Alpenglow Timber’s proposed wood processing and sawmill facility in Klondike Flat was approved by the Nevada County Commission with a 5-0 vote on October 8, 2024. The Alpenglow team anticipates beginning operations by the end of fall 2025. Their services will span as far as the Sierra Valley, Donner Summit, and the North Shore of Lake Tahoe.
David Mercer founded Alpenglow Timber with the goal of having necessary timber facilities close to where we live and work. The project would create a circular, regenerative economy by using trees that are being thinned from our forests anyways to make simple boards, firewood, woodchips, and eventually cross-laminated timber (CLT).
Logging is often thought of as being destructive to the natural environment; however, when done right, the removal of trees keeps forests healthy by aiding in the reduction of fuels that could potentially cause or worsen wildfires. Mercer states, “these forests were never meant to be this dense” and that “if you don’t thin them, they stop growing”. The National Forest Foundation verifies this by saying that overstocked forests cause trees to compete more for resources, leading to higher tree mortality rates.
Forest thinning mimics the behavior of healthy fire. Shifting the focus from fire suppression to prevention is key to combating large-scale wildfire, a pertinent issue for Californians. “We’re recognizing that the forest is going to burn and we want it to burn under conditions that are more controlled and safer,” says Chief of Gold Ridge Fire Protection District, Shepley Schroth-Cary, in a KQED interview.
Fire has been used by Native Americans for thousands of years, a tradition that helps them coexist with the land. Indigenous people would deliberately light fires to increase the productivity of hunting and to encourage growth of certain woodland plants.
Now, with modern infrastructure, especially in mountain communities like ours in the Tahoe-Truckee area, it is more important than ever to ensure our ecosystems are resilient when it comes to fire. If the forests are not thinned, wildfires will start and potentially cause catastrophic destruction.
Mercer states that his goal with Alpenglow Timber is to, “get [the] forest back to a point where it’s healthy, sustainable, not affected by fire”.
Impacts of this development on the community
The plan for the Alpenglow project was originally approved on August 8th with a 5-0 vote, but an appeal was filed shortly after by the Friends of Prosser Truckee, an organization made up of locals concerned about the impacts of the development in Klondike Flat.
There has been a great deal of controversy in the surrounding community regarding the timber project, which was reflected in the appeal. The appeal was a decision rather than a recommendation, meaning that the Nevada County Planning Commission, who are clearly in favor of the project, could not oppose the motion. In the public hearing regarding the appeal, both parties addressed the situation and many concerns were debunked or resolved by the Alpenglow team and planning commission.
For example, The Friends of Prosser Truckee claimed on their website the project “would introduce considerable noise pollution into our quiet residential neighborhood”. The CEQA environmental impact report claims that the current noise in Klondike Flat is “primarily defined by traffic on SR 89 to the east of the project site and natural sounds”. The report also determined that the addition of the timber facility would not produce a significant increase in ambient noise, with mitigation. The opposing organization believed the project’s debarker would be “very loud”; however, the total noise of the development is predicted to be equivalent to a household washing machine.
The Alpenglow project will involve a variety of new constructions. Buildings will include a sawmill, manufacturing facility for cross-laminated timber, storage, and three duplexes for employee housing. Six employees will be hired to live there to take positions as sawmill workers and on the forestry side of the operation.
The lumber industry has played a significant role in Truckee’s history. The industry experienced a boom in the mid to late 1800s when there were about six sawmills in the area. However, due to a push for less logging and more suppression-based efforts, mills ended up closing throughout the 20th century. For example, Burney Lumber closed in 1989 and operations in Hobart Mills shut down in 1936 (The Sierra Sun).
A lack of these types of facilities in our immediate region means organizations like the Truckee Donner Land Trust (TDLT) have to pay higher hauling costs to transport logs or chips for processing or milling.
