Air quality cops tackle wildfires
Air quality cops tackle wildfires
25 November 2015
published by www.recordnet.com
USA– At its worst last summer, the states largest wildfire in Kings Canyon National Park produced up to 105 times more pollution than the entire San Joaquin Valley.
Every tailpipe. Every smokestack. Every farm tractor.
The 150,000-acre Rough Fire spewed more harmful tiny particles into the air than all of them combined. And it wasnt even close.
Now, after another bad fire season, air quality officials are taking another look at the link between forest fires, air quality and public health. The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District took a first step earlier this month toward making it easier to conduct prescribed burns, intentional fires that produce some pollution of their own but help to prevent much larger catastrophic wildfires in the future.
The policy shift that were advocating for is not to be penny wise and pound foolish, said Seyed Sadredin, executive director of the air district. We are so concerned about the short-term localized impacts that may come with a few days of prescribed burning, that it may lead to situations where we dont allow enough of a prescribed burn.
And that, he said, allows forest fuels to continue to grow and pose an even greater risk for larger fires down the road.
Air pollution spiked up and down the Valley as fires burned this summer, from Calaveras Countys Butte Fire in the north to the Rough Fire in the south.
The worst smoke impacts were in the south Valley, where even tiny pieces of ash fell on Fresno neighborhoods. But Stockton, too, in mid-August saw tiny particle pollution briefly exceed federal health standards as smoke blew into the region from distant blazes.
For many decades, national policy was to quickly extinguish forest fires, a Smokey Bear philosophy that ignored the natural role wildfires play in managing our forests. Despite a more recent emphasis on using prescribed burns to decrease the danger, the forest fuel buildup has continued to increase at an alarming rate, according to an air district staff report.
So the district is considering taking a number of steps to loosen the restrictions on prescribed burns in forests within its jurisdiction (mostly public lands in the southern Sierra Nevada). Officials may allow larger burns over a shorter period of time. They may allow those burns to occur even when no-burn days are declared on the Valley floor. And they may reduce the fees required to get a permit to burn.
They also say they support efforts to change the way in which federal officials pay for wildfire suppression. Instead of shifting the money away from prevention, the district wants to urge the feds to take wildfire suppression costs out of emergency accounts that pay for other natural disasters such as earthquakes or hurricanes. In 2015, for the first time, more than half of the U.S. Forest Services budget was spent on wildfire suppression.
Finally, the district also may support the use of mechanical harvesting equipment where appropriate in wilderness areas.
Anything we can do to reduce fuel buildup will help, Sadredin said.
The districts governing board approved a suite of broad policies at its meeting last week, and Sadredin said more specific actions will be considered at a future meeting.
