Recovering lumber has become a big business in recent years. You can buy floors and posts made from old mines. There are social consequences to this recovery however. In Southeast Asia recovery of teak has resulted in a kind of identity crisis. A few summers ago I found myself looking at an old mine above Mackey, Idaho. The town was trying to restore its mining heritage and encourage tourism. However, a timber recover company had already started ripping into the old buildings tearing out enormous beams that would fetch a large sum for new homes in Jackson Hole or Aspen. I never found out if the company had permission to do it or not, but the people in the town were not happy about it at all. It was their heritage and it was being stolen.
Enter a new source of timber. There are many reservoir around the world and many of them were built in areas where there are a lot of trees. Wired is running an article on Chris Godsall founder and CEO of Triton Logging. They recover wood from the under the water. There is no shortage of it either. Here’s a quote from the article:
Most salvage loggers believe that reservoirs conceal 200 million to 300 million trees worldwide. “That’s a low estimate,†Godsall says. “We’re continually discovering reservoirs with trees in them. There’s one in Brazil called Tucurui with $1 billion worth of timber.â€
Interesting.
I remember seeing a episode of “Dirty Jobs” on the Discovery Channel about harvesting under water logs. Apparently the logs can be quite valuable. Mike Rowe, from Dirty Jobs visited these guys:
http://www.georgianbaywetwood.com/