WaPo
has
again missed a golden opportunity to explore the
human the settlement pattern story. Read it and
weep: "Closed-Door Deal Could Open Land in
Montana: Forest Service Angers Locals With Move
That May Speed Building". The story is by
Karl Vick on the front page of the 5 July The
Washington Post. For those who think this
note is only about Montana read on and See End
Note One.
There
is a silver bullet that would forestall this
"speed building" in a heartbeat.
However, we have no confidence that bullet will
be fired in Montana or in the Piedmont of
Virginia. More on that in a moment.
The
bottom line of the WaPo story is
that a former timber lobbyist "who oversees
the U.S. Forest Service" has negotiated a
new set of guidelines for
"development" of some or all of Plum
Creek Timber Co.’s 1.2 million acres of land
in western Montana.
Plum
Creek is a corporate descendent of Northern
Pacific Railroad, the recipient of
"alternate sections" to subsidize
building its railroad across Montana in the 19th
century. Plum Creek is an Enterprise progeny of
the interlocked relationships among forest
product Enterprises Boise Cascade, Potlatch and
Weyerhaeuser. Plum Creek was formerly a logging,
sawmill, lumber and paper company. It is now a
land speculator / real estate investment trust.
See End Note
Two.
First:
The WaPo reporter had limited
space to tell a complex story and some
relationships and events are not clear. In
addition, it is well established that WaPo
editors do not understand human
settlement pattern issues. Because of these two
realities, anyone who reads the WaPo story
about the Plum Creek / Forest Service deal may
not have the whole picture. Even with this
caveat, the story portrays yet again the
pervasive governance dysfunction in the US of A.
Any more of you now ready to support Fundamental
Transformation of governance structure?
Second:
The scattered "second, third or
fourth" homes that may result from the Plum
Creek development are urban land uses.
The Plum Creek / U.S. Forest Service activity
needs to be treated as an urban settlement
pattern issue. Forestry is a nonurban activity,
second homes that generate six to ten
Autonomobile trips a day when occupied and
attract vandals when not occupied are urban land
uses.
Based
on the facts presented, two things about the
story also do not ring true:
First,
Plum Creek‘s management - this is an
Enterprise with over a century of forest
harvesting experience - cannot be so badly out
of touch with the scale of its holdings (aka,
Geographically Illiterate) as to think second,
third and fourth home sales would dispose of a
significant part of its 1.2 million acres of
land in western Montana. At the rate of sale to
developers claimed by Plum Creek over the last
five years it would take 2,000 years to clear
their books of these timber lands. (See End
Note Three.)
Further
Plum Creek leaders must know what happened to
their corporate relative Boise Cascade when that
Enterprise decided to convert its forest
expertise into land speculation profit.
Boise
Cascade lost millions in the 1973-1975 Oil /
REIT / Land Speculation recession. This loss was
due to the fact that the company vastly
overestimated consumption for future urban uses
in the Radius Band = 10 to Radius = 30 miles
around expanding urban centers. This is not the
case in western Montana. "Growth"
is due to "come-heres" who are
importing "unearned" income.
The
second thing that does not compute is that the
"opposition" cannot really think that
development will "happen" in the
foreseeable future to more than a tiny fraction
of the 1.2 million acres Plum Creek owns, even
if the past were prologue.
The past is not
prologue - think punctuated equilibrium. The
First World has run out of cheap oil
It is not
the price of gasoline that is a problem for
potential buyers of Plum Creek McLodges - even
those with Euros to spend - it is the end of air
travel as it has existed since the end of World
War II. (See our 21 April 2008 column "The
End of Flight as We Know It.") The home
page for Eagle Creek at Lakeside, MT, that is
being scraped out of former Plum Creek land by
"Land Rush Reality" (I am not making
this up) touts the close proximity to Glacier
International Airport (AKA, Flathead County
Airport.)
And
that is just the start. Humans are headed for a
Fundamental Transformation in the forces that
impact settlement patterns. (See our 7 July 2008
column on Plutocracy titled "The
Wealth Gap.")
OK,
there are already some three-story log mushrooms
popping up, there are some newly cleared
building sites near existing roads in the Swan
Valley and elsewhere. As the son of
dyed-in-the-wool hunter and fisherman - the sole
source of protein and much of the fruit in our
Household when I was growing up was hunted and
gathered from public land - and a card carrying
environmentalist, I hate to see those things
happen as much as anyone. (See the two columns
on Montana cited in End Note Two.)
But
the potential development would be nothing like
the past scourge of resource extraction and the
continuing scourge of resource
"exploration" that is being carried
out to "keep the economy growing."
This scourge can be seen across western US of A
and is faithfully reported in High Country
News and other sources. (See again the
"The Wealth Gap" column noted above
and the resources cited there-in.)
