Sharon

Bill to Use Federal Land for Affordable Housing: HOUSES Act of 2022

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This isn’t about employees, but is of interest.

U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis has co-sponsored legislation that would allow federal land to be used for public housing.

The Helping Open Underutilized Space to Ensure Shelter Act (HOUSES) would open up parcels of federally owned land for states or local governments to buy for the purpose of increasing the availability of housing.

“The purpose of the bill is to make state and local governments able to buy local land for home development,” Lummis told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday afternoon.

The legislation would amend the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and also proposes that state or local entities would be allowed to buy federal public land at a discounted rate “well below market value,” ratioed by a Payment in Lieu of Taxes price.

The HOUSES Act was first introduced in 2022 and was recently reintroduced by Lummis, bill sponsor Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. Lack of affordable housing has become not only an issue in Wyoming in recent years, but also throughout the entire West.

“Housing affordability is a nationwide problem. Rent is high and mortgages are even higher thanks to Bidenomics,” Barrasso said in a statement. “The HOUSES Act will provide new options to state and local governments by allowing them to buy certain lands from the federal government for residential purposes. As more people move to Wyoming, growing communities need options to expand housing.”

What It Does?
Lummis said the legislation could have a particular benefit for a number of Wyoming communities like Jackson, Sheridan and Cody that border federal land, which makes up nearly 50% of Wyoming’s total acreage.

“Affordable housing is becoming less and less capable in Wyoming,” she said.

The Joint Economic Committee of Congress estimates the bill would lead to the construction of 2.7 million more homes in the U.S. and alleviate Wyoming’s entire housing shortage.

Under the bill, development would be limited to federal lands directly adjacent to where existing sewer infrastructure could be developed and would also exclude particularly sensitive tracts of land such as wilderness areas and national monuments. This would leave out most federal land aside from BLM and Bureau of Reclamation property.

I don’t think that’s true.. it sounds like FS would be included.

It would ensure that lands are primarily used for housing with a mandate that at least 85% be dedicated for residential purposes and the community’s related needs. It also includes density requirements, ensuring a minimum of four homes per acre and prohibits the development of luxury second homes on these parcels.

“It allows the carve-out of small parcels and is especially for the purpose of adding affordable housing,” Lummis said.

A local entity would be allowed to use the land for low-income housing, condominiums, single-family homes or even mixed-use developments.

The local government would submit requests for conveyance to the Secretary of the Interior, who would then need to approve the sale along with a state’s governor.

Not Just Houses …
According to the bill text, construction of community amenities like assembly halls, firefighting facilities, grocery stores, health clinics, hospitals, libraries, churches, police stations, recreational facilities and schools would also be allowed.

It would also require the construction of water, sewer, electricity, communications infrastructure and some connection to public transit.

Creating industrial areas would also be allowed if they include “manufacturing, assembling, processing, extracting or otherwise treating raw materials.”

The Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act already allows for the exchange of specific, low-value, isolated parcels of public land where it is necessary, seen most prominently on the far edge of Las Vegas.

“Instead of doing these on a case-by-case basis, this will establish an act of Congress to allow it,” Lummis said.

Some conservatives have criticized proposals like these as the government meddling in the private market. Lummis doesn’t buy that argument because the land being discussed isn’t available to the private market anyway.

“The private market is already cut out now because it’s federal land,” she said.

Lummis added that she finds it nearly impossible these days for the private sector to make money off building affordable housing.

The HOUSES Act also has been derided by a handful of environmental groups like Backcountry Hunters and Anglers as anti-public lands.

“The availability and affordability of housing is a real concern that impacts everyday Americans; however, the HOUSES Act does not present a meaningful attempt to solve this issue,” the group said in a Monday press release. “Rather, it would facilitate the removal of multiple-use lands from the public estate.”

I have some questions..probably someone has been following this..

  1. Why Nevada and nowhere else?
  2. To environmental groups, is this more OK if done piece by piece, or not acceptable at all?
  3.  Does the land have to be transferred, or could it be traded or leased?

All the News That Fits the Narrative; Rock Springs RMP, Schuller Interview with EPA EJ Administrator

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We’ve been having a discussion on various aspect of the Rock Springs Wyoming RMP.   A few things have come my way that are of interest relating to that, and also the role of communities.
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First, Tisha Schuller talks with the deputy assistant administrator for EJ at EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights on her Energy Thinks podcast. I didn’t listen to the whole thing but she shared a few quotes.
On EPA’s growing focus on EJ: 
“It is the first time in government—not just in the United States but in the history of humankind—that we have real funding at the same time that we have real political support not only to change the systems and structures of governance but to do so in an equitable way.”

Hmm.. count me skeptical as to the role of one federal agency (or even the current Admin, which is, after all one of three branches of the federal government) in changing “the systems and structures of governance” in an “equitable way.” Not that I have a problem with equity, but I think its use and meaning are contested.

And
On placing communities at the head of the table:
“None of us want to live in a place where we’re not heard. None of us want to live in a community where things are done to it and you don’t have anything to say about it. None of us want to live in that place. Communities with EJ concerns want to be heard.”

“Communities with EJ concerns” is a term also used in the proposed NEPA regs (more on those next week). Rather than define what EJ communities are or aren’t, we now have communities with concerns. For example, my somewhat neighboring community of Kiowa is not thrilled about new high voltage powerlines (this is all private as part of Colorado’s Power Pathway, so no federal nexus except for endangered species and National Park viewsheds). There are quite a few different parameters that could be indexed in different ways (for example, east of there is a food desert). So depending on the way you index, it could be an EJ community or not. If you were to define what one is. But any community seemingly could have EJ concerns, and is there an arbiter of what are legitimate concerns or not? It’s all not exactly transparent or clear. In my experience, when people dream up abstractions and are intentionally not clear about who is in and who is out.. other people are making the determination, usually for small or large political reasons.

