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Gavin’s planning to spend $1Billion per year for the next 5 years to increase thinning and open new, state-subsidized mills.
Well, that might be a start. I’m not sure the whole state subsidized mill idea will work though. For reasons already addressed by others the initial subsidy is going to need to be huge. Who wants to open a mill only to have the state change course and back out? Lot’s of money for thinning is good, but you’ve still got to move the projects through the process quickly. I just the other day looked at a study the El Dorado Irrigation completed in an effort to proceed with a handful of relatively small projects at their facilities in El Dorado County. The study was almost 500 pages long and was completed simply to justify their claim that the projects were exempt from a full environmental review! Without significant changes in the regulatory environment, I suspect much of the new spending will just go to enrich the environmental compliance industry and not for the actual boots and machines on the ground thinning and fuels treatment that we so desperately need.
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EID watershed just took the mega hit.
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It’s a great point about nobody wanting to build a mill without a stable long-term source for logs. Something like a mill is easily a 30-year investment. The same goes for building a biomass energy plant. The California Energy Commission caved to pressure from environmental groups like the Center for Biological Diversity (who are worried we will over-thin the forests in areas near larger plants) and has focused its biomass efforts on a bunch of really small-scale plants (3 megawatts or less). The problem with these smaller plants is that will never have enough demand for materials to even finance a single commercial-scale biomass harvesting contractor.
The old Ultrapower/Covanta plant in Westwood burned more than 270 tons of chips a day, converting the material into approximately 11.5 megawatt hours of electricity. Yes, we had to ‘feed the beast’ from the surrounding forests and a huge amount of thinning took place over the 25+ years the plant was in operation. Those ‘over-thinned forests’ were one of the reasons we were able to hold the Dixie Fire at Highway 36 and A-21.
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There was a fellow who published a book of historical forest photos about 20 years ago vs the photos of today (20 years ago now), from the same vantage points. Maybe somebody can remember the name of that book.
The forest tree stocking looked like the grass/oak woodland of Smartsville, instead of the green carpet of today.
Also, who is going to want to build a mill right now, right at the end of a huge run-up which would indicate a crash coming. But maybe the crash will be soft because we still need to build houses for all the backed up demand.
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One must not believe a Governor who is facing a re-call and has the current fires and forest management as a huge negative to his ratings. This is a campaign ploy for votes just before an election. It’s not the first time he’s lied about spending, just ask Cal Fire! I’m not being partisan here, just stating facts. Past actions predicts future actions.
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That book is “Fire in Sierra Nevada Forests”, by George E Gruell. This book is out of print and copies are very expensive. Very well done research and photos.
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Thank you. Found a sampling of it here: https://www.frames.gov/documents/fireworks/curriculum/SierraNevada/HighSchool/H19/H19_APhotographicInterpretation.pdf
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I believe the small BioMAT facilities you describe (<3MW grid) can use 2MW on site (so 5MW total), so potentially just enough to keep a normal chipping side operating. Using rough math, they should need ~840BDT/week, so 168BDT/day (assuming 5 delivery days); at ~15BDT/load, that’s 11 loads/day, which is what a mid-size operator can be expected to produce. That doesn’t take into account stockpiling for the winter months.
I do agree that is still a small positive impact, but enough facilities spread out could make a dent, while keeping transportation costs down. Whether or not that is a better strategy than bringing a few
of the larger facilities back online is another question.
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If your basket breaks, and your apples fall out………….
Maybe a few more baskets so one failure doesn’t hurt so much.
I like the plan of smaller plants.
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Lucifero, where did you find this comment/information?
Please take my following comments as a discussion not an attack.
Sorry but I seriously doubt the Governor will even remember he said this (if he did and it’s not a recall ploy, i.e. the number of acres actually committed to fuel reduction in California in 2020). The State and Fed’s offer tax breaks but they disappear after a year or a couple of years so why would an investor want to commit?
Fuel reduction and fire control at the small start are the heart of California Fire Suppression. In my opinion after 38 years, wait and see leads to Tamarack and Dixie, and all the other recent conflagrations and MEGA FIRES.
My view is Co-gen for disposal of fuels is one leg in the solution. Co-gen equals controlled useful burning, with carbon traps and energy production. Low cost energy at a local level.
Wild fire equals free burning wildfire with wildly spread free smoke plumes, aerosols, particulates, property destruction, tremendous suppression costs and CO2/CO emissions affecting state wide health .
State -subsidized Mill’s? That’s a laugh. Currently we’re seeing some of the highest prices for lumber and plywood in history. Numerous, (hundred’s ?) of mills have been shut down over the last 15 years so timber can be sent offshore. My opinion is that the fed’s and state have no interest in promoting American Timber.
These are my views and I readily admit it’s from a lifelong Fire Ground Hog. Engines, Crews, Helitack, Air Attack. Please further this discussion with your more educated and experienced views and opinions.
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I’m far from an expert in this field, but I was taking a class that had a guest speaker from CalFire’s climate office. They indicated they were going to receive that those funds for vegetation reduction projects, including mills and other wood product facilities. The reasoning was that, firstly, CalFire is apparently currently disconnected from profiting off wood products, and that it will be shifting to capturing that revenue in the future. This will further fund the department’s vegetation reduction efforts. Secondly, timber products that are removed from California are apparently brought to mills in Oregon, with the final product being “sold in LA”. The governor’s office wants to capture those jobs for CA. Again, I don’t know how much will be spent on subsidizing mills, it is only a part of what that investment is slated for.
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Lucifero, thank you for the expansion on your comment. I hope the proposal will develop but as we’ve seen, the Governor says one thing and does another. He inflated the number of acres treated then reduced CAL Fire’s hazard reduction budget.
Quoting an article in Capital Radio, Wednesday, June 23, 2021 | Sacramento, CA,
“Newsom has claimed that 35 “priority projects” carried out as a result of his executive order resulted in fire prevention work on 90,000 acres. But the state’s own data show the actual number is 11,399.”
As I said, I hope to see a change but I’m a realist.
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