logging

- by Aaron Beswick, May 15, 2014, Source: Truro Bureau

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"193","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 300px; height: 220px; float: left; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;","title":"Photo: Industcards.coom"}}]]Nova Scotia is having trouble keeping up with the requirement for fibre at the biomass boiler at Point Tupper, says the natural resources minister.

“There’s not enough fibre right now in the province to support demands placed on that sector,” Zach Churchill said Thursday, referring to the amount of fibre available on Crown land.

Churchill was responding to questions from reporters about whether hardwood sawlogs are being burned in the boiler to produce electricity rather than going to hardwood sawmills where they could be processed into a higher-value product.

- by Tom Ayer , May 12, 2014, Source: Cape Breton Bureau

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"192","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 189px; float: left; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;","title":"Photo: Erin Pottie, Cape Breton Bureau"}}]]Business owners in Cape Breton who rely on the forest for a living say high-quality hardwoods are making their way into Nova Scotia Power’s biomass plant in Point Tupper, consuming a wood supply that instead should be available for value-added businesses such as flooring and lumber.

David Fraser of BA Fraser Lumber in Margaree Valley, Inverness County, says he is seeing fewer quality saw logs and he blames it on Nova Scotia Power’s policy of getting the most amount of biomass fuel for the cheapest price.

- by Paul Gottlieb, February 27, 2014. Source: Peninsula Daily News

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"170","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 274px; height: 222px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Peninsula Daily News"}}]]PORT ANGELES — Fuel-system problems with Nippon Paper Industries USA’s newly expanded biomass cogeneration plant have caused a two-week shutdown of the mill, according to a union official.

Darrel Reetz, vice president of the Association of Western Pulp & Paper Workers Local 155, said Thursday he is confident the plant will be up and running again by about March 9.

“We are having some issues that need to be fixed on the fuel system,” Reetz said.

- by Kevin Murphy, February 26, 2014. Source: Wasau Daily Herald

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"169","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 221px; float: left; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;","title":"Photo: Corey Schjoth"}}]]The recently built power plant at Domtar paper mill is getting only 10 percent of its fuel from logging waste, which originally was supposed to supply nearly all of the plant’s energy needs.

The 50-megawatt, $255 million power plant went online in November to provide steam for Domtar’s paper operations and a clean source of power for WE Energies. The plant will burn 500,000 tons of biomass annually, said Cathy Schulze, a WE Energies spokeswoman.

- by Mike Baker, Ken Armstrong, and Hal Bernton, March 25, 2014. Source: The Seattle Times

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"167","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"480","style":"width: 352px; height: 480px; float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-left: 10px;","title":"Photo: Associated Press","width":"352"}}]]The plateau above the soggy hillside that gave way Saturday has been logged for almost a century, with hundreds of acres of softwoods cut and hauled away, according to state records.

But in recent decades, as the slope has become more unstable, scientists have increasingly challenged the timber harvests, with some even warning of possible calamity.

The state has continued to allow logging on the plateau, although it has imposed restrictions at least twice since the 1980s. The remnant of one clear-cut operation is visible in aerial photographs of Saturday’s monstrous mudslide. A triangle — 7½ acres, the shape of a pie slice — can be seen atop the destruction, its tip just cutting into where the hill collapsed.

Multiple factors can contribute to a slide.

With the hill that caved in over the weekend, geologists have pointed to the Stillaguamish River’s erosion of the hill’s base, or toe.

But logging can also play a role in instigating or intensifying a slide, by increasing the amount of water seeping into an unstable zone, according to an analysis of the watershed submitted to the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

- by Rebecca Everett, March 17, 2014. Source: Daily Hampshire Gazette

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"162","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"356","style":"width: 450px; height: 297px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; float: left;","title":"Northampton watershed (Photo: Chris Matera)","width":"480"}}]]Chris Matera of Northampton said he was driving through Whately to go skiing two weeks ago when he noticed piles of fresh-cut logs at the mouth of a trail into a forest.

“I said, ‘Wait, isn’t that the watershed?,’” he recalled recently.

Matera, who heads a statewide group opposed to logging on publicly owned land called Massachusetts Forest Watch, was appalled to think Northampton was allowing logging on the watershed surrounding the Francis P. Ryan and West Whately reservoirs.