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KUFM Commentary - July 2009 --------------------------------------------------------- "Biomass Energy for Montana: A Community-Driven Solution" On a hot afternoon last week in the small town of Townsend, Montana, Senator Jon Tester made history by introducing his widely anticipated Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. Senator Tester's bill combines the work of three community-driven solutions for forest management on the Beaverhead Deerlodge, Kootenai, and Lolo National Forests. As Resource manager of Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley Lake, I know first-hand that all three of these proposals create good jobs in the woods by combining responsible forest thinning with restoration work that improves forest health, water quality and wildlife habitat over the long-term. In addition, some of our best backcountry areas would receive formal wilderness designations to ensure access and enjoyment for future generations of Montanans. You've probably heard all that before, but there is another important portion of the bill that hasn't received much attention yet, even though it represents an exciting possibility for sustainable energy production in rural Montana. If you go to Senator Tester's website right now you can call up the proposed legislation and find a small provision that helps to fund the construction of community biomass facilities in each of the three forest management areas. We've been looking very seriously at a new biomass facility in Seeley Lake that could generate electricity and heat for homes, businesses and schools, while creating good family-wage jobs in the process. The best part is, it would do all this by harnessing a sustainable fuel source that is plentiful in western Montana. Biomass may have a fancy name, but it's essentially just trees and woody vegetation that can be used as a fuel source. When burned, it releases the energy it had stored from the sun. We have a lot of biomass in our forests. So much that unnaturally dense buildups of small-diameter trees actually increases the threat of wildfire to rural communities like Seeley Lake. We live in a fire-prone landscape, and a century of fire suppression combined with longer and dryer summers has created a recipe for forest fires that burn much too close for comfort. For instance, the Jocko Lakes fire, burned 18,000 acres in one day in 2007 and a total of 36,000 acres. Many residents of Seeley Lake were forced to evacuate from their homes before it was brought under control. Senator Tester's forest bill recognizes the need to make our rural forest communities safer by reducing the unnatural fuel buildup around these communities through forest thinning and prescribed burns. However, thinning all these small-diameter trees would just leave us with piles and piles of slash. You can't sell it; and often it's too costly to chip up or transform into other products. In the past it's all just been heaped together and burned. However, a locally-scaled biomass plant could harness these forest products and burn them efficiently and with minimal emissions to generate sustainable, renewable electricity and heat. Anyone who travels down Highway 83 from Condon to Seeley knows we have plenty of these small-diameter fuels. We predict there is enough excess fuel loading within the public and private forests along that stretch of road to fuel a small biomass plant in Seeley Lake for the next 75 years. Turning that biomass into energy is actually pretty simple. Once it's been thinned, the fuel would be transported to the biomass facility and burned in a large boiler along with other excess lumber waste from the mill. That boiler would produce high-pressure steam that is then converted into two forms of usable energy: heat and electricity. The first source of energy, heat, could be used for lumber drying capacity at the mill and in a district heating system that would provide heat to schools, homes, and businesses in downtown Seeley Lake. The other source of energy, electricity, could power the local lumber mill while excess could potentially be sold to our electric co-operative. Locally-scaled, sustainable energy development is an innovative cause worth pursuing in rural Montana. It provides an outlet for excess forest fuels on our public and private forests; it increases the number of local well-paying manufacturing, trucking and woods worker positions, and it also provides a model and vision for rebuilding lost infrastructure in the West. Biomass isn't a silver bullet for our energy problems, but in the long run it's one important step towards freeing our businesses and communities from fossil fuels. Senator Tester's Forest Jobs and Recreation Act represents a new era in public lands management in Montana. Montana needs good forest jobs. We need wildlife and watershed protection afforded through wilderness designation. And we need innovative community-based sustainable energy development in rural Montana. Thanks for listening. This is Gordy Sanders with Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley Lake, Montana. This commentary is brought to you by the Alternative Energy Resources Organization. AERO has been building communities by linking people with sustainable agriculture and energy solutions for 35 years. To join the conversation call us in Helena at (406) 443-7272.
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