Alaska mental health trust eyes rugged Deer Mountain for logging in Ketchikan

The Southeast city of Ketchikan has been fighting for decades to prolong the life of its timber industry, which has been battered by a pulp mill closure and a dwindling supply of trees to cut.

So it might seem perplexing that city leaders have lined up against a proposed 900-acre timber sale just outside of town.

But on Thursday, the City Council unanimously passed a resolution against it. The Ketchikan Daily News editorialized that the proposal was "unacceptable," and compared the fight against it to Alaska's battle for statehood. And local artist Ray Troll, renowned across the country for his beneath the sea artwork, is helping to lead a grass-roots effort to stop the sale.

The opposition stems from the timber harvest's proposed location: Deer Mountain, the city's iconic rugged backdrop. Its slopes offer hiking trails for locals and a majestic view for the 900,000 passengers that arrive on cruise ships each summer — bolstering the city's tourism economy that's grown as the timber industry has flagged.

"It's like logging your front yard," said Ketchikan Mayor Lew Williams, who is also publisher of the Daily News. "Deer Mountain's pretty precious to us."

The Ketchikan proposal is one of two planned timber sales to ignite controversies in Southeast since a decision by theAlaska Mental Health Trust Authority board of directors two weeks ago.

The trust owns the Deer Mountain land, as well as another 2,600 acres near Petersburg, it's been trying to make money from for more than a decade.

At an Aug. 24 meeting, the board approved a sale of timber on both parcels no later than Jan. 15 — unless Alaska's congressional delegation succeeds in passing legislation to trade the land, plus another 15,000 acres, to the federal government for timber closer to an active sawmill.

The prospect of logging the Ketchikan and Petersburg parcels faces ferocious community opposition in both places and highlights a shift in the regional economy, away from resource extraction and toward tourism.

The trust's board doesn't want to wait any longer to offer the sales because of the potential for the Southeast timber industry to die off completely, said Russ Webb, the board's chair.

"We're not in a place now, with a dying industry, where we can wait forever," Webb said. "The timber industry, we've been told, has timber to log through the end of 2017. And if the timber industry goes away, our land is of zero value."

He added that the trust's first responsibility is to its beneficiaries: Alaskans suffering from mental illness and disabilities. The two proposed timber sales would generate at least $5 million for the trust, according to its projections.

"It's not public land. It's private trust land," Webb, who lives in Anchorage, said in a phone interview. "The community interest and the specific concerns of communities who might wish to use the land for public interests are not our mission."

The fight over the Southeast sales dates back to 2005. That's when the trust first proposed logging the Petersburg parcel, which stretches for several miles along a hillside above Wrangell Narrows.

The land sits above a road lined with homes, and the logging proposal quickly drew fears from residents about landslides. The Mitkof Highway Homeowners Association, with about 100 members, has since spent more than $100,000 to pay for an attorney and a risk assessment of the slope, said co-founder Ed Wood.

Instead of moving ahead with the timber sale, the trust decided to work with the federal government on the land trade — one that's since grown to include parcels on Deer Mountain and other trust land near Juneau, Wrangell and Sitka.

The proposal would exchange the trust's remaining commercially viable timber in Southeast for federal land that could be logged near Ketchikan and on Prince of Wales Island — the home of Viking Lumber, the region's largest remaining sawmill.

The trust in mid-2015 signed an agreement to initiate the exchange, which was originally scheduled to be finished in mid-2018.

But the trust's staff says that working through the administrative process with the U.S. Forest Service will be costly and delayed by environmental reviews.

"It's been 14 months now and we haven't really accomplished anything," said John Morrison, executive director of the trust's land office. "We can't wait forever and spend untold sums of money on a process that may never actually complete."

To speed up the swap, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski introduced legislation in May that, if passed, could complete the exchange within a year.

But if the legislation doesn't pass before the end of this year's congressional session, the trust says it can't wait any longer. Viking Lumber has warned that without more timber to mill, it could close some time next year.

A timber sale by the trust would be a "Band-Aid" on the industry's problems, which primarily stem from diminished access to federal land, said Owen Graham, executive director of the Alaska Forest Association, which represents logging companies and mills.

"But it's better than having zero," Graham said in a phone interview from Ketchikan. Trust land sales, he added, have been "a significant source of timber to keep our loggers working."

Graham said he enjoys hiking the Deer Mountain trail, which cuts across the area to be logged if the timber sale proceeds. The industry would prefer to have access to the federal land in the proposed exchange, he said.

"But if they can't get those other parcels, they have nothing else," he said.

In its Aug. 24 meeting, after 15 minutes of public discussion — and 50 minutes in a closed-door executive session — the trust's board unanimously approved staff recommendations to go forward with negotiated sales of the Ketchikan and Petersburg land unless Murkowski's legislation passed.

Opponents in Ketchikan and Petersburg have since been scrambling to organize a response.

"We don't know where this came from," said Wood, a 64-year-old Petersburg commercial fisherman and one of the founders of the homeowners' association.

Wood, like many of the opponents of the Ketchikan sale, said he's an industry booster — just not in an area where logging could increase landslide risk, as an assessment by the homeowners association showed.

"I've always supported the timber industry — the next thing I know, I have the feeling that part of it's trying to kill me," said Wood. "We're all supportive of resource extraction in Alaska. That's what Alaska is about. But this has absolutely nothing to do with logging — it's strictly a safety issue."

In Ketchikan, Troll formed "Save Deer Mountain" with Bob Weinstein, a former city mayor, the day after the trust board approved the step toward the sales.

Weinstein has since launched a persistent lobbying and public relations campaign, arguing the trust's board proceeded surreptitiously and violated public notice requirements at its Aug. 24 meeting.

"The community was kept in the dark," Weinstein said. "The meeting was essentially over before most people in Ketchikan and Petersburg knew that it was happening."

Webb said Petersburg and Ketchikan residents will have other chances to voice their objections if the proposed sales move forward.

"They will have multiple opportunities to be heard," Webb said.

But the swift action by the board has some people wondering if the trust is bluffing, in a bid to hurry the land exchange by putting more pressure on the congressional delegation, said Williams, Ketchikan mayor. Trust officials, however, dismissed that idea.

A spokeswoman for Murkowski, Nicole Daigle, said the senator was glad the trust left open a "window" for Congress to pass the legislation. But she didn't directly answer a question about the likelihood the senator's bill would pass before the deadline.

"Hopefully, the administration and others will help her ensure that it is signed into law before the end of this year," Daigle wrote in an email.

Webb suggested sale opponents in Petersburg and Ketchikan could solve their own problems by presenting new proposals to generate cash for the trust — like buying the land outright.

Those residents, Webb said, have had years to do so, pointing out there was "plenty of money" available from the Alaska Legislature during years of high oil prices.

"We would sell it to them," Webb said. "We'll be happy to work with these communities if they come forward with an alternative that protects the interests of our beneficiaries."