Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007 My Turn • One fire produces the same greenhouse gases as more than 2 million cars

Publisher’s note: This My Turn originally appeared in the Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007 edition of the Lassen County Times.

The 3,000-acre Angora Fire released enough greenhouse gasses to equal what 132,000 cars put out in a year in California.

Multiplying that by 20 times means the recent 65,000-acre Moonlight Fire produced the amount of greenhouse gases put out by more than 2.6 million cars in one year.

But reducing the fire danger did not make the California Air Resources Board’s list of early action items to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“It’s total garbage,” said Brian Dahle, who chairs the Lassen County Board of Supervisors, and serves on an ARB blue ribbon committee.

Dahle pointed out the list of action items developed in response to Assembly Bill 32, the California Global  Warming  Solutions  Act  of  2006, says “nothing about forest fires or the carbon that’s released during a fire.”

The action items found at arb.ca.gov/cc include requiring devices  that  reduce  aerodynamic  drag  and  rolling  resistance on trucks, replacement of high global warming  potential refrigerants used in California’s mobile air conditioning systems, ensuring that vehicle tire  pressure is maintained to manufacturer specifications and reducing sulfur hexafluoride — a highly stable non-conducting chemical used for and emitted  from various industrial processes and in the manufacturing of electrical circuitry.

“Who’s going to enforce all this?” asked District 1 Supervisor Bob Pyle.

“I’m assuming the county,” Dahle replied. “That’s usually how it works.”

Dahle told the board at its Sept. 25 meeting, quite a few supervisors at a recent meeting of the Regional Council of Rural Counties let an air board representative know the action items need to address forest health issues.

The ARB representative said she “really hadn’t had a chance to look into that issue,” according to District 3 Supervisor Lloyd Keefer, who also attended the RCRC meeting. “That told the story right there.”

ARB isn’t the only short-sighted state agency. The Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board won’t allow clean-up of the forest in the Tahoe Basin because it doesn’t want to disturb the soil and send runoff and sedimentation into the lake, said District 2 Supervisor Jim Chapman. Chapman resigned in March from the seat on the Lahontan board Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed him to in January 2005.

The Angora Fire produced more ash and sediment than years forest work could have disturbed.

Dahle attended a workshop the same day, where he said he hoped to educate the ARB “on where a lot of emissions are coming from, and it’s from the overgrowth in the forest and the catastrophic fires.”

Forest county officials have been preaching the dangers of fuel build-up on national forests for years and very few people have listened.

Perhaps the global warming bandwagon will be the place to get some attention.