Should we cut down mature ponderosa forest to accommodate a golf course expansion?

Some of the latest drama here in Los Alamos is a proposed golf course improvement/expansion project which involves cutting down a significant amount of forest in North Community (both north and south of Diamond Drive, depending on the option). As you might guess, I don’t think this is a good idea. I’m in favor of golf course improvement (they really need it), but not at the expense of our internal community forests, especially after two major fires.

On December 8, there was a big public meeting at Fuller Lodge; about 150 people showed up. There was a lot of passion, but a very respectful and community-minded tone for the most part (with the exception of a group of golfers sitting behind us). The Monitor had a moderately good writeup and a few letters to the editor (1 2 3) (all behind a paywall, unfortunately). The county also has a fair amount of background information, with the usual level of bureaucratic disorganization. There are other blog posts appearing (1 2 3), and the Los Alamos Trails Facebook group is pretty stirred up.

If you want to weigh in, the county is listening. Please write to the Capital Projects and Improvements Department at cpfd@lacnm.us or to the Parks & Recreation Board at prb@lacnm.us. It’s unclear to me which is preferable, so I wrote to both.

Please also don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if you want to talk more about this or swap ideas and strategy.

My letter to the county is below.

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Dear Mr. Walker, Mr. Aragon, and members of the Parks & Recreation Board and Capital Projects and Facilities Department:

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Golf Course Improvement Study. I attended (and spoke at) the public meeting on December 8 and found it extremely valuable, particularly in understanding the perspective of the golf course community. I was persuaded that the golf course indeed needs work, and that a quality golf course is in the best interests of both forest users and golfers. However, I still have significant concerns about the project, which I detail below.

For context, I grew up on Woodland Road and recently returned to town to pursue my career. I now live in Western Area. When I was little, I spend a great deal of time in the woods within and close to town, particularly between Woodland Road and the golf course. Much of this time was unsupervised, something uniquely possible in Los Alamos, with its well-bounded interior forests. As a returning adult, I am spending time in the county forests at least once a week; when it’s lighter in the evenings, I expect to spend more. I am expecting my first child in May and hope to be able to provide him or her with the same extraordinary and unique outdoor experiences I was lucky enough to have when I was young.

I have never played a round of golf and expect never to do so. This does not mean I am anti-golf; rather, I am simply indifferent to it. However, I do believe strongly in community and realize that a viable community has diverse interests. Thus, it is important to me as a community member to support the interests of local golfers, to the extent that they do not threaten my own, and in this specific case, it is important to me to reach some kind of agreement which satisfies both golfers and forest users. I am happy to put in significant work towards this goal (e.g., by serving on a working group).

My concerns about the project fall into three basic categories: the removal of trees, the expectation that an improved course can really be a regional draw, and the validity of the safety concerns expressed by the golf course.

Removal of trees

First, I believe the framing of the impacts is incorrect. The central issue is not trails, but rather their context: the forest. Neither matching nor increasing the trail mileage is sufficient; it is the impact on forest that should be considered. Trails are simply a means to access the forest.

Most importantly, I stand by my opinion that the goal of the project should be zero trees removed. This is not an extreme position. Our forest is particularly precious after two major wildfires in the past decade, once of which had severe effects within North Community itself. Should we not think long and hard before reducing what little we have left? The forest and its trees are a core asset for the people and wildlife that use them, and it is perfectly reasonable for us to ask that they be left alone.

I worry too about the erosive precedent we would set by removing trees: a few trees here, a few trees there, and pretty soon we’ll have nothing left. Many mountain communities have followed this unfortunate path. Let’s not become one of them.

Allow me to make an analogy. Suppose that instead of trees, the golf course were surrounded by boulders and cliffs – features prohibitively expensive to remove. Would the golf course simply throw up its hands and give up on improvements? Of course not. The course’s planners would get creative and produce a great solution within the constraints. My point is this: the cost of removing trees is in fact prohibitively expensive. It is just that the expense cannot be measured in dollars. And thus, I ask the community to work towards creative solutions which respect the magnitude of this expense.

Similarly, project planners must not hide this expense. When presenting options, planners must quote clearly (a) acres of forest to be removed and (b) number of mature ponderosas to be removed. If the golf course is going to ask forest users to give up part of the forest, it has a duty to be explicit about the impact.

I also note that the golf course invoked the notion of sustainability several times. I found this frustrating – does not sustainability include preserving our rapidly disappearing natural heritage? It is impossible to plant mature ponderosas; a “sustainable” new course does not make up for lost trees.

