Federal program hopes to revitalize communities that rely on wood processing, sawmills

The U.S. Forest Service and Department of Agriculture recently launched a program to increase ecological rehabilitation and wildfire risk prevention in parts of the country that need it most.

The Timber Production Expansion Program is now underway, with loan guarantees of up to 90% meant to help sawmills and wood processing facilities near high-risk federal and Tribal lands.

Betsy Dirksen Londrigan, the administrator for the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Business-Cooperative Service, said that especially in areas that have historically relied on wood processing facilities, the $220 million in guaranteed loans the agency is offering is meant “to help them get those funds right back into their communities and put them to work, creating businesses, expanding businesses.”

The guaranteed loans, she said, work as part of her office’s efforts to respond directly to community needs.

“We are seeing closures of sawmills and paper mills across the nation and we hear from our stakeholders and folks who are living in these communities how devastating it is to their community when a saw mill closes or paper mill closes,” Dirksen Londrigan said. “It's like the best kind of twofer, right, where we are both helping the communities economically and fighting wildfires at the same time.”

In the long term, she sees the program expanding to other areas. But for now, she said success means wood processing jobs in places that need them most.

“Like a community that maybe had lost a sawmill previously seeing that sawmill reopened,” Dirksen Londrigan explained. “Seeing it renovated, seeing it upgraded, and creating more jobs that put funding right back into the community.”

Dirksen Londrigan said the resulting facilities that will stay open, re-open or even open for the first time as a result will include ecological restoration and wildfire prevention efforts in their work.