Colville Tribes sue U.S. government, seeking damages for failure to manage forests that burned in massive 2015 wildfires
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government on Wednesday, alleging federal agencies failed to fulfill their legally required duties before, during and after the 2015 wildfires that burned more than 240,000 acres and turned parts of the reservation into a “moonscape.”
The Colville Tribes, whose approximately 9,500 members rely heavily on timber revenue and other natural resources, are seeking compensation from the federal government after the 2015 fires destroyed roughly 20% of the commercial timber on the reservation. But Andrew Joseph, Jr., chairman of the Colville Business Council, said the damage extended far beyond the lost revenue.
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Under federal law, the U.S. government is responsible for managing forest health and providing adequate firefighting resources on land it holds in trust on behalf of Native American tribes. The Colville Tribes’ suit alleges the government knew it needed to make forests on their reservation less susceptible to severe fire by thinning trees and conducting controlled burns, and that its failure to do so “led to tinderbox conditions in which catastrophic fire was inevitable.”
A portion of Cross Mountain Ranch in northwest Colorado that is protected by a conservation easement. (Erik Glenn)
Reporter Sammy Roth of the LA Times has a newsletter called The Boiling Point. One of the things he writes about is the oncoming tension between conservation and renewable energy buildout. As TSW readers know, I’ve been following the Chokecherry-Sierra Madre Wind Farm in Wyoming as an example. It’s a very interesting story about the last holdouts and the generally white-hatted NRCS holding up the transmission line with a … conservation easement. It’s a great story IMHO and the Times has a firewall, so excuse the length.
“Way back in 2019, I asked an energy company owned by one of America’s richest individuals to alert me when they were down to one final landowner standing in the way of their plan to send massive amounts of wind power from Wyoming to California.
It had been a dozen years since Phil Anschutz first proposed to build the country’s largest wind farm, as well as a 730-mile transmission line to ferry the clean electricity toward the West Coast. Federal officials had signed off on the power-line route, but Anschutz Corp. still needed to work out financial arrangements with hundreds of private landowners whose properties the towers and wires would cross. I was interested in writing about the final holdout along the route, if the project got that far.
This week, company officials finally had an answer for me. They said the last landowner standing between California and an infusion of climate-friendly power will be a family of Colorado ranchers — working closely with a federal agency.
That’s right: Even as President Biden urges Congress to fund a rapid buildout of clean energy infrastructure to fight climate change, an arm of his administration is helping to block the country’s largest renewable power project.
It’s a conflict that illustrates the difficulty of quickly transitioning away from fossil fuels, especially given the opposition to solar farms, wind turbines and transmission lines that has bubbled up in communities across the West. That opposition is motivated at times by aesthetic concerns and at times by a desire to protect animals and ecosystems from industrial energy development.
Let’s back up a minute.
Anschutz got rich drilling for oil in the Intermountain West decades ago. Today he owns or holds major stakes in the Los Angeles Lakers, L.A.’s Staples Center and the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. Forbes estimates his net worth at $10.1 billion.
Since 2008, Anschutz Corp. has spent more than $400 million permitting and preparing to build 1,000 wind turbines on a giant ranch in south-central Wyoming, as well as hundreds of miles of electric wires that would cross through Colorado, Utah and Nevada, ending near Las Vegas. As I’ve written previously, the wind in Wyoming peaks in the afternoon and stays strong into the evening, meaning it could help California keep the lights on after sundown — a challenge recently, as you may have heard.
It sounds like an easy win for California, Wyoming and our planet’s climate. But here’s where things get complicated.
A small handful of landowners are still haggling with Anschutz Corp. over how much they ought to be paid to allow TransWest Express to cross their properties. The company tells me it expects to be able to resolve its issues with every landowner except one: Cross Mountain Ranch, an enormous sheep and cattle operation in northwest Colorado.
Under normal circumstances, Anschutz Corp. might try to invoke eminent domain. But several years ago, the National Resources Conservation Service — an agency within the federal Department of Agriculture — spent $3.3 million to help fund a “conservation easement” across 16,000 acres of Cross Mountain Ranch. In exchange for that money, the landowning Boeddeker family agreed not to sell any of the ranch to a developer who might build homes (or anything else). Power lines wouldn’t be allowed.
