Governor's Advisory Committee on Chip Mills

Governor's Advisory Committee on Chip Mills
November 1 and 2, 1999
Department of Natural Resources
1738 East Elm St.
Jefferson City, Missouri

November 1, 1999

Committee Members Present:
Stephen Mahfood, Director, Department of Natural Resources
Mike Hoffmann, Forestry Division, Missouri Department of Conservation (representing Director Jerry Conley)
Mark Garnett, Forest Products Representative, Brandsville
Jon Smith, Forest Products Representative, Mountain View
David Bedan, Citizen environmental conservation group, Columbia
Jay Law, Conservation Federation of Missouri, St. James
Emily Firebaugh, Forest Landowner, Farmington
David Day, Private Property Owner Organization Representative
Senator Wayne Goode, St. Louis
Senator Doyle Childers, Reeds Springs
Representative Bill Foster, Poplar Bluff
Earl Cannon, Deputy Director, Business Expansion and Attraction, Department of Economic Development
Sarah Tyree, Special Assistant, Department of Agriculture

Facilitators:
Dr. Jerry Wade, University of Missouri, Columbia
Dr. Bernie Lewis, University of Missouri, Columbia

Interested Parties Present:
Llona C. Weiss, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Pam Duncan, Department of Conservation, Jefferson City
Donna Homan, Department of Conservation, Jefferson City
Brian Brookshire, Department of Conservation, Jefferson City
John Slusher, University of Missouri, Columbia
John McCammon, The Nature Conservancy, St. Louis
Robert Riessenmy, Wood Woman, Hartsburg
Greg Thorpe, Mill Spring Chip Mill, Mill Spring
Phoennix Conway, Missouri Heartwood, Columbia
Steve Galliher, Williamette Industries, Piedmont
Cory Ridenhour, Missouri Forest Products Association, Jefferson City
Hank and Katie Dorst, Forest Watchers, Elk Creek
Terry Finger, Missouri House of Representatives, Jefferson City
Ed Galbraith, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Charles Hirt, Canal Wood, Jackson
Roy Hengerson, Missouri Coalition for the Environment, St. Louis
Becky Denney, Missouri Coalitition for the Environment, Kirkwood
Tom Kruzan, Missouri Coalitition for the Environment, Mountain View
Tom Lange, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Jess Garnett, Garnett Wood Products, Brandsville
Dan Schuette, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Randy Crawford, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Katie Auman, Dogwood Alliance, Yellville, AR
John Wood, Westvaco, Wickliff, KY
Bill Moore, Canal Chip Corporation, Conway, SC
Louise McKeel, Villiage Image News, St. Louis
Kirk McFadden, Jefferson City

Call To Order

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The meeting was called to order at 9:30 by Stephen Mahfood, Director of the Department of Natural Resources and Co-Chairman of the committee. He welcomed everyone, noting the meeting is scheduled to meet for upwards of two days.

Mr. Mahfood noted there was a slight adjustment to the agenda; they will start by reviewing the minutes, then Dr. Jerry Wade will give an overview of how to proceed with the meeting, then a public comment period will proceed the discussions of the committee.

Minutes from September 14th and October 12, 1999 Meetings

Mr. Mahfood asked if everyone has had a chance to review the minutes from the September 14th and October 12th meetings with the changes that were recommended. He asked for comments.

LAW: Could I just suggest, these are mostly words to rewrite, that I just submit mine as corrected. My only comments are on my own statements, and mostly it's a wording thing. I appreciate very much the efforts our secretaries have gone through.

MAHFOOD: My preference would be to not approve the minutes until we've had your changes incorporated. Does anyone have other suggestions?

CHILDERS: That sounds like a reasonable way to deal with it. You cant agree to approve them until they are actually there.

MAHFOOD: Why don't we take your submittal for the minutes, then we'll incorporate the changes. I'm not sure how we'll handle approving the minutes since we're not sure how we will proceed after today. Other suggestions? I'm willing to accept the comments that Jay has if they're on his part of discussion. If there are no other changes we can approve the minutes with the proviso that we will adjust the language that was submitted by Jay Law.

GOODE: I think most people got this report and concentrated on the report and didn't have time to look at the minutes. Why don't we leave the minutes open and if anyone else wants to submit corrections to their own comments, we can incorporate them and reproduce them later.

MAHFOOD: We will hold the minutes, and I agree with Senator Goode in that I don't think anyone will be upset if we don't officially approve these minutes or don't have the time to do that.

WADE: You all have received a copy of a very rough draft. I think as a committee, you can begin now dealing with the report as a whole document. Bernie and I struggled with how short of time there is between the 12th of October and the 22nd of October. You all have another document called Section IV, Thematic Background, this is a continued completion of that section. If you will please replace this with what is in the report that you've got, I think you will find that it fills in a lot of the places in the report that indicated there was still work to be done.

At the October meeting, the committee made the decision that a report was going to be a policy options focus, and when we put the draft together, and I think it was pretty easy when you got into Section V, looking at the potential actions, where the committee has spent considerable time focusing it's discussion, and where we hadn't yet quite had the benefit of that focus discussion. The quality of the section and the ability to write with a little higher quality was significantly different. Bernie and I feel that we're beginning to get close on the first 4 sections, although I know that many of you will have comments and further suggestions. Let me let Bernie take a minute and tell us from his prospective where we're still short and have considerable work to do yet.

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LEWIS: On the Thematic Background that you've received, last time, basically, it was about 1/3 or so written in the way hopefully the final report will be written. What you received today is about 2/3 written that way, so there is still, I estimate, probably about two or three days more work that I have to do to complete this so the very end of what you got today is pretty much the same as you got last time. You're probably sick of seeing the background outline notes from logger training, but that happened to be the last section. So this is about 2/3 of the way along, and if you have any comments, even as you look through, particularly with the material that is written in fairly polished form. That pretty much is going to be gone through to get your feedback. I'd appreciate if you'd let me know, but expect that the outline material, etc., will be taken care of and that you will get the whole document in this form.

WADE: As I worked on Section V, and it's obvious that this is probably the section that adds the most immediate interest, there is obviously a lot of work to be done on that, a lot of work by us, a lot of work by the committee. What became very obvious to me was that 2 things were emerging. One is the extent to which the pieces interconnect, and I'm not sure that the material in that does a very good job of showing those interconnections, but that whenever __ happens with education begins to impact all the other sections and vice versa, so I would urge you to also as we look at the pieces, also keep in mind that we're also dealing with a series of potential actions that are also inter-related. The other thing that became clear to me is that in fact recommendations do begin to emerge when there are areas of actions in which there is basically not choices, which means that the committee was approaching the __ so that the policy choice ends up being a pretty much single choice, and I highlighted some of those in dark print, an area that we could almost call without having to worry what we call it the recommendation, but that in some of the areas where there are multiple approaches to how you address accomplishing something in the question of choices begins to jump out, and those are also the areas in which the committee has very low levels of disagreement. The section that Bernie and I have already started to redo because there have simply been no discussion and very little substance is the sustainable environment, and we're already done some restructuring of that, and when we get to that point in our discussion today, I'll ___ some of that structure, we don't have anything to hand out. A lot of the material in what you have that's background material has already been moved into the background, and a lot of the material that's in your sustainable environment has already been moved into here, which will give it more of an action focus.

My suggestion on how we move with this is that we will begin with public comment and get the input there, then I would recommend that we begin first by working through the sections that Bernie and I think that we're closest to completion, Sections 1 to 4, then we will begin to devote our time, and I would recommend that we move through the analysis and discussion of Section V in a way in which there __ starting with education, economic, environment, and financial. Bernie and I will make the commitment to doing a rewrite based upon what you provide us at this meeting and having it ready to be distributed on Monday, November 15th. What we hope is that that will be very close to a final report, but I would anticipate is when we get to the end of the meeting tomorrow whenever that may be, we assess where we are and then make the decisions on how the committee proceeds from there, but we will make a commitment to doing a complete rewrite and have it ready to distribute to you on November 15th.

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BEDAN: I have a couple concerns about Section IV. I don't think we should micro-edit, but I have couple large conceptual issues, so I'd hate to skip that entirely. There is a lot of good stuff in Section IV, but there are some problems with it.

GOODE: There appears to me to be some conclusions or recommendations in Section IV, there are some, and some of the may conflict with some things that are in Section V, so I think we need to work through that. I would also suggest that we work through Section IV as it was mailed out to us, because that's what we all read and that's what we all have our notes on, and then Bernie and Jerry can tell us if they've already corrected that, see page such and such, then we can take a quick look at that. But I think we all need to work from the pages that we've made our notes on.

MAHFOOD: What we have offered here seems to make some sense, Jerry, that we review IV, the move into V.

WADE: Without getting into word snipping, it would really help us if we could get a committee sense on each of those that with the exception of the word snipping, that could conceptually the section is ok, then if you could provide us, if you have done editing on those Sections and made the comments, provide those to us and we will use that in the editing. We want to make sure there are no major conceptual questions with them, that it is just word snipping, and I don't think the committee would be well served to spend much time word snipping, but I would like to get a sense from the committee that the major of emphasis of that sections is ok and we can move on. Those that have editing, particularly word snipping, please just provide us a copy of it as you've done that.

MAHFOOD: Let's go ahead and move on to public comment. First is Cory Ridenhour.

