Smokey Has a Point: Housefresh Analyzes Human-Caused Wildfires

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Well actually, Smokey never left, although he was defamed in certain circles. Here’s BCm and here’s Burnie the Bobcat. As I said on XTwit or TwitX last weekish.

Thanks to Wildfire Today for this:

Air quality publication HouseFresh analyzed NIFC data from 2023 and ranked the causes of wildfires by number of occurrences. Of the recorded fires, 72.6 percent were directly caused by humans.

The bulk of last year’s wildfires were caused by debris burning and open burning, resulting in 1,302 wildfires. That is an increase from the 1,120 fires started by debris and open burning in 2022. Equipment and vehicle use, power generation/transmission/distribution, and arson were the next listed causes of wildfires in 2023 at 507, 390, and 364 respectively.

“The balance between human and natural fires has almost reversed since 2014, although the trend has not been smooth,” the HouseFresh report said. “The proportion of human-caused wildfires grew significantly in 2015, 2016 and 2020, peaking at 77.2 percent in 2020.”

Here’s a link to the Housefresh report.

A person might wonder if some climate modeling of wildfire dollars could be rerouted to understanding the social science of human ignitions and looking at successful interventions?

Federal Lands Litigation – update through April 8, 2024

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A little weekend reading.

FOREST SERVICE

Notice of Intent to Sue

On March 25, the Center for Biological Diversity notified the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service of its intent to sue for failing to initiate consultation on its ongoing actions that may affect the coastal pine marten, listed as threatened in 2020.  They specifically target “rampant, unchecked off-road vehicle (“ORV”) use” in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, and suggest that the Forest Service should “put up fencing to protect marten habitat, and more signage or enforcement of noise limits that could disrupt the martens’ critical day-to-day behaviors.”  The press release includes a link to the Notice; additional background is provided here.

New lawsuit

A new lawsuit has been filed against the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest because it relocated a repeater antenna to a designated Wilderness Study Area.  The Forest’s decision was apparently based on a categorical exclusion for repair and maintenance of an administrative site.  No news sources without a paywall seem to have covered this story, but background was previously provided here.

Court decision in Greater Hells Canyon Council v. Wilkes (D. Oregon)

On March 29, the district court issued an order supporting the findings of the magistrate judge, previously discussed here.  The court said the Forest Service evaluation of eliminating the 21 inch diameter limit on logging in eastern Oregon and Washington “failed to take a hard look at the amendment’s change and its impact on aquatic species.”  We have already discussed the court’s decision here.  (Press coverage seems surprisingly limited, and I have not seen the actual order.)

Court decision in Friends of the Crazy Mountains v. Erickson (9th Cir.)

On April 8, the circuit court affirmed the district court’s ruling that the Forest Service had complied with NEPA requirements for specificity for this 2018 decision long ago because, “Both the 2006 EIS and the 2009 EA gave reasonable notice that the 2018 trail reroute fell within their respective scopes.”  Plaintiffs had failed to challenge those actions at the time.  The article includes a link to the opinion.  We covered the beginnings of this case here.

BLM/NPS

Court decision in Dakota Resource Council v. U. S. Department of Interior (D. D.C.)

On March 22, the district court upheld BLM’s compliance with NEPA and FLPMA for six oil and gas lease sales affecting nearly 120,000 acres in Wyoming and another 10,000 in several other states.  The court specifically rejected the plaintiff’s arguments that the BLM should combine all leases within each quarter in one decision process instead of separate EAs.  With regard to greenhouse gas issues, the court said:

“Operating at the frontiers of science, BLM reasonably exhausted available tools to analyze the lease sales’ environmental consequences:  It estimated the amount of GHG emissions from the lease sales; placed those projections in proper perspective; monetized the social cost of the emissions; described why it cannot predict the on-the-ground effects that this level of GHG emissions will have on the local ecosystem or global environment; and explained why, absent a government carbon budget or similar reference standard, it was not possible to determine whether the estimated emissions would have a “significant” impact on the environment.”

Court decision in Wilderness Society v. U. S. D. I. (D. D.C.)

In a second case on the same lease decisions, the same judge held that the BLM violated NEPA because it failed to adequately assess “the Wyoming sale’s impact on groundwater and wildlife,” specifically mule deer and the sage grouse, and failed to adequately explain how the effects on greenhouse gas emissions influenced its leasing decisions.  Notably, the court did not approve of the BLM relying on the analysis of wildlife effects in its resource management plan.  The court agreed with the BLM on other issues.  With regard to the greenhouse gas issue, the court said:

“After projecting the emissions and their social costs, though, the Bureau did not explain why it believed that a lease sale of this magnitude was nonetheless worthwhile and consistent with its statutory duties to steward federal lands for the public benefit. Rather, the Bureau appeared to back away from its analysis of GHG emissions when justifying its decision to move forward.”

