ROBBINS — The sound of a heavy truck rolls down the valley through which Brimstone Creek flows. The echoing rumble gets louder, until the source of the noise appears around a turn in Brimstone Road: A log truck, laden with freshly cut timber.
Further up the valley, along Indian Fork Creek, the sounds of chain saws and a log skidder cut through the warm afternoon. It's business as usual on the western fringe of the Brimstone Tract.
The Indian Fork crew is just one of several timber crews working across the 44,000 acres of the Brimstone property. Throughout the year, the buzz of chain saws and the rumble of skidders can be heard throughout the vast mountainous tract, keeping crews busy.
Today, however, there is some uncertainty about the future of the Brimstone tract. The state has proposed to enter into an agreement with a New Hampshire-based timber company in the purchase of the property, part of which would be used to create a wildlife management area. Timber cutters and sawmill operators are nervous about the future of timber operations on the property. Outdoors enthusiasts — namely, four-wheeler riders — are nervous about the future of recreation on the property. Lawmakers are nervous about the cost of the property.
But as details of the possible purchase continue to be sorted out, the major players involved are attempting to assure critics that little will change, except ownership, if the deal goes through.
THE SETUP FOR CHANGE
Timber is the latest natural resource to create a flurry of activity on the 44,000 acres of the Brimstone tract. In the early 1970s, it was oil. From the '60s to the '80s, it was coal. In the mid-1990s, timber became a major player on the Brimstone property.
In 1972, the Payne-Baker Estate — which included more than 40,000 contiguous acres from near Huntsville in Scott County to near Petros in Morgan County, and from the present-day Royal Blue Wildlife Management Area along the Scott/Campbell county line to near this tiny community of Robbins, also in Scott County — changed hands for the first time since the 1940s. The property was purchased by a group that included then-U.S. Senator (and future chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan) Howard Baker and would eventually become known, in 1976, as the Brimstone Company.
Coal mining operations ongoing at the time continued until the diminish of the industry on the Cumberland Plateau — partly because veins played out and partly because of stricter federal regulations. For a little more than a decade, the Brimstone property was largely inactive in terms of natural resource extraction, save for a handful of active oil wells. By the 1990s, International Paper had established a chip mill on the highway named for Senator Baker through Scott and Campbell counties, near Interstate 75 in the Caryville community, and timber operations were well on their way to taking off on the Cumberland Plateau.
In 2001, International Paper put its 74,000 acres bordering the Brimstone Property on the market. The pulpwood company owned the surface rights to the property, but did not own the mineral rights. The state was immediately interested in the property, and worked a deal with Boston-based GMO Natural Resources through which GMO would purchase the timber rights, at a cost of around $30 million, while the state would purchase the conservation easement to the property and place it under the management of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency as a wildlife management area to adjoin the south side of the 40,000-acre Royal Blue WMA. The deal was finalized months later, despite opposition from a Knoxville developer, and Sundquist WMA was established.
In 2004, the Brimstone Property made the decision to give up the property it had held for three decades. GMO expanded its ownership in the region by purchasing the surface rights to the tract, at a cost of $30 million, while the mineral rights were severed from the property and retained by the Brimstone Company.
Today, a surge of natural gas exploration is occurring on the property by Knox Energy, which has a lease with the Brimstone Company. But it is GMO's timber operations that continue to be the biggest business on the property. Over the past decade, tens of millions of board feet of timber have been removed from the property, with millions more cut each year.
Shortly after GMO's purchase of the Brimstone tract, negotiations began for the property's recreation and public access rights. And, in January 2006, Brimstone Recreation — founded by Mothwing Camoflauge CFO Mark Love and Huntsville businessman Aaron Thompson — was established to lease those rights from GMO.
A DEAL IN THE MAKING
Earlier this year, GMO put its local interests — the timber rights on the 74,000-acre Sundquist tract and the surface rights on the 44,000-acre Brimstone tract — on the market. According to The Nature Conservancy's associate director in Tennessee, Gina Hancock, GMO contacted Lyme Timber, with which it had worked on previous land transactions in the past. Lyme, in turn, turned to The Nature Conservancy, a non-profit conservation group with which it had worked on previous land acquisitions. TNC then contacted Governor Phil Bredesen, with whom the organization had worked on a number of other conservation projects along the Cumberland Plateau over the past three years, and the wheels of an eventual proposal were put into motion.
Early in the negotiation process, Forest Lands Group, LLC, which holds the Emory River (Gobey) tract adjoining Brimstone and Sundquist, was brought into the discussions. What resulted was a complicated proposal that most of the parties involved call an innovative, public-private initiative, one which would result in the state holding rights to 164,000 contiguous acres in and adjacent to the Cumberland Mountains on the northern Cumberland Plateau — including the 104,000 acres previously held by the state and 40,000 new acres.
