{"id":47085,"date":"2021-04-29T17:28:29","date_gmt":"2021-04-29T23:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/local-group-looks-to-start-up-pellet-mill-in-montezuma-county\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:36:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:36:48","slug":"local-group-looks-to-start-up-pellet-mill-in-montezuma-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/local-group-looks-to-start-up-pellet-mill-in-montezuma-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Local group looks to start up pellet mill in Montezuma County"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A local group of residents wants to start a pellet mill in Montezuma County to process sawdust piles from local sawmills into wood stove pellets<\/span>Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A resurgence in the timber industry in Montezuma County has opened up opportunity for new spinoff businesses and has raised awareness of fire safety practices for sawmill waste products.<\/p>\n

There are eight sawmill operations in Montezuma County, and increasing timber sales on the San Juan National Forest are boosting their supply.<\/p>\n

The local mills create a variety of products, including wood paneling, plywood veneer, excelsior, flooring, construction lumber, mine cribbing and furniture. The leftover sawdust and slash have a market as well.<\/p>\n

During a presentation to the Montezuma County Commissioners, local residents Mara Baxstrom, Luke Baxstrom and Rachel Comisky announced that they and two other people have formed a partnership to start a pellet mill in the county that would utilize wood waste such as sawdust from regional mills.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a need to get rid of the waste at the mills to mitigate fire hazards,\u201d said Mara Baxstrom. \u201cA pellet mill will bring more money into the county and add jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stationary mill would create wood pellets used in pellet stoves and for other purposes.<\/p>\n

Once a location is secured, the business owners expect to start out processing 6 tons per hour of mill waste into marketable pellets, and expand production from there based on supply.<\/p>\n

A potential location for the pellet mill is next door to the IronWood mill, southwest of Dolores.<\/p>\n

Mara Baxstrom said the market for stove pellets has increased since the shutdown of regional coal mines relied on for heat by many households in the Southwest and Navajo Nation.<\/p>\n

It is critically important for mills to reduce and safely manage waste, said Montezuma County Emergency Manager Jim Spratlen, and a pellet mill is a good solution.<\/p>\n

After the Aspen Wall Wood slash pile fire in December, which continues to smolder, area mills were contacted to evaluate and mitigate mill waste hazards, he said.<\/p>\n

Every mill has a fire emergency response plan, which were reviewed and updated. Mill fire prevention includes use of temperature probes to monitor sawdust piles, which can spontaneously combust from heat buildup.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce the temperatures reach a certain point, the piles are broken up and divided up into smaller piles,\u201d Spratlen said.<\/p>\n

Wood waste piles should not be more than 25 feet high, 250 feet long, he said. Sawmills work with local fire districts on fire mitigation and safety plans.<\/p>\n

Besides for use in pellet stoves, wood mill waste finds markets as animal bedding, firewood, mulch, livestock feed additives and horse track surfaces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Increase in timber industry has created market for sawmill waste products<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[431,21,374,2487,13,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-47085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-business-general","tag-cortez","tag-economic-development","tag-forestry-and-timber","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87117,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47085\/revisions\/87117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47085"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=47085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}