PORT ANGELES — Clallam County’s Revenue Advisory Committee is recommending the three county commissioners support the contract for the Doc Holliday timber sale.
The recommendation goes against a request from the Earth Law Center and the Center for Responsible Forestry, which asked that the Revenue Advisory Committee (RAC) allow the process to continue in their effort to explore amending the Doc Holliday timber sale contract so the unlogged units of the site are placed into the state Department of Natural Resource’s (DNR) conservation lands and replaced with loggable land elsewhere in the state.
The county commissioners will make a final decision.
The RAC met Monday afternoon to discuss the matter, which the commissioners previously had sent to the committee to explore following a presentation in October on the replacement program.
Elizabeth Dunne, Earth Law Center’s director of legal advocacy, and Brel Froebe, a senior strategic advisor for the Center for Responsible Forestry, both were in favor of the replacement program.
The RAC also heard a presentation by former state Rep. Jim Buck, who spoke as a county taxpayer, and from American Forest Resource Council Washington State Manager Matt Comisky, both of whom spoke against the replacement program.
Port of Port Angeles Commissioner Connie Beauvais, speaking as a member of the RAC, proposed the committee urge commissioners to support the Doc Holliday timber sale rather than the replacement program proposal.
“During 2025, DNR paused eight timber sales in Clallam County, representing more than $8 million in appraised value,” Beauvais said. “These sales were delayed due to concerns about harvesting stands of a particular character. Had they been sold earlier this year, the likely return to Clallam County and its junior taxing districts would’ve approached $12 million.”
Despite assurances that paused sales would return to the market, only one sale has been, and DNR has not provided a timeline for bringing the other sales forward, Beauvais said.
“The Doc Holliday sale has been carefully designed, reviewed and implemented specifically because it complies with the federal Endangered Species Act through adherence to DNR’s habitat conservation plan as amended by the marbled murrelet plan,” she said. “It meets all standards established under Washington’s forest practices act, including those protecting water quality and wildlife habitat. It follows our county protection standards under both the Forest Practices Act and DNR management policies, and it was analyzed under the state Environmental Policy Act with ample opportunity for public comment. Given the thorough planning, scientific review and compliance with multiple layers of environmental regulation, the RAC believes it would be inappropriate to substitute the professional expertise of DNR’s field team with external opinion or judgment.”
The request from the Center for Responsibly Forestry and Earth Law Center was to use the DNR’s Natural Climate Solutions Program to put units 4, 5 and 6 of the Doc Holliday site — 46.5 acres — into conservation lands and find timber land of equal value to be logged elsewhere.
“This program puts structurally complex, carbon-dense forests into conservation and buys replacement lands of equal value and also purchases replacement lands for areas that have already been put into conservation for encumbered counties, of which Clallam County is one of the few counties that’s really prioritized by the Legislature as an encumbered county,” Froebe said. “So this proviso could benefit Clallam County in two ways, both conserving some last remaining structurally complex forests in the county and making good on that offer the Legislature made to Clallam County of replacing lands that have already been put into conservation through the spotted owl management plan, etc.”
Clallam County commissioners chose to be part of the program when it first received funding in 2023 by placing 100 acres of the Shore Thing timber sale and 69 acres of the Power Plant timber sale into conservation.
“One thing we heard from Clallam County commissioners and commissioners from all over Western Washington who were excited about this program that there’s this concern about immediate near-term revenue,” Froebe said. “The way that this program works is that it fully replaces the value of these forests and buys replacement lands for them, but what happens in the more near-term while you’re waiting for those forests that were purchased to mature and get to the point where you can get the most money as possible by logging them, we worked with the Legislature to create a fix for this and we’re calling it the cash for counties option.”
According to that option, lands nominated to go into conservation would be appraised and counties would be able to request anything in excess of $12,000 per acre. So if a timber land was appraised at $25,000 per acre, a county could request $13,000 per acre be paid upfront while waiting for the rest of the money.
As a counter to Froebe’s presentation with Dunne, Buck submitted a presentation which went over the history of timber trust lands in Clallam County. Buck was unable to attend the meeting, so Beauvais read his presentation to the committee.
