Thanks to NY Biomass Incinerator, Firewood More Difficult to Find

- by Pete Cree­don, Octo­ber 6, 2014, Water­town Dai­ly Times

Always nice to see a com­pa­ny come in an offer jobs and oth­er things that will ben­e­fit the area it serves (“ReEn­er­gy wins huge con­tract at Drum,” Sept. 30).

The ques­tion is, at what cost? The peo­ple this will affect in a neg­a­tive way are a small group of peo­ple who for the most part will not receive any of the ben­e­fits of this bio­mass plant.

These peo­ple are the ones who heat their homes with wood. For the last cou­ple of years as this plant has been com­ing online, it has become hard­er to find fire­wood and at a price that has not been inflated.

There was an arti­cle in the paper last year, I believe, how the fire­wood pro­duc­ers were say­ing that they have not cut back on fire­wood pro­duc­tion in favor of wood chip pro­duc­tion for this bio­mass plant. That is hard to believe. The com­pa­ny I get my fire­wood from, I know for a fact, sup­plies this plant.

Last year, it was dif­fi­cult to find the wood I need­ed for last win­ter. The price was almost dou­ble what I spent the year before.

Like every­thing else, the cost of fire­wood is going up due to fuel and labor costs passed on from the log­ging com­pa­ny. This only makes sense.

How­ev­er, when a fire­wood-pro­duc­ing com­pa­ny rais­es its price for a cord of cut and split wood or a load of uncut logs just because it has the prod­uct avail­able because it is not sell­ing to the bio­mass plant is just not right. The log­ging com­pa­nies are, of course (like any oth­er busi­ness), going to go where they can make the most money.

Soon, as this plant pro­duces more and more elec­tric­i­ty, it will require more wood chips to keep it run­ning at top capac­i­ty. This will cre­ate even more of a strain on the local fire­wood industry.

Prices for fire­wood will go up faster then they have ever before as it becomes hard­er and hard­er to find fire­wood. The oth­er option is to use heat­ing fuel or gas.

Prices for heat­ing oil are high, and for the moment heat­ing with wood is still a cheap­er option. Got to won­der how long this will be true.

I hope to be short­ly one of the hun­dreds of North­ern New York­ers who are flee­ing the state in hopes of find­ing a place to live that one can afford and find mean­ing­ful work.