Theres no waste material in boreal forests

As if the wanton desecration resulting from clear-cutting our provincial forests isnt enough, the profiteers now want to literally scrape the ground of so-called forest waste to be used in the manufacture of fuel pellets and wood chips. How short sighted can they be? Can these people not be made to understand that there is no such thing as waste material in our boreal forests?

It boggles the mind that people can be so ignorant of the precarious nutrient cycle in the thin topsoil of our forests and believe for a moment that removing the entire biomass will not affect re-growth or do they really care?

The spokesman for the Annapolis Digby Economic Development Agency says that the proposed biomass harvest and wood pellet production must be a community project. Heaven forbid that the innocent and ill informed be suckered into the scheme. Paid consultants, who always provide the answers sought, concluded that some 500,000 tonnes of biomass might be harvested from community woodlots. Bear in mind that they did not say 500,000 tonnes a year. It would be a one-shot harvest; how could it be otherwise? According to the consultants report the proposed $4-million plant could produce five tonnes of product per hour, which means that in a 40-hour week some 200 tonnes, or 200,000 kilograms of pellets would be produced, and that 15 to 20 jobs would be created, with most of these being taken up with the harvesting of the biomass.

Let's examine what is meant by biomass. It is, in effect, everything not taken during logging or commercial woodcutting, which includes: stumps, tops, branches, leaf detritus, moss, brush and anything else that can be pulverized, dried and compressed into fuel pellets.

According to the plan, the woodlot owners are expecting a break-even return of $30 per tonne which, based on production estimates, and assuming there is no waste (including water, which is the heaviest component of the biomass) would place an initial cost against the product at $6,000 per week. Add to that wages in the plant proper, mortgage and plant operating costs, including power, taxes, insurance and a return for investors, and we have a conservative total cost of, say, $25,000 per week. This would place a break-even wholesale price on the product at $8 per kilogram. Add to that a retail profit, and the consumer is going to be paying dearly for a kilogram of fuel; much more than hardwood in the round, and very much more than oil or natural gas for an equivalent amount of heat energy. As surely as the sun comes up, in the final analysis others, those Nova Scotians not even burning the product, are going to be paying for the inevitable shortfall.

Consider then that the total amount of biomass in the cited district will be consumed in approximately the lifetime of a single generation of mature saw logs, and because all of the potential nutrients have been removed from the soil of the affected woodlots, there will be no further productive growth for decades.

Of course, woodlot owners will never remain content with a break-even price for their biomass when the buyers are ripping them off on the price of their timber. Plant taxes and insurance rates will inevitably rise and, as suggested by the Warden of Annapolis County, since the government is prepared to work toward a sustainable project, it doesnt require a lot of imagination to know who will inevitably pick up the shortfall in order to sustain it.

In terms simple to understand, remove the topsoil from your garden plot and sell it. Then plant your garden the following year in the same place and with no added fertilizer or compost, and wait to see what grows. The result will be precisely what will occur in the Annapolis Digby woodlands if this foolish, profit oriented project is permitted to proceed. Rather than short term pain for long term gain, as the saying goes, this brainless scheme is better characterized as short term gain for long term disaster; for literally stealing the lumbering heritage of future woodlot owners.

Never believe for a moment that the variety of stakeholders, as cited by the Annapolis County warden, are in the least interested in improving local energy security, whatever that is. They are or will be in it for the money, and will, like Heritage Gas, lay on price increases galore once the clientele are trapped into the scheme and jobs will be at stake if their requests for increased prices are not complied with. In the latter case, government support will then kick in, leaving the people of Nova Scotia who do not burn wood pellets paying for the upkeep of an unnecessary and immensely destructive enterprise. Remember Sydney Steel, and the continuing cost to taxpayers for maintaining that foolish fiasco?



John G. McKay is a member of the Amherst Daily?News Community Editorial Board.