RIDENHOUR: I'm Cory Ridenhour, Executive Director of Missouri Forest Products Association. First, I had some handouts, there is a comment from American Tree Farm, which is a Missouri Tree Farm program, which was passed out. Their steering committee met about two weeks ago and determined their policy and an outline for that. Any questions and I can help with that because I do sit on the committee.

Secondly, there was a cover letter addressed to Director Conley and Director Mahfood, and attached is our policy statement. Our board has met over the last four or five months on basis to develop on where the Association is going to stand on many issues, and we feel the policy statement addresses those:

Logger Education - MFPA support voluntary education and certification of loggers in the state of Missouri to meet the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.

Landowner Education - MFPA recognized the need for industry to endorse landowner education programs that promote multiple use of Missouri's forest, best management practices, and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. We are prepared to take a leadership role in working with groups and agencies such as the Missouri Department of Conservation, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Missouri Department of Agriculture, Missouri Department of Economic Development, University Extension Service, Missouri Farm Bureau, Missouri Consulting Foresters Association, and the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service. We believe programs should be developed that will give the forest landowner incentives to manage woodland resources to increase the usable timber in Missouri.

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Best Management Practices - MFPA supports the implementation by all landowners and loggers to implement best management practices as are currently defined by MDC. We are prepared to take a leadership role to develop financial and other incentives to promote the success of this program.

Timber Availability - MFPA supports all programs designed to increase the amount of acreage and over quality and productivity of the forest lands of Missouri. MFPA supports the multiple use of federal and state lands in Missouri.

Does anyone have any questions?

GARNETT: You're saying not mandatory logger training but voluntary?

RIDENHOUR: Right. We currently have a volunteer logger training program, it's called the Professional Timber Harvester Program, and it has been successful, and it's basically been driven by the market. We just started the 2000 program, and it's continuing to fill up, so there is not a problem, loggers are seeking education.

GOODE: What percentage of "active loggers", I don't know if that's a good way to describe it or not, have been through the training program?

RIDENHOUR: It's really difficult to say because no one really knows how many loggers are out. It would be really dangerous for me to guess. When we first started the program, we typically get those persons who are somewhat active, a few landowners, but at this point our enrollment is really strictly loggers, active loggers, who do their job every day.

SMITH: How many have been through the program?

RIDENHOUR: We have about 154 that will have completed in January. The classes are spread over 4 months.

GOODE: 154 have been through, do you have a rough idea of how many active loggers there are? Would that be 10%, 5%, 15%?

RIDENHOUR: I would say maybe 10%.

GOODE: How long have you been doing it?

RIDENHOUR: We've been doing it for 2 years. This year, our 2000 program doubled in enrollment, and we've also introduced a supervisor program which complements our normal program.

GOODE: What is your standard for measuring success?

RIDENHOUR: Completion of the program.

GOODE: I don't mean on an individual basis, I would think if a logger goes through it that that works. But you made the statement that the program has been very successful, and what is your basis for that?

RIDENHOUR: We see that those people who have completed program, those that we've talked to, industry owners, etc., they are using what they've learned in the classes and applying it out in the woods. The BMP's is obviously an important part. Also the cutting part, the safety, and all the things you see they're actually using out there.

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GOODE: So you're measuring success based on those that have been through it, not on a broad...

RIDENHOUR: No I'd say it's a broad success. Any education program, if they're not using the materials that we've taught it wouldn't be successful in our minds.

GOODE: It doesn't seem to me that only 10% being through would be, and I assume it is a very successful program for those that have been through, but if only 10% of those who are actively logging have been through, then that's not very successful overall.

RIDENHOUR: The program is new, it's only been out there for 2 years. We are expanding the program so the percentage should go up quickly. The 2000 program will have the opportunity for four times as many people who have gone through at this point. It's a voluntary program, so it's one of those things that attendance will eventually pick up where we can offer more classes. We staying with demand for the class right now, and it's really doubled at this point.

GARNETT: If you were to characterize the type of logger that has gone through training so far, as those the larger loggers, smaller ones? If we're talking about 10% loggers in the state, how much harvesting does that represent?

RIDENHOUR: I couldn't tell you the percentage, but it's typically more proactive companies and loggers who do more and more of the logging. A lot of our industry has supported and backed the program, they typically do more of the harvesting than private landowners that log just a little bit.

BEDAN: I wanted to follow up on some of Wayne's questions that evaluating success is real important here because industry is really ___ as a way to go voluntarily so regulations don't get imposed, but I haven't really heard anything that gives me much comfort because just to take best management practices, if we have X number of acres that are being commercially harvested, I think we need to know what percentage of those best management practices are implemented, and we need to have a continuing study so we can correlate that back to your training program. Until we know that, we don't know success. If the loggers feel good when they leave training, that's great, you hear anecdotal evidence that some of them are using it, that really doesn't prove anything. I think what we need is some kind of systematic study that looks at the percentage of acres in Missouri that implement best management practices, and have you discussed ways of improving performance in that sense?

RIDENHOUR: No we haven't. At this point our main concern is training loggers and making sure that process is done. We have not had the resources to do the research and those kind of things. Typically, that's done by a state.

BEDAN: I agree and I guess I would suggest that one of the things that your association could do is make a request to corporate state agencies, DNR, Conservation, to do some kind of study that would give us a running total on the percentage of commercially harvested acres utilize best management practices.

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RIDENHOUR: That would be very difficult, there is no real recording requirements, so it would be very difficult to do.

BEDAN: What I'm suggesting is until you get something like that, that your program is kinda "feel good" stuff and anecdotal and doesn't convince me.

RIDENHOUR: I disagree with the "feel good" part. It's nuts and bolts stuff that's in our program.

BEDAN: The nuts and bolts are what's happening out on the land, Cory, it's not what happens in the classroom. The nuts and bolts are is this going to change the way forestry is practiced. And if you don't have a handle on that, you don't know what you're ___. It's not the number of students that go through the course, it's what happens out in the woods.

RIDENHOUR: Our education committee survey those people that have gone through the program on a regular basis, and the surveys we get back say that they are using that information.

BEDAN: I know what I'm suggesting would require considerable effort, but I think until we know that kind of information, I'm not willing to accept a voluntary program in lieu of a regulatory program. If you can come back in five years and say 90% of the harvests are being conducted by people we trained and they are implementing BMP's, I'd say that's success. But if in five years, its on 20% of the harvests, that's a failure.

RIDENHOUR: What does a regulatory program do that a volunteer program does not do?

BEDAN: A regulatory program requires you to use BMP's, get training, and requires you to implement the BMP's. You have no control over implementation, right?

RIDENHOUR: No, not in our program. I disagree that a regulatory program would be better. There is a requirement, but is there someone going to be out there checking and making sure that's done?

BEDAN: I feel there should be. Like all regulatory programs, you need field inspectors. I know a lot of people don't like to hear that, we don't like regulation, but I don't want "feel good" talk about training people to substitute for results on the land.

You're well-intentioned and you're going in the right direction, but I think it's going to be far too little too late. Ten to twenty years from now we're going to see huge impacts on the forest and I think your program is only going to be nibbling around the edge. First of all, you're probably attracting loggers who want to do a better job anyway, inclined, and then there are going to be some that "nobody's going to tell us what to do" attitude.

RIDENHOUR: We have those currently in the class. One thing that's good about the industry is they have pressured to take the program.

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BEDAN: I think some sort of annual accounting of your program would be real helpful to policy makers, but I think it needs to extend to some way determine the actual results on the land.

RIDENHOUR: We intend to continue our surveying that we're doing, so hopefully we can add those questions to the survey, although they aren't required to be returned. We have a really good return rate on our surveys.

BEDAN: That's a good start.

CHILDERS: Cory, did I hear you say that we have doubled - what is the progression of the training as far as the numbers these classes offered?

RIDENHOUR: We have 15 in a class at this point, that's our max, it's all hands on so we can't go above that level. For 2000 program, we're adding a new instructor, so we'll have actually 30 in a class, 2 instructors, 15 to each instructor. We're doing 6 programs in 2000. We did 5 in 1999, and we did 5 in 1998, so we've added another class and doubled the class size. We're filling those classes, several are already half filled.

CHILDERS: What is your scenario for training over the next 3 to 5 years? How many people do you think your program will reach?

RIDENHOUR: We will continue at this level and probably increase it by 1/3 in the 2001 program, and that's basically where we're wanting to stay. We feel we can keep up with the market demand for the program and fill those classes. The finance and all the stuff that's involved with it, the trainer, Soren Erikson, our principal trainer, will be retiring in 2000, so we will have his cost (a lot greater than others considered as good if not better) so we feel that we can actually have more classes and hit more areas. We have 6 locations across the state, so we're hoping we can expand in that respect.

CHILDERS: The 300-400 people you're looking at as being able to do it in a year?

RIDENHOUR: No, it would be probably about 200.

CHILDERS: So if there is 1500 to 1600, you should pretty well cover most of the training in the next 3 to 5 years.

RIDENHOUR: The bad thing about the logging industry is the turnover is so great, so we figure that in there too. Turn over is also high in companies, they are taking the certification and using that to get better jobs within the industry.

SMITH: I think that maybe we've reached 10% or so of the actual loggers, but I suspect that the percentage of the land the percentage logs that they cut is probably more like 20%. The ones we've got are the larger ones. Our company, anybody who is a professional logger that hauls into us, we greatly encourage them to take the course, and they all did. I think it's been a great success, and I've seen a lot of those loggers change their attitudes about a lot of things.

