Controversial WA timber sale near Elwha River rankles conservationists, Port Angeles leaders

PORT ANGELES — Sitting at a weathered picnic table along Ediz Hook, a 3-mile-long sand spit that extends from the shores of the city, LaTrisha Suggs studied the jagged ridges of the Olympic Mountains on the horizon.

“The month of July, it’s not normally like this — it’s beautiful, but it’s not normally warm like this,” Suggs said, a few weeks before the state would declare a drought emergency in the watershed after a dry spring and an early snowmelt. “There’s a little speck up there, but we usually still have some snow.”

Glaciers from within the craggy mountaintops release water and nutrients carried by the Elwha River through a sea of evergreens. Some of the water is intercepted to supply drinking water for the city and county, while the rest flows to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, nourishing salmon and other species along the way.

But within the blanket of green are several brown patches — timber cuts — dotted with skinny, straggling trees. Another piece of this landscape is set to be logged, a few hundred feet from the site of the former lower Elwha Dam: the 126-acre Power Plant timber sale.

The sale has rankled local leaders from Port Angeles, who had requested the state Department of Natural Resources reconsider its plans, and spurred conservationists to file a lawsuit to stop the sale. They say the loss of forests like this one in the watershed could further warm streams, reduce flows in the river, and threaten drinking water and salmon.

The planned cut represents a growing controversy over the state’s forest-management practices and its sale of timber in the face of climate change.

“There are increasing numbers of different counties and different communities that are pushing back on DNR’s harvest plans,” former Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark said. “Some of them for local reasons, and some of them are also for climate reasons.”

Suggs is a member of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe and the Port Angeles City Council. She said the city has seen worsening droughts and water-use restrictions. It now opposes all logging in the Elwha watershed until the state studies the effects.

“We’re seeing impacts of climate change,” Port Angeles City Manager Nathan West said in an interview at City Hall in early July. “We’re seeing major flow changes in the Elwha River. … We’re at a historically low point that probably in the last 25 years, it is probably one of three times where we’ve ever been this low at this time of year.”

Ten years ago, the removal of two dams on the Elwha was completed in a roughly $330 million salmon-recovery success story. Conservationists, who filed the lawsuit seeking to halt the timber sale, question why the state would allow trees to be harvested here, of all places.

But the state says 40% of its lands are managed for conservation and it recently began testing the impacts of logging on stream temperatures and flows.

Meanwhile, proceeds from the Power Plant sale will go to Clallam County and could help fund things like schools and fire and emergency services.

Even as the state gave in to pressure last week from the Metropolitan King County Council to postpone cutting one Duvall forest, the auction to sell off this mature forest along the Elwha charged ahead.

Randy Johnson, a Clallam County commissioner, said that while it may be easy for counties like King to step back and say they’d like to preserve a chunk of forest and forfeit the revenue, Clallam doesn’t have the luxury.

“We’re A, a rural area, and B, we’re not the most well-off county,” Johnson said.
“Those dollars matter — where are we going to make up for that shortfall?”

The forest comprising Power Plant has been harvested in the past, and Johnson said DNR told the council there were no significant risks to the environment associated with the sale.

“If a sale like Power Plant is contentious, then we’re just going to be importing more and more wood from outside of Washington from lands that aren’t managed as well as ours are,” said Duane Emmons, DNR’s assistant deputy supervisor for State Uplands.

About 1 in 4 logs that make it to a mill in Washington come from forests managed by the state, officials say.

On Wednesday, Murphy Co. submitted a high bid of about $657,000 to harvest some of the trees from the sale, which make up less than 1% of the Elwha watershed. The first page of the state’s auction packet noted the sale is the subject of a lawsuit and suggests contacting an attorney with questions.

Rich resource

The powerful river and nearby lush forests of the Elwha watershed have long been harnessed for their valuable resources. In the early 1900s, Canadian entrepreneur Thomas Aldwell saw the river and its narrow gorges as an economic opportunity.

