Seattle nonprofit employee fired after Snoqualmie Tribe protests $20M forestry grant

(The Center Square) – Seattle-based nonprofit Forterra NW has come under fire over a $20 million United States Department of Agriculture grant to assist with timber management on Snoqualmie Tribe lands.

When asked last week for comment by The Center Square, Forterra NW responded with a statement from Board Chair Beth Birnbaum saying the board has “retained outside counsel to conduct a review of the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe’s recent claims,” and closing with “At present, however, the Forterra NW board has confidence in Forterra’s executive leadership and stands behind its leadership team.”

The confidence in Forterra’s leadership team did not last long. In a statement to The Center Square on Monday, Forterra said, “One of the outcomes of this effort has been the termination of Tobias Levey (Vice President of Real Estate Transactions) with cause on October 21, due to concerns that he could not responsibly or effectively serve the organization’s mission.”

The current controversy leaves the $20 million USDA grant in limbo, currently approved but not yet disbursed.

A Oct. 19 letter about the Forterra NW award by 80 former employees of the non-profit questioned the integrity of the grant application, which Levey had been involved in managing the land rights portion of.

The letter by former employees concerned Forterra’s dealings with the Snoqualmie Tribe. The signers warned, “It appears that Forterra has mistreated a sovereign Tribal Nation on its own ancestral lands while claiming to act in its best interest.”

The Snoqualmie Tribe, listed as a key partner on the grant application, published a statement withdrawing support for Forterra, citing “serious concerns that Forterra’s grant application contains multiple unauthorized misrepresentations of fact, as well as false representations of commitments allegedly made by our Tribe”.

The grant is based on usage and stewardship of one commodity, the tribe’s ancestral forest. In the application, Forterra told the USDA it would use the grant to stand up a facility that would “manufacture 20,000 cubic meters of carbon-sequestering mass timber commodity elements per year.”

At present, the tribe is only harvesting 2,500 cubic meters of its forests per year, an amount it considers sustainable and responsible. In contrast, the tribe called the 20,000 cubic meters proposed by Forterra “unsustainable and irresponsible”.

The tribe also called on the USDA to perform a full review and audit of all representations made by Forterra in the grant application, not just the portions pertaining to its former “key partnership.”

According to the Snoqualmie Tribe, Forterra had “refused to provide the grant in which [Forterra] is listed as the main partner to the Tribe unless we signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement.” The tribe eventually acquired the full text of the grant application through a third party.

This controversy comes on the heels of a labor dispute against Forterra filed last August with the National Labor Relations Board by the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 8.

It remains to be seen what the USDA will choose to do about the claims, or with the $20 million grant.

Forterra is a Seattle-based nonprofit that “innovates and scales land-based solutions to address the climate crisis and support equitable, green and prosperous communities,” according to a mission statement on its website.