(Music) - Hi everyone, welcome to both sides of the story.

I'm your host Alan Gionet from CBS4.

Thanks for joining us.

This is the third of our four preliminary rounds for the 2021 tournament, featuring eight students from eight different high schools and we've kept our consolation brackets so you'll get a chance to see all of our students debate multiple times this season.

Now, in tonight's show, we have students from Holy Family High School in Broomfield and Mountain Vista High School in Highlands Ranch.

They are facing off, so let's meet our participants now.

First up Jaden Reenan.

He is a senior from Holy Family, High in Broomfield.

Here's his story.

- My name is Jaden Reenan I am currently a senior at Holy Family High School.

Debate has allowed me to grow into more of a research thoughtful person is allowed me to become a better speaker.

I like to research a lot and just imply as many arguments as I possibly can and just try to find where everything connects.

Just today in my life outside of school I play tennis, I play for Silver Creek High School.

I'm very involved in the Civil Air Patrol which is one of our community organizations.

- Jaden was selected for both sides of the story because he is an excellent leader.

First of all, he is our debate captain here at Holy Family.

Jaden might seem quiet when you first meet him and reserved, but really he is very interesting, well-read, funny, and a really great communicator who is compassionate to other people.

- What inspires me is my goals, ambitions in life.

I want to attend a service Academy and then serve in the military as an officer.

- And excellent young man.

Now, let's meet an excellent young woman, Sahithi Mathukumilli a junior at Mountain Vista High School.

Let's catch up with Sahithi.

- As a kid, I was super, super shy, afraid to talk to people.

So I found speech and debate and I was like you know what?

Let's try it and here I am now super comfortable speaking in front of people.

I'm Sahithi Mathukumilli and I go to Mountain Vista High School, and I'm in 11th grade, since I do want to go into healthcare, I hope that I can be that person where my patient feels super comfortable talking to me and that I can communicate clearly, concisely in a way that's perceivable to my patient.

- Combining Sahithi's ability to be so calm and poised and passionate, but with that organizational skill in that collaborative nature, I think that's one of the things she brings to a debate environment.

So it takes away the aggression and leaves that real sense of a knowledgeable, experienced student.

- I believe that taking part in speech and debate is one of the most impactful things that you can ever do and it will improve your confidence, your speaking skills, and it's something that you can use to make change wherever you see that change needs to be made.

- Now you've met her participants also joining us here our special panel of experts who will offer their analysis of our debate today.

They are Dominic Dezzutti, host of Colorado, inside out the weekly roundtable program here on PBS12.

and he's joined by Michael Fields, Executive Director of Colorado Rising state action, and Ian Thomas Tafoya, a community organizer, and activist.

They'll be looking at our debate and asking questions.

It's time to set the ground rules.

Each side will present their case, ask each other questions, and then have a chance to offer rebuttals.

Both students have prepared a pro and con case for tonight's debate.

I don't know which side they'll defend until we have a coin flip right here in our studio.

When it is finished, we do go to our illustrious panel for their questions and we find out who they felt offered the best argument.

So let's get started.

The issue up for debate today is this.

"Should the state of Colorado make a significant investment in forest management for future fire mitigation" Let's have our coin flip right now, and will get underway, and so, Jaden, I'm gonna will allow you to call it--make the call if you could please.

- I call heads.

- And it is tails, so Sahithi you decide what would you like pro or con?

- Pro.

- Pro goes first.

That means you now have 3 minutes to state your case.

Go right ahead.

- I stand strongly in support of making investments in forest management for the reasons of environment, health and money.

My first contention is improving the environment.

88% of fires are caused by humans and now more than ever, people are moving near to the forests of the more than 5.5 million people living in Colorado.

The State Foresters Office estimates that 2.9 million live in the wildland-urban interface.

These human ignited fires send loads of smoke into the air heating the atmosphere.

This is fuel for fires to burn longer and more frequently, and the predictions for our future fire seasons are that we're going to see longer, and hotter, and drier conditions.

We need to invest in mitigation strategies so that we can have a healthier world that can support life for centuries to come.

My second contention is that improving people's health should be first and foremost.

We can see it in the air to this day.

The Cameron Peak Fire which is scorched more than 206,000 acres has left EU S with smoggy air barely being able to see the hills and mountains in Colorado and having horrible allergies that burn our lungs.

