A vow by federal land managers to stop using fire retardant that contains a form of cyanide may not be as ironclad as once thought.

Over the past two years, the U.S. Forest Service has pledged it will stop using retardant that contains sodium ferrocyanide by 2004. Now the agency says it will wait until two studies are completed later this year before it decides whether to follow through on that promise.

Officials with Fire-Trol, a Phoenix-based company that supplies most of the fire retardant used by the federal government, insist their product is safe even though it contains sodium ferrocyanide, a compound that has been implicated in fish kills following wildfires in the West.

Forest Magazine has learned that Fire-Trol has hired Bruce Babbitt, who served as Interior secretary during the eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency, to help make its case.

“We still have problems getting our message out,” said Rob Crouch, Fire-Trol’s research and development director. “There’s a lot of cyanide phobia out there.”

The red-tinted fire retardant is one of the primary tools the government employs to fight wildfires in the West. The consistency of melted marshmallows, the retardant smothers flames and helps firefighters gain a foothold when battling out-of-control blazes.

But the slurry is highly caustic and highly controversial. Additives must be used to keep the retardant from eating through the metal tanks in which it is carried. That’s the purpose of sodium ferrocyanide in the Fire-Trol retardant.

Another company also sells retardant to the federal government. Astaris, a Saint Louis–based firm, does not use sodium ferrocyanide as an anticorrosive agent. The exact compositions of both companies’ formulations are closely guarded secrets protected by federal patent law. Astaris’s retardant, like Fire-Trol’s, contains large quantities of ammonia compounds, which are also potentially lethal to fish and other organisms.

Fire-Trol commands the lion’s share of the government’s business; company officials say they supply nearly 70 percent of the retardant used to battle wildfires in North America.

The government’s use of Fire-Trol retardant drew close scrutiny two years ago, after a federal study found that sodium ferrocyanide can kill fish and frogs under certain conditions. (There is no indication that the chemical is harmful to humans.)

With that study in hand, the Forest Service ordered its firefighters to stop using Fire-Trol retardant. Less than a month later, after Fire-Trol officials bitterly complained, the agency rescinded its order. But the Forest Service also vowed to stop using retardant that contains sodium ferrocyanide by 2004.

Federal officials subsequently commissioned two studies to gauge the impact of the retardant after it is dropped on wildfires. Those studies are due to be released in September.

Since 2000, Fire-Trol and Astaris have engaged in a high-stakes battle for the government’s business.

Fire-Trol officials say they are working to find a substitute to sodium ferrocyanide. At the same time, however, the company says it would like to see the government reconsider its demand that the chemical be removed from the retardant.

That, apparently, is where Babbitt comes in.

Crouch, the Fire-Trol official, said the company approached Babbitt at a meeting last summer and asked for his help.

“He had seen some of the correspondence back [when he was Interior secretary] and decided to help us,” Crouch said. “We think he’s one of the best people that we’ve been able to contact to get our story across at the government level.”

Babbitt was ousted when George W. Bush took office in January 2001 and was soon hired as an attorney by the prominent Washington, D.C., law firm of Latham and Watkins. Fire-Trol hired Babbitt in that capacity, according to Crouch.

Crouch said he was not sure how long Babbitt has been working for Fire-Trol or what he has done on the company’s behalf. “I don’t know when he submitted his first bill,” Crouch said.

Efforts to reach Babbitt through Latham and Watkins were unsuccessful. A spokesperson with the firm would not comment for this story.

Senior officials with the Forest Service and with the Bureau of Land Management confirmed that Babbitt is representing Fire-Trol. Larry Hamilton, who oversees the BLM’s firefighting program, said Babbitt called him about the retardant issue in early April.

Hamilton said his former boss (the BLM is an agency within the Interior Department) asked him questions regarding the government’s deliberations over the retardant issue. Hamilton said Babbitt mentioned that he had been approached by Fire-Trol officials. “He asked me what was going on,” Hamilton said. “It was an informational sort of thing. There was no lobbying.”

Fire-Trol is not the only player in the retardant debate to attempt to gain favor with prominent government figures. Astaris officials have contacted several senators in an attempt to gain support for their effort to see the 2004 pledge stand.

In mid-April, Missouri Senator Christopher Bond wrote a letter to Forest Service officials telling them he expects the agency to honor its pledge to stop using retardant containing the cyanide compound, according to Eddie Goldberg, an Astaris business director. Goldberg said his company has also contacted Senators Larry Craig and Michael Crapo of Idaho and Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California.

“I don’t think it’s unusual for companies to use high-level political figures to further their business goals,” Goldberg said. “I do find it unusual, though, that a public figure like Babbitt would weigh in in support of using cyanide on the land.”

Studies on the effects of sodium ferrocyanide date back at least a half-century. A 1950 report showed that when the chemical is exposed to sunlight, it can break down into free cyanide, which is highly toxic to aquatic organisms even in small doses.

More recently, the Forest Service commissioned a study by the U.S. Geological Survey to evaluate risks posed by the retardant. Those findings were released in March 2000.

The USGS study confirmed that sodium ferrocyanide, when exposed to sunlight, can degrade into free cyanide and kill fish and other organisms. With those results in hand, the Forest Service on March 28, 2000, ordered federal firefighters to stop using the Fire-Trol retardant.

Agency administrators reversed that order twenty-four days later, saying they had erred in holding that use of the product violated the federal Clean Water Act. Federal managers issued new guidelines calling for firefighters to avoid dropping retardant within 300 feet of lakes, rivers and streams.

Environmentalists claim that directive is all but impossible to follow amid the smoky and chaotic conditions of a rampaging wildfire.

On April 3, 2000, a week after the stop-work order took effect, top Fire-Trol representatives met with Forest Service officials in a hastily called meeting at a hotel in Sacramento, California. In that meeting, company officials vehemently criticized the USGS study, saying it was based on faulty assumptions that did not consider real-world conditions such as the ability of fish to swim away from contaminated water.

Forest Magazine has obtained minutes from that meeting taken by Alice Forbes, one of the Forest Service officials who was present.

Those notes show that Thomas Tuttle, Fire-Trol’s principal partner, stressed that the stop-work order was costing his company thousands of dollars each day and could drive the company out of business. According to the notes, Tuttle insinuated that Fire-Trol would take legal action if the order wasn’t lifted. “Tom said the longer we go on this way the higher the potential claim,” Forbes’s notes state.

The notes also say that Tuttle told Forbes that his family had influence with high government officials.

Tuttle was unavailable for comment. Crouch said the notes from the 2000 meeting should be viewed in light of the stress under which company officials found themselves at the time. “We were called up on March 28 and essentially told we were out of business,” Crouch said. “We were trying to do anything we could to get their attention.”

Government officials said their decision on whether to stop using retardant that contains sodium ferrocyanide will be based on the results of the two ongoing studies. Depending on what the studies show, officials said, they may continue to allow the chemical to be used.