The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views
Community Sourced, Shared and Supported
While we have heard some of Derek’s ideas on this blog, there are some new ones, plus pretty darn excellent writing IMHO. Thanks to Derek for sending, and to Range Magazine for allowing us to post it!
Here’s the link.
Derek has an idea for a solution to the questions we’ve been debating here. Check it out.
Here’s a link to a story on a House Bill from the Durango Herald. Italics are mine.
Grijalva predicted the Democratic-controlled Senate will not go for the bill.
“Why not craft something that would be taken seriously?” he said.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said members of Congress from the American West in the two parties have a lot of common ground on the forest-health problem, but Tipton’s bill goes too far. In any case, the real problem is prying money from Congress and the White House in order to fund forest-thinning projects, he said.
“Both the Bush administration and the Obama administration have come up short in funding hazardous fuel-reduction treatments,” DeFazio said.
The bill’s number is H.R. 1526. Wednesday’s vote puts it in line for a vote on the House floor after Congress returns from its August recess.
Tipton urged quick passage.
Did you really say this?
Please Representative DeFazio, say it ain’t so.
I would love to be a fly on the wall for this meeting..I wonder if it is open to the public..
From the E&E here. Below is an excerpt.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tomorrow is scheduled to meet with the CEOs of major environmental groups to discuss his pending legislation to resolve decades-long disputes over timber management in western Oregon.
The meeting will come roughly a week after the leaders of seven groups sent a letter to Wyden requesting a meeting to discuss their concerns over how his bill will address the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act, statutes that have hindered timber harvests on the roughly 2.5 million acres of so-called O&C lands.
“The ESA and NEPA are essential elements of a legal framework that has proven highly successful in maintaining the full range of values provided by the O&C lands,” the groups’ leaders wrote in their letter. “We are deeply concerned, however, that irreplaceable contributions of these public lands will be lost if review of federal forest management under the ESA and NEPA is constrained or eliminated as part of your effort to ‘modernize existing federal laws as they apply to O&C lands.'”
Signing the letter was Jamie Rappaport Clark of Defenders of Wildlife, Trip Van Noppen of Earthjustice, Philip Radford of Greenpeace, Gene Karpinski of the League of Conservation Voters, Frances Beinecke of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Michael Brune of the Sierra Club and Jamie Williams of the Wilderness Society.
They were referring specifically to a legislative framework Wyden released in May for a bill that seeks to increase timber harvests on O&C lands while ensuring old-growth protections, wilderness designations and river protections on an equal amount of lands.
Concern was also raised over a separate provision in the framework proposing logging projects at a “steady, sustainable, and uninterrupted rate once an initial review of all lands set aside for management is completed and as long as subsequent timber sales comply with the legislation” (E&E Daily, May 24).
“A single high altitude review followed by decades of timber harvests would be fundamentally incompatible with the ESA, which requires a determination of whether such harvests are likely to jeopardize a species’ existence or adversely modify its critical habitat and a determination of the number listed species that are likely to be incidentally taken by that logging,” the groups’ leaders wrote.
Really? Fundamentally incompatible?The problem is that we can’t tell what is posturing and what is not..We can all see ways that you could try some things- pick the best design criteria you can and review success at 5 years? Does anyone think that something will go extent in 5 years? Or a certain acreage of projects would require public review by a, say, FACA committee?
Interesting how this project is characterized in Courthouse News here…I think the write of the article said “4890 acres of commercial logging.” But in the next paragraph quoting the plaintiffs it says that there are 381 acres of precommercial thinning. So I think you need to subtract that to get a total of commercial. But as we see below the commercial distinction is fairly fine.
SALT LAKE CITY (CN) – Uncle Sam refused to prepare an environmental impact statement before approving a 5,000-acre logging project in southern Utah that threatens rare and endangered species, including spotted and flammulated owls, goshawks, and three-toed woodpeckers, environmentalists claim in court.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Native Ecosystems Council sued the U.S. Forest Service and Dixie National Forest Supervisor Angelita Bulletts, in Federal Court.
