Representatives of the foresters that would log the Fredonia reservoir talked about their plans at a village Board of Trustees workshop last week.

“There were some concerns about possible landslides on that property — which is a concern with the soil types that are up there,” said Neil Walker of Bradford Forest. “It has been logged before, there are old trails in there.

“I guess the timing of the sale would have to be the best part of it, probably looking at next summer to do it. Unless we got a really hard freeze this winter, we would try it, maybe — if it all came together, but probably next summer would be the driest,” Walker added.

Walker pointed out that water bars and seeding of former skid trails could get put in to help stop landslides after the logging is finished. He offered to exclude areas on steeper slopes if that is a big concern.

“It’s a very select cut,” said Sam Burns of Bradford Forest. “It’s more the over mature trees and the damaged trees is what we were going to harvest. To really promote growth and make a healthy forest — right now it’s an old forest — it needs a little kickstart.”

Burns comment provoked a derisive snort from Trustee Michelle Twichell, a staunch opponent of logging the reservoir property.

“Do you understand that by cutting down those old trees, invasive species will grow? And also, have you seen the map where it could produce landslides?” inquired Twichell.

Burns and Walker said they had not. “Well, I think you should be informed because I don’t think this is needed,” Twichell said. “I don’t believe we need to have the old forest logged. We had people in here telling us how important it is to keep those trees because they help filter the water and protect the forest…the new trees that grow are not helpful at all.”

Burns responded shortly thereafter, “We understand that there are soils that are at a risk of erosion, that’s pretty much everywhere. Different soils have different erosion factors.”

“We haven’t seen the overlay map to know what kind of past landslides there were in the areas they are talking about cutting,” said Trustee Jon Espersen, who has proposed the logging. “We haven’t seen that. We saw a general map, but not exactly where we’re cutting.”

Burns said trees would not be cut within 800 yards of the reservoir or within “about 100 to 150 feet” of any stream.

The discussion eventually degenerated into Twichell and Espersen bickering over what an “important tree” is.

“I don’t think we need to have any more trees cut!” Twichell said.

Trustee Paul Wandel asked how low the trees would get cut. “The most valuable part of the tree is thenbutt log, the bottom part. So we try to keep the stump to as low as the ground as possible, usually under six inches,” Walker said. “The root structure and the stump is still there, the idea is to let light in so other trees can grow.”

Espersen asked if Bradford Lumber planned to get the same trees as Forecon did four years ago under a reservoir logging contract that apparently never got fulfilled.

“They were really marking it fairly heavy… we didn’t mark as many trees (for harvest),” Walker said. It was marked so that another harvest could happen in eight to 10 years, he said.