LONGVIEW — Gov. Chris Gregoire plans to close three minimum-security prisons — including Larch Mountain Correctional Facility in Yacolt near Vancouver — and make other changes as part of a statewide plan to save money. But critics say the plan could actually end up costing more money.
According to a consultant’s study in October, reducing the number of prisons will save taxpayers $65 million over the next four years.
But the state Department of Natural Resources, which trains and uses Larch inmates to fight fires, plant trees and maintain forests, may have to contract out these services when Larch closes in June, said Rex Hapala of the DNR’s Pacific Cascade Region.
Legislators from the 18th District sent Gregoire two letters objecting to the proposed closure, calling it “penny wise and pound foolish.”
“I believe state government needs to consolidate in order save money,” said Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, in a news release. “But that consolidation has to create actual savings, not just perceived savings. Or, as is possible with the Larch closing, an actual increase in overall costs.”
Larch, located on the Yacolt Burn State Forest, opened in 1956. It holds 400 male inmates with four years or less left on their sentences.
To help inmates make the transition to life on the outside, Larch allows them to earn money working on-site in the kitchen, shop or grounds, as well as doing outside work for the DNR, community work crews and nonprofit agencies, Sgt. David Lynch told The Daily News during a tour of the prison last year.
“They do work really hard,” Nancy Simmons, community partnerships coordinator, told The Daily News. “They’re out planting trees in the snow, working hard in all kinds of weather. They leave at 7 and they’re back at 4:30.”
The DNR trains them to be Level 2 firefighters, Hapala said.
Larch firefighting crews (each crew is 10 inmates and a supervisor) responded to 21 fires in Cowlitz, Clark and Skamania counties in 2009, according to DNR records. Several Larch crews fought a 59-acre fire on Cottonwood Island on June 19.
In recent years Larch crews have fought fires on Mount Solo, Carrolls Bluff, along West Side Highway near Castle Rock and on Weyerhaeuser timberlands.
They also plant and thin trees, clear brush on state forest lands, maintain and decommission forest roads, do upkeep on recreational sites and hiking trails, armor culverts, replace bridge decks and collect litter. In 1994, inmate crews erected a forest fire danger warning sign at Seaquest State Park.
“They’ve also done work up the Toutle River with the Lower Columbia Fish Enhancement group, doing bank stabilizing,” Hapala said. “They’ve worked with the Diking District putting up some gates. … It’s within their working circle, within their commute.”
After budget reductions in 2008, Larch went from eight 10-person offender crews year-round to five year-round crews and three seasonal crews, Hapala said.
Under Gregoire’s proposal, the medium-security McNeil Island prison near Tacoma would be converted to minimum security and become the new home for many of the Larch inmates, said Chad Lewis of the Department of Corrections.
Most of the current McNeil inmates will be transferred to the newly expanded Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in Franklin County, Lewis said.
“It costs much less to operate because of the design,” Lewis said. Coyote Ridge has room for 2,700 inmates and will become the state’s largest prison when it’s full, he said.
The plan will reduce the state’s prison costs because “it costs less to operate larger medium-security prisons than it does more minimum-security prisons,” he said.
When Larch closes, the nearest prisons to Cowlitz County will be Stafford Creek, a medium-security prison in Aberdeen, and Cedar Creek, a minimum-security prison just north of the Lewis-Thurston county line.
Eleanor Vernell, the superintendent at Larch, will become the superintendent at Cedar Creek after Larch closes this summer, the DOC announced Thursday.
Cedar Creek is too far a commute to be useful to the DNR in Clark, Cowlitz and Skamania counties, Hapala said, “so we will have to contract out.”
A DNR report released Dec. 15 shows that the cost for an inmate fire crew in 2009 was $3,000 a day, while a privately contracted crew would cost $9,000 to $15,000 a day, said DNR communications director Aaron Toso.
The DNR is “still analyzing the budget and what the potential impacts could be,” Toso said. “For us, it’s really important that we maintain the capacity that we have. Whether it will be maintained at Larch or by using crews out of other camps is yet to be known. We’re still taking a look at the numbers. We really have to wait for the legislature to do their job, too.”
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Information from: The Daily News, http://www.tdn.com
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