Biofuels Plant Won’t Protect Us from Wildfire

- by Vir­ginia Moran, May 16, 2014, Source: The Union

Regard­ing the pro­posed “bio­fu­els” plant (i.e. accel­er­a­tion of cli­mate change) project, here is what I find “scary”: that res­i­dents of west­ern Neva­da Coun­ty are nev­er allowed to live our lives in peace. If we are twitchy and irri­ta­ble it is because we are con­stant­ly on guard regard­ing what the next project will be to exploit our county.

What I find scary is crony­ism (i.e. revolv­ing door) between pub­lic and qua­si-pub­lic agen­cies here, and mem­bers of the so-called pri­vate sec­tor (“con­sul­tants” and con­trac­tors) who tend to look out for their own inter­ests (i.e., profit).

What I find scary is fire offi­cials and the like who use hys­te­ria that upsets peo­ple by run­ning around talk­ing about how “dan­ger­ous” the fire sea­son is going to be and how “scary” it all is with­out offer­ing any sol­id solu­tions regard­ing how to pre­pare for fire.

As I have writ­ten before, I brushed-cleared my prop­er­ty in San Diego, and my home and neigh­bor­hood still burned to the ground. Cat­a­stroph­ic fire is dri­ven by wind. Hous­es set oth­er hous­es on fire.

What I find scary is that our fire agencies/officials con­tin­ue to ignore sol­id sci­ence in favor of push­ing their own agenda.

Instead of a bio­fu­els plant, what would eco­nom­i­cal­ly ben­e­fit our coun­ty for the long term is more open space, parks and bike paths that tie into down­town areas …

Sol­id sci­ence shows it is wood­en struc­tures with­in fire-prone land­scapes that are the real “fuel.” It makes more sense to imple­ment mea­sures to recon­sid­er wood as a build­ing mate­r­i­al in fire-prone envi­ron­ments, pro­vide incen­tives to retro-fit exist­ing homes with fire-proof mea­sures such as steel roofs and teach peo­ple how to use fire bar­ri­cade gels, etc.

As one of many exam­ples, in the mid-1800s, Shas­ta City, now a his­toric state park, burned down. They rebuilt the town with brick and iron, and it’s still stand­ing (and because it’s still stand­ing, it’s able to be a state park). At the time, replac­ing the wood­en struc­tures with brick and iron was called “com­mon sense.” This was in the mid-1800s before we had 350 dif­fer­ent lay­ers of “fire pro­tec­tion agen­cies,” includ­ing all their var­i­ous fees and taxes.

What I find scary is that offi­cials in Neva­da Coun­ty con­tin­ue to ignore the nature of our soils here. Slopes are col­laps­ing due to the cut­ting of native trees and shrubs on these slopes. This starts a near­ly unstop­pable ero­sion process that is lit­er­al­ly eat­ing away people’s prop­er­ty. The slopes recede toward the homes with irrev­o­ca­ble con­se­quences to the sta­bil­i­ty of the land and per­ma­nent loss of prop­er­ty val­ues. In severe cas­es, it could under­mine the foun­da­tion of the home.

What I also find scary is that tax­pay­ers are pay­ing to clean up these slides and slumps to the tune of almost a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars just for one (Fay Road, Alta Sierra).

What I find scary is a coun­ty that made it eas­i­er to build homes on fire dan­ger­ous slopes but wants to arrest peo­ple for not masticating/destroying the “fuel” on their property.

What I find scary is pub­lic offi­cials who com­plete­ly dis­re­gard the wildlife of our coun­ty and obvi­ous­ly do not under­stand the role our native veg­e­ta­tion plays in pro­vid­ing essen­tial ecosys­tem ser­vices, includ­ing hold­ing slopes, pro­vid­ing habi­tat, chan­nel­ing water back into our water­sheds and act­ing as sinks for hold­ing carbon.

Every time friends from the val­ley or points south vis­it me, they always say the same thing — ”it’s so pret­ty here.” Why is it always about the east side of our coun­ty? (Sure, it has a cer­tain lake). West­ern Neva­da Coun­ty can also boast nat­ur­al assets such as our rur­al set­ting rich with native oaks, shrubs (such as the beau­ti­ful man­zani­ta) and wildflowers.

Instead of a bio­fu­els plant, what would eco­nom­i­cal­ly ben­e­fit our coun­ty for the long term is more open space, parks and bike paths that tie into down­town areas and fun­nel cyclists to exist­ing busi­ness­es (such as Fol­som has done). If you find the idea of a bio­fu­els plant “scary,” then stop the bio­fu­els plant and push for real mea­sures to pre­vent fire in west­ern Neva­da County.

Vir­ginia Moran is a field biol­o­gist and res­i­dent of west­ern Neva­da County.