The Charlotte Observer

Published Monday, January 31, 2000

Chipping away the forests

Chip mill study may not answer the hard questions

A draft report of a study ordered up by Gov. Jim Hunt in 1997 doesn't answer the most pressing questions about what chip mills are doing to North Carolina's forests, and a final version to be released in March may not answer them all, either. That's one more reason to justify the state's go-slow approach on permitting more chip mills to begin operating.

Chip mills are wood-processing operations that convert trees into small chips as the raw material for paper, chipboard and even house-siding. On the positive side, these mills create jobs, provide export opportunities, allow efficient use of trees that aren't suitable for lumber and give forest owners a source of income.

On the negative side, they provide the mechanism to gobble up forests at an impressive - some say alarming - rate. And environmentalists point out that a state tax incentive to export wood chips is a subsidy of forest depletion - perhaps the very definition of bad public policy and blatant special-interest tax treatment.

The draft study, conducted by the Southern Center for Sustainable Forests, takes note of the proliferation of chip mills in the last two decades, when the number rose from two to 18, and notes an increase in logging in chip mill areas. It projects that hardwood trees in the mountains and Piedmont will be consumed faster than they can grow in the next 10 years. But so far, the report's authors do not conclude that how much of the logging increase is due to the chip mills.

Environmentalists believe that answer is obvious - that logging has increased dramatically because of chip mills. They contend that chip mills deplete the state's hardwood forests because timber interests routinely replace hardwoods with pines, a faster-growing softwood that is less valuable for wildlife habitat as well as commercial uses.

While the long-awaited forest study may not answer all the relevant questions about chip mills and their impact on the state's forests, state officials have before them a common-sense set of recommendations put forth last year by the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research, a state-level think-tank that examines a wide range of issues. Among other things, the Center recommended:

• Eliminating the state tax credit for exporting wood chips.
  
  
• Clarifying state law to assure that best forestry management practices are required on all timber harvests.
  
  
• Requiring landowners to notify the state Division of Forest Resources when they intend to harvest trees, so water quality inspectors can advise them on preventing erosion and pollution on the site.
  
  
• Requiring the Division of Forest Resources to develop a plan to enhance the state reforestation program to meet the goal of sustainable forestry.

When the N.C. General Assembly reconvenes May 8, it ought to adopt these reasonable suggestions.

As we've said before, using tax policy to encourage forest consumption is a bad idea; encouraging sustainable forests is a good one.