570 



Senator Wirth. Senator Murkowski? 



Senator Murkowski. I want to compliment the witnesses. I know 

 some of them personally. I have a high regard for your commit- 

 ment to the life style that you and other Alaskans enjoy, and I 

 would like to spend a little more time pursuing it. 



There was a reference to Ketchikan's spruce mills in one of the 

 earlier statements. I wonder you would care to elaborate a little 

 bit, Ms. Baade? It was owned by the Dailey family, and then Milton 

 Dailey died. 



Ms. Baade. It was third generation, as far as I know. I knew 

 Milton Dailey. 



Senator Murkowski. And then it was run by his son, John. 



Ms. Baade. Yes, and his son John sold the mill. I remember the 

 timber sale lawsuit and it was quite detailed as to the whole pat- 

 tern of how they put the spruce mill out of business. I was saying 

 that — well, the equipment, I understand, was beginning to wear 

 out and they had a dry kiln which was bulldozed out to store the 

 kilns. That was after Ketchikan Pulp Company took it over. They 

 shipped the lumber all over the State of Alaska. Most of all Ketchi- 

 kan was built with the Ketchikan spruce mill lumber and it was 

 real nice to be able to go down to the mill and pick out some 

 lumber for your own building purposes. Now you cannot even buy 

 a two by four. 



Senator Murkowski. I used to work that sawmill and John was a 

 personal friend of mine. They used to operate yards in Sitka and 

 Anchorage and Fairbanks and Palmer. The difficulty, of course, 

 was all the ships bypassed Southeast Alaska going up to pull the 

 charters. There was a small mill here in Sitka many years ago 

 when I first came here, and they used to produce for the local 

 market but one of the realizations that Mr. Dailey told me was the 

 reason that they had to sell the mill is they got a good offer from 

 Louisiana Pacific and then, previous to that, they had been out of 

 the dimensional lumber business for some time because they were 

 supplying their yards by rail barge because they could load up the 

 barges with dimensional lumber, all different kinds, fir, plywood, 

 and be able to sell what the market required and had the ability to 

 compete with the locally produced spruce and hemlock, even 

 though they had to dry kiln the lumber. It was more costly than 

 their competitors in Anchorage and Fairbanks, who had lumber 

 yards they were supplying out of the commercial diversified indus- 

 try out of Puget Sound. So, they simply went out of that business 

 in order to survive and went into the export business, which they 

 operated for several years before they sold it to Louisiana Pacific. 

 Then Louisiana Pacific had a labor strike where they could not re- 

 solve the negotiations, and they finally sold the land to the City of 

 Ketchikan and tore down the buildings. And it is a big parking lot 

 today. 



Ms. Baade. Senator Murkowski, I know John Dailey testified 

 before Congress and I have all of his testimony, as you outlined 

 there, as to why the mill was put out of business. If you read the 

 Reid Brothers timber sale lawsuit there are not many who testified 

 under oath. 



Senator Murkowski. Well, I will see him tomorrow in Anchor- 

 age. 