Conservation easements are meant to preserve rural economies dependent on agriculture, while also protecting farm and ranch lands that provide wildlife habitat. At Cross Mountain Ranch, federal officials said an easement would support the greater sage grouse, an iconic Western bird whose sagebrush habitat has been decimated by residential and industrial development.
“This became quickly one of the highest-priority sage grouse initiative projects in the country, because of the size, the connectivity to the public lands,” said Erik Glenn, executive director of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust, which helped broker the Cross Mountain Ranch easement. “It’s a pretty pivotal migration corridor for mule deer, for elk… You’re frequently going to see sandhill cranes along the Yampa and Little Snake rivers in their migration periods.”
Anschutz’s TransWest subsidiary sued the Department of Agriculture in 2019, arguing that the National Resources Conservation Service violated federal law and its own policies when it approved and funded an easement that would block the planned power line. The company wants a judge to throw out the easement. Department of Agriculture officials have countered that they followed the law and were totally in the right to prioritize conservation, regardless of how it might affect the energy project.
Here’s the key point:Regardless of who wins in court, this battle illustrates a tension that is only getting more pressing as America hurries to confront the fires and floods of the climate crisis.
I’m referring to the tension between building renewable energy infrastructure and protecting ecosystems, which I’ve written about extensively. President Biden wants the United States to get 100% of its electricity from climate-friendly power sources by 2035. He’s also endorsed a campaign by scientists and advocates to protect 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030.
There are ways to meet both of those goals, and they most likely involve carefully studying which landscapes ought to be fully protected and which can be set aside for development. But those strategies won’t resolve every conflict. There will always be difficult value judgments about the appropriate balance between conservation and fighting climate change.
For Anschutz Corp., the facts on the ground at Cross Mountain Ranch clearly weigh in favor of climate. The company points out that its transmission-line corridor would take up just 30 acres of the 16,000-acre conservation easement, and would allow for the delivery of enough wind energy — 3,000 megawatts — to power nearly two million homes.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack — who served in that role under President Obama, and now again under Biden — has actually praised TransWest Express, along with six other power lines selected by the Obama administration for accelerated permitting a decade ago. Vilsack said the projects would “help to meet our country’s electric needs in the 21st century.”
“These infrastructure projects will also create jobs and opportunities that will strengthen our economy to benefit households and businesses throughout the country,” Vilsack said in a written statement in 2011.
I asked TransWest’s general counsel, Lisa Christian, about one arm of the Biden administration blocking a power line meant to help Western states ditch fossil fuels while most of the rest of the federal government pushes aggressive climate action. She was perplexed, to say the least, telling me the company has “tried repeatedly” to get Biden administration higher-ups to step in.
I also asked Glenn, from the Colorado land trust, whether sacrificing 30 acres out of 16,000 for a power line would really be that big a deal. He pointed me to research suggesting transmission infrastructure can harm sage grouse.
“We’ve got a policy priority of increased renewable energy, and we have a policy priority of increased conservation. Those two are going to continue to butt heads,” he said. “We have to find ways to resolve those conflicts.”
I also reached out to the owners of Cross Mountain Ranch. A 2017 Denver Post story described the property — which had been put on the market at the time, although it hasn’t sold — as “the rural family compound of the late Ronald Boeddeker, the Southern California real estate tycoon renowned for luxury developments like Lake Las Vegas and Waikoloa Beach Resort in Hawaii.”
Boeddeker’s son Matt didn’t respond to my interview requests. But he definitely opposes a transmission line. In a 2019 email cited by TransWest’s lawsuit, he wrote to a Natural Resources Conservation Service official that his family “agreed to permanently restrict (from development and for the protection of important wildlife) a very large part of one of the largest private ranches in Colorado in exchange for the govts part in full protection against power lines and other damaging items of development.”
“It’s impossible for this power line to happen if you take actions,” he wrote.
