Everett Mill Closings End Era For Timber Industry And Families

EVERETT

About five months ago, Weyerhaeuser closed the last of its Everett mills, symbolically bringing the reign of the timber industry in that area to a close.

A few mills around the Everett area hang on, trying to wait out the political storm that has pitted the timber industry against the spotted owl.

But David Buse, general manager of the 46-year-old Buse Timber and Sales saw mill, thinks the industry may be on its last legs. With the closing of each mill that he witnesses, Buse worries that his company - and a way of life - will soon follow the same path.

Founded in 1946 by Buse's father and uncle, the company remains very much a family business, recently adding the third generation of Buses to its employment ranks. Similarly, many of Buse Timber's employees are the children or grandchildren of past employees. The founders still hold the offices of president and vice-president.

Family pictures and company portraits are one and the same. The black-and-white photographs that decorate the office walls show the company's evolution through its 46-year history. Initially, Buse Timber also ran a farm operation, raising pigs, potatoes and other crops on some of its 20-acre site. As the company grew, it moved away from farming and focused predominantly on its cutting of logs into dimensional lumber, even converting the hay barn into a new mill. Currently, only a small portion of land is still used for farming of crops such as corn.

The company held on during tough times, said Del Buse, president and patriarch.

In its 46-year history, the mill has never shut down operations, David Buse said. In this industry, he said, a business either continues at full production or it shuts down.

But today, the picture isn't as clear. Despite millions of dollars of sales annually, the company is suffering substantial losses, said Buse. He would not give specific figures on how high the sales or the losses are.

Everett itself, once a hub of mill action, saw mill after mill closing to the point where there are none that Tom Burns, president of the Everett Area Chamber of Commerce, can think of. He added that although the mills built a culture and shaped the city in the past, the city has since diversified considerably and few residents are forest products employees.

A prime reason why companies like Buse's are facing such tough times is a simple matter of supply and demand. Logs, which the saw mills buy to cut into different dimensions, are in short supply. Over the past several years, the cost of logs has doubled, Buse said.

Buse blames actions such as those by U.S. District Judge William Dwyer, who refused to lift a permanent injunction that prohibits government timber sales in millions of acres in Washington, Oregon and Northern California where spotted owls live. The owl is a threatened species under the 1990 Endangered Species Act.

In addition to fighting market forces, Buse believes his business and the entire industry is fighting a battle of public perception.

"We feel very unfairly picked on, as far as what we're actually doing and the amount of the timber supply compared to what the public perception is and the fact that there's an awful lot of jobs at stake," Buse said. "It's a way of life at stake."

He criticized the "preservationists" as trying to drum up opposition to the timber industry by spreading false information.

"We have an industry in this country that has a lot of money. They get this money from donations and the product of this industry is fear . . . They have to keep stirring the pot, saying that their kids and grandkids will only have a concrete block to stand on with no oxygen to breathe. That industry is the preservation industry," he said.

But the timber industry is unfairly scapegoating environmentalists, said Vic Sher, managing attorney of the Northwest Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, which is not a part of the Sierra Club. He said that lost jobs are due in most part to changes within the industry such as automation and log exports.

Buse said he thinks the environmentalists have more allies in the media. The press, he said, is quick to challenge assertions by forest services officials, but not as likely to scrutinize environmentalists' claims.