The Fiscal Burden of Wildfires: State Expenditures and Funding Mechanisms for Wildfire Suppression in the Western U.S. and Implications for Federal Policy

The number and size of wildfires in the western United States have increased dramatically in the last 30 years. The rising cost of wildfire suppression has become a significant concern for all levels of government, although most attention has been focused on the federal level. Much less is known about the financial impact of expenditures on states, which retain responsibility for suppression on over 480 million acres of state and private forests. This study collected data on state expenditures for wildfire suppression in the western United States from 2005 to 2015 to examine fiscal burdens and compare funding mechanisms used to cover those costs. Our analysis finds that western states expended $11.9 billion on wildfire suppression over the 11-year period and used own-source funds to cover 88 percent of these costs. States displayed a variety of mechanisms for covering their cost obligations with tradeoffs that may affect non-wildfire policy priorities.

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Writing Time in Metaphors

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474423939.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jennifer J. Smith

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

The United States ◽

Western United States ◽

Entire System ◽

Language And Culture ◽

Space Race ◽

Do So

Coherence of place often exists alongside irregularities in time in cycles, and chapter three turns to cycles linked by temporal markers. Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950) follows a linear chronology and describes the exploration, conquest, and repopulation of Mars by humans. Conversely, Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine (1984) jumps back and forth across time to narrate the lives of interconnected families in the western United States. Bradbury’s cycle invokes a confluence of historical forces—time as value-laden, work as a calling, and travel as necessitating standardized time—and contextualizes them in relation to anxieties about the space race. Erdrich’s cycle invokes broader, oppositional conceptions of time—as recursive and arbitrary and as causal and meaningful—to depict time as implicated in an entire system of measurement that made possible the destruction and exploitation of the Chippewa people. Both volumes understand the United States to be preoccupied with imperialist impulses. Even as they critique such projects, they also point to the tenacity with which individuals encounter these systems, and they do so by creating “interstitial temporalities,” which allow them to navigate time at the crossroads of language and culture.

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