MINERAL COUNTY – Mineral County leaders had the opportunity last week to participate in round table discussions with someone who represents the county’s interests at a national level.

The topic of discussion between Mineral County Commissioners Duane Simons and Roman Zylawy and Montana Senator Steve Daines centered primarily on issues regarding land management. Simons and Zylawy met with Daines separately. Simons said he wanted the senator to know how important land management issues were to the people of Mineral County.

“Everybody is concerned about timber availability,” Simons said. “We need the sawmills to run. His concern was what the future looks like. Are we going to lose more mills? Every mill is running short on logs right now and everyone is real concerned about that.”

Simons said he was mostly encouraged by the conversation with Daines. He said anytime citizens can have the ear of someone in a position of power and influence and stress to them what is important it usually yields productive results.

“I think anytime you can sit down and talk about these things, it’s productive,” Simons said. “Everybody at the table did say it would be slow to change. Collaboration is fine but it’s also time consuming. There’s only eight, I believe, mills left. We’re going to lose more.”

Simons said Daines stressed that the way forward with land management issues would have to be a bi-partisan effort on the part of Montana policy makers. Simons said he agreed with Daines that in order to move forward, the senators and representatives from Montana would have to work together in order to get any work done.

“They seem to think they can get along,” Simons said. “We’ll see. Hopefully they do because we’re not going to get much done if they don’t.”

Daines also told county officials he wanted to increase the amount of timber that was allowed to be harvested from logging sites to get mills up to capacity. He said many mills, including Tri-Con Timber in Mineral County, were operating at far below what they are capable of handling in terms of volume.

Simons said another thing he stressed to Daines was getting proposed logging sites in Mineral County producing logs in a timely manner. Referring to the proposed Cedar Thom site that has been in development for nearly a decade, Simons said it was time to get logging trucks coming off the mountains of Mineral County.

“None of these mills will survive if it takes so many years before we put together a lumber sale,” Simons said. “I don’t care how big these sales are. That just won’t work.”