A massive waste of wood

[lowroadacres]

So I run into an acquaintance today who runs a fencing company. In chatting with him about a very large job near our home, which happens to be a perimeter fence for a jail. I find out that not only have there been dozens of box elder trees (which I can live with this) torn out and taken to be buried..... There have been over 40 oaks, some of them 2 feet in diameter, taken to the same pit!

To top it all off there are 48 beautiful health elm trees slated to be cut down and taken to the pit as well..... These cannot be legally taken from the site except by someone licensed to do so due to the Dutch Elm Disease rules in our region.

I am furious about the Oak and the Elm. Frustrated about the box elder.

If time allows I am going to get pictures as I head out to the pit to see if the Oak is salvageable without killing my chains in dirt and other crap piled in with it.

For a society that would claim to be obsessed with the environment and saving energy why in the world would we be wasting dozens of cords of wood?

I run into another friend on the jobsite where I stopped to check to see if all of the Oak had been hauled..... And he says to me.....

"Oh right! I should have told you all about this a week ago so you could have gotten the wood!"

I live less than 2 miles from the site and the dump trucks hauling the wood had to drive past my house another 6 miles to their pit.

 

[NH_Wood]

Ugh! That's bad business - sorry you didn't get the wood - definitely a shame. Hopefully you'll find a lot of salvageable wood in the pit. Cheers!

 

[shawneyboy]

40 Oaks !! Years of heat That sux.

 

[lowroadacres]

Yep. I am going to check out the pit but my hope is that I can get the elm on some technicality . If I can get the elm it doesn't have to be dug out of a messy pile and it doesn't have to be hauled extra miles.

My challenge is time.

In our province there are literally hundreds of cords of elm each year that get destroyed instead of being made into firewood or lumber.

 

[Jags]

Not sure of your specific rules on the elm, but make sure you use the term "staying in the county". Most rules are based off of county lines. YMMV.

 

[NH_Wood]

Not sure of your specific rules on the elm, but make sure you use the term "staying in the county". Most rules are based off of county lines. YMMV.

Not sure if 'county' works up north - are there similar rules in Canada?

 

[lowroadacres]

If I can type this without getting too angry..... We have no legal wiggle room on Elm firewood in our province. It is a zero tolerance on storing, hauling, etc.

If I were to be found to have Elm firewood on my own acreage "they" could try to take it away from me.

In some cases there are stories of inspectors coming to houses with visible wood piles and asking to check for Elm.... And then "seizing" the firewood.

I can only imagine what the nanny state will do if and when EAB makes its way this far North.

 

[Nic36]

Happens all the time down here. Very wasteful.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

It is downright crazy to let all that go to waste. I understand their fears on the dutch elm as we used to have many beautiful elm trees in Michigan, many in the large cities. Then, if memory serves me, it was during the 1950's when the dutch elm disease hit the state. Well, we still have some elm but most do not get very big before they die. We have several and usually cut some dead standing elm annually. It makes great firewood. However, I hate to cut it green as then it does not make that good of firewood and it a tough job splitting it.

Those oaks about make you cry....

 

[K2Orion]

I have cleared acres of all types of trees in my line of work. I run heavy equipment for a highway contractor. More and more the company will not "knowingly" allow employees or strangers to take wood. They think the liability risk is too high. If the wood gatherer is on the clock then the company is subject to work comp. claims and lost production. If they're not an employee then the company is open to other lawsuits. Fortunately, the management will look the other way on occasion.

 

[kabbott]

I have cleared acres of all types of trees in my line of work. I run heavy equipment for a highway contractor. More and more the company will not "knowingly" allow employees or strangers to take wood. They think the liability risk is too high. If the wood gatherer is on the clock then the company is subject to work comp. claims and lost production. If they're not an employee then the company is open to other lawsuits. Fortunately, the management will look the other way on occasion.

Same here... I do underground utilities and the clearing is usually done by another company but when I have to take down a tree I give it a home in my woodpile unless
it will make good lumber or fenceboards, then I saw it for lumber. ;-)

If I had all the trees that were pushed in pile, buried, and chipped on the jobs I have worked on I would probably have enough wood for the rest of my life, It really
is a waste. This won't change anytime soon though, the cost of hauling them away is chump change compared to the money in a large construction job and time is money...

 

[eujamfh]

What about flagging one of the truckers down...explain you are on the way, and offer something for his time - maybe pizzas for the crew, or beer or a little money. They may be willing to take the initiative on their own rather than wasting it in the pit.

 

[lowroadacres]

As someone who has run businesses and done some contracting I fully understand the combination of risk, time pressure and cost effectiveness when it comes to clearing a jobsite.

The challenge for me at this point is that I had a contractor friend on site who forgot to keep me in the loop. It is also the fact that it happened less than two miles from my house.

I could have saved the contractor several hours on the hauling by having him dump the quality trees on my garden.

This is life and not something I can change now.

It would be nice to acquire the Elm but given our laws here it is highly unlikely.

I did manage to help my tree service buddy score the stump grinding work on the site.

 

[Jags]

It would be nice to acquire the Elm but given our laws here it is highly unlikely.

>:-( Kinda ticks me off, and I don't even live there.

 

[Wood Duck]

In addition to potential liability and delays, I think a lot of the reason this stuff happens is hassle for the contractor/foreman. Sure, I bet most of these guys wanna help people out if they can, but finding the right person to give the wood to, contacting him, arranging to meet him, etc. etc. makes it a lot easier just to dump the stuff. That may be the reason that a lot of scores happen on the fly - the trees are being hauled away and you ask at the right time, so the hassle factor is greatly reduced.