BILL REQ. #:  S-3804.2 

Read first time 01/10/2006.   Referred to Committee on Natural Resources, Ocean & Recreation.

     AN ACT Relating to scenic protection; amending RCW 76.09.010 and 43.21C.037; adding a new section to chapter 76.09 RCW; and creating a new section.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 1   The legislature finds that landscape-based tourism, including scenic driving, trail use, and wildlife watching are increasingly important contributors to the economic diversity of Washington's rural areas. According to a 1998 study by the department of community, trade, and economic development, nearly forty percent of all tourists who visit Washington planned to visit a state or national park. Travel spending by these tourists totaled more than ten billion dollars, creating a payroll of two billion dollars while directly supporting more than one hundred twenty-four thousand jobs. The department of fish and wildlife has found that wildlife viewing creates over twenty-two thousand jobs and contributed over one billion seven hundred eighty-nine million dollars to Washington's economy.
     Over the past ten years a number of state and local highways have been designated as "scenic" routes to help promote Washington tourism. Some of these routes go through or are adjacent to commercial forest lands.
     While commercial forests contribute to Washington's economy, certain forest practices, including large, poorly designed clear-cuts, mid-slope roads, and slash piles adversely impact the aesthetic quality of important tourist routes and destinations, including state and nationally designated scenic highways, gateway communities to Mt. Rainier national park, highway 101 around the Olympic Peninsula, the Lewis and Clark highway, and other areas. Recent studies, including one by an independent panel of landscape aesthetic experts, verify that forest practices in these areas fall below acceptable regional and national standards of forest aesthetics and likely are having negative impacts on the tourist economy and private property values.
     Adopting forest practice rules that mitigate aesthetic impacts is feasible, economical, and in the public interest. Mitigation of scenic impacts that result from commercial forestry is time tested and widely practiced in the Pacific Northwest, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Numerous approaches and tools are available to plan timber harvests with aesthetic considerations in mind. Many of these practices can be applied at low cost, and can be done within a framework of large scale harvests. Additionally, they do not require permanent reserves of trees. Often only slight modifications of harvest designs or timing are needed to meet acceptable aesthetic standards.

Sec. 2   RCW 76.09.010 and 1999 sp.s. c 4 s 901 are each amended to read as follows:
     (1) The legislature hereby finds and declares that the forest land resources are among the most valuable of all resources in the state; that a viable forest products industry is of prime importance to the state's economy; that it is in the public interest for public and private commercial forest lands to be managed consistent with sound policies of natural resource protection; that coincident with maintenance of a viable forest products industry, it is important to afford protection to forest soils, fisheries, wildlife, water quantity and quality, air quality, recreation, and scenic beauty.
     (2) The legislature further finds and declares it to be in the public interest of this state to create and maintain through the adoption of this chapter a comprehensive statewide system of laws and forest practices rules which will achieve the following purposes and policies:
     (a) Afford protection to, promote, foster and encourage timber growth, and require such minimum reforestation of commercial tree species on forest lands as will reasonably utilize the timber growing capacity of the soil following current timber harvest;
     (b) Afford protection to forest soils and public resources by utilizing all reasonable methods of technology in conducting forest practices;
     (c) Recognize both the public and private interest in the profitable growing and harvesting of timber;
     (d) Promote efficiency by permitting maximum operating freedom consistent with the other purposes and policies stated herein;
     (e) Provide for regulation of forest practices so as to avoid unnecessary duplication in such rules;
     (f) Provide for interagency input and intergovernmental and tribal coordination and cooperation;
     (g) Achieve compliance with all applicable requirements of federal and state law with respect to nonpoint sources of water pollution from forest practices;
     (h) To consider reasonable land use planning goals and concepts contained in local comprehensive plans and zoning regulations;
     (i) Foster cooperation among managers of public resources, forest landowners, Indian tribes, and the citizens of the state; ((and))
     (j) Develop a watershed analysis system that addresses the cumulative effect of forest practices on, at a minimum, the public resources of fish, water, and public capital improvements of the state and its political subdivisions; and
     (k) Identify forested areas that are important for the state's tourism economy where industrial forest practices may impair scenic resources, and develop forest practice rules that adequately protect these resources.
     (3) The legislature further finds and declares that it is also in the public interest of the state to encourage forest landowners to undertake corrective and remedial action to reduce the impact of mass earth movements and fluvial processes.
     (4) The legislature further finds and declares that it is in the public interest that the applicants for state forest practices permits should assist in paying for the cost of review and permitting necessary for the environmental protection of these resources.

