T-L Photo/JANELL HUNTER Wayne National Forest officials Public Affairs Officer Gary Chancey, from left, Forest Supervisor Tony Scardina and Athens District Ranger Jason Reed speak to the Monroe County Board of Commissioners about distribution of oil and gas lease payments to counties that have acreage in the forest.

WOODSFIELD — Wayne National Forest officials spoke to the Monroe County Board of Commissioners about how federal land payments to state and local governments are distributed across the 12 Ohio counties that have national forest acreage.

Ohio received 25 percent of $1.7 million — or $425,000 — from the December 2016 Mineral Lease Sale in Monroe County. According to Wayne National Forest Supervisor Tony Scardina, Congress sequesters a portion of the payment, leaving a balance of $380,000. Each county within the forest received a share of that amount based on a Bureau of Land Management formula; the formula is not based on activity within the county but on the number of acres of forest each county encompasses. The remaining 75 percent of the proceeds goes directly into the U.S. Treasury.

The 12 counties located within the forest received the following amounts from the December sale: Athens, $31,599.92; Gallia, $28,916.65; Hocking, $44,094.21; Jackson, $2,884.97; Lawrence, $97,942.49; Monroe, $41,181.99; Morgan, $5,644; Noble, $1,176.93; Perry, $37,569.59; Scioto, $19,717.61, Vinton, $3,169.66; and Washington, $66,752.53. There are approximately 25,000 acres of the forest in Monroe County.

The BLM has yet to distribute payments from the March 23 Mineral Lease Sale in which the agency netted $5.2 million. Payments are normally distributed by the BLM three months after the leases are issued.

Wayne National Forest Supervisor Tony Scardina said the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which previously determined payments from the BLM for this type of activity, has expired and the current presidential administration has not yet decided a position on the act.

Without congressional reauthorization of the SRS Act, the Forest Service has reverted to making payments under the Payments to States Act of 1908, which has the 25 percent state/75 percent federal breakdown. Monroe County received $35,000 under the SRS Act last year, and this year it received $6,300.

Scardina said the 1908 Act mandates 25 percent of all receipts received from commercial activities on the national forests from timber, grazing, special-use permits, power and mineral leases and admission and user fees with the states in which national forests are located go to public schools and public roads.

“In the next couple of years, we expect to increase our forest management program for the amount of timber that we’re harvesting, primarily for wildlife habitat benefit. … Our forest plan calls for an increased level of harvesting, and we’ve struggled to do that in the past decade, but our goal is to increase harvesting quite substantially so that will be another set of receipts that (Monroe County) will be receiving,” Scardina said.

Scardina said the WNF is “open-minded’ about opening up the Monroe County national forest acreage to trails for all-terrain vehicles, although the trails take a lot of “hands-on management.”

“If the community has an interest in it, then our ears are open and we should listen. I think traditionally it hasn’t been authorized here because the land ownership pattern is so checkerboarded. … And you will always have 1 percent of users that won’t follow the rules that require a lot of management,” Scardina said. “I think overall, the trails are managed really well and the majority of users are exceptional.”