It’s hard for me to say if TransWest Express and the accompanying wind farm would really be canceled if the company’s lawsuit fails. Anschutz has spent hundreds of millions of dollars and a dozen years on these projects, and construction hasn’t even begun. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were willing to throw some more money and time at rerouting the power line.
I should note that the Department of Agriculture didn’t grant an interview request or respond to several questions I sent them.
I should also note that another company owned by one of America’s wealthiest individuals — the electric utility PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway empire — also wants to build a transmission line, known as Gateway South, along the same route through Cross Mountain Ranch as Anschutz. PacifiCorp has its own legal action pending over the conflict.”
Below is the text of the letter referred to in the WSJ article from yesterday and here is a link to the letter itself..
Regional Foresters, Station Directors, IITF Director, Deputy Chiefs, and WO Directors
The 2021 fire year is different from any before. On July 14, 2021, the National Multi-Agency Coordination Group raised the national preparedness level (PL) to 5, the earliest point in a decade and the third earliest ever. There are currently over 70 large fires burning across the nation and 22,000 personnel responding, which are both nearly three times more than the 10-year average for the month of July. Severe drought is affecting over 70 percent of the West, and the potential for significant fire activity is predicted to be above normal into October. Our firefighters are fatigued, especially after more than a year of almost constant deployments, beginning with helping Australia in January 2020, and continuing through a difficult 2020 fire year and then supporting the vaccination effort in early 2021. In addition, COVID-19 infections are rising again. They are degrading our firefighting response capacity at an alarming rate, which will persist until more Americans are vaccinated.
In short, we are in a national crisis. At times like these, we must anchor to our core values, particularly safety. In PL 5, the reality is we are resource limited. The core tenet of the Forest Service’s fire response strategy is public and firefighter safety above all else. The current situation demands that we commit our fire resources only in instances where they have a high probability of success and they can operate safely and effectively. We will rely on the tested principles of risk management in determining our strategies and tactics.
At this time, for all of these reasons, managing fires for resource benefit is a strategy we will not use. In addition, until further notice, ignited prescribed fire operations will be considered only in geographic areas at or below PL 2 and only with the approval of the Regional Forester after consulting with the Chief’s Office. We are in a “triage mode” where our primary focus must be on fires that threaten communities and infrastructure. There is a finite amount of firefighting resources available that must be prioritized and fires will not always get the resources that might be requested. We will support our Agency administrators and fire managers as they make the best choices they can, given the resources at hand, the immediate threats, and the predicted weather.
Let me be clear. This is not a return to the “10 a.m. Policy.” This is the prudent course of action now in a situation that is dynamic and fluid. When western fire activity abates, we will resume using all the tools in our toolbox, including wildfire and prescribed fire in the right places and at the right time.
I know we all continue to remember the sacrifices of the fallen. Let us honor them by ensuring we do all we can to get everyone home safely, every single day. Thank you for all you are doing. I’m proud to serve alongside you.
The U.S. Forest Service pledged to more aggressively fight new wildfires that could threaten communities in the drought-ravaged West, after state and local officials criticized it for letting an initially small blaze grow out of control and destroy 14 homes.
The head of the Forest Service, Randy Moore, in a letter to staff on Monday, said extreme drought and the Covid-19 pandemic are limiting the agency’s resources and it would as a result focus primarily on fires that threaten communities and infrastructure. Until the current wave of Western fire activity abates, he said, the agency wouldn’t use prescribed burns in high risk areas or manage natural fires to help thin overgrown forests.
The Forest Service decided not to fight the Tamarack Fire south of Lake Tahoe when it started with a lightning strike to a tree on July 4 and was a quarter-acre in size for the next week. The Forest Service said it made its decision out of concerns that the terrain was unsafe to insert crews.
Less than a week later, extreme winds fanned the fire into a raging inferno that blackened 70,000 acres in California and neighboring Nevada and prompted the evacuation of hundreds of residents. As of Monday, the fire—among the largest of dozens burning in the West—was 82%-contained.
