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Fire Chronicle #18
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Laura McCarthy, Forest Trust
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May 07, 2003 12:57 PDT
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FIRE CHRONICLE #18
Stories of the National Fire Plan
May 6, 2003
SMALL AND LOCAL BUSINESSES CITE BARRIERS TO REACHING NATIONAL FIRE PLAN
GOALS
By Cassandra Moseley and Laura McCarthy
Rural communities, small businesses, and local workers are vital to the
implementation of the National Fire Plan. Congress has emphasized the
creation of local employment opportunities and rural business growth
through the National Fire Plan by including special contracting
authorities in the annual appropriations. Fire suppression and fuel
reduction are two fire plan activities that require well-trained
workforces and healthy businesses near public forests. However, the
experience of several rural businesses along the Pacific Coast and in
the Southwest indicate that barriers in contracting procedures are
inhibiting local employment in fire suppression and fuel reduction, and
hindering progress towards the community assistance goals of the
National Fire Plan.
A previous issue of the Fire Chronicle reported on a study of the
employment effects of the National Fire Plan in Washington and Oregon
(Fire Chronicle #16, National Fire Plan Provides Economic Opportunity
for Rural Residents). The study found modest increases in local
employment as a result of the National Fire Plan. In this issue, we ask
why the employment gains have not been more significant, and address
barriers identified by small and micro business owners in California,
Oregon, and New Mexico.
CHALLENGES
Several factors influence the success of local and micro businesses in
creating economic opportunity in forest-dependent communities and
achieving the goals of the National Fire Plan. The phrase “local and
micro businesses” is used because the Small Business Administration
classifies forestry businesses with less than $6 million in annual
revenue as “small,” and uses the term “micro” to refer to businesses
with 25 or fewer employees. To be effective and sustainable, these micro
businesses need:
- Access to contracts
- Trained workforces with capacity to perform the contracts
- Incentives for employee retention such as living-wages and full-time
employment
The Departments of Interior and Agriculture recently decided to increase
their contracting of fuel reduction activities to achieve the goals of
the President's Healthy Forests Initiative, the 10-Year Comprehensive
Strategy, and the National Fire Plan. This increase in contracting over
previous years could be challenging for the agencies to administer, and
reaching out to local and micro businesses could be particularly
difficult.
Fire Suppression
Fire suppression is done by agency personnel, a seasonal workforce of
fire specialists, and a growing number of national contractors who
supply on-call suppression crews and logistical support for fire
suppression campaigns. Local workforces sometimes contribute to fire
suppression efforts by supplying heavy equipment, water trucks, timber
felling services, and meals, but local private sector fire crews are
increasingly rare. The Oregonian reported on January 29, 2003 that 94%
of all the 20-person crews nationwide are currently dispatched out of
Oregon.
The Watershed Research and Training Center has observed that the
dominance of national contractors along the Pacific Coast Interstate-5
corridor means that contractors from rural communities have few
opportunities to supply workers to suppress fire when it occurs close to
home. The Watershed Center notes that it is inefficient to pay
transportation and support costs to mobilize national contract crews
when a local workforce is trained and available. The Watershed Center
has also found that many agency fire suppression jobs that were located
in rural communities have been eliminated and replaced with contract
fire crews that employ workers from urban areas.
Hazardous Fuels Reduction
Hazardous fuel reduction includes fuel break construction, forest
thinning, and prescribed burning. This work is sometimes available to
contractors who are based in communities near the fuel reduction site
and who employ local workers. However, the agencies rarely have enough
work to keep a local crew busy throughout the season. In the Southwest,
contracts under $25,000 are usually awarded to local businesses, while
larger contracts are usually awarded to national contractors who offer a
better price, but who do not meet the local employment goals of the
National Fire Plan. In the Pacific Northwest, many of the contractors
who are selected to perform thinning and fuels reduction are the same
contractors who operate the national fire suppression crews. The
contractors employ the same workers for both activities and are able to
take a loss on fuel reduction contracts because of the high profits they
make in fire suppression.
Another trend is the use of IDIQ (indefinite delivery, indefinite
quantity) contracts to accomplish mechanical thinning. These contracts
are large and often include job sites across several states, which is
beyond the reasonable working circle of most local and micro businesses.
In one example, the Oregon Bureau of Land Management (BLM) arranged fuel
reduction treatments through five IDIQ contracts, and BLM units and
National Forests in Oregon and California placed task orders against the
contract.
OPPORTUNITIES
Creating an explicit link between the fire suppression and hazardous
fuel reduction workforce at the community level could make both
activities more efficient and cost effective. If local crews are already
in the woods to reduce hazardous fuels, and are organized to respond to
fire emergencies, then significant transportation and support expenses
would be eliminated. However, the institutional barriers that favor big
contracts and national enterprises will need to be overcome before local
and micro businesses can effectively perform suppression and fuel
reduction work.
