Who should pay for protective fuel mitigation treatments?
I try not to be too judgmental about these things, but it appears that based on this bill, the rest of the state (we are talking farmers in the Eastern Plains as well as urbanites) are going to pay for mitigation through tax credits rather than require homeowners to do it. This whole approach strikes me as 1) not honoring the work of the task force, 2) not being willing to really address the problem and 3) not likely to be very effective. For Coloradans, we might want to write our legislators or call and let them know how we feel.
Here’s the link and below is an excerpt:
“We considered it, but no one thought about moving anything forward,” said Sen. Matt Jones, D-Louisville, a member of the interim Wildfire Matters Review committee, about the recommendation of a fee on homeowners who choose to build in heavily wooded areas. “We want to provide incentives for people to do the right thing and keep firefighters safe.”
Some oppose fees
Developers and the real estate industry opposed fees on property owners and a state building code. If homeowners live in high-risk burn areas, they’re likely to pay higher insurance premiums, said Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association.
“But insurance companies consider a variety of risk factors, like building materials and distance to a fire station,” Walker said.
At a news conference Thursday to outline some of the proposed wildfire bills, Hickenlooper said issues such as fees and building codes are delegated to counties and municipalities.
While state resources are used to fight fires that often cross county lines, Hickenlooper said, “we don’t have to lean on (local governments) with a heavy shoulder.”
Hickenlooper agreed with Jones in calling for an incentives approach. Of the items outlined in the task force report, lawmakers on the interim committee did heed the suggestions of creating a tax credit for mitigation.
On Friday, perhaps the most ambitious proposal toward fighting Colorado’s wildfire epidemic is set to be unveiled by Sen. Steve King, R-Grand Junction; the measure calls for the state to fund its own aerial firefighting fleet. A bill sponsored by King last year and passed into law allowed the state to create its own fleet, but the measure had its funding stripped.
At the time, King, along with co-sponsor Sen. Cheri Jahn, D-Wheat Ridge, estimated it would cost Colorado about $20 million annually to support a fleet of aircraft which would be paid for through a mix of public and private funds, advertising and a new state lottery game.
“This provides a solution to help save land, structures and Colorado drinking water. Fires are a clear danger,” King, a member of the interim committee, said this week. “Enough with the talk. Let’s pass this serious bill and get it funded and protect Colorado.”
The article is about Mesa County but I couldn’t find a map like this of them so this is San Juan County. You can click on it if you want to see the names of the towns and roads.
This article was on the front page of the Denver Post. Again, I think it’s interesting what having regional newspapers means to what kind of coverage there is of regional issues. But, of course, all public lands are national issues. But what would a newspaper reader in San Francisco or New York or DC see in their paper about public lands compared to the Denver or Salt Lake or Boise or Missoula paper? Something to think about as the newspaper industry deconstructs..
Anyway, below is an excerpt. Note that D’s and R’s are together on this..and you don’t need lack of timber receipts for the issue to be a problem.
WASHINGTON — Colorado’s rural, mountainous counties that boast some of the most picturesque , yet isolated, scenery in the nation face the prospect of receiving $31.9 million fewer federal dollars this year.
The money was left out of last week’s budget deal approved by Congress and supported by President Barack Obama.
Known as “Payments in Lieu of Taxes,” or PILT, the federal payments backfill budgets in places such as Mesa County, which has a lot of federal land that doesn’t generate any property taxes. The dynamic puts Mesa at a disadvantage compared with, say, Denver County, whose dense population generates county dollars to take care of infrastructure, emergency services and roads.
Colorado is among the five biggest recipients of federal PILT dollars. Other large recipients include Utah, Wyoming and Montana.
“If any other property taxpayer in the country decided that ‘Money was too tight, I’m in a deficit situation and I’m just going to quit paying my property taxes,’ they’d find their property on the auction block,” said Mesa County Commissioner Steve Acquafresca. “Yet the federal government exempts themselves from that.”
