More and more workers are lining up to blow the whistle on a state project that they say is irresponsibly removing trees along roads and properties that burned in last year鈥檚 wildfires.
Multiple people who have worked for Oregon Department of Transportation contractors with the state鈥檚 hazard tree removal project.
Lawmakers heard many of their concerns at on Wednesday, and are now considering their options for trying to stop the work until it can be reviewed.
On Thursday, committee chair Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, sent a letter to Gov. Kate Brown asking her to suspend the state鈥檚 tree removal operation and order an investigation of the allegations shared in Wednesday鈥檚 testimony. He flagged concerns that mismanagement of the state contracts could jeopardize Federal Emergency Management disaster funding that the state is counting on to help pay for wildfire cleanup work.
鈥淭he testimony was alarming,鈥� Golden wrote. 鈥淭here are multiple allegations that core elements of the project鈥檚 stated purpose and specifications are being violated. 鈥� If any of these allegations are substantially true, the negative consequences for our state would be grave in a number of ways.鈥�
Golden told the governor his committee is not qualified to assess the allegations, but that no more trees should be felled under the existing contracts until an 鈥渙n-the-ground inquiry鈥� can 鈥渁scertain the facts.鈥�
The state is in the midst of a massive effort to cut down an estimated 140,000 burned trees that could be dangerous to people on state roads or burned properties.
The project is using contractors and subcontractors who have now been accused by former employees of potentially fraudulent mismanagement.
At the hearing, workers who held a variety of positions with two key companies, CDR Maguire and Mason, Bruce & Girard, shared firsthand accounts of how the companies failed to develop proper guidelines for which trees to cut, allowed inexperienced workers to mark trees for removal using a phone application, marked trees for removal that aren鈥檛 actually hazardous and allowed contractors to cut trees into wetlands without proper precautions.
Ron Carmickle, mayor of the city of Gates, told lawmakers he was stunned to see 鈥渓iterally thousands of trees鈥� marked with blue paint for removal along the roads and property in his town, and he鈥檚 worried that the guidelines being used to determine which trees are hazardous are flawed.
鈥淭his is not OK with me,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e have a major problem going on here in Oregon. I believe our beautiful state is being rampaged. I believe money that should be used to rebuild our state is being pilfered by contractors and corporations set to profit from our devastation.鈥�
He asked lawmakers to do what they can to stop the project.
鈥淧lease help stop the ugliness and stop this excessive and needless cutting of healthy trees,鈥� he said. 鈥淧lease, please, please save our beautiful state.鈥�
Sen. Prozanski, D-Eugene, said the accusations against ODOT鈥檚 contractors are serious enough that lawmakers may consider asking the Oregon State Police to conduct an independent investigation into the project, 鈥渋ncluding potential criminal conduct.鈥�
鈥淲e need to think about calling for an immediate stop to the tree removal that鈥檚 occurring right now until we can have oversight,鈥� he said.
Committee chair Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, said lawmakers don鈥檛 have authority to stop the project but can send a request to state leaders who do have that authority.
鈥淲hat risk would be run if in fact there were a pause, a fairly short pause, for a vetting of some of these assertions that go way beyond what we鈥檙e able to do sitting here in committee?鈥� he asked. 鈥淏ecause I think that鈥檚 something we at least want to discuss.鈥�
Sen. Deb Patterson, D-Salem, was one of several lawmakers on the committee who said they want to continue the hearing. She raised concerns about why Oregon hired Miami-based CDR Maguire to oversee the hazard tree removal project.
鈥淲e鈥檝e got experts here,鈥� she said. 鈥淲hy would we hire a firm from Florida to manage this process?鈥�
Lawmakers heard from Mac Lynde, ODOT鈥檚 director of the Debris Management Task Force, CDR Maguire owner Carlos Duart and Mason, Bruce & Girard principal Reggie Fay before hearing numerous reports of mismanagement and excessive tree-cutting from people who have worked on the state鈥檚 wildfire cleanup.
Lynde said the project involves 鈥渁 tremendous amount of work,鈥� including cleaning up 3,000 properties that were destroyed by wildfire.
鈥淭his is an emergency operation,鈥� he told lawmakers. 鈥淭his is not a project that was planned out for multiple years in advance. That鈥檚 requiring a tremendous amount of coordination at the local and state level with a lot of different parties and individuals who have been traumatized by fires.鈥�
Lynde said utilities, federal land managers and private timber land owners are also doing tree removal work that the state is not involved with and that 鈥渢here鈥檚 been a lot of confusion over who is doing what work.鈥�
Lynde said safety is the top priority for the state as it removes hazard trees, but the state is also being careful to follow Federal Emergency Management guidelines so that 75% of the costs can be reimbursed with federal disaster funds.
