Employee forums, transition teams and senior management decisions will guide how Weyerhaeuser Co. integrates the assets of Willamette Industries. Following a 14-month hostile takeover attempt, Weyerhaeuser purchased Willamette Industries earlier this year for $55.50 per share, approximately $6.2 billion in addition to assuming $1.7 billion of Willamette debt.

Six years ago, Chips, Inc. partners Dicky Dost and Clark Diehl remodeled and upgraded their sawmill in Louisa County with a slew of Hi-Tech Comact machinery that included curve-sawing technology. With Chips, Inc. humming along nicely at 35MMBF annually, the two men continued to dream about the prospects of building a greenfield mill.

When asked again, production manager Bruce West offers the same response, “That’s 190 million board feet on one line.” His ready smile indicates this isn’t the first time a disbeliever has repeated the question concerning the annual production capacity of Millar Western’s new single line dimension sawmill here.

Your recent editorial concerning CCA is right on! I am a manager for Coastal Lumber in the Treated Products Div. and have worked in this CCA business for 23 years. This whole thing is the most absurd process that I have ever been exposed to. It just amazes me that our government, who I usually have a lot of faith and trust in, would throw good scientific research out the window in favor of emotional babble of the minority.

The overall approach to the design and implementation of the control and power distribution systems for the new Rocky Creek Lumber Co. sawmill here was to make the best use of proven technology in order to provide a system that balanced the issues of equipment costs, installation costs and dependability to provide maximum value for the mill.

My name is Rusty Wood and I am Chairman of the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports. The Coalition represents hundreds of lumber companies from throughout the South, Northwest, Inland and Northeast. I am also the owner and operator of Tolleson Lumber Co., a third generation family-owned sawmill out of Perry, Ga. I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to speak on behalf of the U.S. industry before this panel regarding our long-standing trade dispute over subsidized and dumped Canadian lumber.

When I heard of Judge William Dwyer’s recent death, I immediately thought back to May 1991. I had just stepped into the office of Whitey Howard, sawmill manager at Seneca Sawmill in Eugene, Ore. Howard, wearing a grim expression on an already well weathered face, asked me if I had heard what Judge Dwyer had done. Howard, though he had never met me, never considered that perhaps I didn’t know whom Dwyer was.