Changing Industry, agencies and activists join forces Faces to manage Southern by Joel Preston Smith Oregon’s crowded forests

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“Like bodybuilders, the environmentalists were Initiative, a conservation group focused thought of as kind of weird fanatics also. You know on sustainable forestry in southeastern Oregon, the kind of serious tree huggers. Environmentalists where the average population density is 2.1 people were no fun. They were like prohibitionists at the per square mile, and where four of the county’s five fraternity party.” sawmills have closed since 1986. —California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, delivering In the spring of 2006, Walls says he was work- the keynote address at a global warming conference, ing “full bore” in his Lakeview office on “prov- Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., April 2007 ing that sustainable forestry would work” in the ponderosa pine-dominated forests of Lake County n the Pacific Northwest, no one epitomizes the when he was struck by the idea of harvesting idea of “fanatical tree hugger” more than the small-diameter trees and turning them not into I bearded, balding druid form of Andy Kerr—arch lawsuits but rather into electricity. In the sur- enemy of the logging community, timber teetotaler, rounding Fremont-Winema National Forests, self-described “political activist, inside/outside agita- stands that in their historical prime averaged tor, schmoozer and raconteur.” Or as the Lake County 12 to 40 trees an acre were now crowded with Examiner once described him, “Oregon’s version of 800 to 1,200 trees, most of them no thicker the antichrist.” than a man’s leg. Kerr is best known, from the timber industry’s perspective, as the front man for the people who Sucking up water. Drying up the soil and choking brought you the northern spotted owl, timber-sale out older trees. A box of matches, standing on end. injunctions and epic courtroom battles. It is somewhat ironic, then, to find Kerr and other It didn’t seem like it would be difficult to venerable veterans of the Pacific Northwest’s timber convince environmentalists that burning wars now prodding the Forest Service with a stick, brush to generate electricity was wiser, in asking the monster to reawaken and once again essence, than clear-cutting with a flame- allow the industry to heft its ax and proceed forth thrower, and Walls had history on his into the forest. Kerr, Tim Lillebo of Oregon Wild, side. On a single day, July 12, 2002, an Mike Anderson of the Wilderness Society and Rick estimated 16,000 lightning strikes hit the Brown of Defenders of Wildlife—all of them serious Fremont-Winema, burning more than tree huggers—are leading a contingent of environ- 121,000 acres in 65 separate fires. mental groups who want to put timber workers back The problem was that Lakeview in the Pacific Northwest’s woods. doesn’t have a power plant. As one What happened? What could unite not only envi- resident describes it, “We’re 90 miles ronmental groups but timber industry officials, the from the nearest traffic light, and we Forest Service and a growing army of nonprofits and like it like that.” government agencies? Not surprisingly, they’ve ral- Tillie Flynn, general manager of lied around a mutual hatred—not of each other, this the Lake County Examiner, character- time, but of catastrophic forest fires. After nearly 100 izes the 2,500 residents of Lakeview years of fire suppression and more than a decade of as “very Mayberry.” But it’s also the dwindling timber harvests, many state and national kind of town, says city manager Ray forests have become national thickets. The buildup Simms, where environmentalists are of ladder fuels—debris, saplings and low-hanging still labeled by some as “ecoterror- limbs that allow fire to climb into the forest canopy, ists,” where timber-sale injunctions resulting in a charred moonscape in which little if brought on a “virtual shutdown of anything survives—borders on a blowup, threat- the woods,” followed by widespread ening the destruction of entire forests, including unemployment, alcoholism, domes- the remaining 5 percent of historical old growth, tic abuse, the collapse of families throughout the Pacific Northwest. and an exodus of nearly 2,000 resi- dents from the county. The idea of Trees into power walking hand-in-hand through the Jim Walls has a less than agreeable history with forest on a harvesting project with “outsider” environmentalists, but he knows forests, “Andy Kerr and his groupies,” as the timber industry and how to sell a novel idea. Flynn calls them, wouldn’t be an A former backcountry ranger for the National Park easy pitch. Service, Walls directs the Lake County Resources continued on next page 2 3

