Calling it a win-win-win situation, Craig Brown, chairman of the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors, said a potential biomass processing plant near Paulden could bring 100 jobs to the area.
In addition, it could eliminate the necessity for county involvement in fuel mitigation services and prescribed burning on land in five forests. Best of all, it would allow rainwater to saturate deep enough to recharge the aquifer.
Still in the exploration phase, the project, called Watershed Restoration and Management Plan, would involve an outside company to bring in low-impact equipment and clear acres of land of juniper, pinyon and chaparral. The woody material would then go to a privately owned, not yet built, processing plant near Paulden to be condensed into large sausage-sized “pellets,” which then would be transported by railroad from the Paulden plant to the West Coast and subsequently by ship to buyers in South Korea.
Brown said a demonstration project with slash harvesting could begin as early as December. He estimates a savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars by processing the slash, which is hard to get rid of, even when offered free. Korea can use the pellets as ground cover for its dairy herds, or to supplement fuel in its coal-burning plants.
The success of the project relies on how cost-productive the removal is, the amount of slash harvested, and whether removal of vegetation and restoration of grassland truly increases watershed yield.
From The Daily Courier: https://dcourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=152055