Nearly 29 years after the eruption of Mount St. Helens, Cowlitz County commissioners are again asking state lawmakers to help with the fallout.

The request, however, is encountering opposition from the Department of Natural Resources.

The county and DNR disagree about whether volcanic sand dredged from the Cowlitz, Toutle and Coweeman rivers should be taxed by the state agency if it’s sold by a private landowner.

DNR argues that letting landowners sell the sand royalty-free amounts to giving away public property.

The county says the tax makes landowners reluctant to voluntarily take dredge spoils that have little value. Without agreeable landowners, the public would have to pony up money for places to deposit sand, so lifting the tax “makes sense for the overall community good,” county Commissioner George Raiter said Thursday.

The dispute between the county and DNR has its roots in the 1980 blast that launched massive amounts of earth into rivers flowing toward Castle Rock, Kelso and Longview. The eruption raised riverbeds and threatened catastrophic flooding.

Heeding the plea of Cowlitz County commissioners, the Legislature exempted from the DNR fee sand dredged in the aftermath of the eruption.

The exemption expired in 1995. Now, 14 years later, the county is asking legislators to reinstate it.

The county needs new sites to deposit sand because an increasing amount of material is washing over the 22-year-old sediment retention dam on the Toutle River’s north fork, public works official Ken Stone said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will dredge the sand, and the state will pay for preparing the sites. The county, however, is responsible for finding the land.

The county lined up two pieces of land near the mouth of the Cowlitz River to take dredge spoils last year. It will need other geographically dispersed sites in the coming years, Stone said.

The DNR’s claim on the sand discourages property owners from supplying land, he said. “Some say, ‘I’ll give you the right to place the sand for free if you give me the sand for free.’ ”

Siding with the county, Sen. Brian Hatfield, D-Raymond, has introduced legislation barring DNR from collecting the tax on sand dredged from the three rivers.

Senate Bill 6070 has cleared two committees. On Thursday, Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, used his position on the Rules Committee to move the bill closer to a floor vote.

Hatfield predicted senators will send the bill to the House. “We should be able to get it through the Senate side,” he said.

DNR has testified against the bill in committee hearings and continues to oppose it, department legislative liaison Heath Packard said Thursday.

DNR doesn’t charge landowners for merely accepting the sand — only when they sell it, he said. “You don’t need to have the royalty removed if you’re never going to sell the material.”

DNR estimates reinstating the exemption for the Cowlitz, Toutle and Coweeman rivers could cost it nearly $400,000 a year. The department says it would use the money to nurture shorelines, rivers and streams.

“In these lean economic times, when we’re already trying to do more with less, we’re loath to promote policies that could significantly reduce resources for our core services,” Packard said.

County officials say DNR’s estimate of lost revenue is wildly inflated, noting there are millions of tons of dredge spoils on county land that the county has never been able to sell.

They say the eruption caused a surplus of sand for local projects, and the material is too expensive to truck to other areas.

Stone estimated there is enough sand on property owned by Wasser & Winters near the mouth of the Cowlitz River to last seven decades.

In calculating its revenue loss, DNR assumed collecting 75 cents for every cubic yard dredged by the corps in a given year. “It’s as likely to happen as Mount St. Helens rebuilding to a full mountain again,” Raiter said.

Packard acknowledged DNR’s estimate could be too high. “It really depends on the market,” he said.

He stuck by his point that reinstating the exemption would amount to a gift of public resources. He said the department could support Hatfield’s bill if it distinguished between private landowners who won’t sell sand and commercial landowners who will.

Packard said the department hasn’t thought through what would happen if private landowners get an offer and sell sand.

County officials say they want a clean break and not have to deal with DNR at all when coaxing landowners into taking dredge spoils.

“We’re talking about the protection of lives and property versus revenues to the state. And the loss of revenues to the state was greatly overestimated,” Stone said.