Ross Bennett co-founded a timber company, but claims environmentalists like him.
He sells planks of ancient Northwest fir and hemlock, but he's never bothered a spotted owl. And he's after sunken treasure, but he's no pirate.
Ross Bennett: "See, the side scan is hitting the side of it. That's that dark side there."
Ross Bennett is looking at the sonar display in the wheelhouse of his workboat.
Ross Bennett: "Then it gives you the honey color when it gets to the round part of the log."
Tom Banse: "That could be a hundred years old?"
Ross Bennett: "Oh, yeah. Anything that big, it's been around a long time. That's huge stuff."
Bennett is scouting a side channel of the Columbia River for sunken timber that could be salvaged. A blurry jumble of sticks on the sonar screen suggests he's found an old staging area for log rafts.
Ross Bennett: "Northern waters, our waters are cold. And we have clean water in the Northwest. Cold, clean water is great for the wood."
Subtract oxygen and light and presto, you've preserved wood.
The jovial entrepreneur wearing a sailor's cap estimates five percent of the trees floated downriver in rafts never arrived at a port or mill.
They became waterlogged and sank. Now, in some cases a century later, Bennett's Underwater Timber Salvage Corp. is bringing the wood back.
Ross Bennett: "Every log you get from us is one that you don't have to get out of the forest. They were cut long time ago and it's a high-quality old-growth wood."
An excavator perched on a barge retrieves the logs with a long grapple claw. The barge accumulates reclaimed trees -- mud-caked and black -- at a rate of 60 to 80 per day.
The founders of this company got the idea for underwater salvage after reading about similar operations on the Great Lakes.
They surveyed a wide range of Northwest lakes and rivers before diving in. Lake Couer d'Alene
showed a lot of promise until critics voiced concern about stirring up toxic mining sediments.
Permits to work the lower Columbia River came through first and salvage started here in 2003.
So far, the Oregon entrepreneurs have been allowed to operate royalty-free in exchange for removing navigational hazards such as decaying pilings, deadheads and derelict fishing gear.
Nobody's applied for permits to do this in Washington. Aquatic Resources Division manager Loren Stern expects his state to proceed with caution.
Stern has questions about whether pulling up
sunken logs will reduce fish habitat.
Loren Stern: "One, whatever's done would need to be done in an environmentally sound manner. Second, the citizens of the state would need to receive value for the use of those pieces of wood."
Stern says sunken timber generally belongs to the taxpayers unless the original owner can be located. Underwater Timber rarely finds those owners. Instead it sells its milled product at a premium.
At the salvaged wood showroom, company president Steve Strable shows samples.
Steve Strable: "This is hemlock here. And we also pull up some maple, some pine, some alder."
It's milled into high-end flooring, trim, beams, and furniture where fake wood or laminates won't do.
Steve Strable: "People don't want that. They want the real look. We can offer the real look in the tight-grain old growth timbers that look absolutely stunning when you finish them."
The company owners say the quantity of sunken logs they've located could keep them in lumber for the rest of their and their kids' lives.Oregon Public Broadcasting
