The Angora Fire west of South Lake Tahoe in June-July of 2007 opened an opportunity for Peterson to demonstrate a BTR70 Blower Trailer to a large group of people involved in fire restoration.

The fire destroyed 254 houses, 75 commercial buildings, and burned hot enough over 3100 acres to remove grasses and other ground cover, making the area vulnerable to mud slides. Further concerns were raised about clouding in the lake, famous for its clarity and already at risk of pollution.

Stuart Buckner and Matt Cotton of the US Composting Council (USCC), along with representatives of CalTrans and others involved in fire damage restoration worked to come up with a better way of fixing the fire damage and bringing some life back to the damaged area.

Peterson got a call from Adam Grover, owner of Grover Landscape and Environmental compost yard, where they use a Peterson Horizontal Grinder to make compost out of green waste. Grover is also involved with CalTrans and suggested using a blower unit to distribute compost over the fire damaged area.

The job was to prove to representatives from the State of California, US Forest Service, Tahoe Land Conservancy and others that the right blower unit could prevent or control erosion of a fire-ravaged 20-30% slope using seed-injected compost that would restore growth and not wash away with the first bit of rain.

Peterson’s Victor Acevedo reports that Grover put 45 yards of compost and 50 lbs of seed mix in the BTR70 Trailer.

“We went to the job site at 6500 ft elevation. They had set up a half acre for us as one of five (5) test plots to be used for comparison. We decided to blow one section of this area without seed and the other with seed to show that our seeders are a good way of distributing seed without extra expense and more manpower.”

“A group of 6 to 8 people from the state had been given the job of hand-raking the soil, laying seed down, putting in filter socks, then laying straw over the seed by hand. They had done about 1½ acres already and put in a filter fence. I asked how long it had taken them. To my surprise they had been working on this site for 2-plus weeks. (Approximately 370 labor-hours per acre)”

“I started blowing the compost putting about 1½ inches of compost down and covered the ½ acre in about 4 to 5 hours. At this point we had 30 people from the State, Forestry and CalTrans all looking and asking all kinds of questions about the compost, the seed, how we were applying the compost, and how the seed got put in compost. Has this ever been proven to work? Can we put different mixes of compost through the trailer? and other questions.”

Acevedo then said, “I felt that we had done our job and showed there are more ways to do this job than by hand. The fact is, we were adding a natural fertilizer to a soil that would otherwise be slow to grow a new cover and was likely to erode before growth could occur.”

“There is also the time factor; we did the job with fewer people in a fraction of the time. (Approximately 20 labor-hours per acre) Great job!”

The test plots will be monitored throughout the winter and into the spring by the Tahoe Land Conservancy for germination rates, run-off, and run-off control of native soils.

Matt Cotton plans further comment and discussion on using compost for forest restoration and highway right-of-way replanting mix at the February 2008, USCC Conference.

For further questions contact

Paul Elias
Peterson Central Western Sales Representative
541.912.6805
paulepetersoncorp.com

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