Briefing on the remedy is pending.  (The article includes a link to both opinions.)

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Bureau of Land Management (D. Nevada)

On March 25, plaintiffs went to court to try to force the BLM to develop plans for two national monuments in Nevada, Basin and Range and Gold Butte.  The monuments were established in 2015 and 2017 respectively, and beginning efforts at planning were abandoned.  FLPMA and the proclamations for the monuments require planning. Plaintiffs explained the problems with the delay:

“Some examples of impacts to the monuments from a lack of active management include the proliferation of human waste at recreation sites due to BLM’s failure to install sanitary facilities; a proliferation of unauthorized [off-highway vehicle] uses due to BLM’s failure to properly regulate and enforce laws on limitations to off road vehicular travel; and the ongoing illegal cattle grazing by Cliven Bundy in Gold Butte. These impacts cause habitat degradation and destruction which threaten wildlife like the desert tortoise.”

Solar projects were also mentioned.  This article provides an update on the Bundy cattle (from which one might infer a connection to the lack of BLM action there).  Plaintiffs recognize that completion of plans would not resolve the cattle trespassing issue, since they are already illegal.

Cert denied in American Forest Resource Council v. U. S. A. (Supreme Court)

On March 25, the Supreme Court declined to review the expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou on O&C lands, and BLM’s 2016 Resource Management Plans for Western Oregon O&C lands, which had been upheld by the D. C. Court of Appeals.  (See also comments by Sean here.)  Only two justices indicated an interest in reviewing the case, and they may have only been interested in the narrower question of conflicts with the O&C Act rather than the Antiquities Act authority to designate monuments.  The door doesn’t appear to be closed to another challenge to the Antiquities Act.  (Coincidentally, the BLM has just released a new draft plan for managing the Monument.)

New lawsuit:  Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center v. U. S. Bureau of Land Management (D. Oregon)

On March 27, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild sued the BLM for its decision to authorize portions of the Rogue Gold Forest Management Project, which involves logging in late-successional reserves designated under a resource management plan.  The complaint alleges that the Project violates FLPMA because it is not consistent with that plan because, “Generating timber volume is not a permissible objective for logging within the LSR.”

This article provides some additional context regarding large trees and litigation in this area, including this comment from BLM that was something I hadn’t heard before:

“We work really hard to design timber sales and access roads to have the least amount of impact. We hear from our timber operators that they don’t want to cut those larger trees. It’s a safety issue. It increases the costs,” said Kyle Sullivan, a BLM spokesperson.

He said that there are barely any mills left in Oregon that can take old-growth sized logs and claimed those large trees that are felled are left on the forest floor to become wildlife habitat.

Court decision in Leigh v. Raby (D. Nevada)

On March 28, the district court ruled that the BLM “unreasonably delayed” completion of herd management area plans when it failed to adopt such a plan or conduct the necessary environmental review before 31 mustangs died during a roundup in the Pancake complex in eastern Nevada.  The court specifically rejected the argument that BLM’s broader resource management plans combined with individual roundup plans for overpopulated herds satisfies the requirement.  The court stated, “Engaging in the decision-making of an HMAP without actually preparing an HMAP could therefore deprive interested parties of the administrative review processes to which they are entitled.”  (This reasoning may be applicable to decisions that should be in forest plans but are made without following appropriate processes, or attempts to substitute some other process for actions that should be subject to NEPA.)  The court required completion of the Herd Area Management Plan within one year.

ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT

At the end of March, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA issued a final rule largely reversing the changes the Trump Administration had made in the ESA listing and consultation processes.  This article explains the changes, and anticipates the litigation that will follow.

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (D. Arizona)

On April 1, the Center sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to respond to its petitions to list four bumblebee species under the Endangered Species Act within the required time period.  The species are the American bumblebee, the southern plains bumblebee, the variable cuckoo bumblebee and the blue calamintha bee.  American bumblebees were found in open areas across all of the lower 48 states except Washington.

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (D. Montana)

New lawsuit:  Western Watersheds Project v. Williams (D. Montana)

On April 8, 14 plaintiffs filed two lawsuits against the decision by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to not relist the gray wolves of the northern Rocky Mountains under the Endangered Species Act.  Both complaints argue that USFWS relied on flawed population models and underestimated the impact of aggressive wolf-reduction measures in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.  The article has links to both complaints.

