In addition to lands that have been dedicated to its purpose, Powell River Community Forest is offering to manage trees on City of Powell River property.
At council’s Thursday, October 16, committee of the whole meeting, Greg Hemphill, community forest president, said Chris Laing, owner of Results Based Forest Management, the company that conducts day-to-day operational management in the community forest, came to him with a suggestion. Laing had indicated to the community forest board that there may be an opportunity to undertake some forest management in the airport reserve lands and some of the other rural municipal forest lands.
“What our board suggested was that Chris do a full reconnaissance and preliminary engineering so when we came to council, there would be a good base of information,” Hemphill said. “If we were going to do this for you, we would manage it to the same high standard and forest practices we use in the community forest.”
Hemphill said the city lands being discussed were adjacent to the community forest.
“We could manage all aspects of the development, including financing the upfront cost of operation, issuing the contracts and selling the timber,” he said. “We would treat it as a separate cost centre from our community forest. We would share our financial records with the city as we go along.”
Laing showed the committee maps of four proposed harvesting areas.
One, called Inland-100, is a piece of city land that straddles the Inland Lake Forest Service Road. Laing said there are six hectares of “very nice timber,” with a mix of fir, hemlock and cedar, and a large component for fir saw logs and poles.
West-100 is adjacent to West Lake, and has just a little more than one hectare of fir saw logs and poles.
Airport Reserve Phase 4 is the largest tract of land and it comprises multiple lots south of town. Together, they comprise nearly 14 hectares, with fir being the predominant harvestable species.
The final area is known as Pine Tree, which is a 1.8-hectare property near Pine Tree Road, just off Highway 101.
Laing estimated the total harvest volume at 19,130 cubic metres. He said a detailed work-up of the operational costs and market prices has been undertaken.
“In terms of potential profit margin, a reasonable estimate would be a net profit of about $700,000 to $800,000 for the city,” Laing said. “Market changes, contractor availability and dump/sort access, and accommodations made to protect other values may alter the inputs.
“Timing is critical as our best returns will result from treating this as winter show, which, in terms of mobilization, means getting going this fall.”
Mayor Dave Formosa said he’d spent three hours touring the forested lands with Councillor Russell Brewer and Tor Birtig, the city’s director of infrastructure. He said that Birtig would be working closely with the community forest and Results Based Forest Management in identifying some other parcels of forested land that the city may want to dedicate to harvesting by the community forest.
Formosa said the city is delighted the community forest has said it can manage the upfront costs and take the money back later when revenue is generated.
Given the time sensitivity, a city staff report regarding the request will go directly to the city’s council meeting on November 6.
