B.C. Biomass With no chance of a government push in the B.C. Interior, McKay has tried to grind waste wood such as pallets and other debris, but to no avail. B.C. Coastal Biomass Underutilized Meet Dave McKay, a contractor in Squamish, B.C., who believes small company biomass use in his province is in trouble. By Jean Sorensen major problems facing the B.C. Coast biomass industry: First, there needs to be an incentive (legislative or otherwise) to cleaning up logging residuals at sites, and secondly, there needs to be greater diversification in the regional demand for biomass use. “We are not even using 5% of the [green] residual wood in our area,” says McKay. The Squamish-Whistler corridor area has mainly mature timber and second growth timber stands, both of which yield high portions of biomass content. While McKay has been harvesting woodlots on the logging side of his busi-ness, he says he is “totally flabbergasted” at B iomaSS on the coast of British Columbia is still underutilized and needs the push of municipal or provincial government to gain full use, says a Squamish, B.C., contractor. “I can’t compete with the guy who wants to burn or bury wood,” says Dave McKay, president of Triack Resources of Squamish. He has been in the biomass industry for six years and watched the de-mand for the product fluctuate as logging residuals continue to be burned while building debris is buried in landfills. McKay maintains that there are two the amount of fibre left in the wood. “My harvest level is down to a 3.5-inch top,” he says. But when McKay looks at the fibre that he rakes and grinds, “it is a 2:1 ratio great-er than the log fibre harvest.” McKay has been keeping track of the residual waste removed from the woodlot, as the hogged material is shipped to the Whistler Composting Facility on a short-term winter contract. The municipally owned operation mixes food scraps from the service industry and bio-solids from sewage treatment plants with wood fibre to make topsoil that is sold to landscapers and into the domestic market. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 20 Canadian BIOMASS
Canadian Biomass January/February 2012: Page 20