The Forest Service in March approved the Iron Springs “vegetation improvement and salvage project,” authorizing 4,890 acres of commercial logging in Dixie National Forest.
“Among other things, the Forest Service’s decision notice authorizes 3,603 acres of spruce/fir commercial logging utilizing ground-based skidders, at least 1,927 acres of which will occur in old-growth stands, 366 acres of commercial sanitation and salvage logging, 381 acres of precommercial thinning, 152 acres of regeneration logging, and 388 acres of ‘aspen cleaning’ in aspen stands, for a total of 4,890 acres of logging,” the complaint states.
“The decision notice also authorizes road reconstruction and maintenance activities on 36.16 miles of existing roads and 9.61 miles of new, temporary road construction to facilitate logging activities.”
The plaintiffs claim the Forest Service approved the project without preparing an environmental impact statement, “instead finding that the authorized activities would not significantly affect the quality of the environment.”
Sensing that this will be an interesting project to consider (since we’ve never analyzed ones in Utah that I recall), I went to the project website here and found this explanation of why they were doing it.
Treatments within Engelmann spruce/subalpine fir stands Within the project area, there are 5,240 acres of Engelmann spruce/subalpine fir. Approximately 3,603 of these acres would be commercially thinned to reduce stand densities while maintaining a variety of tree sizes. Individual tree marking would designate trees that would be harvested. In addition to the commercial thin, there would be salvage and sanitation harvest of pockets of Engelmann spruce killed or infested with spruce beetle.
Approximately 381 acres of the 3,603 acres of treated spruce/fir stands would also be precommercially thinned to remove trees less than 5-inches diameter that exceed stand density objectives or species mix. Trees greater than 5-inches diameter would be removed commercially.Trees between 5- and 7.9-inch diameter size class that cannot be sold commercially will be included in the pre-commercial treatment. Approximately 388 acres of scattered aspen clones
within spruce/fir stands would receive aspen cleaning through hand felling of conifer. Within aspen clones commercial-size conifer would be removed; non-commercial-size conifer and some
aspen would be cut and left on site to discourage browsing by larger ungulates, primarily deer, elk, and livestock.Under the criteria in “Characteristics of Old-Growth Forests in the Intermountain Region” (Hamilton et al. 1993) and a 2007 Regional Office letter (USDA 2007) clarifying meaning and
intent in Hamilton et al. 1993, 2,058 acres of spruce/fir within the project area have old growth characteristics. This determination was made based on an evaluation of existing stand data and new data collected during field surveys. These data and findings are included in the project record. Thinning is needed in these stands to reduce the risk of timber loss due to beetle kill and to forestall the spread of beetle activity to additional trees. Thinning in these areas will be done from below, and will be restricted to trees between 5- and 18-inches diameter.
Of the 2,058 acres with old growth characteristics, 131 acres would not receive treatment. Of the 1,927 acres treated, approximately 1,541 acres would retain old growth status following treatment. Thus, of the 2,058 acres with old growth characteristic, approximately 1,672 acres would retain old growth characteristics. The Forest Plan requires that 7 percent to 10 percent of each drainage be managed as old growth. Retention of 1,672 acres as old growth exceeds the Forest Plan requirement in each drainage within the project area. Details are provided in the Forest Vegetation Report.Spruce beetle-infested or killed trees throughout the project area would be removed using sanitation/salvage timber harvest and commercial removal. Some stands that contain infested or killed subalpine fir would also be commercially removed. Merchantable, dead standing, and down spruce and fir would be harvested.
Approximately 366 acres in the spruce/fir stands are currently at the desired density. These 366 acres would receive commercial sanitation/salvage treatment only.Finally, approximately 154 acres would be planted with Engelmann spruce seedlings using hand tools or augers. These areas are conifer strips in the south half of the project area that were
clearcut in the 1960s and that do not contain the desired tree stocking.
I’m sure all the regular followers of this blog will spy a number of interesting things.
1) Is the 152 acres the same as the 154 that they are planting due to not enough stocking. If so, is planting trees the same thing as “commericial logging”.
