The Senate Ways & Means Committee met early this Saturday morning to hear a variety of bills and take action on several more.

The deadline for the Committee to consider House bills with a fiscal impact is end of day Monday, March 1.

As  a part of the public hearing process this morning , Evergreen testified in support of House Bill 2481. HB 2481 is a bill discussed often on this blog, but is worth further discussion because it looks different at this stage in the legislative process than it did earlier on. The bill would:

• Allow Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to enter into contract terms up to 15 years when an entity plans and commits to a capital investment of at least $50 million prior to the contract and completes that investment before removal of biomass under the contract;

• Allow DNR to include provisions in the agreement that are periodically adjusted for market conditions;
• Require the contract to include provisions that allow DNR, when it is in the best interest of the trust beneficiaries, to maintain access to existing users of biomass;
• Ensure that biomass volume conveyed under this act will not be counted toward DNR’s sustainable harvest target, except that appraised timber sold in a conventional timber sale will count toward the target whether individual trees are ultimately used by that purchaser for timber or biomass energy;
• Remove wood from old growth forests from the definition of what is not included in forest biomass; and
• Require DNR to conduct a survey of scientific literature regarding the carbon neutrality of forest biomass and report to the Legislature by December 15, 2010.

Evergreen believes that the passage of House Bill 2481 would provide the Washington Department of Natural Resources with the tools necessary to be a viable player in the emerging biomass industry and a potential partner with Evergreen as we move forward to construct our Biomass Gasification Project.

The Committee took no further action on the bill.