JOHN DAY The first bricks and pellets are coming off the line in John Day this month, signaling the launch of a new biomass industry in Grant County.

   Ochoco Lumbers new biomass plant sits adjacent to the existing sawmill on its Malheur Lumber site, at the west end of town. The plants construction has been something of a whirlwind, with company officials jokingly describing the site as little more than a hole in the ground just six months ago. 

   From that humble base arose an arrangement of conveyers, dryers, milling equipment and silos, all aligned to take otherwise unusable forest material and transform it into marketable heating bricks and pellets.

    In recent weeks, mill officials and their equipment suppliers were testing and tweaking the system and liking what they saw.

  Its going well, said Mike Billman, project manager for Malheur Lumber.

    The experts were expected to banish any glitches and have the plant producing both pellets and bricks by the end of the month. 

   The plant already is producing jobs. 

  By mid-December, Malheur Lumber had added four employees for the start-up phase. 

   Were looking at a total of 12-15 jobs once its in full production, Billman said.

   John Rowell, a former Grant County resident, recently returned from Lithuania, where he ran an Ochoco operation, to be the pellet plant manager.

   The new plant will operate two shifts, day and swing, initially. Thats in addition to the regular shift at Malheurs sawmill.

   Officials say the pellet plant not only promises new jobs, but brings stability for the sawmills workforce and other types of workers who labor on forest stewardship projects.

   The new mill grew out of the combined efforts of numerous agencies who worked with Ochoco, contributing technical knowledge and skills to the project.

   The Malheur National Forest provided a critical first step, securing a $5 million grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to locate a pellet plant in either Harney or Grant counties. The award was announced in June 2009.

   The grant had multiple goals: to create jobs, to support stewardship and to retain the infrastructure needed to help the Forest Service conduct forest health projects.  Biomass plants can use the small-diameter trees and forest debris material that otherwise would be stacked and burned on the forest floor to create heating fuel materials.

   Once the grant was approved, the Forest Service faced a dilemma: where to site the plant. Both Grant and Harney counties, hammered by long-term double-digit unemployment, wanted the project.

    Forest Supervisor Doug Gochnour said he welcomed the states assistance in making the pick. Business Oregon, the states business development arm, took on the project proposal and selection process.

   Rick Minster, a regional business development officer for Business Oregon, said the states interest was in job creation as well as job retention. Malheurs proposal, one of five, rose to the top as the review committee pondered the qualifications of the applicants.

   Their proposal was very well done, Minster recalled. They had the resources, the experience, the capital and the ability to get it done and to get it done in time.

    Grant County Judge Mark Webb didnt serve on the selection panel, but appointed local resident George Meredith to be the countys representative. Meredith had worked with Sally Bartlett, the countys economic development coordinator, on a broad-based committee that drafted a biomass utilization study for the county in early 2009. 

    That study, funded by federal Title III, detailed the volume and type of woody biomass available from the local forests, projected costs and funding sources and recommended further talks with industry and the Forest Service about the possibilities.

   Webb said that when the state was reviewing proposals for the Malheur Forest, Meredith was a valued participant because of his knowledge of the industry and the ability to ask the right questions when evaluating the project proposals.

   He was a critical part of the process, the judge said. He was a key player for the county, but he was also impartial in seeking a merit-based selection.

  In November 2009, the state announced the results of that process: Malheur Lumber was picked to build the new plant.

    With that, the company pushed ahead with the design and implementation. In short order, Ochoco was placing orders for specialized biomass equipment from as far away as Oklahoma, Kentucky and even Germany, and JH Kelly was brought in as general contractor.

    The total project cost came to about $6 million; the ARRA funding was bolstered by Ochocos private investment and Rural Economic Development loan program funding in cooperation with Old West Federal Credit Union.

    Ochoco president Bruce Daucsavage, at a community appreciation event earlier this year, noted the array of state, federal and local partners who helped make the project a reality.

    We are humbled by the efforts, the dedication and help offered by all of you, he told the crowd. this will give us the ability to do some things we havent done before.

    Officials say that one partnership was particularly important in securing the project the alliance between Ochoco and Bear Mountain Forest Products. The  Portland-headquartered manufacturer and distributor of pellets and fuel bricks will handle the marketing of products from John Day. That partnership promises a readymade market as the biomass plant gears up, and it also provided expertise in the early stages.

    A3 Energy Partners, a consulting and design firm founded by Bear Mountains principals, was instrumental in the project, according to Billman. 

     Andrew Haden, A3 vice president, said that from the start, the design team needed to tailor the plant to the local site, resources and forest economy. He said the John Day plant is different from most other pellet mills, which generally use sawdust, not chips. The plan to use wood chips meant the design had to incorporate dryer systems with a much lower fire risk. 

   Another requirement was that the design complement the existing sawmill operation, he noted.

    The end result is a plant that makes efficient use of the materials that a conventional sawmill cant use and cant sell.

   Theres no waste at all, he said.

  Haden also has advised other local agencies that were considering biomass heating systems; one is now in place at the new Grant County airport terminal, and another is in the works at Blue Mountain Hospital. 

  As the Malheur biomass plant geared up this month, Haden called it a great success story. He hopes it will lead to projects elsewhere that similarly combine industry, community and forest needs.

  John Shelk, managing director of Ochoco Lumber, said recently he cant be sure what the future holds for the emerging biomass industry, but he already sees benefits for the John Day operation. The biomass plant complements Malheurs conventional lumber operation, allowing the mill to utilize the entire tree the largest diameter segment cut into lumber, the smaller portions chipped for biomass and the rest ground up for hog fuel that in turn powers the mill operations.

    It allows us to take that product off the national forest one step further, he said. Its like what the pork producers in the Midwest always say: were using everything but the squeal.

    At the same time, the process makes use of a plentiful and local renewable resource and takes one more small step toward curbing our dependence on fossil fuels, he said.