To stay afloat, Darrington mill needs more public timber
DARRINGTON — The sticky sweet smell of freshly cut Douglas fir and Hemlock trees filled the air Thursday as boards destined for Home Depots and construction sites shot out of the Hampton Lumber Mill on a forest-green conveyor belt.
Set in the shadow of Whitehorse Mountain, the Darrington mill uses about 100 truckloads of logs a day. It’s the town’s single largest employer, with 125 of its 170 employees calling the area home.
Right now, the mill is operating at 75% capacity. That’s because there aren’t enough logs coming in for the mill to run full-force, CEO Steve Zika said.
The number of private timber owners with trees the appropriate age for harvesting — 50 to 60 years old — are dwindling. At the same time, Zika said regulatory hold-ups are preventing the mill from purchasing enough timber off public lands.
More than half the mill’s logs come from state Department of Natural Resources land, with a small fraction from national forests. But to stay open, Zika said, the company will have to increase its public sourcing to about 70%.
Every decade, the Department of Natural Resources passes a Sustainable Harvest Calculation, the volume of timber to be sold from DNR lands over a 10-year period.
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More than 175,000 acres of DNR land have been locked out of harvest as the department works on a conservation plan for the marbled murrelet, a threatened bird species that nests in large conifer trees.
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