The politics of wildfire

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Endangered Retardant?

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - The Bush administration decided not to
consult with government agencies on the potential harm to
threatened and endangered fish from fire retardant dropped on
wildfires, despite advice to do so from the agencies, according to
documents emerging in a lawsuit.
The documents were released Thursday by the Forest Service
Employees for Environmental Ethics after obtaining them from the
government as part of their lawsuit over fire retardant use filed
last October in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Mont.
"The public needs to know that if the judge orders retardant
use to be stopped, it's because the government chose to break the
law, and it knew better," said Andy Stahl, director of the Eugene,
Ore.-based environmental group made up of Forest Service employees.
"We could avoid that outcome. The way to do that is for the
government to agree it has to write an environmental impact
statement and involve the public in deciding how we manage fire on
public lands, something the government has never done in 100
years."
Fire retardant dropped from air tankers contracted by the Forest
Service contains sodium ferrocyanide, which breaks down to form
hydrogen cyanide, which kills fish when it is mixed with water and
exposed to sunlight, the lawsuit contends. At least three fish
kills from fire retardant falling in streams have been acknowledged
by the government.
In allowing timber interests to intervene in the lawsuit, Judge
Donald W. Molloy wrote that if the environmental group wins its
lawsuit, the Forest Service will have to stop using fire retardant
until it complies with the law.
The lawsuit claims the Forest Service has violated the National
Environmental Policy Act by failing to go through a public review
of the environmental effects of dropping retardant.
It also argues the Forest Service violated the Endangered
Species Act by failing to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and NOAA Fisheries, which have jurisdiction over threatened
and endangered fish, on the lethal effects of fire retardant on
bull trout and salmon.
Spokesmen for the Forest Service and for Mark Rey, agriculture
undersecretary for natural resources and the environment, said they
could not comment on pending litigation.
Stahl said a motion for discovery in the case produced hundreds
of documents loaded onto a CD marked with the case number.
Among them were:
- A June 23, 2003 briefing paper prepared by Rick Sayers, the
Fish and Wildlife branch chief for Endangered Species Act
consultation.
It said Fish and Wildlife and NOAA Fisheries had told the Forest
Service that the Endangered Species Act required them to consult
with the agencies before contracting for and using fire retardant
on wildfires.
It added that an environmental review of fire retardants should
be done before buying new supplies.
Application guidelines, which include 200-foot buffers along
streams, are not sufficient to protect fish, and do not include
permission to inadvertently kill threatened and endangered fish,
the briefing paper said.
- A June 30, 2003 memo from Tom Harbour, Forest Service deputy
director of fire and aviation. Harbour wrote that he was told by
Dave Tenny, deputy undersecretary of agriculture for natural
resources, that he, Rey and an unnamed undersecretary of interior
had met. They decided "there would NOT be formal consultation on
retardant use." Instead, they would cooperate with Fish and
Wildlife and NOAA Fisheries on appropriate guidelines.
- A June 26, 2003 Forest Service and Interior Department
briefing paper on fire and aviation management. It noted that Fish
and Wildlife and NOAA Fisheries advised the Forest Service must
consult with them over the use of fire retardant as called for by
the Endangered Species Act. The agencies said they should also do
an environmental review under the National Environmental Policy
Act. A list of options noted that "legal vulnerability is high"
if they decided against consultation.
The briefing paper noted that more than 11,000 loads of fire
retardant are dropped annually on 6,500 acres in the course of
fighting wildfires. In the previous two years, retardant went into
streams eight times, resulting in three fish kills.
"The Forest Service maintains that this level of overflight,
spills and fish kill would not jeopardize the continued existence
of any listed species," the briefing paper said. "Additional
guidance will not increase protection of fish where life or
property are threatened, or reduce the risk of an accidental
spill."

