OLYMPIA — Legislation passed unanimously today by the Senate would reduce the scope of wildfires by encouraging the removal of dead timber and other ground materials that help the fires spread.
SB 6121, sponsored by Sen. Kevin Van De Wege (D-Lake Sutherland), would reduce the presence of common ground fuels by providing an alternative approach to remove and process dead forest growth that is both affordable and environmentally friendly.
“The growing frequency and intensity of wildfires is ravaging our forests and polluting the air in communities across our state,” Van De Wege said. “We can’t always prevent wildfires from happening, but when they do happen, we can starve them of the fuels that feed them.”
Maintaining healthy forests requires hazardous fuels reduction by thinning, limbing, clearing brush, and removing the resulting slash piles promptly rather than letting the fuel load build up over months and years. Modern technologies like Flame Capped Kilns produce fewer emissions while generating biochar, a product that is both profitable and useful to agriculture.
“This bill is game changing for the U.S. Rake Force. We ‘rake the forest’ with goats first, then chainsaws, to prevent catastrophic fire, but then we collect the excess wood fuel that we’ve thinned and pruned, and we make biochar,” said Jake Dailey of the U.S. Rake Force. “This bill permits the use of these Flame Cap Kilns that help us efficiently make biochar, which is a carbon credit earning activity, opening the door of the carbon market to small-scale producers and subsidizing some of the cost of managing our forests to be resilient against catastrophic fire.”
Biochar is attractive to farmers for its high carbon content and because mixing it with fertilizer reduces the amount of water needed for irrigation, Van De Wege said.
“Anything we do to promote the removal of timber slash from our forests will also eliminate an abundant fuel for wildfires,” Van De Wege said. “The benefits of biochar, a by-product that can boost crops and reduce demand on our limited water supplies at the same time, encourage the use of a practice that can improve forest health.”
