Communications and Press
ACCG communications are handled by the group’s Administrative Workgroup. For press inquiries, please contact:
Economic Component Representative
[open]
Social Component Representative
Cathy Koos-Breazeal, Amador Firesafe Council
amadorfiresafe@gmail.com or 209.295.6200
Environmental Component Representative
Katherine Evatt, Foothill Conservancy
Katherine@mokeriver.com or 296-5734
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The ACCG recently adopted a communications policy, which is linked below. Additional work will be done by the Administrative Workgroup to finalize details associated with communications delegates and other issues.
Recent News Articles
CCWD approves concept of CHIPS buy
Calaveras County Water District directors approved in concept the use and purchase of surplus property near West Point for use by the nonprofit Calaveras Healthy Impact Products Solutions. CHIPS wants to use the 30 acres to produce wood chips for power generation and landscaping; sawmill and kiln operation; producing firewood, posts and poles and developing a native plant nursery for reforestation. The CCWD board vote allows CHIPS to take the project forward to county planning staff for review. CHIPS representative Rick Breeze-Martin told directors the organization is seeking funding from a variety of federal, state and private grants with county planning approval for a zoning change from public service to manufacturing expected within two years. CHIPS and CCWD officials are to negotiate purchase details for the remainder of the year. CHIPS will have the land appraised and expects to pay the fair value of the property to CCWD. “We want to get this done as fast as possible simply because (contractors) are ready to work,” Breeze-Martin said. Though not yet planned, Breeze-Martin gave a warm reception to Director Dennis Dooley’s mention of using biosolids CCWD could provide for conversion to fertilizer. Dooley pointed to Jamestown Sanitary District as an outfit having success with such a process. “There’s a million good reasons to move this forward,” Breeze-Martin said. The board voted 4-0 in favor of the conceptual purchase, with Director Bob Dean not present. CCWD assistant general manager Larry Diamond and board president Jeff Davidson were quick to note the vote does not constitute any form of obligation on the district’s behalf. Contact Sean Janssen atsjanssen@uniondemocrat.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view itor 890-7741. |
Biomass plant gets go-ahead in Lode
Settlement means dozens of new jobs
The Record
By Dana M. Nichols
Record Staff Writer
May 25, 2011 12:00 AM
SAN ANDREAS – The settlement of an environmental lawsuit means that the long-awaited Buena Vista Biomass Power plant will soon begin hiring workers and gearing up to generate 18.5 megawatts of power, a Calaveras County official announced Tuesday.
Calaveras County Supervisor Steve Wilensky, whose forested district in the West Point area is expected to help fuel the plant with wood chips from thinning projects, said he helped mediate the settlement between the Center for Biological Diversity and Buena Vista Power.
Wilensky said that Buena Vista Biomass Power has posted 24 job openings, and that a number of other jobs also will be available to workers who chip forest slash and transport the chips to the soon-to-open plant on Coal Mine Road between Ione and Valley Springs.
Wilensky’s district, once home to several lumber mills, now suffers from high unemployment as well as fire-prone, overgrown forests. Wilensky spoke during Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, making it clear he wanted his message to reach unemployed county residents.
The meetings are broadcast on public access cable television.
“Get down to Mother Lode Job Training,” Wilensky said. “Apply for those jobs.”
Wilensky also said he believes the settlement is the first of its kind in the nation.
Using wood chips and other plant matter to generate power is referred to as “biomass,” and it is a promising but controversial alternative to fossil fuels such as coal and oil.
Advocates say that biomass offers the hope of being carbon neutral, because it reduces the amount of open-pile burning after logging operations in forests or tree removal in orchards.
Burning the wood in a controlled system creates less air pollution, they say.
But the Center for Biological Diversity and other critics say biomass plants create a powerful incentive to simply cut forests down for fuel.
“Wide-scale biomass energy generation poses a real threat to the forest,” said Kevin Bundy, senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. “We are seeing this in other parts of the country where forests are literally being mined for energy right now. And that is going to be an increasing concern in California.”
Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made biomass power a key component of his plan to have a third of California’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020.