He constructed a hydroelectric dam in 1910, eventually supplying enough energy to fire up a pulp mill in Port Angeles, bolstering the city’s growing logging industry. As energy demands from the industry rose, plans to construct a second dam were solidified. By 1927, Glines Canyon Dam was built 8 miles upstream.

Just last fall, DNR sold off more than 160 acres of timber in the Aldwell sale, netting $2.9 million. The land, near Olympic National Park, is strewn with stumps, woody debris and a few patchy stands of skinny trees.

Suggs saw the Elwha Dam removal come to fruition — the largest dam removal in the world.

“When the dams fell, tribal members were just kind of walking taller and were excited,” said Suggs, who then worked for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.

The tribe initiated a moratorium on fishing to give the salmon runs space to recover after dam removal. For more than a decade, tribal fishermen have not harvested salmon.

Growing up, Jessica Elofson remembers heading down to Sisson’s Hole with her aunties, setting nets and dragging big silvery salmon up the steep canyon from the river on a rope.

“There’s nothing like it, to be near the Elwha River: that color, smell and being there with all your heroes,” said Elofson, a member of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, fighting back tears. “It’s hard not getting to raise my kids in that way of life.”

The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe is slated to have a tribal ceremonial and subsistence fishery for coho salmon on the Elwha this fall. It would be the first in years.

People within the Dungeness-Elwha watershed have expressed concerns about the current drought’s potential to harm fish hatcheries and salmon migrations.

“Everybody has done something for the benefit of the watershed, and I think it’s time that Washington state DNR step up and do that same thing,” Suggs said.

Meanwhile, the Elwha is strained to provide enough water for the humans that rely on it.

The city says it is concerned about the potential impacts of logging on the river’s flows, which serve Port Angeles and 25% of Clallam County.

In October 2022, the city declared a “Stage III Water Shortage,” meaning the city’s water supplies are “critically impacted” and residents have to cut back on their water use. The shortage was in place for about a month.

The 2023 snow season ended May 31, and Washington’s snowpack quickly melted. The Olympic Mountains’ snowpack was about 57% of what was considered normal from 1991 to 2020. This week, the river’s flows are at about half of their average this time of year.

On Monday, the state declared a drought emergency in Clallam County. One county water district began trucking in water because the flows in a coastal stream were so low.

DNR in April notified the city about a pair of upcoming timber sales, including Power Plant. The city responded, asking the state to pull back its plans until the effects on the watershed could be evaluated.

“Logging these forests compromises efforts to restore endangered salmon habitat; threatens other endangered and recovering species; destroys essential carbon sinks; and threatens Port Angeles’ sole drinking water source,” the city manager wrote.

The city followed up in June, again asking for a pause on the timber sales. “The City will continue to oppose the State logging in the Elwha River Watershed, until such time that we can proactively and collectively discuss a long-term plan for harvests that protects the river,” Mayor Kate Dexter wrote.

The state Board of Natural Resources approved the timber sale days after the city sent the letter. 

Timber sale moves ahead

In a pair of battered leather hiking boots, with keys clinking against a reusable water bottle in her pack, Elizabeth Dunne followed a dirt power line access road to a skinny trail leading to the lower Elwha Dam site.

Succulent, peachy salmonberries and velvety thimbleberry bush fronds flank the entrance to the trail, blanketed in soft shade from the outstretched limbs of towering Western red cedar, Douglas fir and hemlock. The churning river can be heard just steps into the forest. Eventually, an overlook where the lower dam once stood reveals the Elwha carving through steep canyon walls.

As policy director at the Earth Law Center, Dunne advocates for the rights of nature in the legal system.

The Earth Law Center joined the Center for Whale Research and the Keystone Species Alliance in appealing the state’s approval of the Power Plant timber sale.

The lawsuit in county court explains that the forest is in the headwaters of Colville Creek and other small tributaries of the Elwha, which are “areas critical for the recharging of groundwater to feed these streams” and central to supporting salmon and the endangered southern resident orcas that rely on them.

It alleges that the state failed to analyze the “effect of cumulative impacts of past, present, and future logging or consider alternatives that would have less of an adverse impact on the environment.”

