In This Issue:

• Message from the CEO
• Corporate News
• Aircrane
• Log Harvesting
• Forestry Engineering
• Environmental Mgmt. & Fire
• Mill Works
• Mill Report
• Information Systems
• Fred's Compost Talk
• Calendar

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By Paul Pashnik, EMS Manager Environmental Management & Fire Protection

A. FIRE PREVENTION 2008 FIRE SEASON

1. 2008 Woods Operations did not have any Reportable Forest Fires

It is hard to believe that summer is over and fall has arrived. I’m pleased to report that despite a hot and dry first half of September all of Coulson Group’s logging and road building operations did not have a single reportable forest fire during the 2008 season. Although July was hot and dry and Stewardson’s fire danger did reach moderate, the logging supervisor was only required to suspend debris burning at the dry land and arrange to have a watchman watch over the woods operations for 1 hour at the end of the work day. Fortunately heavy rain during August quickly brought the fire danger down to low allowing debris burning to resume. Then, the first half of September was warm and dry causing the fire danger to climb to the bottom end of moderate and then during the last week of September heavy rain dampened the woods to keep conditions in the low fire danger class. All in all, logging and road building crews are to be congratulated for preventing any operational fires from occurring during the 2008 fire season – good work everyone!!

2. Stewardson Fire Weather Station proves to be a very usefull Fire Prevention Tool

As mentioned in an earlier article, the Stewardson Inlet Fire Weather Station is fully automated with a satellite “up-link” to the GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites) weather network which enables instant fire danger calculations to the posted to the Coulson Group EMS system 30 minutes after the 1:00PM Pacific Daylight Time scheduled daily fire danger calculation. The weather readings are transmitted via satellite to the GOES centre for calculation and then at 1:30PM DST are posted on the Coulson EMS Website. The Logging Manager and Logging Supervisor can quickly call up the readings and determine the level of fire preparedness for the operation – see most recent weather readings in the following chart:

Weather Report from FTS HTML Generator

From Group:
Printed On: 9/29/2008 1:26:46 AM

The above chart lists all of the fire indices used to determine compliance with the BC Wildfire Act Fire Prevention Regulations – note Fire Danger reading at 2, however the FFMC at 82 - 84 (Fine Fuel Moisture) indicates you could have a serious slash fire.

B. ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

1. FSC Forest Certification

Recent changes in the FSC Chain of Custody Standard (July 2008) has required all certificate holders to conduct a detailed risk assessment for the purchase of non-certified wood. This new standard required a re-write of the Coulson manufacturing Ltd’s FSC Chain of Custody Manual. The standard was changed to ensure that non-certified wood can be used as FSC controlled wood in order to qualify the wood to be sold in the FSC Mixed category and or the FSC Mixed Credit category.

The new standard requires that the manufacturer must have procedures in place to ensure that such logs purchased have been screened to comply with the 5 key controlled wood criteria. This required us to review and setup a log purchase pre-screening process to ensure the 5 key FSC controlled wood elements are complied with.

The annual FSC Chain of Custody audit is scheduled for the first full week in October. I have been working with  Darlene Kemps and Darren Van Dyk to ensure all audit elements are ready. In addition I have worked with George Rose to setup a computer FSC Log and Lumber account system to replace the excel spreadsheet setup by Darlene Kemps. George Rose and Karen Salyn will be implementing this new CML log purchase and lumber sales FSC Account ledger.

2. Coulson GroupISO14001

Both Coulson Manufacturing Ltd’s EMS ISO14001 re-registration and Coulson Aircrane Ltd’s
EMS ISO14000 registration audits have been setup for the first week of December, 2008. QMI is our registrar and will be conducting the external audit on both divisions,

By mid October the Aircrane EMS manual should be available on line. Currently the Aviation SOPs are being revised so that they are simple and in bullet format.

The Timberlands EMS program is on track and has no issues. Next external audit will be scheduled for May or June 2009.