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Walker requests meeting on air tanker The county commissioner is running out of time to get the Forest Service to leave the Medford base open By PAUL FATTIG Jack Walker wants the U.S. Forest Service to reconsider its decision to permanently close the Medford air tanker base. But Walker, a Jackson County commissioner who is taking the lead in the fight to retain the base, knows he has precious little time to make his case: Closure is planned for the end of the 2001 fire season. The fire season normally ends in mid-October, although it could be later this year. In a letter sent to the Forest Service's Regional Forester Harv Forsgren on Tuesday, the commissioners requested that the agency hold a public meeting in Medford to allow those opposed to base closure to present their arguments. "We want to be able to offer all the information we have to prove that the tanker base should not be removed," Walker said. "Leaving it here would benefit everyone. Removing it would benefit no one." The Forest Service in conjunction with the Oregon Department of Forestry has offered to hold a meeting in Portland on Nov. 9 to review the decision with the commissioners. The commissioners declined because that meeting would not be open to the public nor be accessible to local residents impacted by the decision, Walker said. The Forest Service has not yet responded to the commissioners' request. "We just want a chance to prove why it should remain open," Walker said. "This base has served us very well for many years. "This is absolutely a no-brainer," he added later. "It's one of those things that we see big government do and scratch our heads. This decision certainly wasn't made on a common-sense evaluation." But Jim Payne, regional aviation officer for the Forest Service, defended the decision to close the base and move it to Klamath Falls before the beginning of the 2002 fire season. Moreover, he said it was unlikely the agency would be persuaded to rescind its decision. Noting that funding availability limits one air tanker base to southwestern Oregon, Payne added that the National Air Tanker Base study completed in 1996 concluded the Klamath Falls base is the best choice. "We've reanalyzed the firefighting plan three times since 1996 and each time it indicated Klamath Falls was the better location," he said. "We've found it more efficient by about $1 million in savings a year." In addition to Medford and Klamath Falls, there are air tanker bases in Redmond and Redding, Calif. A reload base is in Montague, Calif. Air tankers launched out of Medford historically have covered the area from the coast to the crest of the Cascade Mountains and from Yreka, Calif., north to Roseburg. Both the Klamath Falls and Medford bases need to be upgraded to meet current agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, Payne said, adding that the former proved to be the best candidate for the upgrade. "If we were to keep Medford as a base, the cost of bringing it up to standard would be more than $2 million," he said. "We have no new money to pay for that. We would have to trade off firefighters and engine crews to rebuild the base." The two bases are only 60 miles apart, making them the closest of any tanker bases in the nation, he said. Once the base is closed, it would not serve as a reload base for tankers to use because of the cost required for upkeep, Payne said. However, the agency has offered the base to the local government, he said. "We understand the value to local private resources," he said. "But the reality is that those are not the Forest Service's protection responsibility." Walker is quick to counter that wildfires don't stop at national forest boundary lines. "Somebody made a decision, an idiotic decision based on virtually no facts, that everything other than what is important to the Forest Service and their funding ability is not to be considered," he said. "When you don't consider Bureau of Land Management, state land, private land and the rural interface, that's wrong," he said. "That's a big mistake." Both local Forest Service and BLM employees have told the commissioners that the air tankers from Medford saved the day at the Quartz Fire in August, Walker said. The planes were able to dump loads of retardant on that 6,100-acre fire in the Little Applegate River drainage every 10 minutes, he said. "I cannot give you their names - I promised I wouldn't - but they tell us that had we not had that increment of time, then we would have lost the Ashland watershed," Walker said, referring to the nearby forested area overlooking Ashland. More northern spotted owl habitat would have been lost had it not been for the retardant planes, he said of the half-dozen nesting sites burned by the Quartz Fire. The birds are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Walker says the 1996 Forest Service study was flawed, particularly its estimation that moving the base would increase the average response time from Klamath Falls to wildfires west of the Cascades by only about nine minutes. "Anyone knows that, unless you are in an F-15, you are not going to make that turnaround time," he said. Noting that Uncle Sam has increased its firefighting budget in the past year, Walker believes both Medford and Klamath Falls bases ought to be retained. "We are asking the Forest Service to reconsider," he said. "We want them to make an evaluation, not just on their budget and their standing timber, but everyone concerned. "We're all taxpayers," he added. "We should all be worried about fire, whether it's a Forest Service loss, private property or lives." Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.