Of course, there’s “being heard” and “having your say determine the outcome”; plus not all people in communities agree. People in the federal land management space know this landscape quite well over many decisions large and small. It seems in the broader world of new energy buildout, other organizations and NGOs are discovering these complexities.

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The NY Times on Rock Springs decision..

This was quite timely. Note the tagline ..

Explosive reactions to the proposal, which would limit drilling, show how the president’s climate policies are crashing into walls in some oil and gas states.

The journalist, Lisa Friedman (no relation) seems like a nice person. At one Society of Environmental Journalists meeting I attended, she (and other reporters from Coastal Media) seemed extraordinarily interested in Pendley’s (he was there) attitude toward climate change. As if somehow the BLM were the key to worldwide decarbonization. It felt a little weird to me, especially since I wanted to ask him about e-bikes. Oh well.

As a candidate, Mr. Biden pledged to end new federal oil and gas leasing. And, as president, he has said he wants to conserve at least 30 percent of public lands and waters by 2030. Both are part of an aggressive agenda to curb climate change, though Mr. Biden has approved some large fossil fuel projects. Political and legal concerns have played a role in those decisions.

I guess you can state that “conserving” 30 percent of land” is an “aggressive approach to curb climate change, but I wonder whether if the protected areas don’t allow fuel reduction.. they actually do that. Plus some of us might see a conflict between renewable build-out and “conserving.” Without a map, though, why would we believe that they are compatible? Otherwise it’s just political arm-waving attempts to placate renewable and ENGO interests. And as we have seen with the BLM conservation rule and the proposed CEQ NEPA regs, when renewable buildout and “protection” meet, renewables lose.

“We are in a bit of a bubble here right now with Ukraine and the Middle East,” said Mark Squillace, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Mr. Squillace said if oil prices climbed there could be heightened interest in federal oil and gas leasing, but only in the short term.

Mark is another great person, and I’d like to think we’re in a “bubble” but I don’t know what our foreign policy will be nor how others will react. The fact is that no one knows.

“I think we all know that in the next 20 years or so there’s going to be a whole lot less oil and gas production, because of the trends that we’re seeing with electric vehicles and renewable energy,” Mr. Squillace said. Wyoming, which also is grappling with collapsing demand for its coal, he added, “should, of all states, know the consequences of not managing their land.”

I don’t understand exactly what that means.

Ah.. the “backlash”

The backlash began almost immediately. Lawmakers accused the Biden administration of trying to pull Wyoming “back to the Stone Age.” Governor Gordon sent a letter to the Bureau of Land Management director asking the agency to withdraw the entire plan. A local sheriff declared he would not enforce the plan if it were finalized.

The director of the Bureau of Land Management’s field office in Rock Springs, Wyo., Kimberlee Foster, told a local news outlet that her staff members had begun receiving threatening calls were being investigated by the F.B.I. “It’s not really about specifics in the document,” Ms. Foster said. “The hate has been more political in nature.”

Pivot to “incipient Bundys”. Lawmakers quote.. Governor Gordon’s letter (which was pretty mild for a politician), a sheriff.. yup.

“The situation is ripe for this sort of anger to come to the surface,” said State Senator Brian Boner, a Republican. He noted the federal government already owned nearly half, 48 percent, of Wyoming land. “You feel like you don’t really have a voice in the way your state moves forward, and in this instance there’s a significant threat to peoples’ livelihoods,” he said.

So let’s go back to Tisha’s podcast:

None of us want to live in a place where we’re not heard. None of us want to live in a community where things are done to it and you don’t have anything to say about it. None of us want to live in that place

What’s interesting about the Times story is that it’s all about oil and gas, not about the process, which is what Gordon’s letter was about. Does not mention the political back and forth concern, as in the Cowboy State Daily report discussed previously, and as we shall see there’s other info not included.

Indeed “all the news that fits the narrative”. Oil and gas bad and not needed, check. Republicans bad, check. Westerners dangerous and incipient Bundys, check. Are the facts wrong? Probably not. Does fitting the info to a narrative leave a lot out and not actually help our understanding of what’s going on? Yes.

Good thing we have the Cowboy State Daily and Wyofile!

Zoom Presentation and Discussion with Kelly Martin on the Wildfire Mitigation and Management Report

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The Zoom will be held Friday, November 3 (this Friday) at 1PM Pacific, 2PM MT, and 4PM ET.

All are welcome to this first TSW Zoom! Email me at Sharon at forestpolicypub.com for the link.  Kelly is a member of the Commission. Here’s her bio:

Kelly is the President of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing the public with information and education regarding much needed wildland fire workforce reforms. Her organization advocates on behalf of thousands of wildland firefighters.

She is also very active as a Burn Boss for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) mentoring and coaching other TNC employees and nonprofit organizations to help them become more skilled and proficient in applying “good fire” on the landscape.

After 35 years as a fulltime federal wildland firefighter, Kelly retired federal service in 2019 for an opportunity to pass her knowledge to the next generation through her volunteer work as a subcommittee chair of IAWF hosting “Ignite Talk” presentations and serving as the President of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.

She is a Burn Boss; Fire Behavior Analyst; Operations Section Chief; and Operations Branch Director and served on Interagency Incident Management Teams for over 20 years. She has served as a Fire Management Officer for both the US Forest Service and the National Park Service in Moab, UT; Carson City, NV; Placerville, CA; and Yosemite, CA. She is a strong advocate and leader for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion promoting gender parity throughout the Wildland Fire Community. Her current work includes providing leadership for the Women-in-Fire Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (WTREX) and Indigenous Cultural burning Training Exchanges (TREX) events.

