Business
AgLife
B
Thursday, April 8, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Focus now
on NOAA
salmon
recovery
Plans look at all
aspects; project cost
could top $139M
over 10 years
Kendrick Moholt Photography/Contributed Photo
An assortment of biomass logs are staged for use at Heartwood Biomass in Wallowa. The small-diameter log facility makes use of timber that is too small to sell to a standard lumber mill.
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
New name, new investors
Biomass company changes name, but mill’s work remains the same
By BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
WALLOWA — Integrated Bio-
mass Resources in Wallowa has
changed its name to Heartwood
Biomass LLC to mark new begin-
nings for the small-diameter wood
products facility.
But little else will change,
Heartwood CEO David Schmidt
said.
The name change was
announced Wednesday, March 31,
in a press release that said the mill
continues to benefit from com-
munity support as well as a new
investor base and a rejuvenated
leadership team.
As for change in opera-
tions, Schmidt discounted any
likelihood.
“There won’t be. Not a lot,” he
said. “There will be a little bit less
stress on us and ability to keep
building what we set out to do and
be more effective.”
Started in 2009, Schmidt and
wife, Jesse, came to Wallowa after
nonprofit Wallowa Resources first
began developing a vision in 1996
to move to a restoration-based
forest economy. The business was
designed specifically to monetize
low-value, small-diameter timber
from forest restoration projects, the
release stated. Validating the need
for companies like IBR, the U.S.
Forest Service’s local forest resto-
ration contracts grew from just one
in the first five years of the busi-
ness, to eight over the next five
years.
Unlike traditional mills, the
Heartwood facility can process
small-diameter trees that increas-
ingly dominate Western forests.
Too small to be processed by tra-
ditional mills and used for lumber,
these smaller trees are often left
standing in tightly spaced for-
ests, contributing to high-intensity,
catastrophic wildfires and insect
infestation that can destroy entire
forest stands.
Heartwood uses them to create
wood products like bundled fire-
wood for grocery stores; agricul-
tural poles for hop, vineyard and
orchard trellising; and fence posts
for ranches.
Heartwood grew out of a group
of investors who identified an
opportunity for broad impact at
the intersection of rural jobs, forest
restoration and community resil-
ience. The company believes the
Kendrick Moholt Photography/Contributed Photo
Above, an operator enters a biomass log into the debarking line at Heartwood Biomass in Wallowa. Below, kiln-dried firewood stands
ready to be bundled for retail customers.
Heartwood facility is a scalable
model that can boost forest health
and community vitality across the
Western U.S.
“We believe it’s critical to
adapt our region’s economy to
focus on what our forests and
communities need, which is res-
toration and stewardship,” David
Schmidt said.
After nearly a decade of
growth, a devastating fire at the
IBR facility in 2019 threatened
to undo the company’s progress.
With the backdrop of wildfires
rampaging across the Western U.S.
Making concrete progress
and the growing need to pivot rural
communities’ natural-resource
dependence to land restoration, a
group of investors who had been
following the important work of
IBR embarked on a capital-raising
campaign. The result culminated
in the formation of Heartwood and
its recent acquisition of nearly all
assets of the original facility.
“I had the blessing to have
grown up in Wallowa County and
know how important Heartwood’s
business is in creating healthy for-
ests for our planet and providing
jobs and economic growth for this
Associated Press
Alex Wittwer/The Observer
See, NOAA/Page 2B
Study finds drought-breaking rains
more erratic, rare across U.S. West
By MATTHEW BROWN
Mike Delpierre on Tuesday, April 6, 2021, cuts through a cinder block that will be a corner
piece for the flower bed at The Local Station, 1508 Adams Ave., La Grande. The site was
once home to a Texaco gas station. Developers Gust and Karin Tsiatsos are changing the
property into a space for boutique ice cream, coffee and mercantile shops as well as public
meeting areas. Gust Tsiatsos has said they want to create a place where tourists and locals
can do more than just buy coffee. The La Grande Urban Renewal Agency in 2020 approved
$64,200 in funds for the project, which has a total cost north of $400,000.
community,” said investor Jeff
Nuss, founder and past president/
CEO of GreenWood Resources.
