-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Follett <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
<[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, December 03, 1999 9:25 AM
Subject: Salvage Operation Ootsa Lake... Sunken Logs


>Graphics on sunken log salvage operations.
>
><A
>HREF="http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_53/
h_0
>2947.gif">Click here:
>http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_53/h_0294
7.g
>if</A>
>
>Seems of a sudden we need to find salvaged cypress logs for a project at an
>arboretum. Another BP synchronicity?
>
>][<en

Ken, another little bit of synch.   I was sitting on a fire lookout for the
BC Forest service and doing my (was it Gary Snyder who sat on a lookout ?)
thing while looking down at
Ootsa Lake when that log salvage operation was proposed and a permit applied
for.   The very idea of underwater logging was the great local laugh.  You
should have heard the conventional loggers' jokes about the silly idea of
going to all that trouble to pull up rotten wood from a swamp full of frogs
and slime.    "How ya gonna stard a chainsaw unda wadder?  Haaw HAaaaw
Haaw."

Ootsa Lake was one of those lakes so far from the public eye, that when its
level was greatly raised by a dam to supply power for an aluminum smelter,
there was no requirement to clear the land to prevent junking the lake with
dead wood.   The smelter guys just flooded it because it was a cheap way to
go.  The wood just waited to be recognized.   It reminded me of Fuller's
comment that industrial pollution would never become the ultimate problem
because once business folks realized the value of what was going up the
smokestacks they would capture and recycle it.

The up country laughs sure changed when test log retrieval proved the
quality of the wood and the little company with the crazy idea and some
funny equipment that wasn't a chainsaw with a logger on the end of it began
sending truckloads to the mill.

Getting used to the idea of finding the top of a tree and going down to cut
it was a real mind-bender for most folks who were used to looking up at a
tree first to see what you were going to cut.

However, I thought it was mostly spruce there and a bit of western red
cedar.   Perhaps water-cured red cedar looks like cypress.

Cuyler