Critics say fire retardant's impact on animals, plants, too great

By Dana M. Nichols

December 30, 2010

Record Staff Writer

COLUMBIA, California - The red liquid pumped into air tankers every summer at a base here and at another in Stockton is coming under increasing scrutiny and might in the future be banned from use if fire-retardant critics have their way.

After more than seven years of legal battling, a federal judge in Montana in July ordered the U.S. Forest Service to do a full environmental impact study on how to prevent the harm that retardant does to species such as steelhead and salmon when the chemical gets dumped into waterways.

No one disputes that the main chemical in retardant - a form of chemical fertilizer - kills fish and rare plants if it gets into streams.

But federal fire officials say spills into creeks are rare and that retardant is a valuable tool that saves human lives, forests and property.

"It decreases the fire's intensity and slows the advance of the fire," said Jennifer Jones, a Forest Service employee and public affairs specialist for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

In steep, difficult-to-access terrain, air drops of retardant can buy time while ground crews try to reach an area to cut fire lines, Jones said.

It is particularly valuable, Jones said, that retardant works even once the water in it evaporates.

"It actually is effective for longer than water. And we have studies that show that."

Critics of fire retardant dispute that, saying there is no evidence of benefits from the approximately $100 million a year spent on buying and dropping retardant.

"As one researcher put it, fire retardant is faith-based firefighting," said Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, the group that sued the Forest Service over the issue.

"Fire retardant is generally used where there are fire-retardant bases, and fire retardant bases are built where there is federal land," Stahl.

As a result, a state like California that has ample federal land has many more bases and uses three times as much fire retardant each year as Texas, but without improving the performance of state and federal crews in knocking down wildfires, Stahl said.

Jones said California and Texas are not comparable because of differences in terrain and forest cover.

The Columbia Air Attack Base was originally a Forest Service base but has been administered by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection since 1966. That base pumps an average of 600,000 gallons of retardant a year but can ramp up to 120,000 gallons a day in the event of a large fire.

The U.S. Forest Service also has a retardant base at Stockton Metropolitan Airport that can pump retardant into large air tankers.

Jones said work has already begun on the environmental study, and that a draft should be available for public comment by spring.

The Forest Service has until the end of 2011 to complete the study and come up with limits on retardant use adequate to protect fish and plant species.

Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 607-1361 or dnichols@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at recordnet.com/calaverasblog.

Fire retardant review

To follow developments as the U.S. Forest Service studies aerial fire retardants and considers restrictions on their use, go to www.fs.fed.us/fire/retardant.