March 1, 2022
Tanker 12, a BAe-146, dropping on the northwest side of the Alisal Fire near Santa Barbara, California, Oct. 13, 2021. Photo by Santa Barbara County FD.Thirteen members of Congress signed a letter February 2, 2022 asking the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture about a long-overdue report regarding shifting from 1-year to 10-year contracts for firefighting aircraft.
Many of the contracts for firefighting aircraft issued by the Forest Service in recent years have been for only one guaranteed year with a few more years possible on a year by year approval basis. Some air tanker vendors have found it challenging to develop the aircraft and then hire, train, and retain employees with nothing guaranteed beyond one year.
The Consolidated Appropriation Act of 2021 which became law December 27, 2020 required that the report about 10-year contracts be submitted no later than March 27, 2021. When the letter (below) was written, the document still had not been submitted, and was more than 300 days overdue.
On Tuesday March 1, a spokesperson for the US Forest Service, Stanton Florea, told Fire Aviation that the agency sent the report to the Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, on February 8. In compliance with Public Law 111–88, Mr. Florea said, after 45 days it will be posted to the Forest Service website at: www.fs.fed.us/about-agency/
When we asked for a copy of a letter that would have been in response to the February 2 inquiry from the 13 members of Congress, Mr. Florea said it is”currently going through clearance and is not yet available.”
Elizabeth Daniels is the Communications Director for the Congressional Western Caucus which posted the letter to the USFS on the Caucus’ website. The Caucus, rather than individual Representatives’ offices, are the lead on issues like this, we were told by Amanda Fitzmorris, the Press Secretary for Rep. Dan Newhouse, the Chair of the Caucus.
The Congressional Western Caucus lists 85 members on its website, many of which are from surprising locations considering the name of the organization — Louisiana, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, Puerto Rico, and American Samoa. Most, however, are from states west of the Mississippi River.
Ms. Daniels confirmed that the Caucus has the report from the USFS about the 10-year contracts, but she could not send us a copy.
“We’ve got a lot of different cooks in the kitchen on this one…I’m trying to get the information out as soon as possible,” Ms. Daniels said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to turn some of the recommendations and things that they’ve put into the report into some legislative items. So while you may not get the actual physical report, you’ll kind of get the gist of what they said through our actions.”
She later said if the report is approved for release, she could then distribute it.
In testimony April 15, 2021 before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, U.S. Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen was asked about the report, which at the time was about 19 days late.
“Relative to your question about air tankers, the contracting air tanker community has really come on line, they are meeting our needs of contemporary air tanker capacity for wildland fire in the U.S,” Chief Christiansen said. “We are studying the question about going to a 10-year contract, what the pros and cons are. We’re nearly complete with that report. It will be going through clearance in a matter of a few days and it will be getting to the committee here shortly. So we’d be glad to discuss more about air tankers. But we think we are really on the right track with our air tankers. And thank you for being such a help and an advocate for getting us get the right resources.”
We have written about 1-year and 10-year contracts several times. Here is an excerpt from an article published December 17, 2021, titled, Forest Service says there’s not enough time to issue new helicopter contracts for 2022.
Our take
Less than three months after Forest Service Chief Christiansen said the agency was going to release a report “shortly” about the feasibility of moving to 10-year contracts, they issued a presolicitation for helicopter contracts that guaranteed one year. (Fire Aviation requested a copy of the report at the time, but it was not provided.)
In December, 2017 the US Forest Service canceled a five-year exclusive use (EU) contract it had issued the previous year for two CL-415 water scooping air tankers. So a one-year contract with each additional option year at the discretion of the agency with unreliable congressional funding is not a concept that makes potential vendors feel all warm and fuzzy.
That year the FS also reduced the number of Type 1 helicopters on EU contract from 34 to 28 and canceled a solicitation for up to seven large air tankers, citing a lack of funding.
In 2018 when the Forest Service began issuing one-year contracts for air tankers we wrote:
Few if any vendors can simply write a check to purchase and convert an air tanker, so they have to convince a lender to give them large sums of money usually even before they have a contract with the USFS. With this new one-year contract policy, obtaining those funds could be even more difficult.
Below is an excerpt from the Missoulian:
“They’re only offering a one-year contract,” said Ron Hooper, president of Missoula-based Neptune Aviation. “We can’t go to the bank with a one-year contract to finance airplanes. They just laugh at us.”
Even if a vendor received a guaranteed five-year contract it can be difficult to establish and implement a long-term business plan that would make sense to their banker and the solvency of the company.
These one-year firefighting aircraft contracts need to be converted to 10-year contracts, and the number of Type 1 helicopters must be restored to at least the 34 we had for years.
Below is the letter sent by the 13 members of Congress dated February 2, 2022.
[pdf-embedder url=”https://fireaviation.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Congressional-letter-10-year-contracts.pdf” title=”Congressional letter, 10-year contracts”]
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Gerald.