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RIDENHOUR: I've gone out to the training classes. And loggers who have been doing it for 30 years and probably weren't too excited about being here in the first place, see that total change in attitude - "where were you 30 years ago, we really could have used this".

SMITH: I agree with Dave Bedan in that we need to reach more, I think we are nibbling around the edges and need to reach more of them, but I think we're having more of an impact than the 200 or so.

FIREBAUGH: Cory, wrapping into the financial aspect, are you in contact with the insurance carriers to see if the logger actually gets a discount?

RIDENHOUR: We're in the process of educating the insurance companies, there are two in Missouri that do quite a bit, have been to the training, have seen it, have actually been there for one or two days. There is a trust with the Wood Products Insurance Trust that covers loggers, I believe they have a 20% adjustment if you've taken the training. There is a board meeting again this weekend to discuss the logger training and the use of it. I think eventually it will be there. Looking at other states, we've only been two years training, in about five to eight year section, but the rates of workers comp tends to drop quite a bit in almost every state.

LAW: On your best management practices, was there a feeling there on supporting legislation or anything requiring best management practices?

RIDENHOUR: The board discussed it, and determined that the real need is to get the information out. I think there is a lot, we teach the best management practices in our logging course, and we're also doing a logger supervisor course, which is completely new for 2000 year, and it will have the same type locations across the state, developed mostly for owners of companies and for those who are actually supervising loggers out in the field. We're expanding that to two day program instead of the one day logger training. MDC will be teaching that portion of the program. We really feel that just getting that information out there is the biggest problem. Mandatory isn't really that effective, and I think it's industry lead.

FIREBAUGH: You're always going to have a renegade who isn't going to want to do BMP's. What do you tell your logger if I would call them and say "I want you to clearcut on a riparian area". What do you tell your logger when they say "I've just taken this course and I have to turn that job down".

RIDENHOUR: Clearcut is an application that forester's believe is effective measures as long as the BMP's are done. The education committee at this point is in their review process of having a certified program, right now it's more of a completion program. Part of that process that we'll be looking at, the legal ramifications, and all the part of the certification, so if someone goes out there and does the BMP's and reports it back to us that they are in violation, they could lose their certification. Not could, but would.

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HENGERSON: I'm Roy Hengerson, Environmental Policy Director of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. I wanted to focus some comments on two aspects. The first being the process and the second a few comments about the draft. I did want to say also in the draft I haven't had that much time to review it in detail so my comments are sketchy and the draft is a bit sketchy.

On the process, I think a meeting or two ago I expressed some concerns about the timing that there wouldn't be enough time, and I have those concerns even greater right now. I think there has been a lot of good work done but this is a very rough draft report, it needs to be put into what I would call final draft form for the committee to approve, but then I think it should not be going out as a final report, but as a draft report for a comment period but the public. There are only a very few of us that have had the opportunity to be camp followers, but there is a lot more interest in the state, and I think that certainly we want to hear from those folks too. That obviously means that getting a final report out by December 1st is unrealistic. I would propose that you try to get a final draft report out by December 1, then have some sort of the public comment period where maybe hold an open public meeting for a three day minimum, forty-five day, something like that, then come up with a final report.

The other thing that was noted and I fully support is a recommendation for a continuing forest resources committee. Whenever this committee stops functioning, the issue is not going away and it's not going to be finally resolved, so there will be a need for continuing body somewhere to continue the dialogue and see if we can make progress in the state.

On the draft, I think it was just incredibly great work that Jerry and Bernie have done given what they had to work with. There has been a lot of conversations floating around and a lot of good ideas out there, but certainly, I thought about myself, if I was in a position for writing something like this, where would I start, and I have to credit for incredible work to get the draft you have before you. I will make a couple comments about some things. I guess my biggest area of interest about the environmental sustainability section, and as Jerry mentioned, he indicated that it was pretty sketchy and I agree, and what I would like to see is a more definitive recommendations. Maybe the committee cannot agree on any and will have to report that, but I hope we can have a series of recommendations that policy makers can seriously look at.

I'd also like to point out that the sustainability questions are a big part of the governor's charge for this committee, and if you don't satisfactorily address those questions, it seems to me that you haven't really met your charge.

One the theme section, I think that ought to be more of a narrative. It needs explanation, it needs some narrative to make it read okay and that people understand what the themes are. I think in a way it is an important section. I know Section V with specific recommendations is probably the most important section, but Section II is what is our vision for a better way of having forest management in the state, and I think it's important. I would also urge that the whole document be given a readability review to be sure that since it is a public document that jargon and some of these other things are at least explained or something, maybe a definitions section or something might be added.

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My last comment is that some application needs could be made by some of the other state's experience, and again that was one of the charges that the Governor had to the committee, so I think we could learn from what other states have tried and what they're thinking about.

FIREBAUGH: I have a question for the committee. You mentioned that the committee report is ___ public input, I remember saying about four meetings ago that the public input may or may not be accepted after the committee makes their report. I felt we were commissioned as a committee to make the report and that the report was not to include public comment per say. Am I mistaken in that charge that we had?

MAHFOOD: That was part of the discussion. I'm not sure that we ever came to a final consensus on that. That was one of the positions that never really came to a final conclusion on how to handle.

FIREBAUGH: Can I make that in the form of a motion?

GOODE: What's the motion?

FIREBAUGH: The motion would be that the committee contained our results and not to have a addendum of public comment. That after we've made our committee report then if the Governor wanted to open a public comment session then he could.

GOODE: I would agree with that. I think the public comments are for the purpose of letting the committee know how various people feel. We've processed those comments in our minds. I don't know that a motion is necessary, but I agree that there would be no end to printing public comments, particularly when we said we were going to do that, we'd end up with a thick book.

BEDAN: I agree that this is our report to express what we feel, but traditionally whenever a government agency or committee issues a report, it gets a draft and puts it out for public comment, the public gets to see a nearly final draft which we don't really have yet, then the committee can modify or totally ignore the public's comments, but at least the public got to see a next to final draft and could comment. With the schedule, we've sort of put out bits and pieces, and I don't think the availability of the draft hasn't had wide public notification because I've heard people say "I wasn't able to come to these meetings". It's great for the people who came, but there were other people out there that couldn't come to the meetings but still may want to comment. I don't know if there has been a general statewide press release saying here's a draft and you can comment, which is traditionally what you do. I agree with your philosophy, Emily, that it's our report, we can accept or reject anything we want, but we are deficient in the process of getting full input.

FIREBAUGH: To me, it would be our responsibility to hand this to the Governor as our report. Then the Governor open it up for public comment.

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CHILDERS: I can't think of any report that I've ever been involved with, not speaking academically in academic circles, but you have your testimony and you write your report. If you open up again and try to rewrite the report again, I see nothing but creating problems. If there is legislation or there is going to be changes, you have public hearings so that is put out so that anyone has a chance to come in and give input into it. But the report is basically a report of what this group of people decide after hearing all the testimony and all the written that was given. I don't know that we need to rewrite it two or three times. That will come if there is any action taken on it. There is no action taken on it, the reports sits and gathers dust. The thing is, I can't see any reason to go back out again and say we want more information.

GARNETT: Is there any legal reason for a public comment period?

MAHFOOD: It's been a very open process. Bill, help me out...

BRYAN: If you came up recommendations that some opponent could characterize as a rule, then you would be required to have public notice. Right now we have a lawsuit that is similar that Willamette industry has filed lawsuit and is now in court of appeals over whether or not the executive order itself and DNR's implementation of that order..... (EAOE CHANGE)

...as a practical matter, when you do provide public notice and comment, you have an obligation to give the public a meaningful opportunity to comment. I'm not sure that we have enough time to provide meaningful comment period on a 30 or 40 page report. It may be that there could be a comment period after the report is finalized.

GARNETT: I second Emily's motion regarding public comment.

BEDAN: It's our report. We decide what goes in it. I've spent many days writing comments on draft reports, but I always got a full draft report. We have not issued a full draft report. We've had lot's of testimony, but no response to our report.

FIREBAUGH: I think it then becomes the Governor's report that we hand to him and he's the one who would call for general comment.

BEDAN: That's possibly one way it could be handled.

MAHFOOD: That is one way it could be handled. My preference in this, I have the same concerns that Dave has - that we have not assembled a final report for somebody to respond to that report as opposed to various sections and concepts. I think we pretty much know what people's responses will be, to sit people down and talk about landowner education and voluntary/regulatory. I think we know how people will respond. My concern is, like Department of Natural Resources, we pride ourselves on being very public about what we're involved with. You take a lot of hits, you get beat up a lot but doing that, but the idea of involvement kinda goes away. I also agree with you and what the Senator said, this is our report. Nobody says that your have to change a word in this report. I'll go with whatever the committee decides, but I'm wrestling with this myself.

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GOODE: I don't think there is any question that it's our report, we don't attach public comments to it or anything like that. I think that's fairly clear. But how the process works is another question. I've seen it done both ways. When legislature does a report, we do the report, we issue it, generally it results in some kind of legislation, the public has another opportunity. As far as commissions or committees like this, I've seen it done both ways. Doyle is right. When Legislature does a report, we issue it, generally it results in some sort of legislation and the public has another opportunity. As far as committees like this, I've seen it done both ways. The Governor will have a large committee like this one, they do a draft report, put the draft report out for comments, get comments, go back and look at it again. You can do it both ways. But in either event, it ends up being the committee's report. I can be pretty sure that the Governor doesn't want anything that he's got to take out and do another round of hearings. He wants our report. We are limited by time, that's the only real problem we have on getting public comment. By the way, was this draft posted on the state's net site?

