<—”We aren’t really city folk”: Keith Landers and H&L Salvage (4 of 6 part series)

This is a view of the Good Faith Lumber facility. Workers are processing solid slabs of lumber into smooth table tops.
Good Faith Lumber, far surpassed our expectations as far as size and workload. Good Faith is owned by three Thorne Bay residents with a combined experience in the wood industry of over 92 years! We walked around the facility and watched big beautiful slabs of old-growth lumber being planned and finished into gorgeous table tops. The employees were all busy at work water blasting gravel from the raw wood, operating heavy machinery and soaking in the opportune hot Southeast Sun. We met with Hans on his break.

These rustic slab tables are planned smooth to perfection and will make for a gorgeous, high-quality, unique table top.
“It’s busy especially this time of year, it gets busy. Lots of orders coming in. People wanting to build cabins or homes you know.”
We asked Hans about his history and relationship with Alaskan timber. He stressed his dedication to in-region manufacturing as opposed to wholesale export of raw lumber and job opportunities to markets outside of Alaska.
“We all have the same mindset for the future. None of us want to get rich and leave. We want to see this thing working. We want to see the wood stay here. Frankly, I’d like to not see any export at all. I’d like it all manufactured right here on the island rather than send it to Japan or wherever else but right now it’s a necessary evil.”
We agreed with Hans. Our valuable timber should be carefully and responsibly managed. The lumber should be used in a way that maximizes benefits to the region and our local rural communities. Rather than mass export raw products to Asian markets or companies in the lower 48, this wood can, and should be used to create jobs and valuable products right here in Southeast Alaska where jobs, and a stable economy are so desperately needed. How can we better incentivize in-region manufacturing? This is a question and goal that needs more exploration.

By using a high power pressure hose to spray down raw lumber, this worker removes bits of grit and rock that would otherwise dull the heavy machinery
We continued our tour and noticed, smoke billowing out above a gravel mountain from the corner of the property. This is where waste wood is burned. Around fifty percent of a given log can be wasted and unfortunately, as it is now, these local mill operations are left to burn the leftovers. Keith Landers and Hans expressed a common guilt and sadness for burning this waste. Removing wood from the forest only to end up using half of it to fuel a continuous bonfire is a modern tragedy in the Southeast. Wasted wood can and should be used to fuel creative markets and heat homes in a region where incredibly high energy costs debilitates our economy and leaves residents scrambling to pay utility bills. This waste is not only problematic at the stage of manufacturing and processing, the floor of clearcuts and thinned forests are often littered with abandoned wood, disregarded as ‘non merchantable’.
Eliminating the waste stream in our industry requires both societal and political change. For one, building a culture that admires defect, that refuses to burn waste wood when it can be manufactured into unique and functional products. This wasted wood could also heat homes. Exploring a sustainable ‘biomass’ industry that could fuel Southeast Alaska and reduce exorbitant energy costs for rural Alaskans is on the agenda of everyone from SCS and the Forest Service to the millers themselves. Four mill owners on Prince of Wales, including Keith Landers and Good Faith Lumber, are interested in partnering to turn waste wood into chips or pellets for sale to local markets. The success of a localized biomass industry, depends on regional markets. The Forest Service is exploring biomass utilization schemes. This exploration and the related initiatives have not yet trickled down into action on the ground, in the communities and across industries where it is needed.
There are a number of policy changes that can also help eliminate wood waste at its source. As it is now, the US Forest Service has a very relaxed definition of ‘merchantable’ wood. This allows the winning timber sale bidder to leave behind high volumes of ‘slash’ or cut and abandoned ‘unmerchantable’ wood on the floor of a clearcut. Policies like this incentive our current timber culture that lags far behind the lower 48 as far as eliminating waste streams and maximizing industry efficiency per board foot.

Waste wood is currently burned at H&L Salvage and Good Faith lumber. This wood could be processed into chips or pellets and used to heat homes here in rural Alaska. Four local millers across Prince of Wales island are interested in starting a biomass industry to use this wasted wood. Starting a biomass industry is dependent on having boilers and markets to sell to.
One way to eliminate old-growth waste is by encouraging selective logging and only cutting the trees that are wanted. By leaving trees standing, rather than cutting and ultimately abandoning on the clearcut floor, this practice better protects forest structure that would otherwise be lost under a clearcut regime. In many situations, the USFS requires all trees to be cut. The resultant forest consists solely of trees of the same age. Once the canopies close, these even-aged trees block out the sun and prevent a healthy understory from growing. In order to speed growth, restore habitat diversity and improve function for deer and other wildlife, these stands are periodically thinned- often at great cost. Under a partial, selective-harvest regime, a certain percent of the multi-aged structure of the stand is retained. The resulting forest avoids complete canopy closure and the subsequent detriment to wildlife. Therefore, costly thinning procedures are no longer required and the ecological integrity of the forest prevails.

