530 



Senator Murkowski. And you see the V up on the mountain 

 where the second growth intercepts the original growth. Have any 

 foresters ever looked at the two and made any conclusions? 



Ms. Brown. I do not know if they have or not. 



Senator Murkowski. I think it is very important, Mr. Chairman, 

 to note that right here is this phenomena. Here we have evidence 

 of second growth from 100 years ago and next to it is original 

 growth. And on the mountain behind Sitka, from when the Rus- 

 sians came, you can see where there is second growth and in abun- 

 dance. I think Ms. Brown brought that out in testimony. 



Ms. Brown. I think it is my understanding, too, that Kuna Park 

 was at one time cut, and you can see the stumps, but I did not 

 want to be quoted on that, I was not positive on that. 



Senator Murkowski. Mr. Roppel, there was conversation in the 

 Ketchikan hearings at some length that the Alaska Pulp Company 

 mill was owned by the Japanese and the final designation of the 

 product it produces. I was wondering if you could give us a little 

 brief orientation on where the products go and you also have a 

 sawmill, I believe, and that sawmill was shut down? As I recall, the 

 sawmill was originally opened by a Portland firm, Alaska Wood 

 Products, or something, from Portland and that was when they 

 had, I think, the Southeast divided into, theoretically, four pulp 

 mill blocks. One was going to go in Juneau, Berners Bay, and I 

 think Champion — U.S. Plywood and Champion got the timber sale 

 and that was going to be Admiralty Island that they were going to 

 cut. That was cancelled; there was a lot of opposition against it, 

 and as a consequence of that, the pulp mill block never came into 

 reality. There is Ketchikan, Sitka, the question of Wrangell and 

 that was not developed, I gather. The market was down; there was 

 . not enough timber. And so, to stimulate the economy of Wrangell 

 between 1962 and 1966 there was an effort made to stimulate some 

 sawmills. They always had a small sawmill, and then it went 

 broke. It was up and down, and you folks came in, and then what 

 happened? It went broke, too? 



Mr. Roppel. There has been a sawmill operation in Wrangell for 

 many years. The current sawmill that is now operating there was 

 completely rebuilt in 1980. It is the old sawmill that belonged to 

 Pacific Northern Timber, the Portland firm that you spoke of. The 

 operation shut down, and I believe Alaska Pulp bought that oper- 

 ation and they already owned another mill in Wrangell. They even- 

 tually junked out the older of the two and rebuilt the current mill 

 at a cost of about $21 million, and that one was set up to sell sur- 

 face lumber into the export market because we saw a need for that 

 type of product going in that direction. The mill currently employ- 

 ees a little over 200 people working on a two-shift basis for about 

 the last three years. 



We had the mill leased out to an independent operator, and 

 about six to eight months ago, he came to us and said that he was 

 no longer confident that he could get his timber supplies. And then 

 the money was going to run out, and he could not stand the finan- 

 cial risk. He wanted to know if we would take the lease back. So, at 

 that point, we did take the lease back and he is now operating on a 

 contract offer. 