These forest fires affect the quality of people's lives.

A 2017 study led by the EPA estimated that the cost of short-term exposures to US wildfires occurring between 2008 and 2012 that lead to premature deaths or hospital admissions with $63 billion.

The cost of long-term exposures was estimated at $450 billion.

Professors of preventative medicine state that in the short term we have the potential for emergency room type events, but in the longer term we'll have the development of more chronic diseases and if we were to invest in smart force management, we can combat all of these negative effects that we're currently experiencing.

My final contention is a better allocation of funds.

Colorado currently spends $140 million on mitigating fires and $560 million on rebuilding the damage caused by them.

If we were to choose to spend more money on mitigation, we can save money and lives.

As the USDA says, that every dollar spent on disaster preparedness can say $4 in disaster response and recovery costs.

Speaking from the past, Colorado spent a few $1,000,000 and on firebreaks and prescribed fires which protected 1400 homes almost a billion dollars in property in Silverthorne when a wildfire burned through the region in 2018.

Since federal taxpayer dollars go towards National Forest health, helping the fire department.

And handling additional damage.

Investing in significant forests resources in mitigation strategies will help the state save money and allow taxpayer money to go to other areas of improvement.

We should choose to invest their money in a smarter fashion and this resolution provides us with the opportunity to spend less and spend smart.

We should be proactive in forest management instead of reactive and should we should choose to invest in our forests for future safety.

Thank you.

- Thank you very much, Sahithi.

Alright, Jaden.

Now, you have two minutes for questions and cross-examination.

Go right ahead.

- Thank you so much.

First, I would like to start what would management just forest management in general looks like.

- We would focus on the density of our forests and making sure that that is at a rate, which can be maintained and does not cause fires to spread rapidly and cause destruction to property and people's homes.

- Thank you.

Do you have an example of how we would reduce the density in a forest or keep it at a good level?

- Yes, we can focus on the most fire-resistant trees and make sure that they're not there, spread out evenly, and making sure that they have their place in strategic areas to make sure that the forest fires spread in there contained and they don't spread uncontrolled.

- And then do you have, like any rough estimate of how much this could cost?

- It's estimating about a couple of $1,000,000.

I don't have the exact numbers, but if we were to put this resolution into place we could run the numbers and we can finance that.

- Okay, and then I want to move on to your first contention that about the environment.

You talk a lot about WUI development in the urban interface.

How will an investment in forest management solve that problem?

- Well, if we were to invest in forest management, we can make sure that the fires that we do have don't start at such rapid rates and they aren't as vague as they are now, seeing as of right now, we have really, really big fires that are causing lots of pollution to be released and if we were to invest in forest mitigation strategies.

We can make sure that they are controlled and that would lead to less pollutants being released in our atmospheres.

- Alright, Jaden, thank you very much left to wrap up the questions there.

I'm going to give you 3 minutes now.

The floor is yours to make your case in the negative.

Go right ahead.

- I negate the resolution.

The state of Colorado should make a significant investment in forest management for future fire mitigation.

Forest fires are a growing issue for residents and public officials in the state of Colorado, but a significant investment in-force management.

Is completely unnecessary in order to achieve sustainable mitigation of future fires.

Well, we're going to find is a state investment harms Coloradon in two ways.

First, it will create a financial burden on the public, as we will be putting state dollars into a program that may or may not achieve the goals of the resolution.

And second, it will do so unnecessarily as the same positive results can be achieved through other methods that do not require significant state funding.

This resolution gives no indication of what forest management would entail.

Simply referencing the large amount of money that would amount of state money that we put into this program.

A major problem when looking at forestry is the ambiguity by which forest management is planned and implemented.

For example, prescribed burning is a means of management that can cost an average of $125 an acre.

While full forest restoration can cost around $700 an acre, according to this symposium on Fire Economics and U.S. Department of Agriculture, respectively, this variability in price in purpose complicates the idea of mitigating fires through investment alone, and may in fact lead to more problems in the future.

Another important issue is the cost of management implementation and the sheer amount of land that requires work.

The Collaborative Forest Restoration Institute has planned to work on 1.5 million acres of Colorado forests, which could cost upwards of billions of dollars.

