There has been a great deal of discussion in the community about the application to Nevada County for a use permit for the Alpenglow small diameter timber mill and wood products facility. Sierra Business Council (SBC) supports the Alpenglow Timber facility, and encourages members of the community to weigh in with their support.

The Alpenglow facility will be set on a site that is previously zoned for this activity. The project includes workforce housing for employees. The project is a local business that will create good local jobs. It is being proposed by a long- term resident with a 30-year history of sustainable forestry practices.

SBC has worked on climate resilience, forest management and wildfire mitigation issues for 30 years with a focus on advancing certain principles. The primary focus of forest management should be the ecological restoration of our forests. To achieve restoration we must increase the pace and scale of forest treatment. To reach our restoration goals we need facilities to treat wood waste and find economically beneficial uses in order to control and reduce the cost of treatment.

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Current conditions in forests in and around Truckee are degraded and unhealthy due to past logging practices, fire suppression, drought, and climate change. There are too few large trees, too many small trees, and an excess of “surface and ladder fuels” that significantly increase the risk of high-severity wildfire. SBC’s perspective is that Truckee has been fortunate to have not suffered a large landscape, high intensity wildfire since the Donner Ridge Fire in 1960. The Alpenglow facility is a critical part of a renewed and ecologically sensitive forest management industry that is necessary to reduce the risk to life, property and the environment in the region.

The Alpenglow facility will also result in a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions due to the use of sawmill debris for heat and power with state of the art emissions controls, thus avoiding the use of carbon based fuels for operations, while avoiding emissions from open pile burning of small diameter timber in our forests.

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Potential noise impacts have been mitigated by placing the mill and machinery in an enclosed building and as far from residential areas as possible.

The traffic study finds the vast majority of project-generated traffic already exists on Hwy 89-North as a function of the existing work at Hobart and the new, added project-generated traffic equates to less than a one percent increase in existing Hwy 89-North traffic volumes during the highest traffic volume period. There are a total of eight new truck trips on Highway 89. Five of those trips go South on 89 from the project site, three head Northbound. On Klondike Road specifically there will be 30 new truck trips daily and 31 new car trips daily. These are the facts relating to the nominal traffic generation increases on Highway 89. Every project of this type requires in-depth studies and surveys that guide planners and construction alike to ensure the safest outcome. All studies can be seen in the public CEQA document which is available here: https://ceqanet.opr.ca.gov/2024051065.

Truckee and the Sierra Nevada are facing the ongoing challenge of more frequent and devastating large-scale high intensity wildfires and all of the negative impacts associated with them including loss of life, property, habitat, biodiversity, and degraded public health. To address that challenge we need facilities like Alpenglow to address our forest management needs.

In the end the project will benefit the entire community and its neighbors by allowing us to scale up forest management in the region. Sierra Business Council strongly supports the proposed Alpenglow project and encourages residents to read the environmental documentation and comment in favor of granting a use permit to the Alpenglow facility.

Steve Frisch is the President and CEO of the Sierra Business Council based in Truckee and serving the entire Sierra Nevada with a mission to catalyze and demonstrate innovative approaches and solutions to increase community vitality, economic prosperity, environmental quality, and social fairness in the Sierra Nevada.