I believe strongly that the golf course has not made its case for removal of trees. The way to make this case is to show first that zero-tree options have been creatively and exhaustively explored, and then make a persuasive case that such options really are unworkable. Currently, it is clear that improvement within existing boundaries (currently Option C) was not explored anywhere near as thoroughly as the expansion options. The golf course must do so in order to credibly ask for tree removal.

Can an improved course really be a regional draw?

I sympathize with the golf course’s desire to become a regionally known course that draws golfers from beyond our community. However, I’m not yet convinced this is a realistic goal. In particular, I note that anyone coming up to Los Alamos to play golf must drive past courses in the valley which golfers in the meeting acknowledged as excellent. Thus, if the course were to become a regional draw, it would need to not only match neighboring courses in quality but exceed them sufficiently to justify another half hour of driving. As I mentioned, I’m not a golfer, but that seems like a tall order to me.

In particular, I am concerned that factors beyond course condition have a significant effect on the course’s ability to become a regional draw. I believe the golf course has a responsibility to quantify the degree to which course condition has hurt the course as well as the degree to which improving it would help. What data support the theory that improving the course will lead to increased interest (and accompanying player numbers)? How much of the cited play decline, and the expected play increase, are due to course condition as opposed to other factors, including construction and improvement of nearby courses, change in popularity of golf in general, and the economic downturn? How much does the additional driving beyond competing courses matter to players?

In other words, why should the golf course attempt to become a regional draw rather than an excellent community course? My point here is that the golf course must be improved under realistic assumptions and toward realistic goals. The golf course must make a credible case, backed by data, that becoming a regional draw is in fact plausible and likely under the proposed changes, before asking the community to endorse steps towards that goal.

Safety concerns expressed by the golf course

While I certainly agree that safety is an important consideration in most things, I do not believe the golf course has adequately made its case that meaningful safety problems exist and that the proposed improvements would mitigate them. At the meeting, evidence supporting the existence of a safety problem was limited to course standards and anecdotes (and especially in this town, the plural of anecdote is not data). No evidence at all was presented supporting the implicit claim that the course is meaningfully worse off than similar courses. (While the golf course showed that it did not meet current design standards, that is not the same thing.)

The golf course must present data showing (a) that a safety problem exists, and the specific nature of that problem, (b) that these problems are significantly worse than similar courses, and (c) that the proposed improvements sufficiently mitigate the problem. Additionally, the similar courses must be selected appropriately; new courses constructed to the most modern standards would not qualify. In these analyses, the golf course must be clear about who in particular is benefitting from improved safety, and to what degree. Golfers? Motorists on Diamond Drive? Hikers in the forest? In particular, simple signage could go along way towards improving hiker safety (if indeed there is a problem).

At this point, I worry that the golf course is simply “playing the safety card” in order to get what it wants. Being more specific and quantitative about the issue will allay this concern.

Moving forward

I do believe, based on the respectful and community-minded tone of the meeting as well as my own goals, that an agreement can be reached which would satisfy both sides. I also agree with Mr. Walker that a proposal that does not enjoy broad support would probably be unsuccessful (certainly, I would vigorously oppose a proposal which I believed did not adequately take into account the interests of forest users).

I also believe that keeping this constructive tone is important. While in general I do not see any problems emerging in this area, one that concerns me is vocabulary. The county is calling the plan an “improvement”, but several of the options include increasing the size of the golf course, which clearly meets the definition of “expansion”. (In particular, I was frustrated and worried when Mr. Stupka stood up at the end of the meeting and asserted repeatedly that the golf course was not seeking to expand. Denying the meaning of common words is an important ingredient in the collapse of good will and common purpose. I hope that the golf community will not continue down this path.) I suggest renaming the project to “Golf Course Improvement and/or Expansion Project”, in order to reflect the fact that some of the options involve expansion.

Along those lines, I’m interested in serving on a working group to hash out an agreement. It seems to me that having stakeholders sit down, get to know one another, and work out disagreements at length is a fruitful strategy that would lead to a solid agreement supported by both sides. (It is not clear to me that the current process really involves the two sides working together.) I’m sure it’s obvious that that I am firmly on the side of the forest, which I believe makes me an excellent candidate for a working group – if I’m satisfied, then there is a good chance that most forest people will be satisfied.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to comment, and I would love an opportunity to participate more deeply in this process. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

[my full name, address, phone number]

A few Los Alamos hikes

Erin and I went on a few short hikes around town this weekend: a little bit of Hidden Canyon Trail off Trinity, East Fork Trail near the golf course, and Kwage Trail behind the stables on North Mesa.

Pajarito Mountain from pretty much someone’s back yard, near Hidden Canyon.

Not actually East Fork Trail – we got lost. The tracks lead to someone’s back gate.