The lack of specificity and large amount of money make this resolution overall unfeasible at the local level.

Furthermore, this resolution implies that an investment in forest management is the only way to mitigate future fires.

Colorado should instead focus on the variables that directly lead to fires.

One of the most prominent is development in the wildland-urban interface, which is directly correlated with the latest increase in fires according to the National Fire Plan the WUI includes areas "were structures another human development meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland."

According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"WUI development in the United States grew rapidly from 1990 to 2010, setting a 41% growth in new houses and a 32% growth in land usage."

If we enact policies that reduce WUI development, we can mitigate future fires without the investment.

This community Complish in many ways.

In fact, a 2009 study done by the Headwaters Economics States the effectiveness of a redirection of federal aid zoning ordinances or a National Fire insurance plan.

This would be similar to FEMA floodplain work program, which works to reduce flood-damaged by communicating with local authorities and assisting with land use planning.

Instead of putting that burden on the state or county governments.

Overall, the resounding message is that Colorado does not require a significant investment in forest management.

But rather a focus on the factors starting and driving wildfires or the use of federal aid.

I negate the resolution because there are alternatives that will achieve positive impacts without the cost and logistics of significant state investment.

- Jaden, thank you very much.

Question of the day today.

Should Colorado make a significant investment in forest management for future fire mitigation?

Jaden has the negative Sahithi has the affirmative 2 minutes for questions and cross-examination to Jaden right now go.

- How do you suggest that we improve the quality of our environment and lives if we don't use fire mitigation strategies?

- So The thing is, is that we're not using not using fire mitigation strategies, we already have them in place.

We don't need to make an investment in them.

What we should do instead is focus on the factors that Colorado really can't control.

For example, development in the WUI.

Well, then urban interface that can reduce future fires.

- Thank you.

And do you consider zoning laws to be a way to manage forests?

- It's not necessarily managing the forest so much as it is disincentivizing that development in the wildland-urban interface, because if we take people away from those high-risk areas, we can therefore mitigate the fires that are being caused.

As you said, 88% are caused by humans.

- Thank you.

And then could you please re-- re-tell your point about the financial burden this resolution would cause?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So what I was talking about there is that there's no specific defined way of what forest management is going to entail in this resolution.

And there are all these different kinds of forest management that cost different amounts of money.

And the National Forest plan I believe it was has planned to work on 1.5 million acres and just using those estimates, that's billions of dollars of local state money that the Colorado government probably doesn't have.

- Alright, and then how do you think that leaving are forced to be untamed could impact the people that live in those environments?

- Again, I want to emphasize that we're not leaving our force untamed so much as we are not making a significant investment of state money into this resolution.

Or instead is we're taking our mitigation policies and we're keeping them there and then, we're focusing on some of the factors that we truly can't control.

Such as mitigating movement, human movement into the wild and urban interface.

- Thank you.

- Alright, Sahithi you will have to wrap it up right there.

Two of the top speech and debate participants in the state of Colorado at the high school level, and today we're talking about forest mitigation.

Sahithi, two minutes for rebuttal.

Go ahead.

- I would like to refute my opponent's case for two things.

First, my opponent mentioned that our forests are not in tamed and that we do currently have things in place that make our forests have some sort of control on the fires that do take place.

Now, I would like to say that we do have had past strategies that have been implemented that have failed.

As we can see that the largest fires have happened this year and if we had successful mitigation strategies put in place before now, we would not have seen that larger fires or that much destruction over thousands and thousands and thousands of acres of land.

My second point is that my opponent mentioned that it would be a financial burden to the people to fund these mitigation efforts, and what I said in my case was that taxpayer dollars currently go towards rebuilding property that have been destroyed by fires that have wrecked the people's homes and open land.

Now taxpayer dollars in this case, if we are to not take any future efforts to mitigate forests and manage them, that means that taxpayer dollars will continue to go towards efforts that increasingly will destroy property and will have to spend more money on rebuilding that property that has been damaged.

Therefore, I think it is-- best that we do invest in significant resources for management so that we taxpayers can save their money and go towards actually improving the Community instead of trying to rebuild what has been broken and broken over and over again.

Because of these forest fires, thank you.

- Sahithi, thank you very much.

