Lakeland Mill Rebuild Decision Still Long Way Off
Thursday, September 20, 2012 @ 4:18 AM
Prince George, B.C.- It has been a few days since the people in Burns Lake learned Hampton Affiliates is committed to rebuilding the Babine Forest Products sawmill as long as the Government comes through on certain promises, but what of the Lakeland Mill in Prince George?
It has been five months since that mill exploded and was destroyed by flames. Two employees died, and several others were injured.
President of the Sinclar Group, Greg Stewart says there is no decision yet on the future of the Lakeland property. “ We are still quite a long ways away from being able to make that final decision. One of our main focuses has been trying to understand what caused this incident so we can engineer that out should we make the decision to rebuild. Those investigations are continuing and we look forward to hearing results from the various parties as they reach their conclusions. That said, we are also working with insurance to understand exactly what we might be able to expect from an insurance pay out. Once that information is available, then it will really help us advance our thinking around what it is that we can, and should do.”
Stewart says to date, no one has been able to pin down a timeline on when a final decision on the future of the mill might be forthcoming “ The hope is we might be able to get some of the information back by the end of the year and following that, there would need to be some time on our side to do the research and make sure we get all the information that we need to make the right decision for the organization in the long term.”
The planer at the site has been shut down, now that all the inventory ready for that part of the process has been dealt with. Lakeland continues to operate the district energy system for the City, as well as meet its commitments to supply the University of Northern B.C. with biomass for it’s heating system. The log inventory is being moved out of the yard “We’ve reached an agreement with Carrier (Lumber) and we are making sure those logs are making their way over to Carrier so they can process them in a timely fashion.” The log yard was full at the time of the late April blast as the winter harvest was just wrapping up and heading into spring break up.
Stewart says there are a number of employees on site, working to prep the site for winter, working on the district energy system and moving the logs to Carrier’s site. He expects that log inventory to be gone by the end of the year.
The Burns Lake situation is a little different as a sustainable fibre supply was one of the key issues which needed to be addressed before Hampton Affiliates would consider a rebuild. Stewart says while it is encouraging to see the Provincial Government help in working towards the rebuild of the Babine Forest Products Mill, “From our perspective, we’ve been in a different fibre situation all along and there was nothing significant in that announcement that would change our opinion of our ability to rebuild or not.”
Comments
One of the questions that come to mind, and this needs to be addressed by the City rather than Lakeland is the following.
The Community Energy System, was designed and built to provide the following.
1. Burn the hog fuel at Lakeland Mills to generate heat to supply the CES. This would eliminate approx 300 truck loads of hog fuel being transported to the pulp mills and would reduce the fine particulates in the airshed by some 70 tonnes per year.
2. Because the Energy System would produce heat for the Government buildings it serviced, at a cheaper cost, this would result if a revenue stream for the City, and further reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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So. What happened.
1. Because of the fire, we are now faced with the hog fuel for the Energy System, being trucked in to Lakeland from Isle Pierre BC. This will in effect increase the number of trucks going into Lakeland as opposed to decreasing them, so we will end up with no decrease in fine particulates into the airshed by this project.
The fact that the mill is not operating means that all the pollution from burning hog, can now be attributed to the Energy System, and not pro rated between the City, and Lakeland. Further, all the costs are attributed to running this system are not shared with Lakeland.
2. Since the Energy System was first designed and planned, the cost of natural gas has plummeted. A gigajoule of natural gas is now priced at $2.20, down from $7.58 in 2005. In fact the BC Government is blaming the low price of natural gas for part of its deficit.
Are we now faced with an energy system that in effect if it was re-costed, (as it should be) operating a system that;
a. Does not reduce any fine particulates into the airshed, and might in fact increase them, and
b. Costs the taxpayers of Prince George more money to operate than the old natural gas system.
The City is laying low on this project with the hope that no one will ask the hard questions, because they have now spent huge dollars on this project and may in fact get nothing in return.
The funding from the Provincial, and Federal Government for this project was based on reductions in greenhouse gases, so a legitimate question to ask, is, under the new set of circumstances covering this project, are we meeting the greenhouse gas reductions originally touted for the Energy System???? and are we still going to get a revenue stream for the City from this project.??
One of the largest factors with the rebuilding of Lakeland will be who is ultimatly held responsable for the disaster (The insurance payout will be significantly less if they are responseable) and the company will fight that they were not to the bitter end.
The employees (myself included) are torn between those wanting severance and those looking forward to a new mill.
So why do we have to reduce greenhouse gas? Makes the forest grow right.
How would the waste energy system reduce fine particulates? A truck either hauls chips or logs. Wood gets to the burner one way or the other. Last I looked the pulp mills are in the bowl airshed so what is the difference hauling to the mills or Lakeland.
Seamutt.
The Citys website on the Community Energy System states:
Because the hog fuel from milling of logs will no longer be trucked to Intercon Pulp Mill, there will be a reduction of approx 300 trucks per year, from Lakeland to the pulp mill. This will result in a reduction of fine particulates into the airshed of approx 70 Tonnes per year.
I argued with the City at the time that Intercon would source the hog fuel is was shorted from some other source, so there in fact would be no reduction, however this idea seemed to confuse the people who were running the meeting and advocating the CES.
In any event as long as the mill is not running the City is now a major contributor to polluting the air, as they are the only ones using this system.
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