How Waste Wood Can Heat up our Economy

By Mary Anne Landis

Describes the workings of The Mendocino County Woody Biomass Working Group and how it can create jobs and broadly effect our area's economic and environmental health.

During the brouhaha around changing the zoning at Masonite, it became clear to me that we need to figure out how to encourage sustainable businesses, not just prevent the loss of industrial land. I believe that we need to preserve that industrial property until the right job-creating industry is developed to use that uniquely located site. And, we need to promote business clusters that utilize our natural resources to make value added products.

Bill Smith's entry into the Masonite Reuse Contest was a pellet plant that would utilize the small diameter trees, waste wood, to create jobs and clean up our forests. Bill knew he was on to something and his idea became inspiration for a kitchen table conversation early in 2009. We wondered how to determine whether an idea similar to Bill's pellet plant might have legs. We asked about 20 people in timber, forestry, environmentalists, business owners, elected officials and facilitated a discussion who gave us a thumbs-up as well as a plan for pursuing this value-added use of our abundant natural resources of our forest.

At this point about 16 months later, we are a diverse group of 30 participants, meeting regularly, operating with a defined mission and operating goals that embrace a sustainable approach to creating jobs in the forest, improving forest health and creating some kind of value-added densified fuel product--perhaps, pellets, synthetic fuel, bio char, or the generation of electricity. We have an innovative, capable staff person who is paid for by money raised by the group. We are building our own knowledge of the latest wisdom in this field through field trips and presentations from experts in forest and technology subject areas. We have submitted for grant funding to explore the feasibility of sustainably harvesting timber near several former mills sites where we can determine what technologies and what scale of a facility could work.

The end goal of this exploration will meet several of the needs we have.

• Our forests will be restored to healthy habitats for animals
• The danger of sweeping forest fires fueled by an understory of dead wood and dense small diameter trees will be greatly reduced
• Well-paying jobs will be created, a new kind of forest economy

Find out more about the Mendocino County Woody Biomass Working Group at: http://cemendocino.ucdavis.edu/Forestry/Biomass_Feasibility_in_Mendocino_County/