Cities around here compost everything, including and mainly wood debris, if you live within city limits around here its illegal to burn tree's, with all the storms the last few years, all the tree services take all the cut stuff to the city recycling center and its all fed into horizontal chippers, I know, its done right across the fence from me about four times a year, then they bring in tub grinders and grind everything together, I know the guys that do it, they cover most of the towns in the area. Yes they add grass clippings to it, same for any yard waste, this time of year its leaves, shrubs, flower bed debris, anything and its tub ground together, then they turn it several times and if its dry out, water it down and afterwards, it all free to anyone living within city limits to go get.
Wood chips, mulch and sawdust are big in my area for composting dead livestock, in a semi load piled up in a heap a farmer can shove quite a few dead cows into the pile, it cuts the smell, and within a few months the entire critter is gone, bones, hide, hooves, skull and all. Then you just add more chips, mulch or sawdust and keep the cycle going, when the entire mass gets wet enough and no longer contains the smell, its all loaded up and hauled out on the fields and they start over with new.
As for nitrogen to speed up the process, you are right, but before doing it, in the volumes needed, check to see if its legal to do, its not in my area, none that I know of, not to mention the price factor involved. Around here the DNR, NRCS, or EPA would never go along with it, never have and if you'd attempt it, you'd be monitored beyond belief for nitrate contamination of nearby groundwater of any type.
As for not getting the mulch to burn, if you have a CO-GEN plant nearby, they pay on a dry basis, but want it wet to keep and burn. As for the stuff being too wet to burn as is, we just cleared 13 acres and finished up last week, the entire timber was still live and growing, it all got fed into the fire and went up in smoke, mulch can be burned as well if you know how to do it, but its not cost effective to do on that large of scale outdoors. The last I knew there was more BTU's of heat in wet live wood than dry dead material, or so I was told by the larger CO-GEN plants I've visited, same for some major Universities in your state that heat and generate their own electricity for their campus.
But to play devils advocate Delmer, just where have you tried what your claiming will work, just how many lbs per acre of nitrogen did you use, who did you get the permits from and what did it cost on a per ton or per acre basis?? How many years did it take for you to use nitrogen to compost the debris a foot thick on acres worth of ground?? This isn't a backyard experiment, its acres worth of mulch and major nitrogen amounts to achieve it, but your claim it won't decay on its own isn't the case, we've walked into these types of situations before, how we handled it was just like I said, shove it into piles and clear some ground so something can grow, then over time load up and spread out some more debris each year till its all gone and working into the ground and used up, if you couldn't give it away that is first for mulch. The pile will turn to mushy garbage over time, dry out on top and as the heat dies down, the pile will settle and steam, then as its opened up and you stir it, as the years go by, it will be less to haul out, but it is doable, and no laws will be broken, no permits needed to be gotten and nobody is going to be upset besides the person paying the bill. The last debacle we encountered like this, the farmer had hundreds of acres to spread it out on, we called in the large commercial manure haulers with trucks and a tub grinder, ground it up and spit it into trucks and then spread it thin over hundreds of acres, took forever and cost a fortune, but it got done, the farmer learned his lesson as he paid the bill and then we went to work doing all the conservation work and dirt work we needed to do, have no clue how much per acre he had in it, wasn't my fault but it got done. Anytime you physically load anything and move it distances, the price increases considerably, to shove it to the side and pile it up, and the farmer haul it himself over the years is his cheapest option in the long term, if he's not equipped to do this, there are dozens of ways to get it done, none he will be happy with. After having been there and done that, I'd still stand at a distance and watch the whole thing progress or stall out and stay like it is, till it rots down, washes away or is overgrown with junk and garbage to cover the whole mess up and its out of sight.
The last time I mulched any volume of acres of tree's, it was in a low laying area and in the spring the river came up and six inches thick matt of mulch on the ground floated away, its what the owner wanted, have no idea why, didn't ask him, but his intent wasn't to crop it, his goal was to bid it back into the 10 year set aside program for the third time around and he hated fire, its what he wanted and paid for, whoever farms it some day can curse me beyond words but the owner read somewhere in ten years the stumps would rot and be gone, told him it wouldn't work quite that way, but he insisted it was a "green" way to clear land...............all I know is his check cleared the bank and as of yet, its still in the set aside program and he's sprayed the growth from coming back. Yes we did ask, its not illegal to have mulch float away, no laws were broken and we got the go ahead to do it by all the approved agencies, as they say two thumbs up when I can make everyone involved happy.