Photos by Christopher Millette
Sawmills in West Virginia, like Facemyer Lumber mill in Ripley,
are producing record amounts of lumber.
By Ken Ward Jr.
SUNDAY GAZETTE-MAIL
West Virginians
cut down a lot of trees. But they don't turn those trees into as many jobs
as they could.
Timber is the only manufacturing industry where employment has increased
in the last decade. There are 3,000 more people working in timber than
there were in the mid-1980s.
But the amount of timber cut annually in West Virginia has doubled since
the mid-1980s, to more than 1 billion board feet. The number of people
working in the timber industry has increased by half that rate, to about
10,000.
Over and over, timber industry boosters predict that a boom is just around
the corner. If we keep cutting, they say, the jobs will come.
Some day, West Virginia might finally stop trucking its trees to furniture
factories in North Carolina or paper mills in Maryland.
Some day, West Virginians might make tables out of black cherry trees or
floors out of giant old oaks. The additional jobs and economic growth might
stay in the Mountain State.
"There is no doubt that, under professional management, the forest
lands of West Virginia can produce the harvest peak of 1909, 1.5 billion
board feet," the state Division of Forestry predicted in 1991.
"With four-fifths of the state in forest cover, it is expected that
forestry will be the basis for the state's new economy."
To date, timber expansion has been modest.
Workers at Facemyer Lumber in Jackson County separate lumber into different
grades before shipping it.
The West Virginia timber industry still mostly consists
of loggers and sawmill workers.
About 240 logging companies employ 1,000 workers, according to the U.S.
Census Bureau. Nearly 200 sawmills employ 3,500 workers.
But West Virginia has only 14 kitchen cabinet factories that employ 200
people. Nine household furniture factories employ between 100 and 250 workers.
Most of the trees cut here are hauled out of state -- or shipped out of
the country -- to be made into furniture or building materials. Extra jobs
go with them.
"The problem with the structure of the wood industry in West Virginia
is that, historically, West Virginia has been a lumber-producing state
rather than a wood products manufacturing state," said a 1988 report
for the U.S. Department of Commerce.
In 1981, that report said, West Virginia ranked 25th among all states in
volume of timber harvested, but only 39th in the amount of value added
through wood products manufacturing.
"By failing to manufacture finished wood products in the state, West
Virginia is forfeiting not only added product value, but additional jobs,
personal income, and tax revenue as well."
David E. White studied the economy of the state's forests as a professor
at the West Virginia University College of Agriculture and Forestry. In
a 1994 article, White concluded:
In terms of jobs and value of products manufactured, the timber industry
is a small part of the state's total economy.
Between 1990 and 1995, timber accounted for only 1.5 percent of the state's
total employment. It makes up just 1.1 percent of gross state product.
Trees growing in the forest don't always translate into valuable wood products.
In West Virginia, there are major constraints to this translation.
About two-thirds of the state's hardwood trees are suitable only for making
ties, pallets and other low-value products. Surveys show most landowners
do not buy their property to grow and cut timber. They just want to hunt
or fish or live on their land.
Because West Virginia doesn't process much wood into finished products,
the state doesn't get as much economic kick from its forests as other states.
Each cubic foot of wood removed from West Virginia forests in 1987 generated
only about $3.50 in value of shipments. In neighboring states, the figures
ranged from $12.50 in Virginia to $71.17 in Ohio.
"West Virginia's timber industry will probably not increase very much,
perhaps not at all," White wrote.
"The timber industry may play a more significant role in the future
economy of the state than it has in the past, but that is not at all certain."
Some positive trends
Experts agree on at least one major positive trend in
West Virginia's timber industry -- the recent increase in the number of
dry kilns. Processed wood products are made from lumber that is dried in
kilns.
In 1982, there were fewer than 100 kilns at 26 sites across West Virginia,
according to WVU reports. These kilns dried about 67 million board feet
of lumber a year, the reports said.
In 1984, West Virginia was drying just one quarter of its lumber production,
compared to the 60 percent national average, according to the U.S. Forest
Service.
Because little lumber could be dried in West Virginia, there was less chance
it would be made into other products here. It wouldn't make much sense
to haul lumber out of state to be dried and then haul it back to make furniture
out of it. If the lumber could be dried here, companies might go another
step and make it into furniture here as well.
By 1992, the number of kilns had grown to 249 at 56 sites. The total amount
of lumber dried in the state had nearly tripled, to about 190 million board
feet a year.
"This is important," said James P. Armstrong, a WVU forestry
professor who has studied the growth of drykilning in the state. "It's
one way we're moving toward improving the value-added side of our forest
products industry."
Others point to scattered expansions in some secondary timber processing
across the state.
American Woodmark added 50 jobs in 1993 at its cabinet factory in Moorefield.
Bruce Hardwood has expanded its flooring mill at Beverly in Randolph County
several times over the last three years. Even Gov. Gaston Caperton and
his son, Gat, bought a small furniture factory in Berkeley Springs.
Joel Stopha, a wood manufacturing specialist with the WVU Appalachian Hardwoods
Center, noted that several mills across the state have started cutting
raw lumber into pieces of a certain size used to make furniture in a factory
somewhere else. This is another step toward value-added wood products,
Stopha said.
"There have been some very good success stories in the state,"
Stopha said.
More pulp mills
In early September, the West Virginia Forestry Association
distributed a chart which compared the size of forests and forest industries
in West Virginia with those in Ohio and Virginia.
