City, environmental group at odds over logging-rules settlement

Bellingham officials say a settlement leaving intact restrictive logging rules would avoid expensive legal fights next year and help protect Lake Whatcom.

But county leaders have doubts about some of the settlement language, and they may not sign it.

The settlement, which has already been approved by Bellingham and Skagit County leaders, could end the legal challenge to the Lake Whatcom Landscape Plan, a set of rules that restricts logging on sensitive state-managed watershed lands. City officials and local environmentalists say the rules help protect the lake, the drinking water source for more than 90,000 Bellingham-area residents.

Officials forged the settlement over the summer, but now, at the eleventh hour, Bellingham officials and environmental group Conservation Northwest are sparring over it.

Conservation Northwest says the settlement includes a clause binding Whatcom County and Bellingham to lobby the Legislature to further tie school funding to timber cutting, which hurts conservation efforts and some schools.

"The settlement requires the city and county to advocate for awful public policy that would reduce equity among school districts and increase the linkage between school budgets and clear-cutting of state lands," group Executive Director Mitch Friedman wrote in an e-mail.

Some County Council members have similar concerns, but the council declined to vote on the settlement Tuesday, Sept. 9.

If the County Council doesn't sign it, the case will go to trial next year. The legal costs could reach more than $1 million, and the risk of having the court strike down the rules is high, according to a letter to the County Council from Bellingham Mayor Dan Pike and City Council President Barbara Ryan.

In 2000, the Legislature ordered creation of the landscape plan, which went into effect in 2004 and reduced the amount of timber that can be cut on state Department of Natural Resources-managed lands. The DNR sells timber from those forest trust lands, and the money goes to the county and districts.

In February 2005, Skagit County, the Mount Baker School District and Skagit's United General Hospital, which all get money from that timber, filed a lawsuit in Skagit County Superior Court challenging the rules. Whatcom County, Bellingham, the Lake Whatcom Water and Sewer District and Conservation Northwest jumped into the case defending the rules.

The settlement, announced by the city Tuesday, Sept. 9, leaves the rules intact, while requiring Bellingham, Whatcom County and the state to reimburse the Mount Baker School District for some of the lost revenue. Bellingham would give $225,000, Whatcom County $150,000 and the state of Washington $725,000 to the rural school district by July 1, 2009. If the Legislature declined to pay the $725,000 next year, then the settlement would fall apart.

Richard Gantman, superintendent of the school district, said the money compensates the district for revenue lost because of a past temporary ban on logging and the landscape plan. The rural district has a weak property tax base and relies on the revenue, he said.

Right now, the state deducts some of that timber revenue when it allocates other funding, and Gantman wants to change that. The settlement would require Bellingham and Whatcom County to lobby the Legislature to change it.

That's the part Conservation Northwest opposes, wrote Friedman, who called it a "poison pill included in the settlement."

The state does that to distribute the money more evenly among districts. Eliminating the deduction would increase the inequity in funding, Friedman wrote. It also gives school districts the power to veto conservation efforts on public lands, he wrote.

"It's high time for the state to fix the school funding mess in a way that treats our kids and our environment right," he wrote. "This settlement would move us backwards."

Despite concerns, his group plans to sign the settlement, he wrote.

According to the settlement, if state legislators decided not to change the deduction policy, then Bellingham would have to pay the Mount Baker School District another $67,000, and Whatcom County would pay another $33,000.

The letter from Pike and Ryan says the deducted amount isn't much money in the grand scheme of things, and the settlement still ensures financial relief for the Mount Baker School District.

"Conservation NW places a higher priority on preventing rural school districts from benefiting from timber harvest revenues on state-managed forest lands than protecting Lake Whatcom," the letter stated.