MAHFOOD: I don't think it is because of the timing.

DAY: I don't know how these things work, but if we wanted to do a public comment period, is there any way to get an extension, can that be done, and is it wise?

MAHFOOD: And before anybody answers that, Sarah, was anything you were going to say relate to what David just said?

TYREE: I guess that it's one thing, an extension if we have it out, and we get public comment, do we redo the report or do we just make sure the report is distributed as widely as possible and leave it up to the general public to contact their legislators, and that would be how they would express their comments.

MAHFOOD: And the only thing I can say I probably would second what the Senator said, I think the governor would like to see some closure, even if it took a little extra time, closure before he receives the report, but I don't want to speak for Governor and his staff.

SMITH: If we're going to have a public comment period, and then it looks to me like we would have to meet again and review all those comments, and then decide if we're going to change the report. Otherwise, there would be no use in taking comments. It looks to me like there is no way we can do that, but if the Governor would give us an extension in time, we could meet in December and maybe January.

CHILDERS: The way I see it, there is nothing going to happen with this report unless there is either legislation filed or rules made. Either one of those require public hearing, which would allow people to come in and give their input. We've had all the testimony we could encourage here in these meetings, and I don't see how we gain or lose anything. I think the key point is you have to have adequate time - how many days is it? I think it's 30 days, but so people have a chance to give written testimony. I can't see what affect it has if you have extra testimony.

WEISS: Pertaining to the questions that David and Earl had, I went back to our Executive Order, and it says the advisory committee on chip mills shall submit it's final study included recommended requirements to the Governor no later than December 1, 1999. The advisory committee shall automatically cease to exist on that day unless extended by subsequent executive action. So, if you want to go past December 1st, you need to get an executive order.

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BEDAN: I agree that most of what we're talking about, legislation or rule making, like Doyle said, that's not totally true, because there are some things that could be done by the state agencies redirecting their resources into things like education, more intensive inventory of forest resources, remote sensing, some of that is already in the power of the agency and may be a matter of priority, so I think the agencies can do some things on their own without rule making.

HOFFMANN: I don't see where the public comment would make any difference on that though.

BEDAN: If you get a huge number of people saying MDC should spend a lot more money on remote sensing information, you may want to take notice of that in your next budget deliberations.

DAY: My only thought is, and Dave brought it up a minute ago, a lot of people do have an interest in this, and they haven't been able to attend the meetings because they are out in the woods cutting trees or whatever, and that would give them a chance to look at the report, read it, and submit their comments on it then.

DENNEY: I'm Becky Denney, and I'm a member of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. I'm a long term resident of Kirkwood, so I'm a suburbanite, and before that I lived in Kansas City, so that's really where I come from, but my husband and I do now own 43 acres of forest in Reynolds County that's been in the family since about 1970, so I do have some ties down there and certainly a lot of tugs on my heart strings. This was meant to be camping and recreational land, which it really is, but it was logged in 1991, so I have just a little of experience in that direction. I wasn't actually involved in the logging, my parents owned it at that time, but I look at the land now and I'm trying to start dealing with it myself. I accessed the minutes through the website and was disappointed that they weren't updated and for some reason, I didn't get the September minutes, which I attended, so I have information up to that point. I am certainly glad to see that you've come a long way. If there is any way you can get a draft on the internet, I think that's such a good place where people can get it or get it from their friends. I would really appreciate it.

Nothing so far has changed my feeling that we need to put restrictions on the products and what the chip mills actually use in their business, and to put that in place, we need to put a moratorium on new chip mills coming in, and I don't know how you address that in your draft or if you have. One thing I feel about and felt that after reading a good part of your minutes, is that there needs to be a small permanent committee to address things, to pull some of this together, to address things as they come up. This is a continuing subject, this is important to the whole state, it's important to me coming from a city, and I feel this should consist of at least a representative from DED, DNR, MDC, and Ag. I think those four organizations are almost necessary. I noticed the Missouri Forest Products Association has a task force, which does address what I'm talking about, and their trying to coordinate forestry products programs and education on forestry management for the landowner, and that's really what I'm concerned about is that the landowners get the kind of information and education that they can use and help themselves out. I think that this needs to be come from state agencies and needs to be a permanent kind of thing that is a little bit different from the kind of setup that was mentioned in your draft under Landowner Education. I do think that, and what I really feel strongly about is that we need to really education the landowner. You've talked a lot about educating loggers, and I think that's good, but I want to emphasize the incentives that you might be able to give the landowner and education so that they can make decisions. I don't know if you actually want a copy of this, but I was real interested because this comes from Reynolds County, and they recently had a meeting that economic growth is vital and the representative from the Missouri Outreach and Extension was at the Ellington Chamber of Commerce to discuss this and she's going to go back. One of the biggest things she discussed is that they have to set their goals and she used tourism as one possible alternative, but this is the kind of thing that's going to happen in Missouri and this is where we really need to have the push in education. Would you like to have this for your records? I thank you for allowing us to be here.

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LAW: We thank you very much for coming and taking the time here. Are there some specific things that you think landowners would like to know that would help them?

DENNEY: Well, they need to know how to make their own decisions. I know they want to make the decisions themselves, and I wish that we could all do the right thing all the time and I'm afraid that's not going to happen. I think we need some strong incentives for that kind of thing. I guess one of the points was that we could get some this information out through the county level and through a lot of these counties if they have one newspaper, that's a real good way to go I feel.

FIREBAUGH: You mentioned that you're a member of an environmental group, do you take advantage of any of the state programs that are there, like Forest Cropland, or Stewardship program?

DENNEY: I don't know anything about them. I just have become the landowner and my parents did their thing with that land, and in fact it's through listening to you that I begin to realize things I didn't know about forest, and I'm interested in looking into those. I'm in the Forestkeepers program which is an urban program through MDC, and it's very fine. Some of these programs are find programs and they do give information but I think they could be better.

FIREBAUGH: With you having attended these meetings and being someone who wants to be educated, where would you go first?

DENNEY: Actually, I was planning to call Missouri Extension because as a city dweller, I don't usually deal with them. I have actually had a note in for the State Forester to call me, and I didn't get any information from them, but truthfully, I realized after listening to these meetings that they are probably busy, and I myself am not in a hurry.

FIREBAUGH: As someone who now has 43 acres that mean something to you, what's the first thing you would like to learn to help your land?

DENNEY: How to take care of the trees.

CHILDERS: Looking at your land, you mentioned that it was logger in 1991, what sort of logging took place on it in 1991? Was it just cut off, or was it selective cutting?

DENNEY: Selective cutting. My parents required that it be 12" and above, and they lowered it to 10", and I look at it now, especially since the leaves have fallen, and it looks like the logger that did it did what we would think is very fine because we have mostly ridges and valleys, and the trees are falling. Again and again they've fallen so they're going to slow the water draining down the hill, so I think that was probably done in the correct manner. We have a lot of trees of the same diameter, but I'm not sure how that would have been changed anyway.

CHILDERS: So it was a thinning as well as selective cutting?

DENNEY: They were trying to get the most money. I live in an area that I'm not as worried about someone clearcutting next to my property. In that respect, we border on Corp of Engineer on the one side and my neighbors have lived there for years and love the land, and as long as they know good forestry habits, they're not going to do anything that's going to be detrimental to my property or theirs.

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MAHFOOD: Thank you. Bill Moore?

MOORE: I going to make my comments very brief, I actually have just one to make. I'd like to call your attention to the map on Page ___, I think it is, for Canal Chip, we may be different from the Mill Springs mill, we typically bring wood in from an average of about 85 miles. What does that do to the volumes that we're talking about? The difference in the acreage in a 60 mile radius is about 7.2 million acres, and the 80 mile radius it's about 12.8 million acres. So it's a great deal of difference volume-wise as what we're talking about. My second point is that over 50% of the acreage that we're talking about is actually outside of Missouri, and that's another important point that I think the volumes needs to be adjusted to look at those volumes that are outside of Missouri also, and you can't assume that most of it is coming from Missouri and I think maybe that's implied. For example, I was talking with Charlie Hirt, we've gotten wood from as far away as Greenville, Kentucky, Harrisburg, Illinois, and Paristown. Implied in the report but not specifically stated is the fact that you've got a higher cull volume than any other state in the nation. Implied in that is that there is some opportunity for timber stand improvement for future roads for the saw milling industry, so I just wanted to make sure that those points get made, and probably the last one, the cull volumes in the areas that we're talking about are very conservative, but just a conservative number of what Canal and Willamette have added to the value of the land just by coming into the area is probably around $68 million just on the cull volume. That doesn't include any top wood that would now be recovered and it wouldn't include any wood from timber stand improvement, so there's a tremendous amount of value that accrues to the landowner whether he chooses to harvest or not. That land is now worth that much more money for it to be valued by an appraiser. Those are my comments.

FIREBAUGH: Did you notice on this report that two of the other chip mill companies are not mentioned here? I noticed that Westvaco and the other small chip mill, I believe the name of it is Ozark, they are not mentioned in here at all.

