41 



take years to resolve. The process must be shortened, and a proce- 

 dure to allow continued operations while the plan is being appealed 

 must be implemented. Thank you for your time. 



[The statement of Ms. Bailey may be found at end of hearing.] 

 Mr. Hansen. Thank you. We appreciate your testimony. Mr. 

 Phelps. 



STATEMENT OF JACK PHELPS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

 ALASKA FOREST ASSOCIATION 



Mr. Phelps. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Jack Phelps. 

 I am the Executive Director of the Alaska Forest Association. Fur- 

 thermore, I am a member of the Society of American Foresters, as 

 is the gentleman from North Carolina who spoke earlier. And I 

 want to just express my appreciation for his comments and urge 

 the committee to recognize the validity of them. 



Let me begin my testimony today by pointing out that the timber 

 industry in Alaska is starving in the midst of plenty. Although we 

 operate on the largest national forest in the country, which in- 

 cludes more than 5 million acres of productive old growth, we are 

 unable to harvest enough timber to meet the needs of our very 

 modest domestic processing capacity. Since the Tongass Timber Re- 

 form Act passed Congress in 1990, more than 42 percent of our di- 

 rect timber industry jobs have been lost. 



Ketchikan, the town in which I live, recently lost another inde- 

 pendent mill, putting 35 more people out of work. That may not 

 sound like a lot of jobs to you, but in a town the size of Ketchikan, 

 those losses will be felt. And, in any case, they were important to 

 the families whom they used to support. 



My message to you today is that the Forest Service cannot sup- 

 ply enough timber to our mills, not because they lack sufficient 

 standing timber, not because too much of the old growth has been 

 cut — in fact, 93 percent of what was standing in 1954 when com- 

 mercial timber harvest began is still standing according to the For- 

 est Service's own numbers. 



The reason they can't supply enough timber is because the proc- 

 ess through which they must defend every sale is seriously flawed. 

 The National Environmental Policy Act, though designed with good 

 intentions, is not working to protect the environment so much as 

 it is working to impede America's economy and to interfere with 

 the lives of the resource industry workers upon whom so much of 

 this country depends. 



Now, I would like to bring before you one example of how this 

 process is working against us, and I have provided rather detailed 

 comments in my written testimony. And I am only going to sum- 

 marize them here, but I ask that my written comments be included 

 in the record. 



The example I want to give is on an island called Kuiu, which 

 is about the middle of the Tongass, north and south. In the early 

 '60's, there was some beach logging that took place in a place called 

 No Name Bay on the east side of Kuiu Island. There were no roads 

 built. But in 1977, preliminary sale planning for timber harvest on 

 east Kuiu began in connection with the Alaska Pulp Company's 

 long-term contract. 



