Public meeting planned to discuss Singletary timber sale

Published 1:30 am Friday, May 19, 2017

GOLD BAR — The state Board of Natural Resources has planned a public meeting Friday to consider moving ahead with the Singletary timber sale next to Wallace Falls State Park.

A meeting about the auction is set for 9 a.m. in Room 175 A-B of the Natural Resources Building in the state capitol. The address is 1111 Washington St. SE, Olympia.

The land covers 166 acres and has a minimum bid of $956,000. Harvesting the timber will require building roads that could provide access to log a much larger area in the future.

Snohomish County worked with the Department of Natural Resources earlier this year to remove 25 acres of the Singletary harvest closest to the state park. County leaders wanted to protect scenery and help improve upon the park’s trail system. The minimum bid before the size reduction was $1.8 million.

County leaders are looking into ways to compensate for the reduced size of the sale, which will reduce timber revenues for local schools, libraries, fire service and hospital district.