According to TDLT’s Executive Director John Svahn, the organization has used Mercer’s forest management company, Crosscheck Services for thinning and meadow restoration on their Webber Lake and Royal Gorge properties. When Alpenglow begins operations it will be beneficial to organizations like them because the challenging hauling costs will be less.
The closest sawmill and wood processing plant to Truckee as of the development’s approval is Sierra Pacific Industries’ Quincy division 70 miles away. According to Nala Lowry, who lives 15 minutes from that mill, on the right day there is noticeable air pollution and “logging trucks are constantly driving through town”, resulting in moderate traffic on Main Street which later connects to highway 70. Sierra Pacific typically trucks 400-500 loads of logs per day while the project in Klondike Flat would result in approximately 15 to 20. Quincy’s timber facility is much more large-scale and industrial than Alpenglow Timber will be and the majority of new traffic will be on highway 89, a mountain road similar to Quincy’s CA 70.
Quincy is a smaller town than Truckee and withstands a larger timber operation than Alpenglow will be, which could mean many local concerns, such as those about increased traffic, will not be an issue. According to the World Population Review, Quincy’s 2024 population is 1,308 people while Truckee’s is 17,130.
Lowry states that the mill does not significantly impact her daily life. She says Sierra Pacific employs a lot of people in Quincy and “it definitely is a good thing for our community, it brings in a lot of money for our small town”.
Comparing the impacts of a similar yet bigger operation in Quincy does not get close to disapproving concerns or predicting the impacts of the Alpenglow development. Anabel Geary, a Truckee High senior and life-long resident of Klondike Flat, explains she and her neighbors are concerned about noise, safety (namely fire danger), and pollution that could result from the project.
Geary believes that the addition of the sawmill and wood processing facility will disturb the quiet neighborhood and surrounding natural area. She claims that the current project plan “does not provide many solutions [to concerns] that people living here want to see” such as a separate entrance to the mill off of 89.
Klondike Flat Road is the only access point for the neighborhood and the Alpenglow property. The plan for the road is that it will eventually be paved to minimize the erosive impacts and weathering of an already rough, rutted street. Additionally, a left turn lane will be put in on 89 to make the turn from the highway to the smaller road safer.
The value of houses in the neighborhood is another thing Klondike Flat residents like Geary are worried about. Having a development like a sawmill near houses could lower their value. That creates a potential future financial burden for homeowners if and when they decide to sell.
Why CLT?
In the near future, Alpenglow hopes to manufacture cross-laminated timber (CLT), which also falls into the glulam, or mass timber category. CLT is created by layering together boards with wood glue at 90 degree angles. Its versatility, rigidity and earthquake resistance makes the material great for flooring, beams, to supplement concrete and steel, and even to build entire houses.
CLT is carbon-smart because trees naturally sequester significant amounts of carbon that is only released when they decompose or burn. Additionally, it will be produced in a low-impact way. Unlike other wood processing operations, Alpenglow will not be trucking wastewater, because the kiln-drying method that will be utilized allows water to evaporate from the wood.
Mercer says,”wood is a great product”. He explains that this particular product is made without toxic materials and is a great way to use low-grade material that would otherwise be a by-product at other sawmills. While wood is renewable, other more popular building materials like concrete and steel are not. According to Henkel those products “are mined from the ground and never replaced. They require intensive energy to produce. Half of the cement used to make concrete in North America comes from offshore, and most of the steel does, too”.
A 2021 report by the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment states, “There has been considerable interest in establishing CLT production in California. While the demand for CLT in California is rapidly increasing, so far state CLT production has not happened for several reasons.”
As of three years ago, there were only 8 factories in the U.S. manufacturing CLT, none of those being in California. This means in our state it is being outsourced, and the material is being used in building more and more. Although Alpenglow Timber would be a smaller scale operation, it would be very helpful in response to the CLT demand in our region and for the environmental reasons mentioned previously.
More information about CLT and other mass timber products can be found here and here.