District III Supervisor Jason Whiting presented to the Navajo County Board of Supervisors last week on the need for responsible biomass removal from the county’s forests. Biomass, in this case, is described as the debris remaining after logging operations.
The presentation contained an overview of the recent Eastern Arizona Counties Organization (ECO) legislative field trip. “Over 20 officials from the state Senate, the state House of Representatives, federal organizations and local governments came together to learn about what ECO does, as well as the issues of biomass and proper forest management,” said Navajo County Communications Director Adam Wolfe.
In a video interview with ECO Executive Director Pascal Berlioux, the board received more information on the needs of the county. “Forest restoration in Arizona started about 15 years ago,” Berlioux said. “In one acre in Arizona, 25 tons of logs are used, and anywhere between 10 and 30 tons of logging sludge, tree tops, branches and so on.
“In order to mitigate the risk of fire, we need to remove not only the logs, but the biomass. For the removal of that biomass to happen, we need to find an industry or use for that biomass so that it can pay for its own removal.”
In the past, biomass removal has been limited to collecting the material into large piles and burning them. As Whiting noted, “Traditionally, we would pile and burn, and that wasn’t a problem for smaller areas. Now when we have fires that burn here, we start getting calls. The citizens don’t love it, and it can scorch the ground beneath it and sterilize it. Sometimes it burns the trees around it and it costs money. For all of those reasons, it’s not scalable to go to the level that we need to do. Right now, if we were to burn at the level we need to burn, it would cost approximately, and this is on the low end, $1.5 million.”
Whiting went on to explain the need for forest restoration, stating, “For years, we have been told that we shouldn’t have fires in the forest, but quite honestly, fires were a natural condition of the forest and by not having those fires that existed, or traditionally existed, the fuel load started to increase significantly. Now we have a forest that looks unlike anything that it has looked like before, a very unhealthy and overpopulated forest. As we ramp up to landscape scale restoration, we are going to be doing business different than we have ever done.”
Approximately 50,000 acres a year of Arizona forest needs to be restored, according to Whiting. “Over here on the east side, we are doing about 15,000,” he said, explaining how much more needs to be done. “When we get to that 50,000, we will have to deal with about a million tons of biomass.”
In addition to the overgrowth, potential fires fueled by it cause further issues. “Fires burn so hot in the Southwest that it actually damages the soil. That soil and its ashes wash away and makes it’s way all the way to the Valley, where the contaminants in the ashes clog up and damage water filtration systems,” Pascal said.
Potential solutions to the biomass removal issue were introduced by Whiting, including industries to which biomass may contribute. Some, as he mentioned, are familiar, but have not advanced to meet the scale that will be needed in Navajo County and around Arizona.
According to Whiting, there have been “millions and millions of dollars invested in this (biofuel) technology, and not a plant to show for it. It is of no value today. Biochar is not scalable; they do about 365 tons a year and we will need over a million. Composting, while it is a solution and certainly can be done, with the amount of land that you would have to have, the math doesn’t work.
“Pelletizing is great, and is being done in Show Low. There is a difference between what we call clean chips and dirty chips. Clean chips are the white wood, logging residue. The bark and the pine needles (biomass) are what they call the dirty chips. They can burn that, but it doesn’t give the BTUs that we the public would want to burn in our stoves. So that is not a solution.”
The next potential solution Whiting mentioned was the conversion of a coal plant into a biomass burning plant. “It would be supplemented with natural gas. It’s a great idea, but some of the problems that they would see, that would make it very difficult to do, would be just the cost alone,” he said.
Co-firing is another option. Co-firing is the introduction of biomass into coal burning plants. Salt River Project has, according to Whiting, been able to add about two percent biomass to its coal fuel so far. That two percent will equal about 5,000 acres biomass consumption, which, as Whiting said, could be a component of getting to the 50,000 acres projected.
“One of the solutions that is currently dealing with it the best is the biomass power plant. We have one in Navajo County near the Snowflake area (Novo BioPower) right now that can handle up to about 15,000 acres. It’s still not getting us to the 50,000, but it is existing technology, and it is consuming at a larger scale than the rest,” Whiting noted. He went on to explain the downfalls of the biopower solution, such as cost compared to natural gas. “But,” he said, “the reality is, this could be a great solution.
“This is an important issue that we need to keep talking about. We need to make sure that all of Arizona understands that it affects us all equally, it affects our watershed,” Whiting said as he assured the board that he will continue the conversation with legislators as he visits the County Supervisors Association summit this week.