PILT, like hundreds of other line items in the voluminous federal budget, has a history of being tucked into various funding measures over the years.
Created in the 1970s, it was funded through the regular appropriations process on Capitol Hill until 2008. Then it was stuck in the Troubled Asset Relief Program bill for five years. Last year, it was tucked in transportation funding.
Last week’s budget, passed by both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, failed to include PILT funding.
“I’m very disturbed … that the decision was made to zero it out,” said Rep. Scott Tipton, a Republican whose 3rd District gets more of these federal dollars than anywhere else in Colorado and who voted against the budget package. “We’re concerned on the impact primarily on our communities. … This is a real challenge. When a hiker gets lost on federal land, the federal government doesn’t help — it’s going to be the local sheriff.”
The federal government owns roughly 75 percent of Mesa County’s land. The county’s 146,000 denizens live on the remaining fourth, mostly in Grand Junction and Fruita.
Yet Acquafresca points out that county officials are in charge of all the land — including road access, emergency service and law enforcement.
The county received $3.12 million last year from the federal government. The money accounts for about 5 percent of the county’s overall budget. Mesa gets more of the federal money than any other county in Colorado.
Acquafresca and his commissioner colleagues have budgeted this year for the federal dollars and says he doesn’t know what they’ll do if the money doesn’t come through in June.
“We don’t provide frivolous services,” he said. “Everything we do in this community is vital.”
Tipton, who is in Colorado this week on a congressional recess with the other members, said GOP leadership assured him they would try to get PILT funding restored in the Farm Bill.
Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, who was on the Western Slope this week hearing from county commissioners on the matter, is making the same push from his position on the Farm Bill conference committee.
“It’s very, very important to the operating budgets to counties all over Colorado, vitally important to first responders and schools. That’s the message I heard loud and clear,” Bennet said.
La Plata County Commissioner Julie Westendorff said the $607,959 her county received last year helped fund rescue efforts and emergency services in the bountiful, heavily traversed mountains near Durango.
You can check out the comments too, but some of them devolve pretty quickly to partisan name-calling (another one says that search and rescue is reimbursed and not really an issue).
Recent photo of the Black Hills Advisory Committee (FACA)
So sorry.. there was a “here” in the original post that didn’t have the link. HERE is the link.
I am solely responsible for choosing the excerpts. I felt I had to excerpt, because although the whole thing was worth reading, it was too long for one post. Maybe I should’ve had several posts.. but then the discussion would have been in each post. Anyway, I am not allowing comments on this post because it would be better in my opinion if all the comments were on the previous post here.
Update: Thanks to the Black Hills for the recent photo of their FACA Committee!
CHAD HANSON, John Muir Project, in the Manteca, Calif., Bulletin today, with his typical message:
<a href=”http://www.mantecabulletin.com/section/160/article/96042/”>Rim Fire logging plan poses major threat to Sierra wildlife</a>
“The proposed logging would heavily target the rarest, most threatened, and most biologically diverse and rich forest habitat type in the Sierra Nevada—“snag forest habitat”—and it would further threaten numerous rare and declining wildlife species that depend on this habitat, including the Black-backed Woodpecker.”
OK, so why wasn’t Hanson writing editorials before the fire, advocating for using fire to create snag forest habitat?
This is from Barry Wynsma in Evergreen. Thanks to Jim Petersen for permission to repost. We have discussed the Black Hills success story in terms of litigation and appeals before. here and here. There are several other posts about the Hills you can find by searching in the search box.
There are many notable things about the Hills, including the fact that they have a formal FACA committee (photo above).
It’s fairly long and worth reading in its entirety, but I focused on this section that talks about litigation. Feel free to comment on any of the other parts as well.
