A bill to help farms recoup losses due to extreme weather could bring forestry businesses into the mix as it makes its way across the Legislature.
S.60 sets up a farm relief fund that lawmakers seem to agree should be accessible to loggers as well. Only farms would qualify for the money under the Senate’s initial plan, which came together after floods and freezes in recent years devastated Vermont agriculture.
Over the last two years, “persistently rainy conditions made many forested areas too wet to harvest,” a rep from the Professional Logging Contractors of the Northeast told legislators last week in the House committee dealing with agriculture and forestry.
Those conditions came alongside damage to roads and bridges due to flooding. Heavy mud seasons and warmer, wetter winters in particular can inhibit both the harvest and transport of timber, leaving loggers stuck.
Lawmakers had already been looking at including foresters in the bill when the testimony came. Shortly after, a draft doing just that was introduced.
“We expect the loggers impacted would be a fraction of the claims, but their losses from adverse weather events cause great hardship, and giving loggers the opportunity to apply for emergency funds seems fair,” said Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun, D-Westminster, who had sponsored a nearly identical House bill that covered foresters.
A typical forestry outfit’s business model looks a lot different from the average farm, but people in both industries are subject to extreme weather events hurting bottom lines.
“Loggers have historically been left out of these relief bills,” said Rep. David Durfree, D-Shaftsbury.
Flood relief efforts like the Business Emergency Gap Assistance Program didn’t extend funds to loggers as their losses were considered revenue loss, according to the logging organization.
The inclusion of foresters raises questions about who or what would receive payments. Loggers often use sub-contractors for loading logs or trucking timber, and legislators need to determine if or how the fund could compensate those workers.
“Clearly, there are different circumstances for a farmer than there are for a logging contractor, and the biggest one is that the logging contractor doesn’t generally own the property they are working on,” said Dana Doran, the rep from the logging group, told the House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency and Forestry.
In a phone call Monday, Doran was confident lawmakers would find a way to ensure everyone involved in a logging operation could be compensated.
He believes the important part is setting up legislation to provide much needed relief for struggling foresters.
As laid out earlier this year, the fund would help farms recover losses or reimburse them for unexpected costs. Those could include wages, wiped-out income from destroyed crops or repairs to roads. It would cover up to 50% of uninsured or uncovered losses, up to $150,000 per year for a farm.
A review board would make the final call, with a turnaround coming at most 30 days from officials receiving an “administratively complete application,” under ideal circumstances.
The updated version of the bill in the House committee includes two forestry operators on the review board alongside the previously planned group of state officials, farmers and farming orgs. Forest fires have also been added to the list of eligible extreme weather events.
Legislators also added a limit on the proportion of the fund a single farm or forestry operation could receive at 5%. The maximum funding a single entity could receive from the program remains capped at $150,000.
Sam Hartnett writes for the Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
Sam Hartnett
Sam Hartnett writes for the Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