See you there!

“Motorheads” Appeal Labyrinth Rims/Gemini Bridges Travel Plan: Jonathan Thompson

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We haven’t had much for our recreation friends lately.. so here is a link to a post by Jonathan Thompson in his Land Desk newsletter.  Apparently he is not a fan of (some? all?) OHVers.  Which is OK. Another writer might have said “OHV groups appeal decision which has had a lot of local input and compromise.”  I mean this is a good argument (if true) but some of us could apply that to say.. the Rock Springs proposed RMP alternative, or numerous lawsuits against collaboratively produced fuels treatment projects.  But do we know what litigants “really want”?  I would say that we do not.  This goes back to intention, and I’m not much of a fan of digging into other peoples’ brains.

The appellants claim the plan — which closes some motorized routes — violates federal law, is “arbitrary and capricious,” and is even unconstitutional.

But really they’re just miffed that they can’t continue to ride their OHVs just about everywhere.

The plan, long in the making, was intended to strike a balance between motorheads’ desire for unfettered access and the urgent need to mitigate the impacts of a burgeoning number of OHVs, especially side-by-sides, on public lands. But even this “balance” was tilted toward the OHVs: Of the 1,120 miles of existing motorized routes in the 469-square-mile planning area, more than 800 miles will remain open to motorized travel. Only 317 miles, or less than one-third of the total, will be closed.

But the Blue Ribbon Coalition, other motorized access groups, and, for that matter, most Utah politicians, have an ideological intolerance to any road closures whatsoever — whether those roads go anywhere or not. The state and various county commissions have spent millions of dollars fighting road closures. They’ve led illegal and damaging protest rides into closed areas and subjected BLM staffers to threats and intimidation. County sheriffs of a certain ilk have even attempted to press criminal charges against federal employees simply for doing their jobs.

This case is a bit different, because the local county commission favors the BLM compromise. In fact, they advocated for a more restrictive plan that would have closed 437 miles of trails. In 2021, the commission urged the BLM to create a rational plan that would remedy the existing situation, in which 95% of the planning area was within a half mile of a motorized route and less than 1% was a mile or more away from a road. “In particular, it is important to provide opportunities for quiet forms of recreation, out of earshot of motorized trails,” they wrote. “We think the travel plan should ensure that a reasonable percentage of the planning area is more than one mile from a road or motorized trail.”

Instead of wielding ol’ RS-2477, the 157-year-old defunct statute giving the right to build highways across public lands to access mines, the Blue Ribbon Coalition and friends are attempting other spurious arguments, such as:

  • The plan violates the Dingell Act, the 2019 legislation designating Labyrinth Canyon as a wilderness area. Congress emphasized that the act was meant only to protect the designated wilderness areas, not “to create protective perimeters or buffer zones around the wilderness areas.” The appellants claim this plan is an attempt to do just that. But the argument falls flat when you consider how many routes near the wilderness remain open. That’s no buffer.
  • The closures violate the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. Okay, this one’s so goofy I’m not even going to get into it. (Basically they’re saying the BLM’s district manager doesn’t have the authority to make any decisions because they aren’t elected or directly appointed by the president).
  • The decision is arbitrary and capricious. Not! The BLM has been working on this plan for more than five years and has accepted and considered thousands of comments. If anything was arbitrary it was the establishment of more than 1,000 miles of roads and paths across the landscape over the last century.

Chances of the appeal actually going somewhere are pretty slim, given these arguments. It’s a colossal waste of time nevertheless.

It would be interesting to hear the other side of the story. I’m hoping some TSW readers will weigh in.

Reducing Polarization: A Modest Amendment to FLPMA- Make the BLM Director a Career Position

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Polarization seems a bit like the weather.. everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it.  I can think of a variety of Big Ideas to reduce it, but the people who have gained political power via riding the polarization horse have little interest in putting it out to pasture.  So I’d propose simpler and tinier solutions which might ultimately add up to something larger.

We have two multiple-use agencies at this time, the BLM and the Forest Service.  FLPMA has the BLM Director be a political appointee.  The Forest Service Chief is not (although certainly approved by the Admin).  Folks I know who have worked in both agencies say that the policy pendulum in the Forest Service does not swing as far as with BLM.

As Governor Freudenthal (D) of Wyoming noted  in 2010 for the BLM:

Unfortunately, Washington, D.C. seems to go from pillar to post to placate what is perceived as a key constituency. I only half-heartedly joke with those in industry that, during the prior administration, their names were chiseled above the chairs outside the office of the Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals. With the changes announced yesterday, I fear that we are merely swapping the names above those same chairs to environmental interests, giving them a stranglehold on an already cumbersome process.

Suppose just a tiny tweak.. suppose FLPMA was amended to require the BLM Director to be a career employee? (This could also be done for all the Director roles at Interior, NPS, USFWS, BOR and BIA).   The Assistant Secretaries, Deputy Secretary and Secretary would then, similar to the FS, be politicals to develop the President’s policy as the result of the election. Career Directors should have expertise and agency management experience (preferably in the field, and in the case of BLM, in the West) and work to implement the policy as developed by the politicals. At BLM currently there is the Director (PAS) and one of two Deputy Directors as politicals and some lower level schedule C’s politicals.   If you have too many politicals around in positions of power, it is likely that everything is seem through a partisan lens.  And they don’t always hear different views.  First, it’s easy to discount voices from the other party (they are not worth listening to) and people from their own party who disagree don’t always feel comfortable telling them (you’re either with us or against us; or fear of ticking off powerful people in their own party and possibly future retaliation).  So it’s easy (especially with no career feds around who have western field experience) to be in an echo chamber and rely on people from your past life (ENGOs or industry) for info.  It leads to a situation in which people closer to the ground could come to agreement, but the politicals  in DC  cannot.