At the end of an otherwise unremarkable article about yet another environmental group reversing in court a federal agency’s illegal decision, and getting paid for its troubles under the Equal Access to Justice Act, is the following postscript:
In fiscal 2020, 16 federal agencies reported 15,596 separate awards under the EAJA totaling more than $101 million. The Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs accounted for the vast majority of the EAJA payments.
And the answer is: Veterans and seniors. That’s who.
Sacramento Grazing Association, Inc. v. United States (U.S. Court of Federal Claims) – On July 23, 2021 the U.S. Court of Federal Claims reconsidered the court’s 2017 liability determination that the Forest Service “effected a physical taking of plaintiffs right to beneficial use of stock water sources under New Mexico law” in the Sacramento Allotments of the Lincoln National Forest. The Court found that the plaintiffs did not possess a right to beneficial use of stock water sources under New Mexico water law at the time of the alleged taking.
Alliance for The Wild Rockies v. Pierson, (D. Idaho) – On July 23, 2021 the district court granted a preliminary injunction (for a second time) on the Hanna Flats Project on the Idaho Panhandle National Forest because the Forest Service failed to apply HFRA’s definition of WUI, and instead relied exclusively on Bonner County’s community wildfire protection plan’s determination of the WUI, which is inconsistent with HFRA’s definition and cannot provide a justification for a NEPA categorical exclusion under HFRA. (Here is an AP news article.)
WildEarth Guardians v. Steele and Swan View Coalition v. Steele (D. Mont.)- On July 22, 2021 the plaintiffs filed a motion to amend the district court’s June 24, 2021 decision against the Flathead National Forest revised land management plan by requesting the court to vacate new road management requirements, and to reinstate the requirements of the former forest plan to protect grizzly bears and bull trout.
Wilderness Watch v. Marten (D. Mont.) – On July 22, 2021, the plaintiff filed a complaint in the district court against the Forest Service regarding the North Fork Blackfoot River Westslope Cutthroat Trout Conservation Project on the Lolo National Forest. The project would authorize large-scale helicopter-assisted stream poisoning to remove previously stocked fish, followed by the stocking of Westslope cutthroat trout in the Scapegoat Wilderness, including in areas that were likely historically fishless. (We discussed this project here, and here is a local news article.)
(Court decision.) Neighbors of the Mogollon Rim, Inc. v. U.S. Forest Service (D. Ariz., June 30, 2021)
The district court denied a motion for a preliminary injunction against the Tonto National Forest’s allotment management plan and grazing permit for the Bar X allotments and Heber-Reno Sheep Driveway. Plaintiffs are owners of land in private enclaves within an area of national forest lands that was reopened for grazing. The court’s ruling is based entirely on the balance of harm and does not address the merits of the case.
(Notice of Intent.) Lands Council v. U. S. Forest Service (E.D. Wa.) Three conservation groups notified the Colville National Forest on July 10 of their intent to add a claim to their existing lawsuit against the issuance of a 10-year grazing permit for two allotments that will challenge the failure to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service concerning effects on bull trout and critical habitat. (The linked article includes a link to the NOI.)
(Court decision – BLM.) Friends of Animals v. U. S. Bureau of Land Management (D. D.C., July 13, 2021)
The district court denied a motion for a preliminary injunction to stop BLM’s gather and removal of wild horses inside and adjacent to the Onaqui Mountain Herd Management Area in Utah. The court found that Plaintiff’s likelihood of success on the merits was low, and that due to the extreme drought, “Allowing the horses to remain on the range could imperil their health and the ecological well-being of the range.”
(Notice of Intent – BLM.) The Center for Biological Diversity and the Maricopa Audubon Society have filed a “60-Day Notice of Endangered Species Act Violations” with the Bureau of Land Management over cattle trespassing along the San Pedro River in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in Arizona. Listed species that may be adversely affected are the western yellow-billed cuckoo, the northern Mexican garter snake and especially the Huachuca water umbel, an aquatic plant.
Trump un-dos
ESA regulations: Trump-era changes to the regulations implementing the Endangered Species Act are currently subject to three lawsuits. The Biden Administration’s Spring 2021 Unified Agenda provides general timeframes for changing them, each of which will go through a notice and comment rulemaking process.
