Borgford BioEnergy LLC, of Colville, Wash., started construction earlier this month of a biomass-to-energy project at a lumber mill in Springdale, Wash., about 40 miles northwest of Spokane.

The new facility is part of a broader plan to develop a bioenergy park with two campuses that could employ 40 people when it's fully operational, says Dale Borgford, who co-owns the company with his wife, Sharon Borgford.

Dale Borgford says the first project underway involves building an "octaflame gasifier," an octagon-shaped burner using wood waste from the mill and biomass from forest thinning and logging on state and private forest land. This biomass project will replace a propane burner at the mill that had been used to heat the lumber kilns.

The company expects to have the burner operational for producing steam heat, bio-char—a burned-wood waste product believed to have potential as an agricultural soil additive—and bio-oil by the end of this year, but it doesn't plan to add a turbine for producing electricity until 2012. Borgford says he doesn't have a specific timeline for that work, but once the turbine is installed, it will produce 1 megawatt of electricity, which is enough electricity to power hundreds of homes.

Borgford declines to disclose the total cost of the biomass-to-energy project or development of the bioenergy park, but the company has secured at least $8.7 million for the projects. In June 2009, Borgford BioEnergy received a $4 million U.S. Forest Service grant with the support of U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, and the company matched that with $4 million of its own funding, for a total of $8 million toward the development of the plant. In 2010, Borgford also landed a combination loan and grant of $771,000 through the state toward developing a bioenergy project at the Springdale site.

Borgford says that the company also is operating the mill, called Springdale Lumber & BioEnergy, on about 40 acres it owns in Springdale.

Borgford BioEnergy bought the mill when it came up for sale in October 2009 and started production last year after the mill had been shut down for nearly five years. The mill is specializing in producing lumber beams used in the construction industry.

Currently, with the Springdale mill operational, Borgford says the company is employing almost 30 people, and it's also contracting with an additional half-dozen workers.

Borgford says the company's development of a future bioenergy park will encompass two separate Borgford BioEnergy park campuses, a few miles apart in the Springdale area.

The first site is at the Springdale lumber mill. Borgford's second campus will be on a 52-acre property owned by the company at the old Kulzer Mill site seven miles from Springdale.

"At Kulzer, we've done site preparation, and we've done a lot of cleanup from the old mill abandoned years ago," he adds.

He says bioenergy development at Kulzer won't happen until next year, but eventually, the company plans to develop up to five of its octaflame gasifiers at the Kulzer site, in addition to the one under construction at the Springdale mill site.

The Kulzer site also will have greenhouses and a manufacturing facility for the octaflame gasifier, but the company doesn't plan to have any mill operations there, he says.

The company plans to produce electricity for its operations and for sale on the grid, says the Washington state Department of Natural Resources, which received legislative authorization to participate in public-private biomass energy pilot projects like the Borgford project.

The DNR, which is also working with a biomass project in Port Angeles, Wash., gained legislative authority to enter into long-term contracts for supplies of biomass from the forests it manages.