Guest opinion

Healthy forests?

The Healthy Forest Rest-oration Act was funded to reduce hazardous fuel loads in the nation's forests.

The USDA Bureau of Res-ources and Environment declared fuel reduction top priority in forest counties.

With Flathead communities highly threatened, the county fire plan prioritizes treatment of thousands of acres in wildlands/urban interface, while millions of adjoining federal acres remain hazardous.

On May 13, the Daily Interlake provided biomass heating system rationale for the new high school.

Although "Fuels for Schools" may achieve energy savings, this is not the prime objective intended for federal Healthy Forest Initiative appropriations.

Savings of $24,800 per year of biomass over natural gas was rated a possible 8-year payback on investment.

However, my calculations show 9.7 years payback on monies from local taxes alone of $240,000.

The capital investment of $480,000 including the federal grant shows payback at 19.3 years, very near the possible life of the installation, with few years left for actual savings.

This study shows 740 tons of wood burned per year. An actual fuel reduction program in San Bernardino produced 400 to 500 tons of fuel per day, which would have met our annual school needs in about 1.5 days' harvest.

To successfully achieve the Healthy Forest goal, success must be measured by the number of treated acres per dollar invested. In Montana, this would require about 37 acres or less running a consecutive 20 tons per acre to provide the year's supply of biomass for the Kalispell school.

If waste from normal logging operations only is used, probably from private lands, very little if any incremental fuel reduction would be achieved.

The minuscule acreage treated would have little impact on catastrophic fire and therefore represents poor capital investment per acre.

Fuels to Schools is a feel-good idea to basically subsidize schools but provides inconsequential fuel reduction for fire-prone forests.

If we care about our forests, our most valuable renewable resource, and safety of towns and communities, we must scrutinize tax expenditures.

Taxpayers cannot afford cutesy, wasteful programs losing sight of goal. Nor afford ongoing, ever-increasing fire-fighting costs, forest restoration, and rebuilding of community infrastructures lost to fire.

If provided the opportunity, forests are capable of paying for their own recovery.

Fuel-choked forests are loaded with valuable dead, down and dying, but still usable timber for the mills, small-diameter thinned trees with many uses, and wood-fiber waste for cogeneration plants producing power generation and heat for manufacturing.

Clarice Ryan

Bigfork