VallesCaldera.com – The independent news source about the Valles Caldera

This morning, VallesCaldera.com conducted an exclusive podcast interview with Dr. Bob Parmenter, the chief scientist of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. You can listen to the podcast here.

Parmenter provided a wide range of information regarding the Las Conchas Fire, including that highly burned forest areas will take up to a century and a half to recover. He also spoke of how the fire, which ignited “one acre of forest every 1.17 seconds for 14 hours,” is still burning underground as it torches through trees’ root structures. “A tree that may look like it escaped the flames just fine — 3 weeks from now can just fall over because all the roots are killed,” he said. He also stated that “a tree that looks like it might have only gotten singed by the heat and only the first ten feet or so might have brown needles, those trees could be dead in two, three, four years.”

The chief scientist also said that elk, deer, mountain lions, and most bears probably emerged unscathed from the fire, but that many songbirds, tree-nesting birds, and tree squirrels probably did not survive the inferno.

Parmenter also painted a distressing picture of the short-term future of the Jemez Mountains as he related a graduate study being conducted that has concluded that “there are many times in the past that the entire Valles Caldera burned over a two year period. So half the Preserve burned one year, and half burned the next year. And so, this type of pattern is not unprecedented either — it shows up in the fire record. So are we into the 2011 and 2012 fire season of two years and we’re going to burn the rest of the Preserve next year? It is not unprecedented.”

The interview also touched on the impacts of the cultural resources on the Caldera, firefighting operations on the Preserve, the chances of monsoons coming, as well as volunteer opportunities to restore the Caldera, and also what he hopes the fire’s impact will be on people’s opinions and behavior:

“I would hope that the trend continues for a wider acceptance of natural fire and prescribed fire as a natural ecosystem process, and that the tolerance for a couple weeks of smoke each summer, or fall if we do fall burns, or early spring if we do spring burns — that having a little smoke in the air is better than having a lot of smoke in the air, because these forests are going to continue to burn, and we either let them burn on our terms, or we let them burn on nature’s terms, and if it’s on nature’s terms, it’s very difficult to stop,” he said. ” So I would hope that, as we look back on this, that Cerro Grande, Las Conchas, and the CFLRP [Consolidated Forest Landscape Restoration Program], will all come together and have the citizens of, basically, all forested ecosystems in the west, really understand that there are natural ways to manage these forests by reintroducing fire and keeping the fuel loads down.”

The following is a transcription of key topics of the podcast:

Continue reading ‘Exclusive podcast interview with chief scientist of Caldera: Intense burn areas won’t recover for 100-150 years; Many birds and tree squirrels did not survive; Wet winter not expected; Fires in Jemez often occurred historically in consecutive years’

On July 25, 2000, exactly ten years ago today, the Jemez Mountains of Northern New Mexico were forever transformed as the Valles Caldera Preservation Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. In his signing statement, Mr. Clinton proclaimed that the law “protects a magnificent natural resource for New Mexicans and all Americans, and we can all be proud of this legacy that we leave for generations to come.”

The Valles Caldera Preservation Act enabled the purchase of the Baca Location No. 1 (the “Baca Ranch”) for $101 million, and set the course for an “experiment in land management” — the Valles Caldera Trust, a wholly-owned governmental corporation tasked to run the land as a working ranch on a financially self-sustaining basis — to govern the newly-created Valles Caldera National Preserve for the American people. At the time, the Baca Location No. 1 was 94,761 acres, so this transaction worked out to about $1,065 per acre. The source of the money to purchase the Baca was the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which comes from a portion of receipts from offshore oil and gas leases that are placed into a fund annually for state and local conservation, and to purchase land, water and wetlands for the the benefit of all Americans.

The land had been privately owned for 140 years, from 1860 to 2000. You can read more about the history of the Baca Location No. 1 in the History section of VallesCaldera.com.

The bill made it to the President’s desk after having been approved by the U.S. Senate unanimously on April 13, 2000, and after the House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 377-45 on July 12, 2000.

Enjoy some of our reading material regarding the history of the Baca Location No. 1 and the efforts to purchase this land for the public by clicking below:

The National Park Service’s narrative of many efforts in the 20th century to purchase the Baca Ranch – the land that became the Valles Caldera National Preserve – for the American People

VallesCaldera.com’s “Recent History of the Land that Became the Valles Caldera National Preserve”

You can also download the entire U.S. Government publication, More Than a Scenic Mountain Landscape: Valles Caldera National Preserve Land Use History, by Kurt F. Anschuetz and Thomas Merlan. This book is in the public domain.

Roughly one decade after the devastating Cerro Grande fire of May 2000, a new book has been published that aims to tell the complete story of “the most costly wildfire in U.S. history.” Inferno by Committee: The True Story of the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos) Fire, America’s Worst Prescribed Fire Disaster is an in-depth study and “white-knuckle narrative” of the prescribed burn that began on the eastern rim of the Valles Caldera and proceeded to destroy hundreds of homes in nearby Los Alamos, as well as many structures at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, forcing a lengthy evacuation of the town and neighboring White Rock.

