Retardant Justice
This essay was written last March by the venerable Forrest Grump.
It must be spring. After all, environmentalists have “sprung” at least six or seven new lawsuits on the Northwest court system the past couple weeks — and Earthjustice is about ready to file against delisting Northern Rockies wolves.
But it’s a just-dismissed lawsuit that has my attention, especially since I just got “carded” for this year’s fire season. It was filed by the Eugene, Oregon-based, so-called Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE) in District Judge Donald Molloy’s Missoula courtroom, way back in October 2003. I’ll spare you the stultifying federal acronym soup.
On the surface, FSEEE basically sued the Forest Service (USFS) in order to force a full-blown paperwork shuffle on the environmental effects of air-dropped fire retardants.
Judge Molloy took two years to rule for the paperwork shuffle, in October 2005, at which point FSEEE crowed “Group Wins Lawsuit to Protect Firefighters and the Environment From Toxic Aerial Fire Retardant.”
But the use of chemical retardants hasn’t been stopped. FSEEE never asked for that to begin with. Molloy’s 35-page ruling specifically pointed out the case was not about the safety or toxicity of retardants per se, but only a procedural case affirming the need to shuffle paper if and when “substantial questions” of environmental impact “may” exist.
The already-overwhelmed Forest Service dragged butt on the shuffle, goading Judge Molloy into threatening Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey with jail unless the paperwork hit Molloy’s desk –- which it did in late February 2008.
The Forest Service concluded that using retardant poses no “significant environmental impact” to Judge Molloy, who dismissed the case March 12.
Now, after four-plus years, FSEEE spokesman Andy Stahl (the guy who made “spotted owl” a household word) is telling reporters his group intends to file ANOTHER lawsuit over retardant in Molloy’s court. It’s all part of what Missoulian reporter John Cramer terms “another decade-long campaign” to stop “the war on fire.”
With the “no significant impact” paperwork from USFS in hand, FSEEE apparently now plans to attack the paperwork in court, in the hopes of finding an uncrossed T or undotted I that will bring about a legal injunction against retardant use.
Now, how much environmental impact is at issue? Bomber slurry is basically 85% water, 15% fertilizer. The fertilizer binds the water, slowing evaporation, plus it sticks to everything it lands on. A bomber line of slurry therefore stays more effective at slowing or stopping a fire’s advance for a longer time than plain water drops. It work… so well that the Forest Service uses 15 to 40 million gallons of slurry per year. Using a 2,700-gallon P2V Neptune tanker as an “average” slurry bomber, that comes out to at least 5,500 to 14,800 “bomb runs” a year.
In its complaint, FSEEE raised the issue of retardant drops directly into streams or lakes, citing one in 1996, one in 2000, one in 2003, and most scandalous of all, a 2002 drop into an Oregon stream that killed 20,000 fish. Bad? Of course, but one run out of 5,000 (or more) is objectively a darned low “defect” rate for such technical flying. Never mind that Eugene’s ecotopians probably eat 20,000 organically-killed fish a week.
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 five thousand 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.
by Bob Z.
Nice work, Grump!
The so-called “Eugene ecotopian” retardants have been personally responsible for the deaths of millions of fish, deer, elk, bear, birds, and old-growth trees, the blackening of millions of acres of public forests, the ending of tens of thousands of rural jobs, the mass pollution of airsheds with CO2 and soot for tens of millions of people, and the pollution and siltation of thousands of miles of salmon-bearing streams, so it only makes sense that they would tie up federal courts for years over the accidental deaths of 20,000 fingerlings (about one day’s worth of McDonald’s fish sticks, max).
Enough already! These nitwits need to be exposed and stopped, before they do too much more damage. Thanks to you, Mike D, and YP Mule in your continuing efforts to expose these destructive self-promoters. Their “green earth” has become a blackened hell for the rest of us. They need to stop and go away.
by Tim B.
In case there is any confusion about exactly what the FSEEE organization really is, the actual Forest Service employee membership in that group is very small. Last I heard, and this was some time ago, it was less than 10%, and most who claim that affiliation can only do so by counting a few seasons on a fire crew when they were kids (ala Mr. Stahl). They DO NOT represent, in any way, rank and file FS employees.
by YPmule
Next they will be taking away the Pulaskis - saying that digging fire line is hard on the ecology. Makes me want to smack some sense into some folks with my fire shovel. How anyone can say that letting catastrophic fires burn is “good” is beyond me. These desk jockeys need to come hike a mile in my boots.
The “mandate” for the elected Democrat majority in Congress is global warming, energy use, and universal health care. That is the basis for Waxman taking out Dingle as chair of the Energy and Commerce committee. Not one word about the economy or the mideast wars. None. Dingle was positioned as the toady for the Detroit Big Three, and his being married to a Fisher, as in Body by Fisher, set him up as being married to GM for the loyal Pelosi folks
We have yet to see who runs USDA or Interior. I have not seen a candidate I would think will lift a finger to stop irresponsible fire management, let alone not encourage more rampant burning. I have ZERO faith that the Congress as now constituted, will have any interest in the public lands debate other than cutting budgets so that banks, insurance, and unions prosper. If unfought fire is a union interest, it will get addressed. If public access is a union interest, it will get addressed. But public lands budgets will shrink further, and employers will be burdened with providing universal health care, and the good medicine, the efficient medicine, will slide further to a private health care system for the wealthy, and a public health system paid for with defense, public lands, education, public safety, highway money. So those who have the dough will live a lot longer, the average age of mortality will drop for the masses, and the wealthy will live a lot longer. And if you think that taxing the rich will do the trick, watch capital flight take those words out of your mouth.
