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PHOENIX — Purchase your tickets now to attend the Arizona Outdoor Hall of Fame banquet and honor your fellow wildlife conservationists on Saturday, Aug. 20, 2022, at the Hilton Resort at the Peak, 7677 N. 16th Street in Phoenix.

The Supreme Court’s reputation with the public is in tatters. Fewer than one in three Americans think the institution is doing a good job, putting the court just above the sewers where approval for Congress and the media lives.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a list of grants to test innovative ways to save the forest and forested communities by making use of the small trees and biomass that have so far stymied restoration efforts.

The $44 million list of projects nationally includes $1.75 million worth of projects in Congressional District 2, in part thanks to lobbying efforts by Rep. Tom O’Halleran (D-Oak Creek).

“As a member of the House Agriculture Committee for over five years now, I’ve been proud to work to prioritize Arizona’s vibrant ag industry, and its intersections with commerce, wildfire reduction and energy production,” said O’Halleran, who has pressed the Forest Service to prioritize wildfire prevention and forest restoration. “These new grants will help spur forward agricultural innovation in our state, especially in rural and tribal communities.”

The USDA announced the national list of projects to create products from the biomass generated by forest thinning and restoration projects. The wood scraps, saplings, small trees, brush and downed wood makes up about half of the material removed in a forest restoration project in the ponderosa pine forests. However, timber companies can’t make enough money on the larger trees to cover the cost of removing the biomass, which has stalled the 4-Forests Restoration Initiative for a decade.

The projects funded in Congressional District 2 under the new grants include:

• $1 million for a Lumber Dry Kiln and Planing Mill at a new, small-tree sawmill on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, which will make it possible to create a host of new products from small diameter trees.

• $250,000 to train workers at the San Carlos Apache sawmill.

• $250,000 to support research at Arizona State University to study ways to turn residue from sawmills and thinning projects into high-tech “functionalized carbon,” which can be used in things like manufacturing nanotubes.

• $250,000 for a biomass dryer, grinder and briquette machine for Joe Dirt Excavating in Williams, which can process biomass in the field for thinning projects.

The full list included more than $40 million in additional projects nationally. The innovative projects include wood pellets for burning and power generation, converting wood waste into biochar, which provides a way to enhance soil and other uses, high-tech furniture and building materials, high-tech wood mills and others.

The grant to the San Carlos Apache mill will bolster the revival of a small-wood timber industry on the 1.8-million-acre San Carlos reservation. The tribe has about 200,000 acres of ponderosa pine timber on its reservation and built a sawmill in Cutter in the 1980s. The sawmill relied on used equipment, with some key machines now 60 years old. The reservation lands can provide about 10 million acre board feet per year. That sounds like a lot, but competing mills elsewhere in the country can process some 300 million board feet a year, offering huge economies of scale for a traditional mill. As a result, the San Carlos Apache mill has struggled and not operated much in the past few years – despite a big jump in lumber prices.

The tribe has been working with the federal government to upgrade the mill, with an emphasis on handling the small-diameter trees that not only dominate the forest but pose a huge danger of uncontrolled crown fires.

The mill is designed to make a profit on trees 6 to 11 inches in diameter as well as processing the biomass and other, non-commercial species like juniper, pinyon and oak. Product lines will include moulding, landscape timbers, architectural timbers, structural lumber, pallets and lumber-packaging products, according to an online summary by Beck Group, which is designing the mill for the tribe.

The mill will include a firewood-processing facility, a pole-peeling operation to produce utility poles, a mill to produce rustic furniture from juniper, a wood-fuel pellet plant and perhaps a wood-shavings facility to produce animal-bedding products.

The lack of small-wood mills and a market for biomass has stalled efforts to thin some 6 million acres of overgrown, fire-prone ponderosa forests in northern Arizona. After a decade, the project has mechanically thinned less than 20,000 acres – compared to the original goal of 50,000 acres annually. The lack of a market for biomass and the lack of federal money to subsidize thinning projects has frustrated the effort.

The only current market for the biomass remains the NovoPower biomass burning power plant in Snowflake. However, the facility can burn enough biomass to support only about 15,000 acres of thinning annually. Its future remains in doubt because the Arizona Corporation Commission balked at requiring power companies to generate any power from burning biomass. Neither Arizona Public Service nor Salt River Project has so far given NovoPower a new, longterm contract – leaving its future in doubt.

Several other mills in the White Mountains can also create products from small-diameter trees — including one on the White Mountain Apache Reservation. Another new, small-wood mill is about to start near Flagstaff.

So the federal demonstration projects could nudge the door open to new industry approaches that will revive efforts to thin and restore the overgrown, fire-prone forests.

Peter Aleshire covers state and county government and other topics for the Independent. He is the former editor of the Payson Roundup. Reach him at paleshire@payson.com

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