Fundamentally, to my mind, the best land solutions are developed locally by local people with local knowledge and local research.

One thing that struck me about Governor Gordon’s letter was the contrast between how this decision was made and the idea  of environmental justice.

EPA defines “environmental justice” as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision‐making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.

My bold. Perhaps EJ does not include “all people regardless of whom they vote for”?

Why throw out all that work, and throw the BLM employees under the bus?  For indeed, they and the State and the local folks have put a great deal of work into these plans. Fpr twelve years.

Our political friends come in to Interior and spend a few years making decisions (without having direct experience of these places and people; often without natural resources backgrounds at all). They are just passing through on their way to their next law firm, ENGO or industry post.  Meanwhile,  BLM employees have to live with the mistrust and the bad decisions that the politicals generate, in the grocery store, in the bleachers at the high school basketball game, and so on, for their entire 30 year ish career.   I’d rather that public involvement was not an elaborate hoax, and that politicals put a finger (tip?) on the scale rather than ignoring it.  For some westerners, picking a surprise alternative seems like an intentional sharp stick in the eye, and if we question it,  we are incipient Bundys (not people seeking environmental justice), and so the unproductive cycle continues.   Our access to federal land, our recreation and in some cases, our livelihoods, are pawns in the R/D chess game, effectively without agency.   Not exactly EJ, to my mind, nor any justice at all.

If Congressfolk asked me “why do this FLPMA amendment now?” I’d say it’s a tiny step towards reducing polarization.  If we are in a climate emergency, we need BLM employees (who, we remember, are down in numbers to the extent that the Admin is concerned) to not waste their time on doing and redoing plans based on the predilections of people in each Administration.  We think that the stakeholders and people who work on developing agreements and those who give public comment need to be fairly and meaningfully involved- just like the definition of EJ.. which would mean that the people in the room making the decision would be immersed in those views and agreements.  We want to build trust and the foundation for States, feds, Tribes and locals to work better together.  Things apparently haven’t changed much between Freudenthal’s and Gordon’s concerns- in the last 10 years.  If we want to build a national effort to decarbonize and to adapt to climate change (the Wildfire Commission says wildfire is an emergency).  We need to work together better across federal, state and local governments.

I’ll end with another quote from Governor Gordon’s letter, that talks about fostering relationships that lead ultimately to better governance:

Until very recently, the BLM has been a major partner, along with state and local entities, in bringing about consensus-based Wyoming solutions to major land management questions. Wyoming is a national leader on Greater Sage Grouse, migration corridor management, and responsible development. We did that with local support, stakeholder buy-in, and rigorous on the ground work. That work was not simple or easy, but it showed a respect for the resources and the people of the area. The BLM’s RMP and Preferred Alternative threaten to eliminate all the hard work accomplished by bulldozing over state executive orders, stakeholder engagement, and interagency agreements. Simply put, existing and future partnerships are in jeopardy. A federal fiat won’t run efficiently or well over such a bumpy road.

There is a substantial amount of trust placed in our federal government to manage our public lands effectively and according to law. That trust is fragile and should never be abused. One of the BLM’s Guiding Principles is, “To cultivate community-based conservation, citizen-centered stewardship, and partnership through consultation, cooperation, and communication.”

I think a simple FLPMA amendment would go a long way in that direction.

Whatever Happened To: FLPMA’s Requirements for Coordination With States? Rock Springs RMP

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Many thanks to Jon for bringing up the Rock Springs RMP.  There are many interesting things about it. In this post, I’ll focus on what appears to be a breakdown in the FLPMA and associated regulations for coordination with the State.  In the next post, I’ll focus on impacts to communities and employees. I don’t know a bunch about the BLM but did participate in a Governor’s Office Review (with Harris Sherman, then DNR Director in Colorado) of the ill-fated joint BLM/FS San Juan plan.  It seemed to me that it indeed was a useful exercise.  So I was surprised when I took a look at the Governor’s letter on the proposed RMP:

in this case, Governor Gordon of Wyoming seems to have been blindsided:

More to the point, this draft does not accurately reflect the 12-year cooperative process undertaken during my entire time in office as Governor and as State Treasurer, three presidential administrations, a multitude of public meetings, cooperating agency input, technological and scientific advancements, and millions of taxpayer dollars. So, it is completely incomprehensible that the BLM selected for its Agency Preferred Alternative, Alternative B, one considered an outlier in previous attempts at issuing an RMP one that was meant to serve initially as a bookend – an alternative with the most resource use restrictions and concomitantly with the largest socioeconomic impacts. Over a decade’s worth of contributions from local stakeholders, cooperators, counties, and state agencies are either falling on deaf ears or disingenuously being thrown by the wayside with this decision.

And

The Agency’s actions here are contrary to that intent. One is left to assume that that partnership was found to be less valuable than playing to some other audience than those most affected by the people and the ecology these decisions would most impact. It is a shame that evidently little heed was paid to the wishes of local communities. The release of this draft is the first instance the public has to review the BLM’s proposal, and it has completely blindsided those involved, those who care most about the place. The release of this draft places a 90-day burden on the shoulders of those who live, work, and recreate here to understand and respond to this outlandish Preferred Alternative. The trust that has so painstakingly been earned over years of cooperation has been tested severely.

Why did that happen?  According to a source.

FLPMA is replete with directions to BLM to cooperate with states. See e.g. 43 U.S.C.  § 1712 (a)(9) (planning), § 1716 (exchanges) and § 1720 (conveyances).  FLPMA also provides an opportunity before the Final RMP for the Governor’s Consistency Review – is the RMP consistent with state and local land use plans. The late Governor Richardson was successful in redirecting a BLM plan through that process and a lawsuit.

