ESFPA E-News

ESFPA Would Like to Wish Everyone a Happy Earth Day 2023!

ESFPA Receives National Attention 

ESFPA is proud to announce that The Hardwood Federation published a report yesterday that addressed the comments made by ESFPA Executive Director, John Bartow, at the Farm Bill listening session in Binghamton, NY last week. They pointed out that John's remarks at the panel shared and supported several Hardwood Federation priorities "including the importance of recognizing the carbon storage value of wood products, increasing export promotion dollars and funding for USDA’s biomass energy program."

In case you missed our previous article, last Friday the Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, Glenn "GT" Thompson (PA-15), hosted a Farm Bill listening session in Binghamton, New York. Mr. Thompson was joined by Rep. Marc Molinaro (NY-19), along with bipartisan Members of the House Committee on Agriculture. The event brought together farmers, ranchers, producers, agribusiness owners, and more to solicit public feedback—an integral part of the Farm Bill reauthorization process. All members of the Committee were invited to participate as well as the New York Congressional delegation.

ESFPA Executive Director, John Bartow, attended this session and presented his remarks. He stated that ESFPA is the single voice in New York for wood product manufacturers and entities involved in the supply chain from forests to mills to consumers. The Farm Bill presents an important opportunity to address and support the needs of the U.S. forests and wood products industry. Key issues he asked the House Committee to consider during their deliberations include the following five areas:

• Forests and Conservation
• Wood Products Carbon Storage
• USDA Biomass Energy Program Funding  
• Wood in Affordable Housing 
• USDA Export Promotion Program Funding

Read ESFPA's full in-depth remarks below:

Northern Forest Center Webinar Recording Available

If you missed the Northern Forest Center's Today’s Northern Forest Economy webinar on Ensuring Long-Term Forest Health and Resiliency or want to revisit the conversation, please click here for the recording. There was a fascinating conversation with three leaders on the importance of forest management for long-term forest health and resiliency during an age marked by climate change and development pressure.  They discussed what this means both in theory and in practice, why it is important, and what challenges and successes they have experienced.

Panelists Included:

1. Ali Kosiba- Assistant Professor of Forestry, University of Vermont
2. Kevin Evans- Director of Woodlands Operations, Dartmouth College
3. Steve Tatko- Vice President Conservation Research and Land Management, Appalachian Mountain Club

Additional Resources:

1. 12 Steps for Climate Resilience: Managing Your Forest with Climate Change in Mind
2. The NAWCA program provides matching grants to wetlands conservation projects.
3. The NRCS provides various grants and programs to help forest landowners improve their management practices for resiliency.

More Webinars:

On May 16th, join the Northern Forest Center for a discussion on Empowering Young Leaders. The conservation will focus how to support the next generation of leaders in our communities. This webinar is part of the Community Investment Team’s Building the New Forest Future series.  Register here.

Watch past webinars on Exploring New Forest Products and The Outlook for Wood Heat.

Local Species Cross-Laminated Timber Nearly Commercial in the Northeast

By Charles Levesque

We’ve been hearing a lot about “mass timber” lately, and for good reason. This building technique, which uses glulam beams and cross-laminated timber, is starting to take hold in the commercial building field. Mass timber is much more carbon friendly – replacing traditional concrete and steel – and can often compete on price partly because the construction phase for this technique is so much faster than concrete and steel. Think prefab. And now with new building codes being adopted across the US mass timber buildings can be up to 18 stories tall.

So what about the northeastern US?  The demand side is moving along nicely. According to Woodworks (www.woodworks.org) there are 54 commercial mass timber buildings built or under construction and another 88 in design in the Northeast. Nationally there are over 1500 built, under construction, or in the design phase.

What about using local timber for mass timber buildings in this part of the country? The challenge with this is that to date, there are no mass timber manufacturing plants in the northeastern US (except for the Unilam glulam plant in New York State – but they are not using local timber yet). As a result, although there is a sharp increase in mass timber building in the Northeast, most of that construction is using timber from western Europe, the southeastern US, the West Coast, or eastern Canada where there is one manufacturing plant.

The project described in this article is designed to get local species commercialized for mass timber, eventually leading to a mass timber manufacturing plant in the Northeast.

