Brazil's tree cemetery, and Hollund's Industria

Brazil 's tree cemetery, and Hollund's Industrial Marine's opportunity.

A bridge between supply and demand is visible in lake Tucurui, an underwater cemetery peopled by millions of gray, leafless tree trunks. In one of the biggest scandals of the military Government that ruled Brazil until 1985, a group of retired military officers received a contract to clear all timber from the area to be flooded by Tucurui, Brazil's second largest dam. But Lacking any kind of business experience, the group harvested only 5 percent.

Eletronorte, the Amazon's electric power company, closed the dam on the Tocantins River in November 1984. Since then, six million cubic meters of wood have been entombed in a lake the size of Lake Champlain. The power company smiles benignly, and today takes 10 percent of wood sales from recovered trees. Thus, Eletronorte benefits from submerged tree harvesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/14/world/tucur...looms.html