Recent Work
The Biomass Boondoggle?
The Anderson Valley Advertiser - May 6, 2009
By Freda Moon
Back when the Timber Wars were raging in Mendocino County, the area's logging interests attempted a linguistic coupe of Rovian proportions. Battling a pro-environment popular revolt against the rape and pillage clear-cutting of Northern California's old growth redwoods, the same men that had touted “Save a logger, eat a spotted owl” bumper stickers on their mighty pickup trucks suddenly adopted a kinder, gentler motto: “Trees are America's Renewable Resource.” This cynical embrace of pseudo environmentalist language didn't fool anyone. But now, years later, the logging lobby is resurrecting the rhetoric. This time, it's working.
On April 24, Fort Bragg's town hall hosted a three-hour public workshop—in fact, a sponsored PR event complete with an expert speaker who was paid several hundred dollars for his 45 minute presentation—on the possibility of building a $40 million, 15 megawatt biomass-fueled power plant on Highway 20. The plant would burn wood and wood waste—10,000 truckloads of it a year—creating electricity that could then be sold into PG&E's power grid.
The project's cheerleaders extolled its many green virtues, preaching biomass's status as a relatively clean, supposedly carbon neutral, renewable energy source. Gone are the days when lumbermen argued for logging jobs and tax revenue in their ideological battle against environmentalist forces. Today, these once-proud, would-be Paul Bunyans are the environmentalists. Or so their language would have us believe.
In preaching the need to fight global warming by reducing fossil fuel use and the tidy efficiencies of reusing waste, the timber industry has found the political sweet spot of Mendocino's eco-happy hoards. But whether this environmental yappity-yap is greenwashing, good marketing or a genuine change of heart, it remains unclear what a wood-powered biomass plant would mean for the county.
That's because the biomass project is, as of now, just a vague idea—an idea with a following, but without a developer, a definite location, an environmental assessment or a concrete plan of any kind.
FIRST, THERE WAS A COMMITTEE
Last year, loggers and foresters joined with city and county governments, forming the innocuously named Ad Hoc Biomass Committee, to pursue the plan. The group, which meets once a month, commissioned a study to determine if the project had a chance.
Their hired hand, consultant Bill Carlson of Redding, wrote in his February 25, 2008 report that the plant “may well be a feasible project...though [it] is not without its challenges.” Hardly a ringing endorsement. The report went on to cite "substantial fuel risk" as its major concern. Translation: the wood and wood waste on which the plant would run can't be guaranteed in the near-to-long term.
To guarantee supply, it's not enough that Mendocino County has the biomass to fuel the plant. The wood—40 truckloads of it a day—has to get from the forests to the facility, and harvesting and transporting that wood isn't cheap. To seduce potential developers, project advocates have to assure that timber companies can keep the biomass coming—and that it'll remain affordable enough to sustain profits into the future. It's not clear if that's possible.
Despite these concerns, the project has real support. Both Congressman Mike Thompson and Senator Diane Feinstein requested $700,000 in federal earmarks for the project, and both city and county governments have offered tentative support. April's workshop, which cost about $2,300, according to the draft budget, was paid for by four separate timber companies, PG&E, the city of Fort Bragg, Mendocino County, Rep. Mike Thompson and the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District—a county- and grant-funded “special district” that works with landowners on land and water conservation projects. Even on a national level, there's government support for projects of this kind, including a large tax credit—worth about $12 million in this case—to encourage development of renewable energy sources.
It's an eclectic, and telling, coalition of interests. Among the timberland property owners are two non-profits, the Conservation Fund and the Usal Redwood Forest. The former is a national non-profit based in Virginia that has bought two large forest properties—the 24,000-acre Garcia River Forest in 2004 and the 16,000-acre Big River-Salmon Creek Forest in 2006. Unlike many conservation organizations, the Fund maintains these properties as “working forests”—land that can't be broken up and turned into vineyards or homes, but that continues to be logged. The smaller, local Usal Redwood Forest non-profit has a similar mission: to restore what was once industrial forest land—heavily logged under the old regime—so that it can be sustainably logged in the future.