According to Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation Communications Director Dana Coleman, Lyme Timber would purchase all properties from GMO and Forest Lands outright, at a total cost of around $148 million. That purchase would include the timber rights on the Sundquist tract, and surface rights on the Brimstone and Emory River tracts.
Lyme Timber would then sell an estimated 7,000 acres of the Emory River tract fee simple to the state. That 7,000 acres would border — and double the size of — Frozen Head State Natural Area near Wartburg in Morgan County.
Lyme Timber would also enter into a 10-year leaseback agreement with the state on the timber rights of the Sundquist tract, allowing the state to retain those timber rights at the end of the time period. Finally, Lyme Timber would sell a conservation easement — allowing the state to control public access, hunting and fishing, and wildlife management — on a total of 40,000 acres. That total would include some 25,000 acres of the Brimstone tract and 15,000 acres of the Emory River tract, though Lyme Timber's director of forestland investments, Tom Morrow, cautioned that those numbers are only preliminary.
"Those estimates could change as we move forward," Morrow said. "The conservation easement could wind up including more of the Brimstone tract, or it could include less of the Brimstone tract."
The problem, according to Marie STringer, of the Governor's Policy Office, is sorting out exactly what property is included and what isn't.
"We're working through where the lines would be drawn right now," Stringer said. Regardless, she said, all of the property — except that within the Frozen Head State Management Area — will see active timber management.
In the end, the 40,000 acres of the conservation easement sold to the state would be placed under the management of the TWRA, establishing a third WMA to adjoin the already-established 70,000-acre Sundquist and 40,000-acre Royal Blue WMAs. The 7,000 acres sold fee simple to the state would be placed under the management of the TDEC. Public access on the remainder of the property — around 15,000 acres on the Brimstone tract and 10,000 acres on the Emory River tract — would be privately held by Lyme Timber. The future of that property is unclear, though Morrow said Lyme Timber would enter its ownership with no plans to develop the property. Several options would be available to Lyme, including leasing the recreation rights or eventually selling off the property.
TIMBER WORRIES
Some groups — including timber cutters in the Scott County area and the Tennessee Forestry Association — have expressed concerns about the deal. "Everybody is actively watching this proposal go forward," TFA Director Candace Dinwiddie said. But Lyme Timber, TDEC and TNC are seeking to put those fears to rest.
"We're in the timber investment business," Morrow said. "We own about 500,000 acres of land and harvesting timber is just a normal part of our business. We have timber harvesting operations going on year-round."
"Lyme Timber is in the business to make money; they're not buying this property because they want to lock it up and set it aside," Hancock added. "Lyme is really into sustainable harvesting, and that's what we're looking at. Subdividing the property into small tracts and cutting it all up is not to anyone's economic or conservation interest."
Meanwhile, Stringer said that the timber harvest on the property will remain at or similar to current level.s
The levels of harvesting that the property can sustain is around seven million board feet of timber per year for the Sundquist tract and five million board feet per year for the Brimstone tract, according to Fountain Forestry's Eric Dennis. Also based in New Hampshire, Fountain Forestry manages the timber rights of both tracts for GMO. Dennis is the forester for the company's Oak Ridge office in East Tennessee.
"We've yet to reach those levels, but those are the levels we project and we will not exceed those levels," Dennis said.
In addition, the property can produce around 100,000 tons of pulp wood each year.
Dennis said that Fountain Forestry currently has 15 subcontractors working on the two tracts of property. Each subcontractor employes a crew of three to around 10 workers.
A UNIQUE PARTNERSHIP
Establishing land holdings in which it owns the timber rights but conservation easements are publicly owned is nothing new for Lyme Timber, nor is its partnership with TNC. In 2005, Lyme and TNC and the state of New York reached a similar agreement on 104,000 acres of the Adironack region of upstate New York. Under that agreement, part of the property was opened to public access for the first time, while Lyme Timber continued timber practices on the property.
Hancock calls the proposed deal a possible model for future endeavors.
"Being able to try to work with an equity partner like Lyme, who has a conservation interest but who will employee local loggers, is hopefully a new public-private model," she said.
TNC is also no stranger to involvement in Cumberland Plateau conservation deals. Most recently, the organization partnered with the state in acquisition of property at Pogue Creek in Pickett County and the Walls of Jericho on the southern Plateau along the Tennessee-Alabama border. The organization will invest $11 million of the proposed $148 million project (the state's investment is $82 million, while Lyme Timber's investment is $54 million).
"I think what we're trying to do in these four counties (Anderson, Campbell, Morgan and Scott) may be something we want to try all over the state if this works," Hancock said.
The non-profit Tennessee Wildlife Federation has also pledged its support to the project. Executive Director Mike Butler called the arrangement "innovative."
