- TIMBERBIZ.COM.AU - A La Une - 21/Jul 01:06

Small town US mills on a long decline

For nearly a century, Washington’s timber industry produced everything from paper and two-by-fours to the massive wood beams that hold up the Tacoma Dome. Lumber mills were the backbone of logging towns throughout the Northwest. Source: Oregon Public Broadcasting But the industry has been on a long decline since the 1990s. Now, President Donald Trump wants to reduce foreign competition and increase U.S. logging to bring back those jobs. The timber industry is not immune from layoffs. In June, a plywood mill along the Columbia River closed and laid off all of its workers. And another one is laying off 112 people. Those layoffs are part of this bigger trend that’s been happening for decades. Today, the state has about 100,000 timber-related jobs, including mills. That means Washington has lost about a quarter of its timber jobs in the last 30 years. The loss has been devastating to rural communities built around those sawmills, like Morton, Washington. Morton lies about an hour’s drive southeast from Seattle. It’s a sleepy little town, with a population of just over 1,000, and a big wooden statue of a lumberjack as you drive in. But back in the 1950s, it was known as the “railroad tie capital of the world.” The Hampton Mill is still the economic heart of the community today. It’s survived the waves of closures over the years. Inside, the first thing that hits you is the strong, sappy smell of freshly cut wood. The mill itself is like a giant machine. It looks highly automated, with just a few dozen people managing it all. Back in the old days, there would have been a lot more people doing these jobs. Today, this mill produces enough lumber each day to frame 70 houses. You see logs in all stages of being cut apart, flying around on conveyor belts. Some chutes carry the wood like a log ride at the fair. Once they’re cut down to studs, it becomes more like a really fast merry-go-round. It feels a little like a carnival — one where it’s easy to get your fingers cut off. “Obviously, keep your hands inside the rides at all times,” warned mill manager Aaron Poquette. The Hampton Mill is still the economic heart of the community today. It’s survived the waves of closures over the years. Inside, the first thing that hits you is the strong, sappy smell of freshly cut wood. The mill itself is like a giant machine. It looks highly automated, with just a few dozen people managing it all. Back in the old days, there would have been a lot more people doing these jobs. Plus, lumber from Canada is so much cheaper — because of its vast timber lands and the Canadian government’s involvement in setting prices on its lumber. The U.S. currently imports a third of its wood from Canada. There’s a lot for small communities to gain by bringing back sawmill jobs. They’re good jobs in rural communities, where jobs like that are hard to come by. Dennis Barnes, a mill worker in Morton who plans to retire soon, is in favour of increasing timber jobs. He started as an entry level worker, but now, he’s in charge of quality control. He monitors a huge computer system that keeps track of every single board as it moves through the mill. He plans out maintenance schedules for the saws, some of which must be sharpened several times a day. “It’s been a good job,” he said. “I’ve been here 26 years. Lots of change. We’ve had some rough times, but, overall, it’s supported my family, and it’s been a good living.” Barnes’ career path illustrates how, over time, mill jobs are becoming more highly skilled and valuable. Now, with AI technologies entering the mill, doing things like visually grading the quality of each board, that transition continues. Poquette says it’s difficult to convince workers to move or commute to Morton, so his company has been training existing entry-level workers for those more technical jobs. At the end of his career, Dennis Barnes has a nice 401(k), and plans to stick around Morton after retiring. “I’ve lived here all my life, and I plan on staying here,” he said. The economies of small towns like Morton depend on mill jobs. Over the decades, Morton has already lost half of its timber jobs, and people there don’t want to lose any more. At the same time, many small rural communities also depend on tourism, tied to the area’s natural beauty. But that industry could be harmed by more logging. In some ways, this feels like a very Pacific Northwest story — it involves lumberjacks, after all. But in others, it’s a story playing out in rural communities across the country. Industrial jobs used to anchor them, and now that the anchor is gone, a lot of these towns are adrift. It’s a story that’s driving the political moment right now. And when small towns lose mills, it’s not just the jobs that go away. It’s the whole infrastructure for producing wood products. Without that production capacity, it makes us reliant on non-local sources of all the wood products we need. And we need a lot of them. Seattle is a city built out of wood. It’s hidden in the walls of our homes and apartment buildings. It’s in the paper we use and the particle board in our furniture. Without this industry, Seattle and other cities like it would have to import a lot of those things from somewhere else. In many ways it’s about self-sufficiency. Mill operators say the Northwest has this valuable local resource that we could be managing, using, and selling with good local jobs. Or, we can pay other people in other places to import the same resource — and those people might not have the same values we have in terms of protecting the environment. Blue collar sawmill jobs seem like exactly the type of thing President Trump wants to […]