As of October, Good Earth Power AZ had thinned 5,142 acres of trees across northern Arizona since it acquired the 300,000-acre Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) phase one contract in 2013. That’s compared to the company’s initial projections that by 2015 it would be thinning 45,000 acres per year.
While the speed of Good Earth’s thinning progress isn’t what many local officials would have hoped, the company is still in compliance with the terms and conditions of the contract, Forest Service officials said.
In an effort to speed things up though, the Forest Service in August modified Good Earth’s contract to require the company to create an operating schedule for each thinning task order. The schedule will be approved by the Forest Service, said Kim Newbauer, the contracting officer’s representative overseeing all of Good Earth’s work on 4FRI project for the Forest Service. He came up with the idea of the operating schedules. Before August, Good Earth’s contract didn’t have any such milestones the company had to meet.
If Good Earth is not on schedule, it will have to redo it and after that, if the company continues to fall behind, the Forest Service could “at some point” come out with a cure notice, Newbauer said. A cure notice is the next step up in disciplinary action under the 4FRI contract. If a violation continues after the cure notice is issued, the Forest Service could potentially go into some type of a notice for default, Roberta Buskirk, director of acquisition management with the Forest Service, said in a 2013 teleconference.
The goal of requiring operating schedules, which were mutually agreed upon by the Forest Service and Good Earth, is to get the company on track to treat 30,000 acres per year, said Brienne Pettit, 4FRI spokesperson for the Forest Service.
From the Arizona Daily Sun: https://azdailysun.com/news/local/forest-service-increases-tracking-of-fri-progress/article_6d150443-123c-58af-8ce3-a8fa87f2c926.html