"We like the fact that it uses private equity money and is an innovative public-private partnership," Butler said. "The state doesn't have to always own lands for them to be protected for fish and wildlife. This stretches the few conservation dollars we have."
Operating as the Tennessee Conservation League, the Wildlife Federation was instrumental in the purchase of the Sundquist tract earlier this decade. Butler said that purchase the surface rights sans the timber rights was the right move at the time, but now it is time to complete the project.
"Getting those timber rights on Sundquist long-term will be a good thing and I think it'll provide more management options to TWRA in the future," he said.
"The other side of our support is that we expect active forest management to take place, and we consider that good," Butler added.
Morrow said the public-private arrangement is a chosen business model for his company.
"We don't particularly want to speculate in real estate development and land values," he said. "When you buy land, you often find that is exactly what you're doing. By working with states and conservation entities in situations where we can sell conservation easements, it takes the land speculation part out of it for us."
Under the proposed arrangement, Lyme Timber would continue to pay property taxes on lands it owns, while the state would make payments in lieu of taxes on the land it acquires, resulting in no lost tax revenue for local governments.
Katherine Medlock, executive director of the Alliance of the Cumberlands, said the total package is one her organization can support.
"I feel it's a good thing for the community," she said. "The land is up for sale, and having it in state ownership means that the public will continue to have access to it, which is a good thing for everybody in Scott County. Folks will be able to use the land and be able to hunt and fish on it. I don't see a downside."
Medlock said she has received assurance that timber will continue to be taken from the property at current rates, adding that she did not feel that the alliance would be in support of the plan if that wasn't the case.
FAR FROM A DONE DEAL
While Gov. Bredesen has been able to sell most of his conservation and preservation ideas to the General Assembly, the proposed northern Cumberland Plateau deal is far from becoming reality.
Besides the process of working through the minute details of what is included with the property and which parts would go to whom, there has been some concern from the legislature.
Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey (R — Blountville) said he had "huge reservations" about the proposal. While he has not officially opposed it, he said he was "troubled" by taking so much land "out of production."
Long-time Lt. Gov. John Wilder (D — Somerville), who lost his Senate leadership re-election bid to Ramsey earlier this year, also has expressed concern, saying he has a problem with buying that much property and "doing nothing with it."
But House leader Jimmy Naifeh has gone on record in support of the proposal, saying there's "only so much land in the state," and that "it's a good thing to preserve some of it for our grandchildren."
Senator Tommy Kilby (D — Wartburg) represents three of the four counties to be impacted by the proposal (the lone exception being Anderson County), and has asked citizens to fill out a survey on his website (www.tommykilby.com) that includes a question on the land conservation proposal.
While support for the land deal is broad, it will face its first potentially-damaging opposition this week, when it is considered by the Senate Finance Committee. According to an email sent to the Tennessee Wildlife Federation's "Camo Coalition," several members of the committee are rumored to be opposed to the deal or are considering opposing it.
Among Bredesen's previous land conservation efforts that were successfully sold to the legislature was the establishment of a Heritage Conservation Trust, which is credited with preserving around 15,000 acres of land. This year's state budget includes $10 million for the trust, while Bredesen's FY 2007-08 budget includes another $10 million that would be in addition to the $82 million bond issue to invest into the north Cumberlands project.
The state also acquired 16,000 acres of Plateau land last year for the Laurel Snow Wilderness Area in Rhea County and Virgin Falls Natural Area in White County.
THE END RESULT?
Should the proposal become reality, the end result would be another chunk of land added to the public land coffers, opening up more possibilities for hunters. Specifically, north Cumberland hunters would benefit. Already, a sizeable portion of that region is tied up in public land, including the 40,000-acre Royal Blue and 70,000-acre Sundquist WMAs and the 115,000-acre federally-owned Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area.
Butler pointed out that the acquisition would connect Royal Blue, Sundquist and Frozen Head, and come close to creating a corridor of public land from the northern-most reach of Sundquist WMA in central Campbell County to Catoosa WMA in Cumberland County or the BSF NRRA in Fentress County.
According to the state and Lyme Timber, timber production would not decrease on the property. And, according to the state, property taxes would continue to be paid on the property. The only change, the partners in the proposed deal say, is public access to the 40,000 acres of conservation easements that would be purchased by the state.
While that is not likely to convince those whose livelihood depends on the property's forests, and another segment of the local populous that views state control of property unfavorable, the governor's policy makers are attempting to reassure local residents in advance of any deal being completed.
"We understand how citizens are concerned with how land use will change once the state owns an easement," Stringer said. "The benefit is the state will own public access rights to all the property and will make that property open to the public for hunting and fishing, as is allowed by timber operation (some areas would be limited to public access during active timber operations). Our intent is that the current uses of the property are allowed to continue."
