State senator speaks out on fire

Dave Cogdill: Ending the cycle of catastrophic fires
By Dave Cogdill - Special To The Bee
Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, July 20, 2007
Story appeared in EDITORIALS section, Page B7


It seems that this time every year, we find ourselves in the same precarious situation of watching our hillsides get drier and drier while the summer gets hotter and hotter, until a fire erupts and we scramble to contain it and minimize its effect. Once the fire's been put out and things return to normal (for the most part), we do little to prevent future fires. Then summer hits once again and we're back to square one. It's time we put an end to this cycle.

This reality has never been as evident as with the Angora fire that devastated the South Lake Tahoe area. A drier than usual winter, low humidity, illegal campfires, wind gusts and an abundance of undergrowth all served as catalysts that fed the fire.

The existing hands-off approach is simply not acceptable -- suppression alone is a flawed policy whereby forest fires are merely put out and there isn't enough active forest management. This policy has resulted in the Lake Tahoe basin having twice as many trees as normally would be sustained. As a result of certain crippling environmental laws regarding forestry, this calamity has endangered our families, children and firefighters, destroyed hundreds of homes and displaced thousands of residents, threatened our air and water quality, and caused millions of dollars of damage to the Lake Tahoe region.

There is a group of people who tend to the more extreme side of environmentalism, who insist upon stricter air quality regulations on industries and agriculture, and yet endorse policies such as an arbitrary limit on the size of trees that can be removed from our forests and the exclusion of biomass (converting forest waste into usable energy) as a form of alternative fuel. These are the same policies that have led to overgrown, dense forests that act as "powder kegs," as termed by Thomas Bonnicksen, a professor at Texas A&M and an expert on forestry and forest management. Once that powder keg is ignited and a runaway wildfire ensues, unheard of amounts of carbon are dumped into our air, completely undermining any progress made in improving air quality.

This year, I introduced two pieces of legislation aimed at addressing the connection between our forests, responsible forestry management, air pollution and wildfire protection. Sen ate Bill 572 would have required the State Air Resources Board, when implementing the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, to take into due consideration the emissions created by catastrophic wildfire as well as the air benefits created by a well-managed forest.

Senate Bill 838 would have funded community-based wildfire threat reduction and prevention programs, such as fire safe councils, which preserve and enhance California's resources and mobilize Californians to protect their homes, communities and environment from wildfires.

In 1997, the California Forestry Association published a report titled, "Lake Tahoe ... the Pearl in Peril." In that piece, the association calls for greater management of the precious Tahoe forest and quotes a former chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Jack Ward Thomas, as saying, following the 1994 fire season: "We cannot, in my opinion, simply step back and wait for 'nature' to take its course. I do not believe that what has happened this fire season is acceptable as a solution to the problem. These fires at this scale and intensity, are too hot, destructive, dangerous and too ecologically, economically, aesthetically and socially damaging to be tolerable."

Here we are, 13 years after Thomas issued his admonition, and what do we have to show for it? Yet another scorched mountain in the Lake Tahoe region, 250 destroyed homes, 3,500 displaced and scared people, erosion from wildfire threatening the pristine lake and millions of dollars lost due to damages and the cost of fighting fires. It's time to move beyond environmental absurdity and to start taking our forests and their management more seriously.

About the writer:
Dave Cogdill is a Republican state senator for District 14, which includes Mariposa and Tuolumne counties and parts of Fresno, Madera, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.