Dead trees pile up before being mulched to produce fuel for cogeneration plants at the Placer County Eastern Regional Material Recovery Facility outside Truckee in 2023.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
Walk onto almost any forest wildfire prevention or post-fire restoration project in California right now and you will find the same thing: piles of low-value wood, cut and stacked, waiting for somewhere to go.
The crews did their job. They thinned the overgrown stands and pulled out the dead material. They removed the low-value kindling that turns a manageable fire into a catastrophe.
Then the wood sits there.
Article continues below this ad
It’s not because the state lacks ambition. California has committed to treating around 1 million forest acres annually to reduce wildfire risk and restore forest health. Reaching that goal entails removing more than 5 million bone-dry tons of woody material annually, and that’s a conservative estimate. Since 2018, California has accumulated 11 at least 1 million bone-dry tons of forest biomass in piles awaiting disposal, with much more likely remaining undocumented.
What exactly is this debris, and why is it not turned into lumber or other products?
San Francisco Chronicle Logo
Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.
Add Preferred Source
Simply, these materials are often dead trees that have burned or decayed and cannot be used for lumber or other wood products. In many instances, this material is brush or young dense trees that were thinned for purposes of fire prevention. You cannot create boards from rotten and small-diameter material.
California has become quite adept at piling up these hazardous vegetative fuels. The problem is that we have almost nowhere to send them.
Article continues below this ad
Sadly, nature often takes care of it her way, by igniting it.
Woody material with no buyer doesn’t disappear. It becomes everyone’s problem. It remains in the forest as fuel for the next megafire. It gets burned in open slash piles that pollute the air. Or, it decays and releases climate pollutants like methane. None of those outcomes are free. We pay for them in smoke, in suppression costs, damaged lungs and towns that burn.
Before we start the cycle all over again, the state needs to act.
The lack of markets for this forest-based residue is a glaring, yet solvable, missing piece within the fire prevention and recovery strategy of the state.
There is a solution, and in a world full of tortured acronyms, this is a great one: the Forest Organic Residue Energy and Safety Transformation and Wildfire Prevention Fund Act.
Article continues below this ad
Assembly Bill 706, designed to clear California’s ridiculous biomass backlog, was introduced by Assembly Member Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters (Yolo County), with Assembly Member Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz, and state Sen. Megan Dahle, R-Bieber (Lassen County);
For decades, biomass power plants gave forest waste a productive destination. Yet, one by one, those plants have closed, idled or operated far below capacity. Meanwhile, the state has allowed its small-scale bioenergy procurement program to expire at the end of 2025.
Every plant that goes dark means more hazardous wildfire fuel is left on the forest floor. Let’s call it what it is: deferred combustion.
FOREST would establish a dedicated fund to help move forest waste to beneficial use, keep existing biomass facilities operating and support the next generation of wood-using industries.
In plain English: It gives the wood somewhere to go.
Article continues below this ad
The program will provide desperately needed outlets for millions of tons of forest residue and save lives, lungs, homes and livelihoods. At the same time, it would have the knock-on effect of creating additional jobs in rural communities.
For too long, the state has treated the lack of markets for low-value wood as a side problem. It is not. It’s the hinge on which California’s wildfire strategy swings.
At a moment when California is supposed to maintain and potentially expand the pace of wildfire prevention and recovery work, ignoring the end-use problem puts communities at greater risk. The fuel is on the ground now, the fire season is in front of us now, and AB706 buys the state time to build additional processing outlets without letting the existing facilities vanish in the meantime.
California has spent years, and real money, learning how to cut the right trees, remove dense brush, and clear standing dead material after a conflagration. We know these efforts can make communities safer downstream and downwind. We know they make our forests more resilient.
Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership.
Read more about our transparency and ethics policies
But a forest treatment project is only half-finished if the wood has nowhere to go.
Article continues below this ad
Diverse support for FOREST adds up to real protection. We simply cannot afford to leave the forest waste where it falls. When we do, we are paying to perpetuate the very problems we are trying to solve.
Matt Dias is a registered professional forester and president and CEO of the California Forestry Association. Tracy Hernandez is the co-founder and CEO of the New California Coalition.