BC Hydro is burning most of the timber it is cutting along the 340-kilometre-long route of its Northwest Transmission Line north of Terrace, saying the quality of the wood and sheer remoteness of the project make it uneconomic to salvage.
Hydro has warned residents along the route to expect smokey and hazy skies as contractors burn hundreds of thousands of trees – almost all of the estimated 490,000 cubic metres of wood that is now being cleared along the right-of-way for the $404 million project.
Ironically, one of the environmental arguments Hydro makes for the new line is that electrification will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in northwestern B.C.
The logging is being conducted by six regional First Nations and their contractors as part of an agreement with Hydro that turned title to the timber over to First Nations.
But the loggers have been unable to find markets for most of the timber they are cutting, said Bruce Barrett, BC Hydro vice-president of project and program delivery. It’s not for a lack of trying, he said.
“They have been trying to find commercial value in the wood and in fact some of the timber taken off the project closer to Terrace has produced merchantable logs,” he said.
“But a lot of these areas are second-growth timber; it has smaller stems and so has little value. As you go north, most of the trees are hemlock and balsam that have a very low market value. There is no market for pulp logs in the north any more (with the closure of Skeena Cellulose pulp mill) and the market is really looking for higher-valued sawlogs.”
He said the northern portion of the line, where the Tahltan First Nation has the clearing contracts, distance to markets is the issue.
“When the Tahltan first started, they were actually processing and decking some logs in their area but found they couldn’t find anyone that would even come and take them for free. It was 300 kilometres away from any market point, but it was also the quality and species of the wood involved. They were actually losing money by cutting and processing logs and then having to turn around and burn them.”
The transmission line runs along Highway 37 for most of its route, beginning at a substation southwest of Terrace and ending in the north at Bob Quinn Lake. The right-of-way is about 80 metres wide along its 340-kilometre route.
Clearing began in January for the 270-kilovolt transmission line, which is to bring energy to fuel industrial development in the province’s northwest.
Here’s what Hydro and the ministry of forests, lands and natural resources say has happened to the wood. Of the 490,000 cubic metres being cut, 445,000 is on Crown land and the rest is on is on Nisga’a land or private land. Half the timber along the right-of-way – 290,000 cubic metres – has been cleared but by the end of October, while some logs may still be at right-of-way sites, only 24,400 cubic metres of timber had been scaled for sale.
To put the volume of wood being cut into perspective – a cubic metre is equivalent in size to a telephone pole – the 490,000-cubic-metre cut ranks the clearing project as one of the province’s largest logging operations. It is enough wood to fill 16,000 logging trucks and is more fibre than the entire B.C. wood pellet industry uses in a year.
Barrett said Hydro is making every effort it can to find a home for the wood. The First Nations doing the clearing have sophisticated logging operations and are capable of extracting value from the timber where they can, he said.
Frederic Tolmie, chair of the Nisga’a corporation Nass Area Enterprises, said in an email that the company is trying to utilize merchantable timber wherever its feasible.
“Much of the quality of the wood is not by itself merchantable although we cannot provide you at this time with any specifics,” he said.
Although Hydro has no figures on the volume of wood being burned – some of the smaller stems in the northern portion are being chipped and returned to the soil as mulch – the carbon footprint of the project is likely to be enormous. If all the wood were to be burned, the province estimates it would release about 600,000 tonnes of C02 into the atmosphere.
The sheer size of the cut and the fact that most of it is being burned raises disturbing issues about forest management, said Bob Simpson, independent MLA for Cariboo North. He said the clearcut and the wood-burning likely puts the province in violation of two of its own laws: The Clean Energy Act, which sets targets for carbon emissions reductions, and the Zero Net Deforestation Act, which contains a pledge to replace tracts of forest removed from the land base with plantings elsewhere.
“Where is the government’s replacement of this volume of standing timber to meet their obligations under zero net deforestation?” Simpson said.
“To me, it’s the lack of foresight, the lack of planning, of thoughtfulness by both government and BC Hydro. This is just a lazy approach to dealing with this public resource.”
NDP forests critic Norm Macdonald said it makes no sense to be cutting and burning such a huge volume of wood in one corner of the province while sawmills in the Interior are crying for more wood.
“It’s counter-intuitive. Most people in the province are talking about a fibre shortage and then at the same time we are being wasteful with the fibre we have, and we are not able to figure out a way to utilize it. It doesn’t make sense to most people and it’s not just this particular project in the northwest. There are others. Is proper oversight being paid to the removal of the wood?”
In an email, Forests Minister Steve Thomson said the province accounts for permanent removal of trees in its greenhouse gas emissions tracking, which were on target as of June 2012.
He justified the loss of forestland saying it is being put to a higher use.
“The Northwest Transmission line and other projects like it will bring huge economic benefits to the province.”
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