[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
WASTE, FRAUD, ABUSE, AND MISMANAGEMENT
=======================================================================
HEARINGS
before the
TASK FORCE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
AND THE ENVIRONMENT
of the
COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARINGS HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC: MAY 24, JULY 12 & 19, AND SEPTEMBER
13, 2000
__________
Serial No. 10-4
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Budget
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
64-703cc WASHINGTON : 2000
COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
JOHN R. KASICH, Ohio, Chairman
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia, JOHN M. SPRATT, Jr., South
Speaker's Designee Carolina,
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut Ranking Minority Member
WALLY HERGER, California JIM McDERMOTT, Washington,
BOB FRANKS, New Jersey Leadership Designee
NICK SMITH, Michigan LYNN N. RIVERS, Michigan
JIM NUSSLE, Iowa BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi
PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan DAVID MINGE, Minnesota
GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California KEN BENTSEN, Texas
CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire JIM DAVIS, Florida
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota ROBERT A. WEYGAND, Rhode Island
VAN HILLEARY, Tennessee EVA M. CLAYTON, North Carolina
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
JOSEPH PITTS, Pennsylvania EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
JOE KNOLLENBERG, Michigan GERALD D. KLECZKA, Wisconsin
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas BOB CLEMENT, Tennessee
JIM RYUN, Kansas JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
MAC COLLINS, Georgia DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon
ZACH WAMP, Tennessee KEN LUCAS, Kentucky
MARK GREEN, Wisconsin RUSH D. HOLT, New Jersey
ERNIE FLETCHER, Kentucky JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL III,
GARY MILLER, California Pennsylvania
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
PAT TOOMEY, Pennsylvania
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Task Force on Natural Resources and the Environment
GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California, Chairman
PAT TOOMEY, Pennsylvania, Vice DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina,
Chairman Ranking Minority Member
WALLY HERGER, California JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL III,
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota Pennsylvania
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
------
Professional Staff
Wayne T. Struble, Staff Director
Thomas S. Kahn, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held in Washington, DC, May 24, 2000: Management Failures
at the National Parks.......................................... 1
Statement of:
Barry T. Hill, Associate Director, Energy, Resources, and
Science Issues, the General Accounting Office.......... 5
Kevin R. Garden, Partner, Saltman and Stevens Attorneys
at Law (on behalf of Fred Vreeman, President and CEO,
Kings Canyon Park Service Co.)......................... 10
Maureen Finnerty, Associate Director for Operations and
Education, the National Park Service................... 15
Prepared statement of:
Mr. Hill................................................. 7
Mr. Garden............................................... 13
Ms. Finnerty............................................. 17
Earl E. Devaney, Inspector General, U.S. