Warm Springs mill’s demise leaves dozens out of work

Fifty years after acquiring a lumber mill on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, tribal leaders announced Monday the permanent closure and impending bankruptcy and liquidation of the Warm Springs Forest Products Industries mill.

Daniel Lawrence has worked at the mill on and off since the ’80s. For the past six years, he’s worked in the steaming department.

“You know, there’s been some struggles through the years, but it has been a big part of the community providing for families,” Lawrence said Tuesday.

“It was one of the best high-paying jobs on the reservation. Back in the ’70 and ’80s this was a really big enterprise and very rich enterprise,” Lawrence added.

Tribal members voted in 1966 to buy the mill from Jefferson Plywood, and the tribes said it “was profitable for decades, paying substantial dividends to the tribes.”

“In recent years, the mill has struggled financially, due to a number of factors,” the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs announced in a posting at the Spilyay Tymoo newspaper online.

“The mill equipment, for instance, is suited for larger-sized logs, which are increasingly rare,” the statement said, also noting that “the market for lumber has changed, and the allowable cut on the reservation is declining, and other factors have made the operation no longer viable.”

After earlier rounds of cuts, about 85 people, mostly tribal members, were working at the mill until the closure.

The mill, officials said, “is no longer a viable and solvent enterprise,” and thus “is now going into court-supervised receivership,” selling the assets to mitigate the financial loss.

The tribes are the largest creditor, and the mill and tribes had agreed last year to a repayment schedule to bring stumpage payments up to date. But WSFPI missed its most recent scheduled payment, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a cease-and-desist order to halt any further extraction of timber.

A petition for receivership is being filed in Tribal Court, and a judge pro tem will oversee the process, the tribes said.

The tribes noted that long-term, they can continue to harvest timber on the reservation, for sale to third parties at market value.

“It’s been a real joy to be working down here,” Lawrence said. “There’s a lot of good people that know a lot of things. That have a lot of knowledge. It’s just sad to see the mill coming to an end.”

According to Lawrence, tribal council members are holding a meeting on Wednesday to help displaced workers find other jobs.

In the announcement, the tribes said, “There are a number of business models the tribes can follow, in order to bring new revenue to the tribes.”