A massive landslide closed a stretch of Washington Highway 503 for weeks.
Molly Solomon / OPB
Washington Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz is asking the Legislature for more time to review proposals to log potentially unstable slopes. The Department of Natural Resources currently has 30 days to evaluate timber harvest applications for landslide risk.
Franz says giving the DNR 60 days instead of 30 would give agency geologists "enough time to make sure we have all the materials, we’ve reviewed the science, we’ve gotten on the ground and been able to ensure that the public will be safe pursuant to any logging activities."
It would also give the public more time to weigh in on logging proposals, she adds.
The 30-day window was set back in 1974, Franz says, when "we did not have the knowledge and the science that we now have regarding unstable slopes and activities on unstable slopes, and we didn’t have the size and number of applications that we are receiving each year."
The Washington Forest Protection Association, a timber industry group, says taking more time to review proposals would create unnecessary delay and uncertainty for timber companies.
"Washington has a very robust forest practices rule system, and this legislation appears to be a duplicative and expensive permitting process,” says Cindy Mitchell, a WFPA spokesperson. "It doesn’t appear to be an additional level of protections. It’s about additional process."
"The idea of allowing analysts enough time to come to a good decision on forest practice applications is really an excellent idea,” says David Montgomery, a geomorphologist at the University of Washington who specializes in landslides.
"But the other issue is really, what are the guidelines and the rules that are being actually implemented?" he added. Montgomery says those guidelines and rules should be updated to better identify landslide risks, including the potential "to reactivate landslides that haven’t moved historically, but they could be dangerous should they move."
Franz says she is also looking at updating the rules the Forest Practices Board enforces, but the rule-making process doesn’t have to go through the Legislature.