2) Everyone loves aspen, but if you try to get more by cutting conifers, that’s bad. Or only if you sell them? What difference could it make? 388 acres of hand felling?
3) “Trees greater than 5-inches diameter would be removed commercially.” That’s a good market.
The “issue” with the plaintiffs is that “they should have done an EIS”. Somehow I don’t believe that is really their goal. Plaintiffs are being represented by the Northern Rockies Justice Center here. I think it’s interesting that their mission is in the NW, but they are doing work in southern Utah.
I wonder if a simple statute were passed that required cases (say, as a trial run, FS cases involving vegetation management) to go to mediation prior to litigation, and the mediation record was available to the judge when ruling, and the mediation documents were also publicly available. This could be tried as a pilot anyway.. perhaps starting with this case? Rider, anyone?
I’d like to start a discussion along the lines of CREATE (as you may or may not recall, “Conflict Resolution Effectiveness, Accountability and Transparency Enhancement”) for Forest Service projects and plans. Here and here are some previous posts.
We have some bills that are place-based. But the problem with these, to some, is that areas to be preserved are preserved, while areas agreed to be open to timber harvesting (these are where there is current timber industry) will still be open to exactly the same “Random Project Rejection by Groups with Lawyers” that they are today (and so clearly in the Colt Summit project). Doesn’t seem like a very good deal.
Then there are the O&C lands. Much is going on, but not sure how applicable all of it is to anywhere else. (People who know can chime in). Then there are trusts. For this series, I would like to focus on other ideas..and generate a great many different and possibly new ideas.
Everyone is welcome to post their own ideas, but for organization, if you have a new idea, submit it to me and I will post as a post. That way each idea will have its own string of comments. Make sense?
Let me know if you have questions.
This blog has had numerous posts, debates and discussions about the Four Forest Restoration (4FRI) in Arizona, including this article, “Is the US Forest Service killing the last best chance to save the Southwest’s forests?”
Well, the latest development via the in-depth reporting of Pete Aleshire with the Payson Roundup in an article yesterday titled, “Forest Contract Bombshell.” Below are extensive snips from that article: [Note: emphasis added – mk]
Amid fresh furor, the U.S. Forest Service is considering letting a troubled timber company transfer the biggest forest restoration project in history.
The Forest Service announced on Monday that it has received a request from Pioneer Forest Products to transfer the 10-year, Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) contract to thin 300,000 acres in Northern Arizona to another, unnamed company.
“We are in the process of reviewing the application,” said Cathie Schmidtlin, media officer for the Southwest Region of the U.S. Forest Service, “to determine whether the transfer of assets is in the best interest of the government. If we determine it is not, the contract would stay with Pioneer. If it is determined to be in the best interest of the government, then the contract liability would transfer to the new owner, who would be contractually obligated to carry out the terms and conditions of the 4FRI contract.”….
At least one of the key groups that helped develop the 4FRI plan immediately responded to the announcement by calling for an inspector general’s investigation of the “potential irregularities” in the award of the contract.
“Many of us saw this one coming right from the start. Pioneer’s business plan read like a fantasy novel,” said Todd Schulke, with the Center for Biological Diversity, which helped develop 4FRI in collaboration with representatives of the timber industry, forest health researchers and local officials like Gila County Supervisor Tommie Martin. “But the Forest Service chose Pioneer despite having more realistic options. Either Pioneer misled the agency about its financial viability or the Forest Service chose to look the other way when there were serious questions. Why?”
Gila County Supervisor Tommie Martin said, “this could be the best thing that has happened to 4FRI — or it could be abysmal business as usual. Anyone who has the financial backing to buy this contract, the willingness to ‘take on’ the whole social functioning/disfunctioning that has grown around it and the desire to fulfill it definitely has my attention … and my respect if they can actually pull it off.”….
The Forest Service awarded the contract to Pioneer more than a year ago. The contract originally required Pioneer to thin about 15,000 acres in 2013 and 30,000 acres annually after that. The plan called for feeding those small-diameter trees into new mills in Winslow to produce biodiesel fuel and a type of “finger-jointed” furniture.