And it alleges the state’s environmental impact analysis indicates no assessment of effects on instream flows, groundwater or water temperatures. The state confirmed this claim in a June Board of Natural Resources meeting, but said it is adhering to its Habitat Conservation Plan that was reviewed and approved by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries staff.

At the meeting, one board member said they were concerned about the impacts of timber harvest on water quality — not just runoff and sedimentation from the use of heavy equipment and trucks, but also the potential influence on stream temperatures. The Elwha is listed as a temperature-impaired stream by the state Ecology Department.

Paul Pickett, an environmental engineer who worked over 30 years at the Ecology Department, wrote to the state with concerns about the impacts of logging in the watershed. 

“Trees of 60 years … or older provide the highest instream flows,” Pickett wrote in a June email.

Opponents of the timber sale noted in letters and testimony several studies tracing the impact of some types of logging on watersheds.

Clear-cut logging of old forests destroys the natural stream hydrology, with flows reduced by as much as 50% in summer as water is sucked up by young plantation trees, scientists have found. The water deficit can last decades.

According to state documents, some of the trees slated to be harvested in Power Plant are 80 to 100 years old.

Emmons, the DNR lands deputy, says it’s wrong to compare these studies with DNR practices. Many of the studies were based on Oregon forest practice rules, and the timber was harvested half a century ago when there weren’t as strict of protections for streams, as well as salmon and other species.

No part of the cut will be closer than 200 feet to the river, according to the state. DNR manages less than 20% of the total forestlands in the watershed.

After the forest is cut, it should be left with some 25-year-old trees, too small to be valuable for harvest, and eight larger trees per acre.  

Emmons said the state is obligated to cut timber to raise revenue and that it is going “above and beyond” in its management of state lands and Clean Water Act requirements.

“Investing in studies, pausing all timber sales in the Elwha watershed … is not something that we see as a worthwhile investment,” Emmons said.

Environmentalists have long pushed the state agency to see the forests for the trees, beyond their economic value and the minimum conservation requirements. Conservationists celebrated a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that they believe gave the state flexibility to manage lands for diverse public interests like mitigating the worst impacts of climate change, such as worsening flooding, drought and extreme heat.

“We recognize that there are people that just don’t like timber harvests; they want to see forests in Washington conserved to sequester carbon or for other uses,” Emmons said. “We’ve conserved half of our lands for conservation. The other half is there to generate the forest products that we all need.”

Vision for the Elwha and beyond

The all-terrain vehicle puttered down a winding dirt road shaded by mature Douglas fir and cedar, with sword ferns and vine maple brushing the sides of the cart along the way. At the bottom was a meadow with knee-high grasses, a table and chairs overlooking the blue-green Elwha.

Ken Balcomb, the late founder of the Center for Whale Research, spent some of his last years here, at the Big Salmon Ranch. The perimeter spans the river from slow-going, translucent, deep-blue pools to tumbling rocks in a furious rush toward saltwater.

His brother, Howard Garrett, said Balcomb invested in the ranch in part to highlight and protect the value of whole ecosystems: from conserving healthy forests that anchor slopes, store water and filter it, to freeing main river channels from dams and other barriers, and allowing nutrients to flow from the mountains to the estuary.

He’s now fighting, just as Balcomb always had, for healthy salmon runs to support the recovery of the endangered southern resident orcas. Part of that fight includes joining the lawsuit, and offering to work with DNR to protect ecologically complex state forests.

Peter Goldman, managing attorney for the Washington Forest Law Center, who is not involved with the lawsuit, sees a common thread among the opposition to state timber sales.

“That’s the same issue that’s under all these cases, is what is DNR’s legal duty to identify and protect these old, structurally significant forests, many of which are over 100 years old,” Goldman said. “They’re pre-old growth, soon-to-be old growth.”

A Clallam County judge on Tuesday denied a request for a preliminary injunction to pause the Power Plant timber sale and still needs to hear the merits of the case.

DNR could confirm the sale within a couple of weeks. Then the trees would be next to fall.

Correction: A caption on an earlier version of this story misidentified Highway 112.