I want to be clear right up front: I am pro-logging. I used to work as a logger, and I understand the value of timber management to our local economy. But anyone who has run equipment in the woods knows a basic truth — some ground simply needs to be left alone.

The proposed clear-cut at Cooks Run (Unit 4), which has a June 3 bidding deadline, is exactly that kind of ground. Just because we can log a piece of land doesn’t mean we should.

Why is Iron County risking a 122-acre public asset for a marginal return on low-grade pulpwood?

The harvest zone is a 5-acre island of saturated, spring-fed peat. The engineering math doesn’t lie. That wetland soil has a structural bearing limit of under 4.5 pounds per square inch, or PSI. To put that in perspective, a 200-pound man wearing size 11 boots exerts about 5 to 6 PSI with each walking step. When I walked the property recently, I was breaking through the surface myself.

If this soil can’t even support a person walking across it, you don’t have to be an engineer to know what happens when you drive a loaded forwarder exerting over 12 PSI over it: the root mat fails, the equipment sinks, and the resulting mud-drag severely damages the cold-water springs feeding the adjacent Blue Ribbon trout stream.

Even worse is the legal risk. That land was deeded to the county in 1961 strictly for public use. If the county permanently degrades a high-quality aquatic habitat for a negligible payout, it triggers a statutory trap. The State of Michigan can legally revoke the deed and take the entire 122 acres back.

I have formally served the Iron County Board of Commissioners, the Michigan attorney general and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy’s EGLE with the engineering and legal data proving this plan is destined to fail.

It is time for the commissioners to act decisively and stop any logging of this sensitive, irreplaceable public resource. Protect the land — and protect the county from a legal and environmental disaster of its own making.