A school district in the mountains of Northwestern Colorado is replacing its old coal-fired boilers with a system that will burn woody biomass - a suddenly plentiful resource - thanks to the region’s pine beetle epidemic that is threatening to kill off nearly all of the state’s lodgelpole pines in the next 3-5 years.

The South Routt School District will be spending the next few months replacing it’s old coal-fired boiler with a biomass boiler that will use wood pellets for fuel instead. A significant portion of the pellets will come from the new Confluence Energy facility that is just about ready to open its doors in Kremmling, Colorado.

The project was financed The Governor’s Energy Of­­fice and a state bond program. McKinstry, an energy-oriented consulting and contracting firm based in the Seattle area, also is contributing free services for the boiler, which Reed said will be “cost-neutral” for South Routt schools. The change is part of a $4.1 million project to improve energy efficiency in schools and buildings, and could save the district $10,000 a year.

See Also:
“Should We Pursue Biofuels From Beetle-Killed Wood?” :: CleanTechnica (2/2008)
“Jamtland: A County Fueled by Biomass” (Video) :: ecopolitology (3/2008)
Steamboat Pilot (4/2008)

Photo: Steve Roe

[This post was originally published at sustainablog on January 22, 2008. It is the first of two parts addressing the pine beetle epidemic in Colorado and what the mountain communities are doing about it. Part two can be found by clicking on this link]

Colorado has 1.7 million acres of lodgepole pine forests. Though, if you have any desire to see any of those trees alive, I’d suggest you move rather quickly. State and federal officials recently announced that the mountain pine beetle epidemic grew by a half a million acres in 2007, bringing the total infestation in the state to about 1.5 million acres. Foresters indicated that the epidemic would virtually eliminate every acre of lodgepole pines in the next three to five years.

Up until quite recently, the pine beetle epidemic in Colorado was limited to a five county area along the Continental Divide. However, recent forest surveys indicate that the beetle has crossed the Divide and is moving eastward. The Forest Service’s annual surveys that are produced by ’stitching’ together aerial photographs have enabled the forest service to illuminate the rapid acceleration of the beetles’ northeasterly march. Once restricted to high country hamlets like Breckenridge, Fraser and Steamboat Springs, the hungry beetles are quickly moving into the foothills and front range near Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins. According to Kyle Patterson at Rocky Mountain National Park, the pine beetles have reached “epic proportions.”

Although the beetle is a full-time resident of the temperate coniferous forests of the Rocky Mountains, their numbers have grown exponentially in the last ten years, fed by a ‘perfect storm’ of contributing factors, including a steady pattern of rising temperatures.

Extreme cold temperatures can reduce beetle populations. But, ever since the most recent outbreak began in the mid-1990s, the extremes have not been extreme enough. For freezing temperatures to affect a large number of larvae during the middle of winter, temperatures of at least 30 degrees below zero must be sustained for at least five days.

Locals have come to accept that, for the most part, the beetle cannot be stopped, only adapted to. The good news is that folks in the mountain towns of Colorado are not willing to simply let the beetles win. Facing daily changes to their familiar green landscapes, and dealing with the potential of catastrophic wildfire, large-scale erosion leading to watershed quality problems, and loss of tourism dollars, communities in Colorado are forming innovative, multilevel collaborative partnerships to come up with new ideas and plans of action for an epidemic that knows no political boundaries.

The biggest obstacle for community organizations is not political will, it is the significant resources required for the large-scale thinning of at-risk areas. Currently, the average price of thinning one acre of forests in Summit County, CO is about $2000. Limited funding obviously means that not every acre can be treated. The reason for the high cost of forest thinning is that there is no market for the beetle-kill wood. According to Gary Severson of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments:

“There’s simply not enough public money to thin the forests. The only way to do this is to find some way to add value to this material. With small-diameter lodgepole pine, there aren’t a lot of options.”

