June's lightning-caused fires in rural Northern California continue to burn. This weekend, fire swept through a beautiful old-growth forest on a mountain where I spent summers as a child. My heart aches. Miles upon miles of once-green land have been charred, ruining timberlands, fisheries, and the health, homes and economic futures of the area's citizens. It is increasingly clear to area residents, and those of us who love this place from afar, that something has gone dreadfully wrong.
The mainstream media barely notices this sparsely populated, often rugged region between Sacramento and the Oregon border. When the smoke reached Sacramento, President Bush and various officials, including Rep. Wally Herger, dropped in for a Katrina-like flyover. But as a cartoon in a local paper made clear, that isn't the kind of leadership that this area needs.
Enter Jeff Morris, Democratic candidate for California's 2nd Congressional District.
A sixth-generation Northern California resident and member of the Trinity County Board of Supervisors, Jeff is a get-things-done kind of guy with an impressive record of making good things happen for his constituents. Conventional wisdom says District 2 is historically a shoo-in for Republican candidates, but that view only looks backwards -- it's easy to win when you've had no serious competition. Jeff Morris is the first elected official in 20 years to challenge incumbent Wally Herger, and Herger's continual political posturing isn't helping the vulnerable population of the north state, despite its historic friendliness to his Party. This is the year for conventional wisdom to yield to a well-qualified candidate with a proven history of real leadership. Jeff's campaign has already attracted the support of many current and former elected officials and Republican and Independent supporters, one of whom hiked miles from his camp in the Trinity Alps just to vote for Jeff in the primaries. Clearly, the desperate need for real leadership in this forgotten region outweighs traditional party loyalty.
Full disclosure: Jeff is my brother. He has not reviewed or approved these introductory paragraphs, but he gave me permission to reprint the following op-ed. I hope you'll share his ideas with your smoked-out Northern California friends and join us in supporting Jeff Morris for CA-02!
Federal Leadership Would Be a Breath of Fresh Air
July 29, 2008
- Jeff Morris
Traveling to Sacramento last week for an Air Resources Board meeting reinforced for me the extreme conditions we in the North State have been dealing with this summer. According to the North Coast Air Quality Management District, Trinity County -- my home -- is currently experiencing the worst air quality in the state due to forest fire smoke, and it looks like it won't be letting up any time soon.
But as bad as the air quality in Trinity has become, the loss of homes and lives in the rest of the North State has been even more catastrophic.
State and federal forest lands are one of our biggest assets if managed well, and one of our biggest liabilities if managed badly or not at all. But the bitter political battles between industry and environmental groups have brought the situation to a stalemate. Rather than working toward a solution that would create truly healthy forests, we have a political atmosphere that's as clogged with dead brush as our backcountry.
Something's got to change -- but as things currently stand in Washington, nothing will.
President Bush's latest proposed budget for the US Forest Service includes massive cuts to vital programs, including approximately $90 million less for staffing and training firefighting teams and clearing hazardous fuels. So even as the president was putting on a show of support for our situation during his July 18 visit, his administration was busy cutting funding for the resources that would help prevent these kinds of fires in the future.
The citizens of the North State realize that a presidential visit by itself won't fix our problems. Real help would entail real changes in policy, budgeting and operations -- but instead, the administration and its Congressional allies have simply stuck with their usual approach to natural disaster prevention: pursuing their own agenda, cutting funds for everything else, and hoping nothing bad will happen. Unfortunately, something bad did happen, it happened here, and it will happen again unless all the stakeholders in this issue come together and work toward real solutions.
If they'd listened, they would have known this was coming. Northern California counties have known it for more than a decade. Trinity County was the first in California to develop a county-wide fire safe plan. In 2006 we passed an ordinance declaring heavy forest fuel loads on private and federal lands a public nuisance. Our town of Hayfork hosts one of ten nationwide locations that are a part of The Nature Conservancy's Fire Learning Network, which fosters innovation in fuels reduction and fire regime restoration strategies. The Weaverville Community Forest, a stewardship agreement with the Bureau of Land Management, is a nationally recognized example of sustainable forestry that also provides lumber-grade timber and implements fuels reduction strategies. We are committed and we are doing our part.
On February 5th of this year, with two feet of snow on the ground, I and the other members of Trinity County's Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution declaring an ongoing state of emergency with regard to extreme wildfire risk. The Board sent a letter to select members of the US Congress and other federal public officials listing priority actions that need to take place to mitigate this risk. Part of the letter reads, "Trinity County has been a leader in Fire Safe Planning and collaborative forest restoration. We have worked successfully with the environmental community, forest industry, the Forest Service and BLM, and, indeed, the whole community to be proactive in restoring the ability of our forests to be fire resilient. We know that it is the only way to drop costs, protect the communities, and protect the environment."
Unfortunately we have also been subject to political processes that have been out of our control. Local outcry and action have either been dismissed, ignored or usurped by the power brokers from all points in this process.
Currently, 47% of the entire United States Forest Service budget is spent on fire suppression. By comparison, forest fuels reduction budgets are a pittance. That's backward thinking. While putting out fires is certainly important, this kind of budgeting is like a patient who never receives any preventative health care and instead uses the emergency room as his primary physician. To extend the metaphor, our national forests have now skipped right past the emergency room into intensive care. It's time to get a checkup and get healthy before our state and national budgets pull the plug on our life support. We're down to that basic choice.
Trinity County's February letter to our representatives included the following priorities:
- Re-direct all possible non-fire suppression budgets of USFS, BLM, BIA, Parks Service and Fish and Wildlife Service to hazardous fuels management.
- Priority 1 areas for treatments should be those areas described in Community Wildfire Protection Plans – areas identified by the communities themselves as most at risk.
- Priority 2 areas should be high-value resources like threatened and endangered species habitat, fishery habitat, old growth and high recreation value areas.
- Initial funding should be for projects that will pay for themselves. There must also be thinnings to reduce fire effects, provide defensible space, and create anchor points for fire suppression adjacent to communities.
This is just the beginning of what we need to do. In addition, I would also recommend that funding for limited-use escape routes from specific risk-identified communities be included in the upcoming federal transportation bill (SAFETEA-LU), which is reauthorized every five years. These escape routes would need to be identified by updated community wildfire protection plans and local municipalities and would be implemented based on assessments of current infrastructure/transportation corridors and wildfire risk. Simultaneous with the development of these corridors, other local, state and federal agencies should be concentrating on fuels reduction projects.
The catastrophic wildfire situation in the United States, like so many of our current national challenges, transcends political parties. It transcends environmental and industry jousting. It transcends geographic location. It is also inextricably tied to other community needs. Our economies, school systems, quality of health, quality of life and long-term environmental sustainability are all related to resource management and inclusion of all community members in a solution-building process. We need leaders who understand that long-term solutions require a willingness to take heat from both industry and environmental groups, bring all players to the table, and hammer out a middle ground that produces real, constructive results.
Electing those kinds of leaders is our only hope of moving forward to flexible, long-term solutions that can adapt to changing conditions. Real leadership is not just zipping in from Washington and doing a flyover. Real leadership requires work, relationship building, sacrifice and an ability to be a strong voice for all the people you represent. It is not for the faint of heart -- and it is the kind of leadership we deserve.
Jeff Morris is a Trinity County Supervisor and a candidate for US Congress in California's 2nd District
(Cross-posted at Bullfight)