“I know I can speak for all of the
investors when I say we are incred-
ibly excited to be able to come
alongside the management team
and continue this important work.
We believe these types of impact
investments are in critical demand
and Heartwood’s business model
has a great opportunity to expand
to other places.”
Heartwood was able to
retain all the approximately 20
employees and the management
team, as well as add important
management capacity and infra-
structure. The company will
continue serving the established
customer base and partnering
with the strong supplier and con-
tractor community that had been
integral to the growth of the
original business. Heartwood
plans to look for opportunities to
expand throughout the Western
U.S.
For more information about
Heartwood Biomass or to seek
employment opportunities, visit
heartwoodbiomass.com.
“We’re going to be continuing
to do more timber sales and lots of
stuff,” David Schmidt said.
Idaho Rep. Mike Simp-
son’s proposal to tear out
four dams on the Snake
River has brought renewed
focus on the Columbia
River System Operations
environmental impact state-
ment and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration Fisheries’
salmon recovery plan.
“Many factors con-
tributed to the decline of
salmon,” NOAA West
Coast public affairs officer
Michael Milstein told the
Capital Press. “Dams were
a big part of it, but not all of
it. So they must be part of
the solution. That has been
happening in terms of over-
hauling the system to make
fish a priority.”
The NOAA Fisheries
recovery plans for Snake
River salmon and steelhead
are all being implemented
across the basin, Milstein
said.
The approximate cost
of NOAA’s recovery plan
is $139 million over 10
years, he said. One of the
main sources of funding is
the Pacific Coastal Salmon
Recovery Fund, a stream of
federal funds, Milstein said.
NOAA Fisheries has not
evaluated Simpson’s plan,
Milstein said.
“It goes beyond dam
removal and threatened and
endangered fish,” he said.
NOAA Fisheries
develops recovery plans
for threatened and endan-
gered species listed under
the Endangered Species
Act. These recovery plans
are voluntary and outline
goals for improved sur-
vival across the life cycle —
habitat, hatcheries, hydro
power and harvest, Milstein
said.
The environmental
impact statement examines
the operations of the dams
on the Columbia and Snake
rivers.
The plan outlines the
improvements needed to
achieve recovery. The plan
goes beyond the dams to
include other parts of the
salmon life cycle, Milstein
said.
NOAA’s biological
opinion, commonly referred
to as the “BiOp,” addresses
the impact of the opera-
tion of the dams, but is not
responsible for recovering
BILLINGS, Mont. — Rain-
storms grew more erratic and
droughts much longer across
most of the U.S. West over the
past half-century as climate
change warmed the planet,
according to a sweeping gov-
ernment study released Tuesday,
April 6, that concludes the situa-
tion is worsening.
The most dramatic changes
were recorded in the desert
Southwest, where the average
dry period between rainstorms
grew from about 30 days in the
1970s to 45 days between storms
now, said Joel Biederman, a
research hydrologist with the
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Southwest Watershed Research
Center in Tucson, Arizona.
The consequences of the
intense dry periods that pum-
meled areas of the West in
recent years were severe —
more intense and dangerous
wildfires, parched croplands and
not enough vegetation to support
livestock and wildlife. And the
problem appears to be acceler-
ating, with rainstorms becoming
more unpredictable and more
areas showing longer intervals
between storms since the turn
of the century compared to prior
decades, the study concludes.
While previous research doc-
umented a decline in total rain-
fall for much of the West, the
work by Biederman and col-
leagues put more focus on when
that rain occurs. That has signif-
icant implications for how much
water is available for agriculture
and plants such as grasses that
have shallow roots and need a
steadier supply of moisture than
large trees.
“Once the growing season
starts, the total amount of rain-
fall is important. But if it comes
in just a few large storms,
with really long dry periods in
between, that can have really
detrimental consequences,” Bie-
derman said in an interview.
The total amount of rain in a
year doesn’t matter to plants —
especially if rains come mostly
in heavy bursts with large
run-off — but consistent mois-
ture is what keeps them alive,
See, Rains/Page 2B