Several months ago, the Forest Service modified the terms the contract so that Pioneer only had to thin 1,000 acres in the next 18 months, amid reports that the company was having trouble getting financing for its proposed mills in Winslow.
The Forest Service statement released on Monday said “we cannot disclose the names of the potential new owner as this information is confidential while the proposed agreement is under review. The first task order of the contract, the Ranch task order located on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests is progressing satisfactorily and expected to be completed ahead of schedule.”…..
The stakeholders generally expected Berlioux Arizona Forest Restoration Products (AZFRP) to win the bid for the contract, since he had helped develop the approach behind 4FRI.
Instead, the Forest Service’s contract review office in Albuquerque awarded the contract to Pioneer Forest Products. One of the principals in the company was Marlin Johnston, who was a longtime Forest Service official who formerly ran the agency’s regional timber harvest office. In that post, he battled demands of environmentalists that the Forest Service quit cutting the remaining old-growth, fire-resistant trees.
Supporters of the 4FRI approach, like Supervisor Martin, questioned the award of the contract to Pioneer. She noted that Berlioux had not only offered to pay more money to the Forest Service for the contract, but had also agreed to monitor whether the thinning projects had the intended effects on tree growth, fire patterns and wildlife.
Moreover, Martin and others questioned Pioneer’s plan to compete with overseas markets in making finger-jointed furniture and use branches and slash to make diesel fuel, although previous efforts had failed.
By contrast, Berlioux proposed using the trees to make Oriented Strand Board — a sort of high-tech plywood that currently represents a $2 billion industry. Berlioux ran Europe’s first OSB factory.
Moreover, Pioneer principal owner Herman Hauck, 84, hasn’t operated a timber company or mill since Hauck Mill Work Company went bankrupt in 1969, according to an investigation by freelance writer and radio reporter Claudine LoMonaco, published in The Santa Fe Reporter, an alternative weekly. She had prepared a story on Pioneer’s dubious background for the public radio station in Flagstaff, but station officials killed the story.
The Forest Service contracting office declined to release many key details of Pioneer’s proposal and has never explained why it awarded the contract to the company that offered to pay the least.
Forest Service officials on Monday remained tight-lipped. In an e-mail to the Roundup accompanying the release Schmidlin said “this is all the information I’m able to provide at this time. The Forest Service will gladly share additional information in the near future, when the review process is completed. I don’t know how long the process will take.”
The swirl of questions about the contracts have forced the very people who developed the 4FRI approach to become increasingly vocal critics of the Forest Service’s implementation.
Martin, in an e-mail exchange on Monday, said she hopes the Forest Service will now seek expert, outside help. “The FS track record on the business side of this contract conversation has been so poor that unless they get ‘outside’ help evaluating the situation, the proposal and bringing business science to bear — I’m skeptical of the outcome … even knowing that a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while!”
Moreover, she said “for me there is still the whole social agreement concerning big tree/old tree retention that was agreed upon by the counties, enviros, industry and others that the FS have completely thrown out the window and claim that us wanting to leave them all ‘is not good science.’ Nonsense!”
She said old-growth trees constitute just 3 percent of the trees in the ponderosa pine forest of Northern Arizona, even though the Forest Service management plan calls for increasing that tally to 20 percent. “For instance, the 33,000-acre Rim Lakes thinning portion of the 4FRI proposal by Heber has only an average less than one old tree per acre to start with!”
She said she hopes the Forest Service will now agree to leave virtually all of the trees larger than 16 inches in diameter. “We’re asking that they leave ALL the big/old trees (with few exceptions) — get rid of all the dog hair thickets and get ahead of the fire danger curve — and then go back to the drawing board and see if there needs to be more mosaic, more age/structure classifications, etc. within the treated area. They claim their science shows restoration occurs faster/better with some of the old growth gone — again I say nonsense! First let them show me where they have restored a forest — ANYWHERE — and then we’ll talk about it.”
