CLALLAM BAY — Timber companies and environmentalists, at loggerheads for months over water quality in streams that flow into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, have agreed to disagree.
Rather than trying to write a policy that reflects either side of the dispute, they decided Sept. 7 to separately present written “perspectives” in the Water Resource Inventory Area 19 plan.
Timber companies like Green Crow and Rayonier maintain that logging practices already are regulated by the state Forests and Fish Act of 1999.
That act led to a Forest Practices Habitat Conservation Plan that they and the state Department of Natural Resources unveiled last March.
Environmentalists insisted that timber-harvesting methods continue to destroy salmon habitat and that planners should monitor streams on private forest lands — a demand the timber companies adamantly opposed.
It was no nitpicky issue. At least three-quarters of the land in WRIA 19 is planted with commercial timber.