Group's lawsuit playing with fire

We concede that it makes no sense to try to protect fish and their habitat from a wildfire by dumping poison into the stream where they swim.

But it's equally illogical to make a political point about federal firefighting policy by trying to exclude from the firefighters' arsenal a tool they use dozens of times each year to save lives and homes.

The group seeking to make that political point is the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.

The organization sued its namesake agency last week. The group is challenging the Forest Service plan to continue using fire retardant — that's the goopy red stuff, also known as "slurry," that airplanes dump in the path of fires to slow the flames' advance and give fire crews on the ground a chance to dig control lines.

Forest Service officials acknowledge that chemicals in fire retardant can kill fish and other aquatic life. In 2000 the Forest Service ordered pilots to avoid spraying retardant within 300 feet of streams.

That precaution has worked — usually.

One heavily publicized exception happened in 2002, when a pilot accidentally poured retardant into Fall River near Sunriver killing about 22,000 fish.

Earlier this year Forest Service officials, after studying the potential environmental effects of fire retardant, decided to continue using it.

That decision prompted last week's lawsuit.

But Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, admitted that fire retardant, though it gave his group a reason to sue, is not the primary target.

"What we're trying to do here is use the issue of fire retardant to get at a much bigger societal issue, which is how do we deal with fire," Stahl said last week.

That is an important issue, all right.

The Forest Service spent about a billion dollars fighting fires last year, and Stahl's group is hardly alone in suggesting that in certain cases the agency would not only benefit the environment, but also save a bunch of money, if it let the fires burn.

Forest Service officials themselves have said as much. That's why the agency already allows lightning-caused fires to burn in some places — including the Eagle Cap Wilderness.

Stahl's group argues that the Forest Service should let more fires burn. That's a reasonable position.

What's not reasonable is filing a lawsuit that could force the Forest Service to stop using fire retardant — even in situations when retardant poses no threat to fish, but could save firefighters' lives.

The Forest Service will continue, and should continue, to fight wildfires that threaten people, homes and other private property, or valuable wildlife habitat such as rivers where salmon and steelhead spawn.

Such fires have, of course, become more common during the past couple decades as people across the West, including Baker County, build homes in the woods and out in the rangelands.

If a judge demands the agency cease using fire retardant, then fire bosses will have to send their crews into dangerous situations more often than they do now, when planes can dump retardant right next to the flames.

We already expect firefighters to take chances — risky ones sometimes.

But the level of risk that the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Responsibility's lawsuit could lead to is simply too high.

No one needs to die to ensure the Forest Service uses fire retardant responsibly.