From beetles to bucks

Dead lodgepole pines turned into products from pellet fuel to pens

By Roger Fillion, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Ken Papaleo / The Rocky

Stacks of beetle-killed timber wait to be turned into pellet fuel at the Rocky Mountain Pellet Co. mill, which is scheduled to open this summer on the outskirts of Walden. Mike Frink, son of one of the owners, has a bird's-eye view.

Ken Papaleo / The Rocky

A conference table at Mountain Valley Bank in Walden is made from beetle-kill pine, as are the bank's wood ceiling, desks and paneling. "It was all local wood," says bank president Zack Jacobsen.

Ken Papaleo / The Rocky

Retired teacher Bucky Brumfield crafts pens and pencils from dead pine. Beetle-inflicted blue stains and knots in the wood add to the design.

Citizens here are turning dead lodgepole pines into pencils and pens, log homes, furniture, pellet fuel and more - hoping to make a buck and avert a potential disaster.

Residents fret that millions of beetle- kill pines in the nearby hills and mountains could explode into a fire that destroys their northern Colorado community.

But locals also realize that using the wood for beetle-kill products is just a start - and not a silver bullet.

"There's little stuff going on, but not near what we need," said Jackson County Commissioner John Rich.

But, still, he's grateful. "Small steps lead to big trips," he said.

Dead and dying lodgepole acreage in Colorado has grown to 1.5 million since the first signs of the mountain pine beetle outbreak in 1996, according to 2007 data from the U.S. Forest Service and the Colorado State Forest Service.

The acreage in Jackson County alone is 322,000.

Officials say homes, property and lives could be lost if the potentially explosive timber burns. The burned land then could spur mudslides, dumping debris and sediment into municipal water and irrigation systems.

"A catastrophic fire would make Hurricane Katrina look like a picnic," warned Rich.

Aside from the U.S. Forest Service arranging for dead trees to be removed from federal land, officials here hope capitalism and entrepreneurial zeal will help as well.

The goal: make the dead trees financially attractive to loggers, who'd be more willing to harvest the stands of stricken pines and reduce the fire danger.

Enter the beetle-kill products, including furniture, log homes and a new wood pellet-fuel factory here.

"The whole idea behind getting the private sector involved is to give value to the wood," said Gary Severson, executive director of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments, a group of local and municipal governments.

Severson said that's not the case today, in part because the dead lodgepoles typically are smaller in diameter than other trees such as Douglas fir.

"There's just not a lot of market for this wood," he said. "It's junk material for the logger."

Severson cited Summit County as an example. A federal logging contract on national forest land there attaches a price of $1,600 to $2,000 an acre for loggers to come in and remove the beetle-kill trees. Severson would like to get that price tag closer to $500 an acre.

"If we can cut that by two-thirds, we can thin two-thirds more acreage," said Severson. Greater demand for the wood also would entice more loggers to enter the market and bring down logging costs, he added.

In Walden, workers are building a multimillion-dollar beetle-related project on the outskirts of town.

The Rocky Mountain Pellet Co. mill, which sits on 110 acres, is scheduled to start producing wood pellets this summer. Company officials say the 20,000- square-foot facility, once completed, will be capable of making up to 150,000 tons of pellets a year that homes, businesses, schools and government could burn for heat.

"We can consume just about everything we can take," said Bob Stahl, the mill's plant manager. "It will be one of the largest mills in the United States."

Pointing to a huge stockpile of beetle-kill timber waiting outside the mill for processing, Stahl said: "That's about two months worth of logs out there."

A new pellet mill in Kremmling, owned by Confluence Energy, began shipping beetle-kill pellets last week.

On a smaller scale, Bucky Brumfield is using dead trees to make pens and pencils. The wood's knots and beetle-inflicted blue stains add to the design.

"You can see the beetle damage," said Brumfield, displaying one of the hand-crafted pens. The retired schoolteacher sells them for around $25.

The beetle kill has been used for other purposes, too.

Inside Mountain Valley Bank on Walden's Main Street, bank president Zack Jacobsen shows a visitor the bank's ornate wood ceiling, desks, conference table and wood paneling - all made from beetle-kill pine.

"It was all local wood," said Jacobsen, who opted to use the wood for two reasons: It helps the economy and maybe others will be spurred into doing the same.

Across the street from the bank, James McEntire is selling furniture he built at a local gallery here. His works include lamps, tables and dressers. A pine and copper floor lamp is priced at $300.

In addition to the blue stain that can add to the furniture's decorative features, McEntire likes the wood because he doesn't have to cut down live trees.

"It's getting easier and easier to find standing dead trees," he said.

"DK" Mansker has been using the logs to build customs log homes. "It's perfect for me. I like to build with the moisture in the log," he said.

He noted the beetle-kill logs have about a 20 percent moisture content vs. around 33 percent for a green tree.

"You can control where it cracks," said Mansker, owner of Dakota Rose Log Homes.

Rich, the county commissioner, welcomes such projects. But he said more needs to be done. He reckons citizens and government types must "think outside the box."

"I'm real conservative. But what about a government sawmill?" he asked.

fillionr@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2467

• June 4, 2008

  10:52 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  jbowen43 writes:

  How about contact information for the producers of these products? How about information on how we can get the price of logging beetle killed trees lowered?

• June 4, 2008

  11:05 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  MrJim writes:

  what happened to the company that was going to make ethonol from the beetle killed trees? Weren't they suppose to be setting up shop in Commerce City? A followup story on that would be nice.

• June 4, 2008

  9:59 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  logger writes:

  The dirty little secret that the enviromentalist/media won't tell you is that a sawmill in Saratoga Wyoming, capable of handling twice the volume as both pellet plants, closed in 2003 from lack of timber! Both Walden and Kremmling had large sawmills that closed in the 90's because of "lack of timber".
  The timber harvest on local National Forests declined by 80% in the 90's because of enviros. Why doesn't the media examine the history of the demise of your timber industry-and let the public lay blame where it may?
  The enviro populated ski country wanted natural and didn't like to see clearcuts. The crazy irony is that now every local, state, and federal polititian wants the Forest Service to clearcut more! The only thing that explains to the public the ecology behind a clearcut better than a pine beetle epidemic is a wildfire. Suddenly now they get it. The loggers and Forest Service knew it all along.
  Logging certainly wouldn't have stopped this epidemic. But one has to ponder how much the severity of it could have been reduced by a thriving and healthy timber industry. Up here in the Black Hills of South Dakota we still have a thriving timber industry. Our little dry forest has 5 times the sawmilling capacity as the whole state of Colorado! Our little forest harvested more timber last year than the whole state of Colorado! Our little forest is the only forest where the numbers of pine beetle killed trees has plummeted in the last 5 years due to an aggresive thinning and sanitation program. In ten years why you're still trying to convince yourself that dead is beautifull, we'll be enjoying a green forest. Please don't move up here.