I recently had the privilege of
listening to the business manager of a lumber mill in Seeley,
Mont., talk frankly about what to do when a small town’s major
employer pulls the plug. Comptroller Loren Rose of Pyramid Lumber
was invited to Libby, Mont., because that’s where Stimson Lumber
had just laid off 300 workers. It is a huge blow to this town of
3,000.
The reasons Stimson gave for shutting down did not
include the usual reason: a dearth of available big trees. In fact,
Stimson Lumber had a year left on a guaranteed timber contract with
Plum Creek. Instead, the company cited a global collapse in the
price of plywood, foreign competition and rising insurance premiums
caused by asbestos-related lung disease. Over 200 people have died
of asbestosis in Libby because of their exposure to verniculite
ore, which was mined for decades in the town.
Yet here
was Rose, invited to bring a message of hope to residents battered
by bad news. Seeley Lake had managed to retool its lumber mill and
keep it open, he said, and maybe Libby could, too. But that night
in the gym, faces looked somber and subdued. There had been a lot
of gatherings about Libby’s plight, and undoubtedly there would be
more. As one resident said, people were “meetinged out.”
Loren Rose’s advice seemed helpful. First, he told the crowd, don’t
burn bridges to Stimson, no matter how angry everyone gets about
the layoffs. Second, he counseled, don’t forget the environmental
site concerns — the toluene, diesel, creosote and asbestos still
present at the mill site. They represent real liabilities and
dangers.
Don’t get emotional when making business
decisions, he continued. If you do, “you’ll be wrong.” Then he
added, “You can’t get in a hurry. When you get in a hurry, you tend
to make mistakes. And you need to build consensus. You need to
reach out.” He advised against holding a grudge toward banks or
investment partners who ask hard questions, or who choose not to
participate in what comes next.
Rose attributed part of
his retooled mill’s success in Seeley to a collaboration with area
environmental groups, as well as with national groups such as the
Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society, which visited his logging
operations and were impressed.
“You’re going to agree way
more than you disagree,” he predicted. I could only second that
approach. My local environmental group, the Yaak Valley Forest
Council, supports both permanent protection of roadless areas and a
sustainable local economy based on the area’s natural resources.
But one county commissioner, who’s invested a huge amount of time
and energy — physical and emotional — had his back up. He asked
rhetorically if local meetings might be a waste of time since some
environmentalists had sued Forest Service managers of the Kootenai
National Forest for failing to protect old-growth trees.
Throughout the process, we’ve been impressed by the relative
absence of finger-pointing in the local community, which, frankly,
has not been known historically for such absences. People seem to
agree that the Champion and Plum Creek private lands are relatively
moon-scaped, having fed all their big “peelers” to the plywood mill
for the last few decades; that the chipboard market is killing
plywood manufacturers worldwide; that the countries of Canada and
Russia, to name only a couple, have cheaper and greater quantities
of big logs; that our 485-acre mill site in Libby is contaminated
with several different types of toxins; that the Libby mill’s
workforce is the best in the industry; and that it’s unthinkable
that there won’t be some kind of wood-processing facility in Libby,
to capture the local market and availability of wood.
Many people are also talking about the town becoming an incubator
for new lumber products, such as the gathering of “character” logs
(particularly Pinus contorta) for log homes. There’s also a
potential market for molding, flooring, trusses, Presto logs,
furniture, cabinetry, and other niche products. What you don’t want
to do, Rose said, is duplicate what the big companies sell.
I’d met Loren Rose before, late last year, and remembered
an exchange he’d had with Steve Thompson, an environmentalist who
works with loggers. Thompson asked Rose if his logging company
would be willing to commit to protecting “the backcountry.”
“Absolutely,” Rose replied, and then he asked Thompson if he would
be willing to commit to working together in the “frontcountry.”
“Absolutely,” Thompson replied.
In Libby, Rose boiled
down that approach: Find areas of agreement, and plug away at
those. As for the conflict areas: “Forget about it.”
From
my environmentalist point of view, I couldn’t agree more. We want
to help Libby, and we’re looking for investors in a new, more
sustainable sort of community mill. You can find out more by
visiting the website Koonenet.com/healthy_communities.htm.
Rick Bass is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado
(hcn.org). He lives in Troy, Montana, and is the author of numerous
books about the West.
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