Operations at the Pinnacle Pellet plant in Houston are currently shut down due to a “fire-related event” that injured three employees Nov. 25. In a statement, the company said the employees “sustained minor injuries and were taken to Smithers Hospital as a precautionary measure.” …The company reported the fire started in the dryer area of the facility. Rumours of an ensuing explosion cannot be confirmed at this time. No date for a resumption of operations has been set. Fires and explosions are a perennial risk for pellet plant operations because they deal with a lot of wood dust. Since 2014, Pinnacle has dealt with fires and/or explosions in a number of its plants including Houston, Burns Lake, Smithers, Lavington, Entwistle and Armstrong.

Almost a year into B.C. adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) the Nuchatlaht First Nation (NFN) is calling on the province to honour its legislation with regards to an ongoing land title case. The Nuchatlaht called on Premier John Horgan, Attorney General David Eby and the newly appointed cabinet ministers to “correct the long-standing government policy that Nuchatlaht abandoned their territory,” to abide by legislation to uphold the UNDRIP, and to drop its legal argument. Since Jan. 2017, NFN has been legally pursuing a land claim for territory including Nootka Island, along the northwest coast of Vancouver Island. …The nation claims it was forced out of its traditional territory on Nootka Island, and the land was licensed by the province to logging companies without the consent of the First Nation. 

For decades, the natural gas pumped from the previously rich reservoir at Clarke Lake… that Fort Nelson First Nation Chief Sharleen Gale looks on as “a gift from our ancestors.” A gift of geothermal power to displace the gas-fired electricity the region relies on… and a source of diversified economic development for people usually tied to boom-and-bust resource industries. And Gale’s vision is to capitalize on that gift, starting with a $100 million geothermal power plant to demonstrate its potential, provided the First Nation can fill a $6.3 million funding gap by a Dec. 31 deadline to secure significant support from Natural Resources Canada. …Gale said the plant could also serve as carbon-free power for new industry including a wood pellet plant and greenhouses, which would also tap into residual heat to grow food that is typically expensive and hard to access now.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic and fluctuations in trade agreements, Canoe Forest Products appears to be holding steady.  General manager Marcello Angelozzi said things were a little dicey after the pandemic broke in March and April, but business soon bounced back.  “It was tough out of the gate in March, April, May, but we held in there and have had a fairly good finish to the year,” he said Nov. 23.  Plywood is the plant’s primary product and markets are doing well.  Angelozzi said the company had employees off in March because of COVID-19 concerns – not from contracting the virus – but no one was laid off.  Of salaried personnel, Canoe Forest Products currently employs 35 people in the woodlands sector and about 150 in plywood production and maintenance, he reported.

Nathan Cullen

The B.C. ministry with the biggest name and footprint in provincial history is being broken up as part of a reform of rural and resource development, Premier John Horgan says.  Newly elected Stikine MLA Nathan Cullen has been assigned the task of reorganizing what is now officially known as the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development into two government departments. That will leave Kootenay West MLA Katrine Conroy with a focus on forests and rural development as B.C.’s first female forests minister. Cullen, a long-time northwest B.C. MP appointed “minister of state” or assistant to Conroy, will likely end up in charge of the vast Crown lands and resource roads that wind through them.  …Lands and natural resources will be a full-scale department with significant staff… …the logic for combining forests and lands was that roads, bridges, logging, and mining were linked with wildlife, as B.C. struggled with dwindling caribou herds