Official says
plywood firm
would bring jobs

Supporters and critics speak
on Tradewinds' bid for a timber
lease on land south of Hilo

By Rod Thompson
Big Island correspondent

HILO >> A plywood manufacturing plant near Hilo will do something that a 1997 Big Island wood chipping proposal would not do, says Hawaii County Councilman Dominic Yagong: The plywood plant will create high-value products while supplying local manufacturing jobs.

The state Board of Land and Natural Resources yesterday heard testimony on a proposed state lease to Tradewinds LLC of 9,000 acres of non-native timber land south of Hilo. That and another 31,000 acres of private timber would supply the company with raw materials for a plywood plant.

Yagong supported Tradewinds yesterday. In 1997 he opposed Oji Paper Co.'s wood chip proposal.

"The issues are absolutely related," Yagong said. "This is an opportunity to create a value-added industry.

"A lot of my local brothers are having a hard time. They want to work in their own community," he said.

State and company officials yesterday said Tradewinds would harvest up to 500 acres per year in 40-acre blocks in the Waiakea Forest.

Andrea Gill of the Hawaii Forest Industry Association, backing the project, said the non-native trees were planted in the 1960s with the expressed purpose of being harvested someday.

Mary Rose Simkin was among critics saying the trees are needed for watershed protection.

State forestry official Michael Buck disputed that, saying rainfall sinks immediately into lava rock in which the trees grow.

Company official Don Bryan said his partner Gordy Boyd has pulled 32 companies out of bankruptcy. Three that Boyd combined and made profitable failed again after leaving Boyd's control. Bryan was responding to critic James Anthony, who accused Boyd of being involved in bankruptcies.

With many people still waiting to testify at day's end, the Land Board voted to continue the hearing at another date.