It's imperative to keep two critical aspects in mind as the effort to cut down dead trees on our city and national forests ensues this fall.

First, the problem of beetle-killed trees goes far beyond those dead, red stands on Mount Helena, Mount Ascension and the rest of the South Hills. Those are but a microcosm of the infestation and very real fire danger caused by this pine bark beetle epidemic that plagues the Helena National Forest.

Second, it's not just about removing the trees to avoid a catastrophic wildfire from ripping into our community. It's also about what to do with those trees after they're logged.

Beetle-killed trees are not totally useless for commercial purposes, though there is no great market for lodgepoles and ponderosas, which we mostly have here.

So what do we do with them?

As a city task force grapples with this very question this week, our government and public safety leaders must at all times seek a long-term solution that positions Helena as a leader in utilizing local

beetle-killed trees.

And the most logical and forward-thinking approach is to use those trees to produce local energy.

Here in Helena we have the benefit of hindsight by looking to Colorado and Canada, two places on the Rocky Mountain Front hit hardest by the pine bark beetles, to set our own course toward locally produced energy sources.

This model of using local trees for local energy is the future, and the city must seize the opportunity to implement its best practices now.

Dead reds

When pine beetles attack a tree, they release pheromones that attract other beetles to swarm the tree and overcome its natural arboreal defenses.

The beetles carry a blue-stained fungus, and when enough beetles devour a tree, the fungus infects and kills it. The needles turn reddish-brown. As long as the needles remain on the tree, usually for up to three years, it poses a serious fire danger.

If a dead tree with its needles catches fire, the wind can literally blow the burning needles off the tree like raining fire.

If left standing, those trees eventually fall, laying a blanket for an intensely hot blaze.

It's why city officials are acting this fall to cut down those dead patches on city open space.

Dry market

The fungus the beetles carry stains the wood blue, but structurally, the wood for the most part remains sturdy -- at least initially. Beetle-killed wood tends to be more resinous and permeable, but it does have its uses.

Some niches are unfolding. Woodworkers, for example, are taking advantage of the wood's color to make intriguing cabinets and hardwood floors.

Most lodgepole pines are too small in diameter for practical commercial uses. To make lumber that can be used in construction, trees must be larger than 21 inches in diameter.

In the Helena region, that's mostly ponderosa pines. However, ponderosas tend to punk much more quickly, rotting and falling in nearly three years. As wood sits dead on the stump, cracks spread deeper into the tree, potentially ruining the logs' use as a building material and dampening any potential profit.

Thus, the quicker the trees are logged, the greater the amount of uses and profit.

The pine beetle epidemic has created a surge in the number of trees available for commercial use, but the surge is temporary. If dead lodgepole trees remain standing in the forest, they become unusable after about eight years. And once the beetle epidemic ends, so will the abundance of dead wood.

This has some entrepreneurs in Colorado and Canada worried, so much so that they're not buying into practical uses for the dead timber.

They also haven't bought into the financial practicality of using beetle-killed wood because of the high cost to truck it back and forth from the few mills actually still in operation.

That's a problem in Montana, too. With the stagnant timber industry, many mills have laid off workers, reduced hours or closed. At least 23 Montana mills have closed since 1990, with the most recent being Plum Creek mills in Pablo and Evergreen.

Smurfit-Stone Container Corp., a cardboard box material and linerboard mill in Frenchtown, filed for bankruptcy in January. Yet it is one of the few Montana mills taking dead trees. They're loaded to capacity, and city of Helena leaders are trying to wedge a place there to take the logs they harvest this fall.

The Eureka Pellet Mills in Superior is Montana's only wood-pellet mill, but wood pellets are typically high-grade material made from the whole tree. And trucking dead wood there might not save enough money to make beetle-killed trees more cost effective than natural gas, electricity or propane.

Biomass boilers

But those aren't the only uses. The use of biomass boilers to heat large, industrial-sized buildings is gaining steam.