View of the wasted wood and ‘slash’ left behind after a clearcut harvest. Photo taken on Prince of Wales Island, Logjam timber sale
The Tongass already contains vast tracts of clearcut land and subsequent young-growth forest. Additional, mass clearcutting of our vanishing old-growth forest is wasteful and costly in both economic and environmental terms. Future old-growth harvests should focus on reducing needless waste and destruction of valuable wildlife habitat by leaving a selection of trees standing and only removing those which meet the specific needs of the logger. By being more selective and prudent in the way we harvest our forests we can achieve common goals and bridge the differences between those driven by economic and conservation goals.
We left Good Faith Lumber and stopped distracting the very busy workers from the tasks at hand. Good Faith Lumber produces large quantities of high quality dimensional lumber and their products are in high demand. We thanked Hans and his colleagues for their time and piled back in the rig to ruminate on and discuss all the insight and wisdom these delightful woodworkers shared with us.
Check back next week for the conclusion and summary of our visit to Princce of Wales.
Did you build your own water filters out of cotton balls and coffee filters, make homemade rainwater catchment systems, or simulate oil rigs with sand and straws when you were in third grade? Neither did I. Third graders in Chris Bryner’s class got to embark on a journey to learn all about water conservation in and around the Tongass over the course of the last few months through a project called Conservation in the Classroom. This new program, created by myself and Chris Bryner, aimed to teach kids everything about water conservation and how it relates to their lives. Throughout two months, I taught lessons on how water conservation relates to things like pollution, waste, energy, water filtration, and more.
Chris’s classroom is unique in that he uses the model of project based learning. This non traditional and adaptive teaching style gave me the freedom to let kids learn by building and being creative instead of talking at them. They learned how hydropower works by building their own water wheel. They compared this to oil rigs as they created their own ocean with layers of sugar and sand to represent oil and the ocean floor. They saw as they pulled the “oil” out of the water with a straw, the “ocean floor” was disturbed. Instead of me telling them, they got to create the simulation on their own. They could see how hydropower is a clean source of energy and understand how our Blue Lake Dam works.
We talked about the importance of protecting watersheds, which is a huge concept for third graders! Kids crumpled up paper to create miniature mountain peaks. I sprayed water on all of the peaks and they watched it trickle down to create this big watershed. We did the same thing with food dye and saw how far it could travel if you dump a pollutant at the top of a mountain. The kids watched it happen in front of their eyes instead of being told what might happen. After that, the kids asked f we could have a trash pick up day to remove all the garbage from Cutthroat Creek to stop it from spreading.
Sitka Conservation Society’s advocates for protecting the Tongass and promoting ecological resiliency. By teaching third graders why conservation matters, they will have a better understanding of why the Tongass is worth protecting. Through these projects and others that the kids created, we all learned how even though water is abundant here, it relates and impacts other things in the Tongass and should be monitored and protected.
After exploring these things, the kids got to break up into groups and focus on a final project they were most interested in. One group investigated the benefits and drawbacks of the Blue Lake Dam Expansion Project. They went on a tour of the facility, interviewed key people from the project, and talked to Sitkans about what they thought. Another group wanted to know how to proper filter water. They did a Skype interview with a woman who builds filters for families in Africa. The kids were creative, inquisitive, and had incredible results. Conservation in the Classroom was a terrific collaboration between SCS and Chris Bryner’s class. Students walked away with a better understanding of their landscape and how to protect it.
Sitka has brought a myriad of new experiences for me in the short amount of time I have been here. I’ve learned I can home make my own jam or fruit leather from berries. I can process my own deer and have meat. I can harvest mushrooms and use them for a meal. These things were never a part of my upbringing. If you saw a berry on a bush in Chicago, you probably only ate it if you were dared. I have the opportunity to interact with the Tongass in more ways than just hiking the trails. Home making my own products seems much easier now than ever before.
To build off the idea of making my own foods or products, the other JV’s and I have decided to try a chemical challenge for the month of December. There are too many harsh products with destructive properties in household items. We are spending one month exploring alternatives to these products. To help protect our streams and ocean from these harsh chemicals that will inevitably make it there after it’s sent down the drain, we will create our own environmentally friendly products.
We are making one new homemade product or cleaning supply each week. This will include things like counter disinfectant, shampoo, toilet bowl cleaner, and more. After some research, we have found some common threads in homemade cleaning supplies, such as baking soda and vinegar. We have started collecting these types of ingredients to create some new cleaning supplies. Each week we will build off the previous product so by the end of the four weeks we will be consistently using four new cleaning solutions. Our goal is produce less harmful runoff and less of a footprint on our environment.
Salmon is an integral part of our community and it is the underlying backbone of what sustains us here in Sitka. Fisherman, processors, and fish eaters all have an investment in the livelihood of salmon in Alaska. Approximately 48 million wild salmon are caught every year in the Tongass. In order to keep our salmon healthy and safe, it is crucial that we protect our waters. Salmon are obviously hurt by trash and litter in the waterways, but chemicals are also effecting them. This could be overlooked because at a glance a river would look healthy and safe, but chemicals leaving our homes through the pipes or trash are making there way to the water. The EPA considers runoff to be the largest threat to water quality in the country currently. Investing in environmentally friendly products will help not only salmon, but the whole Tongass ecosystem. Check back at the end of the month to hear all about our new products and to get recipes to do this yourself!