The 345-page book, published by Trafford Publishing, is written by Tom Ribe, a fire fighter and science journalist who also serves as the executive director of Caldera Action, a Valles Caldera advocacy group.

You can buy this book online by clicking here. You can also buy it by clicking here to visit the author’s web site, which also contains lots of other information regarding the fire.

The Los Alamos Monitor wrote that Ribe’s book is “useful and valuable to readers,” while informing the public “everything they wanted to know about the dynamics of Cerro Grande fire and the methods to fight it but were afraid to ask.” Click here to read the complete review. Below is an excerpt:

Ribe doesn’t just look back 10 years ago to the first week of May 2000, he scans all the way back to about 8,000 years ago to the area’s first residents. Furthermore, he examines how, over time, humans significantly change the landscape – whether it was through grazing or logging or politics. He discusses at length about the differences between the National Forest Service’s philosophy of maintaining the land and the National Park Service’s beliefs.

After heavily sifting through the ashes of time, Ribe presents an argument that is applicable now, tomorrow and forever after. He stresses the importance of environmental stewardship but also the need to exercise stewardship amongst humans. A lot of problems can be resolved by good teamwork, unity and taking the time and effort to make the right decisions for everyone.

Continue reading ’2000 Cerro Grande fire studied in new book, Inferno by Committee‘

William DeBuys, who from 2001 to 2004 served as the founding chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, wrote an editorial this week on the New West website advocating passage of the legislation introduced by U.S. Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall that would transfer management of the Valles Caldera to the National Park Service and dissolve the Valles Caldera Trust.

Mr. DeBuys, among whose books is Valles Caldera: A Vision for New Mexico’s National Preserve, wrote this piece in response to this week’s editorial written by Courtney White that was titled “A Step Backward: the Valles Caldera National Park.”  Mr. White’s piece argues against the legislation and questions whether the late Stewart Udall, who served as Secretary of the Interior under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (and is the father of Sen. Tom Udall), would have supported the bill that his son co-sponsored.  Click here to read Mr. DeBuys’ piece.

Mr. DeBuys includes some compelling insight, revealing that he visited with Stewart Udall a month before his death in March, and according to Mr. DeBuys, Mr. Udall “expressed deep satisfaction that introduction of the bill was imminent.”

Below is a portion of the editorial, headlined “Valles Caldera: What Would Stewart Udall Think?”

Courtney White has my sympathy. He regrets that the land management “experiment” of the Valles Caldera Trust should be abandoned. I share his regret, but not his conclusion. It is time for all of us to face facts and not entangle the fate of a peerless natural landscape in dreamy notions about “new approaches.” The caldera has been the subject of a new approach for nearly a decade. It hasn’t worked.
…
Lamentably, the complex and conflicted mission with which the Trust was charged has produced paralysis, not synthesis, and the public is understandably frustrated by the conspicuous lack of both progress and access at the preserve.

The trust would have better served its fortunes in recent years by focusing its energies on building a broad public constituency; ultimately, its failure is not that it cannot be self-sufficient in dollars, but that the people it should be serving have failed to care sufficiently about it. As a result, the enormous reservoir of public goodwill with which the Trust started its journey has largely been consumed. Let’s move on.

Mr. White’s assertion that the “national park idea… is not well-suited for the onrushing, global challenges of the 21st century” is nonsense, and it is offensive that he should utter this foolishness in reference to Stewart Udall. If Stewart were still alive, he would be the first to say that the national park idea has proved adaptable and enduring, not least in lands beyond the borders of the United States where the defense of the natural world is led by citizens with sharper vision than Mr. White’s. The national park idea continues to represent one of the best strategies yet devised for protecting the environmental commons against the relentless push to privatize and exploit the earth’s goods.

Making the Valles Caldera National Preserve a unit of the National Park System will assure the protection and effective stewardship of an extraordinary place. New Mexico Senators Bingaman and Udall are demonstrating realism and leadership in championing the necessary legislation. Their bill would permit continued grazing and hunting on the preserve, and it also calls for continuation of the preserve’s science and education program, one of the signal achievements of the Trust’s early years. When I last saw Stewart Udall, about a month before he passed away, he expressed deep satisfaction that introduction of the bill was imminent.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman submitted a statement into the U.S. Senate record last week in support of the legislation that he sponsored with Sen. Tom Udall to transfer the Valles Caldera National Preserve to the National Park Service (this statement is included below in its entirety).

In the speech, Bingaman asserted that the Park Service “is best suited to manage the Preserve while ensuring its long-term conservation,” and that it is his “strong belief that transferring management of the Valles Caldera National Preserve to the National Park Service will be the best way to ensure the protection and enjoyment of the Preserve over the long term.”  Furthermore, he stated that the legislative structure that governs the Valles Caldera Trust “is not sustainable in my opinion, and the existing statutory termination of the Trust is looming.”

Bingaman also expressed the following: “I would like to emphasize that in no way is this legislation a criticism of the good work and valuable accomplishments made by the Board Members of the Valles Caldera Trust and the Preserve staff. However, I believe having the Preserve managed by the National Park Service—an agency with a mission protecting natural, historic, and cultural resources while also providing for public enjoyment of those resources—is more appropriate for the long-term future of the Valles Caldera. In my view, the desire for increased public access, balanced with the need to protect and interpret the Preserve’s unique cultural and natural resources, would be best served by National Park Service management of the Preserve.”