The process is simple. Biomass boilers burn corn, wood, straw or even manure to generate high-output heat, which can be circulated in buildings to heat air or water.

One such boiler is the Aqua-Therm Econoburn, a high-efficiency indoor machine that costs roughly $20,000. It burns 1 million BTUs and heats buildings up to 8,000 square feet. It easily integrates into existing heating systems.

A well-operated boiler will produce no smoke. It will produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, but wood decaying on a forest floor would do so anyway.

Many places in Montana are using biomass boilers already. The Fuels for Schools program installed biomass boilers in 10 school districts across the state. While the system in Deer Lodge alone cost nearly $780,000, those boilers collectively are expected to save the 10 school districts nearly $730,000 annually. It's also saving the school districts from burning fossil fuels, is carbon-neutral, and doesn't put the districts at the mercy of fluctuating natural gas prices.

Case in point

In Kremmling, Colo., about 120 miles west of Denver, private entrepreneur Mark Mathis built a $10 million wood-pellet manufacturing facility called Confluence Energy. The plant takes whole-log, pine-beetle-killed trees and reduces them into a pellet to be used in biomass boilers.

In Colorado, that's a lot of trees. The pine beetle has ravaged nearly 2 million acres of forests, killing nearly all of the state's lodgepole pines.

Confluence surely won't use up all those dead trees, but it is keeping busy -- and making an impact on the local economy. In a June ColoradoBiz Magazine story, Mathis said he'd employ about 20 full-time employees, create 75 jobs in trucking, and pump $10 million annually back into the local economy.

In a state where the beetle kill is rapidly resembling Colorado, that could be an opportunity for private business here.

However, a better approach to using all those dead, red pines is what Boulder County is doing in Longmont, Colo. And it's exactly what we could do here in Helena.

The Boulder County Parks and Open Space Department has recently embarked on a plan to use the trees it logs (because of pine beetle infestation or for healthy forest management) as wood chips to feed biomass boilers in five buildings.

The system was designed to displace 80 percent of its annual consumption of natural gas. The boiler needs 650 tons of wood per year to heat those five buildings, which comprise roughly 125,000 square feet. Their average forest-thinning project generates about 10 tons of wood per acre, thus needing to thin about 65 acres per year to run the system. Typically, the department thins between 100 and 150 acres per year.

The system uses wood chips instead of pellets, and at a cost of $350,000 more than a standard natural gas system, the county expects to recoup its investment in seven to 10 years. The system is expected to last 25 years.

The solution

Montana is a natural resource state. But natural resources change, and our use of them must, too, if we want our own economy to remain diverse and viable.

That's possible right out our back door.

The city task force is looking at all options, noted Parks and Recreation Director Amy Teegarden and Natural Resources Coordinator Brad Langsather. They're planning to take trees of all usable diameters to market, and chip and burn the rest right up on the hillsides. The city already does that, as well as chipping the natural materials at the transfer station, combining them with sludge from the wastewater treatment plant, and selling it as compost.

If the city and/or county were able to install a reasonable number of biomass boilers in its buildings that were engineered for wood chips rather than pellets or other sources, wood from our open space lands and forests could be chipped locally and cheaply and used to heat those buildings.

It would be the ultimate example of creating a useful byproduct from the fire mitigation and forest management efforts that will be happening all over our region anyway.

Further, there is the potential to expand this technology to cogenerate electricity, an even brighter idea yet.

Unlike many communities, even in Montana, we're literally surrounded by forests. The ";out there" in Helena is really ";in here."

Given our adjacent location to local, state and national forests, we have an endless supply of this material -- 400,000 acres of beetle infestation on the Helena National Forest alone. The average thinning project here generates 20 tons per acre. That's 8 million tons of dead wood.

There's no reason we shouldn't use it appropriately to improve our efficiency and environmental stewardship.

The future is at our fingertips. Let's reach out and grab it.

Click here to view more information and resources about biomass energy production in Montana from DNRC

Click here to view more information on financial assistance for biomass applications.

Click here to view more information on Fuels for Schools.