Just below the stairs on East Fork Trail.

Also just below the stairs on East Fork Trail.

Kwage Trail on North Mesa. The mountain on the right is Caballo.

The end of Kwage Trail, overlooking the new old sewage treatment plant.

Barranca Mesa from the Kwage Trail.

On the causes of the Cerro Grande fire

I read a very interesting book on the Cerro Grande fire, a prescribed fire that got out of hand and torched the homes of over 400 Los Alamos families in the spring of 2000. I was in college at the time. The book is: Inferno by Committee: A History of the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos) Fire, America’s Worst Prescribed Fire Disaster.

It was a really interesting read, albeit somewhat infuriating at times. The following is the book’s interpretation of events, which I found quite persuasive.

The central question: “What caused the Cerro Grande fire?”

Notably, the question “what started the Cerro Grande fire?” is of pretty much no consequence. It is true that the Park Service made some mistakes with the prescribed fire, and the Forest Service exacerbated these mistakes, leading to Cerro Grande escaping control. But this is essentially irrelevent – what we really care about is: “Why was the the fire so destructive, and why were so many homes lost?”

A big fire in Los Alamos was inevitable, and it was only bad luck that it was a prescribed burn that started it. (The Dome Fire of 1996 very nearly came into town in essentially the same way that Cerro Grande did, and the Las Conchas fire of this year would probably have come into town if not for the fuel removal by Cerro Grande.)

The official investigations focused almost exclusively on why the fire started, rather than the bigger picture. In particular, a hasty and incompetent witch hunt that released its “findings” only a week after the fire passed through town (while it was in fact still burning in other locations) defined the popular understanding of the fire’s causes with falsehoods that still form the conventional wisdom today.

Anyway, the answers are:

The fire was so destructive because the fuel load in the forests surrounding Los Alamos was far in excess of what is healthy for a dry, Southwestern ponderosa pine forest. A healthy ponderosa forest has remarkably few trees, just a few dozen per acre, with grassy meadows beneath the trees, and it burns at a low intensity every 10-15 years.

Instead, a policy of overgrazing, logging, and fire suppression left the forests with up to tens of thousands of trees per acre and a thick layer of dropped pine needles on the ground – a huge quantity of fuel just waiting for a fire and some wind. And the Forest Service was largely uninterested in forest health and fire preparation, preferring to focus on resource extraction (mostly logging) that actually lost money for the U.S. government.

So many homes were lost because of poor preparation. The wind-driven crown fire largely missed the town; most of the burned homes were ignited by either ground fire or embers falling from the sky, which are relatively straightforward to prepare for.

Residents generally failed to prepare in the years before the fire: for example, they did not keep vegetation away from buildings, remove pine needle accumulation from yards, or install fire-resistant roofing. Further, and inexplicably, firefighters failed to bulldoze a fire break around the west side of town when they had the opportunity – during two days of calm weather, the fire paused on the south side of Los Alamos Canyon, and bulldozers were in town and ready to go during those two days.

Either or both of these actions could have saved the bulk of the homes that were lost. The would have reduced the number of structure fires in town, and that would have freed firefighting resources to deal with more effectively with the structure fires that did start.

Salida train tracks

I’m visiting my sister in Salida, Colorado this weekend.

Natural Arch hike

Erin and I walked up to Natural Arch on Sunday. This was one of my favorite walks when I was a little kid. Of course, it’s not a forest hike anymore; very little of the walk seemed familiar.

The big views are fun, but I do miss the woods. I suspect it’s greener in the spring and summer – the scrub oak would be green, and supposedly there are a lot of aspen up in the hills.

Cave of the Winds hike

Erin and I went up to see Cave of the Winds yesterday. This is a small cave (more or less one room perhaps 100 feet long) about a half hour’s walk from our house.

View from near the cave, looking up Los Alamos Canyon towards the ski hill on the horizon. Note missing trees from the Cerro Grande and/or Las Conchas burns.

Erin and me on the canyon rim above the cave.

From the Cave of the Winds trail towards the town site (not visible) and the Truchas Peaks across the valley. The large ponderosas are survivors of Cerro Grande, while the small ones have sprouted since the fire. This area did not burn in the Las Conchas fire.

Red Dot Trail

We’ve now been in Los Alamos for a couple of days. No stuff yet – we’re camping out with a card table and inflatable bed in our mostly empty house – but so far it’s pretty nice.

For example, we can go on walks like this, down the Red Dot Trail, just a few minutes outside town:

Big news!

Erin and I are having our first baby, due in mid-May.

If you’d like to follow along, we have a private blog for friend and family – please e-mail me and I’ll add you.