- by John Cox, April 6, 2015, Bakersfield Californian
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"449","attributes":{"alt":"kern biomass california","class":"media-image","style":"width: 300px; height: 236px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Felix Adamo/Californian"}}]]Local farmers are adding their support to legislation that would divert revenue from California’s cap-and-trade program to biomass plants that generate power by burning agricultural and urban green waste.
Last month the Kern County Farm Bureau co-hosted a meeting in Delano to raise awareness of Assembly Bill 590 and help an industry the group called “very important” to local growers, in that biomass plants take trimmings and old trees that would otherwise be more expensive for farmers to dispose of.
AB 590, co-authored by Assemblymen Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield, and Brian Dahle, R-Bieber, is making its way through the state capitol at a time when California’s biomass industry says it is having a hard time competing with cheaper sources of electrical power, including solar panels and natural gas.
- by Debra Moore, April 5, 2015, Plumas County News
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"448","attributes":{"alt":"california biomass energy facilities","class":"media-image","height":"480","style":"width: 333px; height: 431px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Graphic: livingassessment.wikispaces.com","width":"371"}}]]The Sierra Institute is poised to receive $2.6 million from the California Energy Commission, but first the public will have a chance to comment on the biomass boiler that would be built near the county’s health and human services building in Quincy.
The commission announced March 10 that it had awarded $2.6 million to the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment after ranking it No. 2 out of the nearly two dozen proposals received.
Jonathan Kusel, the executive director of the institute, said he was thrilled when he heard the news. Likewise, Plumas County Supervisor Lori Simpson, and Dony Sawchuk, the county’s facility’s director, expressed their appreciation that the county would benefit from the award. The construction would provide jobs; the forests would be rendered healthier; and the power and heat generated would be more economical.
A small biomass boiler, the first of its type in the state, would provide heat for the college dorms and power and heat for the health and human services building.
But not everyone supports the project. Graeagle resident Mark Mihevc has repeatedly spoken out at Board of Supervisors’ meetings about his aversion to biomass technology. Mihevc prefers a compost approach to biomass and opposes mechanical thinning of forests to provide fuel to produce energy.
During the Feb. 17 Board of Supervisors meeting, when the supervisors were discussing a similar biomass plant for Eastern Plumas Health Care, Mihevc objected to biomass boilers at all proposed locations, which he described as “massive industrial thinning that will kill the forest.” Mihevc said that fire is nature’s path to forest health.
- by Seth Nidever, March 26, 2015, Hanford Sentinel
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"438","attributes":{"alt":"biomass in california","class":"media-image","height":"410","style":"width: 333px; height: 284px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Graphic: Airqualityguy.wordpress.com","width":"480"}}]][Notice not a single mention of health and environmental impacts of biomass facilities. -Josh]
Once upon a time, local orchard farmers taking out trees piled them up in large heaps and struck a match, sending huge plumes of smoke into the air.
More recently, the waste has gone to biomass power plants that crank out electricity, meet stricter air pollution requirements and provide a renewable energy component.
But now that the whole biomass industry in California is threatened with extinction, the issue has become a hot topic in the ag industry.
Growers are asking: If you can’t burn orchard trees that have been removed, and you’ve got no biomass plant to send them to, where does it all go?
- December 17, 2014, U.S. Department of Agriculture
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"350","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"480","style":"width: 333px; height: 333px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that more than 200,000 tons of biomass were removed from federal lands through the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP). BCAP, reauthorized by the 2014 Farm Bill, provided incentives for the removal of dead or diseased trees from National Forests and Bureau of Land Management lands for renewable energy, while reducing the risk of forest fire. This summer, 19 energy facilities in 10 states participated in the program.
"This initiative helps to retrieve forest residues that are a fire risk, but otherwise are costly to remove," said Vilsack. "In just three months, working with private partners across the country, the program helped to reduced fire, disease and insect threats while providing more biomass feedstock for advanced energy facilities."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Farm Service Agency administered the program earlier this year. Eligible farmers, ranchers or foresters participating in BCAP received a payment to partially offset the cost of harvesting and delivering forest or agricultural residues to a qualified energy facility. Up to $12.5 million is available each year for biomass removal.