鈥淲e want no more lives lost at the hands of these devastating wildfires,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 want to cut more trees down than we have to, but we have to do it in a FEMA-compliant way.鈥�
CDR Maguire owner Duart said he鈥檚 proud of the work his company is doing in Oregon to oversee the hazard tree-removal operation.
Duart said his minority-owned company relies on Mason, Bruce & Girard, a Portland-based environmental consulting company, to oversee the hazard tree marking.
鈥淚 assure you there are many layers of accountability and quality assurance to ensure that trees will not be cut unnecessarily,鈥� he said.
Reggie Fay with Mason, Bruce & Girard said he worked for months with Tom Ford, the lead arborist for CDR Maguire, to develop protocols for choosing which trees to remove that would withstand public and legal scrutiny.
Ford was later fired from the project after raising concerns that those protocols weren鈥檛 properly reviewed before they were implemented.
鈥淭here was no roadmap for us. We really started from scratch,鈥� Fay told lawmakers. 鈥淎n event like this had not happened in Oregon before, and we were very sensitive to public perception of this project. We designed protocols with that in mind. We kept talking and saying to each other: 鈥楨ventually this may be litigated. People are going to question the work that we鈥檙e doing.鈥欌��
Fay said that multiple agencies reviewed the protocols before they were implemented, including ODOT and the U.S. Forest Service, while Ford told lawmakers the protocols didn鈥檛 get any review that he knew of.
Fay said his company continued to update the protocols into early March, long after Ford was fired from CDR Maguire as lead arborist.
鈥淚 can say each addition to the protocols actually made us mark less hazard trees,鈥� Fay said. 鈥淲e were constantly adjusting the protocols to meet the demands and make sure we were assessing hazard trees appropriately.鈥�
The company is only hiring arborists and foresters with at least five years experience, he said, and because the protocols have changed and the project has evolved, the company started doing 鈥渜uality control鈥� reviews in early March.
鈥淲henever you鈥檙e in a production environment and you have multiple staff with different backgrounds working on a project, you鈥檙e always going to have human error mixed in and people are going to have different judgment calls,鈥� he said.
Mason, Bruce & Girard staff are using Forest Service guidelines for what percentage of bark char, crown scorch and insect presence indicate that a tree is more than 50% likely to die in the next three years, Fay said, and those trees are getting marked for removal. Senior foresters are walking by every marked tree and doing assessments to make sure it was marked properly, he said.
鈥淭hat gives me confidence that the trees are marked according to the specs,鈥� Fay told lawmakers. 鈥淚 can鈥檛 say we have 100% correctness out there. There probably is some margin of error. But I can say pretty confidently that 95% plus of the trees that have been tagged and are being cut are marked according to the specs that we designed.鈥�
Ford told lawmakers that CDR Maguire was pressuring him and Fay to move faster in developing their protocols so that tree marking and cutting could begin.
He said it was 鈥渘ot adequate鈥� for two people to use a 鈥渧ery limited鈥� U.S. Forest Service research paper to develop a protocol for cutting trees that are more than 50% likely to die after three years. He said foresters were marking trees without formal standard operating procedures well into January with unclear communication from CDR Maguire about who was reviewing their work.
鈥淚 never saw any vetting of that protocol from any other agency,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 never had any faith that the decision to start marking trees without any protocol really came from ODOT.鈥�
Chris Vaughan arborist who was hired to work for CDR Maguire in February, said he only worked on the project for a month before leaving because he was uncomfortable with the disorganization, lack of leadership and poor communication he saw.
Vaughan said the project鈥檚 guideline of cutting hazard trees within 1.5 tree lengths of a road is 鈥減retty aggressive鈥� and can lead to cutting trees in a swath of 600 feet or more. He said the guidelines for which trees to mark also changed frequently, at one point going from 1.5 tree lengths to 2 tree lengths distance from the road.
He said the paperwork requirements were intense and concerning, the chain of command was 鈥渧ery unclear,鈥� and he never saw anyone from ODOT on the job site.
鈥淚 was asked to fraudulently represent safety meetings that never happened in the field,鈥� Vaughan said. 鈥淭he safety presence was minimal. There was no job hazard training.鈥�
As an arborist on the job, Vaughan said, he would often have to correct major errors like misidentification of a tree as a cottonwood rather than a spruce. He said he saw workers napping on the job and witnessed substance abuse problems that weren鈥檛 addressed.
Eric Phillips was hired to monitor tree removal operations for CDR Maguire, and he said he had a good experience working on a project site on the McKenzie River near Eugene. But then he was assigned to work in other areas, where his experience 鈥渟tarted to sour,鈥� he said.