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 3   A new section is added to chapter 76.09 RCW to read as follows:
     (1) By June 30, 2007, the board shall identify and map areas that merit increased scenic protection based on their importance to Washington's tourist and recreational economy. These locations include, but are not necessarily limited to, topographically visible areas within a five-mile distance of state and federally designated scenic highways and byways, scenic waterways, and major recreation trails. The board shall coordinate with the department of fish and wildlife, the department of community, trade, and economic development, the department of transportation, counties, and the public in identifying, evaluating, and selecting appropriate areas.
     (2) By December 31, 2007, the board shall adopt forest practices rules for all forest practice permits proposed to be conducted on topographically visible commercial forest lands within selected scenic areas as set forth in subsection (1) of this section. These rules must be designed to accomplish the following:
     (a) The rules must require landowners owning more than two thousand acres within the state to conduct a technically verifiable landscape assessment of their lands that fall within scenic areas mapped by the department. Multiple forest land parcels exceeding two thousand acres in total that are owned by corporations or partnerships having fifty percent or greater control by the same person must be included in these rules. The landowner must prepare a visual impact mitigation plan subject to design review and department approval prior to receiving further harvest permits.
     (b) The rules must prescribe a procedure for the department to evaluate, approve, or reject visual mitigation plans that includes design review by professional landscape architects with demonstrated experience in aesthetic forestry.
     (c) The rules must prescribe aesthetic forestry techniques that include, but are not limited to:
     (i) Identification of key viewpoints, view angles, and focal views;
     (ii) Keeping harvest unit size within a scale appropriate to local conditions;
     (iii) Use of naturally shaped harvest unit boundaries that harmonize with the natural topography of the surrounding landscape;
     (iv) Designing new harvest units that balance and interlock with nearby recovering and mature forest stands;
     (v) Avoiding creation of strongly geometric harvest unit shapes;
     (vi) Varying the density and spacing of leave trees within harvest units to mimic naturally disturbed stands;
     (vii) Minimizing the visual impact of roads by avoiding exposed mid-slope cuts and fills;
     (viii) Minimizing piling of slash and debris in near foreground views;
     (ix) Feathering the density of leave trees at the edges of harvest units;
     (x) Temporarily retaining buffers to maintain visual integrity until harvest areas recover; and
     (xi) Avoiding cumulative aesthetic impacts by restricting further clear-cut harvests in a given area until a sufficient area of forest has visually recovered.

Sec. 4   RCW 43.21C.037 and 1997 c 173 s 6 are each amended to read as follows:
     (1) Decisions pertaining to applications for Class I, II, and III forest practices, as defined by rule of the forest practices board under RCW 76.09.050, are not subject to the requirements of RCW 43.21C.030(2)(c) as now or hereafter amended.
     (2) When the applicable county, city, or town requires a license in connection with any proposal involving forest practices (a) on lands platted after January 1, 1960, as provided in chapter 58.17 RCW, (b) on lands that have or are being converted to another use, or (c) on lands which, pursuant to RCW 76.09.070 as now or hereafter amended, are not to be reforested because of the likelihood of future conversion to urban development, then the local government, rather than the department of natural resources, is responsible for any detailed statement required under RCW 43.21C.030(2)(c).
     (3)(a) Those forest practices determined by rule of the forest practices board to have a potential for a substantial impact on the environment, and thus to be Class IV practices, require an evaluation by the department of natural resources as to whether or not a detailed statement must be prepared pursuant to this chapter. The evaluation shall be made within ten days from the date the department receives the application. A Class IV forest practice application must be approved or disapproved by the department within thirty calendar days from the date the department receives the application, unless the department determines that a detailed statement must be made, in which case the application must be approved or disapproved by the department within sixty days from the date the department receives the application, unless the commissioner of public lands, through the promulgation of a formal order, determines that the process cannot be completed within such period. This section shall not be construed to prevent any local or regional governmental entity from determining that a detailed statement must be prepared for an action regarding a Class IV forest practice taken by that governmental entity concerning the land on which forest practices will be conducted.
     (b) The provisions of (a) of this subsection do not apply to forest practices that are approved under and in compliance with rules adopted under section 3 of this act.