And..

The existing BLM regulation requires cooperating agency status to be offered to State, Tribal and local governments during land use planning and current Department NEPA rules require the same for all Department Environmental Impact Statements. See BLM, Cooperating Agency Deskbook (2012) p. 2 (“The BLM amended its planning regulations in 2005 to ensure that it engages its government partners consistently and effectively through the CA relationship whenever land use plans are prepared or revised. In 2008, the Department of the Interior (DOI) applied this policy to the preparation of all EISs.

So all those requirements were .. ignored?  And  a trusted source reported that they had spoken with an ENGO who said that they were “shocked and delighted” that they had been given whatever they wanted on the RMP.  Perhaps this is less about rewarding your friend NGO’s than punishing your enemy States who don’t vote the way the Admin prefers… despite legal requirements to work with them.  I am not a fan of the ship of federalism, which has served us well, foundering on the shoals of political partisanship.

Next post: Concerns for EJ, communities and employees.

 

More on RVs and Potential Housing for Federal Workers: Colorado Sun Story

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Kristin McGrath and Collin Vlass have been living in their 2015 Outback Keystone travel trailer for over two years with their dogs, Ola and Clyde. McGrath has had to move frequently to do clinical work for her degree in nurse anesthesia through Westminster University in Salt Lake City. The couple has lived in New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado and will soon move to Las Cruces in New Mexico. Vlass is a firefighter and wildfire paramedic. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

 

 

Kelly’s and Rebecca’s comments on housing reminded me of this article from the Colorado Sun.  Apologies if I have already posted, my list of items to post is long and my memory is not perfect (nor is the search engine on TSW).   I think there’s definitely something there, especially compared to the difficulties and long-term nature of building permanent housing. Or reducing the cost of housing more generally (requires, I don’t know, messing with the economy?) so definitely above our pay grade.

Kristin McGrath and Collin Vlass have gathered plenty of first-hand information about trying to live in an RV while working in Colorado.

McGrath is a nurse anesthetist student and Vlass fights wildland fires.

Last year, McGrath learned she would have to move five times to do clinical work for her degree. She and Vlass have two dogs and own a house in Durango, “and seeing housing prices go crazy, rent gouging and having the dogs, we knew it was going to be astronomically expensive to find housing anywhere for a couple of months,” she said.

So they bought a used RV thinking they’d live in RV parks while they worked. But that plan would turn out to be more difficult than they thought.

In Manitou Springs’ Pikes Peak RV Park, where they currently reside, the two pay $1,300 a month for a concrete parking slab, water, power, sewer and the use of amenities — coin-operated laundry, bathrooms with showers and access to the Manitou Pool & Fitness Center. It’s the most expensive park they’ve lived on their journey, McGrath said, and “it seems as though they’ve seen the demand and are cramming as many RVs in there as possible.”

The crowding issue sometimes creates problems with renters not knowing which hookup pedestal to use, and McGrath said on the couple of instances when other campers unplugged them from electricity and turned off their water, the managers on site told them “it didn’t happen.”

When you mix vacationers with long-term renters, “they rarely have situational awareness,” Vlass added. “It’s bad because Kristin is pregnant and has to get up at 4, 5, 6 a.m. to go to school. I’m sorry, but even if it’s like nine people who came from three different spots in Colorado and chose Manitou for their reunion, even though we’re paying a pretty premium cost, there’s no separation between us and them.”

At least the two have been able to live in RV parks while traveling for work, something not everyone can manage due to aesthetics.

Many Colorado parks have restrictions around who can and cannot stay. A big one: If your RV is 10 or more years old, forget it, because they’re often rejected for being too worn or weathered, out of a concern they’ll ruin a park’s image.

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But for the Coloradoans living in wheeled homes out of necessity, very little assistance has been available.

Jonathan Damon, a ski coach who lived in Colorado for a time, characterized long-term RV camping here as “a nightmare” and “impossible,” because “there are too many wealthy people who don’t want to see affordable living near their backyard.”

A situation last year in Grand County highlighted another challenge nonrecreational RV campers face, when a couple renting a site from Sun Outdoors Rocky Mountains resort, in Granby, was forced to leave after miscalculating the price of their site.

After renting at Sun Outdoors for a short time, camper Aaron Keil realized he couldn’t afford the $2,500-per-month rate. With no other place to legally park his RV, he moved onto Bureau of Land Management land outside of Kremmling. He planned to move campsites every two weeks, to stay in compliance with BLM policy, according to reporting in the Sky-Hi News. But he didn’t see the part of the policy that states each move must be 30 miles — as the crow flies — from the last site.

Steven Hall, Colorado communications manager for the BLM, said it’s difficult to get an accurate number of people using BLM lands for “residential use,” but “it’s an ongoing challenge for us with law enforcement and recreation staff in field offices like Kremmling.”

Hall said two of the most popular places for this kind of camping are the outskirts of Grand Junction and Cañon City, and that when BLM finds someone who has violated the two-week restriction, they’ll contact the person, let them know they’re in violation and help them find another campsite “where they would be in compliance.”

If a camper ignores the warnings long enough, agency law enforcement will “take action, including escorting them off the land and seizing what they’ve left behind,” Hall said. Cleanup can be a big job, because sometimes what’s left behind is the RV.

“BLM is trying to preserve the natural environment, which is hard to do if you have someone living there. People get concerned about ongoing hygiene issues and the watershed. But I worry less about people not using BLM land to help solve the housing crisis and more about the unused land that gets snapped up by market-rate developers,” said Curtis, from the safe parking organization. “We can’t build housing without land, and if you’re an affordable housing provider, you’ve got to have a wing and a prayer to get access to usable land that’s decent, near transit and a grocery store — all things we need to have.

