Editor’s note, Sept. 13: Article updated to reflect that Nevada County District 5 Supervisor Hardy Bullock wrote a letter of support for a grant connected to the Alpenglow Timber project.
Six days after the Nevada County Planning Commission approved construction of a sawmill off Highway 89 and just west of Prosser Creek’s inlet to its parent reservoir, progress was halted.
On Aug. 14, Friends of Prosser Truckee submitted an appeal to the Aug. 8 planning commission’s approval of the project, known as Alpenglow Timber.
The disagreement at hand is not over the need for a facility to process the many dead and dying trees crowding local forests. There’s collective agreement there, and Moonshine has reported on the situation many times (read Bettering Our Woody Ways).
Rather, it’s about the proposed location of this particular facility, and whether the county’s review of the project has been thorough enough.
Plans for Alpenglow Timber include a forestry management and material processing facility supported by a wood-fired boiler and associated structures, and six residential dwelling units for employees. The land on which it’s anticipated to be constructed, a 124-acre property at 10375 Silverado Way, is zoned appropriately: For the “production and management … of timber resources, and compatible recreational and low density residential uses,” per the Nevada County General Plan.
Adjacent to the site lies a 20-home community comprising 12 full-time residents. The sawmill structure’s emission sources are anticipated to sit about 1,000 feet from the closest residence. Alder Creek Middle School is located a little over 3 miles south of Alpenglow Timber; the Truckee Tahoe Airport, 4.5 miles. The sole road used to access the homes, Klondike Flat Road — a non-county maintained dirt road off Highway 89 — also would serve as entry and exit to Alpenglow Timber and its daily trucking in of felled logs.
Project opposition’s topmost concern is safety, primarily regarding increased traffic, noise pollution, and lack of secondary access to the site. The filed appeal focuses on creating an environmental impact report in connection to Alpenglow Timber.
“[The sawmill is] important work … If anyone’s going to do it, I would want [project applicant David Mercer] to do it,” said Jay Grube, a nearby resident. Grube also serves as a primary contact for the Friends of Prosser Truckee group. “But at the same time, we’d like to see it not in our neighborhood. And if it is in our neighborhood, we’d like to see safety take the topmost priority.”
Mercer, meanwhile, claims he’s done everything he can to appease frustrations. “I had hoped that [the residents] would have seen things differently with a 5-0 vote from the planning commissioners in favor of approval,” he told Moonshine Ink. “That what concerns they had brought up, all the mitigation measures that we had taken and everything we had done [to meet] the requirements of [the California Environmental Quality Act], the requirements of the county, the requirements of the planning department, and that we had done what I felt was what I could do to reach out to the neighbors to try and address the concerns they had … I get where they’re coming from. But it’s zoned for what it’s zoned for, and it’s in the general plan for what it is there for, and that’s what it is.”
It’s a really, really hard
balance to strike between
private property rights and community concerns. Like, it is the name of the game when it comes to getting stuff approved like this.”~ District 5 Nevada County Supervisor Hardy Bullock
The appeal moves the ultimate decision up to the county board of supervisors, who tentatively plan to hold an October hearing in Truckee. While the Nevada County Planning Commission’s task was to interpret the project’s alignment within zoning, code, and environmental review, the board has more flexibility to interpret more the spirit of the law versus the letter.
So said county District 5 Supervisor Hardy Bullock: “It’s a really, really hard balance to strike between private property rights and community concerns. Like, it is the name of the game when it comes to getting stuff approved like this,” he said. “I think our board is going to find this really engaging. I think they’re going to think a lot about it, I’ve thought a lot about it, and we’re going to do all of our homework and be prepared in that meeting to make the best possible decision we can.”
‘We need a place to take the wood’
Mercer, born and raised in the region, has owned Cross Check Services for 20 years. The local business focuses on all things forest-thinning and firewood production primarily in the Truckee River Basin, Olympic Valley, and North Lake Tahoe. Cross Check has worked with such agencies as Truckee Donner Land Trust, local fire protection districts, The Nature Conservancy, and more.
Alpenglow Timber is essentially an extension of Cross Check Services’ current work, adding the manufacturing of lumber (an expected 4.5 million board feet per year) to firewood production. The wood-fired boiler will utilize forest residuals to support the operation of three dry kilns and provide heat to on-site structures, including the residences. The boiler is the primary source of operational emissions.
Mitigative measures have been incorporated into the project, such as: regulating emissions, avoiding construction or conducting pre-construction surveys for nests during the breeding season of protected wildlife species, monitoring requirements for special status species and their habitats, limiting heavy truck trips from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and others.