MOORE: These is some overlap there sure, but I didn't address that at all. But I do have to say first of all I compliment Dr. Lewis and Dr. Wade because I know the difficulty of the task of pulling all this stuff together because this is what I did before I came here, the same exercise, so I know how enormous it is to try to put it together.

FIREBAUGH: It was noted at one of the recent meetings by a public comment that a Gatewood explanation of what they would take did not include culls. If we're looking at improving timber stand in the long run with the eradication of culls in our areas, does Canal Wood take a percentage of culls?

MOORE: Absolutely, I'd have to let Charlie Hirt address the cull situation, he's the one who actually sets the wood specifications for the area, but certainly, we want that type of material. Just as a sideline, I've heard a number of times and it's actually in the report towards the end that we chip up sawlogs. We can't afford to do that, we're out on the open market as is Willamette. We can't afford to pay a sawlog price and then get a pulpwood price for the material after it's chipped. I won't say that a sawlog never goes through the mill, because if somebody brings a whole load of wood in that's cull wood and it's got one sawlog in it, chances are it could actually end up in the mill. But no, we can't afford to buy sawlogs and chip them up. That's a misconception and I won't perpetuate it.

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FIREBAUGH: On most of the things that we're heard, that's very true. Thank you.

MOORE: Do you want to ask Charlie any questions about specifications?

FIREBAUGH: Charlie, could you give us some percentages on that?

HIRT: Basically, the way we look at it, our specifications are set up and designed to where anything that won't make a sawlog is pretty much what we're taking. It can't be too crooked, you have to cut the sweep out of it, you might cut it into two pieces to put it on your load rather than bring in one log that looks like a bow and arrow. The curved log gets caught in the chipper, but if you cut the curve out and put it into pieces, then you can go ahead and put it through the chipper. We get some of this in there, but the one thing we tell loggers is we don't want what I call a culvert, which is a hollow tree and there is only about 3/4" wood, and you put that through the drum, it turns into toothpicks. But if we got 1 ½" wood around it, it will hold together enough to make it through the chipper. Rotten, dead to the point there is still solid wood there, so if you've got some dead snags or whatever, but the wood is still solid and hasn't deteriorated....I've got a sawmill that's delivering wood to me right now that on one of my timber sales I'd be merchandising it out as tie logs. All their interested in is grade, and once it drops down below a #2 log, they're just bringing it into us. They are actually bring us some sawlog material in there from the sawmills.

BEDAN: What percentage of your incoming stock is potential sawlogs that could be used for some other purpose? Another question I have is what percentage of the acres that you contract for if the landowner actually using it for thinning and timber stand improvement as part of a sustainable forestry program?

HIRT: I would say up until just recently, the majority of what we were cutting they were turning into pasture so they were taking it out of forest inventory . That was what that landowner wanted to do. We've just bought three tracts, pay as cut type basis, where we're going in and actually marking the timber, and doing a selective cut. Basically, what they are is trial tracts, they're testing us to see what kind of work we can do, and if they like the job they're going to turn over more acres to improve the stands out there. I think with those landowners, if they're happy, they'll take to their neighbors, but we're actually doing the marking, they're coming out and looking at the marking job and saying yes I approve it or no I don't. I've got foresters out there who are actually doing it. We haven't done anything out there that hasn't been for some sort of conversion. We've done some other types of conversions - we clearcut an area for a mining company that is fixing to mine rock so they might as well get the value of the timber rather than doze it over and burn it. Most of our clearcutting right now has been conversion type cuttings, even though there's out there, that's the forest recommendation you'd use is clearcutting to improve the stand, nothing but junk to start with.

GOODE: Are your standards for raw product much different than Willamette?

HIRT: I haven't actually seen one of their mill spec sheets, but they're basically making the same thing so I think the specs are similar.

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GOODE: About 5 or 6 months ago, someone who testified, and I don't remember who it was, it's on the record, brought in a document provided by Willamette as to what wood they would take. I think everyone here on the committee agreed that it was a pretty high quality of wood, and was not what we would normally consider cull, and that's why I was wondering if your standards were different than theirs.

HIRT: I take everything down to a pretty small size. I've got one in Emily's areas, one of the mills over there, basically bringing me all the top wood when he's merchandising the tie and pallet stock off the bottom and brining me top wood. And if you'd watch one of his loads come it....

GOODE: He must be doing it differently than at least they were at that time because this sheet called for a minimum diameter of logs and a minimal amount of soft material in logs, and those standards were written out as a document that was given to loggers or landowners as to what they would take.

HIRT: Most of our restrictions are actually on form, dog legs, too much sweep, basically what we're been doing is going out there and instructing the loggers that that tree is really bad crooked, but if you cut it here, you can cut it out and still use it.

GOODE: It would pretty hard to truck those in anyway with cutting the curves out.

HIRT: You wouldn't believe what comes in sometimes. I've seen logs that come from one stake and bow all the way out to the other stake.

MOORE: I would like to make one point about specifications. When you're talking about diameter, the reason you don't go below a 4" diameter, whenever that material gets into a debarking drum and starts turning over, those pieces break off and go into waste so you wind up purchasing material that winds up being waste. Whether it's our mill or Westvaco or Willamette, generally you won't take anything lower than a 3-4" top, and that's the reason why. Charlie was addressing the hollow wood and so forth, once you get down below a certain level, when it turns over in that drum it just breaks up, and you bought wood that you can't use.

GOODE: I understand that, but that's quite a bit different than what was on that document.

DAY: What the Senator's talking about, the text that we were given, like you said that's pretty high quality log.

MOORE: And you have to understand too the point Charlie made that might get lost here is that we take material that sawmills don't want. Depending on market conditions, and John and Mark can talk about this among you, but the market changes as time goes on, if they need grade logs, then that's what they want, and they don't want the other material, and the residual material could go into our mill very easily.

LAW: I think it's more important that we get our definitions in there Bernie because as a forest survey definition of a cull tree is about 60% to 70% unusable wood in it, there's a lot of cull trees out there that aren't ever going to go to anyplace, and I think the point is well taken here, I appreciate that, but really what people in the paper industry take are things that the saw log people don't want. So it's not cull trees, there's going to be trees stay out there that as an old sawmiller told me one time "there's nothing in that but sawdust and noise", and I think a lot of it should stay too because of habitat for wildlife. I don't think that getting at the cull tree thing is as important as being able to properly take trees out that need to come out and have a home for their product to go. In your work that you're doing down there, are you working with some different skidding methods? We have a problem in Missouri that we don't have a very good integrated logging operation out there, we don't have people that are used to taking out a tree that may have several products in it.

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MOORE: We're having to work really close with our loggers to do merchandising on the tracts, trying to get each piece of that tree to it's highest value, because that's the highest return to the landowner. On the skidding methods too, when you're out there with a paint gun, that's one of the things you've got to think about, because you just can't go into a clump of trees and mark the cull out of the middle of them, then when they pull the tree out, it skins up all the other four or five. You haven't done anything but downgrade that stand. So you gotta keep in mind when you're out there with a paint gun how you're marking it and make it also convenient for the logger so he doesn't destroy the stand.

MAHFOOD: Further questions? Thank you very much. That ends the public comment period this morning. I'm going to turn this meeting over to Jerry, and you and Bernie might want to come up here.

WADE: What Bernie and I would like is for the committee to give responses to the sections and provide input to us for the rewrite, and if the committee is at the point that it feels like it can make a general decision that with these rewrites, this will probably be where we will want to go. Steve is going to stay up front as chair of the committee for those items of business the committee that in fact is a decision. And what I really would like to do is to start at Section I and begin to deal with the sections. Many of you have editing comments that you have written on your copy. We really do value that as well, so please if you have editing comments on your draft, please make sure your name is on them and you provide them to us. That's where we really get the data to do a good rewrite.

Let's open up on Section I for input and discussions and comments on it.

LAW: I think it would be nice if we could have a table in there that shows all the forest lands in Missouri. I think there's something like 14 million, and I think a lot of people that don't know it that there's quite a bit also in reserve lands and this sort of the thing, then define off this timber land as you've done here which is our focus, but I think they need to see the whole picture of forest lands in Missouri.

WADE: As a table in Section I?

LAW: I think you can make a table or work up a word description, but it's important to know there are forest lands and there's some that are reserve, and I think the forest survey would be a good example.

LEWIS: Do you think that table should be in the text, because I was going to from Steve Shifley, suggest a couple tables like that from his document you received in June.

LAW: I think it might be... You could say there are some 14 million acres of which 13 million is classified as timber land, just to put it in perspective. I also think we don't say much about traditional forest industries in Missouri and the significance of wood products in Missouri, we're a leading producer of tight cooperage #1 in this country, we're in the pallet belt, we produce somewhere between the upper third or fifth of pallet production; I think we produce a lot of walnut gun stocks - just to put the industry in perspective. There was a real fine study done years ago about the economic impact of the industry. I think we need to set the stage and we also need to recognize the concerns of the existing industry. I think that would help lead into what we're talking about here.

WADE: What we'll probably do is put tables on the index, then put narrative in the introduction, and I think that will get the information you want.

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GOODE: It's not exactly what you have at Canal or Willamette, but it is basically a chip mill. I was down in Springfield Thursday and Friday and someone brought that to my attention and I remember some discussion here.