And yet, some people (including, but not limited to, federal employees) who need space have cars.. so don’t need to be “near transit and a grocery store.”  So there’s that. It seems like such places could be limited to preferentially feds and then if space is available to other public employees.  It seems like it might be worthy of piloting such an approach at least.

TSW Proposed Guideline: Can We Leave Intention Out of Our Discussions?

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Mike, Jim and Jon were discussing a topic yesterday that I want to dig into a bit, because I think it has a broader context, one about intention.

Mike questioned two of Jim’s cites. One was about the Sea Change funding and one was about the Rocky Mountain Institute and its funding from the Chinese.  My view is that generally, people don’t accept money to do things they disagree with (unless you’re an employee).  So is money really an important thing to track?

Let’s take three energy examples. Often a person can read that say Senator Manchin is “in the pockets of fossil fuel companies.”  But I ask, is it chicken or egg? If a person supports a policy, then organizations that support the policy will like to fund that person.

Just looking around randomly, EDF Action Fund (Environmental Defense) spent $171K for Senator Murkowski’s 2022 win. Do we think that that contribution changed her mind about anything?

Then there’s wind and solar..  the Open Secrets website says.. “Of partisan contributions, 76 percent went to Democrats, who want to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.”

Again, this sounds like industries (and ideological folks) support people who want to foster their industries or ideologies.  I suppose if a Congressperson or Senator is lukewarm, a large contribution might make them feel more warm and fuzzy toward a given industry or point of view.  Maybe it happens.

Let’s go back to Sea Change and Rocky Mountain Institute, they both have donations from sources we may say are questionable. But we will never know if they have changed their point of view based on this part of their funding. Then there’s this (obviously the far-left designation means the source report is biased, but are the observations they made true?)

Sea Change Foundation/Klein Ltd. Pass Through Illustration. Original credit, US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Original URL: https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/6ce8dd13-e4ab-4b31-9485-6d2b8a6f6b00/chainofenvironmentalcommand.pdf

Do the Simons invest in renewables because they believe in them, or do they invest in ENGO’s who want to get rid of competitors like oil and gas because of their underlying beliefs or to support the industries they’ve invested in? More chickens and eggs.  And to complicate things, currently nat gas electric generation is quite compatible and without large-scale battery capability, necessary as a backup to wind and solar because it’s relatively easy to power up and down. You can see the natgas/wind/solar compatibility in these graphs from across the country the last four days. That’s one of the reasons Sierra Club supported nat gas. .. until they didn’t. Supposedly because some chapters didn’t like it; but other chapters don’t like wind..

My original point wasn’t that people who want to get rid of domestic production of fossil fuels are funded by what we might gently term “non-supportive nation-states.”  My point was rather “if we can’t distinguish these proposed “keep it in the ground” policies from those of non-supportive nation-states, shouldn’t we ask why that is and have that open dialogue with those holding those views somewhere? Maybe it’s just my personal laziness-perusing 990s makes my eyes glaze over. And if we go into the funding question, we have to go within the complex minds of politicians as to whether they are “bought off” or just “supported by folks who agree with them.”

It seems to me that we are unlikely to delve into their psychology in any meaningful way.  So I think we should stick to actions and writing,  not intentions.

***************

Similarly, (not to pick on Mike, as I’ve used this term in the past, as have others),  I’d like to do away with the terms misinformation, disinformation and malinformation for the purposes of The Smokey Wire.

I’m always leery of new words entering the lexicon.. if, as our old friend, the author of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), says, “there is nothing new under the sun” chances are we won’t really need new words.   I think simply saying “I don’t think that’s true, based on..” will take care of it.  The whole misinformation movement seems a bit cloudy.  For example, I looked up the definition of it on Google. It said “false or inaccurate information, especially that which is deliberately intended to deceive.” So, whoa! We’ve gotten back into reading other peoples’ intentions again.

When people make up new words or abstractions, I am suspicious that there is an underlying purpose that doesn’t involve my input. Here’s what the American Psychological Association (second on my Google search) has to say and yes, I noticed it doesn’t match the Google definition:

Misinformation is false or inaccurate information—getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead—intentionally misstating the facts.

The spread of misinformation and disinformation has affected our ability to improve public health, address climate change, maintain a stable democracy, and more. By providing valuable insight into how and why we are likely to believe misinformation and disinformation, psychological science can inform how we protect ourselves against its ill effects.

And yet, people have been giving out misinformation and disinformation (however defined) since we learned to sign, and somehow Homo sapiens has managed to muddle through.

As to falsehood.. let’s face it – most of us, most of the time are not going to do the investigation to figure out where we come out based on our own review of 990s.  Most of the topics we cover are complex, conditional in time and space, and oftentimes it’s difficult to discern what is true.  In the words of Politifact, with regard to the Rocky Mountain Institute:

The institute is working with the Chinese government to reduce carbon emissions, but experts say that characterizing this as “ties” to the Communist Party lacks important context.

So there are facts, but they can be stated in such a way that they lack “important context.” Maybe we’ll never arrive at the ultimate truth?  Or maybe there isn’t one truth. I’m sure Anonymous would have the relevant philosophical citations. On a more pragmatic level..

Say Amira says to Javier “that’s misinformation”.  Amira is implying that either Javier is a doofus who’s been misinformed or that he has ill intentions to misnform others.  Or maybe both.  We should be able to challenge each others facts and perceptions without implying anything negative about each other.

So here are my suggested substitutions.

That’s disinformation..  = These sources, or my experience, say something different.

That’s been debunked. =  These sources, or my experience, say something different.

See how easy that is?

