LANSING – Public schools and townships in two rural Upper Peninsula counties stand to lose federal funds if Congress fails to renew a law that guarantees payments from logging, mining and oil revenue from Michigan’s three national forests.

For example, Chippewa County—parts of which fall within the sprawling Hiawatha National Forest—could lose about $25,000 a year if the law that expired last Sept. 30 isn’t renewed.

“That wouldn’t be good,” county Treasurer Marilyn McDonald said. “A lot of our land is state and federal”—and thus off the property tax rolls.

Chippewa County received a $206,000 annual payment from the program in January and will distribute 75 percent of the proceeds to school districts and 25 percent to townships for roadwork, McDonald said. Rudyard Area Schools is getting the largest part of the education money—$80,313—and Trout Lake Township is getting the most road money—$16,989.

Michigan has three national forests: Huron-Manistee stretching between lakes Michigan and Huron in the northern Lower Peninsula, and Ottawa and Hiawatha, both in the U.P.

Starting in 1908, U.S. counties had received 25 percent of the proceeds from natural resources—primarily timber—harvested or extracted from national forest land within their borders. The federal government keeps the rest, said Karen Dunlap, Ottawa’s national environmental policy law coordinator.

The actual amount paid to counties from the 25-percent share fluctuate from year to year, depending on how much the federal government earns from such resources.

Crawford County Treasurer Joseph Wakeley said, “You never know what you’re going to get.”

And Oscoda County Treasurer William Kendall said his county’s annual receipts—a little more than $130,000 this January—were higher in the late 1980s when there was more timbering in the Huron-Manistee, but have been relatively consistent in recent years.

With declining timber production in many national forests, especially in the West, Congress in 2000 offered counties another option: guaranteed annual payments equal to the average of their three highest years.

Most Michigan counties, including Crawford, Oscoda, Montcalm and Ogemaw, stuck with the traditional 25 percent formula, and Wakeley said, “That seemed to work out pretty well.”

Now the problem comes for counties like Chippewa and Houghton—parts of which lie within Ottawa National Forest—that gambled on the guarantee alternative.

The Ottawa covers about 1 million acres in six western U.P. counties and generates about 97 percent of its revenue from timber sales, according to Lisa Klaus, its public information officer.

While Houghton chose the option, Ottawa’s other counties stayed with the standard 25 percent cut and experience swings up and down of 12 to 15 percent a year, she said. “Because our timber revenue has remained pretty heavy, we didn’t see that severe drop” in timber harvested that the West experienced.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration and some members of Congress want the program extended for five years.

The National Association of Counties, which is lobbying in favor of an extension, calls the three-year-average option a “safety net” that connects “sustainable natural resource management and the stability and well-being of forest counties and communities.”

“It’s a remarkable success story,” the association said.

For example, it said the option has kept rural schools open, maintained roads and developed search-and-rescue, wildfire protection, watershed restoration, and campground improvement programs.

Klaus said the “real benefit” to counties like Houghton and Chippewa “is consistency. You know the amount coming in and can plan.”

To help pay for an extension of the law, the Bush administration proposes selling what the Forest Service describes as “a limited number of acres” of national forest land around the country.

The agency lists about 284,000 acres for potential sale, including 5,448 acres in Michigan’s U.P. None are in the Lower Peninsula.

Most Michigan parcels are 41 acres or smaller, but the largest is 409 acres in Gogebic County. The total Michigan land eligible for sale is more than that of neighboring Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana combined. Under the administration’s plan, national forests in California could sell off the most land, 66,000 acres.