What, exactly, are the terms of the Waiakea Timber Management license that the state proposes to issue to Tradewinds Forest Products and the impacts of the license on other public resources? Here is a summary:
How much does the state get for its timber? For most species of eucalyptus, Tradewinds is to pay $10 per cubic meter. (The volume is to be calculated on the basis of a weight-to-volume conversion formula.) For Eucalyptus robusta, the state will get $8 per cubic meter. The high-value trees are Queensland maple (Flindersia brayleyana) and toon, or Australian red cedar (Toona ciliata). For these, the state will receive $25 per cubic meter.
How many acres are included in the license? Tradewinds proposes to log 8,875 of the 11,700 or so acres of forest in the Waiakea Timber Management Area. It excluded from its proposal more than 2,000 acres of tropical ash (Fraxinus uhdei), a species that has not done well in Waiakea. The state excluded from the license areas dominated by koa and `ohi`a.
What is the total value of the license? According to the staff report to the Board of Land and Natural Resources at its meeting of April 13, “a conservative revenue amount of $3,500,000 could be realized if all merchantable trees are harvested during the first rotation.” The “first rotation” represents the cutting of existing stands, which would probably occur before the expiration of the first 10 years of the license period.
Environment Hawai`i attempted to confirm this amount, using values for the various tree species in the license provided in inventories and other figures from the license. We came up with a total closer to $5 million, assuming that all standing timber is removed from the license area, that Tradewinds pays the state approximately $500,000 for wear and tear on Stainback Highway (a big “if” – see below), and that Tradewinds receives a 60 percent credit (up to $600 an acre) against its costs of replanting poorly stocked areas.
When Carl Masaki, forester with the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife, was asked how the state arrived at $3.5 million, he said this reflected logging restrictions contained in the Forest Management Plan for the Waiakea Timber Management Area, which the Land Board approved in September 1998. (In fact, no such restrictions exist; see below.)
When does the money start to come in? Tradewinds must complete its veneer and sawmill before taking out the first log from Waiakea. If that facility is not “substantially completed” by December 31, 2003, the state can terminate the license, although if “good-faith efforts” have been made to complete the facility and a start-up date is expected in 2004, the state “agrees to not unreasonably terminate” the license.
What is the cost to the state of logging in Waiakea? The state paid several millions of dollars over the last 40 years to put in the roads, clear the land, and plant the trees. It underwrote the timber survey and the environmental assessment. Once logging begins, the state assumes costs of surveying for hoary bats and other protected flora and fauna immediately before a given tract is to be logged.
One of the biggest costs will be improving and maintaining Stainback Highway to standards called for in the license (see below). This cost will be partly offset by a $1 per ton fee Tradewinds pays for all timber hauled over Stainback — but only if the improvements are made before logging starts. In other words, the $50,000 or so a year the state might receive over the 10-year period of the license will not be paid if the state has not improved Stainback by the time Tradewinds starts logging.
Is logging in fact restricted? No. State officials have often said Tradewinds will be limited each year to no more than 55,000 cubic feet (1,560 cubic meters) of Queensland maple and 500 acres of eucalyptus. However, no language in the license refers to any limits, while the Forest Management Plan simply describes scenarios under which the stands of Queensland maple and eucalyptus could be logged in order to provide a stable market supply for 14 or 15 years.
In any case, even if the Forest Management Plan contained limits, the license makes no mention of the plan, much less does it incorporate by reference any of its terms and conditions. This raises questions as to whether the license conforms to state law, which requires all logging be done under terms of a plan approved by the Land Board.
Doesn’t the license call for development of a forest management plan? Indeed it does. But the forest management plan referred to in the license is to be prepared by Tradewinds and is subject to approval only by the administrator of the Division of Forestry and Wildlife, not the full Land Board.
What kind of improvements will be needed to Stainback? The license requires improving Stainback to the commercial forest industry standard of a “mainline road.” DOFAW’s Masaki says a mainline road is the same as a main haul road, which, according to the 1961 Forestry Handbook of the Society of American Foresters is a “main artery of travel through the principal forest area designed for speeds over 25 miles per hour.” He has no idea how much it will cost to bring Stainback up to this standard.
Leonard DeCambra, a supervisor in the Operations Department of Kulani Correctional Facility, said the highway is absolutely not suitable for logging traffic at this time. “The road is not designed for heavy trucks,” he said. “The shoulders are not built for passing vehicles.” Present traffic on Stainback consists mostly of occasional hunters, state vehicles, and deliveries to the prison. The posted speed limit is 35 miles per hour, but the pavement is so rough that in most places, traveling at the speed limit would be too jarring to be safe or comfortable.