The chart showed Ohio has just 7.9 million acres of forests and Virginia
15.4 million acres, compared to the nearly 12 million acres of forests
in West Virginia.
But Ohio and Virginia both have more people working in forest-related businesses
and generally get more economic impact from their forests, according to
the chart.
In Ohio, for example, more than 70,000 people work in forest-related industries.
In Virginia, the forests provide about 228,000 jobs.
In West Virginia, the Forestry Association estimates there are 20,000 people
working in forest-related jobs. Government agencies say the number is half
that.
Ohio gets $7 billion and Virginia $9.8 billion a year in economic impact
from their forests, compared to the $2.1 billion West Virginia is estimated
to receive.
That amounts to $886 per acre in Ohio, $624 per acre in Virginia, and just
$160 per acre in West Virginia, according to the Forestry Association.
According to the chart, one major reason for West Virginia's low economic
boost from forests is that Ohio has eight pulp and paper mills and Virginia
has nine. West Virginia doesn't have any.
The chart suggests that West Virginia should have seven pulp and paper
mills. If it did, according to the forestry association, the state might
receive a grand total of 176,000 jobs and $7.6 billion a year in economic
impact from its forests.
"Everyone is saying what one pulp and paper mill is going to do in
West Virginia, but Ohio has eight and Virginia has nine. I don't see any
of the devastation people are talking about," said Dick Waybright,
lobbyist for the forestry association.
"It's not that we're encouraging eight mills to come to the state,"
he said. "We're saying there is no problem with having enough resources
for this Apple Grove pulp mill.
"It might be that we can't really sustain three or four pulp mills,
but one pulp mill certainly isn't going to use up all the resource and
we could still get more oriented strand board mills or other secondary
manufacturing."
Still not many jobs
Many observers still caution that timber industry growth,
especially in the form of pulp and paper mills and chipboard plants, has
some downsides.
Pulp and paper mills aren't necessarily the best way to use hardwood trees.
Mature, good quality hardwoods are worth a lot more money if they are sold
to be made into furniture.
Moreover, pulp and paper mills don't add as many jobs -- or jobs that pay
as well -- as furniture factories or other value-added facilities.
A West Virginia University study found that, for every million dollar increase
in value of production, pulp and paper mills add about 10 jobs and $400,000
in payroll. A $1 million investment in a chipboard plant provides about
12 jobs, according to the WVU study.
In contrast, a million-dollar investment in a wood kitchen cabinet factory
provides about 22 jobs. A household furniture factory would add nearly
40 jobs, according to the same WVU study.
David Greenstreet, a WVU economist who wrote the study, also adds: "Although
the increase in wood products jobs has contributed to the well-being of
state residents, it is a mixed blessing for a couple of reasons.
"Logging jobs are low wage and sensitive to the ups and downs of business
cycles," Greenstreet wrote.
"West Virginia already has a lot of resource-based jobs in sectors
that are sensitive to business cycles," he wrote. "Adding wood
products jobs tends to contribute to the state's vulnerability to downswings
in the national economy."
Poverty-stricken
Whatever the situation statewide, the timber industry
is definitely a major force in some small communities.
In Webster County in 1990, for example, the timber industry was the only
manufacturing industry. It accounted for 11.9 percent of the county's employment.
In four West Virginia counties in 1995, the timber industry accounted for
more than 10 percent of jobs, according to figures from the West Virginia
Bureau of Employment Programs.
Pocahontas County led the list, with 13.5 percent of its jobs in wood products.
About 440 of the county's 3,250 workers are employed in the timber business.
In Randolph County, nearly 1,300 of the 10,500 employed residents, about
12 percent, work in the timber industry. In Hardy County, about 560 of
the 5,300 workers, or 10.5 percent, worked in the timber industry.
But most of these timber-dominated counties are among the poorest counties
in the state.
The county with the biggest percentage of timber industry jobs -- Pocahontas
-- has an unemployment rate that is nearly twice the state rate of 7 percent,
according to the Bureau of Employment Programs.
Randolph County, with more timber jobs than any other county, has an unemployment
rate of nearly 12 percent.
Timber not a cure-all
Researchers at Auburn University have studied Alabama
communities where logging, sawmills and paper plants are the biggest or
only employer. They found these communities are among the poorest in their
regions.
"An alternative view of timber-dependent communities is that they
constitute corporate satellites: sources of raw materials which flow out
of the community to feed the forest products industry's metropolitan headquarters,"
the Auburn researchers wrote in 1993.
"In this view, exploitation of timber dependent communities by industrial
centers causes and ensures their persistent underdevelopment."
In timber-dependent communities that have little value-added manufacturing,
the Auburn researchers found, residents are generally less likely that
average Americans to graduate from high school, more likely to live below
the poverty level and more likely if they are women to give birth while
they are still in their teens.
These problems could be reduced if trees were made into other products,
such as furniture, in the communities where they are cut. Factories to
make these products would provide more and better paying jobs.
"Development of secondary manufacturing facilities ... holds promise
for increasing the contribution made to economic development by the forest
products industry," the Auburn researchers wrote.
"Secondary forest products manufacturing jobs in Alabama are more
stable and, on average, wages paid are 30 to 35 percent higher than those
in primary forest products manufacture," they wrote. "Higher
wages result in more discretionary income that can be spent in the community,
further increasing the pace of economic development.
"Moreover, as secondary manufacturing capacity grows, demand for supplies
required in the manufacturing process increases," they wrote. "This
demand induces expansion of the supplying businesses, which in turn hire
more employees, thereby further stimulating the local economy."