Residents and visitors may have noticed a change in scenery along State Road 135 North near the recently cleared Bean Blossom Overlook.
Logging took place during the first week of February on land owned by Brown County Parks and Recreation, on the opposite side of the highway from the expansive overlook that was cleared last year.
It’s more drastic than expected, said Mark Shields, parks and rec director.
“It’s almost as though one day they drove past and it was a forest, then the next day they drove past and it’s like Hiroshima,” he said.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Last year, parks and rec reopened the overlook at an existing shelterhouse along 135 North after receiving requests from the public to restore the view. Following that trend, the decision was made to clear the other two overlooks in the area.
Around the same time, the Brown County Council voted to install a new communications tower for emergency personnel north of the Bean Blossom Overlook. Over the past couple weeks, some trees in that area had been taken out to make room for it.
The expansive logging that happened in the valley on the same side of the highway as the communications tower is not related to the tower. A local logging company was tasked with clearing a 100-foot-by-100-foot space for that tower, and while they were there, parks and rec decided to have them open up the view looking into the nearby valley on the same side of the road, Shields said.
A “breakdown” in communication between parks and rec and the logging company resulted in more trees being cut than planned, he said.
The logging company also found more diseased ash trees than expected, so those were taken out along with the harvested hardwood trees. The diseased trees could have been left up to become habitat for woodpeckers, said Shields, who used to work in forestry. “With this situation, with it being part of the overlook, they were taken out and left (on the ground) to help stabilize the bank,” he said.
The logging company responsible for this cut was not the same company that cleared the original Bean Blossom Overlook last year.
Parks and rec had contracted with that company to clear the valley across the highway, along with the picnic spot north of the Bean Blossom Overlook on the same side of State Road 135 North. For both of those clearings, the department received $13,000.
The department received $6,000 from the clearing of the Bean Blossom Overlook.
To come up with the amount trees are worth, Shields said the logging company calculates the value of the timber, subtracts time and labor along with removal of other trees, and then parks and rec receives the difference. Timber money goes into the department’s non-reverting capital improvements fund. That money can only be used for projects such as improving the baseball diamonds, Shields said.
People have reached out to Shields expressing “surprise” and “shock” about the clearing.
“It’s disappointing, because in my mind, aside from the small area that would have been dedicated to the tower anyway, we would not have pursued clearing this if it wasn’t for just having public requests to do it.”
Shields said he was under the impression that the logging company would clear trees to the bottom of the first ridge in the valley. He had met with the company at the site to explain what they wanted done before timbering began.
“I just think when we met, I think he understood, or thought he understood, what we wanted, and I as well. I know after having talked with him on Monday (Feb. 4), again he referenced to thinking this is what we wanted done. … I think he genuinely thought that’s what we wanted,” Shields said.
One way the department plans to help mediate the situation is by planting hardwood seedlings in the valley this spring. Until then, the department will take steps to help prevent runoff into a nearby lake at Shilo Morning Drive and Court, which is at the bottom of the valley. In the logging contract, installing water bars to help prevent runoff into the nearby lake was discussed. Water bars are standard erosion control, Shields said.
“As they create a log road, after they’ve kind of pulled the timber logs out of it, they basically push a pile of dirt and build like a berm to where anything that is coming down that hillside sort of stops once it hits that water bar,” Shields said.
“The lake I did not think would be in any way affected, because I was envisioning 1,000 yards before that lake where they would stop (cutting), so there would be plenty of a buffer zone. … I fear there may be some runoff issues. Right now, that’s where I feel like we’ve got to see what we can do to make sure silt fencing is in, any type of erosion control, and as soon as we can, get in there and plant some more trees.”
County commissioner Diana Biddle reiterated that the logging in the valley is not related to the communications tower being built. She talked to Shields last week about getting a group of volunteers together to help plant new trees in the valley.
“We recognized it was a little aggressive,” she said. “I think that’s what we’ll do (plant trees), and that will help with some of the reforestation of that area.”
Backup communication
The Brown County Parks and Recreation board donated the land for the communications tower to the commissioners.
A contract with Motorola was approved last September for $963,420 to build and equip the new tower. REMC will supply electricity and a backup generator to the site at no cost in exchange for using the tower for their own truck communications.
Last week, Biddle said the project was still in the phase of engineering and getting appropriate permits, such as from the Federal Communications Commission. She said tower construction could begin at the end of March or early April.
Putting a tornado siren on the tower is also being considered. Biddle said she would speak with Brown County Emergency Management Agency Director Susan Armstrong about getting grant money to pay for the sirens. The Bean Blossom area does not have a tornado siren.
The communications tower will help fill in “holes” in the county’s primary radio system, Sheriff Scott Southerland said.
“Because of the terrain in Brown County, the hills and things like that, there are a lot of places where we don’t have any means of communicating with anyone. It’s mainly in the northern part of the county,” he said.
The new tower will also be used by ambulance and volunteer fire departments, which are using an old radio system that utilizes a tower in Brown County State Park. That system has been in place for at least 30 years and that tower is “beyond its normal life span.”
“It’s broken. It doesn’t work. It works maybe as half as good it should,” Southerland said.
The sheriff’s department’s backup radio system is housed in a deteriorating military trailer which was there when he started with the department in 1986. “It went down two or three weeks ago. I had to go out and reset it,” the sheriff said about the radio system. “There was maybe an inch of snow on the floor inside this trailer around this radio equipment, wasp nests — just pretty unbelievable.”
A different state tower in the park will still be used, which is on the statewide 800 mHz radio system. “This will add on to that system to cover areas where there is no communication now,” Southerland said about the new tower.
“There are places where we can’t make phone calls — old system and new radio system, none of them work. They are like black holes,” he said. “Those are some areas that don’t see too much police presence because we don’t like to work where we can’t talk to anybody.”
With the new tower, Southerland said the county’s communication needs will be “met for the rest of our lifetime.” He said the state would also cover maintenance on the tower for the next 25 years on the 800 mHz radio system.
“If the schools needs to do something with their system for their buses, the highway department, fire, EMS, there’s a place we can do that because it will have a secured building there. There will be a fence around it. The building will be heated and cooled. There will be a generator with power backup and there’s a power supply. … It will take care of things for the next 30 or 40 years,” he said.