 

Mass Timber, CLT, GLT, NLT, and Others: What Does it All Mean? Plus NMFSH Auction

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If you watched the Forest Service budget hearing, a few of the Senators brought up Mass Timber and CLT (cross-laminated timber).  The National Museum of Forest Service History had an excellent explanation (with photos) in their newsletter. They are also having an auction until April 15, I’ve bid on a couple of places to stay and there’s other good stuff as well. The below and attached newsletter is reprinted with the permission of the National Museum.  I thought this was a great article, so shout-out to the Museum and to Tom Chung! I just excerpted the introduction below, and the article itself is here.

By Tom S. Chung, FAIA, Principal, Leers Weinzapfel Associates

Many of us may have heard of the term “Mass Timber” but are not sure of what it is, although I would say that many, if not all, of us know what a “wood building” is and have been inside one from log cabins to solid heavy timber office buildings to curved wood structured churches. A Mass Timber building is in one sense, simply a wood building that uses large pieces of wood instead of smaller pieces of wood like lumber (2x4s and 2x6s) that we see being used for single family houses and multifamily housing 5 stories tall or less, all over the country for the past sixty plus years.
Mass Timber as the name implies is made of heavier (or larger) pieces of wood and its earliest examples are the solid heavy timber buildings that were built with old growth trees that made possible large cross sections of columns and beams often greater than 1’ x 1’ and more from a single tree trunk just debarked and cut to size.

But Mass Timber today is a highly engineered product that is assembled into even larger building elements with just lumber (2x4s and 2x6s) or even smaller laminations. Unlike
solid heavy timber that relies much on the characteristics of a single tree and a large safety factor since no two trees are the same, mass timber today is much more predictable and precisely engineered to meet the necessary loads with material efficiency. It is also fabricated in a factory in a highly automated way using digital technologies and equipment and assembled on site quickly and quietly, instead of being constructed piece by piece on site with lots of construction time and material waste.

While most civilizations began building with wood, as it was plentiful and easy to shape with simple tools, our modern society and its need to build bigger and taller buildings over the late 19th and 20th centuries in urban centers, coinciding with the results of industrial revolution which began a century earlier resulted in wood being displaced as the main building material by steel and concrete.

Though wood remained throughout the past century as a building material for smaller structures such as single family homes and small multi-family housing, the emergence of mass timber today makes possible the use of wood as a building material previously reserved for steel and concrete, allowing us to build these larger, taller and more complex buildings now in wood, with a renewable building material with less carbon emissions that helps address the building industry’s responsibility towards climate change.

In addition to being a solution to build more responsibly with less carbon footprint, mass timber buildings, unlike light-frame wood construction often expose the wood since it doesn’t need to be covered up by painted white drywall. This allows for the inherent biophilic attributes of wood to be experienced; visually appealing color and grain, the warmth to touch, the fresh pine scented smell with the humidity and moisture regulating properties of mass timber provides a full tactile experience that enrich the daily routines of those who live and work in these buildings.

Products
Among the commercially available products in the mass timber category are Cross-laminated Timber (CLT), Naillaminated Timber (NLT), Dowell-Laminated Timber (DLT), Mass Plywood Panel (MPP), Glue Laminated Timber (GLT) and glulams, Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL), Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL) and Parallel Strand Lumber (PSL). They range in costs, appearance
and applications.

Nail-Laminated Timber or NLT are simply lumber (2xs) nailed together in a one way span between beams to make solid floors and usually require a layer of plywood on top for lateral stability. They are simple to build, do not require expensive factories and are on the less expensive end of mass timber product costs. But since there are nails, they cannot be cut with CNC machines
and are more limiting structurally and architecturally in general. Dowell-laminated Timber or DLT can be seen as an evolution of NLT in that the steel nails were replaced by hardwood dowels so that it could be CNC cut and made in a highly automated factory like other mass timber products. It appears similar to NLT and also spans one-way between beams but also with increased
structural and architectural possibilities at a higher cost.

Glulams, similar to NLT as mass timber products have been around for over eighty years. They have been used mostly as beams and columns (linear elements) and can be seen in many old churches and gymnasiums as large curved or arching elements. But they can also laid flat on their sides and with successive pieces become floor assemblies, similar to NLT or DLT.
In this configuration as floor panels, they are called “GLT.”

