When Kevin McCully first came on as Paysonâs fuels manager, he learned ash was a big part of his job.
âMy first week on the job, Toby Waugh took me to the Blattner brush pit and told me the looming issue to fuel management was to find a different way to get rid of the biomass or a new place for a brush pit,â said McCully.
The Regional Payson Area Project (RPAP) developed the brush pits around 2001.
âRPAP was a collaboration between local, state, federal and county agencies and concerned citizens,â said McCully.
With annual support from the late District 1 Supervisor Tommie Martin, Rim Country has operated this system of brush pits from Payson to Pine to take trimmings private landowners generate as they clear and Firewise their properties.
âWeâre super excited and the prospects for biomass look much brighter,â Novo BioPower head Brad Worsley told a relieved group of loggers, mill owners and public officials eager to restore the forest and prevent runaway megafires from consuming forested communities.
Worsley said changes at the Arizona Corporation Commission and negotiations with the Salt River Project have given him new hope that his 27-megawatt power plant near Snowflake will survive.
Moreover, he said the plant hopes to play a key role in two crucial thinning projects â the effort to protect the 64,000-acre C.C. Cragin watershed and the 30,000-acre Black River Landscape Restoration Project.