One fish kill stretched five miles down
Washington’s Omak Creek, and wiped out more than 10,000 trout
and steelhead. Another fish kill hit five miles of Colorado’s
Mancos River. Others hit several Oregon streams. The cause?
Fire retardants dropped by airplanes, as federal agencies
battled wildfires during the past three years.
The plume
of chemicals reaches streams in “less than one-tenth of 1
percent of all the retardant drops,” estimates Alice Forbes,
at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
But with 15 to 18 million gallons dropped mostly by federal
agencies in an average year, and as much as 44 million gallons
dropped in a bad fire year, even the small percentage ending up in
streams is too much, says Andy Stahl of Forest Service Employees
for Environmental Ethics.
U.S. Forest Service rules say
retardants should not be dropped within 300 feet of streams, but it
happens — sometimes by accident, and sometimes when
it’s necessary during firefighting. “Pilots drop
retardants in the worst conditions (for accuracy) — low-level
flying, smoke, wind,” Stahl says.
Retardants can
kill aquatic life because they contain chemicals including
fertilizer compounds. When the leading brand, Fire-Trol, is exposed
to sunlight and water, it releases cyanide. The government is
studying the problem, and by 2005 will likely stop using any
retardant that releases cyanide, Forbes says.
Stahl’s group wants a full-scale environmental impact study
of retardants and other tools of the war on wildfires, and has
filed notice it will sue the feds in July, trying to force
firefighters to be more careful.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline War on fire takes a toll on fish.
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