The Alliance for The Wild Rockies, The Wild West Institute, The Lands Council, The Native Ecosystems Council, Friends of the Clearwater, Etcetera…
Another reason – maybe the reason – why comparing the Northern Region with the Black Hills National forest may not be equitable is that the sheer number of species that have to be dealt with in Region 1 makes its national forests huge and easy targets for environmentalists who oppose active forest management.
During fiscal year 2012, there were 140 appeals filed in the Northern Region5. As of August of 2013, 44 more appeals were filed in the Northern Region. Of those, 16 were against projects that included commercial sales of forest products [personal communication with FS]. Also as of August 2012, personnel in the R1 regional office told me the appeals/objections were holding up about 225 million board feet of commercial timber sales.
By comparison, the Black Hills National Forest received 3 appeals [actually objections under the “218” rules] in 2012 and none in 2013.
In referencing the Forest Service Appeals and Litigation website6 I can see that in the Northern Region, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, The Land’s Council, Friends of the Clearwater and the Native Ecosystems Council seem to like to appeal all projects that involve the commercial sale of forest products. Readers that check out this website will also see other groups and individuals that have made it their agenda to appeal commercial timber sale projects.
In comparison and referencing the same Forest Service website, Friends of the Norbeck, Prairie Hills Audubon Society and the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance appears to be the only environmental groups that occasionally appeal projects on the Black Hills National Forest.
The Government Accountability Office [GAO] provided data on Forest Service appeals and litigation for the period 2006-20087 for fuels reduction projects, not necessarily including all projects that involve commercial sale of forest products.
Excerpted from the GAO report are the following findings:
“In fiscal years 2006 through 2008, the Forest Service issued 1,415 decisions involving fuel reduction activities, covering 10.5 million acres.
Of this total, 1,191 decisions, covering about 9 million acres, were subject to appeal and 217-about 18 percent-were appealed. Another 121 decisions, covering about 1.2 million acres, were subject to objection and 49-about 40 percent-were objected to. The remaining 103 decisions were exempt from both objection and appeal. Finally, 29 decisions-about 2 percent of all decisions-were litigated, involving about 124,000 acres.
For 54 percent of the appeals filed, the Forest Service allowed the project to proceed without changes; 7 percent required some changes before being implemented; and 8 percent were not allowed to be implemented. The remaining appeals were generally dismissed for procedural reasons or withdrawn before they could be resolved. Regarding objections, 37 percent of objections resulted in no change to a final decision; 35 percent resulted in a change to a final decision or additional analysis on the part of the Forest Service; and the remaining 28 percent were set aside from review for procedural reasons or addressed in some other way. And finally, of the 29 decisions that were litigated, lawsuits on 21 decisions have been resolved, and 8 are ongoing. Of the lawsuits that have been resolved, the parties settled 3 decisions, 8 were decided in favor of the plaintiffs, and 10 were decided in favor of the Forest Service. All appeals and objections were processed within prescribed time frames-generally, within 90 days of a decision (for appeals), or within 60 days of the legal notice of a proposed decision (for objections).”
Note that this report found that of the projects involved in this report, 18 percent were appealed, 40 percent were objected to and “only” about two percent were litigated. Some environmentalists like to use this two percent figure to downplay the significance of their commercial timber sale appeals.
While this may be true on its face, it reminds me of the Forest Service claim that more than 90 percent of all wildfires in the U.S. each year are put out before they become catastrophic. Whether it’s a big fire or a big lawsuit, the two percent we are discussing is causing significant damage to the environment, to the ability for the Forest Service to manage timber stands that are suitable for commercial timber harvests and to the economic stability of the communities surrounded by national forests.
Looking at the GAO report again, Tables 7 and 8 show that the top five “serial” appellants [to coin Jim Petersen’s phrase] in the Northern Region for the period 2006-2008 includes the Alliance for the Wild Rockies with 35 appeals/objections, the Wild West Institute with 26 appeals/objections, The Land’s Council with 25 appeals/objections, Native Ecosystems Council with 13 appeals/objections and Friends of the Clearwater with 8 appeals/objections. The Northern Region had a total of 187 appeals/objections during this period from the above mentioned and other groups and individuals.