Schulke made the same point. The Center for Biological Diversity has battled the Forest Service for years attempting to prevent the harvest of old-growth trees in an effort to save endangered, old-growth dependent species like the Mexican spotted owl and the Northern goshawk. But the group promised to go to court to support 4FRI if the Forest Service agreed to leave the remaining old-growth trees.
“Ignoring the collaborative agreement was an outright breach of the social license that enabled 4FRI in the first place,” said Schulke. “Large trees are not only critically important to the survival of an array of endangered and threatened species, they’re also more fire resistant — they help to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires. We fully support 4FRI. But the Forest Service bungling has put communities at risk from the fire unnecessarily. It’s time to demand action.”
Some folks posted this last night under comments but I thought it deserved its own post.
Henson said the Northwest Forest Plan, which cut logging by 90 percent on national forests in the 1990s, has done a good job of providing habitat for the spotted owl. But the owls’ numbers have continued to slide.
Henson said unless barred owls are brought under control, the spotted owl in coming decades might disappear from Washington’s northern Cascade Range and Oregon’s Coast Range, where the barred owl incursion has been greatest.
It has taken the federal government a long time to get to this point. The California Academy of Sciences killed some barred owls in spotted owl territory on the Klamath National Forest in Northern California in 2005, and the owner of some redwood timberlands in Northern California regularly kills barred owls to protect spotted owls.
The idea of killing one type of owl to protect another underscores a fragile balance of nature that biologists have struggled with for years.
Between 2000 and 2006, wildlife officials captured and removed more than 40 golden eagles from the Channel Islands off Southern California to protect the island fox. They also hired a company to kill 5,000 feral pigs on Santa Cruz in a controversial program to restore the island’s ecosystem.
In Oregon, officials have used lethal injections to kill selected California sea lions that feast on protected salmon in the Columbia River. And in Yosemite National Park, saving bighorn sheep has meant hunting protected mountain lions.
The northern spotted owl is an icon of bitter disputes between the timber industry and environmentalists over the use of Northwest forests. Because of its dwindling numbers, the little bird was listed as a threatened species in 1990, which resulted in logging cutbacks and lawsuits.
Barred owls are bigger, more aggressive and less picky about food. They started working their way across the Great Plains in the early 1900s, and by 1959 were in British Columbia. Barred owls now cover the spotted owl’s range, in some places outnumbering them as much as 5-to-1.
Oh.. the “fragile balance of nature”.. it turns out it’s really the nonexistent balance of nature, as per Botkin. It’s OK to say “we like animal x more than y, so we are going to kill y to get more x.” Just don’t say it’s anything about what Nature wants. P.S. evolution and hybridization are also “natural” processes, albeit perhaps not “ecological” processes? I can’t keep up with what’s in and out of “ecology.”
Here’s one by Char Miller..Below is an excerpt.
Those living in the subdivisions locked within Arizona’s flammable chaparral shrublands are not alone in having been slow to make their homes more defensible. To get at why this might be so, the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station conducted a careful survey of the fire prevention attitudes and actions of private landowners in the Cascades and Blue Mountains of Oregon.
The impetus for this survey is smartly laid out: “Because fire as a natural process operates across ownership boundaries, the Forest Service is taking an all-lands approach to forest management, and is making an effort to cooperate with other landowners across landscapes,” notes Susan Charnley, an environmental anthropologist working for the research station. “There’s very little information about how family forest owners manage their land for fire. We need to learn about how they’re managing their land for the same risks we face as an agency, to see what we might do differently to better address those risks.”
What Charnley and her colleague Paige Fischer discovered is that those whose properties abutted national forest lands and who perceived that there was a clear fire risk in the high hazardous fuel loads on these public lands, tended to be more proactive about making their properties less fire prone. They were also a lot more likely to act if their primary residence was on these forested acres than if theirs was a second home — eight times more likely, in fact.
