Officials: Town's future bleak

Even Priest River's government acknowledges the town's future looks bleak with the closing of JD Lumber.

"It's going to hurt the whole town, pretty much," said City Council member Doug Wagner. The newly unemployed will have to cut back on shopping at local businesses, he said, especially after their insurance runs out. "It just trickles down to a long list of people."

But JD Lumber's 200 workers, a sizable chunk of the town's 1,800 population, aren't the first to suffer from the withering timber industry.

Wood manufacturers across the county have closed in recent years, leaving the lives of those who worked there to drift in search of where their skills might still apply.

The closing of the Atlas board mill, no longer raking in a profit from softwood products, meant the loss of 120 jobs in the winter of 2005. The DeArmond Stud Mill followed this May when it closed after 50 years of production, the endgame of declining lumber prices and limited demand. About 70 employees lost their jobs.

And the industry continues to hurt, according to data from the state Department of Labor.

Kootenai County had a total of 29 wood product manufacturers in 2003. During the year's first quarter those manufacturers paid $9,138,706 in wages to an average of 1,047 employees.

During the first quarter of 2008 the county saw 37 employers in the first quarter paying $7,653,526 to 836 employees.

Several mills are still operating in the county, however, including Stimson Lumber's Hauser mill, Potlatch and Idaho Veneer in Post Falls and Merritt Brothers in Athol.

Many former Atlas employees were absorbed into other mills, said Priest River Mayor Jim Martin, and he hopes the same will happen now.

"Hopefully we can try to figure something out where we can keep these guys in the community and try to just see what we can find as far as employment or retraining," he said.