SEN. BINGAMAN: Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that would transfer administrative jurisdiction of the Valles Caldera National Preserve from the Valles Caldera Trust to the National Park Service. I am pleased that my colleague from New Mexico, Tom Udall, is cosponsoring the bill.

Between the New Mexico communities of Jemez Springs and Los Alamos, lies the Valle Grande, a magnificent valley surrounded by foothills and forested mountains. When standing in this valley, visitors begin to realize they are actually inside a larger bowl-shaped formation. This is the Valles Caldera – one of only three supervolcanoes in the United States. The oldest of the three – having formed 1.25 million years ago – the Valles Caldera is also the smallest. And yet the caldera rim spans more than 100,000 acres in area whose violent eruption created a volcanic ash plume that stretched from northern Utah to central Kansas. Because of its relatively small size as compared to the two other supervolcanoes in the U.S.– Yellowstone, Wyoming and Long Valley, California – the Valles Caldera provides visitors with excellent opportunities to learn about large volcanic eruptions and their impacts on surrounding landscapes while they stand in a single space to experience one of the world’s best examples of an intact resurgent caldera. In 1975, the Valles Caldera received formal recognition as an outstanding and nationally significant geologic resource when it was designated a National Natural Landmark.

Continue reading ‘In Senate speech, Bingaman forcefully urges passage of legislation to transfer Valles Caldera to Park Service’

On February 10, 2000 — exactly one decade ago — VallesCaldera.com was launched, predating the creation of the Valles Caldera National Preserve (above is a screen shot of this website’s original masthead).

This site went live in the tense months before the Baca Ranch was purchased by the American people, when many New Mexicans watched with bated breath out of concern that this spectacular, 95,000-acre parcel of vast mountain valleys, forested volcanic domes, and sparkling streams might be sold to developers.

In the months that followed the launch of this site, the Baca Ranch was transformed into publicly-owned land after being purchased by taxpayers for $101 million, becoming the Valles Caldera National Preserve with the signing of the Valles Caldera Preservation Act by President Bill Clinton on July 25, 2000.

VallesCaldera.com is operated by a Jemez Mountains local who lives within the geologic Valles Caldera (one mile from the National Preserve fence).

We extend our appreciation to those who have utilized the resources on VallesCaldera.com for the past decade, and have made this the #1-ranked independent website about the Valles Caldera (according to Google).

U.S. District Judge Robert Brack has ruled that the portion of the mineral rights that were not sold to the American people when the Valles Caldera National Preserve was was established in 2000 are worth $3.8 million, according to a story in today’s Albuquerque Journal. Click here to read the full story (after clicking on the prior link, non-subscribers must click on the “trial premium pass” button on the bottom left of the screen to read the article).

When the Baca Ranch was purchased in 2000 for $101 million, the federal government was able to negotiate a mutually acceptable price for the purchase of only 87.5% of the mineral rights to the land.

Concerned that the owners of the remaining 12.5% of the mineral rights might seek to build a geothermal power plant on the National Preserve, the U.S. government condemned these mineral rights in 2006. However, that action required that the owners of the interests be compensated, but the parties had been unable to establish a fair compensation price: the U.S. government initially offered the owners $1.8 million, but the owners asserted that the value of these rights was $14 million. Brack also ruled that the government pay an additional $50,000 in legal costs.

This news is a postscript to the era of geothermal exploration on the Baca Ranch/VCNP, which began in 1960 when an oil test well was built on the western base of Redondo Peak that did not strike oil, but instead struck superheated water (Anschutz and Merlan, 2007). After several more geothermal exploration wells were built in the 1960s, a partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy, Union Oil of California, and Public Service Company of New Mexico was formed in July of 1978 to assess the feasibility of building a geothermal power plant on the ranch. The partnership drilled 20 deep wells, but determined that a potential power plant built there could only generate 20 megawatts of electricity, despite the hope at the outset that it could generate up to 400 megawatts. Consequently, the project was disbanded in 1982. In total, about 40 geothermal test wells were drilled on the Baca Ranch through 1983 (Anschutz and Merlan, 2007). Sealed wells can be seen to this day on the Preserve in Redondo Canyon as well as Alamo Canyon.

Click here to read the entire chapter, “Industrial Mineral Extraction and Geothermal Exploration,” from the U.S. government publication More Than a Scenic Mountain Landscape: Valles Caldera National Preserve Land Use History, by Kurt F. Anschutz and Thomas Merlan, published into the public domain in 2007. To download other chapters of this book, click here.

For more information on the geothermal characteristics of the Valles Caldera, check out the following articles:

Geothermal Potential of Valles Caldera, New Mexico (PDF), by Fraser Goff. GHC Bulletin, Dec. 2002.

Valles Caldera Scientific Drilling, by Fraser Goff and Jeffrey M. Heikoop. Geotimes, Mar. 2004.

Finally, a sizable amount of information on the overall geology of the Caldera can be found on VallesCaldera.com’s Geology page.