Can Baker ride the biomass wave?

Baker County has a chance to be a leader in an economic and environmental sense.

Now we just have to take advantage of that chance.

We have it.

Lots of it.

And it looks as though the combination of private sector innovation and public subsidies could use that biomass bounty to transform Baker County’s typically plodding economy into a fast-moving model for much of the rural West.

Elkhorn Biomass, which is headquartered on Ellingson Lumber Co.’s former sawmill site in Baker City, is turning forest biomass into firewood and other heating products.

And this week the federal government unveiled a program that doubles the amount landowners receive when they sell biomass harvested from their property.

The matching grants are available to farmers and ranchers who sell agricultural biomass (crop residue, for instance) as well as for logging slash and small logs.

The grant program, which will continue for at least two years, is crucial because it should make biomass a profitable product for many landowners.

Equally important, the program is open to contractors who harvest biomass from federal lands — where much of the region’s biomass is.

Then there are the environmental benefits of using biomass.

Thinning overcrowded forests reduces the risk of stand-replacing fires.

And healthy forests are good for the economy because they supply all manner of valuable things, including wood products, recreation, clean water and habitat for fish and wildlife.

For more than half a century Baker County has existed as a sort of island of tranquility in a roiling economic sea.

The county’s relative lack of industry has sometimes served it well. During the current recession, for instance, our unemployment rate is well below the Oregon average.

Yet when the inevitable boom cycle begins anew, history would suggest that Baker County will lag behind.

Uncertainties about biomass remain, of course, chief among them the question of whether public lands, which make up half the county’s 2 million acres, can consistently supply enough biomass.

Yet the possibility of adding agricultural biomass to the mix could offset shortages from public forests.

We’re excited, in any case, about the prospect of a burgeoning biomass industry that puts Baker County on the crest of the economic wave rather than in its trough.