EVERETT — A Senate official ruled against language in a budget bill that would have allowed the sale of U.S. Forest Service land in Snohomish County.
On June 11, U.S. Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican and chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, released bill text revealing plans to sell millions of acres of federal land as part of President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill.
In Snohomish County, U.S. Forest Service land, including areas surrounding Gold Mountain, parts of Helena Ridge, areas of Mount Pilchuck and popular hiking trails by Lake 22 and Heather Lake, would have been up for sale.
On Monday, however, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled against Lee’s proposal because doesn’t follow a Senate rule that bars non-budget items from being included in reconciliation bills. The ruling does not decide the merit of the proposal but it blocks Republicans from including it in the budget reconciliation bill, which has dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
Snow dusts the treeline near Heather Lake Trailhead on Tuesday, April 11, 2023, outside Verlot, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Lee’s original proposal posed the sale of up to 3.3 million acres over the next five years of Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service land across 11 Western states to build housing.
More than 250 million acres could be sold, according to the language included in the June 14 version of the bill, a brief from The Wilderness Society, an American land conservation nonprofit, stated.
On Tuesday, Senator Lee posted on X after MacDonough’s ruling he planned to remove all Forest Service land from his proposal and significantly reduce the amount of BLM land.
Before MacDonough’s ruling, Washington state officials and conservationalists spoke out over the risk of selling public land for development.
“Ever go skiing at Snoqualmie Pass? That’s for sale. Thinking about hiking at White Chuck Mountain? That’s for sale,” Washington Senator Patty Murray said in a June 17 video on X. “Democrats, Republicans, everyone makes use of and enjoys our public lands.”
Co-chair of the Snohomish and Island County Sierra Club chapter, Nancy Johnson, echoed Murray’s thoughts of appreciating public lands’ countless uses.
Forest ranger Justin Sundstrom steps off the trail heading to Heather Lake for hikers near Granite Falls, Washington on July 23, 2022. (Kevin Clark / The Herald)
“If you hike, bird, snowshoe or cross-country ski, hunt or fish in Snohomish County, you are already aware of the increased demand for access to our precious public lands,” Johnson wrote in a June 23 email. “We need to be conserving landscapes, clean water, and wildlife for the future.”
On Tuesday, 45 national hunting brands signed a letter opposing Senator Lee’s original proposal.
“This isn’t a land issue. It’s a legacy issue,” Joe Hamilton, chief executive officer of Vortex, wrote in a June 24 press release. “If these lands are gone, so is the freedom, access, and opportunity that generations of hunters, anglers, and outdoorsmen have relied on.”
Senators who have been pushing for the bill stated the sale of public lands must be only sold “for the development of housing or to address associated community needs,” but gave secretaries of the U.S. Department of Interior and U.S. Department of Agriculture the freedom to define the vague requirements.
The federal government can sell land, but “once that land is in private hands, then it would have to comply with the county comprehensive plan, and if there were attempts to amend the comprehensive plan, they would have to be consistent with” Washington’s Growth Management Act, said Tim Trohimovich, director of planning and law for Futurewise, a housing advocacy nonprofit.
Hikers enter the Heather Lake Trail along the Mountain Loop Highway in Snohomish County, Washington on Wednesday, July 19, 2023. (Annie Barker / The Herald)
Because much of the land originally up for possible sale is located in rural areas, developers would need to build sewage systems and road infrastructure, Trohimovich said. Developments would also have to comply with density regulations, which are low in many of the land plots due to their rural nature, making building dense, affordable housing unlikely, he said.
“There’s just no resources out there to do it, and the likelihood that would be worth anybody’s while. It’s just not likely,” he said. “We don’t even see that on the privately owned land in the rural area. People are just dividing those up into 5- and 10-acre pieces. They’re not building affordable housing on them.”
Eliza Aronson: 425-339-3434; eliza.aronson@heraldnet.com; X: @ElizaAronson.
Eliza’s stories are supported by the Herald’s Environmental and Climate Reporting Fund.
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