This a key finding, as vacation homes make up a goodly number of the residences being slotted into fire zones of all kinds, exacerbating firefighters’ abilities to protect lives and property. “Nationwide, the trend has been toward a booming number of nonindustrial private owners, with a shrinking average parcel size,” observes John Bliss, the Starker Chair in Private and Family Forestry at Oregon State University. “Million-dollar homes are being built in the middle of harvested timberland without firebreaks. Many new owners who built their dream cabins live in an urban area and have no background in forest management, let alone wildfire prevention or fireproofing. When wildfires come through, these houses are sources of ignition and catastrophic loss.”
Just so folks remember that all forces of government need to be working together in the fuels reduction effort.. here’s another note from our county that shut down its slash disposal site.
If anyone had been observing me as I was reading this book, they would have been highly amused. For one thing, it was the first book I’ve ever read on my IPad. Which wouldn’t have been so difficult except Botkin had many sentences I wanted to highlight. Which wouldn’t have been so difficult except highlighting involved 1) tapping the sentence 2) watching the IPad scroll to the next page, 3) tapping again 4) watching the IPad scroll to the previous page, 5) tapping again and watching a screen come up with pots of paint but didn’t seem to highlight, 6) tapping and tapping more earnestly when nothing happened, and so on. Occasionally, I would be surprised by some observation (along the lines of “The Emperor Has No Clothes and Here’s Why”) and I would mutter “OMG!” But the stories were so compelling I couldn’t stop reading to go look up “how to highlight.”
If you asked me why I like this book, I would say “all of us in the forest world are struggling to understand each other. We honestly try, but there’s something deeper that we just can’t get at.” For me, it’s like someone smarter and more articulate describes our world. The net result being that I can see it more clearly. Botkin has begun to explore the terrain of “something deeper”. He’s got a thesis; that a balanced and preferable past lies in our psyche (the Garden of Eden). But that doesn’t completely explain his observation (this was an OMG for me):
“If you ask ecologists whether nature is always constant, they will always say “No, of course not.” But if you ask them to write down a policy for biological conservation or any other kind of environmental management, they will almost always write down a steady-state solution.”
It’s so..obvious… once he pointed it out. Enter “ecosystem integrity” and NRV from the Planning Rule Directives. But why do scientists exhibit this dualistic behavior? Of course, rewriting all those statutes, regulations, and directives would be a lot of work; not for scientists, though. But, in my view, acknowledging the facts might dethrone some scientists from the comfortable position they have, telling the world what to do and how to be. Right now they get to do this without the mess of elections, and the hassle of going to seminary. Human nature is such that if you’re at the top of the heap, even if the foundation is cracked, you don’t want to move to a more secure foundation.
Botkin says that a common question he gets asked is “if you say one kind of change is okay, doesn’t that mean every kind of change is okay, like killing off endangered species (or whatever interests the questioner).” But even that questioner in his audience mixes “observed change” with “bad”.
I will tell one story about taking this to extremes. I once reviewed a paper about a shelterwood and changes in gene frequencies in the seedlings compared to the parents. The conclusion was, since the gene frequencies changed between the parents and the offspring, that shelterwoods were having a negative effect on the genetics. Well, the new gene frequencies could be better for this climate. They could have been a random fluctuation.. perhaps the wind was blowing from a different direction during pollination seasons. The terminal inability to distinguish what is from what should be, empirical from normative, is really scary. Insofar as philosophies can be scary. Because humans do things in the environment, and if every change is labeled bad, then humans are bad. But we know that our intrinsic goodness or badness is the realm of the philosopher, the psychologist and ultimately, the theologian. How did we get from scientific curiosity .. the conversation with nature, where scientists ask and nature answers, to an alchemy of despair? A more in-your-face version of this book might have been titled: The Alchemy of Despair: How Science Became Theology and What We Can Do to Get Science Back.
When I read the book on my IPad, it was an easy read; by showing only 2-3 paragraphs at a time, it seemed to increase the folksiness and storytelling feel of the book. Maybe the sepia background helped also. And make no mistake, Botkin is a great storyteller. And he is gentle in making his points; nonetheless, his points are very clear.
