New environmental outlook sees foresters as good guys, Hargrove tells chamber
By Jim Casey, Peninsula Daily News
Print This |
Email This
Recent Headlines
To our readers . . . about the Aspire! Quartet’s Singing Valentine program -- 2/10/12 -01:53 PM
Floating luxury home hits the water, now moored at Point Hudson [**Video**] -- 2/10/12 -01:03 PM
Mountain goat population up about 40 percent in Olympic Mountains -- 2/10/12 -12:07 PM
417.9 million bites later . . . (does this video warrant that much attention?) -- 2/10/12 -12:02 PM
Josh Powell had ‘incestuous’ sex images, investigators say -- 2/10/12 -09:32 AM
The turnabout could make it politically proper not just to plant trees but to thin forests, harvest timber and make things out of wood, he said.
Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, spoke to the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon meeting at the Port Angeles CrabHouse Restaurant.
With no opponent to his bid for re-election, he said he was free to review accomplishments of the last legislative session.
Among them was a bill instructing state departments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to work with other states on a carbon credit plan.
The Western States Climate Initiative includes Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah, plus the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Manitoba.
States that engage in "carbon sequestration" absorbing carbon emissions with trees could bank credits under the plan, Hargrove said.
A total seven wins
Not only that, they earn more credits for:
Washington also would get credits for forestry practices outlined in the Forests and Fish Habitat Conservation Plan.
Forests even would get credit for not being suburbs or strip malls.
For fans of the "win-win" clichι, that's at least seven "wins."
Hargrove, a forester by profession, said he was pleased that timber companies could come off as some of the good guys, not the villains of the 1980s and 1990s environmental scenarios.
"I've always had some real problems with how forestry was seen in a negative light," he said.
With a new environmental view, "this is not fighting the science. The science is on our side."
On other topics, Hargrove said:
The economy
An $850 million reserve the 2008 Legislature established was "one of the highest in history."
Nonetheless, fuel costs and a limping national economy are drags on Washington's public finances.
The economic downturn packs a double whammy for the state, he said.
"If you're a business and you have fewer customers, you can have less expenses," he said.
"You can't run government like a business because people are relying on the state to do something to help them."
The state, he said, faces a $2 billion revenue shortfall.
Gov. Chris Gregoire is "already talking about having her agencies come up with most of that money" rather than increasing taxes, according to Hargrove.
Transportation
Besides issues like the Hood Canal Bridge and Alaskan Way Viaduct (see related story), transportation would be "one of the real challenges for the next two or three bienniums."
High fuel prices are forcing people to drive less, which means they buy less gas, which in turn means the state receives less tax.
"The oil companies are making money, but our revenues are going down," Hargrove said.
So-called "nickel projects" funded by a 5-cent hike in the tax on fuel "are way behind because the gas tax just isn't coming in," he said.
Hargrove said transportation planners are shifting their paradigms:
Rather than adding highway lanes in congested areas, they would build highways out of such areas into rural locations the state wants to develop.
"The old way of doing business is probably not going to work out in the future," he said.
Human services
Funding education, boosting mental health programs and helping offenders re-enter society is cheaper than dealing with crime, Hargrove said.
The last session of the Legislature also appropriated funds for counties to verify addresses of registered sex offenders and for electronic home monitoring as an alternative to jail.
The Legislature also established a victim's residence as the venue of record for identity theft.
And the Transitional Housing Operating and Rent THOR program provides case management for homeless people "to get them back on their feet," he said.
Hargrove said the state must "continually review our system and look at what's going on in other states so maybe we can get ahead of the curve.
"You don't have to get bad to get better."
Hargrove to Port Townsend: Count your blessings
Do the math, then quit complaining.
That was Sen. Jim Hargrove's message to people quibbling over mitigating next summer's closure of the Hood Canal Bridge.
The North Olympic Peninsula sends three people to the Legislature, he noted, while the Seattle area sends more than 60 legislators to Olympia.
Yet the Hood Canal Bridge project remains funded while replacing Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct still needs money.
"It's almost miraculous that our project is still on track to get worked on next summer," Hargrove said.
That's not to mention an $84 million reallocation to build two new Port Townsend-Keystone ferries.
"We're doing pretty darned good as a district, and we can't be screaming too loud at our friends," he said, meaning Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, who secured the ferry funding.
Jefferson County businesses and officials want a Port Townsend-Edmonds car ferry while the bridge is closed next May and June, but Hargrove advised them not to take so high a profile that they produce a backlash.
As for widening U.S. Highway 101 from Shore to Kitchen-Dick Roads in Clallam County, Hargrove said those funds were secure.
"I'm not too concerned about that," he said.
Last modified: July 14. 2008 9:00PM