FIREBAUGH: I also think that not only Willamette and Canal should be mentioned, but Westvaco should be mentioned even though they don't have a plant on site, they are exporting in quite a large capacity. For instance, on the tour that we took they mentioned the acreage they had. I think in conjunction with what the Senator said, on these smaller chip mills companies and Westvaco is a huge impact.

BEDAN: And there's in Arkansas that may come into Missouri.

FIREBAUGH: Another point that I thought was important on the 2nd paragraph is that you do not have that Canal Wood was invited to come into the state by the Department of Economic Development with a $300,000 infrastructure grant.

LAW: Point of order.

CANNON: I just want to clarify, the Scott County were the ones that found Canal Wood and the infrastructure grant was made not just for Canal Wood but for the benefit of the other four companies. Scott County came to us.

LAW: They did not invite them into the state.

FIREBAUGH: But it was a $300,000 infrastructure grant. And I do think that's important, it's meant as a point of information that's important.

BEDAN: This issue comes up again and we're still in the 2nd paragraph but it comes up several other places in the report, and I'm having trouble with the definition of full capacity. What I need to know, is that based on one shift at each mill, and therefore if market conditions warranted it, could the mills add additional shifts and thereby double or triple the capacity? I didn't see anywhere here a definition of capacity based on mills, not just based on current intentions. Current intentions may say this is full capacity with current staffing, but what are the mills physically capable of handling? I think that ought to be defined and it ought to be always qualified when we're using capacity numbers, what does that mean? Does that mean a single shift?

WADE: When I read that, I made an assumption that full capacity means that they would not be able to do any more chipping through it, but we need to check.

BEDAN: I think we' ve heard testimony that that's current intentions because of the market conditions, but if market conditions warranted additional staffs could be put on and theoretical capacity is much higher.

CHILDERS: Before we got away from Jay's comment a moment ago, one of the things that I think would be very helpful is in showing that graphic there are several different graphs to show, so that when someone looks at this introduction, they get a clear picture of what is available. One of the things I would be interested in is the ratio of culls on private lands to public lands. There are several things that show quality of the timberlands and I think that would be very helpful to have a grasp of what we're dealing with in that area.

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GOODE: On the introduction on the fourth paragraph, I know what you're trying to state here, but I'm kind of uncomfortable with it because I don't think it works that way. You're talking about, and this was the issue that we just had before us and a couple of gentlemen from Mill Springs came up and talked to me, you're entertaining here that there are two views of what goes through chip mills, basically isn't that what you're saying? And there's the view that if you clean up wastes that are not going anywhere else or that there is more high quality wood going through it, and as the gentleman pointed out too that a lot depends on what the market is on a given day and what the options are for the logger who has truckloads of logs and particularly if they just clearcutted an area and they're basically bringing in a good deal of what came off, maybe everything. It seems to me that even under the best of circumstances, there is a lot of fairly high quality wood going through the chip mills.

LAW: If you have trees of value you have places to take them. With wastes there is an option as to where to take it or to do what you've always done with waste.

GARNETT: ...what we've always done and that's would need to happen when the market ___, that's the bottom line here. That's why Missouri leads the nation in culls, we have the market for it, period.

WADE: The question of restricting further expansion is also one of the items that's referred to in the action, and I urge you to hold how we want that built into the report with the options. Could we now move to what Emily suggested that we begin working through this section by section.

LEWIS: We want to emphasize Federal vs. State MDC.

FIREBAUGH: On your outline you have lands base, on this one you just have resource base, actually there is a little bit of a difference, forest lands and forests are two different words, I would say forest land resource base because then you're talking forest land that has been converted, so when are you going to stop calling it cut over forest land and then it's already converted? Jay, help me out on this one, between forest resource base and forest land resource base.

LAW: Well, what is called forest timberland is what used to be called commercial forestland and under various scenarios is open to harvesting. So, what we're interested in is sustainable timberlands.

TYREE: The resource setting, something that's not mentioned but we've talked about is the idea of land conversion. We had discussions earlier that to preserve the forest land itself, and that just isn't captured here.

HOFFMANN: The conversion is a real concern, but I think if we're looking at the data, what it's showing is we're actually gaining forest land, so even though we're losing some that have converted to other uses, there is something else that's coming back into forest land. So overall, the pattern has been that we've been gaining forest land over the last 15 years. We won't know until this inventory is completed.

FIREBAUGH: In this one section on different paragraphs on different pages, I don't know how to get them out to quickly. Do you want me to write them down and send them into you? For instance, page 3 paragraph 3, we've already discussed the culls. But page 3 paragraph 4, I wanted to emphasize the lack of education by MDC. Page 4 paragraph 4, I think the mention of the impact of Westvaco's exporting should be mentioned. Page 5, the chart, I think you should compare apples to apples, you've got tons and cubic fee which are two different measurements.

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WADE: On that first page under resource ___, on the fourth paragraph, I think there are three rather than two high capacity chip mills. Do we decide that was the case?

BEDAN: Well there are two in Missouri and there is at least one sourcing in Missouri.

WADE: Isn't that one in Missouri?

BEDAN: I guess what I would rather say is two in Missouri and at least one out of state sourcing in Missouri.

Maybe it should also be noted too that many small sawmills also produce residue chips as part of the overall description.

(UNIDENTIFIED): Did we decide to include graphics back in the introduction that we were going to put in who owns the land. I notice there's an interesting statement down here, much of the acreage is in larger tracts where most of the owners own the small tracts. Is there a graphic in the introduction or should be do it somewhere here to show what the relationship is of the acreage in large tracts compared to acreage in small tracts?

WADE: That would probably be as part of the introduction.

HOFFMANN: I guess my question was on these turnover rates, I read some stuff that reflected that that was the national average was about 7 years, I never did see anything that was real specific to Missouri, was this just interpreted from that, or do you know where this information comes from?

LEWIS: No, I have the source written somewhere, but I'm sure it's your source. I didn't recall any specific numbers, but that might be for the Midwest region, it might not be national as a whole.

HOFFMANN: But we know it is fairly short then? Beyond that, it's not just a turnover it's a fragmentation, it's a reduction in size, and I guess that makes me question this assumption that this last sentence of that paragraph that most lands will be available for harvest in a 50 year period, and I think if we reduce the size, it makes it a lot less feasible to harvest. I think you have landowner objectives that aren't really considered ___ regardless of what the economics are when I can harvest.

FIREBAUGH: Something that might be at the end of paragraph 3, it says that this implies NIPF lands in Missouri will be available for timber harvest during that time. In 50 years time I think it will be available for timber harvest, but not for forestry management or to go to chip mills as much as for conversion. We could go on and on bantering that scenario.

BEDAN: One of the problems I had with reading this, I kept forgetting the #1 footnote where it says all this is based on Steve Shifley's report, because you start to think that this is the committee's conclusion. Maybe it should say "and Shifley believes this implies..." Just one little footnote on the first page, but if you forget that footnote....

LAW: I think you might say someplace that the committee has accepted or is incorporating a report commissioned by the committee to look at the resources, and this was one of the basic assumptions that he had to come to to be able to generate probable output. I think he's done some other scenarios later on, based on the report.

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GARNETT: On the first page, didn't we hear from Bill Moore a while ago that he would go out about 85 miles?

FIREBAUGH: Yes.

GARNETT: Does that need to be changed here?

WADE: Yes, that will be changed.

LEWIS: Did anyone hear that before? That's the first time I heard the 80.

GARNETT: There were some other things regarding how many acres was available as a result of that, and that needs to be changed.

GOODE: That's a real important point because you may change that circle from 60 miles out to 80 miles out, you have a huge area that's being encompassed in that area.

DAY: Bill, you said 80 miles was an average, but that's not the max?

MOORE: The max is probably 130 to 140.

MAHFOOD: One of the things that needs to be brought out is that Bill was talking about where his area circle gets bigger, but he also starts going into the other states, so not all of his circle is in Missouri.

BEDAN: I think there should be a circle from Westvaco.

FIREBAUGH: I know the industries would not give you the statistics, but it would be hard for one of the other chipmill companies to acquire as much land as Westvaco has in the state of Missouri for chipping in the last two years. A company that comes in and buys all of JM Huber's land, that's a boost up, but other than that, Westvaco's been here acquiring for well over a decade, and in the last five or six years, they've acquired quite a bit.

FIREBAUGH: I'm on paragraph 4. I would like it to be mentioned the lack of outreach and education to NIPF owners, the lack of education through the FCL and Stewardship programs that less than 10% of the NIPF's landowners are in those programs. I think it's important to keep wrapping these government agencies into this report.

HOFFMANN: On the first paragraph, you're talking about the FIA inventory and it says right in the middle of that paragraph that the inventory utilizes a new process, it will sample approximately 10% of the forest land in Missouri. Actually what it's doing it's a five year continuous cycle, so it's actually 20% annually. I'm not sure what this was meant to say, but it is a continuous process, where in the past the FIA was done on a periodic basis. It was supposed to be 10 to 15 years. The two previous ones were 1972 to 1989, so it was 17 years that had elapsed. Now it's meant to complete the state in a five year period. So I think it would be more correct to say that approximately 20% would be sampled on an annual basis.

