LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — This week, the Lake County Planning Commission is set to continue its consideration of a new biochar plant on county property that is raising concern among community members due to unanswered questions about impacts on people and the environment.

The meeting will begin at 9 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 12, in the board chambers on the first floor of the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport.

The agenda is here.

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The public hearing about the AG Forest Wood Processing Bioenergy Project, proposed by the Scotts Valley Energy Corp., is scheduled for 9:20 a.m.

The commission will consider granting a major use permit and a mitigated negative declaration for the project, which is set to be located on a five-acre portion of a 42.6-acre county-owned property at 755 E. State Highway 20 in Upper Lake.

Planning documents state that forest materials that are pre-processed into large wood chips at the tribe’s facility at 8605 Bottle Rock Road, Kelseyville — 21.2 miles south of the site — would be hauled to the project site at 755 E State Highway 20 in Upper Lake for additional processing to create “biochar,” a charcoal-like substance being used for soil amendments and water filtration.

The biochar would be transferred back to Red Hills Bioenergy, located at 7130 Red Hills Road in Kelseyville for use.

At its meeting on Sept. 20, 2022, the Board of Supervisors — sitting as the Lake County Watershed Protection District — voted 3-1 to adopt a resolution authorizing the Lake County Watershed Protection District Board Chair to execute a lease agreement with the Scotts Valley Energy Corp., a company owned by the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians.

The lease is for an initial term of 15 years, with the tribe paying $100 a year.

The property is located in the Middle Creek Restoration Project area, which is supposed to be returned to Clear Lake to improve lake health.

On the same day as the board approved the lease agreement, the U.S. Economic Development Administration, or EDA, announced it was awarding a $5 million grant to the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians “to jumpstart the Tribe’s renewable energy industry through development of a sustainable fuel processing facility.” The grant was funded by the American Rescue Plan’s Indigenous Communities program.

EDA said the project “will support site work and equipment procurement for a new woody biomass processing facility that will be used to transform locally-sourced, low-value biomass into firewood, pellet-based fuels, and other bioenergy products.”

Federal officials said the funding also would allow the tribe “to utilize forest inventory to develop a new revenue stream while mitigating the risk of wildfire created by uncontrolled undergrowth.”

One of the project’s proponents in 2022 was Terre Logsdon, then a Scotts Valley tribal environmental director who spoke in favor of the project at the September 2022 board meeting. Two months later she was hired as the county of Lake’s chief climate resiliency officer.

In the intervening years, the project has been raised sporadically at the Western Region Town Hall, or WRTH, meetings, a few of which were attended by Tom Jordan, the tribe’s economic development director and former tribal administrator who also in 2022 had wanted to turn the Lucerne Hotel into a homeless facility. That plan hit significant community pushback and later folded.

Earlier this fall, on Oct. 24, the Lake County Planning Commission held its first hearing on the project and decided to hold it over for nearly two months for a final decision.

During that meeting, Jordan said the technology the plant will use hasn’t been used in Lake County in any place they know of.

And that appears to be part of the problem for community members who raised questions at that time and have since submitted public comments opposing the project.

They have consistently raised concerns about lack of transparency in the county’s process as well as a significant lack of information when it comes to the plant’s potential impacts on the community’s residents, the lake and the land.

Ultimately, the commission, who only had three members in attendance, decided it wanted to wait until two members not in attendance — including the District 3 commissioner, Batsulwin Brown, whose district includes the project — were present.

They also wanted to give the public more time to learn about the plan and get their questions answered, a response to community concerns about not being adequately informed.

That included taking it back to WRTH. Community Development Director Mireya Turner told the commission that her department had not been invited by WRTH to speak on the project by that time.

The commission subsequently continued the matter to Dec. 12.

Since then, Turner made an appearance at the Nov. 20 WRTH meeting to discuss the biochar plan.

The public comment submitted for the Dec. 12 commission meeting raised specific concerns about data and air quality emissions, impact on water quality and the belief that the project has been hidden from the community.

A letter dated Oct. 24 from the WRTH leadership notes, “This project has been in consideration since at least 2021. At no time in that period, to our knowledge, has the project been presented as anything other than a completed proposal, without any input from the local community.”

Comment letters have included a request for scientific input on the pros and cons of biochar as a soil additive.

More studies appear to be underway worldwide about biochar.

The publication Geoengineering Monitor reported that the sales of carbon credits from biochar have increased twenty-fold between 2005 and 2021, “and the biochar market is expected to continue to grow rapidly due to the carbon market.”

While the market is growing, “At the same time, new information about biochar is raising concerns about the safety of its use on agricultural land, especially in large quantities, as biochar may be more contaminated with carcinogenic, mutagenic, and persistent pollutants than previously thought,” the publication said.

One of the climate concerns is that biochar cannot easily be removed from soil.

Lowell Grant, a longtime Upper Lake resident and businessman with a background in air quality, said in a June 2024 letter to Turner that, “After reading the materials provided to the public, it’s impossible to quantify the potential impact on local residents because there’s absolutely no information about the actual process. There’s no data provided about the emissions that can be expected in either the release of criteria pollutants or odors.”

Grant said he believed the public should be given more information about the project “before any rational discussion can begin” and said that, at that point, the Lake County Air Quality Management District hadn’t yet received a permit request and so hadn’t begun to investigate the project further.

Commenters also have told the county that the facility is not appropriate for an agricultural area and would be more appropriate in an industrial area, farther away from residences, schools and the lake, as well as a greater distance from a scenic corridor.

Other concerns include the property’s location on a watershed and wildlife corridor, and that the area’s roads are already in poor shape and will be degraded further by more trucks.

Opponents also pointed out that farmers have attempted to rent the property from the county for a higher dollar amount and have been ignored.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, and on Bluesky, @erlarson.bsky.social. Find Lake County News on the following platforms: Facebook, @LakeCoNews; X, @LakeCoNews; Threads, @lakeconews, and on Bluesky, @lakeconews.bsky.social.