Northern spotted owl critical habitat: The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to redesignate northern spotted owl critical habitat, restoring protection to all but about 200,000 acres of the 3.4 million acres removed by the Trump Administration. (That decision is currently under litigation, as is the Biden Administration’s delay in implementing it, as described here).
Tongass old growth: In addition to its efforts to reapply the Roadless Area Conservation Rule to the Tongass National Forest (discussed here), the Biden Administration has announced it is freezing any remaining old growth timber sales from the Forest and will pivot to investing in other sectors of Southeast Alaska’s economy.
Law enforcement
Bull trout poaching: A fourth poacher was convicted of illegally taking threatened bull trout from the Metolius River in the Deschutes National Forest.
Arrowhead theft: Two men were convicted of unlawfully removing and damaging archeological resources on the Kisatchie National Forest. The excavation site was designated by the United States government as a known Archeological Site, and the defendants uncovered various Native American artifacts, including arrowheads and some chips of Native American tools or utensils.
Maple tree theft: A jury convicted Justin Andrew Wilke of conspiracy, theft of public property, depredation of public property, trafficking in unlawfully harvested timber, and attempting to traffic in unlawfully harvested timber from an illegal maple logging operation on the Olympic National Forest. Wilke claimed the wood he sold to a Tumwater mill had been harvested from private property with a valid permit. However, at trial, Richard Cronn, Phd., a Research Geneticist for the USDA Forest Service, testified that the wood Wilke sold was a genetic match to the remains of three poached maple trees investigators had discovered in the Elk Lake area. This was the first use of tree DNA evidence in a federal criminal trial. (For Sharon!)
Off-road drivers: Off-road drivers are damaging the Bankhead National Forest, and officials say they are struggling to stop the activity. The Forest Service estimated only about 3% of the illegal riders are ever caught. He said it is usually a group of riders and they usually have lookouts with walkie-talkie radios to warn the drivers. In the rare event they are caught, the drivers face up to $5,000 in fines, six months in the county jail and a federal court appearance.
Folks, forgive me for this bit of shameless self-promotion. The debut edition of my new newsletter, Natural Resources Management Today, is online. It’s free after registering, though I do ask for voluntary subscription payments.
Here’s what you’ll find in the August 2021 edition:
The Power of Private Forests: A conversation with Tom Martin, President and CEO of the American Forest Foundation
NRM Student Profile — Anna Pauletta: A Passion for Wildlife and Forests
Southern Timberland Owners Face Increasing Pressures
Wildland Stories Webinar: Rangeland Ecology
Reflections: Ordinary Time, an essay by Marianne Patinelli-Dubay
Bringing Tech Innovation to Wildfires: 4 Recommendations for Smarter Firefighting as Megafires Menace the US
Esri Provides Open Access to Key Federal Geospatial Data
Observations: Counties on Fire, an essay by Jim Petersen
Climate, Weather, Fuels Drive Wildfires. What Can We Do? Focus on Adaptation and Resilience [I wrote this one]
Mount Hood Prayer, p. 27
In the online publication, the top and bottom menu bars appear when you hover a mouse cursor over them. On the bottom menu bar, the Share button lets you post links to articles to social media or send them by email. I encourage you to share NRM Today far and wide….
Steve
Steve Wilent
Editor & Publisher
Natural Resources Management Today
Oregon home office: 503-622-3033
[email protected]nrmtoday.com
This photo is from the op-ed; copyright by Mary of the Norbeck Society. I’ll take it down if they prefer, but it is the photo in the op-ed.Thanks to Matt for finding and posting this op-ed by frequent TSW commenter Jim Furnish in the thread about the Black Hills. Some of his claims are more generalized about the Forest Service in general, and so I think worthy of a separate discussion.
(Note: the infamous Forest Service Retirees’ Info Network has suggested that there is a media campaign by ENGOs brewing about the Hills.. stay tuned for more press stories)
First of all, you gotta love the headline (I’m suspecting Jim didn’t pick it but..) “Forest Service Putting National Forests in Peril”. We’re all glad, I’m sure, that after four years of “Trump Administration Does Bad Things” the power has returned to non-politicals within a federal agency. Whew, thanks for delegating, Congress and the Biden Admin!
