SEATTLE — The nation’s housing slump has slashed Washington state’s timber sales projections, drastically reducing payments to counties for schools, hospitals, parks and other local needs.

Revenue anticipated by the state Department of Natural Resources from all sources in fiscal 2009, with timber providing the bulk, has declined from a forecast of $280 million in June 2007 to a prediction of $184 million in an interim report that will be issued next week, Robert Van Schoorl, a budget official with the agency, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

That represents a drop of more than 8 percent from the $201.8 million anticipated in the agency’s last quarterly economic and revenue forecast in November. The first 50 percent of responses to a regular survey of timber buyers indicates a further decline is likely in the next quarterly report in March, Van Schoorl said.

“The numbers are continuing to go down,” he said. “The outlook is not good.”

The outlook is especially not good for school, hospital, park and other local districts that rely heavily on state timber sales revenue at a time when homebuilding in the U.S. is at a 50-year low and lumber prices are the lowest in more than 20 years.

With much of the current revenue coming from the sale of state-owned trees for telephone poles rather than other wood products, little improvement in state timber revenue is likely before 2011, Van Schoorl said.

The state agency receives revenue from timber sales on about 2.6 million acres of forested land, including 2 million acres that were granted in trust at statehood and 600,000 acres the state has managed since a wave of defaults during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Timber sales statewide on the state-managed 600,000 acres have declined from $67.5 million in 2006 to $64.7 million in 2007 and $53.7 million in 2008.

Both categories are managed jointly but revenue is allocated differently. Money generated from state-managed lands goes to 19 counties, mostly in Western Washington. Revenue from trust lands is earmarked chiefly for school districts and public colleges and universities.

Letters issued to the 19 counties with state-managed land late last month illustrate the bleakness of the outlook.

For taxing districts in Clallam and Jefferson counties, covering the heavily forested northern Olympic Peninsula, timber sales on state-managed land are expected to drop from $10.7 million in calendar 2008 to $1.9 million this year.

Wide variations in county receipts from year to year are common in boom times and bad, reflecting such non-economic factors as size and number of parcels with harvestable trees, Van Schoorl noted.

In Lewis County, revenue from state-managed lands was $12.7 million in 1999, $10.1 million in 2000, $3.9 million in 2001, $1.5 million in 2002 and $5.5 million in 2003. In Skagit County the figures bounced from $11.4 million in 1999 to $9.2 million in 2000, $5.5 million in 2001, $13.2 million in 2002 and $9 million in 2003. Snohomish County got $13.7 million in 1999, $14.5 million in 2000, $8.5 million in 2001, $6.5 million in 2002 and $10.4 million in 2003.

“There aren’t enough acres in any given county to give a steady stream of revenue,” Van Schoorl said.

Still, he added, the economy is depressing timber sales throughout the state.

The north Olympic Peninsula timber market is declining “faster than any time in history,” John X. Viada, the agency’s regional manager in Forks, told Jefferson County commissioners on Monday, according to a report in the Peninsula Daily News of Port Angeles. “This is the worst situation we’ve ever experienced.”

More woes may confront the state in the fall if timber buyers cannot afford to cut their trees.

Successful bidders for state timber have two years in which to log their parcels, at which point they pay the state, or they may go into default or request contract extensions. The last major round of defaults on state timber contracts was in the 1980s.

Many existing contracts expire in September.

“We’re extremely hopeful that none of them will default,” Van Schoorl said. “We have been getting some hints from purchasers that we may be seeing some applications for extensions.”