Oregon Public Broadcasting

The nation's 9.5 percent unemployment rate has prompted a discussion over whether President Obama's stimulus package is accomplishing its goal. But this summer, money from last fall's $787 billion influx is working its way down to all parts of the Northwest.

Over the next year, the U.S. Forest Service plans to spend about $250 million in Northwest forests.

Critics wonder how many new jobs that will create. But the spending will help rural areas protect homes from wildfires. Inland Northwest Correspondent Doug Nadvornick reports.

Larry Isenberg is leading a small tour through a forested neighborhood east of Coeur d'Alene. He's working with local officials to make federally-funded help available to homeowners.

Larry Isenberg: “When the fire comes, and I real carefully didn't say if, the fire will be out of control. There'll be nothing firefighters can do about it. When it hits these areas that have been treated, the whole objective is to get it to go around them.”

He does that by putting open, or defensible, space around the house, to make it an island among the trees so that flames can't get to it.

This area is a classic example of the wildland urban interface, or W.U.I. People in this business call it "wooey". It's the area where fire crews often spend the most time as they try to protect homes.

Each of Idaho's five northernmost counties has developed their own plans to keep wildfires from overrunning these areas. But Nell Coler says they only have so much money to carry them out.

Coler represents the Panhandle Area Council, the economic development agency that represents those counties.

Nell Coler: “We would be doing the education. We would be out here trying to get homeowners to do it themselves. But without this kind of funding we wouldn't actually be able to do the work.”

Together, Coler says, the five counties will collect about $3 million in stimulus funds for these projects. She estimates that will provide at least 55 new jobs.

Even in rural north Idaho, that doesn't sound like much. But this is just one of about 20 Forest Service stimulus projects in the state. Oregon has three dozen, Washington about 25.

University of Idaho forest economist Jay O'Laughlin says, at a time when the timber industry is struggling, it's a big help.

Jay O'Laughlin: “For every person it puts to work in the woods or in a mill, there are going to be two people in jobs behind those, providing the goods and services that are needed to keep woods workers and millworkers going.”

But critics think the stimulus will have little, if any, effect on timber jobs. Todd Myers is with the free-market Washington Policy Center in Seattle. He says the problems the timber industry now faces can't be solved with make-work government jobs.

Todd Myers: “So all you're really doing is using federal money to rearrange who gets the jobs and not doing much to actually create jobs overall.”

We're in a forested neighborhood near St. Maries, Idaho. A worker with a chainsaw is mowing down a thicket of small trees. Two others are dragging what he cuts into slash piles that will be burned this fall.

Crew boss Kelly Ragan says the team is creating what he calls “safety corridors” that will protect the homes here from wildfires.

Kelly Ragan: “I'm actually a logging contractor, but there's not much logging work here in north Idaho at this time, so we've kind of converted into brushing contractors and we're just happy to have the work.”

Ragan expects to corral some of the stimulus money that's coming to St. Maries. He's convinced the work is worthwhile.

Kelly Ragan: “You know, this little bit of money that they spend for this actually saves the taxpayers millions of dollars in the long run. ‘Cause once the fire gets going, you know, it costs the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight it.”

For the homeowners who live here, it's less about the number of jobs that are created and more about whether their houses survive the next wildfire.

Online:

U.S. Forest Service stimulus project list  -  (click on ARRA Project link)

Photos: 0709DN_stimulus1.jpg…St. Maries, Idaho logger Kelly Raban hopes his company will get snag some of the forest restoration work funded by federal stimulus dollars. [Doug Nadvornick/NNN]
0709DN_stimulus2.jpg…This home on a hillside east of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho is considered safe from wildfire. Crews fueled by federal stimulus dollars are working to safeguard more homes in the wildland urban interface. [Doug Nadvornick/NNN]
0709DN_stimulus3.jpg…A two-man crew feeds small downed trees into a chipper in a hillside neighborhood east of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. This crew is one of many that are making neighborhoods in forested areas safer. [Doug Nadvornick/NNN]