My relatives in Mississippi tell me that timber (logs) sell now at $35.00 a ton, down $10.00 a ton from prior to the hurricane damage. So ... with gas increasing in price, and timber dropping 22.22 percent in price before federal and state tax ... some land owners think that it's not worth the cost in hard labor, time and money, to try to salvage the timber that was blown down.
My relatives said that most mills have stopped taking timber from private individuals, unless they personaly know and trust the man delivering the logs to the mill. Too many of the logs that were blown down, were from people's yards or fence lines and carry the danger of having nails, or dog chains grown into them. This is a terrible danger to the man running the saw-mill. If timber is salvaged from a suspected area, then it usually goes for chip-board, or particle-board, or whole tree pulp-wood. The end result is that blown down trees have about a 50 percent chance of being not usable for lumber, since the bending of the tree in the strong wind usually tears them up on the inside. If you cut them into shorter 8 or 10 foot logs, some will break apart down the middle, from the bending of several different directions from the wind, before the hurricane stops. And then there's tornado damage to a lot of the timber, which normally snaps the trees off above the ground, or blows them down in many different dirrections in a small area. Tornado damage makes it very difficult to get to the base of the trees to cut them up, and makes it hard to load them. In some areas, log roads had to be built where the rain washed out the roads.
So when you see lumber prices rise, don't think the money is getting to the one who owned the timber. Some people are having to pay $400.00 a tree to get them removed. But the poor land owners in the country, ... most are cutting the damaged timber up themselves, and paying someone to come and take the trees to the mill. If the bark falls off the trees, from waiting too long to take them to market, the mill won't take them. If a log is over 30 inches in diameter, the mill won't take it, because their equipment can't handle it. A lot of trees will rot where they fell, and most will get burned this fall, either in the fields where they lay, or for fire wood if they aren't pine.
It's bad all the way around. Two days of work cutting up a load of logs (between 16 to 18 tons) and paying for someone to deliver them to the mill ($100.00 to $140.00) after taxes might bring about $400.00. Then you get to pay for your fuel, maintain your chain saw, buy mosquito repellant, and pay for the fuel the tractor uses to clean up the mess from the limbs that were left from the logs. But ... you can't beat the work-out for exercise.
I was beginning to wonder if we were going to run out of toothpicks. Guess not. Whew, that was close.
This is sort of what my last post was about in a "some Government programs create work just to keep themselves alive" sort of way. To say you're going to clean the soil at a site to a level that's lower than background in areas nearby is crazy. I'd say dilute it with nearby soil if there are concerns to reach such low levels. Sometimes dilution is the solution to environmental pollution. I've spent 15 years as an environmental chemist and know superfund programs (and the money they waste) very well.