This is a good time for recycling this quote from Earl Butz.. in a piece by Char Miller
Earl Butz, Richard Nixon’s controversial secretary of Agriculture, was a profane man known for his hair-trigger temper and rough handling of subordinates. So when the chief of the Forest Service stood him up for a meeting, Butz unloaded in response: “There are four branches of government,” he reportedly snarled, “the executive, legislative, judicial and the Gawd-damn U.S. Forest Service.
But back tot he op-ed..
Perhaps the saddest part is that big old trees, if left to grow, are the natural outcome of ponderosa pine ecology, storing carbon, providing wildlife habitat and seed for new trees and stabilizing soils. But the Forest Service requires that loggers cut down all the big old trees, reducing the forest to ecologically impoverished, even-aged tree farms, and increasing susceptibility to future fires.
It sounds like this is about the Hills, but the photo shows apparently some big old trees.. so I’m not sure if the photo is relevant to the argument Jim is making.
Note that the link goes to a piece by Law and Moomaw.. I noted that these scientist were heavily cited in the letters of some ENGO’s in the Response to Comments in USDA’s Climate Smart Agriculture and Forestry request, by groups who were against tree cutting. IMHO the stand in the photo also doesn’t look more susceptible to future fires, at least not for a while.
The Black Hills logging debacle represents a decades-long drama playing out on most forests across the country. Commercial logging trumps other forest values like carbon storage, clean water, wildlife habitat and old-growth woods.
So the FS is still logging old growth, across the country? Seems like in the plans and projects I’ve looked at there has been a great deal of concern for carbon storage, clean water, wildlife and old growth.
But most curious to me was this, back to “thinning for fuel treatment” but now using anecdotes.
A raging debate questions whether thoughtful logging can actually limit fire risk and severity by reducing fuels in advance. The Forest Service says emphatically “yes,” but anecdotal evidence yields troubling results throughout the fire-prone western United States. The arson-caused Jasper Fire burned through a thinned landscape thought to be in ideal condition. High temperatures, low humidity and heavy winds — the usual culprits — blew the fire up mercilessly.
Reduced logging is long overdue in this treasured landscape. What the Forest Service is doing in the Black Hills reminds me of its tragic liquidation of mature and old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. Then, as now, I urge the Forest Service to follow the advice of its own scientists.
I think Jim means the Hills and the silviculture report, but if you follow the advice of scientists, conceivably you would also follow the many scientists who support tree thinning as a fuel reduction measure either on its own or prior to prescribed burning.
So maybe this media campaign is designed to put pressure on the Admin to reduce harvesting on the Hills. That’s fine, but don’t blame the FS as an independent political actor out to destroy America’s forests, nor question the utility of fuel treatments; a “raging debate” ??. I don’t think that those arguments are 1) accurate nor 2) necessary to make the case, which specifically is for reduced commercial harvesting on the Black Hills.
Bill Gabbert on Wildfire Today did a great job of summarizing the fuels and fire requests in the new infrastructure bill. I wonder whether anyone has reviewed it for other topics of forest or National Forest and BLM interest… if you have seen such, please post below. If you would like to review it for us, please do!
From Bill’s post..
The bill authorizes $600 million for management of personnel — those who fight fires.
The bill directs OPM to develop a distinct “wildland firefighter” occupational series.
The DOI and FS shall convert no fewer than 1,000 seasonal wildland firefighters to wildland firefighters that are full-time, permanent, year-round Federal employees who will reduce hazardous fuels on Federal land for at least 800 hours each year.
The base salaries of Federal wildland firefighters will be increased by the lesser of an amount that is commensurate with an increase of $20,000 per year or an amount equal to 50 percent of the base salary.
Develop mitigation strategies for wildland firefighters to minimize exposure due to line-of-duty environmental hazards.
