Hoodsport continues to clear woody debris from parks

Kirk Boxleitner | Sep 22, 20220

The Port of Hoodsport has readjusted its timeline to remove debris and dead and decaying trees from its parks.

During the port’s Sept. 7 meeting, port commissioner Terry Brazil said Forest McCullough of Northwest Land & Tree had “really been going to town” on cutting the park’s timber.

Brazil said McCullough was fortunate to get help from port maintenance man Scott Lindgren on the project, “because he hasn’t got a lot of other help.”

Brazil said McCullough has been shipping “a lot of rotten timber out of there,” and has used a sorting yard that’s across state Route 119 from the parks.

Port Commissioner Cody Morris has witnessed not only “some crane and logging truck gymnastics,” but also “the horror of poria,” saying it’s “quite shocking to see what it does to the inside of a tree.”

Poria is a fungus that grows primarily in fir trees and spreads up through the middle of the trees, Morris said.

“It becomes completely hollow, and that’s why they fall over so easily in high winds,” Morris said. “It does sound like our last plantings are trees that do not suffer from poria, so as we continue to clear out the firs that do have that issue, we’ve got backup trees that are in really good health.”

Morris theorized that over the next several years, “We should get back to a forest that’s not falling apart when we get high winds” and that “getting rid of some of those trees is going to make it easier for those newly planted trees to grow faster, because they’ll be getting so much more light.”

Brazil added, “They’re going to replant new trees also.”

Maintenance employee Lindgren told port commissioners that he and McCullough had moved over to the disc golf course park and were “pretty much done there, except for some private trees that are either right on the line for the port, or belong to the lot owners,” with “several real bad ones, right on the property lines.”

Brazil shared that he’d talked to “most of the residents who live in those houses,” whose the most frequent question for him was, “When are they going to get over here?”

Lindgren replied, “We can take care of those in the next couple of days, then move across the creek.”

McCullough said he and Lindgren had moved over to the disc golf course park a week and a half prior, but he reported slower going than Lindgren, telling the port commissioners they were “a quarter of the way through” in that area, and still hadn’t gotten to the neighbors’ trees.

“That’s going to require more technical stuff,” McCullough said. “A couple of neighbors have reached out to me lately, wanting to know when we can get over there, but I don’t really have that information for them.”

“And then can they have that firewood?” Brazil checked.

“As soon as possible,” McCullough said. “That’s all I can tell them. There’s a lot of trees in there that are diseased and dying.”

Commissioner Lori Kincannon asked whether the expected completion had shifted from the end of September to October, McCullough replied, “Yeah, I would say October before we’re done with the back piece, but not the end of October; before that.”

“This side’s starting to go pretty quick,” McCullough concluded his report. “It’s pretty open out in the middle, and a lot better going than the strip along the creek. That was really tough going. There was a lot blown down. It was a mess back there.”