County Commissioners and other groups oppose it.

But Jason Chapman, with the Klamath Cattlemen’s Association, fears the impact on farmers and ranchers if the measure dies.

“If we don’t move forward in D.C. with those agreements that we’ve brought up locally here, the farming community in the Klamath Basin is going to dwindle down,” Chapman said.

Chapman says his group hopes their endorsement this week of the Wyden bill will show Walden that agriculture in the basin backs the agreement.

Congress plans to adjourn on Dec. 12 after passing a handful of essential funding bills. If Wyden hopes to keep his proposals alive, he’s going to have to get more support than he’s managed to muster so far — and fast.

This was first reported for Jefferson Public Radio.

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Liam Moriarty has been covering news in the Pacific Northwest for three decades. He served two stints as JPR News Director and retired full-time from JPR at the end of 2021. Liam now edits and curates the news on JPR's website and digital platforms.