Biomass a viable alternative fuel
EDITORIAL — OPINION OF THE RAVALLI REPUBLIC
Thursday, March 6, 2008
You can hardly turn on the television without seeing her.
“It’s going to have to come from a lot of different places,” she says while staring thoughtfully off into the sky.
The “it” this spokesperson for a major oil company is talking about is energy. The commercial continues with others weighing in with opinions on a variety of alternative energy sources including wind and solar.
Last weekend in Hamilton, more than 100 people spent the best part of a Saturday listening to speakers from all over the west talk about the potential for another source of alternative energy n biomass.
Link to complete editorial.
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Biomass Symposium offers energy alternativesRavalli Republic, March 3, 2008
More than 100 people gathered at the Hamilton Fairgrounds Saturday morning to learn all aspects of the biofuel industry.
Focused on advocating the use of biomass from large-scale national forest thinning, the day was sponsored by the Big Sky Coalition.
Co-hosted by the Bitterroot National Forest and the Ravalli County Commissioners, the symposium offered a range of information regarding current and future biomass production and the potential of turning wood waste into ethanol and methanol for electricity and heat.
BSC Executive Director Sonny LaSalle said although he expected more attendance, he was pleased with the turnout.
“I’m hoping the day serves as an educational and informational setting for this community,” LaSalle said. “There’s a lot of opportunity in this county, not only for the bio-fuel industry, but also for the job market.”
Link to complete article.
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A suggestion for the first Big Sky Coalition staff member (Repost,
Clark Fork Chronicle)
by John Q. Murray
Most people would probably agree that a survey of the American West before European settlement would represent a valid benchmark.
It would offer a valuable insight into how the natural ecosystem functioned before the Euro-Americans moved in and started transforming the landscape.
While a snapshot at any one site should not be viewed alone out of context--it would represent only a particular moment in time--a collection of tens of thousands of such snapshots would offer enough data to search for patterns and start the theory-building process. The visual information could be used to enhance all the other resources available to scientists as they build models of a healthy ecosystem.
And amazingly, such a collection is available. The U.S. Geological Survey has a treasure trove in Denver, Colorado, with photographs taken from the late 1800s when government surveyors set the corners for every township and range. Jack Losensky, who has pored over the collection, says there are literally tens of thousands of these photographs, taken all over the West.
In this respect, the American West offers an amazing opportunity. This landscape isn't like Europe, which has been chopped and changed for centuries. While Oregon and California and Utah led the way before the Civil War, most of the West did not get its big waves of settlement until after the Civil War. These photographs offer a glimpse of the land as it appeared to the first settlers, giving us an opportunity to discover how the ecosystem worked before the United States government started making its first changes.
Most people would think that environmental groups would be ecstatic to find such a resource. If federal agencies have incontrovertibly violated the natural landscape, these photographs would offer a way to return to a time before their actions. They would offer an opportunity to see exactly what the West looked like before the foresters got started, at a time when the only management was by Mother Nature. It would be like seeing how the West would appear as if it were all being managed as a wilderness area.
And most people would be wrong.
At least one local group is not at all interested in the "historic conditions." The Ecology Center, now the WildWest Institute, argued six ways till Sunday why the U.S. Forest Service should not conduct commercial thinning and prescribed burning operations in an attempt to start restoring the landscape to its historic conditions.
As attorney Tom Woodbury said this week: "'Historic conditions' is a canard, significant of nothing."
Or as he successfully argued at more length before the Ninth Circuit Court in 2005: Changes to the landscape would alter old-growth habitat, possibly harming the old-growth species dependent upon the habitat; information regarding historic conditions is incomplete; altering particular sections of forest in order to achieve “historic” conditions may not make sense when the forest as a whole has already been fundamentally changed; many variables can affect treatment outcomes; and the treatment process is qualitatively different from the “natural” or “historic” processes it was intended to mimic.
If the Forest Service is really interested in historic conditions, he said this week, they might restore the historic amount of old-growth habitat, estimated at 20-50 percent of the northern Rockies.
And the Ninth Circuit has already made its decision. Two of three judges agreed with Woodbury that the Forest Service should not proceed with the Lolo post-burn project. That decision also established a legal precedent that could be used to block other future projects.
"While Ecology Center does not offer proof that the proposed treatment causes the harms it fears, the Forest Service does not offer proof that the proposed treatment benefits — or at least does not harm — old-growth dependent species," the opinion states.
In other words, there wasn't enough information to make a decision, so the courts imposed their usual no-action alternative.
A new environmental group that formed in the Bitterroot has expressed interest in moving past the no-action alternatives. The Big Sky Coalition drew over 600 people to a meeting last month to start addressing the threats to forest health and human health posed by catastrophic wildfires.
They have expressed an interest in hiring staff members to participate in public land decision-making, just as smaller groups like WildWest have been doing. They are also hoping to sponsor legislation.
The Bitterrooters looked at some of Losensky's photographs and understood immediately that we have spectacularly altered and ruined our forestlands. But it doesn't matter, because the Ninth Circuit has already ruled against what most people would consider common sense.
If they really want to be effective, the Big Sky Coalition should stop looking at the front end of the public policy process and start looking at the back end. The lasting decisions affecting forest management aren't being made by Congress, but by the courts.
The first staff members they hire should be some sharp attorneys in the mold of Scott Horngren, while also recruiting some dedicated young law school grads who have lived in the West and have seen for themselves the effects of catastrophic wildfires in our parched and overcrowded forests.
The last generation of environmental attorneys succeeded in what were essentially negative actions, blocking the Forest Service from taking action. It will be interesting to see whether the next generation can promote a positive agenda, and succeed in effectively promoting restoration efforts.
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John Q. Murray
Publisher, Clark Fork Chronicle
119 Mount Ave.
Missoula MT 59801
406-721-1129
http://www.clarkforkchronicle.com
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