Contact Your Senators Today.
We need your help to stop the Forest Service from polluting invaluable water resources with aerial fire retardant. In response to our lawsuit to force the Forest Service to follow the law, members of Congress have introduced HR 1586, which would exempt fire retardant from the Clean Water Act.
This battle will be won or lost in the Senate, so please call your senators today and ask them them to oppose HR 1586.
When contacting your senators, tell them who you are and “I oppose HR 1586.” Mention two or three reasons why exempting fire retardant from the Clean Water Act is a bad idea. Examples include:
- Fire retardant contains cadmium, a highly toxic heavy metal.
- There is no scientific evidence that retardant keeps fires small.
- Fire retardant kills fish, like endangered trout species.
- Fire retardant can cause toxic algae blooms.
Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 to connect to each U.S. Senate office for your state.
The Forest Service actually admits it is violating the Clean Water Act by dumping chemical pollutants into waterways, but instead of complying with the law, the Forest Service is now relying on representatives from districts with financial interests in the fire-industrial complex to change the law.
These members of Congress claim that following the Clean Water Act would put “the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, at risk by removing one of the most important tools that we have to fight fires in the West.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no scientific evidence that fire retardant makes any difference in wildfire outcomes, nor does the Forest Service claim otherwise. But the truth doesn’t matter to these politicians; the air tanker bases and corporate interests in their districts are what count!
To make matters worse, we’ve learned that aerial fire retardant contains cadmium, a heavy metal that is toxic to all life. Thanks to a Forest Service whistleblower, we know the cadmium in fire retardant comes from a mine on national forest land. Nonetheless, the Forest Service professes ignorance as to the source of the cadmium while continuing to dump millions of gallons of this toxic stew into rivers and lakes throughout our national forests.
Not only is the Forest Service knowingly breaking the law, it is also ignoring its mandate under the 1897 Organic Administrative Act, which mandated forest protections, in part, to protect our sources of clean drinking water, many of which originate on Forest Service land.
As always any donation you can send our way will help us fight to keep our rivers and lakes clean. Thank you for helping to protect our rivers and streams from toxic firefighting chemicals!
