The LumberWorksForums

Many of you know that in February we had the largest ice storm ever recorded for our area. Clean up will be an ongoing process for years to come.




The county set up a web site and outlined the cleanup process as it concerned opening the roads and removing unwanted debris. They first concentrated on getting the roads open. This involved, at minimum, getting the limbs and trees cut back to the edges of the pavemant. They told the landowners to cut all their debris into lengths of 8' or less and pile them in the right-of-ways for later pickup.

They finally came by here today. They're using a truck to pick up the debris. The truck's design looks identical to the ones that are used to scoop out the bottoms of drainages ways...except it has a different attachment on it that consist of a flat plate at the bottom and a hydraulic thumb on top. Looks like they're pulling double duty and finishing clearing the downed trees and limbs from the right-of-ways while they're picking up the landowner's debris. The debris is being loaded into dump trucks and hauled to a central station.

There are many rumors as to what's happening to this debris when it reaches the central station. Some say they're burning it (confirmed is they're burning some of it), they're mulching it for nation-wide sales, or they're buring it. It may be all three. By chance, I ran into the man in charge of this station. But he was in a hurry and couldn't talk.

I'm just a dumb country boy but it struck me we were handling it all wrong. That debris belongs here - it definately shouldn't be burned or buried. And the extra energy of hauling it to a central station and beyond shouldn't be borne by everyone else in the world running up everyone's energy prices. There's a way to do this that would reduce the transportation cost and keep the nutrients here. (BTW - eventually those nutrients will have to be put back...running our energy cost up once again.)

The majority of the debris was small enough to fit in a chipper. They could have annouced to the public that they would haul the chips for free. This would interest mostly farmers and ranchers who had the land to spread it on and the equipment to handle it. Once it was known who wanted it, how much they wanted and where to dump it they could chip it as they picked it up and dispose of it in the same neighborhood. This would keep the nutrients local, improve the soil and reduce transportation costs.

This has been im my mind from the time that cleanup was first discussed. But, again, I'm just a dumb country boy...what do I know?