LAW: Down to paragraph 3, here's where we first introduce rough, rotten, and dead trees, and again just ask for a definition someplace. We say here in the 2nd paragraph in the latter regard is assumed if both federal and state public lands are dedicated to meeting land use priorities other than timber production. I'd like to see it said that there is National Forest philosophy that includes wood, water, wildlife and outdoor recreation in a balanced sustainable presentation. This is also in the philosophy of MDC's management of their lands, so we can't say that timber is excluded, it's part of the multiple use. In fact, it's been adopted by many private landowners. I'd just like to see that.

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LEWIS: I agree. Steve Shifley just made that assumption. He decided to be conservative.

LAW: But that's not a true statement for what happens on the National Forest lands or State Forest lands. But you could say that we are not considering supplies from these points.

FIREBAUGH: Where did you get the slopes greater than 40% because I've been wrestling that around since we've been on this committee, and I haven't heard slopage. And I don't remember running across that in our reports, but I thought that was interesting because with that new harvesting cutter that they had, can't you do slopes greater than 40%?

BEDAN: I think Shifley is eliminating it as it's not good practice to go on those slopes.

WADE: This is part of the criteria that Shifely used to come up with this data.

FIREBAUGH: On the last paragraph there, I still think the Westvaco impact of exported logs ought to be there.

CHILDERS: Somehow I think it's important point in here that when we reduce the total growth figure by 45% for those four factors, then we drop them another 16% because of the overlap, we're looking at 60% growth has been removed from our numbers there by calculation, and that is a pretty big impact when we look at it. That's not to say it's not valid, but I think it's important to realize that when we're looking at 45-60% there that's not being counted in the growth going on in forests in the state, whether they are being harvested now or sometime in the future or harvested with very careful management, probably not a commercial deal such as a chip mill would use, but I think that is one of those real important areas that we're shooting right over and it's pretty important when 45% of your growth is not being counted. I think there might be a little emphasis there for other uses, for recreation and other things, that we're looking at 45% of the total growth in forestry is even being considered in the chip mill scenario. I think that should be reassuring to a lot of people out there that we're not even looking at that 45%

STEVE GALLIHER: Can I say something here? When Steve came down and was going over and trying to see how we figured up what it would take and what decision we based our decision on to come into Missouri, these are the criteria that we used. We just kind of duplicated them to come up with the numbers, and we obviously wanted to be conservative so that we could make sure there was enough resource out there for what we wanted to do.

BEDAN: Is 16% on the original 100% or is that 16% of the remaining 55%?

CHILDERS: It says the resulted figures.

BEDAN: You have 100%, deduct 45% and you have 55% left. Are you taking 16% of 55%, or 16% of 100?

LEWIS: 16% of the 55.

LAW: This is growth on growing stock too.

BEDAN: So really we're only talking about approximately 50% total.

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CHILDERS: That's a huge amount when you think your growth is not even being considered here. That was a little bit of a shocker for me, I think that's an important figure.

WADE: Further input on that?

GARNETT: We need to make sure and change the three places in here where it goes back to the size of the circle.

FIREBAUGH: Then keep emphasizing that it's Shifley's.

CHILDERS: I think if I recall correctly that the formula is a pretty good ratio there that we're showing. That's a huge impact when you look at it.

BEDAN: You could put a footnote that says "Shifley assumed that the sourcing area for Canal is so many miles. We have heard from the company that it's greater". The issue I raised earlier is the 3rd paragraph, what do we mean by __ capacity. I'd like to see what definition that he used.

FIREBAUGH: And you had always mentioned before the specific __ and need is down now, but when it comes back up, it's really going to impact even more. Let's be prepared for it.

CHILDERS: The last line on that page on cull wood. Bottom of page 4, the one we just finished here. Then we're going to use that ___ that was there, I think that needs to go into there too because that's important.

FIREBAUGH: From the 65 to 85? Yes.

LAW: That point was brought up and it bothered me too, as I don't know what started earlier with this committee, but I think we commissioned Dr. Shifley of North Central Experiment Station to provide us with this information, and we did not reject it as I understand. Is that right? If we're going to mess with his data, then he ought to be here. This became our report when we accepted it. We paid for it or whatever, we commissioned it.

BEDAN: A compromise would be to put footnotes on it, and say he used a 60 mile radius, and we've since learned it's an 80 mile radius for Canal, and that doesn't bother his numbers but it alerts the reader. I think it's a service to Shifley too to put these footnotes in to indicate that this needs to be reviewed. I go with what Wayne said, you don't mess with his numbers, you just put a footnote.

LAW: I don't think we divorce ourselves from this, I think we accepted this.

DAY: I don't think we we're just saying since we received this report, we've since learned from the company that this is radius. Then if someone wants to sit down and start doing the math in their head, that's fine. I think it's fine to say the numbers were based on this size of a sourcing area, we've have since learned...and doing it in a footnote, I don't think that's a change in his numbers.

MAHFOOD: As I understand, we did not formally, like all the information we've received, we haven't formally adopt this study as our study. It's a good point you bring up Jay, but we've got a lot of other information in here, and that's one piece of information we asked be done to be considered, and one thing I wanted to ask was did I miss something, what are we discussing? Who said we were changing something?

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LAW: A statement was made this morning from a gentleman at Canal Wood that their radius actually goes beyond 65 miles, and there was also a concern with the 50 years that the land will change over. To me these are all assumptions of this report's data. And I thought we had asked for this report to be made by Shifley, and that we did send him back a couple of times. So I thought we accepted his report.

BEDAN: We never formally accepted it. We didn't have a vote that said we bless it.

GOODE: Whether you paid for it or not, if you get information, it's information, then we decide if we want to use, whatever, just because we paid for it we don't have to incorporate into our report. But I think the point is that it needs to be clear that it's his information, whether you do that by footnoting or whatever, and we kind of got into this changing it because when you read it you kind of get carried away, well is this his or is this something someone else said, that I think that entered into it. Being clear that it's what he said and as long as we don't misquote him, I don't think we're in trouble.

GARNETT: I don't have a problem with changing it as long as we say we're changing it, that's my problem.

WADE: We'll make it so that it's clear, yet Shifley's research will maintain it's integrity.

GOODE: On the chart, I assume the first part is all the growing stock, and the second, is that part of it that's culls?

LEWIS: Except that the cull is not included within the growing stock.

GOODE: The two together make up the whole, right?

LEWIS: Right. And that's stated right at the beginning of the discussion.

GOODE: Again, without trying to change his material, but can we add information, do we have the information to add to show what percentage of the input, raw material to the chip mills is from growing stock and what percent is from cull material?

LEWIS: I just was talking with Steve about that a couple days ago, and that occurred to me, it can't be extracted exactly, but every particular step of why is hard to explain.

GOODE: Is there any way to get a good estimate or range? I think that's the other side of this information, that's what makes it mean something.

FIREBAUGH: I can see the industries reporting to us as an inside corporate secret? I don't have any problem with that because there's nothing I can do about it. But when we went on the tour, as you can see, the percentages of the culls aren't very high, but when you go to this type of a chart even if you wanted to compare it, I think it's 16 cords of green wood that chipped would make a ton, but don't hold me to that. Even if I were working on this as hired help, I still would not want to have to convert this thing to get a percentage. As a committee member, I think it's nice that Shifley has provided this for us, but I don't see it being useful for us being able to convert and see the percentage the chip mills were using.

GOODE: I think we should then have a committee statement that we attempted to find out what the ration was and we're able to do so, and if we can glean from any place of any number of places what the range is, include that. I think we should make it clear that there is a relationship there and we weren't able to determine what it was.

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LEWIS: Part of it would be the fact that you're not just interested in what growing stock went through a chip mill, but of a certain size, 8" or more, and that's where it all falls apart. That's the more valuable material. And it's because the data's not organized according to age class....

GOODE: Then we ought to make a statement that sticks would try to get that information across.

MOORE: In relation to all of this, the Forest Service has weight and volume tables for various areas, for instance I think white oak is about 60 lbs. per cubic foot. Those weight and volume tables are readily available.

HOFFMANN: That's different than what he's doing here. He's not addressing what's going through the chip mills, he's addressing what the resource base is out there. We're talking about a utilization thing if we're looking at what is actually going through the chipmills. This is just telling what the available resource is.

GOODE: That's what I said when I started, and I said can we then get the information to show what the input is into chip mills. They said no they couldn't get it. They've tried to get it. What I'm saying is I want to add a statement that says we attempted to get that information, we were unable to get it because I think I and others on the committee think that comparing that to this is a valid comparison that we ought to have and we don't have the data to do it.

HOFFMANN: I still don't see the direct connection.

GOODE: The direct connection is that are the chip mills using waste, using culls to the extent that they are out there or not? What is their raw material going through their chip mills, and that's we're not able to get and we think it's important.

BEDAN: This connects with a thought I had earlier that I wanted to bring out sometime. We're really talking about 3 kinds of notations, the first one is a source reference, because we have a long section of Shifley's that probably needs to be repeated several times, so it's clear to me that this is Shifley's work. Secondly we have new information like Mr. Moore gave us this morning about the sourcing area, and that needs to be identified too where that came from. But there's a third thing, and that's where we've decided there is not information, there is a lack of data. One of the things this committee can do is identify where the gaps are. We've learned all this, we've laid all this out, but these ten items where no data exists, and this starts to become a research agenda for the future, so the next committee that deliberates has better information. I'd like to have all these gap things collected somewhere at the end and say here's things we couldn't figure out. That could be very valuable.

GARNETT: When you start with Sustainable Forest Resource Base, those aren't Shifley's words, is that correct?