Seen often in combination with glulam beams and columns are Cross-laminated Timber or CLT panels It is the most well known and most talked about mass timber product today given its versatility. It was first commercially developed in Europe with factories in Austria, Germany and Switzerland about 25 years ago, then to Canada and now gaining traction in the US over the past 5-7 years. CLT arranges lumber laid flat, with each successive layer in a perpendicular direction such that unlike NLT, DLT or GLT the grain of the wood is oriented in perpendicular directions rather than a single direction. This allows for a greater dimensional stability and a two-way span capability and possibility of being point-supported with just a column and without beams. However, most CLT floor panels are still used as primarily one-way systems in conjunction with beams and columns given the simpler engineering involved and greater spans and column spacing that it enables. But the two-way structural capacity of CLT panels also makes it ideal not only as floor or roof (horizontal) panels but also as wall (vertical) panels. Many buildings utilize CLT in this way as load bearing walls and even as building cores for egress stairs, elevators and mechanical, designed to also take on lateral loads such as wind and seismic loads.

As versatile as CLT but very different in appearance is Mass Plywood Panel or MPP. MPP are simply layers of plywood (usually 4’x8’ and ~1” thick) laminated on top of each other to make thick, wide and longer panels of 8’ x 40’ or greater and from 4” to over 1’ thick, similar to CLT, NLT and DLT. Like CLT, MPP can span in two directions, be point supported with just columns and are dimensionally more stable. It can also be used as floors or walls and take on lateral loads. But unlike CLT in which each layer is made of 2x boards which can be seen, it’s made of plywood and one can see the whole or partial pieces of the 4’x8’ plywood in its appearance.

Although CLT precedes MPP, as plywood preceded CLT and as they both can span in two directions as they have the grain of wood oriented in perpendicular directions, CLT is sometimes referred to as “plywood on steroids.” Similarly, as CLT, like DLT and MPP are made in a highly automated factories with multi-million dollar investments in the production equipment-such as presses, CNC machines, glueing, dowelling, sorting and finger jointing machines with butterfly tables and vaccum lifts-all with associated costs. NLT has been referred to as “poor man’s CLT” given its relatively low cost and low production factors.

Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL), Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL) and Parallel Strand Lumber (PSL) are veneer or strand-based products with much higher glue to fiber ratio and mainly used for their additional strength properties as compared to lumber, often as columns or beams in conjunction with light frame wood construction where stronger members are needed. Though they can be exposed to view, they are often hidden behind drywall just like light frame wood construction. Though they are technically in the mass timber category, they are less associated with mass timber as they are not used for large floor or wall panels or columns or beams that support them as described earlier with with CLT, NLT, DLT, MPP, GLT and glulams.

Bad and worse, from an environmental perspective

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NBC News

As the election campaign overheats, here are a couple critiques of current Biden and future Trump policies affecting the Forest Service.

WildEarth Guardians recently reviewed a FY 2022 Forest Service Report to Congress, which discusses “timber program performance.”  (I’d note that the context was “the unexpected increase in demand for lumber during the recent period of quarantine and social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic…”)  WildEarth Guardians said,

The document outlines how the agency can increase logging in our national forests by at least 25 percent above current levels, to four billion board feet each year! The last time the Forest Service sold that much timber from our national forests was 1993, the year the agency started developing the Northwest Forest Plan to address habitat loss for the northern spotted owl caused by—that’s right—overlogging. That level of logging was not sustainable then and it isn’t sustainable now, especially in light of what we know now about the importance of protecting mature and old-growth forests to mitigate the effects of climate change. Nevertheless, the Forest Service wants to turn the clock back and actually spells out just how it wants to do that.

The remedy, according to the Forest Service, is not to stop proposing ecologically damaging timber sales that violate the law, but rather to ask Congress for “legislative fixes” that make it harder, if not impossible, to challenge ecologically damaging timber sales in court. Streamlining environmental reviews and limiting public input, the Forest Service says, “will help increase timber volume sold.”

We shouldn’t wonder why there is skepticism from these parts when the Forest Service says “trust us.”  As WildEarth Guardians summarized (with their emphasis):

Such perverse incentives are a stark reminder that timber production remains the overarching priority for the Forest Service while all other values, like wildlife or climate mitigation, are a distant second. As the Forest Service seeks to push timber production levels even higher, those of us who care about our national forests must be ready to speak up and tell the agency and lawmakers that we cannot turn the clock back to a time when unsustainable logging pushed species like the northern spotted owl to the brink of extinction.

An article in the Huffington Post focused on the Department of Interior (but has implications for national forests), and indicates the incentives would be even more perverse for management of our public lands under Trump II, requiring even more public oversight (if they don’t take away the ability to do that):

Pendley’s blueprint for Trump, if he should win in November, includes holding robust oil and gas lease sales on- and offshore, boosting drilling across northern Alaska, slashing the royalties that fossil fuel companies pay to drill on federal lands, expediting oil and gas permitting, and rescinding Biden-era rules aimed at protecting endangered species and limiting methane pollution from oil and gas operations.

