Tenure IS Power: One Man's Opinion

By Ben Meisner

   Before we begin a program of trying to make power out of wood waste in the beetle ravaged areas, we had better get the main stumbling block out of the way.

The meeting with BC Hydro last week may have been a good template but that doesn’t lead to development unless of course all the players are on board, and they are not.

Until you have CANFOR and  West Fraser and who ever else holds wood tenures that they don’t want to give up for nothing , you are not going to get people to flock to this region to set up plants that will extract the chemicals from this wood , make wood pellets and make hydro electric power.

No one in their right mind would start up an operation unless they had some sort of idea what the costs are going to be.  While the provincial government is aware of the tenure issue, it remains somewhere locked in some back room.

Lets get the info out, if we are going to inform the major lumber  producers that hold these tenures that we have the right to sell this beetle killed wood and  other product from the forest floor to new players intent on making a buck , then lets get on with it.

Conversations that we hope to have the majors come on board on the issue haven’t exactly been producing the kind of results that we need and the clock on beetle killed wood is ticking.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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