For for-profit timber companies, the benefits of having a biomass facility close to home are simple: they could sell the wood chips, saw dust or forest slash they now burn or truck to far off processing plants for relatively little profit.
The upside for local government is also economic: jobs and tax dollars. In Fort Bragg, one of the project's most passionate advocates is, not surprisingly, city councilman, forester, former mayor and long-time logging industry employee Jere Melo. Because of contracts with three timber companies interested in the project—and potential conflicts of interest—Melo has said he would have a “much reduced role” if any of those companies are involved in “specific project discussions.”
PLAYING GOD
For foresters—who seem to see the woods as always less perfect than they could be under their own expert tutelage—biomass is everything that stands between them and the flawless, landscaped forests of their dreams. With a snip here and a cut there, forest management takes an abused woodlands and makes it whole again, thinning the fast-growing, weed-like tan oaks and making room for the glorious redwoods and Douglas firs. Forest management, we're told, is the difference between a “productive” forest and a forest that's on the verge of burning to the ground, fueled by felled branches and rotting wood debris.
What's strange—for those of us who are new to this Science as Savior world view—is that it seems to be held by almost everyone involved in forest restoration, conservation and advocacy. If it sounds like foresters are playing God—that even protected forest land is anything but wild land, that this whole system is essentially an elaborate tree farm in which soil quality, sediment run-off, carbon sequestration timber productivity, etc., are measured and manipulated—it sounds that way because, for good or ill, that's the reality of Mendocino County's long-abused forests.
But even among those who accept the need for California's forests to be carefully managed, wood-fueled biomass plants are worrisome. “The environmental community and forest advocates are very wary of biofuels and biomass of this kind,” said Paul Hughes, the director of the San Francisco-based environmental non-profit, Forests Forever. “We feel, obviously, that [biomass plants] can create a driver—a way to extract wood beyond what is required for thinning.” Forest Forever doesn't oppose foresters thinning tree stands, but Hughes worries about where the line is drawn in deciding what trees fuel the plant. “Once the plant is built,” he said, “it needs feeding. How do you make sure that [they] don't go beyond thinning and into extraction for fuel?”
Then there's the water problem.
The plant would require 150 gallons of water a minute—or an Olympic size swimming pool about every three days. In an area where housing developments have been stymied because of insufficient water, that's a huge potential stumbling block. One place that's being eyed for the biomass project is the Mendocino Coast Parks and Recreation District property three miles up Highway 20 from the coast, where there are plans to build a golf course, several ball diamonds, soccer fields and a park. Because that 700-acre slice of land is larger than what the rec. district needs, biomass advocates jumped at the part golf course-part Green Industrial Park bandwagon. Already completed water studies indicate wells could produce about 6 to ten gallons per minute—which, of course, means 15-20 wells would be needed to run the plant alone.
THE UPSIDE
Regardless of who stands to benefit if this long-shot project goes ahead, the idea is intriguing. Energy, after all, has to come from somewhere. Right now much of California's electricity is the product of coal-fueled power plants in Arizona and elsewhere—a source far from here, and far from environmentally acceptable. Even among those who debate whether biomass is actually “carbon neutral”—a debate you wouldn't know exists based on last month's public workshop—there's no doubt that, when it comes to global warming, coal is far, far worse.
Wood-fueled power plants are, in effect, giant wood stoves with fancy filtering systems to reduce emissions. Ultimately, they do produce some greenhouse gases, like CO2, and release particulate—tiny specks of matter, like dust or soot, that get suspended in the air and create pollution. But because trees soak up CO2 from the atmosphere while they're growing, wood-fueled biomass plants are generally considered “carbon-neutral.” Ideally, over the life of the power plant, they capture as much carbon as they produce. But without additional studies, it's impossible to know whether this proposed project comes close to the ideal scenario—a scenario that depends largely on how much fossil fuel is used in harvesting and hauling the wood.
It's too early to know the answers to most of the obvious questions about the project. One thing, however, is clear: the political and logging interests behind biomass know that their success hinges on one thing: appealing to Mendocino's bleeding green heart.