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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March 7th, 2005

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Western lawmakers are furious over
proposed cuts to wildland firefighting funds, including grants to
help rural communities fight fires and prevent fuel build-up.
There's also bipartisan sentiment to get rid of the Bush
administration's traditional method of determining wildfire
suppression budgets. At recent Interior Department and Forest
Service budget hearings for 2006, senators warned that the Bush
administration's proposed 283 (M)million dollars cuts - intended to
shore up the nation's deficit - could end up costing taxpayers more
in the long run.
The federal agencies base funding requests to Congress on the
average annual firefighting costs from the last ten years, then
later ask lawmakers for hundreds of (M)millions of dollars worth of
"emergency" supplemental funds if the account is drained by a
busy fire season.
The federal fire budget's woes stem from a difficulty in
accurately forecasting the severity of the fire season before
knowing how quickly mountain snowpacks will melt in spring and
summer. In 2002 - the worst fire season in 50 years -
three-point-six (M)million acres had burned by late July. But by
the end of the year, seven-point-two (M)million had gone up in
smoke, driving federal costs to one-point-six (B)billion dollars.


(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer
TAHOE CITY, Calif. (AP) - Scenic, wooded Lake Tahoe, one of
America's natural gems, could easily go up in smoke, speakers at an
annual lakeside summit warned Sunday.
Much of the attention - and millions of dollars - have gone in
recent years to protecting the high alpine lake's fabled clear blue
waters, where visibility once penetrated to more than 100 feet and
has recently been improving.
But it is the forested Sierra Nevada mountains reflected in the
lake that could destroy the basin that is home to multimillion
dollar homes, casinos, ski resorts, lodges, restaurants and parks
that draw thousands of tourists.
Moreover, a fast-moving wildfire on a crowded summer weekend
could pose deadly danger to panicked people fleeing over the Tahoe
basin's few winding roads.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, a Democrat, and John
Ensign of Nevada, a Republican, announced Sunday that they will
jointly push for legislation promoting a 10 year U.S. Forest
Service program to thin crowded forests around the lake. About 80
percent of the basin is federal land.
"We live up here in a big tinder box. We are very lucky we
haven't had the type of catastrophic fire that would really do
damage to this lake," Ensign said Sunday. "We figured out we're
going to need $200 million to restore forest health around Lake
Tahoe."
The legislation is designed to "cut through the red tape and
remove hazardous fuels" that threaten the Tahoe basin, Feinstein
said.
Part of the money could come from the federal Healthy Forests
Act and the Southern Nevada Public Lands Act, which included
federal land sales around Las Vegas.
The emphasis would be on areas within 1 1/2 miles of
communities, though areas including watersheds and steeply sloping
mountainsides would be included.
Getting approval could be challenging, Feinstein acknowledged,
noting that logging brings environmental damage. Similar efforts
throughout the Sierra Nevada and across the nation have brought
myriad challenges and lawsuits.
A similar thinning plan significantly cut fire danger after a
lengthy drought 15 years ago, said Forest Service spokesman Matt
Mathes.
"If you stood on the lake and looked around you, one of every
three trees you saw was dead," Mathes said. "The folks in the
Lake Tahoe basin got behind a very serious thinning campaign that
was very effective."
Trees around the lake have grown too crowded, thanks to a
century of fire prevention efforts, making them more susceptible to
fire and disease.
All five California and two Nevada Tahoe-area fire protection
districts have completed Community Wildfire Protection Plans in the
last year, identifying 26,000 acres of federal and private land
that is most at risk of wildfire. They are now working on a
comprehensive fire protection plan, to be completed by next March.
The Forest Service estimates 42,000 acres of its land need
thinning, yet a lack of money enabled it to thin only about 15,000
acres the last five years, Feinstein said. She and the other
senators have several funding ideas that could be incorporated into
their proposed legislation.
Officials who said there needs to be a new effort on wildfire
prevention noted that erosion after a fire would have a severe
impact on water quality that has been a prime focus of lake
restoration projects for years.
"If there was a fire to happen here, it wouldn't matter how
much we spent to keep Tahoe blue - because it wouldn't be blue,"
said Bruce Kranz, a member of the Placer County, Calif. Board of
Supervisors. Scientists say such a wildfire could set back lake
restoration efforts by one hundred years.
More than $500 million in federal, state and local government
and private funds have been spent on over 200 environmental
projects around the lake since 1997, with another $150 million
pending. A 10-year, $900 million partnership created by the federal
Lake Tahoe Restoration Act still has another five years to go,
Feinstein noted.
Water quality continues to be the major research activity at the
lake, and on Saturday a dozen research institutions and management
agencies signed onto a new Tahoe Science Consortium they said will
improve sharing of scientific research, monitoring and computer
modeling. That effort will provide land and lake managers and
policy-makers with timely information to help in their decisions,
officials said.
The consortium's creation comes as the University of California,
Davis, and Sierra Nevada College laid the cornerstone Saturday for
a new $24 million Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences research
laboratory at the college's Incline Village campus.
The annual Tahoe events have been held since 1997, when
President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and other state and
federal officials convened at the lake to bring awareness to
environmental problems that threaten it's delicate ecosystem.
Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate Minority Leader, had been
expected at this year's meeting but is at home recovering from a
mild stroke.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Let them burn!??