Key program accomplishments include:
In Colorado's Front Range, 18,000 tons of trees targeted by the USDA Forest Service to reduce forest fire threats were removed to generate energy.
In California's Rim Fire area in Tuolumne County, nearly 100 percent of the USDA Forest Service's targeted 40,000 tons of forest residue was approved for removal and transport to energy facilities.
In Arizona, 41,000 tons of forest residue in Apache and Navajo counties were approved for removal and transport to energy facilities.
In Oscoda County, Mich., home of the Huron Manistee National Forest, 5,000 tons of forest residue were approved for removal and transport to energy facilities.
These accomplishments helped the Forest Service meet or exceed its restoration goals for Fiscal Year 2014, including reducing hazardous fuels on 1.7 million acres in the wildland urban interface and sustaining or restoring watershed conditions on 2.9 million acres, resulting in 2.8 billion board feet of timber volume sold. To further support this program, the Forest Service has entered into a three-year, $1.5 million agreement to provide technical assistance to the Farm Service Agency as they implement BCAP on National Forest System lands. This will enable the development and execution of biomass sales, and help open and support new and existing markets for biomass products.
-December 11, 2014, Bakersfield Californian
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"347","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 244px; height: 118px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]District attorneys from eight California counties announced Thursday the settlement of a civil environmental enforcement action against three subsidiaries of a New Jersey-based company.
The settlement covers Covanta Energy LLC's Kern County biomass energy facility in Delano, along with other company facilities in Mendota and Oroville.
Kern County will receive about $75,000 as its reimbursement for costs and penalties out of Covanta's total fine of $536,211.
Biomass energy plants burn forest, agricultural and urban wood fuels in order to generate electricity. They produce ash waste streams that are either sent to landfills or have other uses in road building or agriculture.
The civil enforcement action was filed in Sacramento County and asserted that biomass ash sampling and analysis at the three Covanta facilities was not sufficiently rigorous.
The facilities will be bound under the terms of a permanent injunction prohibiting any future violations of law and requiring adherence to the new sampling and testing program for their biomass ash.
In addition to Kern and Sacramento counties, other counties participating in the action were Butte, Fresno, Glenn, Stanislaus, Tulare and Tuolumne.
- by Chad Hanson, August 28, 2014, Earth Island Journal
[How much of the forests that experienced the Rim Fire will be feeding biomass incinerators? -Ed.]
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"258","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"359","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 555px; height: 415px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: David Lucas","width":"480"}}]]The US Forest Service issued a draft decision yesterday for a massive post-fire logging project in the Stanislaus National Forest portion of the 2013 California Rim Fire, which covered 257,171 acres on the national forest and Yosemite National Park. A final, signed decision on the proposal is expected this afternoon.
The draft decision proposes over 37,000 acres of intensive post-fire logging, which would remove the majority of the rarest and most ecologically valuable habitat resulting from the fire on the Stanislaus National Forest: “snag forest habitat” created by high-intensity fire in mature conifer forest. (Forty one percent of the Rim Fire area was comprised of non-conifer vegetation, such as grassland and foothill chaparral, and most of the forest area burned at low/moderate-intensity, wherein only a portion of the trees were killed).
This would include essentially clear-cutting 95 percent of the snags (standing fire-killed trees) in 19,462 acres of the fire area. An additional 17,706 acres of “roadside” logging is planned along roads, including old logging roads, which are not maintained for public use (and many of which are closed roads, long since decommissioned). Much of this would be clearcut too, including live, healthy, mature, and old-growth trees, which would be removed by the thousands, for no credible public safety benefit, based upon profoundly vague criteria that allow just about any tree to be cut.
- by Virginia Moran, May 16, 2014, Source: The Union
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"134","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 219px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; float: right;"}}]]Regarding the proposed “biofuels” plant (i.e. acceleration of climate change) project, here is what I find “scary”: that residents of western Nevada County are never allowed to live our lives in peace. If we are twitchy and irritable it is because we are constantly on guard regarding what the next project will be to exploit our county.
What I find scary is cronyism (i.e. revolving door) between public and quasi-public agencies here, and members of the so-called private sector (“consultants” and contractors) who tend to look out for their own interests (i.e., profit).