Now we're going to get our Closings.

Jaden 3 minutes to respond and close.

The floor is yours.

- Thank you so much.

So I just want to start out by acknowledging some of my opponent's points.

My opponent has given some excellent reasons why we should emphasize Forest mitigation, but the only problem is is that most of these impacts, such as maintaining the environment.

Maintaining health and allocating and reallocating funds can be accomplished through another means that doesn't require billions of state dollars going into a program.

As I previously mentioned, there's a multitude of other options that can develop reduce development into- the WUI.

So start my opponent's first point of the environment.

My opponent states that 88% of fires are human-caused.

And this is a true statistic, and it is caused by development in these undeveloped wildlands.

But as I previously mentioned, that way we can mitigate this is by disincentivizing the development in those areas and then that will again achieve the impacts that my opponent seeks.

Move down to health, they all in the case be less destructive fires that are caused by humans, natural causes, virus fires.

Do less damage in smoke influence than do human-caused wildfires and therefore if we mitigate human development into the WUI, we will see an increase in health and less money spent on mitigating that and then the allocation of funds, this doesn't necessarily address the fact that will you be putting tons of money into this development, and that's not necessarily be an ambiguous solution.

So, we don't know how much money this program is really going to cost, and it could cost anywhere from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.

There's really no specific example there.

So, therefore, what we ought to do is control the stuff that we can in a cheap manner in order to keep state funds out of this.

It really isn't our burden.

Moving on to a point, my opponent made on my case is that tax money paid by Colorado taxpayers often goes to reconstruction, and that is true.

But if we want to invest in these mitigation plans, we taxpayers don't have billions of dollars to put into these programs.

I really want to emphasize the fact that there are other alternatives.

So in order to close out this debate, I want to go over some of my main points again.

It's one money, how much we are putting into this program versus how much we can possibly get out.

It's a really complicated initiative and again it will impact taxpayers if we have put if we try to... put in significant investment into force management.

And then it also may not solve the issue because there are so many different areas there's for preventative burning, we actually have control by fires.

There is forest restoration where we regrow forests.

They all cost different amounts of money and they will all make different impacts on our environment.

Therefore, possibly causing more problems in the future, and then the second is just all the alternatives that we had.

I previously mentioned, in my case team's floodplain program.

This is something that we truly can adopt, in order to combat wildfires.So, how this would work?

is we would have a community, a federal organization working with communities in order to disincentivize development in the forests and then also help those communities get the help they need in the case of wildfires.

For example, a national fires transplant.

So overall, we need to focus on the purpose of this resolution and then the alternative plans that can make a better solution.

- Jaden Reenan, thank you very much from Holy Family High School.

Sahithi Mathukumilli from Mountain Vista.

You now have one minute to close.

Go ahead.

- I would like to like to start off by saying that we've already been investing billions and billions of dollars into rebuilding property, and we need to mitigate these forests, which will be a lot more cost-efficient and more beneficial for people.

Now, I will also say that fires are a very natural thing, and they're necessary to improve our environment and keep it flourishing and providing the nutrients that we need.

Therefore, if we were to invest in significant forest management strategies and manage our forests in an effective way, then we can help our forests thrive because they do need to occasionally cause fires to make sure their soils have enough nutrients and we can make sure that those fires are contained and make sure that they're not causing any damage on the people that are living in areas near those fires.

We can't control what people do, so we should invest in forest management so that we can greater the health of people.

Thank you.

- Sahithi, Jaden.

Thank you very much for an excellent and spirited debate.

I've covered this issue a lot myself and I know there are no easy answers.

So I just kind of shiver thinking about deciding here, Dominic.

Let's go to Dominic and get the thoughts of our panel of experts.

Dominic.

- Alan, thank you so much.

Yes, I appreciate your sympathy for our job here.

Sahithi and Jaden both did a fantastic job on a difficult topic on the minds of Coloradans everywhere.

But your work is not done.

We're going to get a couple of questions from the judges before we make our decision.

Michael when we start with you for your first question for Sahithi.

- It's great to be here with everybody here.

Sahithi, my question to you is.

You talked about investing money beforehand in order to have it pay off later on.

You know there's a lot of important things in the state, budget, education, mental health, health care.

Why are-- why is this forest management as important or more important than those things?

