JOHN DAY – President Obama’s top environmental policy advisor will be in John Day Tuesday to meet with local officials and tour forest and biomass sites.

The visit by Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, was announced Monday. She is expected to focus on the administration’s economic strategies to create jobs and economic opportunities in rural America.

Sutley will meet with county officials and the Blue Mountain Forest Partners, the John Day-based collaborative group helping craft projects on the Malheur National Forest. She will tour a forest restoration site, Malheur Lumber Company’s biomass pellet plant in John Day and the pellet fuel operations at the Grant County Regional Airport.

The tour aims to show how a collaboration between the federal government, county government, conservation groups and industry has created local jobs, and is developing a local renewable energy market.