The Press Enterprise
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A July order for the U.S. Forest Service to come up with a more environmentally careful method for using air-dropped fire retardant on wildfires is not expected to change firefighting tactics in Southern California, at least for now.
The Forest Service has until the end of 2011 to study the use of retardant and submit a plan.
The ruling in U.S. District Court in Montana was in response to a lawsuit filed by the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a Eugene, Ore.-based group. The suit was prompted by the death of about 50 endangered steelhead trout in a creek near Santa Barbara. The deaths were blamed on the fire retardant Phos Chek, which had been dropped in the area during the Jesusita Fire there last year.
“We won,” said Andy Stahl, executive director of the environmental group. “We proved the Forest Service broke the law. More importantly, our goal here is that retardant should be used where it’s safe and effective.”
Stahl said the Forest Service needs to avoid dropping the chemical retardant, a mixture of water, ammonia and either phosphate or sulfate ions, near endangered plant species and near bodies of water or water courses.
Jennifer Jones, spokeswoman for the Forest Service Missoula Technology and Development Center, said existing guidelines already prohibit dropping Phos Chek within 300 feet of a body of water or waterway. The only exception, the existing policy states, is when there are “terrain constraints, life and property concerns, or lack of ground personnel.”
Jones said those guidelines were contained within an environmental assessment published in 2008. The district court ruled the assessment was not legal and required the Forest Service by the end of next year to produce a more thorough analysis, an environmental impact statement, for the use of fire retardants.
“The judge was asking us to take a more detailed, in-depth look at this,” Jones said. “He said, ‘You didn’t analyze it properly.’ ”
Whether that analysis will mean substantial changes in the use of fire retardants, she said, “it’s way too early to speculate.”
In the interim, the court did not order any restrictions on current practices on the use of retardant.
Stahl questions the use of chemical retardants in wildland fires.
“There’s no evidence that fire retardant is effective,” Stahl said. “Retardant is good at putting out fires that aren’t dangerous to homes. It’s really lousy and does virtually no good in terms of home protection in stopping threatening fires.”
Stahl bases those claims on the fact that despite increased use of fire retardant in recent years, the number of acres burned and the number of homes lost in the West, and particularly in Southern California, continue to rise.
Jones said those increases speak more to fire conditions aggravated by such factors as the earlier onset of dry weather, protracted drought and an overabundance of fuels from years of fire suppression. Controlled lab tests, she said, have shown that fire retardant is up to two times more effective than water at slowing the spread and intensity of a fire when fuels are still wet from an application. It continues to hinder fire progression even after it dries, she said.
Stahl said he expects the environmental impact statement to address areas with endangered plant species. Many of those species, he said, exist in areas with nutrient-poor soils. Since Phos Chek contains fertilizer, dropping it in such areas would promote the growth of invasive species that might overrun the endangered ones.
In the long run, he said, “There’s going to be new restrictions placed on fire retardants.”
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