Smoke blankets Sisters

Early Monday morning May 5, forest smoke from a controlled burn lay in gullies and low spots, just above creeks and roads, between houses in subdivisions around Sisters. Square miles of smoke, trapped close to the ground by an inversion.

But by 9:30 a.m. most of it had lifted as the sun rose and the smokey air began to rise.

This smoke came from a burn on private land just west of Sisters near Tollgate and Crossroads. According to Don Pollard of GFP Enterprises, his company burned about 50 acres on Sunday. During the day winds to the north dispersed most of the haze.

But overnight, the winds died and particles stayed close to the ground, until the inversion was broken by convection caused by the sun on warming earth.

GFP's Pollard said his project will total about 300 acres. There are other burns planned for other properties by other contractors. (Note: The author of this story had about five acres of brush burned last week). Pollard hoped to burn two more units, one of 27 acres and the other about 33 acres, in the same area on Monday.

Pollard said that the most of the burn he was managing had previously been "mechanically treated," in other words, cut. The property owners have had wildfire come on to their land, located near both Crossroads and Tollgate, which were evacuated during recent forest fires. Treating this private land could prevent problems in the future for those communities.

Most of this current blaze is cleaning up dead stumps, twigs and grass, with clumps of unburned areas left for use by wildlife and for appearance. "They (the owners) are doing a great job. Ten years ago this was thick and dense," Pollard said.

A seemingly obvious alternative to burning forest slash and causing smoke, especially during this time of high energy costs, would be to use the forest fuel for energy.

According to Rod Bonacker, Special Projects Coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service in Sisters, the agency looked at that option for their new office planned next year.

The office is scheduled to open on 17 acres of land along Barclay Drive next to the Ponderosa Lodge in Sisters in the Fall of 2009.

"We looked at a biomass boiler system," said Bonacker. "The biggest issue, believe it or not, is (fuel) supply."

According to Bonacker, the more automatic a system is, the cleaner its fuel has to be. The more highly refined the fuel, the more expensive it is to refine and to transport, usually from more distant locations. For the system he reviewed, the fuel would have been pellets from the Columbia River Gorge area or from Washington state.

To use local material, chips or branches, for example, "you have to pay someone to throw them in the boiler seven days a week. It just doesn't pencil," said Bonacker.

The agency is now looking at a ground heat exchanger, also known as a geothermal heat pump, that takes thermal energy for heating or cooling from the ground.

Bonacker estimated it might be about 10 years before technology was to a point where local forest slash material could be used as fuel.

Increasingly the drawbacks to using corn and other crops for fuel, and possibly driving up the price of food, have become more obvious. There is some effort underway in Oregon and elsewhere to develop a catalyst that will efficiently break down woody material so it can be used as a liquid fuel such as diesel.

In the meantime, we burn forest slash and brush in the open, increasing carbon in the air and the greenhouse effect, and producing unhealthy smoke, while we buy oil from Saudi Arabia and Russia at $110 per barrel to put in our cars at $4 per gallon.