Summary:

Forestry board and governor move to address a complicated hazard

Gov. John Kitzhaber and the Oregon Board of Forestry are moving cautiously but appropriately to address the risk of deadly landslides in Oregon's steep coastal forests.

Last week, the forestry board approved a series of actions on the landslide hazard while it awaits more scientific information and a clarification of its authority to prohibit logging that it deems a threat to public safety. Those steps include a voluntary deferral by timberland owners of clear-cut logging on unstable sites where slides could threaten roads or homes. That deferral is supported by the Oregon Forest Industries Council, the organization of industrial timberland owners, but is regarded with suspicion by representatives of small-woodlot owners.

The board also approved establishing a blue-ribbon panel to marshal expertise on slides, and asked Oregon State University's College of Forestry to summarize research and recommend actions to reduce landslide risk to people's lives.

Those actions conform to Kitzhaber's request earlier in the week for several agencies to look at the landslide situation. So does another significant part of the board's approach: a voluntary deferral of building permits in high slide-hazard areas pending the results of the blue-ribbon panel.

Kitzhaber and the forestry board both recognize that landslides are largely a land-use problem, not merely a logging-regulation problem. The best way to protect lives from slides is to minimize the number of people in areas where slides could occur.

That's an especially important point to remember as pressure continues to open up Oregon's land-use planning system to allow more homes on forest lands. Ironically, much of that pressure has come from small-woodlot owners, frustrated that they aren't allowed to build homes on their forest acreage. But at last week's forestry board meeting, woodlot owners were suggesting that the right way to protect their ability to log their property was to prohibit homes downhill from it.

Of course, the obvious course would be to prohibit logging that causes landslides, but it's not that simple. Slides -- especially the kind that ooze down a slope accumulating logs and other debris in huge quantities on the way -- are natural features of the steep forest slopes. Various studies have indicated they are more likely to occur within 10 years after clear-cut logging, but many occur on unlogged land, and some on logged sites would have happened logging or no logging.

The Department of Forestry needs clear authority to prohibit logging on unstable slopes where lives could be threatened -- such as uphill from roads and homes -- but at best that could respond only to logging-related threats. Preventing off-property damage should be considered a cost of doing business for timberland owners.

But a necessary companion action -- outside the board's authority -- are tight home-siting standards to keep new homes from being built in slide-hazard areas, an issue that Kitzhaber has asked the Department of Land Conservation and Development to review.

An innovative idea, also, is increasing state and county government warning ability when slides are particularly likely, such as during heavy rains. Roads could be closed and people evacuated, much as is done with floods.

Government can only do so much to prevent slides; it can do more to keep people away from where they are most likely to happen.