Along with a series of actions to boost drilling and mining across the federal estate, Pendley calls for a future Republican administration to not only dismantle existing protected landscapes but limit presidents’ ability to protect others in the future. He advocates for vacating Biden’s executive order establishing a goal of conserving 30% of federal lands and waters by 2030; rescinding the Biden administration’s drilling and mining moratoriums in Colorado, New Mexico and Minnesota; reviewing all Biden-era resource management plans, which cover millions of acres of federal lands; and repealing the Antiquities Act, the landmark 1906 law that 18 presidents have used to designate 161 national monuments.

If that reads like a fossil fuel industry wish list, it’s because it is. Rather than personally calling for the keys to America’s public lands to be turned over to America’s fossil fuel sector, Pendley let the head of a powerful industry group do it for him.

“Beyond posing an existential threat to democracy, Project 2025 puts special interests over everyday Americans,” said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog group that shared its research on Project 2025 with HuffPost. “The dangerous initiative has handed off its policy proposals to the same industry players who have dumped millions into the project — and who will massively benefit from its industry-friendly policies.”

“They could have found any number of mainstream conservatives to write their agenda for them. They didn’t,” Weiss said. “They picked the notorious anti-public lands extremist, because that is at the end of the day what they want.

 

“Trust Us, We Know What We’re Doing”: Guest Post by Dave Mertz on the Keystone Agreements

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Marc Heller has an article about the Keystone Agreements here. I’ll talk about that tomorrow.  He didn’t cover many of the questions that Dave Mertz, I and other retirees had.  Also interesting (and annoying) that Marc could get answers from the FS and Dave and I (and others who have been asking) could not, after weeks of reaching out to different offices and levels. We had to FOIA to get copies of the agreements themselves, which I’ll attach, also tomorrow.

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Maybe some of you, like me, are old enough to remember the old TV show “Sledgehammer.” His catchphrase was “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.” The problem was, oftentimes, he did
not know what he was doing. I wonder if, with these Keystone Agreements, the Forest Service is asking us to trust them because they know what they are doing. We do know that they are
committing a whole lot of federal dollars through these agreements, and there doesn’t seem to be much transparency.

To be fair, the Forest Service was provided a lot of money through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and they had to figure out how to utilize that
funding in a short period of time. Were all of these Keystone Agreements a logical way to bank that money and put it to good use later? Maybe so. Or was it a convenient way for the Forest
Service to claim accomplishments and take some of the load off of them? Maybe it was both?

In the interest of finding out more about these agreements, I sent an email with several questions to the Forest Service’s National Partnerships Office. To date, I have not had a response. I would
imagine that a response will need to be cleared by higher-ups, so it may take a while. Here are the questions I asked:

(1) We have obtained copies of the Master Agreements with the various NGOs through FOIAs.  We are interested in the details contained in the associated Special Project Agreements (SPA), particularly the financial information.  Shouldn’t this information beavailable to the public?  We believe it is important to know how the Forest Service is spending federal dollars through these agreements.  Do we need to file FOIAs to obtain this information or could it just be available online?  If not, why not?  We realize there would be some proprietary information that would need to be redacted.

(2) How are accomplishments being tracked through these agreements?  Who is providing oversight, Grants and Agreements?  The Partnerships Office?

(3) What is the process of awarding the NGOs funding?  Do they receive the dollars and then projects are developed?  What are the overhead rates of the various NGOs?

(4) Are the Keystone Agreements being used to avoid Federal Acquisition Regulations and federal hiring difficulties?

(5) We are hearing that Forests are having budget difficulties this fiscal year and that it will impact their ability to hire employees.  In hindsight, was it wise to put so much funding into the Keystone Agreements rather than into NFS?  Could a lot of this funding have been put into IDIQ contracts instead?

(6) Are Keystone Agreement accomplishments being claimed when the funding is awarded rather than when the work is actually accomplished?

I have other questions that I did not bring up. How much funding has already been provided through the various Special Project Agreements? It appears that through these agreements, the
Forest Service still has a number of obligations. These projects are not turnkey. If that is the case, are they really saving the Forest Service that much work? Are they a good bang for the
buck? Do these organizations have the expertise to accomplish this work up to Forest Service standards? Who is ensuring compliance with the associated NEPA documents? Are these
organizations doing some inherently governmental tasks? I could go on.

I would be interested in getting other’s thoughts on all of this. Can you help answer some of these questions? It would be good to hear from you!

Tester Presses Forest Service Chief on Unwarranted Fines on Montana ­Electric Co-op

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This is a case in which maybe our lawyer friends can chime in..or maybe folks from Region 1 know more?