But, at least there are some options, and some pretty good ones at that. I will address some of the very innovative solutions to this sticky problem in part two.

Colorado State Univ. Cooperative Extension

The Denver Post

The Fort Collins Coloradoan

Photo Credits: Canadian Forest Service.

If you have traveled to Colorado any time recently, (and certainly if you live here), you may have noticed something a little peculiar about some of the pine trees. If you haven’t had such a privilege, let me just tell you: there are acres upon acres of red pine trees. Why? The state’s lodgepole pine forests have been hit by an unprecedented pine beetle outbreak.

Once restricted to five high country counties along the Continental Divide, the mountain pine beetle epidemic in Colorado has spread to the Eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains and is on a path to wipe out virtually all of the state’s lodgepole pine forests in the next 3-5 years. Several years of moderate to severe drought has weakened the trees, and a lack of sustained cold temperatures has prevented any significant kill-off. Fortunately, the preferred food for the pine beetle, lodgepole pines, do not really grow below 6000 feet, so much of the ponderosa, pinon and juniper forests in the foothills will be safe. But that is no comfort for mountain-town residents where the pine beetles have reached epic proportions, because the dead and dying trees could be a significant source of fuel for catastrophic wildfire events. Read more…

The last time beatles invaded Colorado was 1964 and they only made it to the foothills of the Rockies. As the story goes, they were here for less than a day. And although they appeared at the storied Red Rocks amphitheater in Morrison for only about 35 minutes, they were able to inflict a considerable amount of their brand of “destruction” in that short time.

In terms of the most recent beetle invasion, however, it appears the visitors will be around for much longer — and inflict a brand of destruction on the Rocky Mountain landscape that will, in retrospect, make John, Paul, George, and Ringo look merely like four harmless, long-haired kids from Liverpool who smoke cigarettes and play some newfangled kind of music that all the kids seem to love. And yes, even these beetles will not be loved by Boulderites.

I am speaking of course about the ubiquitous mountain pine beetle which is happily chewing its way through the vast coniferous forests of the North American continent. These beetles have yet to make their way to Red Rocks, but by the time they do, the damage will have been done.

Pine beetles, bark beetles and spruce beetles have always been part of the ecosystemic processes in the forests of Colorado. However, within the last 10 years, beetle populations have proliferated. Why? The answers range from the possibility that small increases in the temperature of the earth have created a more hospitable climate for the bugs; to a culture of fire suppression within the US Forest Service, that for over one hundred years took every effort possible to prevent and extinguish forest fires. But fire is a healthy and necessary part of some ecological systems, and perhaps we are beginning to see one of the consequences of its prevention.

About 44 percent of the state’s 1.5 million acres of lodgepole pine are now infested by beetles, or about 660,000 acres. The dry, dead trees, which have a rusty red color, pose the biggest fire risk in the year or two before their needles fall off. The debate rages on concerning this epidemic which cannot be stopped. Some groups argue that the dead trees should be left standing, and that they will eventually fall to create the space and nutrients necessary for the flourishing of new ones. But others are fearful that this approach is far too risky. People who live in the resort towns like Steamboat, Vail, and Breckenridge (not to mention the resorts themselves), fear the potential devastation that could be wreaked by catastrophic, region-wide fires. Direct injury to property is hard to prevent because it is hard to anticipate; indirect injury and the concomitant economic losses are also likely but difficult to predict. Many high country residents would much rather see aggressive thinning programs aimed at reducing the fuel-wood in and around the urban-wildland interface. This might help, but thinning would seem to be only a drop in the bucket. With all but 100,000 acres of the dead trees in Colorado on federal land, the bulk of the thinning falls to the U.S. Forest Service, which plans to treat 18,000 acres of dead trees this year.

So if you have never had the opportunity to be awed what appears to be a never-ending expanse of lodgepole pine, or if you just haven’t made it out west in a while, I would recommend you do so pretty soon — before what people think of as the Rocky Mountain landscape, is only a distant memory.