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BioMass to charge for dumping waste Photo by Steve Johnson Steve Barnard of Medford, shown unloading debris from his yard at BioMass One on Tuesday, says he sees nothing wrong with the company's announced fee structure. "It's a great facility," he says. Wood recycling plant blames higher costs By DAVID PRESZLER WHITE CITY -- One of the Rogue Valley's last free services is ending. Starting Friday, BioMass One will charge $5 a pickup load (and more for larger trucks) to dispose of the tree limbs, shrub and hedge clippings, trash lumber and other clean wood waste that it has taken for free for all 15 years of the company's existence. Gordon Draper, BioMass One vice president for fiber fuel and transportation, says the cost of operating the yard simply has surpassed the fuel value of the material being dropped off. "We've just held off doing it," Draper says of the dropoff charges, noting that the yard has been losing money for several years. And, since BioMass One is a private, for-profit company with 68 employees, it needed a way to offset those higher costs. For example, the company has about $2 million worth of equipment being used in the yard and recently had to purchase a new $325,000 loader. "We're not trying to get rich off this," Draper says. "It's just going to defray the costs of the five guys that work out here and the $2 million worth of equipment." BioMass' charges will be: $5 minimum for pickups; $10 for 1- to 1 1/2-ton trucks; $15 for loads of 10 cubic yards; and $30 for loads of more than 15 cubic yards. By way of comparison, Rogue Disposal charges a $7 a cubic yard (with a $10.50 minimum) to accept wood waste at its transfer station. Draper says customers have had mixed responses to the fee announcement. Some are dismayed at any fee, but he says most have been understanding. "I've been dumping here since day one," says Medford Randy Hugdahl, who dropped off a load of branches Tuesday morning. "I guess we'll have to pay it. What are you going to do? Take it to the dump where they charge you like crazy?" "I don't see anything wrong with it," says Medford's Steve Barnard, who dumped a trailer of trimmings off Tuesday morning. "It's a great facility. It's better than paying $12 at the dump." The public yard operation makes up only a small portion of the fuel BioMass One processes despite the fact that 45,000 to 50,000 people use it each year. The company processes about 1,200 tons of waste wood through its boilers daily, burning it to generate about 25 megawatts of power an hour. That power -- enough to supply about 20,000 homes -- is sold to PacifiCorp, which in turn sells it to customers. But only a small percentage of that 1,200 tons of wood waste comes from public drop offs. Draper says it represents only about a month of the company's annual needs. BioMass gets most of its waste wood from more than 75 fuel suppliers (sawmills, lumber companies, etc.) scattered from Coos Bay to Eugene. Though many people assume the bark and other landscape products the company sells are made from the waste wood they drop off, the company actually buys the bark and top soil elsewhere and resells it. Only the biomulch, which is made from a combination of dust collected from logging decks and ash from the boilers, is produced on site. Contrary to what Draper says is the popular perception, BioMass One isn't a government agency and isn't subsidized by tax dollars or federal grants. The company began accepting public wood waste at a time when such fuel was harder to come by. Now, the cost of getting it elsewhere has dropped while the costs of operating the public yard have risen. Still, Draper says the consumer drop offs are important to the company and remain an environmentally sound way to dispose of wood waste -- something he hopes consumers are aware of now they must pay a fee. Draper says BioMass One keeps 200,000 cubic yards of wood waste out of the Dry Creek Landfill each year. He also says its boilers burn about 100 times cleaner than backyard open burning. "We think we're offering a service that's a win-win for the community," he says, "even with the charges." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA