Promote NC Sawmills Act

In the 2022 NC legislative session, there is a bill (HB 141) that I am working to get passed. It passed the House unanimously in 2021, but was held up in a Senate Committee. The bill would help local sawyers sell lumber to homeowners and builders struggling with the price-gouging occurring in the lumber industry. It would benefit landowners, arborists, builders, and everyone in the local wood-based economy. The bill is currently in the NC Senate Agriculture Committee. If your senator is in this committee, please reach out to them ASAP and tell them to bring HB141 to a committee vote. We believe the bill will pass —and become law— if it gets to a general floor vote.

Background

Current N.C. law (0602.1.1) allows landowners to use unstamped lumber derived from their own properties to build their homes, barns, and related projects. Despite this allowance, there are two barriers that prevent landowners and builders from using local lumber. First, this rule only applies to landowners who have timber. Neither the landowner nor a sawyer can sell that lumber to others to use at another location. Second, if the landowner decides to use his/her own lumber, there’s a caveat in the administrative codes (105.1-2) that gives discretion to a local building inspector to approve the "alternate materials" (aka, local lumber). Therefore, the landowner is technically at the mercy of individual inspectors— which has put a damper on personal lumber use. There are ways around this: In NC, a licensed engineer or architect can approve the lumber over and above a building inspector. But this option is often too expensive and burdensome for a budget-conscious home builder. A licensed grader could theoretically grade-stamp the lumber; however, there are very few graders-for-hire in NC. This is partially because the right to stamp is associated with a company, not an individual. Furthermore, membership dues to stamp are cost prohibitive for anyone doing small volumes. A visit from a licensed-grader for hire costs around $1000/day which is more than most small sawmill can afford.

The House passed HB141 unanimously to clarify and fix this loophole. HB141 would help landowners feel more confident when they want to use their own lumber. And, more importantly, the bill would enable local sawyers to sell their lumber to home builders and others for use in residential construction. The house kicked the bill over to the Senate where it is now in the Agriculture Committee.

Other States’ Models for a Thriving Sawmill Economy

New Hampshire and Wisconsin have figured out ways to support local sawmills without compromising safety. In short, sawyers can receive training in lumber grading, prove proficient by taking a test every five years, and certify and sell their lumber. Here’s information about New Hampshire’s model and Wisconsin’s. North Carolina would be lucky to implement this kind of program.

Why This Matters

The U.S.’s lumber commodity chain is sprawling, destructive and inefficient. Most of the lumber that people get at big box stores (Lowes and Home Depot) is shipped across the continent from clearcuts in Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Meanwhile, local high-quality logs often get dumped in the landfill. Why? Log prices are so low that it is rarely profitable for homeowners, arborists, and even loggers to make a profit hauling them to local mills. Sometimes, local log haulers get as little as $25/ton for their loads. (An arborist’s full, 10-ton dump trailer may take him a half-a-day to sell and yield him $125). The money for these tree workers is in removal, not lumber, so they often cut saw logs into firewood and dump them. For those folks who do sell lumber, such as loggers, it takes them an estimated seventeen semi-truck loads of logs to break even on a job. This results in more massive clearcuts —so loggers can make a living— which continues a downward spiral of depressed pricing, habitat loss, and climate disruption. Part of this crisis is a result of abundant supply: many landowners took government incentives in the 90s to plant pine plantations and they are all coming into fruition now. But most of it results from the fact that large mills have cornered the market on lumber stamping. The system is set-up so it’s cost prohibitive for a small mill to sell its lumber for code-approved construction. And, without a stamp or certification, lumber can rarely be used for home construction— even if it is A-grade clear and perfect and has been kiln dried. Membership dues in the thousands per week ensure that only the large mills can realistically sell qualified lumber. If sawyers try to sell without a grade stamp or certification, they are at the whims of individual building inspectors who may or may not approve the construction. What homebuilder would take that risk?

For homeowners and builders, this system has had two results: first, because the large mills have very little competition, the lumber quality can decrease without any impact to the mill’s bottom lines. Ask any older builder about the current quality of lumber versus lumber they used ten years ago. What used to be rejected grade-3 lumber (full of compromising knots) is now grade-2 lumber approved for construction. The second impact, which we are seeing now, is that there is no check on price-gouging. Low interest rates, stimulus monies, and COVID/climate change-related migrations has boosted the local home-building/renovation market to historic proportions. But, even though there is ample log supply, the cost for lumber has in some places increased 4x. This is having a huge impact in communities that matter to me, such as young people who are trying to buy or build their first homes and beginning farmers who are finding that it is impossible to come up with enough money to build homes and infrastructure. In a perverse twist, local first-time homebuilders are forced to take out a bank loan to pay for a house made with poor-quality imported lumber, while locally-sourced, higher quality lumber nearby is driven to the dump. One way out of this is to enable small sawyers to certify and sell local, high-quality lumber in their communities. HB141 would do this.