Group files second suit against USFS about retardant

From the Missoulian, an excerpt:

"An environmental watchdog group on Wednesday sued the U.S. Forest Service for a second time over the agency's use of aerial fire retardants.

The Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, an Oregon-based nonprofit group, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Missoula.

The lawsuit is part of the group's campaign to reform the Forest Service's wildland firefighting mission.

The campaign includes banning retardant airdrops nationwide unless people or homes are threatened, focusing on fire prevention around communities, and allowing more remote wildfires to burn as a natural part of the ecosystem.

The lawsuit accuses the Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service of failing to fully evaluate the environmental impact of the aerial retardants.

Studies show the ammonium-based retardants are toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms, and promote the spread of flammable invasive weeds.

FSEEE won an earlier retardant-related lawsuit against the Forest Service when U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy ruled that the agency had violated federal law by failing to properly review the environmental impact of retardants on national forests.

That lawsuit - which was filed in 2003, a year after a retardant airdrop killed 20,000 fish in an Oregon stream - was dismissed in February when the Forest Service complied with Molloy's order to complete an environmental assessment of aerial retardants.

FSEEE's latest lawsuit challenges the Forest Service's assessment, which found that the chemical red slurry has no significant environmental impact.

In their biological opinions, the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service said retardants jeopardize 45 endangered or threatened fish, plant, insect, mussel and amphibian species and their critical habitats.

The lawsuit includes those two agencies because they said the Forest Service could avoid jeopardizing the environment if it followed “reasonable and prudent alternatives” when dropping retardants.

[...]

The new lawsuit challenges the three agencies' environmental analyses, conclusions and decisions, saying they violate the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws.

FSEEE said the Forest Service should be forced to complete an environmental impact statement, which is more detailed than an environmental assessment, and that the “reasonable and prudent alternatives” do not prevent harm to the protected species and their critical habitat."

The Flathead Beacon at Kalispell, Montana had this to say, in part:

[...]
"Nuts? Yep, yet FSEEE righteously claims its “mission is to forge a socially responsible value system for the U.S. Forest Service.” They intend to ram their retardant version of social responsibility through the courts, and just might.

Don’t be surprised if FSEEE files their case, and on some trivial technicality, an injunction comes down at the worst possible time. Some poor fire boss will have to announce: “Folks, we need to ground our air fleet and wash out the tanks today. We’re also pulling all our crews, as the bombers were the last chance we had of holding this line without killing someone. Sorry. The judge says a one in 5,000 chance of killing a few minnows overrides any of your trivial concerns. We hope you got your heirlooms and families out in time, have a nice day.”

Retardant justice, indeed."

Photo courtesy of the Zion Helitack blog

Lawsuit against Mark Rey and the USFS is dismissed

From a story at Montana's News Station.com

A lawsuit that forced the nation's top forestry official to apologize in a Missoula courtroom is over. The lawsuit by Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics was filed in 2003, and charged the U.S. Forest Service with violating federal law by indiscriminately dropping retardant on forest fires.

Two weeks ago that case reached a climax when Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey appeared before federal judge Donald Molloy, and faced a possible contempt of court citation.

Molloy was angry that the Forest Service missed deadlines for delivering environmental review documents to him, and for generally taking more time than he liked. Ultimately he decided not to find Rey or the Forest Service in contempt, but not before Rey and other agency officials apologized multiple times.

Now, the case is done. Molloy signed an order last Wednesday dismissing the lawsuit. The judge wrote that the Forest Service has complied with the procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, and so there's nothing left to decide.

P-3 Orion

I ran across this fantastic photo of air tanker 00, a P-3 Orion, dropping on a fire near Cedar City, Utah, in 2006. It is from a new blog about the helitack crew at Zion National Park. Click on the photo to see a larger version. (I took the liberty of cropping it.)

Retardant Use Can Increase Cheatgrass?

It seems that every few years another issue about the use of aerial fire retardant appears. The latest is that the nitrogen and phosphorous in the retardant produce a condition that encourages cheatgrass, while it has little effect on native grasses.

The photo from the Missoulian apparently shows green strips of cheatgrass growing in the areas where air tankers dropped retardant on on a fire on Mount Jumbo near Missoula on July 4, 2006.

According to the story in the Missoulian:

"According to preliminary results, the retardant's fertilizerlike nutrients significantly increased cheatgrass and tumbleweed mustard, both exotic annual species, at the expense of native perennial grasses on the mountainside.

The invaders benefit from the jolt of nitrogen and phosphorous in the slurry, which native and exotic perennials largely ignore because they are accustomed to nutrient-poor soils.

Cheatgrass and tumbleweed mustard didn't spread where the fire burned alone, but they exploded in areas that were burned and hit with retardant, the study found.

The two invaders have spread from 51 percent to 88 percent on Mount Jumbo since the retardant was dropped, although two perennial invaders, spotted knapweed and Dalmation toadflax, decreased.

The Fourth of July fire burned about 320 acres and fire retardant was dropped on about 12 acres of Mount Jumbo, where noxious weeds have become widespread over the past 20 years.

The two-year study, which is to be completed next spring, is being conducted by Besaw and Giles Thelan, a research specialist at UM's plant ecology laboratory."

Air Tanker Drops Retardant in Wilderness Area; No Fire Nearby

Last year wilderness rangers in the Inyo National Forest in California began receiving reports from hikers about a red stain near the 13,200' Feather Peak in the John Muir Wilderness. It turned out to be retardant apparently dropped by an air tanker. This was very odd, since there had been no fire in the area.

Further investigation uncovered the fact that it was dropped July 8, 2007 by the crew of Tanker 55, a P2V launched from Porterville, California. The flight crew initially said that the aircraft developed engine trouble and they jettisoned the 17,500 pounds of retardant for safety reasons. This is standard procedure during some types of in-flight emergencies--a lighter load makes it easier to fly a crippled airplane. The crew, however, did not report the engine problem, or request any repairs upon landing.

Because some aspects of the crew's story did not add up, US Forest Service Law Enforcement investigators got involved. There are indications now that there was no engine trouble, but the air crew had to dump the load somewhere, since they could not land with a full tank of retardant. Rather than drop it in the designated areas for retardant dumping, they, for some reason, chose to drop it near a peak in a wilderness area... a rocky peak with little vegetation. At 13,200', the red retardant will likely be visible for years before it degrades.

2007 - Second Costliest Fire Season on Record

According to the Associated Press, 2007 was the second costliest season ever.

"BOISE, Idaho -- Wildfires scorched an area four times the size of Yellowstone National Park and destroyed more than 5,200 buildings in 2007, one of the nation's worst fire seasons despite a record amount of retardant dropped by aircraft.

The Boise-based National Interagency Fire Center reported nearly 14,000 square miles burned and the federal government spent more than $1.8 billion fighting wildfires, making it the second costliest season on record.

Even though fire managers used 22.4 million gallons of fire retardant - nearly triple the 10-year average - the area burned in 2007 trails only 2006 when fire consumed 15,500 square miles.

The number of buildings burned in 2007 ranks second since current counting methods began in 1999, trailing the 5,700 buildings destroyed in 2003, the fire center reported."

The emphasis in the story on the use of retardant is interesting. This will only reinforce the impression in the public that air tankers are the answer to keeping fires small, while the truth is, large wind-driven fires are not suppressed by air tankers.

(Photo by Bill Gabbert)