LEWIS: My words.

LAW: The drain which is actually how much wood is used by mills and everything is gathered varies from time to time, but usually it is in conjunction with the forest inventory (FIA). The drain is collected by MDC foresters or in this last year I believe was done under contract.

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HOFFMANN: It's a three year cycle. The information from the last cycle, the data was collected prior to any chip mill operations, so it's a real good baseline in the state of what the drain on the resource has been pre-chip mill. The next one will begin in less than two years will give us a real indication of what impacts on the resources those mills have had.

LAW: There is already a way of doing this, just that at the time of the survey the chipmills were not set up and operating. I guess it's on a voluntary basis as to how much information mills give, but I guess we have a couple mill owners here that participate in those reports?

SMITH: I think we have in the past.

MAHFOOD: Bernie also has some additional information on the question of what's going through....

LEWIS: In your new Thematic Background, under Sustainable Economics and Social Impact, the third one, page 30. Under the section Chip Mills and The Forest Products Industry. The middle paragraph starts highlighting some of the central concerns, among which are the kind of wood processed by the mills and whether those logs going through could lead to more economic value. The last paragraph summarizes a point which has come up several times again and again, the question of what is going through the mills has been one of the more vexing ones for the commitee. It's central to a number of concerns in the chip mill issue. Then it reviews in section 1 it was shown that there was a lot of cull, section 2 that you could do forest management, so there was potential. Again, this is sort of stacking up the pluses so far, and the third the chip mills were seen as a providing market. Therefore, everything would be complete if the mills were processing the cull material and not taking the higher quality trees. The paragraph on the next pages says again, how do we know that, what's going through the mills? There is some evidence that what's being chipped by the mills contains a lot of wood which is a better use. With the usual statewide caveats we could figure out that for an acre of wood, if a third is cull, then 2/3 are growing stock, so even if you clearcut an acre and ran it through, you're going to have 2/3 of it growing stock, and some of that's going to be good wood. That's kind of the same logic that I was trying to get __ to answer your question. So the only experience we have of anybody who has actually looked at it, even in the small study, is Goulden, and he talks about the fact that he tells us what he encountered down there. That the mill was harvesting some stands with sawlogs, it's practical for them to take what's economical incentive. This issue of what's going through the mill is central but it does keep coming up. In the first part, your first encountering in the context of all of the inventory.

FIREBAUGH: Added to that scenario, I think there should be other impacts listed. For instance, we have nothing in there on the natural loss of standing timber, such as fire, blow downs, wood rot, and we don't have other land uses mentioned like conversion, which is very important in the loss of this net growth. And we also don't have the potential as we've discussed the specific demands become larger, the marketing demands become larger as other reasons for faster net growth consumption.

LAW: Net growth takes into consideration, that's what it is. Trees that die come out of that. You start out gross growth, there is about 7 or 8 categories that I remember that you take out of there which also includes conversions of land. It's net growth on growing stock trees.

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FIREBAUGH: I'm in the timber business, and I didn't realize all that was taken in, do we need to put a little explanation in?

LAW: Yes, define it. The last report the North Central printed, they put the definition in the front, saying that if they don't, nobody reads them. So all those wonderful definitions are there.

CHILDERS: We talked earlier about the residuals, and it's down here in paragraph 3 again, these are all ideas, if we deal with the removal it all refers back to paragraph 1 going from 200,000 to 600,000 tons or something like that, I guess you could it's like your principle, if you're dealing with a bank account, you're actually using your principle up so your gain on your return is going to be less, and if you double the amount you're taking out, that number - there's two factors that we're dealing with here. One is if the amount that is harvested increases, the other is we're looking at a much wider, almost double, the amount of area that it's coming from, it looks to me like we've got two numbers that both have massive impact on the whole issue. If the capacity is there, I don't know how we get around it, because our numbers, I mean you guys are putting together everything we've got but we don't have numbers beyond that point, it looks to me like there are some real soft spots in whatever conclusion we come to based on those two numbers. If you move the area out and double the size of the area that we're harvesting from, that's a much bigger resource we're pulling from even if you double the amount of volume that's being harvested, then the residuals are going to change. Maybe they balance out, but I don't know.

LAW: One explanation I think of from my experience is that these circles that mills use vary a great deal. The thing that we would look at, and I'm assuming that the gentleman from Canal talked about, is they still didn't say they were changing their capacity, they will still have the same capacity, they may buy wood from further distances in that case it spreads out the drain further and less impacts what we have here. That's compared to bringing in another chipper on line, but as long as the plant facility doesn't change. Paper mill companies in Michigan one time would pay more for wood coming a long distance than they would for wood that was nearby because they didn't want to deplete that supply early. They wanted to reach out and get supplies and balance it out that way.

BEDAN: But if they run more shifts, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day that's staffed up all the time, maybe the production fluctuates, that's more important than the sourcing area.

LAW: That's why I say the assumption has to be made that the capacity is the same and they just go a little further for wood.

BEDAN: I don't think the capacity is the same by adding more shifts, you can greatly increase production.

WADE: The question Doyle keeps raising I don't think is answerable without...

CHILDERS: I don't see how we can get that down.

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WADE: I think one of the things we need to do is to indicate that there is a need for that data to be redone with a different sourcing area. I think that's all we can do with that right now.

CHILDERS: I think there's a balance in there. If you double the area that you're harvesting from, and even if you were to double the capacity of a mill, it looks like there's a balance in there. It may be self-limiting, but it's soft numbered, you just don't know if they're real or not.

LAW: I might mention one thing too with sawmills, the mill capacity is always higher than they actually run. This just means they have the mill capacity to turn out that much, and the markets determine how much they put through their mill. I've seldom been to a mill that's running to full capacity.

FIREBAUGH: I don't think those figures can be determined. If I were Willamette, I would not want Canal Wood to know what I did, or vice versa, as a corporate kind of idea. Then also, if the companies are already saying to us they're not going to let us know where we get our gatewood, they're for sure not going to let you know what their gatewood consists of. Just as a matter of a business, I wouldn't think we could get that.

FIREBAUGH: Page 9 paragraph 3, I think the length of the chip mill cutting that is mentioned, I think that's a very important piece of information, but I also think that the use of culls should be emphasized like you have in the last three lines.

CHILDERS: One small number difference, on 29% reduction for buffers and everything, and 27% for Mill Spring, and 19% for Scott City, now unless there was an average somewhere, back earlier when we talked about that area, we were at 45% reduction, and this would actually be 56%, so this would show a discrepancy between this. Paragraph 2 page 9, third line down. That just rang a bell because its 45% versus 56%.

FIREBAUGH: At the bottom of paragraph 2, where it says strictly in terms of growing stock spread all across the state, standing growing stock could theoretically support four additional, oh that's all across the state. Okay.

LEWIS: Maybe you would prefer me not to say that. I thought that was helpful to put in to establish a baseline, but that's what all this inventory stuff is all about. Every piece of wood standing everywhere and that if you were naive enough to think that if a mill processes so much wood, then we just divide the number into the total of all wood standing in the state, we'd end up with four mills. From that baseline, then all the reality and the adjustments bring it way down farther than that. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to do that...

FIREBAUGH: At the very beginning when Jay asked that we put in all of the timber land acreage, that paragraph makes sense to me to say we can handle four more additional. But when I was reading that, we didn't have the overall state acreage. I've renewed that question.

BEDAN: A bigger problem I have is this assumes for example 200,000 tons a year for Mill Spring. It could be higher, it could be lower.

DAY: If you're going to make assumptions, you have to look at it both ways like you said earlier.

GARNETT: What is Mill Springs and Canal permitted for? Is it in tonnage?

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WADE: My assumption is the term full capacity, that usually in industrial production refers what the full capability of that facility is, if it's being run to it's fullest extent. Practically no manufacturing facility ever runs at full capacity. What your question has done is we need to check those figures are in fact full capacity by that definition. That's a standard definition in manufacturing activity.

BEDAN: My question is if the market is there....

WADE: No, market would not change that. If the market were there, they would be running it at full capacity.

GARNETT: They can't run over a permitted capacity, it doesn't matter what goes on with the market.

WADE: The standard definition of full capacity of manufacturing is what they would produce if there were running at the fullest capacity, and that was my assumption of what that meant. So that would be 7 days, three shifts.

FIREBAUGH: You're talking about remote sense data, I believe our committee also talks about using one and one with the assessors and the collectors offices, and a county by county survey of that also perhaps with Extension? A survey of the forest change detection.

CHILDERS: The satellite sensors.

FIREBAUGH: You're just using satellite sensing as forest land change detection, and our committee had also talked about using the assessors, collectors, and Extension on ground forest land detection changes.

LEWIS: From a records pursuing approach?

FIREBAUGH: County by county through those contacts. Am I the only one that remembers discussing that?

SMITH: I remember that coming up, but I thought someone said that there was so much variance from county to county on how they kept statistics that we didn't think it was going to be productive to do it that way.

FIREBAUGH: I remember that coming out, but I still think it could be an easy thing to do, and I don't know where we went with that. I do know that I believe in the counties I'm in it could be an easy thing to do. I think its a possibility that we should throw in there, if the governor wants to pursue it or if some other agency wants to pursue it, it can. We just had a county by county reporting of flood FCL land is listed would be good.

WADE: Are we ready to move on? Sustainable Managed Forests. I would urge the committ