Boulder, Colo.-The U.S. Forest Service is under a federal court ruling handed down nearly two months ago to stop dropping millions of gallons of the fire retardant mixture of water, fertilizer, and other chemicals on forest fires throughout the country. In his ruling, issued July 27 in a 79-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy, District of Montana, found in favor of nearly every claim by Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics in a suit filed in 2008 claiming that use of fire retardant is a threat to wildlife and the environment. The court found that the government failed to follow the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act when dumping what the plaintiffs call a “toxic mixture” on the public’s forests. Judge Molloy ruled that the Forest Service and the Fish & Wildlife Service failed to consider the effects of the slurry on plants and animals, or to set any limits on the amount they dump as a part of fighting wildfire. Since the introduction of ammonia-based retardants, reported Marvin Dodge, California forest ranger assigned to the Pacific Southwest forest and range experiment station, a few isolated cases of damage to crops and animals have been reported, including one tanker jettisoning a load of retardant over a California peach orchard and causing skin bleach to the ripening fruit, but no permanent damage. Dodge said claims that livestock are being killed by nitrate poisoning by retardants are unfounded. “Ammonia-based retardants cannot cause nitrate poisoning directly,” Dodge stated. “They must first enter the soil, be converted to nitrates, and accumulated by plants. This process occurs only under special climate conditions and requires two to three weeks. The possibility of injury to livestock is very slight, much less than from a range or pasture fertilization program.”
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