I recall that
while elk hunting in the North Fork of the
Flathead River – yes, on the "Forest
Service" (west) side of the river - we came
across log cabins of homesteaders that were
abandoned during and after World War I. Many of
the possessions - stoves, utensils, toys - were
still in place 30 years after the owners left
them behind.
If
they are built, some of the Plum Creek McLodges will come to this same end, just like
mining and ghost towns, only too scattered to
become tourist attractions. Real estate markets
already document the decline in value of ocean
front, water front, resort and retirement
developments.
Both
of these issues are important but there is a
much bigger concern:
When
will humans learn that the cumulative impact
of buying a private piece of Countryside (or
in this case Mountainside) destroys the values
and the value the buyer is seeking?
Paul
Gurinas, the Chicago hedge fund partner cited in
the story understands this. But too late.
Gurinas’ solution is to buy more land.
However, few can afford to do that today and
even fewer will be able to do it in the future.
In addition, the cumulative result of that
self-serving strategy is to keep everyone else
away from the "best places" and that
is not sustainable over the long haul in a
democracy with a market economy.
In
fact most of the best nonurban places are
already public. In West Glacier I lived in a
small dwelling on a very small lot but out our front door (and
across the Middle Fork of the Flathead River)
was a million acres of Glacier National Park.
Out my back door (our property backed to US
Forest Service Land) I could walk - crossing few
trails and almost no roads - for 135 miles
through what was "The Bob" and what
later became The Great Bear and other wilderness
portions of the Northern Rocky Mountain Urban
Support Region.
There
is a need to save more great places - the Yaak
Valley where my father and I fished comes to
mind- but the way to do that is to intelligently
and efficiently allocate land for the 95 percent
of the population that derives their livelihood
from urban activities - and do it in
patterns and densities that are most favored in
the market place. (See our discussion of the
silver bullet below and End
Note Four.)
By
recommending more extensive public and shared
ownership of nonurban land we are not for a
minute suggesting that the current management of
public land is carried out in an acceptable
manner. We also believe that there is an
important role for private ownership of open
land, but private land is not a
"solution," especially not in small,
scattered lots.
What
we are saying is that scattered pseudo-nonurban
land uses that are really the dwellings of urban
citizens are collectively unsustainable.
We address this issue in THE USE AND MANAGEMENT
OF LAND, a chapter in FOUNDATIONS, one
of the three books that comprise TRILO-G forthcoming.
Understanding
that all the urban land uses in the US of A at
minimum sustainable densities will occupy less
than 5 percent of the land area of the lower 48
is a place to start. That means 95 percent of
the land can be devoted to nonurban uses
including the residences of those Households
that depend on nonurban activities for the
majority of their income.
The
question is how to decide what is urban and what
is nonurban and how to manage that land. It
turns out a well informed market and functional
democratic structure will provide a basis for these
decisions. These strategies are articulated
in our work including TRILO-G.
Let’s
take a closer look at one vignette from Karl
Vick‘s story: Buying 200 acres and putting a
remote camera trained on a bear’s hibernation
den is an urban recreation use of land.
Let us follow that trail for a moment. There are
now about 135 Web Cams in Montana and half a dozen
sites that provide listings and links to these
Web Cams. Some
Web Cams can be controlled from my keyboard in
Virginia. A viewer can zero in on what is
happening in a specific place in which they are
interested. For far less than the price of a
lot, you can sponsor a Web Cam that keeps you in
touch with any great place. In 2003 we followed the Robert fire
that threatened our home town via
the Lake McDonald Web Cam.
I
have found that what is great about Montana is
what I see from the trail and from the
mountain top, not what I see from the road or
from a picture window.
Living
a contemporary life, even in a supportive
setting, is very time consuming just to maintain
health and sanity. It makes no sense to move to
a setting where life is even more difficult.
Making the time, distance, flexibility and
monetary sacrifices necessary to achieve the
quality of life on a scattered urban lot is
making life far more difficult, and in the
future far more expensive.
It
may be better to visit from time to time and
supply income for those who choose to live in
Montana and provide services to appreciative
guests. Yes, we know "visiting" will
cost more in the future but the alternative of
buying a McLodge will cost much more.
Ask
yourself: "Why scatter urban dwellings
which cumulatively destroy what you value of the
nonurban world?"
Now
back to the WaPo story and Plum
Creek. Our guess is that the
"development" scare is part of an
overarching Plum Creek sale / disposal strategy.
The goal is to sell the land, but not for
development. Plum Creek wants to sell to the
Nature Conservancy and other blunderers.
If
very much of Plum Creek‘s land was worth the
$11,000 an acre as quoted in the story, the
developer would sell it for that. Instead it is
selling it for $780 an acre (or $1,600 an acre)
- the story is not clear on how many acres were
recently purchased for how much in the
transactions mentioned in the WaPo story.