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - A federal audit says the U.S. Forest
Service should let more wildfires burn and demand that state and
local governments pick up a bigger share of firefighting costs that
regularly top $1 billion a year.
The audit released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's inspector general said Forest Service personnel feel
that protecting private property where cities meet forests, known
as the wildland-urban interface, accounts for more than half of
Forest Service firefighting costs, which have exceeded $1 billion
in three of the past six years.
Produced at the request of the Forest Service, the audit said
that by picking up so much of the cost of fighting wildfires, the
Forest Service was taking away incentives homeowners would have to
take responsibility for protecting their homes in the woods.
And because state and local governments control development in
the wildland-urban interface, they should bear a greater share of
the costs, the audit added.
"We are pleased with the results and hope to have all the
recommendations in place for the 2007 fire season," Forest Service
spokeswoman Jennifer Plyler said from Washington, D.C. "It's
something we looked at and felt we needed some outside help to
decide how to approach it."
Many western forests evolved with fire, but the Forest Service
has long put out all the fires it could, despite recognizing for
many years that this led to an unnatural buildup of fuels that has
increased the size and severity of wildfires.
The audit said current Forest Service policy calls for giving
equal consideration to putting out fires and letting them burn to
reduce buildups of brush and small trees, but outside pressure and
a lack of trained personnel make it difficult to choose to let
fires burn. It noted that only 2 percent of wildfires from 1998
through 2005 were allowed to burn for ecological benefit.
The audit urged the Forest Service to train more personnel to
assess and monitor wildfires for the practice known as wildland
fire use, and hold wildfire incident commanders and line officers
accountable for controlling costs.
The Forest Service should also ask Congress to decide who has
primary responsibility for protecting homes in the woods, and if
that turns out to be the states, renegotiate its firefighting
agreements with them.
Bill Lafferty, fire program manager for the Oregon Department of
Forestry, noted in an email that one reason the Forest Service was
created in 1910 was to fight wildfires that were destroying whole
towns.
Mike Carrier, natural resources adviser to Gov. Ted Kulongoski,
objected to the idea of states paying a greater share when they
already spend millions on protecting private property from
wildfire. He said Oregon has been a leader in helping communities
reduce local wildfire danger, and that the underlying problem
remains the huge buildup of forest fuels.
Andy Stahl of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental
Ethics agreed that more wildfires should be allowed to burn, but
disagreed that protecting homes was driving up costs.
"Ninety percent of the homes lost to wildland fire are located
in one tiny part of the country, Southern California," said Stahl.
"So home loss is simply not a particularly significant issue where
we fight most wildfires. To Southern California's credit, they are
doing a lot, certainly more than anywhere else, to make their
communities fire resistant."
The Wilderness Society has been urging the Forest Service for
years to let more fires burn and supports many of the
recommendations, but how much they can reduce firefighting costs is
anybody's guess, said wildfire policy analyst Jaelith Hall-Rivera.
"Apparently the main reason the Forest Service has not been
doing this is it feels the states object to it - concerns about
fires escaping and smoke," she said. "You have to have a balance
of what is ecologically appropriate with what will help you reduce
suppression costs.
"Unfortunately the moniker 'Let It Burn' has caught on, but
that's not what wildland fire use is," she said. "It's a very
highly managed process, with teams of people on the ground."
This year, 357 fires have been allowed to burn under supervision
across 164,775 acres, amounting to 1.7 percent of the 9.5 million
acres that burned on federal, state and private lands across the
country, according to the National Fire Information Center Web
site.
Forest Service figures show 819 residences, 60 commercial
buildings and 1,265 outbuildings and other structures burned this
year around the nation.
The California Department of Forestry reports that 102
structures burned in areas under its jurisdiction last year, 1,016
in 2004, and 5,394 in 2003.
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On the Net:
Inspector General's report:
http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/08601-44-SF.pdf