SOCM takes on logging
by Joe Tarr
Environmentalists fighting to keep pulp and paper companies from clear-cutting more and more of Tennessee's forests are trying a slightly different tactic this year.
Rather than talking about how intensive logging damages ecosystems and threatens the vitality of many plant and animal species, Tennessee activists are telling people that the more land they clear-cut today, the fewer jobs they'll have, and less money they'll be able to make from their forests.
The clear-cutting method favored by paper companies turns valuable hardwoods into pulp. An economics study done by Tennessee Technological University noted that although the number of loggers in Tennessee rose 688 from 1992 to '96, the number of jobs in the wood products industry fell by 2,524. For every $1 million invested in pulp mills one job is created (with the profits often going overseas); $1 million invested in the hardwood furniture industry creates up to 40 jobs, according to Save Our Cumberland Mountains. But during the '90s, pulp mills have been moving into the Southeast, cutting an estimated 1.2 million acres a year.
To try to stop these trends, the Forest Practices Act was introduced this week in the Legislature. It could be voted on next week by the environment, conservation and tourism committee.
The state currently has no way to control the method or the amount of logging that goes on. As the Chattanooga Times noted, the state government scrutinizes a hair cut (beauticians must take 1,500 hours of classes and pass an exam) more than it does a forest logging operation.
The Forest Practices Act wouldn't outlaw clear-cutting. However, it would require anyone who owns 100 acres or more and intends to log 20 or more acres to get a permit and follow guidelines to protect the soil and water before, during and after logging. The bill also transfers the division of forestry out of the Department of Agriculture into the Department of Environment and Conservation, and authorizes a severance tax on pulpwood to pay for forest management activities.
"What will happen is if we don't do something like this, in the next decade, the landowner will actually lose his choices," says Brian Paddock, chair of SOCM's forestry committee. If the state's woods are intensively logged, they will no longer be able to support the saw mill and logging business it currently does. "Those landowners who kept their timber won't have anywhere to sell their logs because the saw mills will be farther and farther away."
With logging and pulp companies introducing their own bill and lobbying intensively, Paddock doesn't have much hope SOCM's proposal will pass this session.
"You're talking about a multi-year process. Our job is to convince the Legislature there really is a problem," he says. "The Legislature has got to start looking at laws and passing laws that deal with clear-cut logging and the continual drain on our forests."
The Empowerment Zone moves toward reality
by Jesse Fox Mayshark
Remember the Empowerment Zone?
Knoxville earned the designation a year ago, along with 14 other cities across the country. The announcement came with bounteous fanfare and the prospect of $100 million in federal funds over the next 10 years. Then things got kind of quiet.
But that doesn't mean things aren't happening, says Sherry Kelley Marshall, the new executive director of the Partnership for Neighborhood Improvement. PNI is the lead agency in administering the Empowerment Zone. Its first step was hiring Marshall, who came on board full-time a few months ago. The next step was waiting for the EZ money to start flowing—or, as it turned out, trickling. So far, just over $7 million has been appropriated by Congress, and not all of that has made its way to Knoxville yet. (That includes $1 million Sen. Bill Frist shook loose from a separate Housing and Urban Development fund.)
"We are finally moving ahead on some things," Marshall says. The top priority is signing a contract with the Center for Neighborhood Development to organize Zone Advisory Councils (ZACs). Each of the seven "zones" laid out in the EZ plan—all of them within a 16-square-mile central Knoxville core—will have a ZAC made up of residents to identify needs in the communities.
Suzanne Rogers, executive director of the Center for Neighborhood Development, says her goal is to have ZAC organizers hired and trained by the summer, and the ZACs themselves up and running by early fall.
"We have been working to prepare for this," Rogers says. "It's a big project, and we have to work out a lot of things."
In addition to setting up the ZACs, some of the early funds will be used to establish a career center at Pellissippi State's new campus on Magnolia Avenue (in the old Knoxville Catholic High School), and to start an "Empowerment Bank Investment Shop" to provide loans to small inner-city businesses.
Future funding is still up in the air, although President Bill Clinton's proposed budget for next year does include some EZ money. And both George W. Bush and Al Gore have endorsed the EZ concept.
Still, Marhsall says, "The training that residents and other stakeholders get will have value whether we get the money or not... I am really hopeful we will get at least a few more years of the promised funding. But we will continue working with this plan until the community feels that we've done enough with it somehow."
March 16, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 11
© 2000 Metro Pulse
| 
