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Sopris Conference Highlights Fuels For Schools Program © 2006 by Russ Doty (with editing suggestions from Molly Holz & Jonda Crosby) July 27, 2006 John McBride, the force driving Aspen’s Sopris Foundation, is concerned about big changes he has seen in the West since he first worked here in the 1950s. One of those changes is in the amount of energy that westerners consume. According to McBride,Europeans use “one-third of the fuel we do and sustain a higher standard of living.” This problem and others were the focus of a Sopris-sponsored conference called “Innovative Ideas for a New West” that I attended last May as a representative of Montana’s Alternative Energy Resource Organization. One impressive idea I heard at the conference came from Missoula forester Dave Atkins. Mr. Atkins has a master’s degree in forest ecology as well as background in soils. He is the biomass utilization program manager of the U.S. Forest Service’s Fuels for Schools and Beyond program. This six-state initiative encourages school districts, prisons and other public entities to use material that would otherwise go to landfills or be burned when a forest is thinned or when it is cleaned up after beetle infestations. The Fuels for Schools & Beyond program encourages public entities to install heating and sometimes power systems that use woody biomass as their fuels. The program provides free engineering assessments as well as information about financing options. Twelve Montana locations currently have Fuels for Schools projects in various stages of completion. Installation costs can be recovered within 3 to 15 years. For example, Darby, Montana’s Mayor, Rick Scheele, projects that burning around 750 tons of woodchips will cut his school district’s costs by 82 %, bringing it down to $18,000 a year. The program is good for the environment too. It cuts down on some of the smoke and other pollution that results from the burning of an estimated 1 million tons of woody biomass in Montana each year. That’s enough to fuel 1300 Darby-sized projects. To find out more and download an application form, go to www.fuelsforschools.org The Fuels for Schools program is part of the Forest Service’s effort to maintain healthy forests by removing excess forest biomass. “We want to manage forests to retain woody debris as habitat for forest creatures and as nutrients, but not let it build up in ways that lead to atypical fires,” Atkins explained. What happens if the forest biomass is not thinned? Forest fires burn much hotter because there is excess fuel. If fires get too hot, the material on the forest floor, called “duff,” also burns. That puts vast amounts of C02 into the atmosphere, adding to global warming. Erosion is greater after a fire if the duff burns, and more stream sediment and landslides occur in areas where the forests have not been thinned. “Since the duff has a lot of the nutrients, we want to keep those nutrients from flowing (or burning) out of the system,” Atkins said. These days Forest Service crews typically leave some dead snags, woody debris, larger trees, and other materials that hold moisture longer during the summer. Trees hold moisture, which when released, creates rain in areas downwind from a forest. This helps prevent those areas from becoming deserts. Tree roots also clean sediment salts from the ground water, helping to keep it usable for drinking and irrigation. So the Forest Service manages different parts of the forest differently now than it did 20 to 30 years ago. “We’ve learned for example,” Atkins notes, “from mistakes made in historical German management where they culled all dead wood from the forest for hundreds of years. That drained nutrients from the soil. Now we try to balance soil and wildlife needs with fire risk.” “Sustainability is the name of the game,” according to Atkins. He believes, “We can sustain our forest eco-systems through prudent thinning, which in turn reduces the amount of high severity fires. We can use the material removed to sustain our communities and economy.” If not over-done, Atkins hopes the Fuels for Schools concept will allow us to produce sustainable energy from yet another renewable source. You may read more about the Sopris conference and print a copy of this broadcast at www.aeromt.org . For more information about AERO’s farm, food, energy, and growth solutions, or to give us your comments, call us in Helena at 406-443-7272. I’m Russ Doty for AERO, Montana’s grassroots membership organization that is on target to give you alternative energy resources.
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