People on this blog will probably enjoy the interplay between his observations of nature and current scientific concepts. If you’ve ever wondered why the minimum population size is thought to be 30, and yet the black-footed ferret (or Best Ferret Forever) has recovered from a population of 18- this book’s for you.
Because there is so much content in this book, I’m going to suggest we have a Virtual Book Club. To give you all time to order it and read it, Book Club will start around August 12th. Then we’ll start a series of posts where we can each tell our stories, relevant to Botkin’s points or stories, and go on to hopefully have a discussion of other points of view. I encourage others to post about parts of the book that do or don’t resonate with them, and we can discuss that. Please send these posts to terraveritasatgmaildotcom.
I think what Botkin writes about is extremely important, both for environmental and forest policy, but also for people’s psychological well-being- humans are ultimately beloved children of Gaia, or sinners who have sinned against Gaia and deserve to be punished. Those of you involved in formal spiritual traditions.. does this sound familiar? And a dichotomy older, than, say Methusaleh?
Here’s a link to the book.
We’ve talked about the WUI quite a bit in terms of fuel treatments, and I know some of you want to talk about other fire effects. This story in the Denver Post this morning highlights tree thinning and prescribed burning around reservoirs.
Below are some excerpts:
— Top U.S. environmental officials Friday began a push to protect the nation’s federally run water-supply reservoirs against wildfires.
The fear is that worsening wildfires will trigger erosion that damages dams, canals and pipelines, and shrinks water storage, ultimately driving up water costs for ratepayers.
“Climate change is upon us, our ecosystems are changing and it’s up to us to work collaboratively,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told state, federal and local participants before signing a teamwork agreement at Horsetooth Reservoir, west of Fort Collins, an area where 11 wildfires since 2010 have unleashed sediment that threatens to clog water facilities.
Full funding has not been secured for work to protect 43 Bureau of Reclamation reservoirs in the West. But teamwork deals linking federal agencies, state foresters and water providers are enabling six startup tree-thinning and prescribed-burn projects in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Washington.
“When you’ve got a situation where there’s not enough money to go around, you have to pick your highest priorities,” Jewell said in an interview before the signing. “Obviously, protecting lives and property is important. But watersheds are really important. And I don’t think they’ve been on the radar to the same extent.”
Major wildfires in 1996 and 2002 burned 150,000 acres of Denver’s forested watershed and unleashed an estimated 1 million cubic yards of sediment into Strontia reservoir. Denver Water utility managers say they’ve spent $45 million trying to deal with wildfire erosion, including $17 million for dredging Strontia, a job still not done
I like this quote from Secretary Jewell:
Tree-thinning and prescribed burns around federal reservoirs — before anticipated wildfires hit — can reduce fires’ severity and minimize downstream damage from erosion, Jewell said. “If we get ahead of this, you will be spending less money.”
This statement by Vilsack is particularly interesting..
Changing how fire suppression is funded could help free funds for tree-thinning, prescribed fires and restoration work at federal reservoirs, he said without providing details. “This is about reducing the risk of contamination — sediment and ash getting into the water supply — which increases the cost of treating the water and the availability and the quality of water.”
I think folks tried to change how fire suppression if funded.. the FLAME Act, which didn’t work so well. I wonder what ideas the Secretary has?
If tree thinning is important, than why would you cut the budget from last year for doing this by 37%? Maybe USDI thinks differently and didn’t cut their as much?
For the Forest Service, one story would be that the broader Wildland Fire line item had to average out to 5% for sequestration. Another would be OMB doesn’t believe that thinning treatments work. It’s all very confusing.
For me.. if Secretary Jewell says thinning is important in words, then it should be translated into the most powerful policy document there is.. the budget, for all agencies involved. I guess reservoirs could be good to protect, towns not so much; but as a veteran of Colorado Roadless, I can tell you that some folks who don’t want people living in the woods are not really fond of reservoirs either.
Addendum.. there’s also an AP story in the Idaho Statesman here and here’s a press release.
Here’s some information on the Forest to Faucets partnership with Denver Water, which was spearheaded by folks in the Rocky Mountain Region of the Forest Service, pre-Vilsack.