The forestry downturn has hit communities all through the interior but at least one mayor thinks there’s a way to get some of those unemployed workers back on the job.

While appearing on the NL Morning News, Clearwater Mayor Merlin Blackwell said while there’s not the demand for lumber there once was, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a need for wood products.

“We are trying to get secondary use of fibre. So, wood waste, logs that aren’t good enough to go through a dimensional mill. We’re trying to get that fibre, that biomass economy going here,” he said. “We have spent a lot of time with the Clearwater forestry work group and we’re trying to see what we can make happen. I mean Domtar needs chips, we’ve got two biomass heaters in Clearwater, there’s another twenty or thirty in the region.”

Blackwell added, “people need this fibre, we just need to find a way to convert it from the bush into the pulp mill and the biomass heaters and everyone else who needs it.”

“If we can add that to our economic basket here in Clearwater we can keep a lot of these people that are currently out of work and put them back to work and keep them in town.”