Responsible development and the Enbridge spill
On the same day the full extent of Enbridge’s oil pipeline rupture in Michigan was coming to light, I travelled up the Gitsegukla Loop road to visit a commercial wood waste boiler. It’s a system that could mean a whole new sector of forestry employment for Stikine.
An oil pipeline is based on a limited resource. It requires vast capital, leading to control by sharehold- ers in faraway places, and continually poses a risk to rivers and streams. Over the long-term, it provides only modest employment.
By comparison, bioenergy is based on a renewable resource, is affordable for local entrepreneurs (on the feedstock end), uses low-risk technology and would mean scores of long-term jobs in the forestry sector where we have both the expertise and the local resource.
Such contrasts bring focus to future decisions we must make about economic development in Stikine.
The wood waste boiler system long- time Bulkley Valley resident Hans Duerichen helped develop is affordable, efficient and clean. It produces no smoke, no particulate to be concerned about and so little carbon monoxide that it meets the standards for indoor gas fireplaces.
The most promising application for these boilers is in heating large public, commercial and industrial buildings. They could replace non-renewable fuels like gas and oil, or soaring electricity bills, with more affordable and sustainable wood products or even agricultural waste.
For Stikine, wood waste energy production could generate significant jobs. We would be growing the fibre on a very short rotation, chipping what is currently waste, and delivering the product to consumers. An entire spin-off industry would be created on the feedstock side – one for which many people in our communities have the knowledge, expertise and equipment.
And the wood waste boiler system is only one part of the biomass industry.
There is no doubt we need some large, external, capital-intensive projects in our economic mix in Stikine. A new mine could be a more positive example of this than an oil pipeline.
But what we lack right now is the same attention spent encouraging more sustainable and responsible development in the Northwest, founded upon local entrepreneurs and expertise in the forest and agriculture sectors.