COOS BAY - The only evidence most people see of slash - the tops and limbs of trees left over after logging - are pillars of smoke rising off logging landings in the fall.

Some local timber industry folks see something more valuable going up in smoke. With the amount of logging still going on in Coos County, they also see an abundance of opportunity.

"We have a lot of material," D&H Logging Inc. owner Gary Haga said. "It's all going to waste right now."

Haga is trying to persuade people to turn slash into something more useful - heat.

School districts or the county could feed the forest byproduct chipped and dried or packed into pellets into converted boilers and save money - lots of money. For a school district, the savings could total well over $100,000 in one year, as was the tiny Enterprise School District's experience in Northeast Oregon.

The savings comes from not burning petroleum products.

Not only could conversion save money, it will keep money in the local economy and provide more stable fuel costs for local entities. With local suppliers competing, the price of biomass fuel is less likely to take the roller coaster ride oil prices do.

"Locally we can have more of a say in that." said John Pine, Oregon Department of Forestry's biomass specialist for the Southern Oregon region. "If you just pay for oil, it goes to someone far, far away."

Dwindling timber industry jobs would get a boost as well. Local logging outfits or companies devoted to slash pickup would hire more people.

"It gets back to the community working," Pine said. "The people who work and live work in your town are the ones who benefit from it."

As with any business venture, there are challenges.

Low-value slash piles accumulate at logging operations a few miles off a highway or miles and miles up steep and winding roads. There isn't much predictability to that and if the activity is many miles away from where the processing takes place, it may not be worth retrieving.

"It doesn't pay it's way out of the forest," said Marcus Kauffman, the project manager for the University of Oregon's Resource Innovations.

For now, operators are collecting slash at flatter, easy-access landings and experimenting with collection methods, such as hauling out trailers behind logging trucks or bringing chippers to the sites. Collection sites shouldn't be more than 35 to 50 miles away from where it is processed into usable pellets, chips or pucks.

Biomass industry experts are hoping the combination of improving technology and proving slash has a better use will make it more feasible.

"What we are going for is the forest biomass that doesn't have a home and giving it higher value." Kauffman said. "Burn it in a controlled environment where you capture 80 percent of the energy and use it to lower people's heating bills."

Supporters are focusing on smaller markets, such as small school districts or hospitals. The fuel demand of such systems fits with the current supply.

Enterprise School District has three buildings, two boilers and 105,000 square feet to heat. The feasibility study estimated the district would need 582 tons of fuel each year.

Given the amount of logging in Coos County, finding enough material in the region shouldn't be a challenge, said Bill Delimont, a consultant with TSS Consulting, a renewable energy, natural resource management, and financial consulting firm out of Rancho Cordova, Calif.

Delimont is working with Coquille Indian Tribe on a feasibility study on building a biomass-fuel powered plant.

There are too many variables to pin down an estimate of the amount of slash out in the forest, but Pine said logging operations can leave behind four to 10 tons of collectible slash material, depending on how extensive the cut is.

Energy needs for small systems will vary project-to-project, depending on the local sources of fuel and the size of the facilities, Northline Energy President Ron Kirkendorfer said.

Each conversion needs to be analyzed on its individual attributes. Kirkendorfer said wood heat industry engineers can design systems suited to the know-how of the people who will run and maintain it. They can make systems that run like a toaster, needing little maintenance, he said.

"We can suit the boiler to the personality of the project," he said. "Every application is unique."

Kauffman said if one entity decided to come to the forefront and invest in a biomass system that saves money, the value of slash will increase. In theory, loggers could afford to gather the material and more will be available.

Another barrier to switching to wood heat from another source is the cost. Enterprise's system cost $1.5 million to convert, with an estimated payback in 9.5 years. In a down-sliding economy, the potential savings may not seem to justify the up-front expense.

"We have a pretty good idea it works, but you need someone to step forward," Delimont said.