“The main thing we try to do is reduce [the impacts] to a reasonable effect,” said Brian Foss, planning director at the county. “And I guess that’s ultimately why it is a discretionary project that the decision makers, and in this case the board of supervisors, can weigh all those factors and make a decision on whether or not the use is appropriate, if it’s designed appropriately for this location, or suggest additional changes to further reverse any potential impacts.”
Particularly attractive, Alpenglow Timber maximizes small-diameter trees, which are tightly packed within the region’s forests and can contribute to the spread of wildfire and bark beetles. Sierra Pacific Industries, owner of the Quincy sawmill (70 miles away), often won’t take small-diameter trees.
Likewise, “A lot of our logs up here are unmarketable because of the species and the type,” said Scott Lindgren, fire chief for Tahoe Douglas Protection District and representative for the Lake Tahoe Regional Fire Chiefs Association, at the August planning commission hearing. “To haul them to the big mills, it’s [not] cost-effective. The prices of hauling that, especially if it’s a small project like a 3-acre piece that’s putting a house site in, there’s no skin in that. They don’t want to do that.”
Lindgren described a current forest restoration project in North Lake Tahoe in which a Colorado-based logging company has to haul wood from Tahoe to Oregon. “There’s no profit in that … It’s not like, ‘Oh, I’ve got a load of logs like the old days and the mills want it and they’re going to buy it,’” he said. “It’s just not like that anymore. We need a place to take the wood.”
In fact, many local places would be preferred, as Alpenglow Timber’s intake is limited. The sawmill’s output is anticipated to be small: 5 to 6 acres of managed forestland per day, or 1,500 acres annually, of logs generated by Cross Check Services.
Mercer’s counter: “It’s a drop in the bucket, but if you do enough drops, you fill the bucket up.”
A neighborhood farther south, Northstar Community Services District, is pursuing the construction of a wood-energy facility in 2025.
“I have been following the Alpenglow project and see it as complementary to our project,” said NCSD General Manager Mike Staudenmayer. “As you have reported, the amount of biomass being generated in our region is massive and it will take multiple solutions to alleviate the disposal issue. Alpenglow will be taking small diameter logs while our facility will take chipped material derived from slash and non-merchantable material. Alpenglow’s boiler will be fed by sawdust and scraps from the mill operation so will not be ‘competing’ for other chipped woody biomass in the region.”
In the name of safety
A majority of public comments (which totaled over 400) received by Nevada County staff pertaining to Alpenglow Timber opposed the project. One of the most critical concerns is commercial use of Klondike Flat Road both in and out.
From Highway 89, vehicles turn onto Klondike Flat Road and drive uphill. After about 600 feet, the road crosses into Mercer’s property and up to the official project driveway, a turnoff to the left, while Klondike Flat Road continues to other residences. Mercer intends to widen and pave Klondike Flat up to the driveway, bringing it to county roadway standards.
“Our mailboxes are down there [at the start of Klondike Flat Road]; people ride their mountain bikes down to ride across the street … There’s no plans for any sidewalk or bike path,” Grube said. “It’s only planned for trucks.”
Including residential and service vehicles (with a total of 10 logging trucks), 61 daily trips are anticipated with project generation.
Nick Gast is another Klondike Flat resident who’s concerned about the single road access. “Let’s say [there’s] a fire or a truck slides out on that paved road in the winter or any number of things,” he said. “Our road’s closed, that road gets blocked. You’ve got 12 homes here. You’ve got old people, you’ve got kids, you’ve got a lot of people that can’t necessarily bushwhack their way out of the woods and are literally trapped here. We brought that up and they did not even respond.”
A proposed alternative for additional access was constructing a road at the Prosser Hill OHV Staging Area, 2,700 feet south of Klondike Flat Road on Highway 89. The parcel is owned by the U.S. Forest Service, which also owns a sliver of land Klondike Flat Road passes through upon immediate turn-off from the highway. A special use permit granted in 1976 and amended in 1985 allows Klondike to cross over forest service lands.
It’s because of that ’76 special use permit that an ingress/egress road can’t be constructed at the staging area.
An EIR is just like, let’s just relook at this thing and make sure that what you say you’re going to do is actually what you’re going to do. And I think as a community, that’s not too much to ask.”
~ Nick Gast, Klondike Flat resident
“The forest service rules only allow you to have one special use permit onto your property accessing across forest service land,” explained Mercer, who spent a few months navigating the possibility of a separate entrance/exit to Alpenglow Timber. “That’s the way the rules are written. There is no exception for that. So, since Klondike has a special use permit to access across the forest service property onto our land … they can’t grant another access.”
