High-Grade Wood Going to Nova Scotia Biomass Incinerator

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

Pho­to: Erin Pot­tie, Cape Bre­ton Bureau

Top sto­ries in Halifax

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.

Fras­er, who runs a sawmill and is also a con­trac­tor who sup­plies wood to cus­tomers, said con­trac­tors sim­ply can’t afford to sep­a­rate qual­i­ty saw logs from low­er-qual­i­ty stands of wood intend­ed for the bio­mass plant.

“It is real­ly a prob­lem for us,” he said. “They’re not sup­posed to be tar­get­ing our young stems, but they are and it’s all because of the price.”

Con­trac­tors “shouldn’t be tak­ing our good stems and chip­ping them for that plant.”

Fras­er said the bio­mass plant was a good idea but it has been poor­ly executed.

He said it was expect­ed to increase the sup­ply of qual­i­ty logs for lum­ber by mak­ing it eco­nom­i­cal for con­trac­tors to access low­er-qual­i­ty wood­lots. While in those stands, con­trac­tors were expect­ed to sort the wood and sell the high­er-qual­i­ty logs to sawmills.

“Actu­al­ly, it’s been the oppo­site,” Fras­er said. “The prob­lem is you’re in there on a tonne basis. You’re real­ly try­ing to put as many tonnes out on the side of the road as fast as pos­si­ble to make a prof­it. In these poor stands, a guy’s say­ing ‘I’m not hir­ing a guy to sort out a few logs’.”

Peter Chris­tiano, own­er of Finewood Floor­ing and Lum­ber in Mid­dle Riv­er, Vic­to­ria Coun­ty, says the lack of a guar­an­teed long-term sup­ply of hard­wood is hurt­ing his business.

Chris­tiano needs qual­i­ty hard­wood to make floor­ing and said the bio­mass plant’s con­stant need for low-qual­i­ty fuel is tak­ing away any incen­tive wood­lot own­ers and con­trac­tors had to gath­er high­er-qual­i­ty wood.

He said sev­er­al local pro­duc­ers have sim­ply “opt­ed out of the sys­tem, going ‘Why both­er? All they want is low-qual­i­ty wood and it’s not worth it’.”

Mark MacPhail, forestry man­ag­er for the Unama’ki Insti­tute of Nat­ur­al Resources which over­sees First Nation employ­ment in forestry in Cape Bre­ton, said he has seen some high-qual­i­ty saw logs being sent to the bio­mass plant.

“It wasn’t a large amount of wood, like maybe a cou­ple of truck­loads out of a job that had hun­dreds of truck­loads,” he said.

“In my expe­ri­ence, I don’t see it at a high rate.”

MacPhail, too, said the prob­lem is the price being paid for bio­mass fuel.

“With the rates being paid, it’s often not worth a contractor’s time to sep­a­rate the grades,” he said.

Brent MacIn­nis, own­er of Hugh MacIn­nis Lum­ber in French­vale, Cape Bre­ton Coun­ty, said there are rel­a­tive­ly few­er good qual­i­ty hard­wood trees on the east side of Cape Bre­ton Island and he is not aware of saw logs being used for bio­mass fuel.

A forestry con­trac­tor and fire­wood and pal­let pro­duc­er, MacIn­nis also said he is not expe­ri­enc­ing a lack of wood due to the bio­mass plant.

How­ev­er, he said, it’s prob­a­ble that some qual­i­ty hard­wood is not being sort­ed prop­er­ly from low-qual­i­ty stands and a cen­tral sort­ing yard might make it eas­i­er for small­er con­trac­tors to sell enough high-qual­i­ty wood for some­one else to arrange shipping.

Bob Ban­croft, a biol­o­gist and forester from Pom­quet, Antigo­nish Coun­ty, said clear cut­ting is not good for the for­est, not good for wildlife and ulti­mate­ly, not good for humans.

In 2008–2009, he was a mem­ber of a pan­el that advised the NDP gov­ern­ment against allow­ing bio­mass fuel to be used for pow­er generation.

“I don’t believe it’s a wise use at all,” Ban­croft said.

He said the Nova Sco­tia gov­ern­ment has allowed cor­po­rate inter­ests to take over the forests in the name of sav­ing jobs at the Port Hawkes­bury pulp and paper mill.

Nova Sco­tia Pow­er has said the bio­mass plant would only use mate­r­i­al gath­ered using sus­tain­able prac­tices. It was ini­tial­ly set up to burn waste wood and saw­dust and bark left over from sawmills.

Spokes­woman Neera Ritcey said Mon­day the pow­er com­pa­ny fol­lows “the rules around pro­cure­ment of bio­mass and it excludes the use of high-val­ue wood, and we ensure our sup­pli­ers meet that requirement.”

She said Nova Sco­tia Pow­er con­ducts one or two audits a week on top of field inspec­tions and audits that sup­pli­ers con­duct to ensure the prod­uct com­ing into the bio­mass plant is waste material.