Let’s Discuss: Your Priorities and Bold Innovations to Carry Out Recommendations from The Wildfire Commission Report

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There is much to talk about in the Wildfire Commission Report.  Kelly Martin has offered to talk to us about it (she is a member of the Commission) via Zoom, so please let me know if you are interested.  Today, though, I had heard that Commission members were making Hill visits to highlight priority actions.  I don’t know what they came up with as priorities, so hopefully someone will let us know.  But I thought it might be fun to generate ideas here.  There is plenty of expertise among TSW readers.  The way the Report is written, it’s an emergency- so that gives us room to think outside the box.. way outside the box!

Here’s mine.

1. Workforce.  Of course, give wildland firefighters a living wage and what they are already owed.  Work on housing.  How about a CE for FS and BLM to develop sites on federal land to house workers? Perhaps for workers’ RVs or trailers, or provide those to them at reasonable cost? Maybe used FEMA trailers? Cheaper and quicker than building permanent housing, as some places are trying. What else can we do?

Perhaps synchronistically, I received in my mailbox this morning a post from a person whose pseudonym is N.S. Lyons, who writes a Substack called The Upheaval.  He was talking about the failure of security systems in Israel at the border, but I thought this might be relevant to this topic.

One of the most famous sayings of the legendary U.S. Air Force pilot and strategist Col. John Boyd, who helped develop modern maneuver warfare (and is maybe best known for inventing the “OODA Loop”) was: “People, ideas, machines – in that order!” While warfighting devices were and are important, as are doctrines, tactics, and stratagems, these are all less important than the people doing the fighting, planning, and organizing – and are far less adaptable and reliable. As Boyd would often harangue Generals in the Pentagon, usually to no avail: “Machines don’t fight wars… Humans fight wars!”

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Today we have come to practically worship technology and complexity for its own sake, believing it to be the sorcery that must be able to solve our problems once and for all. Except far too often it actually doesn’t – it just creates the illusion of having done so, while our own capacities have actually diminished and our vulnerabilities to entropy-induced system failure have increased. In this way, technology has increasingly become a false idol, squatting in the place of or even preventing genuine human ingenuity, innovation, and adaptability.

People, ideas, machines.. indeed! So let’s invest in them. First.

2. Build Trust About Use of Beneficial Fire. Having fuels experts live in their communities (see 1) will help.  I would add Congress asking the FS to stand down on plan revision until each Forest finishes (including litigation) a plan amendment that develops  1) PODs, or equivalent mapping of potential operational sites  2) conditions and places for prescribed fire and wildland fire use and 3) programs to understand and reduce human-caused ignitions.  The amendment would include an EIS for ongoing maintenance of PODs and maybe some programmatic stuff for prescribed fire and wildland fire use.  By doing this with an open, public process, communities could quickly get on board with understanding how PODs related to their own efforts and can coordinate.  Right now in many places it appears that communities are doing the “random acts of mitigation” without the kind of knowledge that fuels and fire suppression folks from the agencies have available.   My thinking is that building trust with individual humans who live in their community, and the kinds of discussions and public involvement that would come with an amendment, will build a solid relationship for working together on mitigation and beneficial fire.  If Forests just proceed with plan revisions, fire will be one of many things on a relatively small sample of forests.. is it or ain’t it an emergency?

3. Commission or Workgroup on Wood Waste Utilization.  When I read these recommendations in the Report, I thought “we’ve been working on this for forty years now.” And I know some of the folks who continue to work on it today.  We have long had grants for this kind of thing, and yet..  Ten years or so ago, I was in a meeting with DOE who wanted to try something at a gigantic scale, and The Wilderness Society who was afraid if we developed markets for small diameter woody material that they would take over politically and the environment would be sacrificed.  So all the bright young Colorado entrepreneurs at the meeting gave up.  Then there is the question of supply, that 4FRI was developed in part to deal with.  When I look around I see excellent efforts by some FS researchers, by Extension faculty at land grants, by entrepreneurs and so on, and yet…we’ve lost capacity in terms of forest economists and utilization specialists.  Weirdly we spend more money on modeling problems in the future than on solving problem right in our face (emergencies!). What’s up with that?

California had a 50-member working group on “advancing collaborative action on forest biofuels” (of course biofuels is only one use of woody waste) and produced a report in 2022, plus they have some zones of agreement with ENGO’s so perhaps some of those folks could be tapped to anchor a national Commission or Workgroup.  Whatever we have been trying has not been working, and needs organized, comprehensive and dedicated attention.  Key stakeholders are small businesses with experience in the space, technology folks, economists and utilization operations specialists, communities and ENGO’s.  If we keep doing what we always did, we’re going to get what we always got.

And finally (a girl can dream…)

4. Stick a Fork in the Current Admin’s MOG Initiative..err.. climate resilience and adaptation  initiative.  Parsing out what treatments are best to protect OG  or any forests from wildfire.. would be best developed by fire amendments to forest plans.  All hands on deck.  Focus.  This is what climate adaptation looks like.. worked out day by day with resource professionals and communities in specific places.  Many excellent folks are working on MOG who could be working on fire amendments to forest plans, collecting data, etc.  Emergency? Yes if you really want to protect OG and mature stands (at least from wildfire).

The Ethical Paradox of Oil and Gas Use (Everyone Does It) Versus Production (Those Folks are Bad)

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Apologies to all, I had thought to be back to The Smokey Wire sooner.  I spent some time with the Public Lands Foundation in Cheyenne Wyoming, meeting many BLM folks and others dealing with access issues to public lands in Wyoming.  Then the next week, I was off to the Salamander Resort in Middleburg, Virginia, with The Breakthrough Institute, to experience how the other 1% lives and mix with admitted coastal wonky elites...here’s the agenda of that session. I’ll post some of the videos once they are up.  The next week I was back West to Rapid City, South Dakota with field trips to Wall, South Dakota to see efforts dealing with dispersed recreation and the restoration of black-footed ferret with the Rocky Mountaineers retirees’ group.  I hope to upload presentations on the latter so that you all can enjoy a virtual field trip.