The $250 million federal bond guarantee
money that U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, placed in the 2008
"farm bill" - the U.S. Forest Service
is part of USDA - is also involved in what was
obviously a carefully orchestrated mega
transaction. (See End
Note Five.)
There
is a map with the WaPo article
that shows the location of Plum Creek holdings
and "320,000 acres purchased last
month." At first glance the purchase looks
like an intelligent selection but was the price
right, given Plum Creek’s current alternative
prospects?
In
the new world order of expensive energy, what is the value of this
land? What would it be if there were a broad
citizen understanding of the causes and impacts
of dysfunctional human settlement patterns? What
if Agency governance practitioners understood
the long-term impact of their actions? What if
Rick Bass and Bill McKibben looked through the
other end of the telescope?
Flying
into Missoula or driving in from the east / west
(I-90 / US Route 12) or the south / north (US
Route 93) what one sees are trailers, hope
houses, starter homes, retirement A frames, mini
mansions, and some McMansions scattered over the
foothills in all directions. The views from US
Route 93 North - the route we took to and from
college - are especially depressing.
What
municipal, state and federal Agencies have
already scattered across the landscape is not a
pretty sight. When the Super rich who survive
the current unpleasantness have to choose
between a place in western Montana versus one in
the Alps, Patagonia or the Urals they are likely
to choose one of the other places.
We
encountered the Eagle Crest subdivision on the
west side of Flathead Lake, which is cited in
the story by chance, when we were in Montana for
our 50th high school reunion. We photographed it
for our Dysfunctional Settlement Pattern
collection, and I cringe every time I see the ads
in Alumni publications for Mansion Heights,
Canyon River and McMansions down the Bitterroot
Valley where my aunt and uncle farmed.
The
reason we all should cringe is not just aesthetic, it is
economic and, of course, environmental. Where are the
highest values per square foot / per acre in the
Greater Missoula Subregion? Along those
wonderful, tree-lined, urbane streets near the
University.
We would guess, based on our work in
other Regions that the entire population of the
Subregion would comfortably fit in the footprint
of the City of Missoula at appropriate and
sustainable patterns and densities. The values
would be higher and more stable, and the
hillsides could be turned back to the deer,
antelope and pine martins.
You
say you want to live in a different settlement
pattern? Pay the total cost of your decision and
be our guest.
So
what is that silver bullet we noted at the
outset and implied in the last sentence?
Charge
the full cost of all location-variable services
of supporting scattered urban dwellings -
including the cost of protecting them in the
event of fire.
The
WaPo story ends with the list of a
few of the costs that will be incurred by
Missoula County in the provision of
"services" for those residing on
former Plum Creek land. Why should these costs
and any of the other direct and indirect costs
of scattered urban development be paid by anyone
except those who create the scatteration and
those who directly benefit from it?
Our
guess is that a suggested fair allocation of
location-variable costs will be successfully
opposed by those who own parcels of land that
are smaller than those owned by Plum Creek. This
land is also being speculatively held for future
urban land uses that will never happen but that
will not keep the owners from exercising their
political swat.
Have
a good summer. We will be watching on the Web
Cams and preparing to fight these same battles
here in the piedmont of Virginia.
--
July 21, 2008
End
Notes
(1).
This post is written as an open letter to
friends in Montana. At first blush, it may
appear to step outside the normal Bacon‘s
Rebellion turf - the Commonwealth of
Virginia - but does not. The problem discussed
here is also facing forest conservation
interests in Virginia. It is projected that sale
of Virginia timber lands will be greatly
accelerated in the near future. We have heard
the number "5,000,000 acres" (about 20
percent of the total Commonwealth land area)
from very reliable sources as being "in
play" due to the sale of unproductive
timber lands. Most of the land will be marketed
for scattered urban uses. This is not a new
story for the Commonwealth - recall Lake of the
Woods in Orange County, Lake Monticello in
Fluvanna County and perhaps two score other
timber land-to-urban Enclave projects scattered
across the Commonwealth.
(2).
Plum Creek owned a large sawmill in Columbia
Falls, MT, where EMR went to high school. We
have written two columns on human settlement
patterns in Montana: "Fire
and Flood," 3 November 2003, and "Big
(Gray, Brown) Sky Country," 23 October
2006, at Bacon's Rebellion These
columns were written from the perspective of one
who grew up and went to undergraduate school in
the Big Sky Country - A.B.’s daughter was a
classmate.
(3).
We know a bit about disposing of
underperforming timber lands, having been hired
to advise Weyerhaeuser on the topic in the '70s.
(4).
Those who have read our work know that these
settlement patterns are not a
scatteration of one, two, five, ten, 50 or 100
acre urban lots. It is not also
"Manhattan" either. See The
Shape of the Future.
(5).
Such transactions are profiled in "Investing
in Nature: Case Studies of Land Conservation in
Collaboration with Business" by
William J. Ginn.
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