Alex Wigglesworth, environment reporter with the Los Angeles Times, wrote a good news story about our fire retardant lawsuit.
“As the use of aerially delivered retardant has soared in recent years,” she writes, “some forest advocates say the substance does more harm than good. They claim wildfire retardant drops are expensive, ineffective and a growing source of pollution for rivers and streams.”
She then quotes FSEEE Executive Director Andy Stahl: “There’s no scientific evidence that it makes any difference in wildfire outcomes…. This is like dumping cash out of airplanes, except that it’s toxic and you can’t buy anything with it because it doesn’t work.”
Wigglesworth accurately reports that our lawsuit is based on repeated Forest Service violations of the Clean Water Act. She also reports on the accelerating use of retardant — 52.8 million gallons in 2021 — and notes that more than half of that retardant was dumped onto California forests.
In its court filings, the Forest Service contends that the only way to avoid violating the Clean Water Act “is to stop using retardant altogether — an action that they say would deprive the service of a crucial firefighting tool,” Wigglesworth reports.
Of course, this begs the question: If aerial fire retardant is “a crucial firefighting tool,” why are there no scientific studies to support that claim?
Since we filed our lawsuit, the Forest Service asked the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a general permit that will allow it to continue to pollute waterways with fire retardant. Wigglesworth reports that the EPA responded that it will take “about 2½ years” to complete that process, prompting multiple petitions to intervene in the case from the timber industry, firefighting trade organizations, and communities in fire-prone landscapes.
The California Forestry Association is a trade group that represents lumber mills, veneer plants, and biomass facilities. Matt Dias, CFA chief executive, provided Wigglesworth with a foreboding quote about the perils of FSEEE’s lawsuit: “The impacts that everybody is experiencing in California and beyond are so dramatic that we have no option other than to build a coalition to try to cease any action that would result in a higher risk as it relates to wildfire damages.”
While Dias’ statement sounds ominous, his apocalyptic prognostication is just another public relations word salad with no substance.
Butte County has filed to intervene against FSEEE in the case, and Butte County Supervisor Doug Teeter told Wigglesworth, “My understanding is that fire retardant is not good for waterways, but think of the other side of it. A massive forest fire burning down a huge amount of acreage is probably worse for the environment.”
Teeter is a sympathetic character because he lost his home in the Camp Fire, but his statement reveals that he knows little about forest ecology, carbon dioxide emissions, or any wildfire-related scientific discipline. Recent studies have shown that large forest fires emit less CO2 than wildfire mitigation — from thinning trees to transporting the low-quality timber to processing it and burning the biomass as fuel.
Timothy Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter and executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, told Wigglesworth, “The Forest Service feels pressure to do something, as much for public relations as any operational benefit…. But it’s just a big airshow.”
