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Medford's air tanker base gets a reprieve By JILL BRISKEY Mail Tribune Hounded by requests to keep the Medford Air Tanker Base open, the U.S. Forest Service on Wednesday announced plans to keep it as a reload base for one year. The decision, made by Regional Forester Harv Forsgren, reverses the Forest Service's earlier decision to close and dismantle the base by March 15. An air tanker base is manned 24 hours a day during fire season, but a reload base is used by crews only when it's needed to fight fires. "I'm ecstatic," said Jackson County Commissioner Jack Walker, who has been leading the fight to keep the base open. "For three years, we've been working on this." Citing the need to cut costs, the Forest Service announced last year it would close the base and move operations to Klamath Falls. Moving the base and its contracted air tanker planes was expected to save taxpayers $1 million a year. Available funding limited southwestern Oregon to one air tanker base, officials said. Supporters of the Medford base say they will spend the next year attempting to secure funding - including federal appropriations - to keep the base operational. "We've already been looking for where this money can come from," Walker added. "I think we'll be coming up with a solution very soon ... I don't think that's going to be a huge stumbling block." Forsgren's decision follows months of meetings between agency personnel, representatives of Jackson and Josephine counties, and aides to Oregon U.S. Reps. Greg Walden and Peter DeFazio and U.S. Sens. Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden. "It's only been in the last six months that there's been a lot more dialog," said M.J. Harvie, spokeswoman for the Siskiyou and Rogue River forests. "I think this is all in the best interest of the community." The decision to close the Medford base also was based on a National Air Tanker Base Study completed in 1996 that concluded the Klamath Falls base was the best choice. But supporters disagree, citing August's Quartz fire in the Little Applegate River drainage. That fire was projected to burn 22,000 acres but was contained to 6,000. Supporters credit the reduction of potential burned land to tankers flying out of Medford, averaging the savings of fire suppression costs at $28.8 million. Wyden said closing the Medford base compromises services to Coos, Curry, southern Lane, Douglas and Del Norte counties. "Keeping the Medford Air Tanker Base open is absolutely essential to the effective protection of lives, property and vital timber and ecological resources in Southern Oregon," Wyden wrote in a release after learning of the Forest Service's decision. "I'm hopeful that collaboration will continue as we seek a long-term operating plan for the base." Operating and maintaining the Medford base in 2002 will cost approximately $150,000. An undisclosed amount of money had been set aside to dismantle and close down Medford's air tanker base. But now that money will be used to offset the Medford base's 2002 operating costs, said Rex Holloway, spokesman for the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Region in Portland. The Forest Service will absorb the rest of the cost by tweaking budgets, he added. Walden has already requested $1.35 million from the federal budget for the fiscal year 2002 - $1.2 million for upgrades and $150,000 for operating costs. District Director John Snider of Walden's Medford headquarters said the request is still in appropriations. Snider remains confident of a solution. "Now we've got a chance to put together a long-time base with a full-time future," Snider said. The tanker base at the Medford airport has been used since the early 1950s, shortly after the Forest Service began using planes to help snuff out wildfires with fire retardant. Red-bellied air tankers taking off from Medford historically have covered the area from the coast to the crest of the Cascade Mountains, and from Yreka, Calif., north to Roseburg. Reach reporter Jill Briskey at 776-4485, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.