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With the help of Lakeview County Better together to power about 15,000 homes), Marubeni Commissioner Jane O’Keeffe and the envi- “It’s ironic to be in this situation,” Kerr would need 125,000 tons of biomass each ronmental group Sustainable Northwest, admits, “but we need the timber industry year. Collins’ Fremont Mill generates about Walls proposed building a regional cogenera- to restore these forests for the next 20 to 30 one-third of that in hog fuel—the timber tion plant—a power plant that produces both years. If they don’t, fires are going to destroy industry’s term for bark, wood chips and steam and electricity—fed by small-diameter the old growth.” sawdust—from timber from its 82,000-acre trees and ladder fuels. Based on construction Now Kerr, other environmentalists and privately owned forest in Lake County. costs of $30 million, a “cogen” plant would logging advocates suddenly find themselves Privately owned, Collins’ forests aren’t provide 148 full-time jobs and generate more on the same side of the fence. Tim Lillebo subject to federal timber-sale injunctions than $10 million in labor income, accord- of Oregon Wild supports construction of the or the policy whims of changing political ing to Betty Riley, executive director of the biomass plant, for which Marubeni has now administrations. The company’s timber South Central Oregon Economic Development invested $700,000 in feasibility studies, per- harvests also are immune to the U.S. gov- District. mitting and planning. Lillebo, worrying old ernment’s 1994 ban—called the Eastside Marubeni Sustainable Energy, a subsidiary scars, remembers testifying at a public meet- Screens—on logging live trees larger than of the Japanese trade conglomerate Marubeni ing in Bend, Oregon, around 1994, over law- 21 inches in diameter on federal forests east Corporation with annual revenues topping suits Oregon Wild filed against local timber of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon and $27 billion in 2006, was one of the first devel- harvests. “A logger stood up and said he was Washington. Therefore, Collins can guaran- opers to bite. going to kill me. I reached for my 9 mm and tee Marubeni a consistent supply of biomass. Walls proposed siting the plant at found I didn’t own one.” It’s the missing 83,000 tons of hog fuel, cru- Lakeview’s Fremont Sawmill, owned by The He compares the present-day spirit of cial to sparking the Lakeview project, that Collins Companies, a timber corporation cooperation, and working with his former have Marubeni and the project’s developers which owns and manages just over 305,000 enemies, to “doing a prescribed burn, where- concerned. acres of private forests in Washington, as before we were working in a wildfire. We “Banks want a 20-year guarantee on Oregon, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. used to say, ‘They’re cutting down all the everything—on fuel, on water, even on air— Collins, which quotes Mahatma Gandhi in its old growth! They’re damming the streams! before they’re willing to lend startup money corporate literature and has earned the praise We have to litigate!’ But now we see we’ve for a biomass plant,” says Patrick King, of the World Wildlife Fund and other groups, altered the forests on the east side; they’re no Northwest regional development director for was the first private timber company in the longer what they should be, and we have an Marubeni Sustainable Energy. “That takes United States to be certified green for eco- opportunity to fix that.” us through five political administrations. It’s logically sound forest practices by the Forest Kerr, who now runs The Larch Company, not that the supply isn’t there. We’ve looked Stewardship Council. a consulting firm focused on natural in a 70-mile radius [of Lakeview] and it’s What is now known as the “Lakeview resource issues, says, “What made the plan there in the Fremont-Winema. The problem Biomass Project” was underwritten by more attractive is that Collins is arguably is getting it out.” Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski as a means the most environmentally responsible timber to help the state meet its renewable energy company in the world.” Can’t see the forest for the fuel goals, improve forest health and cut green- Collins, with the only functional timber Karen Shimamoto would love to pro- house gasses released in high-severity mill in the county, was in a unique position vide Marubeni with biomass for the pro- forest fires. to attract cogen investors to Lakeview. In posed electrical plant. As supervisor for Nearly everyone, including the Forest Service, includ- order to generate 15 megawatts of electric- the Fremont-Winema National Forests, ity (the proposed size of the plant, enough Shimamoto is responsible for managing fire ing the tree huggers, including Andy Kerr, wanted in. preparedness, protection and suppression programs on the 2.3 million acres that com- prise the two forests. In addition to oversee- ing tinder-dry forests overstocked with ladder fuels, she is facing the demise of a 200,000- acre tract of timber, infested with western pine beetles. “We’d like to restore the forest’s resilience to fire, but no one will ever buy biomass from us. It’s just not economical. They’d lose money.” Shimamoto says the cost of thinning out overstocked timber ranges from $300 to $3,000 an acre, depending on whether tracts are thinned mechanically or by hand. At the lowest cost per acre, assuming only half the Fremont-Winema needs thinning, the bill would be $345 million. Her annual budget is $25 million. Paul Harlan, vice president of resources for Collins, compares hauling slash out of the forest to “trucking air.”