The burning has just begun. The public really does not give a damn. The Congress, as they have been elected to do, will all stand on the bridge and try to piss the Potomac River upstream in the name of stopping global warming, the public will be subjected to taxes and alternatives that leave them stranded and broke in the transportation arena, car owners will be buying a second of their model to have as a parts car for the mechanic, someone will hack and find a master roll of Mormons to sell on the internet so people will know where to steal food, and there will be nobody out there to protect the forests because there will be no money to pay them.
And, the Waxmans, the Pelosis, the Millers, the DeFazios, the Jerkleys, the Wydens, will posture, and orate, and court the media, all to expose their ignorance and waste of our treasure and time. Jihad ain’t going away, and global warming is the only thing that stands between us and the next Ice Age, which is surely coming as world wide temps have dropped for over 20 years. We will all get a pair of roller skates, a bicycle ownership credit, and mass transit that would be better called “minor transit with mass dollars.” I see NOTHING on the horizon that indicates the economic inertia of the last three months has begun to ever slow. Monday it will be CITI Bank that fails, and the week after another. HUGE is being reduced to insignificant. Major has fallen below minor. Money comes from creating something from raw material mined or pumped or grown, and we don’t do that anymore. We cannot create money. All we can do is market stuff, and that requires additional material daily to clip, and more every year than the year before. There is an inverse relationship to growth, and we are going to find out a lot about it. Synergy and new paradigm have been stock words. Well, the synergy of default, of joblessness, of reduced revenues, means that if you lose a dollar in your business, the value of your company is reduced by more than one dollar. And the downward spiral gathers speed. The new paradigm is that people are discovering the difference between “want” and “need.” Want drove a faulty economic model. Need will drive personal and business decisions for some time to come.
Scrap cars are now worth less than $30 a ton. Down from $90 or more. That $14 wheat is now under $4. Doug fir stumpage is a $100. The only reason a small owner will cut is to pay taxes. And fewer of them. A lot fewer. And fewer people will work all down that created capital stream. You try to sell $0.40 a pound fescue and nobody returns calls. All that is moving is food that people NEED. Food that people buy because they can has dropped in price, and some through the floor. The food brokers say their business volume is only down slightly, but there has been a sea change from selling to provisioners and suppliers to selling to grocery wholesalers and chains. People are still eating, but not in restaurants.
The Congress will squander their time and effort on all those pet causes in the pent up anger and frustration at not being in charge for 10 years, and Obama will either be marginalized by the zealots in his party, or he will be a strong President and veto, and hammer on people to stay on target with the issues that got him elected. You can fight global warming and starve the military, and end up back benchers once again. You can bail out union featherbedding by blaming it on management, but you will not make the business competitive and it will fail no matter how much treasure you shift into union pockets. You can drain rich man’s pockets for a year, but capital will flow to where it can work and produce profits. But most of all, you do have to realize that the tax system has little provision for the losses that your IRA or pension has suffered. And that goes for the rich and for the poor. So capital losses will only offset capital gains, and the former are stupendous, and the latter are miniscule. Have fun raising money by taxing unearned income. There is none. And you can run those losses ahead, but that matters little if there are no gains in the future. Not until the economy has retracted to where business can show a profit might there be meaningful tax receipts outside of ordinary worker income taxes, and if too many of those are in the public sector, wiping you ass on that hoop will only give you stinky hands in the long run.
Obama is in for a difficult time, and might not ever get on top of the problems if his idiot fellow travelers go off on their inevitable tangents. Cleaning up after greed and deregulation is closing a very large door long after the barn has emptied, and all there really is to do is shovel shit, lay some new bedding down, and hope your cowboys can rope some of the long gone assets. Or you have enough breeders left to grow a new herd. Only to discover your majority are steers and freemartin heifers that you kept to please PETA.
I see zero concern, care, or action on forests except to create more Wilderness, more roadless, more no use areas. No increase in funding, but a significant decrease in funding. They will provide the smoke and you are to bring your own mirrors.
The purpose/goal of the eco-radicals is not to “stop the war on fire.” It is to expand their war on forests. Their mission is not to save anything but instead to destroy forests with holocausts.
They do not seek to protect old-growth but to incinerate old-growth. They celebrate the destruction of old-growth (and spotted owl habitat) whenever it occurs, such as in the Biscuit Fire (2002), B and B Fire (2003) and the Rattle Fire (2008). They hold radical rendezvous in the ashes and cheer the death of forests, reveling the blackened, charred landscape.