n forestry
“We need forest thinning crews, we need
heavy-equipment operators, we need forest
technicians, we need environmental planners,
we need people that can do the mechanical and
logistical work, we need engineers.”
— Steve Frisch, president, Sierra Business Council
Petaluma-based company, founded
in 2007, has worked on several pub-
lic-private partnerships to develop
its advanced technologies and evalu-
ate their commercial feasibility. Paul
says his company has a “21st century
answer” to the forest-waste problem
that meets California emission stan-
dards.
The company is building a
3-megawatt commercial plant, called
the Hat Creek BioEnergy facility, in
Shasta-Trinity National Forest, with
partial funding from the California
Energy Commission. It’s project-
ed to be operational in 2021. Paul,
originally from New Hampshire
where the paper and pulp industry
once thrived, says biomass will cre-
ate much-needed middle-class jobs.
“You bring employment into rural
areas,” he says. “In that part of ru-
ral California, I mean, there’s great
trout fishing, but the population’s
not growing in those neighborhoods.
You would certainly get local support
for the work.”
Shifting at least some of the fi-
nancial burden of forest manage-
ment to private industry could lead
to innovative ways to increase the
pace and scale. The Blue Forest Con-
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servation, for example, has devel-
oped the Forest Resilience Bond, a
public-private partnership in which
an organization can use bond money
to hire private contractors to do fire
prevention or restoration work much
faster than the government can. The
pilot project launched in 2018 in
Tahoe National Forest.
Steve Frisch, president of the
nonprofit Sierra Business Council
in Truckee, agrees that forest man-
agement activities can reinvigorate
rural communities by launching a
restoration economy, instead of the
resource extraction one that Cali-
fornia has relied on for so long.
“We need forest thinning crews,
we need heavy-equipment oper-
ators, we need forest technicians,
we need environmental planners,
we need people that can do the
mechanical and logistical work,
we need engineers,” he says. “If
we’re also going to be looking at
bioenergy, we need energy indus-
try workers who could be replaced
from fossil fuels to bioenergy who
could be moving from one industry
that is declining to another indus-
try that could be scaling to meet
the challenge.”
WHO WILL LEAD THE WAY?
Battalion Chief Griffis is a burn boss,
which means he puts together pre-
scribed fire programs and leads crews
of firefighters to conduct these fires.
He’s coordinating a fuels reduction
project on about 2,000 acres in Ne-
vada City. Reader Ranch landowners
spearheaded it by applying for this
work to be done by Cal Fire a couple
years ago. Griffis then reached out
to neighbors to see if they wanted to
participate in a larger effort. Eigh-
teen landowners agreed.
“Six, seven years ago, most peo-
ple just said, no, my property’s fine,
don’t bother me,” Griffis says. “But
after five years of consecutively
larger and more damaging fires, the
interest is now coming out. We are
getting more people contacting us,
saying, hey, what can I do, what can
you do, to get my property cleared?”
In September, Gov. Jerry Brown
signed legislation requiring the Cal
Fire Office of the State Fire Marshal,
working with the Statewide Training
and Education Advisory Committee,
to create a certification program for
burn bosses to allow private indi-
viduals to become certified to burn.
Currently, the state government uses