Results are in!

By Clayton Brown

The Alberta Reasearch Council, ARC, was part of a pilot project that turned in great and exciting results. The pilot project, ran in Whitecourt, was a test to see how pulp mills across the province and Canada would be able to salvage pine beetle-infested or beetle-killed wood for newsprint. There are two main problems with the dead trees making them unusable for newsprint:

Trees sap to the affected areas much like the human body sends blood to clot a cut. When getting continually attacked by the beetle the tree soon becomes dried out and the wood becomes too brittle to run through pulp mills.
The trees start to turn a blue colour which is too dark for newsprint paper.

The ARC has made some changes to the production. They’ve added sensors on the belt and changed the consistency of the infected wood by adding different chemicals to it. These chemicals made the wood stronger and not nearly as dark. Making it possible to use, otherwise, worthless wood. This is a huge accomplishment as many pulp mills were looking at laying off workers or worse closing their doors.

Gary Smith of the Alberta Newspaper Council explained it will increase production significantly. “Right now we’re running between nine and 15 per cent blue stained wood in the plant. We expect it to go up to about 35 percent blue stain content.”

This wasn’t the only good news for the province in its battle against the infestation. Minister Morton made an announcement earlier this week. “The federal government will be giving 10 million dollars to Alberta to assist in the fight against the mountain pine beetle infestation.” The 10 million dollars will be added to the already 25 million the province has allocated.