Discussion of the Headwaters Protection and Restoration Act

Courtney Staatz, representing Senator Wayne Allard, led a discussion of the Headwaters Protection and Restoration Act, a bill the Senator has introduced as an extension of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act designed to address the current pine beetle crisis as well as longer term forest management needs.  Allard’s bill seeks to reduce the risk for catastrophic damage to the watershed with a budget of $227 million over five years, all for use in Colorado. Features of the bill include:

• Increased authority for local forest rangers to make local decisions;
• Additional funding for fuels reduction and forest thinning;
• Local business concerns to be involved in solutions;
• Grants to help start Biomass projects for public facilities;
• 50 % Cost share grants for HOA projects through the state forest service;
• Incentives for utilities to use biomass fuels;
• Creation of a forest management fund  through timber sales;
• Redirection of existing appropriations for use in Colorado.

One of our first concerns was the difficulty of a Colorado-specific bill passing the US Senate. 

Courtney responded that since Senator Allard is on the appropriations committee, he would have great  influence over the bill’s fate. He could attach it to another piece of legislation with greater appeal.

Another voiced concern involved the lag time between appropriation and expenditure of funds to support actual work on the ground. How can we expedite the process? Courtney responded that the bill covers other forest health issues besides pine beetle: fungus, drought and blow down. Since many of the bill’s provisions use tools already in place, they could be implemented quickly.

Dan Bihn, who advises the Colorado Wood Utilization & Marketing Project, spoke on the subject of energy production from wood. He believes it is more suitable for generating heat than for producing electricity. He described the development of whole tree pellets for use in boilers, the successful wood pellet industry in Austria, and applications for the technology in Colorado. 

Though a ready source of pellets for a large scale operation does not yet exist in the state, he urges that any industry building plants consider the use of biomass as part of their flexible fuels facilities. As natural gas prices rise, the economics of using wood becomes more attractive.  

The cost of constructing a wood pellet factory is between $3 and 4 million. With a production of 30,000 tons a year, investment payback would take ten years. Dan remarked that a pellet factory could mill dead standing trees for 15  years with good results.

Randy Piper is considering reopening a saw mill in Granby to process beetle kill logs and market the output as “Blue Denim” products. He believes a viable niche market exists for blue stain wood, especially in local markets characterized by environmentally-conscious consumers. Production of structural lumber from salvaged beetle-infected trees, whose distinction from unblemished beams is purely cosmetic, is a possibility, especially in the construction of low income housing. With a combination of tax breaks, business has good potential.