The Mountain View County policies and priorities committee has been given an update on the potential threat posed by the mountain pine beetle (MPB) to the forest areas along the Eastern Slopes.
Sundre Forest Products (SFP) general manager Bruce Alexander and community forester Tom Daniels appeared before the committee at its recent regularly scheduled meeting in council chambers.
A subsidiary of West Fraser, SFP has operations in Sundre and in a large forested area along the Eastern Slopes. It has a 580,000 hectare forest management agreement (FMA) with the provincial government.
“We have found that there may be a possibility that we’ve had an inflight of beetle, said Daniels. “This will be the first time since 2006 that we’ve seen beetle in our area. We are collecting information now to determine how widespread that inflight was and was it an aggressive inflight or just some beetles that we are starting to see.
“So we are maybe having to ramp things up here and it’s going to be a real shame to be quite honest, because what they’ve found is that there is not much you can do around beetle and it’s going to have an impact on this operation if beetle starts to get into it.
“What that impact will be will depend upon how aggressive that attack is going to be and how big that population grows.”
Alexander added: “We will keep you updated as the beetle continues, but we would be looking for your support with our provincial friends if and when the problem gets to a level (like seen in the Hinton area).
“As a milling facility we can only do so much annually. We are only set up for so much, so if we get hit in a big way we can’t react on a manufacturing side to that level. So then you start talking about shelf life for the trees; how long can they survive and be viable out there to manufacture lumber?”
Daniels said: “The (FMA) area is fixed so it is difficult when you have a thing like mountain pine beetle coming in because it has the capacity to basically eat your resource in a very short time period.”
Mountain pine beetle is an insect that kills pine trees by girdling the trees under the bark.
Deputy Reeve Angela Aalbers asked Alexander what is being done about the large sawdust pile at the Sundre-area mill.
“I’ve heard some concerns on the size of the sawdust pile in respect to the potential fire hazard,” said Aalbers. “What’s your plans for that enormous sawdust pile?”
Alexander said SFP has entered into an agreement with a B.C. company to have the sawdust trucked to a wood pellet making facility.
“We’ve started shipping our sawdust to that facility,” said Alexander. “I’m happy that that is going on, but the reality is that it is probably going to take a year and a half at the rate that we can move material to actually get that down to what somebody would have seen in 2013.”
The company continually monitors the pile for heat, he said.
“If the piles get to a point that they are too hot, we will bring in equipment and basically move the pile around to let it cool off,” he said.
“We are managing that and Marty (Butts, Sundre fire chief) and I talk about it quite often.”
Sundre Forest Products employs 250 direct people, has a $19.6-million annual payroll to employees, has 332 indirect and induced jobs in the region, and paid $4.5 million in provincial and local taxes in 2017.
SFP’s forest management agreement was renewed for 20 years in 2012.
West Fraser’s operations in Alberta include the following statistics: The company has 2,400 direct employees at 13 mills; 60 per cent of energy used in the company’s operations come from renewable sources; in 2017, the company planted 35 million seedlings.
