SOS Forests

Torching the Budget

Today the Sacramento Bee published an interesting article entitled “Forest Service burns through its budgets” [here]. A quote:

WASHINGTON – The Forest Service has struggled for years to pay for fighting fires that last year alone scorched almost 10 million acres, mainly in the West. As fire seasons grow longer and the blazes more intense in forests stressed by global warming, the agency’s funding woes mount.

In fact, the Forest Service has already spent roughly $900 million this year, almost 75 percent of its fire-suppression budget, and the season is just nearing its peak.

Nearly half the Forest Service’s annual budget now is spent on battling wildfires or trying to prevent them. In 1991, 13 percent of its budget was spent on fires.

As the costs have grown, so has the toll on the agency’s other programs. To pay for its fire programs, the Forest Service has raided accounts used for everything from reforestation to fish and wildlife to building campgrounds and trails. In theory, those accounts are expected to be repaid. In practice, it’s not that easy.

“The whole damn thing is imploding,” said Casey Judd, business manager of the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association, in Inkom, Idaho. The group represents firefighters in five federal agencies.

Every year, Congress provides emergency money to bail out the Forest Service and other federal land management agencies. Over the past 10 years, it has provided $3.9 billion in emergency funding to fight fires. But some on Capitol Hill are getting tired of the Forest Service coming hat-in-hand every year because its budgets fail to adequately reflect firefighting costs.

“The Forest Service would be on its knees except for the money Congress provides,” said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., who as chairman of the House interior appropriations subcommittee oversees the agency’s budget. “This thing is pretty close to being out of control.”

Not close, Norm, it’s there. Furthermore the USFS fire budget has been out of control for at least 3 years now. So has the acreage burned, which has been rising steadily for at least five years.

Costs have risen right along with acreage. Already this year we have experienced a 245,000 acre fire (the Basin/Indians Complex [here]) that has burned up $115 million in fire supression dollars to date. It will soon be the most expensive fire in California history.

There is considerable discussion as to why fire acreage and costs are rising exponentially. From the Sac Bee article:

Rey and Dicks also disagree over the main [cause] of the Forest Service’s increased fire costs.

The biggest “cost driver,” according to Rey, has been new home construction in forested areas. Over the past 20 years, 8.4 million homes have been built in such areas, he said. Firefighters have had to change their tactics in battling many fires because of forced evacuations and threatened housing, Rey said.

Dicks said global climate change has added a month onto each end of the fire season and often makes the blazes more extreme.

“This administration won’t admit climate change is a reality,” he said.

Both are wrong. There has been no new home construction in the Ventana Wilderness Area, site of the Basin/Indians Fire. Homes are not allowed in designated wilderness areas or in national forests. Nobody can buy a lot on federal property and build a home there. I mean, duh!!!! Mark Rey has either flipped his wig or, more accurately, is spewing enormous lies to hide the truth.

And there has been no global warming for 10 years. As a matter of fact, 2008 has been the coldest year globally since the 1970’s. Norm Dicks has also flipped his wig or is making up enormous lies to hide the truth.

The Basin/Indians Fire, soon to be the most expensive in CA history (when it tops the $120 million Zaca Fire of last year), has been an exercise in backburning. Most of the 245,000 acres burned because they were set on fire by federal “firefighters.” The personnel carried drip torches, not shovels. Homes adjacent to federal land were not fought by federal crews but were left to the devices of the homeowners. Firefighters fled from Tassajara and Big Sur when their set fires spread off federal lands onto private property.

Let It Burn is not cheap; in fact, it is very expensive. That’s because Let It Burn is mostly Set It On Fire in enormous backburns that consume vast acreages. In numerous cases on the California fires still burning, aerial ignitions by helicopters dropping napalm balls have been utilized, and that kind of thing is spendy, just like modern warfare.

The deliberate incineration of public forests also results in resource losses that exceed fire “suppression” costs by a factor of ten or more. As a simple rule of thumb, a $billion in fire expenses means $10 billion worth of timber, watershed values, wildlife habitat, recreation opportunities, etc. have been burned up.

Neither Congress nor the USFS leadership ever calculate the losses from catastrophic fire. They don’t want to even think about the losses. They don’t want the public to think about the losses, either. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Both Dicks and Rey have some clue that the rising cost and acreage of fires might in some way be due to the FUELS!!! From the article:

One answer to the funding problem may be to reduce the amount of hazardous fuel, dried brush, dead trees and other woody debris in the forests, he said. Since 2001, federal land agencies have cleaned 21 million acres, or an area larger than the state of Ohio.

The agencies are clearing between 4 million and 5 million acres a year, but 180 million acres remain untreated, including 80 million to 90 million acres in critical condition or locations.

Dicks and others agree that removing hazardous fuels is important. But they argue the Bush administration sought to cut the Forest Service’s budget for dealing with hazardous fuels by $22 million.

Feinstein said the emergency supplemental she’s writing would include an additional $175 million for hazardous fuels reduction.

Those numbers are faulty, too. Of the 21 million acres the USFS claims as “cleaned,” more than 90% were simply burned on purpose. That burning did not “clean” anything. The dead fuels remaining exceed the dead fuels before the “cleansing” fires, because the fires killed green trees. Not only has the hazard not been abated, it’s worse now.

Someday, maybe, Congress and the USFS will catch on to the notion that the ONLY WAY to halt spiraling fire suppression costs, acreages, and losses is to restore forests to fire resilient historic conditions.

The public has already caught that clue. The public stands aghast as our federal government deliberately incinerates whole forests and adjacent communities, $billions of our tax dollars, and tens of $billions of our natural resource values, and mouths pathetic lies as excuses for their barking incompetence, ignorance, and corruption.