Keeping wood fibre from being burned in slash piles is the goal of a slew of projects being delivered through the Forest Enhancement Society of B.C.
Ravi Kahlon, Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development announced the $27 million worth of fund for 38 projects at an event at Pacific Bioenergy in Prince George Wednesday.
“I’ve been travelling through the interior dealing with communities and talking with communities about where the forest industry needs to go and thing that annoys people the most is seeing piles and piles of waste being burned or just sitting there,” Kahlon said. “So today we announced funding that will go towards making that (fibre) economically viable to take to secondary facilities to make pellets and do other things with.”
The projects are part of the ongoing work of the Forest Enhancement Society. The previous round the projects focused primarily on wildfire mitigation. The money is not ‘new’ money as it will come from the $235 million the provincial government has allocated to the society, which was created in 2016.
According to the provincial inventory, slash burning resulted in 3,990 kilo-tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions from decomposition of harvested wood products resulted in another 42,034 kilo-tonnes. Neither source is tallied in the B.C. total.
However, Kahlon said greenhouse gas emission reductions will be tracked as a result of burning less slash.
“(Greenhouse gas emission reductions) are hard to quantify at this stage,” Kahlon said. “… It’s certainly being tracked.”
The 38 projects will employ forestry contractors, some of whom might otherwise be unemployed. In addition, it will help to employ mill workers who produce electricity, wood pellets and pulp at mills that produce these products specifically. As result, more wood waste will be turned into electricity, heat energy and pulp products to help achieve B.C.’s and Canada’s climate change targets.
Individual grant amounts range from $16,980 to $1.5 million. As of Nov. 13, 2019, about $230 million have been provided by the Forest Enhancement Society of B.C. to support 251 approved projects.
The projects were welcomed by Mackenzie Mayor Joan Atkinson, whose community was the focus of a huge rally earlier this year when it was hit with forest industry closures.
“As an elected official, the safety of my communities and its residents are my top priority,” Atkinson said. “In 2017, the only road in and out of Mackenzie was shut down due to a wildfire so it became very evident that something had to be done to address this.”
The solution, she said, was pretty simple … remove the trees and the fuels along the corridor.
“The big challenge was finding the funds to actually carry out this work,” she said. “The District of Mackenzie is very grateful to the Forest Enhancement Society for providing us the funding to clear that egress route out of our community.”
She added work, on the ground, should begin within a couple of months.
Brian Baarda, CEO of Paper Excellence also celebrated the funding and the projects.
“As you’re aware we are in a bit of a crisis in terms of accessing fibre in the Interior,” he said. “These types of announcements allow us to access more fibre that otherwise would not have been available. It allows us to support our mill and our communities and the workers who are in these communities.”
Steve Kozuki, executive director the Forest Enhancement Society, was host of the event and said he was proud of the work the society has done.
Communities that will benefit from grants
The Forest Enhancement Society of British Columbia has allocated $27,682,301 to support 38 projects that will help increase the use of wood fibre that otherwise would have been burned as slash.
Funding for these projects has been distributed as follows:
November 2018 intake:
* $3.86 million to Ledcor Forest Products Partnership (about 350,000 cubic metres in the Kamloops area)
* $3 million to Zellstoff Celgar LP (about 600,000 cubic metres in the Castlegar area)
* $484,000 to Alkali Resource Management Ltd. (about 24,000 cubic metres in the Williams Lake area)
* $536,100 to Skookumchuck Pulp Inc. (about 51,000 cubic metres in the Kimberley area)
* $1.44 million to Arrow Transportation Systems Inc. (about 140,000 cubic metres in the Kamloops area)
* $1.5 million to Fort St James Fuel Co. Limited Partnership (about 175,000 cubic metres in the Fort St. James area)
* $618,000 to Arrow Transportation Systems Inc. (about 120,000 cubic metres in the Kamloops area)
* $511,500 to Ledcor Forest Products Partnership (about 160,000 cubic metres in the Chilliwack area)
* $555,255 to K&D Logging Ltd. (about 50,000 cubic metres in the Mackenzie area)
* $500,000 to Valley Carriers Ltd. (about 37,000 cubic metres in the Merritt area)
* $1.03 million to Arrow Transportation Systems Inc. (about 100,000 cubic metres in the Kamloops area)
* $887,304 to West Chilcotin Forest Products Ltd. (about 62,000 cubic metres in the Anahim Lake area)
September 2019 intake:
* $488,958 to Alkali Resource Management Ltd. (about 52,000 cubic metres west of Williams Lake)
* $25,354 to the Bella Coola Community Forest (about 4,000 cubic metres in the Bella Coola area)
* $929,314 to Pinnacle Renewable Energy Inc. (about 87,000 cubic metres south of Burns Lake)
* $435,235 to Sasuchan Development Corporation (about 59,000 cubic metres near Fort St. James)
* $707,540 to Cariboo Pulp and Paper (about 74,000 cubic metres near 100 Mile House)
* $1.5 million to Canfor Prince George Pulp and Paper (about 143,000 cubic metres from Prince George area)
* $1 million to Mackenzie Pulp Mill Corporation (about 133,000 cubic metres in the Mackenzie area)
* $1 million to Central Chilcotin Rehabilitation Ltd. (about 90,000 cubic metres in the Williams Lake area)
* $584,138 to Cariboo Pulp and Paper (about 98,000 cubic metres in the Quesnel area)
* $40,000 to Harrop-Proctor Community Cooperative (about 4,000 cubic metres near Harrop)
* $160,000 to Barkerville Historic Town & Park (about 9,000 cubic metres near Barkerville)
* $278,938 to Strategic Natural Resource Consultants Inc. (about 19,000 cubic metres near Port McNeill)
* $21,284 to Hillcore Lakeside Pacific Forest Products Ltd. (about 1,700 cubic metres near Chilliwack, at Harrison Lake)
* $443,400 to Terrace Community Forest (about 30,000 cubic metres south of Terrace)
* $500,000 to Pinnacle Renewable Energy Inc. (about 31,000 cubic metres near Vernon)
* $500,000 to Fort St. James Fuel Co. Limited Partnership (about 52,000 cubic metres near Fort St. James)
* $150,000 to Probyn Log Ltd. (about 6,600 cubic metres near Bella Bella)
* $874,562 to Coast Tsimshian Resources LP (about 94,000 cubic metres near Terrace)
* $1.25 million to Domtar (about 105,000 cubic metres in Kamloops area)
* $85,000 to Lions Gate Forest Products Limited (about 4,000 cubic metres near Port Hardy)
* $750,000 to Williams Lake Indian Band (about 30,000 cubic metres near Williams Lake)
* $16,980 to Stella-Jones Inc. (about 1,900 cubic metres near Revelstoke)
* $150,069 to Logan Lake Community Forest Corporation (about 12,000 cubic metres near Logan Lake)
* $750,000 to Atlantic Power (about 75,000 cubic metres in Williams Lake area)
* $97,460 to Stella-Jones Inc. (about 12,000 cubic metres near Revelstoke)
* $19,909 to Nakusp and Area Community Forest (about 1,600 cubic metres near Nakusp)