STRATTON – The president of Stratton Lumber Inc. said the state’s plan to get temporary bridges up on Route 27 by Tuesday will lessen the economic impact to the mill.

With gas prices already very high, Petr Smetanka said, truckers can’t pay the extra costs to get wood to and from the mill, which is north of the two large washouts from Tropical Storm Irene. He said he’ll have to absorb some of the economic impact.

Truckers and employees who live south of Sugarloaf will have at least an extra hour’s drive every day, he said. The mill’s 50 workers have had to add the extra driving time and costs into their budgets, also, Smetanka said.

Until the road is repaired, traffic will drive on Route 16 through Rangeley.

 “We have great employees, and they are making arrangements to carpool and help each other out,” he said. “We just anticipate we will take more time to get wood products in and out, but with a temporary bridge in place in less than a week, our schedules will be back to normal.”

On Wednesday, he said he met with the Maine Department of Transportation, hoping for some good news, and he wasn’t disappointed.

“The DOT is doing an outstanding job, and they hope to have a temporary bridge in place by Sept. 6, and a permanent replacement by mid-November,” he said. “For the degree of damage up here, their turnaround time is amazing.”

The sawmill produces 60 million board feet of softwood lumber a year for the home construction market. The company is part of the Fontaine Group, which also includes Fontaine Inc., a softwood sawmill on the Quebec–Maine border, and Timber Resource Group Inc., a wood products procurement, marketing and timberland services company.

Allan Ryder, general manager of Timber Resource Group, supervises several log yards in New England and the main office in Farmington. He agreed that the economic impact on the timber industry in Western Maine was significantly less than the rest of the eastern seaboard.

“We don’t have trucks on the road, but we’re out there buying from the loggers and the landowners,” he said. “It’s affecting us somewhat on our deliveries.”

Michael St. Peter of Jackman runs the Maine Certified Logging Professional program. Preparation and safety are fundamental themes in his training programs. Loggers who took the time before the storm to take care of their work sites will go back to work sooner and work in less hazardous conditions, he said.

“A professional logger has the experience to make these judgment calls when it comes to safety,” he said. “Smaller loggers are limited more than larger companies, because they have fewer options in bad weather.”

Keith Kanoti, a Maine Forest Service water quality forester, said professional loggers are trained to minimize water damage.

“I’ve heard some anecdotal stories about stream crossing washouts on forest roads,” he said. “Hopefully, people were planning and preparing ahead of time, and maybe people are not going to be able to get to their job sites as soon as they’d like, but overall, this wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”