When does the FS simply determine a fine, and when do they litigate (as I think they did with Sierra Pacific in California) for starting wildfires? For example, Sierra Pacific was sued for damages and fees in excess of $1 billion for allegedly causing the fire.  Does it depend on the nature of the organization (profit/not for profit?)? The certainty of who started it (as per legitimacy of investigation)? The amount of damage? I guess the questions are “who decides how to proceed and what to charge?” “based on what factors”?

Why did the Chief seem to say (maybe I misunderstood) that it was up to DOJ and he has little control over the decision?

Below is  the press release from Tester’s office on the hearing today. Here’s a link to the exchange with Chief Moore. Thanks to Senator Tester’s office for providing this material!

U.S. Senator Jon Tester today pressed U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Chief Randy Moore during a Senate Appropriations hearing, questioning him on the USFS’s decision to stick Vigilante Rural Cooperative, a Montana electric cooperative, with a more than $5 million bill.

 

Following the Deep Creek Canyon Fire, which occurred in the Helena National Forest in 2021, USFS is seeking to fine Vigilante Rural Cooperative for fire suppression costs. This decision is based on a questionable determination of fault and fails to recognize the potential for this bill to jack up costs for Montana ratepayers. Senator Tester recently called on Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to reverse the fine.

 

Tester began by outlining the magnitude of the fine on the operating revenue of the cooperative: “The Forest Service fined a small electric cooperative in Montana a little over $5 million for a fire in 2021. To put this in perspective, the annual operating revenue for this small cooperative is $15 million. If this isn’t crazy enough, I recently learned that there is not a process in place for the cooperative to appeal this case directly to the U.S. Forest Service.”

 

Tester continued to specifically note the questionable determination of fault: “While I appreciate the importance of holding folks accountable and I believe in it strongly, I can tell you the jury is still out on whether the cooperative was negligent at all. Put that together, this process seems extremely broken.”

 

Tester went on to outline the consequences of this fine not just on the cooperative, but on Montana ratepayers: “Chief Moore, you know very well…that fining a cooperative with a $15 million budget, one third of its revenue – a cooperative that’s been around, by the way, for 87 years – would have two outcomes. The cooperative either goes out of business, and folks lose electricity, which is pretty darn critical in the 21st century, or the cooperative has to jack up energy costs on its entire members – because cooperatives are owned by the customer – to cover the bill.”

 

“Given that the blame for the 2021 fire is disputable,” Tester concluded. “My question to you, Chief Moore, is how the hell did we end up here?”

  

Tester’s recent letter to Secretary Vilsack can be read HERE.

The Wildfire Policy Rodeo: Eyes on the Insurance and Power Company Events

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Pretty sure this isn’t about wildfire risk based on this map.

 

The Hotshot Wakeup is best at covering this stuff, but we have folks in the media saying that wildfires will get worse, due to climate change.

Meanwhile, we also have the military-industrial complex developing early sensing and unpersonned firefighting helicopters, which conceivably can reduce spread.

We have fire retardant litigation, the EPA working on permits,  one fire retardant contract that is under protest and can’t be awarded, and one for more “environmentally friendly” retardant that eats away at the metal in aircraft such that some will not be available for the 2024 fire season.

I’m not sure how scientists can model the climate fingerprint of all that.

We have power companies shutting off power (so conceivably we will have fewer ignitions) although their approaches raise questions (in Colorado the PUC will be investigating), and maybe also have unequal impacts based on socioeconomic conditions.

More than 150,000 Xcel customers lost power because of the intentional shut offs or damaged equipment during the winds that included gusts of nearly 100 mph Saturday into Sunday. As of 10 a.m. Wednesday, the company reported 75 outages affecting 929 customers.

Residents and at least one food bank were forced to toss unrefrigerated food, and several metro Denver schools were closed through Tuesday. Employees at a Boulder wastewater treatment plant had to scramble to make sure raw sewage didn’t flow into Boulder Creek when power was cut to the plant’s two electric substations.

Then there’s this fascinating story from the San Fran Chronicle on for which zip codes State Farm will be non-renewing policies. We can check out the map and see .. whatever it’s about, it’s not about wildfire.

According to the article:

State Farm wrote in state filings that it would not renew policies “that present the most substantial wildfire or fire following earthquake hazards, or that are in areas of significant concentration.”

And probably not about earthquakes.  If you go to that link it says:

Last October, Marc Snyder’s insurance company informed him it wouldn’t be renewing his homeowners insurance this year for a reason he had never heard before: density.

The letter from Liberty Mutual said Snyder’s home was “located in a region where the dwellings are considered to be too densely concentrated for us to continue to provide coverage.”