Tables 7 and 8 also provide comparative data for the Rocky Mountain Region, but not the Black Hills National Forest specifically. Even so, the entire region – which includes the BHNF – saw only 44 appeals/objections during the same time frame. The appeals were filed by the following environmental groups: Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, 13 appeals/objections; Colorado Wild, 5 appeals/objections; Prairie Hills Audubon Society, 4 appeals; Western Watersheds Project, 1 appeal; Great Old Broads for Wilderness, 1 objection, Sierra Club, 1 objection, Sinapu, 1 objection, Wilderness Workshop, 1 objection and; Wild Connections, 1 appeal.
All these appeals, objections and a small percentage of litigation has a catastrophic affect not just on those projects that have been directly targeted, but more often than not, they indirectly effect most if not all projects nationally that are undergoing environmental analysis and the NEPA process. This is especially true for those projects that entail commercial timber harvests. There is a ripple effect on the recommended level of analysis needed to satisfy the latest court case decisions in order to head off the future threat of litigation.
Because appeals and litigation often involve the issues of threatened, endangered and sensitive species (based on my personal experience for the past 23 years as a project leader and 33 years as a Forest Service employee), you can plainly see that those forests and regions that have more listed species will have a correspondingly higher level of difficulty navigating the appeals/objection/litigation process.
Barry was a 33 year employee of the Forest Service, the last 23 as a small sales and special forest products project leader on the Bonners Ferry Ranger District, Idaho Panhandle NF. I specialized in small tree and biomass utilization projects and was also a co-author of the Forest Service’s Woody Biomass Utilization Desk Guide.
Here’s the link and below is an excerpt. For those tracking what papers (local, regional, national) publish what articles, this is from the Denver Post.
The Northern New Mexico Stockman’s Association has sent a letter to Vilsack and a White House senior policy adviser in response to a federal review that shows the U.S. Forest Service in New Mexico and Colorado was not complying with several civil rights requirements, including policies aimed at helping people who speak limited English.
The review also found the agency was inconsistent in implementing policies and procedures, namely when it came to the termination or suspension of grazing permits.
“The issue of access to grazing permits is of vital importance to the minority Hispanic and Native American ranchers in Colorado and New Mexico and has long been a source of conflict with the (Forest Service) over complaints of discriminatory practices,” the ranchers told Vilsack in their letter dated Jan. 6.
The Forest Service did not directly address the lack of civil rights compliance or the ranchers’ claims of discrimination.
The USDA’s Office of Compliance, Policy, Training and Cultural Transformation conducted a review last spring, interviewing about 100 agency managers and employees and more than 135 permit holders.
The report states that civil rights training has fallen by the wayside for many employees and the training that does take place is largely ineffective. Also, the agency’s anti-discrimination statement was consistently omitted from key documents, including grazing permit applications, and there was no evidence that brochures or websites were offered in any other language than English.
Forest Service representatives are supposed to meet with ranchers to discuss annual operating plans. However, the report found that employees prepared the instructions and told the ranchers to “take it or leave it” with little or no discussion.
According to the report, ranchers told the reviewers that Forest Service staff uses “Gestapo” intimidation tactics, such as constant threats, suspension of permits, retaliation and discrimination.
Agency officials in Washington, D.C., said the compliance reviews are done each year.
“The Forest Service takes the recommendations in the programmatic review seriously and views this report as an opportunity to better serve its constituents,” spokesman Larry Chambers said.
The report, which was issued in June as an internal document and obtained by the ranchers six months after filing a public records request, stated that the Forest Service must develop a detailed corrective action plan within 60 days. It is unclear if that has been done.
The question in my mind is whether these are truly discriminatory or it is about Regulators and Regulated Not Getting Along. Like People Not Getting Along at Work, sometimes it’s really hard to tell if the root cause is discrimination or others of the many forces that cause difficulties among different people.