Bundy said his group settled its lawsuit because Buena Vista was willing to agree to restrictions on how it takes fuel from forests, and because local environmental groups have been part of a regional effort to improve the health of forests, including finding economic ways to remove overgrowth that now makes forests prone to catastrophic wildfires.
Among other things, Wilensky and Bundy said that monitors will soon begin visiting and cataloging slash piles.
In addition to forest waste, Buena Vista officials also anticipate fueling the plant with trees removed from orchards and with wood waste collected in nearby cities.
Bundy said the agreement isn’t perfect but that it addresses most of the concerns that his organization had.
“It recognizes that burning biomass is not harmless to the environment,” he said. “It does have an impact.”
Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 607-1361 or dnichols@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at recordnet.com/calaverasblog.
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Restoring forests, changing lives
By Joel Metzger
Posted: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 11:21 AM CDT
Cooperative effort thins growing problem in Calaveras County
By Dana M. Nichols Record Staff Writer August 17, 2010
GLENCOE – Hotshot fire crews from Alaska and local forestry workers teamed up last week for a historic effort to thin overgrown forests.
For as much as a half century, public forests such as the 70-acre Bureau of Land Management site along Highway 26 have been left as unmanaged tree plantations. As a result, they have become a deadly threat to nearby homes and towns.
“The big worry is the fire races up (Mokelumne River Canyon) and burns out all three towns (Glencoe, West Point and Wilseyville) at the top of it,” said Calaveras County Supervisor Steve Wilensky, who represents the Glencoe area.
For years, fire safety officials have wanted to thin overgrown forests. Only recently have loggers, public agencies, environmentalists and local leaders in the West Point and Glencoe area figured out a way to get the work done.
Wilensky said the 70-acre project launched this week required financial support from the Mother Lode Job Training program, from the Calaveras Healthy Impact Product Solutions program, from the Bureau of Land Management, and from the Calaveras Firesafe Council. Then, the Department of the Interior helped by sending one of its Alaska-based Hotshot fire crews.
Forests in much of the American West are in bad shape for a number of reasons. Decades of fire suppression have eliminated the periodic low-intensity fires that once kept underbrush down. And, after the areas were clearcut a half century or more ago, many were planted in dense, single-species plantations that resulted in small trees and fire-prone forests.
Wilensky and others have worked to make peace between loggers and environmentalists to allow forestry crews to thin the forests, and to allow some economic use of the resulting chips, such as selling it as fuel to electrical generation plants.
Still, the politics of logging have left many environmental groups wary that what sounds like a thinning project is really a backdoor effort to resume clearcutting.
The project near Glencoe is designed to address those concerns by proving that well-trained crews can conduct the work to rigorous specifications, leaving large trees and a diversity of species while also controlling undergrowth. Wilensky said he and others took representatives of the Center for Biological Diversity on a tour of the forest before the clearing operation and will bring them back again after the work is done.
“They are going to check on whether we were truthful about our methods,” Wilensky said.
That’s key because the Center for Biological Diversity has objected to plans to sell chips from thinning operations in the area to a biomass-fueled electricity plant near Ione. Such wood chip sales are a major component in making forest maintenance economically viable.
Once the methods are proved, Wilensky and forest officials said they anticipate writing contracts to thin 50,000 acres or more of BLM and Stanislaus National Forest lands in coming years.
That would be good news for Robert Smith of Smith Grinding, a Mountain Ranch-based contractor who has the heavy machinery to grind dense undergrowth and trees into wood chips. If the larger contracts come through, Smith anticipates he would be able to expand his firm from the two employees he has to six or more for years to come.
“It would help quite a bit,” he said. “We have quite a few people I’ve talked to who are ready to go.”
The Alaska Hotshots, for their part, said they enjoyed their week in Glencoe even though most of them developed rashes from poison oak, a plant they say they never encounter in their state.
“It’s a nice visual,” Hotshot Seth Reedy, 30, said of the open forest with widely-spaced tall trees that results from the clearing operation.
Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 607-1361 or dnichols@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at recordnet.com/calaverasblog.