But increasing density is supposed to be good for climate change, and climate change is supposed to be bad for wildfires.  That’s what I mean by the circle of life..  California’s policies are to increase density.  Anyway, sounds like there will be much work for PUCs and insurance commissions to investigate in terms of maps, and I hope they dig deeply.  Perhaps California, as well funded as it is, can figure the insurance/power company conundrum out and let the rest of us know what they find.

Study: Forest treatments that reduce surface fuels decrease subsequent wildfire severity

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New open-access paper in Forest Ecology and Management. A meta-analysis of 220 previous papers. Thanks again to Nick Smith!

Tamm review: A meta-analysis of thinning, prescribed fire, and wildfire effects on subsequent wildfire severity in conifer dominated forests of the Western US

Abstract

Increased understanding of how mechanical thinning, prescribed burning, and wildfire affect subsequent wildfire severity is urgently needed as people and forests face a growing wildfire crisis. In response, we reviewed scientific literature for the US West and completed a meta-analysis that answered three questions: (1) How much do treatments reduce wildfire severity within treated areas? (2) How do the effects vary with treatment type, treatment age, and forest type? (3) How does fire weather moderate the effects of treatments? We found overwhelming evidence that mechanical thinning with prescribed burning, mechanical thinning with pile burning, and prescribed burning only are effective at reducing subsequent wildfire severity, resulting in reductions in severity between 62% and 72% relative to untreated areas. In comparison, thinning only was less effective – underscoring the importance of treating surface fuels when mitigating wildfire severity is the management goal. The efficacy of these treatments did not vary among forest types assessed in this study and was high across a range of fire weather conditions. Prior wildfire had more complex impacts on subsequent wildfire severity, which varied with forest type and initial wildfire severity. Across treatment types, we found that effectiveness of treatments declined over time, with the mean reduction in wildfire severity decreasing more than twofold when wildfire occurred greater than 10 years after initial treatment. Our meta-analysis provides up-to-date information on the extent to which active forest management reduces wildfire severity and facilitates better outcomes for people and forests during future wildfire events.

150 K Folks in Front Range Colorado Have Power Shut Off: TSW PSA on How to Prepare

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Sorry this image is so fuzzy, pulled from news video.

This may be of interest to other folks…. dried grass and high winds are nothing new to the Front Range of Colorado.  However, after the Marshall Fire, a concern over liability on the part of Xcel Energy may well be new, hence.. preventative as well as accidental outages.

From the Denver Post:

The news follows the utilities company’s Sunday prediction that it could take through Monday or longer to restore power to more than 87,000 Xcel customers statewide who were still experiencing outages by 5:45 p.m. on Sunday.

As of Monday morning at 10:25 a.m., over 750 outages were reported by just over 29,000 customers in the Denver area, whereas the Boulder area still saw close to 225 outages affecting roughly 12,000 customers, according to the Xcel electric outage map.

A total of more than 150,000 were impacted by the loss of power — severe weather caused outages for around 100,000 customers, while another 55,000 in six counties had their power shut off by Xcel in an effort to prevent wildfires.

“For the first time in Colorado, Xcel Energy conducted a public safety power shutoff,” said spokesperson Tyler Bryant in a Sunday statement. “While many customers will have service restored later today, with the significant number outages from this weather event, this restoration process will extend into Monday, April 8 and possibly longer for some customers.”

With more than 400 crew members working on restoring power to more than 600 miles of affected lines, the company had addressed the needs of about 63,000 customers by Sunday evening.

Because Xcel changed its system settings during the extreme winds to restrict automatic power restoration, “this safety measure means power outages are likely to last longer than they typically would,” Bryant said.

Since we have both high wind and dried grass in the winter, perhaps electrifying everything is not a very resilient approach? Just a thought.  Also, on the app Nextdoor, there was a certain (large) amount of unhappiness with the way this rolled out (although Xcel had its defenders, and lots of appreciation for employees working to get power restored). A critique From one neighbor:

1. Confusing messages sent out before cutting off our power.

2. No map provided in advance that would have helped know if any businesses, friends, neighbors still had power.

3. Outage map provided after power cut off that is just as useless.

4. Automated emails sent after power cut off assuring us that they are working diligently to get the power back on. Which we know they are not.

5. Another automated email sent out asking what we think of the new electricity rate structure.

6. They have now said that people preemptively shut off have lower priority than those who lost power due to the storm 🤦 Hard to think how they could have done this any worse.

Another thought.. a human being might want to review automated emails prior to sending to  see if they fit the current situation.

