Standard SPI mill remains on schedule for July closure

As scheduled, Sierra Pacific Industries’ Standard Mill will close on July 17, SPI spokesman Mark Pawlicki said.

When the closure was announced in March, it was blamed on decreasing demand in lumber, plummeting timber prices because of the downturn in the housing market and a difficult regulatory environment.

“We’ve seen a very small increase in some products,” Pawlicki said. “But generally, we’re still in a bad market.”
  

The company plans to keep the equipment in the mill in hopes that the economy rebounds, and the mill reopens, he said.

“The market has to come back — we know that,” he said.

The company earlier this year also announced the closure of a plant in Camino in El Dorado County and Quincy in Plumas County.

There have been further curtailments, including cutting shifts at some mills, but no further mill closures are planned, Pawlicki said.

The mill is not accepting logs, and its supply is slowly depleting, Pawlicki said. Logs that are coming out of area forest are either going to the cedar mill in Chinese Camp or likely being driven to a mill in Terra Bella, near Visalia.

Meanwhile, local groups are looking for ways to keep the area logging companies afloat.

On June 19, Tuolumne County Alliance for Resources and Environment will hold a brain-storming session on the best way to do that.

One target is the U.S. Forest Service’s allotment of about $1 billion, from the $787 billion federal economic stimulus package, to use for wildland fire management and capital improvement maintenance.

Only about 10 percent of the allotment has been doled out for forest projects. Some of the money has gone to subsidizing truckers taking logs to the Terra Bella mill, and $120,000 went to thinning projects in the Stanislaus National Forest.

But the roughly $780 million the Forest Service is expected to allocate in the next round has yet to be announced.

“We are asking the Forest Service to develop (timber) sales that will put as many to work as possible,” said Melinda Fleming, TuCARE’s executive director.

“We need to make sure we have the workforce and skills to do the work when we get the mill running again — whether SPI opens it or someone else,” Fleming said.

Area lawmakers have floated ideas to aid area logging, including state Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, introducing legislation that would encourage builders to use California lumber.

U.S. Rep. George Radanovich is looking into ways to tap the stimulus funds, but nothing can be done for the impending closure of the mill, said Spencer Pederson, a spokesman for the congressman.

Meanwhile, there’s been some effort to relocate Standard Mill workers to the Chinese Camp mill or other SPI mills in the state, said Curtis Beutler, vice president of the employees’ union.

“There’s only a handful of jobs out there,” SPI spokesman Pawlicki said. “Some have applied, but we haven’t made any decisions on who will get those jobs.”