Facing the prospect of a dangerous wildfire season made worse by a devastating drought, Colorado officials are thinking about spending millions of dollars to invest in a new fleet of firefighting air tankers.
A bipartisan proposal before the state Senate would give the state Division of Fire Prevention and Control the funds to buy or lease three firefighting helicopters this year, and to lease as many as four large aircraft to fight fires next year.
The bill, which would cost between $8 million and $12 million a year, would help the state protect critical watersheds on the dry Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains. The Western Slope has been hammered for three years by drought and by a growing infestation of invasive beetles that kill trees. The insects are turning forests that might be able to survive fires into 40-foot-tall matchsticks.
The threat goes beyond forests, however. A massive fire can poison water supplies, a much bigger concern in the Rockies than almost anywhere else in the country. Snowmelt from those mountains flows down the Colorado River and provides water to tens of millions of people and hundreds of millions of acres.
“Colorado has 4 million acres of dead trees, mostly on the Western Slope, surrounding our watersheds. Those are watersheds that supply water to 40 million people in six lower-basin states and the country of Mexico,” state Sen. Steve King, one of the bill’s lead sponsors, said in an interview. “The idea that we are one lightning strike, one arsonist’s match strike, one terrorist’s match strike away from a fire that could change the Western Slope of Colorado for generations to come is a huge concern for our state.”
From The Journal Gazzette: https://www.journalgazette.net/article/20140326/NEWS03/140329486/1066/NEWS03