You all might remember this piece from the LA Times in 2019-

Pacific Gas & Electric cut power to more than 700,000 customers in 34 counties early Wednesday because of high winds. Some households were without electricity for 72 hours, a spokesman said. Southern California Edison shut off electricity to more than 24,000 customers, also starting Wednesday.

The biggest failure, experts and customers alike said, was communication. Residents complained they did not receive adequate notice of the shutdown or no notice at all and could not get on the utilities’ websites.

Lessons learned from the shutdowns are critical because more will take place, experts said.

“I suspect for the next few years these are going to occur,” said Severin Borenstein, faculty director of UC Berkeley’s Energy Institute. “No one involved in this thing thinks it was a one-time event.”

The California Public Utilities Commission on Monday ordered PG&E to take immediate corrective actions, and Gov. Gavin Newsom called on the utility to give residential customers who lost power $100 rebates.

Commission President Marybel Batjer told PG&E it must try to restore power within 12 hours in the future, reduce the size of outages, develop systems to ensure call centers and the website are accessible and develop a “communication structure” with counties and tribal governments so they can respond to emergencies.

“Failures in execution, combined with the magnitude of this … event, created an unacceptable situation that should never be repeated,” Batjer said.

He said the state should create some sort of committee that includes public safety officials, elected officials, utilities and the Public Utilities Commission to make power shut-off calls in the future.

Utilities have sparked fires for decades, but they are now more destructive because of droughts produced by climate change and the movement of people into more remote, highly vegetated regions, experts said.

Southern California Edison’s customers complained the utility failed to give them adequate warning.

They hit the utility with questions about the timing, criticism over lack of immediate notice and outrage over spoiled food, stress-related health effects and fears that trapped cars beneath electric garage doors would leave people stranded in the event of a fire.

“We strive to keep the customer informed always, but we may not be able to depending on circumstances,” said Edison spokesman Robert Villegas.

Anyway, the article has interesting lessons learned and ideas for improvement (that could have helped Xcel) .. but given the warning timeframes, maybe it’s best to be ready for a shutoff, even if you live far from the WUI.

Here’s the PSA from Xcel:

Put together an outage kit
Include things like flashlights, batteries, portable chargers, a phone that does not require electricity, a non-electric clock, bottled water, non-perishable food, a manual can opener and a first aid kit
Make sure your computer is protected from surges
Keep devices charged
“Customers who use medical equipment that relies on electrical service should take steps to prepare for extended outages,” Xcel said.

Other things to consider include lighting options for when the power goes out, using a cooler to avoid opening the fridge and using a generator.

“For customers with power outages, you may want to unplug appliances containing electronic components, such as televisions, microwaves, and computers to prevent damage as power is being restored,” Xcel said.

Last year, Sammy Roth wrote a piece on the problem of reliability with regard to tolerating more blackouts during the transition time to solar and wind energy storage technologies.

I got a similar reaction on Twitter.

Of the hundreds of people who responded to my question, most rejected the idea that more power outages are even remotely acceptable — for reasons beyond mere convenience. A former member of the L.A. Department of Water and Power’s board of commissioners wrote that “someone dies every time we have a power outage.” An environment reporter in Phoenix — where temperatures have exceeded 110 degrees for a record 20 straight days — said simply, “Yikes.”

Moura expanded on his skepticism by noting that modern life is more reliant on electricity than ever before.

Those of us lucky enough to have air conditioning depend on it to stay safe during heat waves — which can already kill thousands of people and are only getting more dangerous as fossil fuels warm the planet. Elderly people and individuals with certain health conditions are more vulnerable to heat illness and sometimes need electricity to power their medical equipment, such as ventilators, dialysis machines and motorized wheelchairs. Our refrigerators, cellphones and internet service all depend on reliable electricity.

“It’s not really about keeping the lights on. It’s about keeping people alive,” Moura said.

Two years ago this month, California narrowly avoided rolling outages after wildfire smoke knocked out electric lines that carry large amounts of power from the Pacific Northwest. The state again toed the precipice during a hot spell last September, fending off blackouts only after officials sent out an emergency alert to millions of mobile phones begging people to use less power.

Again and again, I’ve found myself asking: Would it be easier and less expensive to limit climate change — and its deadly combination of worsening heat, fire and drought and flood — if we were willing to live with the occasional blackout?

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Indeed, solving climate change isn’t as simple as replacing gas and coal plants with solar and wind farms. We need to get tens of millions of electric vehicles on the road, and tens of millions of electric heat pumps in people’s homes. We also need to build a lot more long-distance power lines to move renewable electricity from where it’s generated to where it’s needed.

More powerlines, more maintenance, more cutoffs, more dependency on electricity.. maybe  it’s time to rethink this?