Authority to clear Augusta industrial park trees

The Augusta Economic Development Authority is moving ahead with a plan to clear 840 acres of trees at the city industrial park to better market the property to three potential tenants – including an Asian manufacturer it has courted for more than a year.

The clear-cutting at the Augusta Corporate Park, which would commence in March, also is designed to discourage poachers and other trespassers from the site, as well as clear the way for a future rail line.

Forestry consultant Alex Nixon of Nixon Land Co. told the authority at its Thursday meeting that the harvest would be a break-even proposal, as the $150,000 in revenue from the chipped and conventionally cut timber will be offset by $130,000 it would cost to maintain the property as open grassland though herbicides and perennial rye grass planting.

The bulk of the land – 600 acres – are usable only as softwood chips, a low-priced commodity. Prices are not as strong as in years past, Nixon said, saying the closure of Resolute Forest Products’ Augusta newsprint mill in November “really knocked us for a loop.”

Authority Executive Director Cal Wray said he was happy to break even to better market the property. Three manufacturers, including an Asian company proposing to create several hundred jobs, have shown late-stage interest in tracts at the nearly 1,800-acre park’s undeveloped southeast side.

“(We want to) make sure the next few years we have grass out there vs. what we have currently,” Wray said, adding thick underbrush and overgrown roads make it nearly impossible to “show” the land at ground level. “No re-planting, no re-timbering in the future; we want this open for development.”

The proposed rail spur, which would extend southward to a Norfolk Southern main line, is a $12.5 million project in the Transportation Investment Act program appearing on the March 24 presidential primary ballot.

Four Mile Creek runs north to south through the property. Cranston Engineering Project Manager David Mills said the authority could keep from running afoul of the EPA’s Waters of the United States rules or triggering a development moratorium from the Georgia Environmental Protection Division by filing for a local permit to disturb a less than 50-acre section of the harvested area.

That would reduce the permit costs from $70,000 to $5,000 and not risking the entire 840-acre section to the state’s three-year development moratorium.

“If we did get into a buffer, there would be a penalty, but not a three-year moratorium,” Mills said.

Wray said clearing the land also would discourage trespassers, who he said have been littering, poaching and disabling security cameras at the site. He said he recently found three beaver carcasses at the terminus of Valencia Way, the park’s only paved road.

Nixon said he doubted those were the only beavers in the area, adding that Four Mile Creek is full of them.

“Beavers are kind of like hogs – they’re very prolific,” he said. “Believe me, you will not win the war against beavers and you will not win the war against hogs. There’s not enough ammunition made.”