BECKLEY, W.Va. — When the Division of Forestry’s budget was slashed $1.7 million for the current fiscal year, all logging enforcement and inspections ceased.
What that means, said one forestry official, is no more safety inspections, logger training or environmental oversights.
Daniel P. Cooley, who heads the Division of Forestry’s Region 2 logging enforcement program, said in the 16 counties in Region 2, there are more than 625 open logging jobs. Region 2 encompasses Raleigh, Fayette, Wyoming, Summers, Monroe and several other counties.
Prior to the cuts, the Division of Forestry was responsible for training and licensing loggers and timber operators in the state, to ensure state environmental laws were followed, he said.
Since the cuts, there have been no inspections or issuing of licenses. Foresters can “no longer enforce logging regulations, which means that logging jobs will go unchecked and any job left unreclaimed will cause flooding, erosion and sedimentation in the streams,” Cooley said.
He also warned that if logging roads are left with no water control measures, such as water bars, the extra runoff from the roads will increase the flood threats.
Last fiscal year, the Division of Forestry completed more than 8,000 complaints and compliance checks, state data shows. More than 1,300 professional loggers were trained during fiscal year 2015, the agency’s annual report states. More than 1,450 logger certificates were issued and upward of 154,742 acres were harvested, the agency’s data shows.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Commerce said the state’s Department of Environmental Protection will take over some of the inspection and enforcement duties of the forestry division, including handling complaints.
Cooley said, “That is a joke. They are not doing this and neither do they want to.”
“The only way this state agency can get fixed is for the representatives of this state to approve funding” for the division, Cooley said, adding that West Virginia is the third-most forested state in the nation behind Maine and New Hampshire.
Foresters blame the timber industry for the cuts. The forestry industry opposed a proposal by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin which called for postponement of the 39 layoffs and a special legislative session if the timber industry would agree to support a severance tax that completely funded the division.
“We have to be competitive,” Anthony Raines, vice chairman of the West Virginia Loggers Association, told the Gazette-Mail. He suggested selling timber in West Virginia’s state forests to cover the shortfall.
In February, lawmakers approved a 1.5 percent logging severance tax, which created the $1.7 million shortfall for the agency. Tomblin proposed a 2.78 percent severance tax to fully fund the division.
Cooley said he fears more layoffs in the near future. “We were told that by fiscal year 2019, 21 more foresters will have to be let go if funding is not restored,” he said.
— Email: dtyson@register-herald.com