I am posting this because, while some may be shocked, it seems to me that this is what actually happens. You can get all the advantages of learning this, without having to live in Washington D.C.!
People get elected. They have friends who helped elect them. Friends want favors. Agencies grant them. Scandalous, or the natural consequences of a Presidential election? I think it might be interesting to talk about where the line should be. What do you think?
And for those who wonder about how EPA is related to forests.. well here are a few examples. 1. Review of FS and BLM NEPA documents 2. Carbon accounting 3. Forest roads.
Here’s the link to the story and below is an excerpt.
The documents also reveal some of the internal deliberations behind recent controversial EPA decisions, such as the locations of public hearings on an agency rule imposing stringent emissions limits for power plants.
The agency came under fire from legislators representing coal-producing states for holding those hearings far from regions where most of the nation’s coal is produced.
“Instead of the EPA holding a coal hearing in the heart of Coal Country, Kentucky, he has chosen locations such as San Francisco and Washington, D.C.,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said at the time.
McConnell accused EPA of “once again showing its contempt for Kentucky’s coal miners and their families.”
Emails released by EELI show that EPA decided on the locations for those hearings after consulting with leading environmentalist groups that advocate the complete phase-out of coal power.
“San Fran and Seattle would be friendlier forums but CA has no coal plants and WA is phasing out its one plant,” noted EPA region 8 administrator James Martin in an email to Vicki Patton, general counsel at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).
“Choosing either may create opportunities for the industry to claim EPA is tilting the playing field,” Martin told Patton. “Denver would not have that problem.”
The EPA would later deny that Martin used a personal email for EPA business. The FOIAed messages reveal that that was not the case. His email to Patton was sent from a “.me” address.
Martin also advised Patton that hearings in Denver could be used to pressure the natural gas industry. “The gas industry has way more presence here, too. One last point in its favor–it will make Roy Palmer nervous!” he wrote.
Palmer is an executive at Xcel Energy, a leading natural gas utility in Colorado.
For those not following the missing, but now found, Forest Service employee contact information (started as a post by Andy Stahl and most recently updated here), Billy Schneider sent this in. While relevant to that thread, it also seemed interesting on its own. Here’s the link he sent and below is an excerpt.
This is a FOIA request related to the USDA Forest Service’s Office of the Chief, Office of Communication, Misconduct Investigation that was launched in 2013 and specifically the report that was produced from the investigation.
We all understand the sensitivity of releasing such reports which contain information protected by privacy laws. However, members of USDA’s legal counsel can, I’m sure, find an appropriate balance between privacy and the public’s right to know.
Regarding a similar misconduct matter, here’s a quote from a DOD IG spokeswoman who explained the balancing act between privacy and the public’s right to know. “Because such investigations involve information that may address the privacy concerns of the subject as well as witnesses and persons interviewed, reports of investigations frequently must be redacted extensively prior to release to the public. It has been the long standing practice of our office to release these reports in response to FOIA requests.”
Note the last line that, “It has been the long standing practice of our office to release these reports in response to FOIA requests.” Things should be no different at USDA.
As many know, I am in a master’s program in theology. It is on the quarter system. I can barely remember the last time I went to school in the 70’s. But the quarter system to me is like falling down a rabbit hole. One minute I’m leading a normal life and then the next minute there is a complex set of requirements which seem to suck up every ounce of energy; and every day is a due date for something. And it may be more difficult because my previous degrees are unrelated to this one, so the learning curve is exceedingly steep.
Anyway, this explains my curtailed presence on the blog (not a disappearance, just a curtailment) for the next 8 weeks or so. I will be keeping an eye on things and posting and commenting as the Spirit moves me (whoops, that was a bit of disciplinary cross-fertilization). Feel free to email me at terraveritas at gmail.com, if you would like to bring my attention to something.