- I'd say Forest management is incredibly important because if we are living in fear of some fires burning our property, or if they're going to directly affect us, that affects our safety.

And if we're not safe, we cannot achieve anything higher.

We cannot fund education, mental health, things like that.

We need to--If we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we see that safety is, the first and foremost need to be met, and forest fires attack that need of safety and we put an end to the-- If we make our environments more safe then we can continue up that ladder and make sure that we can invest in things like education and mental health resources.

- Sahithi, as a longtime high school debater amillion years ago.

I appreciate you brought up Maslow's Hierarchy.

That was a nice place in the past.

Like that.

- Ian, your question for Sahithi.

- My question is, what if somebody were already to find this as a significant investment?

And how do you determine what the cap of a significant investment is?

- I mean, we need to look at the status quo.

Right now, according to my research, I found that we've spent five hundred and sixty million dollars on just saving the property that has been burned in fires, and we need to see if these fire mitigation resources are going to save us that money.

And if we invest them now, can they outlast us for years and years and years?

And if they can, it can be an investment worth--worth taking into account.

- Jaden, it's your turn, Michael, your question for Jaden.

- So Jaden, you talked a lot about-- it's kind of stopping or slowing development as a way to deal with this.

I guess you know, looking at that difficult as is putting investment in.

Why do you think that it's more realistic to stop development instead of this investment we're talking about?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So there's just the sheer ambiguity of what an investment is really going to mean.

As you previously mentioned, there's not necessarily a cap on what an investment would look like, andverall we don't know if that investment will actually prevent future forest fires or if it'll actually make any substantial impacts that can't be accomplished by another plans.

So what I was really arguing for here is we can establish something else such as-- disincentivizing development and that will, in turn, achieve the impacts of investment, without putting money into this, possibly an effective plan.

- Ian your question for Jaden.

- Jaden, you made a claim that wild line fires are actually cleaner than fires along the wildland edge.

Do you have any evidence to back this up?

- I did, I was.

I did that during my research, but it really can just be buckled down to if a human state in the wildland-urban interface is burning something and that causes bigger fires.

It's going in turn, heat up more buildings, more properties, and just get closer to an industrialized area.

Then let's say a lightning strike in the middle of nowhere.

That's going to do less damage and probably emit less pollutants.

So I did have a resource for that, but we can just figure that out through logical interpretation.

- Thank you both very much.

Give us a couple of minutes, we can figure this out.

We're going to need all the time we can get.

- Do you want to borrow my coin over here?

Maybe [laughs] Alright, we going to panel moment to consider whom they felt won this debate?

That gives me a moment to let you know that this is part of our expanded season of both sides of the story our 2021 tournament will feature 12 total debates including a full consolation bracket.

You will get a chance to see all of our students today, multiple times this fall.

Now to catch up on any episodes you can go to pbs12.org and this is a good one.

Okay, panel.

Do you have a decision?

- We do, it was nip and tuck over here for a little bit over here Alan.

But we do.

We want to, first of all, make sure both you Jaden and Sahithi tackled a very difficult topic that's on the minds of really Coloradans everywhere.

So both of you did a great job, but our job is to pick a winner so we can move on the process.

Sahithi, we felt the both you had.

Better arguments and that your cross-examination went really well.

Your answers to the different questions.

So congratulations!

you're moving on to the winner's bracket and Jaden will see you in a consolation bracket.

- Alright congratulations Sahithi!

and Jaden you both gave our viewers a wonderful debate and you both should be very proud of the work that you've done on this complicated topic.

Now, you'll go on Sahithi to compete against the winner from our first debate from Cherry Creek High School.

And Jaden, we will be seeing you again in our consolation bracket.

And I expect you might be moving up there too.

That's all the time we have for our program tonight and I want to thank our excellent students for accepting our challenge and for participating in our debate.

I also want to thank our esteemed panel for sharing their thoughts.

And finally, we want to thank you for tuning in.

It is the support of viewers like you and our sponsors that helps to make this show a reality.

You can catch up on past episodes of this program on pbs12.org and you can catch me on CBS4 for all the latest news and information impacting Colorado as well for everybody here at PBS12.

I'm Alan Gionet.

Thanks for watching and that is both sides of the story.

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