“Each year, Clallam County Forest Board Trust Lands provide millions of dollars of non-tax revenue to help all of our taxpayers pay for county services me and my neighbors enjoy,” Buck wrote. “I adamantly oppose Legacy Forest Defense Coalition’s (LFDCs) interference with the Doc Holliday timber sale and all other LFDC actions on Clallam County Forest Board Trust Lands.”
In the 1930s, Clallam County deeded 93,000 acres to the state to put into trust lands to benefit the future of the county, according to Buck’s presentation.
The direct cash flow or financial impact to the Joyce community attributed to the Doc Holliday sale, according to Buck’s presentation, would be $54,661 for Crescent School District enrichment, $12,775 for Crescent School District CP/bonds and $69,843 to the general budget for Clallam County Fire District 4. Meanwhile, the pause of eight timber sales in the county by DNR has resulted in a pause of $504,678 to Crescent School District enrichment and CP/bonds and another $519,950 to the general budget for Fire District 4.
That means “people who don’t live here are willing to sacrifice our quality of life to pursue their anti-timber industry agenda without sacrificing any of their own services,” Buck wrote. “Their efforts to stop trust land timber harvests have already halted sales and delayed vital cash flow to our taxing districts.”
Comisky’s presentation to the committee focused on the DNR’s role as the trust manager for the acres Clallam County deeded to the state.
“The trust duties of the manager are undivided loyalty, prudent management, preserve the corpus of the trust, intergenerational equity and ensure the trust asset is productive,” Comisky said.
He also provided key points of the Doc Holliday timber sale which are that 40 percent of the trees are Douglas fir and there’s no significant “high quality” trees, 17 percent are red alder and 16 percent are hemlock. The forest is in the biomass accumulation stage, Comisky said while refuting Froebe’s statement that the Doc Holliday forest is a structurally complex forest.
Giving the conservation proposal the benefit of the doubt and “using actual timber sale math,” Comisky said the 46 acres which were proposed to be put into conservation amount to about 61 percent of the total sale area.
He cited RCW 79.15.140, which addresses valuable materials contract.
“In the event that the department determines that regulatory requirements or some other circumstance beyond the control of both the department and the purchaser has made a valuable materials contract wholly or partially impracticable to perform, the department may cancel any portion of the contract which could not be performed,” Comisky read from the RCW. “In the event of such a cancellation, the purchaser shall not be liable for the purchase price of any portions of the contract so canceled. Market price fluctuations shall not constitute an impracticable situation for valuable materials contracts.”
“To me, I think that’s pretty clear,” Comisky continued. “The wishes of an, at best, fourth-degree party — not the beneficiary, not the trustee, not the trust manager — is asking to have portions of Doc Holliday set aside. I don’t see how that meets the intent of RCW 79.15.140.”
While asking questions, Clallam County Commissioner Randy Johnson, another member of the RAC, called on DNR Deputy Supervisor for State Uplands Duane Emmons to provide more information about the replacement program.
“We know the Doc Holliday sale sold for just over $8,000 an acre, so even if it were appraised, our riparian buffers are wider than private lands, so if we appraised a parcel, unit 5 very likely is not going to appraise at $12,000 an acre,” Emmons said.
That would mean Clallam County would not be able to participate in the cash for counties option.
The Doc Holliday sale has an expiration date of Oct. 31, 2026, so revenues would be received by the junior taxing districts no later than October of next year.
“If we were to set aside a unit or a couple of units of Doc Holliday, I first have to buy replacement land because the proviso and our trust responsibilities require us to not diminish the body or the corpus of the trust, so I can’t set something aside, I can’t move it into conservation status without replacing the land first, so first thing I have to do is find replacement land,” Emmons said.
He said the Legislature has now provided three rounds of funding for the program and he is still looking for land to fulfill the first round.
“In those three provisos, we’ve identified lands to move into conservation status; we have yet to move any into that conservation status,” Emmons said. “So, it’s been a couple of years. The Legislature has given us a lot of work to do with this funding, and so we’re diligently working through that.”
________
Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.