Establish programs for permanent, temporary, seasonal, and year-round wildland firefighters to recognize and address mental health needs, including care for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Other provisions of the the bill. (M = million)
$20M, Satellite fire detection
$10M, Radio interoperability
$30M, Reverse 911 systems
$50M, Slip-on firefighting modules for pickup trucks
$100M, Pre-fire planning, and training personnel for wildland firefighting and vegetation treatments
$20M, Data management for fuels projects and large fires
$20M, Joint Fire Science Program (research)
$100M, Planning & implementing projects under the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program
$500M, Mechanical thinning, timber harvesting, pre-commercial thinning
$500M, Wildfire defense grants for at risk communities
$500M, Prescribed fires
$500M, Constructing fuelbreaks
$200M, Remove fuels, produce biochar and other innovative wood products
$200M, Post-fire restoration
$8M, Firewood banks
$10M, Wildfire detection and real-time monitoring equipment
One issue this legislation does not address is the inadequate funding of aerial firefighting, the use of air tankers and helicopters to assist firefighters on the ground by dropping water or retardant to slow the spread of wildfires, which is necessary for Homeland Security. The Federal agencies entered the year with 18 large air tankers and 28 large Type 1 helicopters, when they should have 40 large air tankers and 50 large helicopters on exclusive use 10-year contracts instead of the existing 1-year contracts.
Questions: (1) Anyone happen to know what firewood banks are? (2) it seems like there is some potential overlap between CFLRP projects, thinning, projects funded by wildfire defense grants, prescribed burning projects and fuelbreaks.. plus states also have funding for some of the same sounding things, plus regular appropriations for feds… has anybody added all that up and seen what it amounts to in total?
Air resources on the Cedar Creek Fire Washington July 29, 2021 InciWeb
This being summer, I’ve built up a few fire stories for posting… but they should lead to different conversations, so I’m going to post them separately. Thanks to Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today for two of these!
First off is this one.. governors’ wildfire requests from the Biden Administration. I don’t know why this convo only had three of the Western Govs. The general feeling was a need for more federal resources of all kinds.
I. Initial Attack Policies
Governor Greg Gianforte of Montana was called on first. He spoke briefly, saying that aggressive initial attack was important. “Without that commitment,”Governor Gianforte said, “we would have had many more large scale fires. And we ask that our federal partners join us in applying this operating principle. Whether it’s a fire that starts on private, state, or federal land — fires are easier to manage when they’re smaller.”
and Governor Gavin Newsome
But here’s the final thing, and it’s the elephant in the room. I was with Governor Sisolak two days ago in his state of Nevada. The reason why is we had a fire that was on federal property. Fifty-seven percent of the forest property in California is federal, just three percent under California jurisdiction. Three percent. Fifty-seven percent under U.S. Forest Service. U.S. Forest Service is spectacular. We have deep admiration and respect, but there’s a culture that, too often, is, “Wait and see.” We can’t afford that any longer. This was a federal fire. They waited. And what we saw is the fire took off because we didn’t put enough initial assets.
Greg was making an oblique point here. I want to be a little bit more explicit: We need your help to change the culture, in terms of the suppression strategies, in this climate, literally and figuratively, to be more aggressive on these federal fires. That fire bled into Nevada and, obviously, impacted not just our two states, but deeply impacted the redundancy of this concern that comes out every year around jurisdictions and incident command and the imperative that we’re all on the same page, in terms of those initial attack strategies.
To TSW readers, especially those on fires, how real is this? Last year the Chief said to be more aggressive due to Covid-induced difficulty with suppression forces. Is it philosophy, culture, or availability of resources, or ???. Or are these observations of Governors not widely shared in the fire community?
II. Airplane Fuel
Governor Inslee
We do have an emerging concern about our fuel supply for our aerial assets.
Governor Newsome
Please pay attention to this fuels issue. We had to get our National Guard to get some emergency fuel supplies for our aerial fleet a week ago. This is a major issue, and it’s not just impacting our aerial suppression strategies on the West Coast. It’s increasingly, as you may know, impacting commercial aviation. It is a major issue.
I wonder what the supply chain problem is for airplane fuel?
