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Steamboat Springs — A loud diesel engine spews black smoke into the air as the machine it's driving carries a bundle of trees down a temporary logging road, with limbs snapping under its tires. Mike Miller operates another machine, gently laying 60-foot-tall, beetle-killed lodgepole pines on the floor of the Routt National Forest after a circular blade slices through their trunks.

These are the sights and sounds of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in Northwest Colorado this summer.

"We can now bring some guys that were laid off back to work, and we can hire some new guys," Miller said June 5. He's the owner of the Steamboat Springs-based logging company Rogue Resources. "This is just a good deal for us all around."

After $2.2 million in federal stimulus money was awarded to the Routt National Forest in April, it was unclear initially how much of the money would stay in Routt County and create jobs locally. A regional office of the U.S. Forest Service awarded stimulus funds to California and Florida logging companies for work in Routt County. The federal government recognized the companies as socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses, which made it possible to award the contracts quickly, a requirement in order to receive stimulus dollars. Local loggers felt slighted, and they let the U.S. Forest Service know it.

Diann Ritschard, a public affairs specialist for the Routt National Forest, contacted Sweat, Inc., the Florida-based company that had been awarded one of the contracts.

"I called them and said we're getting a lot of flack," Ritschard said.

Bill Blind, project manager for Sweat, said the company was prepared to do all the work themselves, but after hearing feedback from Ritschard, Sweat decided to reach out to local companies.

"We did all we could to keep as much local as we could," Blind said.

He estimated between 70 to 90 percent of hazard tree removal will be subcontracted to Rogue and Walden-based Forest Products, Inc.

"A substantial amount of money is going to stay local," Miller said. "It's not all going to Florida."

Sweat, Inc., will focus on the tree removal that is in environmentally sensitive areas where trees need to be cut with a hand crew using chainsaws, Blind said.

The work this summer will concentrate on fire mitigation and removing roadside hazard trees from Forest Road 100, Forest Road 550, Forest Road 80 and Forest Roads 681, 689 and 600 in the Big Creek Lakes area near Walden. Supervisory Forester Andy Cadenhead estimated 20,000 to 30,000 trees will be cut down along the 20 miles of road between Columbine and the Colorado-Wyoming border. About 2,000 trees are being removed from Seedhouse Campground, which will allow it to open by July 4.

Cadenhead said trees are being stacked, and the Forest Service will sell the timber by the truckload later this summer. More tree removal projects are slated for this summer, as well.

"We anticipate more work," Cadenhead said. "Mike (Miller) and others can get in on the bidding for that additional work."

Dead lodgepole pine trees are bountiful in Routt County, but it is a matter of getting someone to pay to have them removed.

"Nobody is spending any money," Miller said. "We don't have the work that we did last year."

A substantial amount of Rogue's business was with private landowners. Jobs Miller had lined up vanished.

"People that had 1,000 trees to take out only want to take out 50," he said.

Rogue's work force shrunk this year from 85 to 25 employees. Miller said it is hard to say what business would be like if there was no work in the national forest.

"We're just happy to have work," he said.

- To reach Matt Stensland, call 871-4247 or e-mail mstensland@steamboatpilot.com