31 



Mr. COOLEY. Thank you very much. 

 Mr. Bendix? 



STATEMENT OF GERALD BENDIX, HI-RIDGE LUMBER 



COMPANY 



Mr. Bendix. My name is Gerry Bendix and I am President of Hi- 

 Ridge Lumber Company. I am here to testify about the Clinton ad- 

 ministration's forest plan for the Pacific Northwest and how the 

 promises made in it are not matching reality. 



Hi-Ridge Lumber Company is something like Mayr Brothers. It 

 is a 40-year-old sawmilling enterprise. We employ 130 people at 

 the mill and an equal number of loggers and truckers work in the 

 woods to supply our mill with the logs we need to operate. In 1996, 

 we will process 45 million board feet of timber and generate ap- 

 proximately $35 million in sales. 



About 90 percent of the raw materials we need to operate our 

 mill have been historically supplied from national forests in North- 

 ern California. Our main source of logs has been the Klamath Na- 

 tional Forest, a forest which annually sold between 200 and 250 

 million board feet of saw timber but now only sells between 20 to 

 30 million board feet. This is part of the legacy of the Clinton forest 

 plan. 



Even before the President's forest plan was finalized, this admin- 

 istration had dropped 12 percent off its promised volume. The final 

 plan calls for a timber sale program of 1.053 billion board feet, but 

 what is being actually sold is very different. In 1994, 187 million 

 board feet were sold. In 1995, the program jumped to 336 million 

 board feet. Through June 30 of this year, they have sold only 393 

 million board feet. At this rate, it will take a decade to attain the 

 level promised in the forest plan. 



When the President announced his forest plan, he directed "his 

 cabinet to identify and implement, in a priority manner, the best 

 ways to strengthen small business and secondary manufacturing in 

 the wood products industry, including a review of increasing sup- 

 plies of Federal timber set aside for small business and possible 

 preferences for bidders who contract for domestic secondary proc- 

 essing." 



Well, not one single change has been made to help either small 

 businesses like ours or secondary manufacturers. In fact, the Small 

 Business Administration seems to be going out of its way to ensure 

 the small business timber sale set-aside program withers on the 

 vine. Over the last three years, the SBA has cut its staffing for this 

 program and resisted Congressional efforts to force the SBA to fill 

 the vacant positions. 



While we have seen no help for small business, we cannot help 

 but notice how far this administration has gone to aid the largest 

 integrated forest products companies, particularly those companies 

 with large land holdings. Some companies have cut deals with the 

 administration to exempt many acres from Northern spotted owl 

 set-asides by signing 100-year-long habitat conservation plans. The 

 irony of this becomes apparent when you think about the Presi- 

 dent's promise to help small business and then think about how 

 large business has benefited by a tremendous run-up in the value 