Can Stainback be improved before logging begins? This would require some ambitious inter-agency planning, since there has as yet been no environmental assessment published for such a project. When the Kulani prison was proposed for expansion several years ago, preliminary botanical and zoological surveys were made for improvements to the highway, which for most of its 17-mile length is under the control of the Department of Public Safety. When the prison expansion plans were cancelled, so, too, was work on the environmental disclosure documents for both the prison and the improvements to Stainback.
Perhaps the state will claim the improvements can be made without an environmental assessment. According to Masaki, the plan is “to add gravel to both sides, making the road a little wider and safer.” State law allows exemptions from the requirement to prepare an environmental assessment when replacing or rebuilding “existing structures,” but only when the replacement will have “substantially the same purpose, capacity, [and] density” as the original. It would probably be a stretch for the state to claim that converting Stainback into a road to carry heavy logging traffic is an exempt activity.
Will new roads be cut in the forest? The answer depends on the document you read. The September 1998 Forest Management Plan says no new permanent roads will be built. But the license anticipates new roads (“All roads within the WTMA used by the Licensee, whether constructed by the Licensee or not, will be maintained by the Licensee at its own costÉ”).
Will other infrastructure be needed? There will have to be improvements to the Hilo and Kawaihae ports to allow chips to be shipped out. In addition, Kawaihae harbor may need to be dredged if chips are destined for Asian markets.
State highways may also need to be improved. According to Jadine Urasaki, a deputy director of the Department of Transportation, “our highways planning staff will evaluate interim-passing lane options within our right of way if it becomes necessary for the trucking to take place on the highways rather than on the old sugar cane haul roads.”
Are Hawaiian hoary bats in the areas to be logged? “Absolutely, I saw them there myself,” says Theresa Menard, an expert on the animal. Menard has tried to get the state to ban logging in the months of June and July, the bats’ peak breeding season. The state’s response has been to say that June and July are two of the driest months and that it would be a hardship on Tradewinds to refuse to allow logging then.
However, Tradewinds will be logging not just the Waiakea stands but also private eucalyptus plantations on the Hamakua Coast. In the dry season, it would be more sensible to make hay in Hamakua than in Waiakea. In Hamakua, the wet season causes the deep soil to become mud traps for heavy machinery, but in Waiakea, the thin soil underlain by rocky lava substrate in most areas allows heavy machinery to operate year-round. According to Masaki of DOFAW, “One thing that Tradewinds likes about Waiakea is that if they’re harvesting from the PruTimber plantations [in Hamakua] and it turns wet, they can divert crews to Waiakea.”
Will clear-cutting occur? State managers don’t want to admit it, but the answer here is yes. They get around the question by saying that the environmental assessment calls for leaving “residual trees within the 40-acre harvesting blocks.” And, in any event, they add, only eucalyptus stands will be managed this way. Queensland maple stands are to be selectively thinned, they note.
Actually, what the environmental assessment says is that “specific conditions, if any, for leave or residual trees É will be specified in the Timber Land License” (italics added). The license makes no provision whatsoever on this subject.
Will logs be chipped? Yes. According to the license, “No woodchips will be manufactured from merchantable logs É except as a by-product of a veneer or lumber processing activity. Logs which are not suitable for manufacturing lumber or veneer may be harvested and processed as woodchips.”
What are “merchantable logs”? The license defines them as “equal to or longer than 17 feet and straight enough to load to a 5″ top diameter” and “all remaining logs that are at least 11 feet in length to a 10″ top diameter.”
What proportion of the total volume of available wood is likely to be “merchantable logs”?
A study of the area found about two-thirds of the eucalyptus volume and roughly half the Queensland maple volume is likely to have an 8-inch or greater diameter “at breast height” (4 and a half feet from the ground) – an indication that the trees would probably meet the merchantable log standard. Two thirds of the total eucalyptus volume in the license area would be about 226,000 cubic meters; half the Queensland maple is 35,000 cubic meters, for a total volume of 261,000 cubic meters. So, roughly half the logs in the license would qualify as “merchantable” logs. Most of the rest would probably be converted immediately to chips (although small Queensland maple logs might be manufactured into lumber). In addition, scraps from the veneer process and sawmill would either be turned into chips or burned as fuel in a co-generation facility to power the veneer mill.
Will plywood be manufactured? An interview with Bryan suggests that may be off in the distant future. The export market for veneer is apparently strong enough so that there is no additional need to manufacture or import a plywood substrate for it.
How much chipping will Tradewinds do?At full build-out (this includes both Waiakea and PruTimber areas), up to 100,000 cubic meters of chips will be produced each year. That translates to 20 truckloads a day. According to the Tradewinds proposal, half would come from Waiakea.
How many truckloads will leave Big Island ports each month? 1,000, according to Tradewinds’ proposal.
How many truckloads will leave the forest every day at full build-out? Between 50 and 60, averaging about 1,500 truckloads a month of cut timber.
How many truckloads of traffic will be added to Big Island roads daily at full build-out? Between 80 and 90 a day.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 11, Number 12 June 2001
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