Forest-managing bill languishes as fires rage
Westerman proposal stalled in Senate
WASHINGTON — With flames charring forests across much of the South, legislation to overhaul federal forest management remains motionless on Capitol Hill, stuck in the U.S. Senate after passing in the U.S. House of Representatives more than a year ago.
Opposition from the White House helped slow the legislation, which provides a mechanism to increase firefighting dollars but also eases environmental restrictions in some instances.
U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, the bill’s original sponsor, said he remains hopeful that its key provisions will be included in a larger energy bill that lawmakers hope to pass by year’s end.
If not, the Hot Springs Republican said, he is confident that the proposal will advance once President-elect Donald Trump and his appointees take office.
Republicans and Democrats agree that budgetary changes are needed at the U.S. Forest Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Forest Service spent more than $1.7 billion on fire suppression in federal fiscal 2015 and about $1.6 billion in fiscal 2016, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
And costs are already rising in fiscal 2017, which began Oct. 1.
Crews were battling 13 large fires on Friday. The blazes had charred more than 110,000 acres in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
The deadliest of those fires began in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg, Tenn. That fire left at least 14 people dead.
A lack of rain and warmer-than-normal weather has contributed to the problem. Portions of all six states are experiencing extreme to exceptional drought, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center.
Officials predict the latest blazes will be contained by the middle of this month.
The fire risk isn’t confined to the South. A combination of drought, tree-killing beetles and warmer-than-average weather has devastated West Coast forests.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack warned earlier this year that there were 66 million dead trees in California alone.
In some parts of the country, “you’ve got a tinderbox waiting to go,” Westerman said.
And as towns near the forests grow, the risk of disaster is rising, he added.
“When you start getting these fires in the East around metropolitan areas, you’re going to have more loss of property and more loss of life just because of the proximity of people to the forest,” he said.
The price tag for firefighting in fiscal 2015 tops $2.1 billion if Interior Department spending is included: funding from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
But the Forest Service bears most of the burden. Twenty years ago, the agency spent roughly one-sixth of its funding on fire suppression. Now, fires devour half the agency’s budget.
Each year, firefighters battle tens of thousands of blazes. But a few of the fires are especially catastrophic. The largest 2 percent eat up 30 percent of the wildfire budget, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.
In a process known as “fire borrowing,” the agency has been forced to shift funds from other programs to cover the costs of the blazes.
Money that would normally go toward fire prevention, watershed protection and other types of forest management is spent instead on battling blazes.
“Definitely, something needs to be done about … how the funding is allocated to fight fires,” said Mohammad Bataineh, an assistant professor of forestry at the University of Arkansas at Monticello.
Spending that minimizes the risk of fire is like “preventive medicine,” he said; it’s like a doctor’s visit now instead of an emergency room admission later. Under Westerman’s proposal, the Interior or Agriculture department secretaries could seek supplemental funding once overall spending on fire suppression for the year surpasses the 10-year average.
A rival measure, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, would allow the requests once fire-suppression spending surpasses 70 percent of the 10-year average. That measure, known as the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, has 150 co-sponsors, including U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, a Republican from Rogers.
Simpson’s measure has never made it out of committee. Instead, Westerman’s bill advanced.
In September, a coalition of environmental and business groups wrote a letter to lawmakers arguing that Westerman’s bill was “only a partial fix” to the Forest Service’s funding problem.
The coalition, which included groups such as the Louisiana Forestry Association and the National Wildlife Federation, urged legislators to “fund suppression at 70 percent of the 10-year average,
similar to the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, or alternatively, to freeze the tenyear average and access disaster funding for levels beyond that amount.”
Westerman, the only congressman with a graduate degree in forestry, said things will continue to deteriorate if Congress fails to act.
“The trees aren’t out there on pause waiting for us to make up our minds here in D.C. Nature just continues to do its thing every day,” he said.
Democrats agree that a funding change is needed. But most objected to provisions in Westerman’s bill.
In its original form, the Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2015 would’ve made it much harder for environmentalists to challenge certain Forest Service decisions. Those who challenged federal decisions and lost would’ve been forced to pay the government’s legal costs.
Critics said the provision would have stripped away important environmental safeguards and made it unduly burdensome to challenge agency decisions in court.
That portion has been removed from the bill’s latest version, which is now known as the Emergency Wildfire and Forest Management Act of 2016.
Members of the Senate Agriculture Committee made substantial changes to Westerman’s measure before advancing it in September. Both versions would allow for expedited salvaging operations after fires, floods, explosions or other disasters.
U.S. Sen. John Boozman, a Republican from Rogers who serves on the Agriculture Committee and backed the bill, remains hopeful that the bill will pass but realizes the clock is winding down.
“As for prospects, there is a lot of remaining work and a very small window in which to accomplish it all, but we are going to continue to look for ways to get it through,” said Boozman’s spokesman, Patrick Creamer.
Westerman’s legislation drew early backing from the Arkansas Forestry Association, an industry group based in Little Rock.
“We feel like it will bring some new tools to the equation that will allow our federal forests to be managed more effectively and more efficiently,” said association
Vice President Max Braswell. “Healthy forests benefit everyone, and that’s why we’ve been in support of what he’s trying to accomplish.”