After a battle that consumed most of the legislative session, the Senate on Monday passed a compromise bill aimed at limiting logging and residential development on steep slopes at risk of a sudden landslide.

As it emerged from the Senate on a 20-6 vote, Senate Bill 12 would continue the authority of the Department of Forestry to bar logging on steep slopes where public safety is at risk. And it would set up a complex regime aimed at discouraging property owners from building houses on property that could be inundated by a landslide.

The department received temporary authority to regulate logging on steep lands for public safety after four Douglas County residents were killed in 1996 after mud and rocks slid down a steep hillside that had been clear-cut.

However, unlike the original version, this bill does not attempt to deal with slow-moving slides that, though not life-threatening, can cause significant property damage. Experts say population growth and a wet weather cycle could result in more earth movements like the one that has wiped out much of the 137-home Aldercrest subdivision in Kelso, Wash.

"I think we walked away from a good opportunity" to try to map and limit development on unstable slopes, said Sen. Joan Dukes, D- Svensen.

Development interests and property rights groups fought the original bill, saying they thought it could put too much of the state off-limits to construction. Working with the timber industry, they came up with a much narrower version of the bill that deals only with mapping and regulating landslide-prone lands that threaten lives.

David Hunnicutt of Oregonians In Action, a group critical of existing state land-use laws, said he did not think the issue of slow-moving landslides could be grappled with until developers have more opportunity to build on flatter land.

Even after the issue of slow earth movements was set aside, there was a long fight about a provision that would allow property owners below dangerous slopes to transfer their development rights to another parcel that would otherwise be off-limits to development.

Gov. John Kitzhaber threatened to veto the bill, and the various parties held long negotiations about the issue. Finally, a complex system was developed that would allow some property owners to build an extra home on rural or urban residential property if their original land was at high risk of a dangerous landslide.

Ray Wilkeson of the Oregon Forest Industries Council said his group was pleased that the bill, which goes to the House, would allow the Department of Forestry to continue regulating logging in landslide-prone areas. He said that most timberland owners agreed to voluntarily stop logging on these areas but that a few signaled they intended to go ahead despite a potential public-safety threat.

You can reach Jeff Mapes at 503-221-8234 or by e-mail at jeffmapes@news.oregonian.com.