At its December quarterly meeting, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) Governing Board awarded $1,544,950 to the Sierra Business Council for a wood-fired boiler for the Alpenglow Timber Sawmill near Truckee, CA. The Alpenglow Timber Sawmill was approved for construction by Nevada County in October with plans to complete construction and start operations by fall 2025.
Restoring the forested landscapes of California’s Sierra-Cascade is at the heart of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy’s mission supporting the environmental, economic, and social well-being of the region, and in many parts of the region returning forests to resilience means removing small trees and brush.
“Many of our forested landscapes are overly dense, leaving them stressed, unhealthy, and vulnerable to disease, pests, and large damaging wildfires,” said Angela Avery, executive officer of the SNC. “A lack of local wood-utilization infrastructure that can create economic value from the byproducts of forest-health work is a significant barrier to restoring many Sierra-Cascade landscapes, including the greater North Lake Tahoe area, so building a new community-scale sawmill is the kind of common-sense step the SNC is proud to support.”
The funds approved by SNC’s Board will contribute to the sawmill’s wood-fired boiler system that will provide heat used for winter kiln-drying and on-site commercial and residential needs. This includes providing heat for six planned on-site employee housing units. The new sawmill will create economic value from restoration byproducts, while providing an environmentally superior alternative to trucking material long distances or pile-burning it on site.
“The grant from the SNC is critical to the success of the Alpenglow Sawmill Project. It represents an important commitment on the state’s behalf towards helping advance the wood-processing infrastructure necessary to meet the region’s wildfire-resilience and forest-management goals,” said Steve Frisch, president of the Sierra Business Council. “This will enable the expansion of appropriate forest treatments in this region.”
The Alpenglow Timber Sawmill, located outside the town of Truckee, will provide a buyer for small-diameter logs extracted from nearby forest-health, hazard-fuel-reduction, and fire-recovery projects. This includes projects funded by the SNC around high-fire-risk communities already taking place, such as the Alpine Meadows and Olympic Valley Fire Protection Project, the Webber Lake Little Truckee River Headwaters project, and the Northwest End Royal Gorge project.
The new sawmill will also help with the local economy.
“The Alpenglow Timber Sawmill can quickly accept and process material generated from forest health and hazard-fuel-reduction projects in the region,” wrote Eli Ilano, former Tahoe National Forest Supervisor, in support of the sawmill. “Additionally, the project will contribute to a stronger regional economy in that it will create jobs and provide housing for the local workforce in an area where affordable housing is extremely limited.”
Along with forest material from SNC-funded efforts in the region, the sawmill, once up and fully functional, is expected to process small-diameter timber extracted from critical restoration projects planned in the near future in the Feather River, Yuba River, Bear River, and American River watersheds. More than 250,000 acres of national forest, California State Park, and private industrial and non-industrial forest lands are within a 30-air mile radius of the Truckee location.
“The Sierra Business Council is grateful for the award of this grant from the SNC and proud to be playing a role in expanding the region’s capacity to address forest management and wildlife-resilience challenges,” added Frisch.
View more information about the grant supporting the Alpenglow Timber Sawmill.