Mass timber uses structural softwood species. The two northeastern species groups that are most likely to replace the aforementioned more distant sourced species are eastern hemlock and spruce-fir. A project to bring eastern hemlock CLT to market is nearing completion. This project was funded by a grant from the USDA Forest Service Wood Innovations grant program to the North East State Foresters Association, and in partnership with the University of New Hampshire, State of Massachusetts, University of Massachusetts, and two building developers. An-add on project is also going to bring northeastern spruce-fir to the market as well.

Sourcing Hemlock Lumber, CLT Manufacture and Testing

Before a species of timber can be used in commercial buildings as mass timber it must undergo testing and certification under the ANSI PRG-320 standard. Once it is certified, through a rigorous set of tests at specialized laboratories, the species will be deemed strong enough for various applications – meeting at least a minimum in the various tests. The tests essentially involve bending and breaking actual pieces of the CLT in massive machines and measuring the strength characteristics through the testing.

Two CLT manufacturing plants have been part of this project.  For the hemlock portion, the SmartLam CLT and glulam plant in Dothan, Alabama has been the manufacturer. For additional hemlock testing and the spruce-fir portion, it is the Sterling plant in Phoenix, Illinois. Hemlock is not generally manufactured or sold in the form needed for CLT or glulam beams. It is usually sold green, rough, and not graded. In order to do the testing and manufacturing for actual use, the lumber needed to be dried, planed, and graded as #2 or better with some opportunity for use of #3 grade in the short dimension of the CLT.  There is no manufacturer of eastern hemlock in the Northeast that can readily supply large quantities of dried, planed, and graded hemlock. For this project, we enlisted several sawmills: Parker Lumber from Maine, White Mountain Lumber in New Hampshire, and Cersosimo Lumber in Vermont.  All played a critical role in sourcing the hemlock. Cersosimo also provided the drying, planning, and grading services in addition to some green lumber from their Brattleboro, Vermont facility. All of this occurred in 2022.

Generally, CLT is made from 2 x 6 stock and sometimes 2 x 8. Once the hemlock material was finished and packaged in Brattleboro, it went to the SmartLam plant in Alabama for CLT manufacturing for the testing phase. Some individual hemlock 2 x 6 stock was tested at the SmartLam plant but most went on to the APA testing plant in Tacoma, Washington.

The APA testing and certification was rigorous and ultimately the hemlock passed all the requirements of the PRG-320 standard. Coming out of this testing regime is a set of design tables that show the actual strength of the species. We learned that hemlock is slightly less strong than spruce-fir but meets the PRG-320 standard requirements. Work in 2019 by Dr. Peggi Clouston at the University of Massachusetts with eastern hemlock and eastern white pine confirmed that.

Using Eastern Hemlock CLT in Commercial Buildings

Phase II of the project – using hemlock CLT in a commercial building application – is well underway and will be completed in 2023 in two commercial buildings in the Northeast. SmartLam in Alabama has been the manufacturer of the CLT again with lumber sourced from White Mountain Lumber and finished at Cersosimo Lumber. The first application is in the addition being constructed at the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, as this is being written. The second building will be in a five-story mixed commercial and residential structure in Somerville, Massachusetts – a building named 154 Broadway by the CMD Construction Managers and Developers. This construction will take place beginning in the spring of 2023.

Spruce-Fir Added to the Species Mix

With PRG-320 testing that will soon be completed at the University of Maine lab with northeastern US hemlock and spruce-fir after manufacturing at the Sterling Structural CLT plant in Phoenix, an ongoing manufacturer nearer the Northeast will be available to manufacture CLT from these local species for building projects.

All the partners in this project have been critical to the success in commercializing northeastern timber species for use in mass timber construction. The demand for mass timber for commercial structures is expected to continue to increase as developers, architects and builders learn the many benefits of using local timber-sourced mass timber in their construction projects. This USDA-funded project brings us one step closer to full commercialization.

27th Annual Adirondack Research Consortium Conference 

The Adirondack Research Consortium is hosting their 27th Annual Conference on the Adirondacks, "Climate Change in the Adirondack/North Country Region – Mitigation, Adaptation, and Implications” on May 18^th and 19^th, 2023 at The Conference Center at Lake Placid, Lake Placid, NY.

See the entire program overview here.

Featured Conference Presentations by:

• Aaron Mair- Adirondack Council
• Curt Stager- Paul Smith’s College- (he will also be presented with the 2023 Elizabeth Thorndike Adirondack Achievement Award on May 19th)
• Grant Domke- US Forest Service

Register for the conference by clicking the link below: