Stale.

It’s what a somewhat narrowly focused column can get — usually does get — after a run of some duration, say for instance 100-plus editions.

Sabbatical.

It’s the usual prescription for the above malady, even if, as in this case, it’s of the in-office variety.

Ideally, you see, the writer (or columnist) sees the stale coming long before the readers prescribe the sabbatical…or worse.

Let’s let that one lie.

From September through, let’s say, March 2001, “Just Thinking” will, well, just not be thinking as much, and certainly not filling the usual column inches. Sabbaticals are made for rejuvenating. We’ll know next spring if this one accomplishes that goal. In the meantime, EHC Senior Writer Joseph A. Davis, Ph.D., will be doing some thinking — and perhaps also some venting — on his own.

As in …….

The cult of computer-assisted reporting (CAR) seems to have passed environmental journalism by. I still can’t figure out why.

The environmental beat is the Saudi Arabia of data. The data tell, or hint at, some urgent and interesting stories. But a search of news indexes for major investigative projects using CAR on the e-beat produces little in a given year. Am I wrong? Tell me what I’m missing.

Well, there actually are big environmental CAR projects. They are just not being done by journalists. Environmental Working Group, US-PIRG, Environmental Defense and some others are cranking them out.

Is that how it should be?

A decade and a half ago, when most monitor screens were still black-and-white, the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) promised to give environmental journalists a new tool they could use to rake muck with a computer, and challenged them to do it responsibly. A few good stories were written, but not enough. Papers like USA Today and the New York Times did big maps and rank lists of “top US polluters,” but the excitement soon waned.

The enviros are seizing opportunities that journalists have let drop. The last 6 or 12 months have seen quite a few aggressive and creative attempts to turn over rocks with computers to see what crawls out from under. The recent EWG assessment of state inspections, or Community Rights Counsel’s tabulation of federal judge’s junkets at the expense of property-rights groups, or US-PIRG’s tabulation of PAC money and lobbying by the forest industry’s Blue Ribbon Coalition, are just a few recent examples. All sank like stones with scarcely a ripple on the placid surface of today’s media.

Some of the reasons for this are obvious. Yes, the groups doing these investigations have axes to grind. Yes, they often present only a prosecutor’s case, with no evidence for the defense. Yes, the data themselves often are of such poor quality that they will barely support the weight of conclusions enviros want to build on them.

That does not mean that the investigations should not be done and the stories should not be written at all. It means they should be done better. They should be done by journalists who care about truth and fairness. And if the enviros are miles ahead of the journalists in enterprise and data-savvy, there’s still no reason for journos not to re-report the stories and ask the questions all over again. The questions need to be asked.

Just one case in point: the EWG report on state enforcement used EPA data that was supposed to come from the states, but ran afoul of a problem because some states were giving EPA lousy data or none at all. What data there were outlined a disturbing picture: one of states not inspecting problem violators for years on end. It made the states look bad. Not surprisingly, the states attacked the quality of data the report’s conclusions were based on. Do you see any circular reasoning here?

The story in Inside EPA quoted nameless “state officials” (Inside EPA has a policy of never naming sources.) as saying “The report is absolutely, 100 percent wrong.” That was pretty much the line one (nameless) Texas environmental press officer took with me when I called him, saying, (and I paraphrase) “We discredited that report – why would you want to write about it?” In fact, Texas enviros had actually cancelled a press conference on the report when they realized what a briar patch the Texas data presented. This press officer seemed not to understand why anyone could possibly want numbers that would tell how good a job of environmental enforcement was being done in Texas.

In reality, the data issues are complex, and it seems that the Texas inspections are neither as lax as EWG would paint them nor as aggressive as the state’s environmental agency would paint them. In fact, much of the data that would tell the tale are being hidden under audit privilege, but that’s another story.

No one may ever know how well environmental laws are being enforced in Texas.

More than one Texas paper just ignored the story in the crush of other news. When a pitch going by you at 90 mph looks like a ball, you let it pass, and focus on the next one. It’s understandable.

But let’s say the report wasn’t 100 percent wrong – but only 95 percent wrong, and a few hard-core permit violators went uninspected and kept polluting for two full years. Wouldn’t that be a story anyway? Why should a journalist have to rely on EWG’s report at all? Why couldn’t they ask the questions and get the answers themselves?

I have heard this excuse for not doing CAR stories many times – the data aren’t perfect so we can’t write a factual story, so let’s not do anything. So many times that I have formulated Davis’ Sixth Law: “Bad data drives out good.” Nobody likes this line of reasoning better than the big industries who seem to wish EPA would just stop publishing data altogether.

Journalists sometimes misunderstand what CAR can and can’t do. No data are perfect. All journalism is a struggle with imperfect information. When the computer has finished analyzing the data, reporters still have a big part of their job to do – ground-truthing and humanizing the data. And asking the questions computers can’t answer. Some are questions of values.

We make a mistake to think computers can ever sanitize the job of muckraking. Perhaps it is easier to let interest groups ask the tough questions. A journalist who asks whether environmental laws are being enforced may risk being seen as some kind of crusader. Did crusading journalists go out with black-and-white monitors?

Great Lakes, Detroit’s auto industry, and of course the November election will highlight the agenda of the Society of Environmental Journalists National Conference in East Lansing, Michigan, October 19-22.

William Clay Ford, Jr., Ford Motor Company’s board chairman is one of the confirmed major speakers, along with “energy visionary” Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Michigan State University, which is hosting the meeting, is about 80 miles from the Detroit airport, and conference attendees are sure to be flooded with opportunities to see and drive an array of eco-cars and alternative vehicles – as well as opportunities to ask auto execs if they really have kicked the SUV habit (the topic of Friday’s opening plenary). MSU, not coincidentally, also happens to be the home of SEJ founding president Jim Detjen, who now directs the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism there and is chairing the SEJ conference.

The conference will take advantage of Michigan’s central position in the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater system in the world, and one struggling to recover from decades of abuse. Traditionally, on the day (Thursday) before the indoor “meeting” part of the conference, journalists pile into buses for real-world field trips. One Thursday tour will focus on the ecology of Lake Michigan and another will offer a Lake Huron sailing adventure on an 85-foot schooner. A post-conference trip will feature Lake Superior and Michigan’s densely forested Upper Peninsula.

The “Michigan Motorcar Tour” will also be held on Thursday – going to Ford’s River Rouge plant, one of the largest manufacturing complexes in the world. Architect William McDonough will explain his vision for transforming this rust-belt classic into a model for sustainable manufacturing. The same tour will also visit EPA’s auto emissions lab in Ann Arbor, which is the epicenter of the mobile source program.

Another Thursday tour will visit the nearby 1,900-acre Dow Chemical plant in Midland, Michigan, which is the world headquarters of the company that makes Styrofoam™. Reporters will learn about chemical pollution going into the Tittabawasee River, the company’s efforts to stop it, and the views of local residents.

Environmental advisors of the presidential candidates will take part in a debate moderated by Margie Kriz of the National Journal. Al Gore will be represented by Katie McGinty, former head of the Council on Environmental Quality, and George W. Bush will be represented by Chris DeMuth, president of the American Enterprise Institute.

Reporters will be able to shoot questions at Mike Dombeck, chief of the USDA Forest Service and Assistant Deputy Minister, Yvan Hardy, head of the Canadian Forest Service, in what is being billed as the first-ever joint press session of the two forest service chiefs.

Keynote speaker at the meeting will be David Suzuki, Canadian scientist and broadcast celebrity, host of The Nature of Things, on the Canadian Broadcasting System, for more than two decades.

Jane Holtz Kay, author of Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back (now in its eighth edition) will be another featured speaker.

Panel discussions will include topics like non-point source pollution, nuclear secrecy, trade agreements, global warming, media entrepreneurship, the coming water wars, urban environments, transboundary pollution, transboundary wildlife management, computer sleuthing, web publishing, geographic information systems, Great Lakes toxics, anti-hunting ballot measures, environmental philanthropy, Ernest Hemingway, and the environment of 2100.

The “Network Lunch,” a popular feature of past conferences, has been cloned into an additional network breakfast. At these meals, conference-goers can choose to sit at particular tables where people interested in a particular topic gather for free-form discussion.

Journalists’ e-mail in-boxes sagged with the weight. And PCs everywhere crackled with the unruly load as controversial ABC 20/20 “journalist” cum entertainer cum political activist/commentator John Stossel lit up the airwaves with renewed questions on journalism ethics in an era of increasing skepticism with the mass media generally.

No stranger to journalistic controversy, Stossel this time raised eyebrows and temperatures with a report that ABC-sponsored laboratory research suggested conventional produce has no more pesticide residue than does organic produce. The Stossel segment initially aired this past February, and ABC compounded the error by airing it again on July 7, with a shorter version distri-buted to network affiliates four days later.

An environmentalist group, the Environmental Working Group, cried foul after the initial airing. With the reruns and concerns that its protests had fallen on deaf ABC ears, it went downright apoplectic. It pointed to the University of Georgia and Georgetown University researchers Stossel had relied on as saying their tests in fact had not involved pesticide residues.

Whoops! … Bingo!

Bring on the Stossel-bashers brigade and, eventually, Stossel’s own defense effort from among those ideologically predisposed toward his free-market and libertarian brand of reportage.

Sloppy reporting? An error? “An innocent mistake that is being dealt with to the highest standards of journalistic integrity,” opined a group of Stossel supporters, urging the likeminded to join in on a pro-Stossel petition campaign to ABC, and rebuking “a drumbeat for Stossel’s dismissal.”

Or outright journalistic “fabrication” aimed at furthering Stossel’s widely-known political biases?

Few commentators hedged.

Stossel’s usual critics — environ-mentalists and political liberals, but also many journalism watchdog interests and media critics generally — pounced on the raw meat served up to them by a broad-cast celeb many have long since come to distrust because of his acceptance of ritzy honoraria from parties at interest.

Amidst howls of protest, an op-ed page paid ad in The New York Times, extensive reporting and commentary by newspapers’ media critics, and more, journalism listservs sagged with weeks of point and counterpoint on Stossel’s most recent transgression. Some few defended his “at least” asking the kinds of tough questions more conventional environ-mental journalists often are accused of shirking. But few serious journalists (concerned in part about the “As Seen on TV” ground-truthing phenomenon) rushed in to defend Stossel’s peculiar brand of checkbook journalism, for instance his frequently having accepted handsome honoraria from those he is paid to cover for ABC (including some of the groups party to the “Support John Stossel” petition campaign).

For some, it was just too much. The word “Stossel” in e-mail subject lines (often preceded by phrases the likes of “More on…,” or “Still More on…,” or, teasingly but usually not factually, “A last word on ….”) led them to lean heavy on their “DELETE” key, thereby perhaps avoiding the precise kind of carpal tunnel syndrome Stossel no doubt would pooh-pooh in any event.

Enough already, let’s turn to other subjects, some journalists complained. They did so in the face of a quarter-page New York Times ad — “ABC NEWS has a credibility problem. His name is John Stossel.” — from TomPaine.com, a liberal “Money and Politics. Environment. Media Criticism.History” group funded by The Florence Fund.

Enough already, other reporters protested, while fueling the very listserv threads they claimed to deplore. (And whether aware or unaware of a taunting, but short-lived, eBay auction item — “You too can buy a piece of John Stossel’s Credibility! The Famous John Stossel of ABC News! As seen on T.V.!” The mock auction, which apparently attracted few actual bids, urged those interested to “join the ranks” of Fortune 500 companies whose largesse, it suggested, leads to Stossel’s saying “anything you want him to say! … Have your own personal fact-bender represent your point of view as if it were factual! … Use his media power to get the public outraged about any government funded issue at all!”)

Stossel’s eventual “reprimand” by his ABC News superiors — along with the one-month suspension without pay of segment producer David Fitzpatrick — led to his broadcasting a brief “apology” on the air at the end of ABC’s 20/20 broadcast on August 11. Stossel’s strongest critics, not surprisingly, were unimpressed and cried hypocrisy over his line about credibility being a journalist’s most treasured resource, one not to be squandered.

As his clearly questionable checkbook-journalism practices have done in the past — just weeks earlier, the “real” Erin Brockovich of Julia Roberts fame challenged Stossel to have his family drink chromium six-contaminated water after one of Stossel’s “Give Me a Break” outbursts — Stossel at least can be credited with once again having stimulated some at-times heated and at other times compelling discussions on journalism ethics.

Among the numerous cyber-venues where the “St..s.l” subject line reigned for weeks (some couldn’t stand the thought of seeing the name any more, but at the same time couldn’t resist contributing their own two cents.) was the Society of Environmental Journalists’ members listserv.

That hydra-headed discussion at times bristled with strong disgust, at other times showed keen insight into perplexing journalism ethics issues. While generally, and by agreement, not for attribution, one comment proffered by Seattle Post-Intelligencier environmental reporter Robert McClure (and used here with McClure’s permission) was memorable:

“I think it should be painfully obvious to all by now that the only way we’re going to end this thread is to set up a sister organization, the Society of Environmental Entertainers [SEE]. The first two SEE members will be Stossel and DeCaprio” of Leonardo and Titanic fame, McClure teased, picking up on DeCaprio’s fawning “interview,” also broadcast on ABC, with President Clinton as part of a tepid Earth Day special.

“Put them in a room together and — wow! — watch out, Nielsens!”

All of which (and more) led the New York Times’ John Tierney to opine in an August 18 column that journalists too often “prefer to focus on hypothetical scares based on animal studies or popular fears. They lavish attention on ‘cancer clusters’ — like football players in the Meadowlands or breast-cancer victims on Long Island — even though clusters continually turn out to be unrelated to environmental pollutants.”

As a result, Tierney ventured, most Americans are unaware of the decline in age-adjusted death rates for cancers other than lung cancer.

Pointing to toxicity testing research done by University of California/Berkeley biochemist Bruce Ames, Tierney quotes Ames as believing that “pesticide residues are a nonissue as far as cancer prevention goes” in any event.

He reported that Stossel indeed had “blundered by reporting the results of a nonexistent test. But the worst journalistic mistake has been giving the public the impression that the test even matters.”

No matter how one feels about its taking a village (or not) to raise a child, a sad commentary is that it takes a Stossel — and, for or better or worse, he is not averse to frequently providing grist for the mill — to provoke impassioned, and at least occasionally informed, journalism ethics discussions among working press.

That in itself is not justification for further journalism ethics lapses on the part of Stossel or, for that matter, anyone else perceived by the public to be “journalist.” But it’s at least one positive result from an otherwise tawdry episode.

Bud Ward

EPA and the Justice Department have finalized a rule strictly limiting public access, especially electronic access, to data about risk to the public from worst-case accidents that could happen at U.S. chemical plants. Nationwide or industry-wide comparisons of the threats which plants present to communities will now be extremely difficult.

The rule was published in the Federal Register (65 FR 48108 – 40 CFR Chapter IV) on August 4, 2000, and took effect the same day. It was nearly unchanged from the version proposed on April 27, 2000 (65 FR 24834). It is currently online at http://www.epa.gov/swercepp/whatnew.html.

The rule carried out a mandate imposed on EPA by Congress at the urging of chemical companies. It came exactly one year after enactment of a bill (PL 106-40) creating the first new exemption to the Freedom of Information Act in years. That bill imposed a one-year moratorium on the disaster data until EPA could issue a rule according to Congressional specifications.

The data in question details “Offsite Consequence Analyses” (OCA) for major chemical accidents, which a different Congress mandated be made public information as part of the 1990 Clean Air Act. The 1990 provision, which took a decade to implement as industry struggled against it, required major plants to prepare “Risk Management Plans.” Following the original mandate, EPA put much of the data into a searchable online database (http://www.epa.gov:9966/srmpdcd/owa/overview$.startup).

But the chemical industry objected to putting online the key part of the OCA data which actually told communities how bad a risk they might face. These “worst-case scenarios” detailed how much of a chemical could be released, how far it might travel, and how many people would be in harm’s way.

The chemical industry argued that a searchable database of worst-case scenarios would allow terrorists to “target” plants where a bomb or similar device could harm the most people. The FBI, which hitherto had shown little concern, agreed. Environmentalists argued that the 1990 law’s intent was for public awareness of risks to push companies to make their plants safer. They said the riskiest plants were already well-known, and were in fact owned by companies who were leading the fight against disclosure.

At the time it imposed the 1999 moratorium, Congress ordered EPA to do a study assessing the benefits of disclosure and Justice to do a study assessing the risks of terrorism. EPA was to base its rule on these studies, which were released April 18, 1999 (texts at http://www.epa.gov/swercepp/ap-99law.htm). Predictably, the EPA study found substantial risk-reduction benefits from disclosure and the Justice study found substantial risks from terrorism.

EPA’s rule, which was dictated in large part by the 1999 law, tried to find a middle way balancing purported risks and benefits by giving access to the information but limiting that access, for example, by making the information very difficult to get or use.

The rule allows public access to paper copies of OCA information for up to 10 sites per month anywhere in the United States, only in one of 50 reading rooms across the country. The documents may not leave the room and mechanical copying would be prohibited. Handwritten notes may leave the room.

In order to see the documents in a reading room, a person would have to provide a driver’s license or similar ID. They would also have to sign a sign-in sheet and sign certification that they had not received OCA data on more than 10 sites for that month. The rule specifies that the sheets be kept for 3 years, but that the agencies create no index or database which would make the sign-in data searchable by a person’s name.

One of the FBI’s goals during the struggle over the disclosure rule was to be able to gather data on who was asking for the OCA data. The EPA rule seems to bar creation of a government database from reading-room sign-in sheets – but doesn’t really. Rather, it pegs treatment of the sign-in sheets to the Privacy Act, which requires the government to give public notice if it does create such a database. The Privacy Act exempts intelligence and criminal investigators from its normal restrictions on data searching – and also forbids government databases on how people exercise First Amendment rights. In any case, investigators could examine the records in the course of a criminal or intelligence investigation.

The rule also provides for EPA to put online a system allowing anyone to type in their address and get back an indication of whether they are in the danger zone of one or more plants – the so-called “vulnerable zone indicator system.”

The rule makes an exception to the 10-sites-per month limit for state and local chemical emergency agencies – State Emergency Response Commissions (SERCs) and Local Emergency Planning Committees (LEPCs). These agencies can give an unlimited amount of OCA information to persons asking for it, as long as they do not provide it in electronic or database form. They are also not required to ask or record the identities of persons asking for the information.

State and local officials would normally only get OCA data about sites in their own state – they would have to ask EPA for information on sites in other states, and are forbidden to give OCA data directly to officials in other states,

“It’s a remarkable development that we have criminal penalties for free speech about dangerous practices perpetrated by corporations,” said Paul Orum of the Right-to-Know Working Group. “Unfortunately, it might take a major chemical release before the government gets serious about reducing hazards instead of impeding public information.”

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative, business-oriented think tank, criticised the rule for not going far enough to restrict information access. “Under this rule, activist groups can still access and post the sensitive information online,” said CEI’s Angela Logomasini.

Both wildfires and political finger-pointing debates raged last month, as thousands of fires destroyed millions of acres, resulting in hundreds of news stories.

Many journalists stuck with boilerplate stories reciting how many fires had occurred this year, how that number compared to previous years, and what the final tally may be at year's end. They wrote about the acreage destroyed by the fires, usually equated with the area of a large state, or several small states combined. Stories focused on the number of people fighting the fires, the battalions they represented, and the states they came from.

But many reporters went beyond the who, what, when, and where, and provided insight into the why – the causes of the fires – and the what next – the short- and long-term solutions. Not many explored the environmental after-effects of the fires. There were few words to be found about destruction of wildlife and habitat. Here=s how the summer wildfires played in several publications across the country:

“The wave of devastating fires has resulted from an unnatural buildup of dry, highly flammable excess wood. Before the government began to suppress forest fires early in the 20th century, frequent small fires cleaned out the underbrush. Large ponderosa pines often grew in open stands with densities between 20 and 55 trees per acre. Now, as a result of preventing forest fires, much smaller trees often grow in the same place with densities of 300 to 900 trees per acre.

“When a forest fire does break out today, it burns much more intensely. Fires like this have nothing to do with the lighter fires that historically were a natural part of the ecological cycle....”

Environmental News Network (early August): “Weather once again has played a leading role, determining speed, direction and intensity of the wildfires.”

Environmental News Network (mid-August): ”Several western Republicans blame the magnitude of the fires on a lack of forest stewardship.

“In Montana, where the fires have forced hundreds of people from their homes, Republican Gov. Marc Racicot and Congressman Rick Hill denounced the recent proposal by President Clinton and the U.S. Forest Service to ban road building within more than 40 million acres of national forests .... [Racicot] maintains the Clinton administration tried to push through the new roadless policy without studying the potential for forest fires, invasive species, and other management issues ....

“According to Tom Power, an economist at the University of Montana, only 25 percent of the wildfires in Montana have occurred in roadless areas. Some 96 percent of fire-fighting resources in the state have been used in heavily logged areas with roads and in ‘urban interface’ areas, he said.

“The Northern Rockies Coordination Center also reports that most of the largest, fast-moving fires in Montana are in the urban interface zone, along the edge of valleys and not in the wilderness. These areas are characterized by extremely dry conditions, rural subdivisions, noxious weeds, and a human-altered environment.”

The New York Times (mid-August): “Trends in population migration and the Forest Service's own policies add to the difficulty of combating the fires, Mr. [Bobby] Kitchens [of the U.S. Forest Service] said .... One problem, he said, is what the agency calls ‘the human interface.’ ‘We've got too many people moving into heavily wooded areas like this,’ he said.

“... people have built their homes amidst a dangerous accumulation of fuels.”

The New York Times (two days later): “Fire experts had warned for years that a buildup of combustible material in Western forests had reached vast and dangerous proportions. But federal agencies did not begin to address the problem until a policy shift in 1995, and conservative critics – including the Republican governor of Montana – were arguing today that, even afterward, the administration did not move fast enough ....

“At the heart of the attack, echoed by representatives of the timber industry, was a contention that the priority given to environmental concerns within the administration had prevented officials from confronting the fire threat as might have been most appropriate, through emergency logging measures ....

“The governor [Marc Racicot of Montana] blamed those he called strong environmentalists within the administration, portraying them as opposed to timber cutting under any circumstances, including thinning that might have reduced the severity and extent of the fires ....

“Since 1989, timber harvests on national forests have fallen to less than 3 billion board feet per year from 12 billion, in large part to address environmental concerns, like threats to endangered species like the spotted owl ....”

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune: “If blame is to be laid, it's Congress' duty to adopt budgets for federal agencies, including the Forest Service. Had [Montana Governor Marc] Racicot's Republicans, who have controlled Congress for the past eight years, given the Forest Service funds to train more firefighters, better equip their ranks and enforce such preventive policies as controlled burns, 2000 might not be a record year for wildfires.”

Time: “What complicates the fire fighters' job is that the picturesque [Bitterroot] valley, like so much of the West, is adding population rapidly, creating what's called an ‘urban interface’ of sometimes palatial homes tucked high among the trees. ‘Forest fire’ is a misnomer; the Bitterroot fires are village fires, backyard fires.”

The Washington Post (op/ed piece): “It's true that the fires of 2000 are burning on Clinton's watch. But you don't have to be a Friend of Bill to understand that today's unnatural buildup of forest fuels has resulted from nearly a century of effective firefighting, not just from the forest management practices of the past seven and a half years.

“[Montana Governor Marc] Racicot's anti-Clinton rant is also dangerously divisive B pitting environmentalists against loggers and neighbors against neighbors just when people need to unite against a daunting common threat.”

Associated Press (Boise, Idaho): “Wildfires this year have burned across the ideological lines of the national forest policy debate to create an opportunity for consensus gone since the 1970s ....

“Some environmentalists - even those who oppose all commercial logging on national forests - are ready to support the thinning and even logging of thickets of overgrown forests surrounding Western communities.

“The timber industry also is ready to shift its focus toward the urban edge of the forests that present the greatest threat to public safety and private property.”

Associated Press (Washington, D.C.): “The U.S. Forest Service wants to boost efforts to remove small trees and brush near western communities in response to wildfires raging this summer, agency officials said yesterday....”

Environmental News Network: “[Rep. Rick] Hill recommends forest thinning and salvage logging to reduce the risk of wildfires .... Hill called on the Clinton administration to conduct an emergency salvage operation of the affected timber to provide a boon to communities that have seen their economic viability damaged by the fires.’...

“[Mathew] Koehler [of the Native Forest Network] also noted that Hill's proposal to salvage affected timber would be harmful to forest ecosystems. ‘This is not a nuclear zone with everything leveled,’ he said. ‘In the future, burnt trees will provide shade for new forests. If you cut them down, you open up the forest floor to harsh sunlight.’

“As a solution to wildfires, a number of environmental groups are supporting the National Forests Protection and Restoration Act, which would end federal logging subsidies and redirect funds into fire-risk reduction programs, including prescribed burns and replanted native vegetation.”

The New York Times: “Those trying to address the future fire threat are focusing on two solutions: taking out more trees by logging or thinning, and deliberately setting fires ....

“A number of Western senators back the idea of allowing the timber industry to remove more trees.

“However, environmental groups point out that the biggest fires in Montana and Idaho are burning not in wilderness areas, but in land that has been developed or logged. Such areas also account for 90 percent of the acreage identified as most vulnerable to wildfire ....

“The other solution B planned fire B has become a public relations nightmare.”

The Portland Oregonian (editorial, in its entirety): “So, Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., says that wildfires are raging because we haven't chopped down enough trees. Hmm. Maybe he's onto something. If we tear down all the buildings, we'll be less susceptible to earthquakes, too.”

USA Today: “Another epic wildfire season in the West might turn out to be a similar watershed event, forging a consensus on the dire need to restore tens of millions of acres of Western forest and range to more natural, fire-resistant conditions ....

“The Bureau of Land Management is pushing to rehabilitate about 75 million acres of the Great Basin where invading cheatgrass has dramatically increased the frequency and intensity of fire ...

“This year's fires might yet have a bright side: focusing attention on the need to restore forest and range ...

“The Senate has attached a $240 million fuel reduction package to a public lands appropriations bill this year, and chances are the House will follow suit .... The emphasis, says Forest Service fire ecologist Mike Hilbruner, would be on protecting at-risk communities, shielding watersheds, and conserving biological diversity.”

The Washington Post (editorial): “Most of the material that should be removed for fire prevention is too small to be useful in commercial logging. In many cases the agency [Forest Service] simply has to pay contractors to cut down the smaller trees and bush and haul them out. Doing this on a big enough scale to make a dent in the problem will be an expensive undertaking.”

Environmental News Network: “The water fire fighters use to suppress wildlife [is] a mixture of chemicals that make the water denser and ground fuels less flammable. But few studies have been conducted to determine the effect of the chemicals on the environment ....

“Research on the environmental effect of fire retardants shows they harm fish if they seep into waterways. Their effect on vegetation and invertebrates appears to be minimal, but data is [sic] scarce ....”

The Salt Lake Tribune (op/ed piece): “For all the direct costs of such fires B lost forests, evacuated communities, lost houses B there is a tremendous cost on our environment. Burning trees release tremendous amounts of toxins and particulate matter into the air, and the smoke and ash can travel for many miles, affecting the air quality of communities hundreds of miles away.

“The fires destroy habitat for wildlife, including the habitats of threatened and endangered species such as spotted owls and salmon. Forest fires can create unstable soil conditions, leading to rivers, and ultimately, the coast. In other words, unhealthy forests are bad environmental policy.”

Note: Formerly published by the National Safety Council. Reprinted with permission.