Friday Morning:
After a breakfast sponsored by Western Timber Products, Friday morning took us to the facilities of the Potlatch Complex in Lewiston. We toured their paper mill as well as their consumer products division where paper products you see in stores come from, and Potlatch's tree nursery where trees are grown to replenish their plantation forests. After that we trekked out East to the Clearwater National Forest to learn how the Clearwater national forests is managed. Lunch was served in Big Eddy State Park above the Dworshak Dam.
Complex
The Potlatch complex in Lewiston, Idaho which combines a sawmill, paper mill, cogeneration and a tree nursery. The facility employs approximately 2,200 people. Chips from the sawmill are pulped to make paper and the waste is burned to generate steam and electricity. About 70% of Potlatch's energy is generated on-site. It was a perfect place to see complete utilization of the forest resources.
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Pulp & Paper Group
Our tour of Potlatch's integrated pulp/paper mill involved viewing Potlatch's huge paper machine
(3L) producing paper for their consumer products at a rate of a mile of paper a minute.
Potlatch pioneered the use of lumber and plywood residues to manufacture bleached paperboard starting in 1950. The Lewiston facility uses approximately 225 truckloads per day of sawmill waste and by-products.
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Consumer Products
Continuing our tour of Potlatch's complex, we'll visit the Consumer Products Division
to see how paper is converted from parent rolls off the paper machine into the various consumer products that Potlatch produces including; paper towels and bathroom and facial tissues. Among the processes
we'll witness; how designs were printed onto paper towels using large 4-color presses and how bathroom tissue is quilted on winders and wound onto cores before being accumulated into packages for shipping and sale.
In the testing labs we'll see examples of the many common consumer products that Potlatch produces and how they test for quality standards in all their products.
Potlatch's Consumer Products Division began its operations in the 1960's. It is the Western United States' largest producer of private label tissue products and provides 40 percent of all private label tissue in the West. The Consumer Products Division alone produces 1,300,000 cases of tissue products each month, including bathroom tissue, facial tissue, household towels, and napkins.
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Nursery
Built in 1976, Potlatch's nursery grows one crop of trees per year (about 3 million trees) to replenish trees cut in Potlatch's plantation. Seeds are gathered from seed trees on the plantations and sown in the nursery. The resulting seedlings are planted in the same area from which the seeds were taken.
Potlatch grows eight species of trees at its Lewiston, Idaho nursery: Douglas Fir, White Pine, Ponderosa Pine, Lodgepole Pine, Western Hemlock, Western Red Cedar, Western Larch, and Grand Fir. It grows about 300,000 trees of each species annually.
Abbie Acuff is our host throughout Potlatch's nursery facility.
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Clearwater National Forest
The Clearwater National Forest is 1.8 million acres in size. It has 30.5 billion board feet of timber, enough to build 3 million three bedroom homes. There are 323 million tons of fuel on the forest (fuel loading). Each of the Nation's 155 National Forests are run by a Forest Supervisor. The Supervisor's Office for the Clearwater National Forest is in Orofino, Idaho. Each forest is further divided into Ranger Districts.
We stopped by the Supervisor's office for a presentation on management considerations for the Clearwater as well as endangered species.
In 1914, the forest had 34.5% white pine and 20.3% Douglas/grand fir compared to 2000, the forest has 0.9% white pine and 39.9% Douglas/grand fir. There are 4000 miles of system (permanent) roads on the forest.
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Lunch
Friday's lunch, sponsored by the Associated Logging Contractors, will be near Dworshak Dam at the Big Eddy lodge and marina in Dworshak State Park.
Along with a lunch catered by Country Caterers, we'll hear an overview of the US Army Corps of Engineer's wildlife and forest management activities in the area. The Corps were responsible for building Dworshak dam in 1973 creating the 53-mile reservoir that offers opportunities for camping, boating, fishing, picnicking and sightseeing. The US Army Corps of Engineers manages a 33,000 acre forest around the lake.
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