Tahoe National Forest public affairs officer Sophie Hamann wrote in an email, “Something would need to change in order for us to consider a new road across the national forest. The dirt roads identified [stemming from the Prosser Hill OHV Staging Area] have limits and are generally used for OHV, bikes, patrol vehicles and not designed for hauling.”
Don Mooney, attorney for Friends of Prosser Truckee who works in environmental law, believes the sole road is noncompliant and that the project needs to be analyzed via the California Environmental Quality Act.
“From a CEQA standpoint I think it is part of the substantial evidence that the project may have a significant impact,” he wrote in an email. “That is the standard for requiring an environmental impact report which requires an alternatives analysis.”
Grube and Gast shared other concerns regarding the project, including dust clouds formed from log trucks currently driving to the site (Mercer holds a temporary log use storage permit); unpermitted material processing that rattled residents’ windows in May 2023; a drop in their property values due to proximity to a sawmill; and lack of sight distance on 89 for turning into and out of Klondike. There’s also a fear that the current log deck on Mercer’s site — an organized pile of logs ready for further transport stored there since a temporary permit was issued in 2021 — increases wildfire possibilities. That said, “the one road is the deal break,” Gast said. “If that’s blocked, what do you do?”
Supervisor Bullock, who’s visited the site, met with homeowners and Mercer, and wrote a letter of support for a grant in relation to this project in its conceptual form, doesn’t see the situation through the same lens.
“The logic is, well, you’re going to start a fire there and then you’re going to block our access, and so that’s all your responsibility,” he said. “But really there is only one access right now. If you take the sawmill part out and just say no fire will likely start at the sawmill, they haven’t been changed. The access hasn’t changed at all. I would argue that Dave Mercer … the first thing he’s going to do is he’s going to go in and thin and do all the forestry management around his entire parcel. He’s basically going to create a huge defensible space profile for the neighbors as soon as he gets there … I would argue that the chance of [the sawmill] catching on fire or starting a fire that affects that road is likely going to be less if he gets on site.”
The Klondike Flat neighborhood is not currently under Truckee Fire Protection District jurisdiction. In emergency situations, Cal Fire is in charge. However, there are conversations to have Truckee Fire annex Mercer’s property so they can serve as first response.
More significance anticipated
With their appeal, the Friends of Prosser Truckee are asking the county to put some legal muscle behind the project approval with an environmental impact report, or EIR.
An EIR requires a detailed analysis of projects, including the disclosure of potential effects on the environment, natural and human, and the identification of mitigation measures and alternatives to avoid significant impacts.
“An EIR is just like, let’s just relook at this thing and make sure that what you say you’re going to do is actually what you’re going to do,” Gast said. “And I think as a community, that’s not too much to ask.”
During the analysis of the Alpenglow Timber application, multiple agencies determined impacts to the environment in response to the project were less than a significant threshold — the Northern Sierra Air Quality Management District on emissions; California Department of Fish and Wildlife on biological resources; Nevada County staff on noise; and others. A Mitigated Negative Declaration was prepared instead of an EIR.
“It’s not necessarily a staff decision to go, ‘Hey, I want to do an EIR, or I want to do an environmental impact statement, or I want to do a mitigated negative declaration,” Bullock explained. “It’s not willy-nilly or subject to interpretation. That’s a very prescribed checklist, and the checklist and the prescription that was used to apply the checklist and the methodology is included in the application document.”
Mooney argues Alpenglow Timber deserves an EIR. He points to four reasons in the appeal: (1) an inadequate project description, leading to (2) a failure to assess the project and its potential impacts as a whole; (3) a lack of specificity for noise generation; and (4) inadequate consideration for safety against wildfire.
Residents like Gast are hopeful the generation of an EIR will raise more questions and pose some of the concessions Friends of Prosser Truckee, created in reaction to the Alpenglow Timber project, is looking for. “I think that what they would find is that ultimately that other report is insufficient,” he said. “And actually, there’s a bunch of stuff that has not been satisfactory.”
It would also give the group time to raise more support and funding, because if an EIR isn’t pursued, more legal action is on the line. “We’re going to have to sue the county as well as [Mercer],” Grube said, “which is unfortunate, ’cause no one wins in a lawsuit.”
Mercer, meanwhile, isn’t wavering in his goal: “I’m not stopping because of their appeal. It’s sitting in the board’s hands and the county planning staff is still completely behind it, so you can only go with that. We have a lot of stakeholders in the community that are behind what we’re doing. I don’t know of a different location for us to do this. And we as Cross Check and myself and my family and my employees and our community, if we don’t continue to thin the forest around here, then I think you probably know what will eventually happen.”