Increasing the access of local and micro businesses to hazardous fuels
contracts will go a long way to achieving the goals of the National Fire
Plan. Five simple actions that would make a big difference include:
1. Create a target for local and micro capture of hazardous fuels
reduction contract dollars. A target to award 25-50% of hazardous fuel
reduction contract dollars to micro or local businesses or other
entities that will hire and train local workers would enable this sector
to grow and would stimulate progress toward the local employment goals
of the National Fire Plan.
2. Direct contracting officers not to award service contracts at prices
well below the government estimate. This practice, reported by micro
businesses in California, Oregon, and New Mexico, favors businesses that
pay substandard wages or that have been able to secure both fire
suppression and fuel reduction contracts, and thus can subsidize forest
work with suppression profits. While many local and micro businesses are
interested in fire suppression and fuel reduction contracts, few micro
businesses currently do both, as previously discussed. Thus, awarding
contracts at prices that are consistent with the government cost
estimate will level the playing field for all contracting businesses.
3. Provide direction to contracting officers and other field staff to
use best value contracting when awarding all hazard reduction work. Best
value contracting, with criteria of specialized skills, past experience,
and ability to provide local employment opportunities, in addition to
price, enables rural businesses to compete more effectively and creates
an incentive for high-quality work performance.
4. Provide clear direction to all agencies and regions to use local
benefit criteria in their best value contracts, as allowed by the
National Fire Plan appropriations language. Local benefit criteria
include contractor intent to employ local workers and to build community
capacity through training. Early monitoring efforts by the Ecosystem
Workforce Program at the University of Oregon suggest that the local
benefit criteria increases the local capture of service contracts, yet
businesses in the Southwest report that the agencies are not making use
of this authority.
5. Encourage local contracting officers to work with community partners
to structure contracts to match local capacity. Within the objectives of
the project, contracts can be structured to be more amenable to micro
and local businesses. For example, a thinning contract could be
structured to provide a crew of five workers with two months of work
instead of providing a crew of ten workers with one month of employment,
which would make the contracts more accessible to smaller operators.
CONCLUSION
Not all fire suppression or fuel reduction work can, or should be,
contracted with local or micro businesses. However, the community
assistance goals of National Fire Plan include employing local workers
and stimulating community economic development. Rural communities
support these goals because they will lead to the protection of their
homes and towns and to meaningful work as forest stewards. Policies that
favor big contracts and national enterprises need to be changed if
programs that are tailored to local and micro businesses are going to
succeed.
FIRE CHRONICLE is edited by the Forest Trust. This issue was written by
Cassandra Moseley, Director of Research and Policy at the Ecosystem
Workforce Program, University of Oregon and Laura Falk McCarthy, Forest
Protection Program Director at the Forest Trust. Additional information
was provided by Lynn Jungwirth, Director, Watershed Research and
Training Center in Hayfork, California. The Forest Trust welcomes your
comments, stories, and observations about how the National Fire Plan is
being implemented (just send a reply message and it will go to the list
moderator). To subscribe to FIRE CHRONICLE go to
http://www.topica.com/lists/firechronicles/ or send an email message to
lau-@theforesttrust.org.
PAST ISSUES OF FIRE CHRONICLE can be downloaded from
http://www.theforesttrust/forest_protection.html#fire
1. 2002 Fire Plan Appropriations will Benefit from 2001 Experience
2. Wildland-Urban Interface Definition a Barrier to Accountability
3. Stewardship Blocks: Innovative Tool Brings Fire Plan Benefits into
Community
4. Youth Training Needed for Fire Plan to Benefit Local Workforce
5. Grants Get National Fire Plan Money into Communities
6. Collaborative Forest Restoration Program Creates New Solution to
Gridlock
7. Permits Regulate Prescribed Burning on Private Land
8. Accountability Remains a Key Issue for National Fire Plan
9. National Partnership Advances Landscape-Scale Forest Restoration
10. Poor Communities Most Threatened By Wildfire
11. A New Model to Fire-Proof Forest Homes
12. Consensus Over Fuel Reduction Treatment Dissolves
13. Wildland Urban Interface Definition Needed for Effective Policy
14. Funding Gaps Prevent Completion of Hazardous Fuel Reduction
15. Agencies Propose to Streamline Environmental Review for Hazardous
Fuel Reduction Treatments
16. National Fire Plan Provides Economic Opportunity for Rural Residents
17. Bark Beetles Heighten Wildfire Concerns
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