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March 28, 2024 4:38 am
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Moapa Paiute Farm Fires Up New Wood Grinder

Moapa Paiute Farm Board members and employees gather at the tribe’s wood recycling site including, rear row from left, Salvador Sandoval, farm employee; Anthony Frank, Farm Board chairman; Linda Donahue, farm office manager; Oscar Sanchez, farm foreman; Norm Tom, Farm Board member; Pete DeSantis, Moapa Paiute Travel Plaza manager; front row from left, Kami Sue Miller, Farm Board member; Robert Volpert, Tribal administrator/business manager, and Preston Tom, Farm Board member/Tribal elder.

By Mike Donahue
Moapa Valley Progress

The Moapa Paiute Farm’s wood recycling business kicked into high gear last week with the delivery and start-up of a massive $100,000 grinder.

The machinery, a used Mobark Tub Grinder powered by a 550 horsepower caterpillar engine, will allow the Paiute farm business to use its own equipment to process wood waste into environmentally sound usable products including several grades of mulch and biofuel, according to Anthony Frank, farm director, Farm Board chairman and vice chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiute’s business council. The grinder was purchased with a USDA grant.

“We had been operating for about a year using rented equipment that was very cost prohibitive,” Frank said. “Incorporating our own grinder into the mix will help us make our recycling business profitable.”

Frank explained that the farm’s recycling business, which operates near the Tribal Enterprises Travel Plaza off I-15 on the Moapa River Indian Reservation, has contracts with several firms allowing them to dump wood waste and unusable wood products gleaned from all over Southern Nevada for a nominal “tipping fee.”

The farm then grinds the wood waste and filters it through thick rigid trammel screens; the finer the screen, the finer the ground wood product. The wood products are then sold, which means the farm makes income when the wood comes in and again when it goes out.

“We have three basic grinds of mulch including rough, overs and fines,” Frank explained. “Rough is a first grind with chunks up to three inches or bigger. Rough can be reground into finer grades of product or it can be burned by companies that use wood-burning biofuel in their processes.

“Overs has been run through the trammel screen once separating it from the fines,” he continued. “Overs has one- to two-inch chunks suitable for decorative mulch. The fines product is roughly ½ inch. We often mix it with sand and manure to make rich garden mulch.”

The farm currently has a contact with Phoenix Recycling to produce a product called tire-derived fuel (TDF) which is purchased and used by the Mitsubishi Cement Corp. in California.

The Moapa Paiute Farm’s massive new wood recycling grinder processes wood waste for use as mulch and biofuel.

Phoenix Recycling processes used tires into playground mulch. The byproduct of the process is called “fluff,” which is an airy, fluffy rubber material. Phoenix trucks the fluff to the Moapa Farm which mixes it with wood fines making a biofuel that has an extremely high BTU rate when burned.

Phoenix then transports the mixed product to Mitsubishi which uses TDF in its generators to produce power.

The mulch products from the Moapa Farm can be purchased by any companies, landscapers, garden clubs or individuals. The fines can be mixed with manure, sand or other fertilizers to any desired specifications.

Interested buyers should contact the Moapa Paiute Farm.

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