1859 Summer 2009

“The Tribes have been the biggest loser
in the basin for 150 years,” says James Honey,
a Klamath Basin program director with Sustainable
Northwest, a nonprofit involved in
negotiating a settlement agreement with the
Tribes over water rights in the Klamath Basin.
“We need to provide new economic opportunities
for tribal and rural people.”
a model for the West
THE SITUATION IS FAMILIAR THROUGHOUT THE WESTERN
United States where boarded-up sawmills or those left idle during the
recent economic downturn are found near vast swaths of public lands
on which overgrown forests have become vulnerable to wildfires and
disease. Fire spreads quickly in the underbrush and up into the midsized
trees, which act as a ladder that spreads the fire into the highest
level of the canopy and grills the most mature trees. By removing
the smaller trees and some of the undergrowth leftover from logging
– known as “slash” – forest managers can help prevent catastrophic
wildfires and restore healthy tree growth. The Forest Service, however,
doesn’t have the budget to restore all federal forestland, and there’s simply
no financial gain to harvesting the small-diameter wood.
“We’ve got forest slums on our hands,” says David Sjoding, a renewable
resources specialist with the Washington State University Extension
Energy Program, a group working with Northwest Congressional
leaders to develop forest management plans that incorporate tree thinning
for renewable energy development.
Biomass produced on forest lands in the western U.S. has the potential
to generate some 2,230 megawatts of renewable energy, or about
the equivalent of the energy produced by four typical coal-fired power
plants, according to the Western Governors’ Association. Biomass is
essentially solar energy stored in plants. It is burned to heat water to
create steam that then drives a turbine and generates electricity that
can be used on site or sold to utilities. The excess heat can also supplant
coal and natural gas in wood products manufacturing, such as paper
mills and pulp, in a process called cogeneration. Generating power from
“We’re trying to create a
marketable solution for the
problem with the forests
around here locally and
throughout the West: too
many small-diameter
trees that have no
commercial value.”
WILL HATCHER, NATURAL RESOURCES
DIRECTOR FOR THE KLAMATH TRIBES
biomass still releases carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere, and so the U.S. and international
carbon markets consider biomass “green” energy
only if plants are grown to recapture the
carbon dioxide and replace the biomass that
is combusted.
Burning wood is one the oldest forms of
energy production but, as a commercial venture,
biomass plants are largely untested. To justify a significant investment
in new equipment, training and land, biomass developers need to
be sure the forest holds enough woody residue to provide a fuel supply
for at least 20 years. In 2007, an Oregon Department of Energy study
found 1.1 million acres of forest eligible for restoration within 75 miles
of Klamath Falls, 27 miles south of Chiloquin, with a potential for producing
150 megawatts of electricity and creating 900 jobs in the area.
But the numbers are only an estimate. It’s unclear exactly how much
biomass forestland can produce or even how to sustainably manage a
forest in order to guarantee future supplies.
“My problem is, I don’t trust experts; our ignorance exceeds our
knowledge in anything, be it love, or energy or the way we interact with
the natural world,” says Tom Chester, director of the Renewable Energy
Center at the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls. The Renewable
Energy Center is working with the Klamath Tribes to develop a
feasibility study for the Giiwas project. “Maybe we need to thin forests,
but do we know that for sure? I see the world in gray.”
Despite the uncertainty and risk, tribes and rural communities
throughout the West that had been considering renewable energy projects
are now rushing to file applications for federal funding to turn existing
and abandoned sawmills into biomass projects, says Bob Middleton,
director of the Office of Energy and Economic Development for the U.S.
Bureau of Indian Affairs. He estimates the number of tribes requesting
his department’s assistance in developing biomass facilities has doubled
since last year. Renewable energy development is a funding priority in
federal budgets under the new Obama administration. A three-year
extension of tax credits for renewable energy projects is included in
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to spur job creation and
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