What the three trips had in common was some amazing young people working on the problems of the day.   From getting minerals from seawater and enhanced rock weathering at TBI to restoring ferrets at the Wall Ranger District, to research at the Rapid City Forest and Grassland Research Laboratory, to regulating pore space for CO2 sequestration at the BLM.    Perhaps these are stories that are too much “in the weeds”, so to speak, for media to pick up on, but they’re out there.

So that’s one commonality that I observed on these trips.  The other was the omnipresence of gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles (and trains, in the case of Cheyenne and Rapid City). Even in urbanized places in Northern Virginia and the District, I noticed many vehicles, and in fact, ended up in the DC morning rush hour from Middleburg one morning.  Even with excellent public transportation, as there is in NoVa, there are many, many, cars and trucks.  And of course recreationists coming from the Midwest to recreate in South Dakota and Wyoming.. cars and RV’s. This seems obvious.

And yet, when I look at my news outlets, such as Center for Western Priorities, or others, there are frequent articles on the badness of oil and gas production when it is done domestically.  In fact, there was a major environmental group push against the Biden Admin for the Willow Project.  Who knows what random goodies will be thrown by the Admin (perhaps some MOG treats?)  in attempts to placate these groups?

But what is that really about?  Do these groups think that outsourcing to say, Iran and Venezuela is environmentally more desirable?  Not to think like an economist, but reducing supply does tend to raise prices, and we care about poor or even middle-class people not being able to get to work or not affording food because of high gas prices. And we are shipping lots of military stuff abroad which runs on.. fossil fuels.

Some of us remember the oil embargo of 1973..this from an interview with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of RI:

“One in five gas stations in the country had no fuel to sell whatsoever,” Colgan said. “By January 1974, oil prices worldwide had quadrupled, and that led to a whole bunch of economic and political consequences” that are still present today.

When asked what it was like living through the oil crisis, Whitehouse shared that there were odd and even days to get gas, decided based on the last number of each person’s license plate. For example, if your license plate ended with a seven and it was an odd day, you could get gas, but if it ended with a six and was an odd day, you could not.

Whitehouse outlined the dilemma faced by oil companies at this time: “Do you keep your prices level because you have an obligation to your country and your customers, or do you follow the international cartel and take advantage of its price gouging?”

“Of course, they chose the latter,” Whitehouse said, explaining that oil companies chose to take advantage of their customers, rather than make gas affordable.

So O&G companies have not always acted well. Perhaps that’s a reason for hate. OTOH some of us also remember the financial crisis and banks being too big to fail and all that.  And yet.. we don’t see daily in the press  the need for better regulation of them. In fact, our friends in the financial industry do things like naming the CEO of Aramco to their board of directors.

The Biden Admin is all on domestic production of strategic minerals.. but not O&G. Or maybe DOE kind of is, but DOI is not.  It’s all puzzling to me.

Meanwhile there are people working every day, human beings, citizens of our country, whom I don’t think deserve this scapegoating. Union jobs, paying a family wage, diverse folks working that bring us what we are using every day.  So what is all this really about, and how do we “un-hate” ourselves out of it?

In fact, many of the folks most against  fossil  production use more than the average person, as in this article on Robert Bryce’s Substack.

Of course, Bloomberg can spend his vast fortune however he wants. According to Forbes, he’s the 11th-richest person on the planet, with assets worth $96.3 billion. (Bloomberg.com doesn’t include Michael Bloomberg in its rankings of the world’s richest people.) And the former mayor of New York City does not live modestly. As I noted in these pages in March, Bloomberg owns about a dozen houses. He’s also one of the biggest users of private jets. As I explained:

According to ClimateJets.org, Bloomberg, or people connected to him, used five aircraft which emitted about 3,197 tons of CO2 in 2022. That number puts Bloomberg in the top 10 of all private jet owners in terms of emissions. For comparison, the average American is responsible for about 16 tons of CO2 emissions per year. In other words, Bloomberg’s fleet of jets is emitting about 200 times more CO2 per year than what’s emitted by the average American.

Recall in announcing his $500 million grant to Beyond Carbon, Bloomberg claimed he wants to move “beyond fossil fuels” and replace them with renewable energy. Last year, Bloomberg, or people connected to him, flew on his private jets to New York, New Jersey, Florida, Bahamas, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Bermuda, Switzerland, France, Costa Rica, Brazil, Israel, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. All that flying required burning about 328,000 gallons of jet fuel. For comparison, that’s about 670 times more than the volume of gasoline consumed by an average American motorist in a year.

Also, recall that in 2021, Bloomberg said, “We’re in a race to save Earth from climate change.” It’s unclear to whom Bloomberg referred when he used the royal “we.”But given his predilection for far-flung houses and private jets, it seems that the media mogul and near-centibillionaire is a lot like the rest of us when it comes to using hydrocarbons.

How can we both use something- in fact it’s vital to our economy-  and say at the same time, that the (domestic only?)  folks that produce it are bad and need to be shut down? Or is it simply that it’s easier to shut down things here than other countries (the policy equivalent of logging the flat ground).

Aside from obvious potential class issues related to workers.  I wonder what that does to people internally to live with that contradiction if they really believe what they say about production. To me, it’s a bit as if the Deuteronomic food laws said “you can eat shrimp, but only if the Canaanites produce  it for you .”  I find it all very puzzling.

I haven’t seen this discussed anywhere, and I am curious about what TSW readers think.