He said he was directed to mark some trees himself using a phone application that was designed to help arborists identify hazard trees. He said he was told to speed up the process by answering 鈥測es鈥� the very first question in the app, 鈥淚s this tree dead?鈥�
鈥淚鈥檓 not an arborist,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 have no forestry qualifications at all.鈥�
Other workers on the project about unqualified people marking trees using a phone application.
鈥淭hey started to rush the job,鈥� Phillips said. 鈥淚 started to see a lot of people marking trees using the guidelines in the app, and what surprises me is learning how detailed the guidelines were and yet they were all bypassed.鈥�
Phillips also said he saw huge numbers of trees removed along the Clackamas River and Highway 224.
鈥淓ntire areas just clear-cut,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou鈥檇 be astonished at what they鈥檙e doing to that valley.鈥�
Phillips said he grew up in Mill City, lived through and values the forests surrounding his hometown. So, when he saw crews falling large trees into a wetland in the area off Highway 22 that burned in the Beachie Creek fire, he was upset.
鈥淭hey鈥檙e dropping old-growth trees, massive pieces of timber,鈥� Phillips said. 鈥淲hat I saw was them conquering these forests. None of them had cut trees this big. They were totally inexperienced and didn鈥檛 care where the timber landed. I saw trees land in the wetlands.鈥�
Phillips said he saw CDR Maguire 鈥減ushing boundaries and possibly committing fraud鈥� as he was directed to take on additional responsibilities like tree marking that were beyond his qualifications.
He raised concerns about trees being cut that weren鈥檛 marked for removal, he said, and was told the company just wouldn鈥檛 get paid for those trees even though there is supposed to be a $2,000 fine for cutting unmarked trees. Phillips said trees that he helped mark were removed a week later without anyone checking their markings.
鈥淚t鈥檚 terrifying out there in the field,鈥� Phillips told lawmakers. 鈥淭here鈥檚 no oversight in the field out there at all. They did a good job of putting things in writing but nobody鈥檚 overseeing it.鈥�
Lynne Piper, a property owner in the Elkhorn area of the Santiam Canyon, said she encountered a problem with how the state is marking trees for removal on private property like hers.
Piper said she signed a right of entry form to allow state agencies to clear debris from her burned home, but she specified she didn鈥檛 want any additional trees removed. She was surprised to return to her property and see dozens of trees marked for removal going up the slope above her home site.
鈥淲e specified we didn鈥檛 want the trees cut, and we didn鈥檛 receive any notice that the trees were marked,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e already lost a lot. We鈥檙e traumatized. We don鈥檛 want to lose anymore.鈥�
Piper said she鈥檚 worried that excessive tree-marking on private property is 鈥渁 money grab at our expense鈥� and pleaded with lawmakers to take action.
鈥淧lease, I ask you to stop what appears to be fraud,鈥� she said. 鈥淪ome people may want their dead trees cut and may want to replant. But we want our soils. 鈥� People have a right to keep the land the way they want. Not everybody sees burned trees as a commodity.鈥�
Rick Till, a certified arborist with hazard tree assessment qualifications, has evaluated some of the trees marked for removal along Highway 22 near Gates and elsewhere in the Santiam Canyon.
He told lawmakers many of the trees he saw that are currently marked for removal are not actually hazardous.
鈥淚 saw very little in the way of imminent hazards to the public,鈥� he said, noting several large Doug firs with moderate bark char that still have green needles on the majority of their canopy.
鈥淚鈥檓 a trained, qualified tree assessor and I cannot imagine how you could mark a tree like that as a hazard to the public,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 inconceivable to me, and I saw that on a scale throughout the valley: A lot of green trees marked for removal based on, in many cases, cosmetic burn damage.鈥�
After hearing the allegations against ODOT鈥檚 project contractors, Lynde indicated his agency is taking them seriously.
鈥淭here鈥檚 some alarming accusations we heard in presentations today, ones that we don鈥檛 take lightly,鈥� he said.
He said ODOT is notifying homeowners of hazard tree marking on their properties.
鈥淯nfortunately, it sounds like that didn鈥檛 occur,鈥� he said in response to Piper鈥檚 testimony.
But he reiterated the importance of removing dangerous trees along state roads.
鈥淭he urgency of removing trees along the highway is paramount,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 want to cut more trees down than we have to.鈥�
Lawmakers ran out of time as they were starting to ask pointed questions of ODOT, CDR Maguire and Mason, Bruce & Girard leaders, so they agreed to continue the hearing at a later date, and noted that the House Wildfire Recovery Committee will be holding .
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