October 05, 2010 07:24 PM UTC

Bennet & Udall: Beetle Kill and Fires sh/be Emergency; Buck ?

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• by: MADCO

The Colorado Independent

is reporting that Senators Bennet and Udall are leading a bi-partisan effort to get the US Dept of Ag to increase funding for clearing dead  trees and  other fire mitigation and prevention work.

Incumbent Republican Ken Buck has said nothing.

Link text

Buck’s previous comments on Social Security, VA health care services, and other government funded services have demonstrated a preference for private,  market based solutions.

I am skeptical about “market based firefighting solutions”, as I suspect the Cranicks are now as well. (And we can all be thankful no person was in their house.)

What would a market solution look like in the case of the bark beetle epidemic in the Rocky Mountain region?

Well, first the good news. There is a market for the dead trees. Denver metro homeowners are paying $200+ per cord for firewood. So it’s possible that an entrepreneur could buy the wood, remove it, cut it, deliver it to Denver homes. Not to other states, however, many of whom have laws against the importation of firewood in an effort to avoid infestations.

But it hasn’t happened yet, despite the bark beetle killing millions of acres of trees. Or if it has, it has not happened quickly enough to be a notably effective fire avoidance technique.

On the down side, we let the bark beetle kill all the lodgepole pines in CO and the region because no private investor emerges to fund an eradication effort.  The destabilized hillsides will clog the watersheds with runoff, perhaps slowing the movement of our water to downstream “owners.”  At that point the local water managers will be forced to mitigate the damage to the waterways, and local solutions are better funded locally.

And until they get wet, there’s another word for all those dead trees: fuel.  If fires are caused by lightning strikes, make it a federal funding priority then.  But if (when) fires are started by human events, charge it back to the people involved. This will create a voluntary insurance market for responsible Coloradans.

Bennet and Udall – leading a bipartisan effort to make this a federal priority.

Buck?

Silent on this specifically and apparently in favor of private market solutions in general.