By Kern S. Ridlington
New housing sales, which have set records for five straight years, started declining in 2006 when Ainsworth closed the two OBS plants in Cook and Grand Rapids and curtailed production at the Bemidji plant. At that time there were over 80 OBS plants in United States and Canada. Now with the closing of the Weyerhaeuser plant in Deerwood, over 458 jobs have been lost in the forest products industry the past two years. This doesn't take into account the 3,000 loggers and truckers affected by these closings. The Brainerd area also took a big hit in 2002 when Potlatch sold the Cloquet mill and closed the Brainerd mill that employed 600 employees.
Hopes for a resurgence in the housing market in 2007 failed when housing starts again fell 30 percent below the 2006 levels. Construction starts fell about 10 percent in the West, 11 percent in the South and 28 percent in the Midwest, where Minnesota markets most of it's forest products.
It was a rough start in 1989 when the Deerwood plant was started by MacMillan Bloedel. There was strong opposition to building the plant. Gary Payne had articles accusing MacMillan Bloedel of devastating the forests in Canada. The Crow Wing Environmental Protection Association and the Minnesota Chapter of the Sierra Club filed a suit challenging the Minnesota Pollution Agencies decision to issue a permit without requiring a EIS (Environmental Impact Statement). The EIS could have taken six to 12 months to prepare. The MPCA decision was upheld by the court and the plant was completed in l991. As a result of this court action the State agreed to prepare a Generic Environmental Impact Statement which was completed in l993 at a cost of $3 million.
Weyerhaeuser purchased Trus Joist in 2000 and by 2004 the company couldn't produce the engineered lumber fast enough. They spent $1 million on new platens for the press. Each week they shipped out 20 train car loads, l5 boat containers for export and 60 semi trailer loads.
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In 2005, most of the aspen offered on county lands averaged $24 a cord but were often bid up as high as $70 a cord. In early 2006, aspen was bid up about $34 a cord and most tracts were sold. On Dec. 3, Aitkin County will offer 54 tracts of timber with the base price for Aspen at $21 a cord. It will be interesting to see if any of these tracts will be bid up or just how many will be sold at the base price.
Kern Ridlington is a media relations volunteer for the Society of American Foresters. He was IRRRC forester in Aitkin County for 22 years from 1957 to l980 and District Forester in Park Rapids for seven years.