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Coming around or the plan to thin forests in order to fuel it, Walls and an ever-expanding list of is ecologically sound. “For the short term, project developers, in the process of trying it seems to have some feasibility,” says to dream up incentives for a biomass plant, Asante Riverwind, Eastern Oregon forest realized that preventing catastrophic forest organizer for the Sierra Club, “but are we fires also meant reducing greenhouse gases. creating another mechanical mouth to feed? People—governments, nonprofits—amaz- Another issue is that some of these thinning ingly, will pay you for this. Nonprofits such projects are ecologically dubious. When as the Climate Trust provide funding for those are done, we’ll still have this plant that organizations and private individuals who needs fuels.” invest in cleaner technologies to offset their Riverwind argues that many of the thin- carbon footprint. ning projects could be completed in as little “Pardon the pun,” says Cylvia Hayes, “but as five years. the environmentalists really warmed up to Most environmentalists believe that restor- it when they found out we’d found a way to ing natural fire to the forest—once thinning also fight global warming.” Hayes, founder projects have been completed and the threat of the sustainable-development company 3E of catastrophic fires has diminished—is more Strategies, in Bend, Oregon, adds: “That’s ecologically sound than what amounts to when Tim Lillebo and Andy Kerr flipped. invasive surgery. Stephen Fitzgerald, a silvi- They saw it was a cost-effective method of culture and wildland fire education specialist doing forest restoration. It was going to be for Oregon State University, notes that histori- good for the local economy and the forest, cally ground fires burned in Eastside forests and it made a lot more sense to see those every seven to 12 years, reducing stress on fuels burned in a biomass plant than to see it the old growth. “Ponderosa pine will live go up as greenhouse gases.” for 600 years,” Fitzgerald says, “but we’re seeing them die at 250 because of competi- There are no guarantees. Not of financing, or carbon- tion for water.” “I don’t view biomass from the national sequestration credits, or grant monies, or a steady forests as a sustainable source of energy,” supply of biomass. Kerr adds, “but they do need to be thinned. I would prefer that fire then be used to sustain The federal tax credit for renewable energy the forests. It’s better to have them thinned production from biomass is expected to by fire than by chain saws.” expire Dec. 31. There is “a memorandum of Environmentalists and the timber industry understanding” among the developers and still disagree over salvage logging of already the environmentalists. There is a “statement burnt forests, and are battling the Bureau of cooperation.” And the State of Oregon Even with a steady supply of fuel, King of Land Management over the agency’s cur- has pre-approved a $10 million tax credit for adds, biomass plants are a high-capital risk. rent push, called the Western Oregon Plan Marubeni, but that won’t kick in until the The “rule of thumb” is $600 to $700 per kilo- Revisions, to cut timber and old growth plant is up and running. Assuming the plant watt hour in construction costs for a natural on 2.2 million acres of federal lands from is constructed. gas plant. For a biomass plant, it’s $2,000 to Portland south to California. “It’s a complete leap of faith for us,” King $2,500, he says. “There’s a reason why not Regardless of whether Marubeni throws says, “to put in a plant that doesn’t have a many biomass plants are being built.” the switch, the timber community and guaranteed source of biomass.” King says that there’s a reasonable chance environmentalists in the region have broken Nevertheless, based on the efforts of the that, should financiers balk at the risks ground on building a better relationship. Lakeview community and the spirit and inherent in the project, Marubeni may self- Kerr is well known from his timber war days determination of the people who’ve worked fund the plant. If the company does move as warning fellow activists, “Collaborate and to build a sustainable industry in the town, forward, the Lakeview Biomass Project die,” which of late has become, Collaborate Marubeni cut the ribbon for the anticipated would be Oregon’s 17th cogen facility. Not all or die. and much-hoped-for biomass plant last have been successful. The town of Klamath Lillebo observes, “This is the first time November, at the Fremont Sawmill. They’re Falls in southern Oregon owned and operated people are looking at me as though I’m not plugged in, but they haven’t turned on. King a 484-megawatt cogen plant before—deeply the devil incarnate.” says Marubeni has hired a California firm to in debt and having lost two contracts for Flynn sums it up this way: “Andy Kerr help find a long-term supply of biomass—one electric sales—selling it to PPM Energy last and his groupies came in guns blazing as that won’t be girdled by litigation, political December. to how he was going to save the world, and upheavals or mutations in Eastside forest- If Marubeni moves forward, it would lease treated us like idiots. How we didn’t under- management plans. land from Collins to site the cogen plant, stand how a forest works. How they were Some of the material could potentially sell steam to Collins in order to operate the going to explain it to us. A lot has changed. come from the Lakeview Stewardship Unit, company’s lumber kilns, and sell power over We learned how to collaborate. Everyone a 500,000-acre tract of the Fremont-Winema the national grid. The objective, says King, is has grown up. We learned how to listen to on which the Forest Service is allowed to sell to break ground in October. each other.” n timber and keep the proceeds, in order to Not everyone in the environmental com- fund forest-restoration projects. munity is convinced that the biomass plant,

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