Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest

Environmental Assessments

I-90 Corridor Thin Project

Dear Forest User:

The Environmental Assessment (EA) for the proposed I-90 Corridor Thin Project is available for public review and comment. The project would commercially thin approximately 338 acres. About 6.7 million board feet (mmbf) of timber would be removed from 14 units ranging in size from about 6 to 86 acres. Ground based, skyline and helicopter logging systems would be used to thin these units. The silvicultural treatment would be a “thinning from below”, meaning that the trees to be removed would generally be the smaller suppressed or intermediate, less vigorous individuals lacking crown development; with the two exceptions being smaller western red cedar or occasional hardwoods left for species diversity/multiple canopy layering and larger dominant/co-dominant individuals removed to open up the canopy or allow more growing space for a minor species.

The proposed action would also include reconstruction of about 0.2 miles of road and construction of about 1.4 miles of temporary road. Temporary roads would be obliterated once thinning is completed. Forest Road 55, 5500101, 9030, 9031 and 9034 would receive spot brushing, blading, ditch cleaning, culvert basin maintenance and culvert replacement upgrades, as needed.

If implemented, thinning for the I-90 Corridor Thin Project would likely begin in the summer/fall of 2009, and would be expected to continue for three to five operating seasons.

The project is located on the Snoqualmie Ranger District in King County, Washington in T. 22 N., R. 9 E., Sections 1 and 12. and T. 22 N., R. 10 E., Sections 6, 7, 9-11, 14, and 15.

The pre-decisional comment period ends 30 days after date of publication of the legal notice in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. If the time period expires on a Saturday or Sunday (or Federal holiday), comments are due by the end of the next Federal working day. Comments received, including names and addresses of those who comment, will be part of the Project Record and available for public review. After close of the 30-day comment period, the Forest Service will release a decision notice (DN). The decision will be subject to appeal. Only those who submit timely comments will have standing to appeal the project decision (36 CFR 215.5(b)(1)(vi)).

Comments on this project may be submitted electronically, through the mail, by fax, or hand delivered. Electronic comments may be sent to comments-pacificnorthwest-mtbaker-snoqualmie-snoqualmie@fs.fed.us. They need to be in message, text, .doc, or .rtf format. Written comments should be sent to: Forest Supervisor, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, 2930 Wetmore Ave., Suite 3A, Everett, WA 98201, (425) 783-6033, fax (425) 783-0214. Hand delivered comments can be taken to the Forest Supervisor’s office at the above address during business hours. The Responsible Official is the Forest Supervisor. For more information, contact interdisciplinary team leader Doug Schrenk at (425) 888-1421, extension 233.

Please note:  Comments received in response to this solicitation, including names and addresses of those who comment, will be considered part of the public record on this proposed action and will be available for public inspection. Comments submitted anonymously will be accepted and considered; however, those who submit anonymous comments will not have standing to appeal the subsequent decision under 36 CFR Part 215. Additionally, pursuant to 7 CFR 1.27(d), any person may request the agency to withhold a submission from the public record by showing how the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) permits such confidentiality. Persons requesting such confidentiality should be aware that, under the FOIA, confidentiality may be granted in only vary limited circumstances, such as to protect trade secrets. The Forest Service will inform the requester of the agency’s decision regarding the request for confidentiality, and where the request is denied, the agency will return the submission and notify the requester that the comments may be resubmitted with or without name and address within 14 days.

Documents Available for Download

• I-90 Corridor Thin Decision Notice And Finding Of No Significant Impact (FONSI) (PDF, 22 pages, 107 kb)
• Cover (PDF, 2 pages, 173 KB)
• Environmental Assessment (PDF, 127 pages, 1.11 MB)
• Appendix D I-90 Corridor Thin Selected Alternative Map (17x11) (PDF, 1 page, 87 kb)

The documents on this page are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. In order to view the PDF files, you will need to install Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer. You can download Adobe Acrobat Reader, here for free. To make PDF files accessible to the disabled, you can download the MakeAccessible Plug-in to Adobe Acrobat Reader.

If you do not want to download the Adobe Acrobat Reader plug-in, please visit access.adobe.com for online conversion tools that allow users to read any document in Adobe PDF format. The tools convert PDF documents into simple HTML or ASCII text.

If you require an alternate format, please contact the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

US Forest Service - Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest
Last Modified: Monday, 20 October 2008 at 12:15:08 EDT