Bill to give state oversight of chip mills dead for this year

Rep. Mike McDonald, D-Portland, and Sen. David Fowler, R-Signal Mountain, said Tuesday they don’t have enough support in the House or Senate.

The bill sought to require chip, pulp and paper mills to get permits from the state, pay a fee for registration, detail which counties will be harvested and how many acres the company plans to cut.

Fowler said the attempt to pass the measure did make people “more attuned to this question.”

“That was the original reason why I sponsored the bill, with the hope that people would take it seriously and at least make policy intentionally rather than by omission,” Fowler said.

Tracy O’Neill, a lobbyist for the Tennessee Forestry Association, said the bill “had a lot of problems.”

The state Department of Agriculture also opposed the bill.

“The bill is based on the false premise that we are over-harvesting and converting our hardwood forests into pine in Tennessee and that is not supported by state and federal assessments,” said agriculture spokesman Tom Womack.

John Wund, chairman of the Forestry Committee for Save Our Cumberland Mountains, said some “progress” was made in the failed effort to pass the bill.

“We are closer now than we were two years ago,” Wund said. “This has become a front page issue and it’s not going to go away.”

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Information from: Chattanooga Times Free Press, http://www.timesfreepress.com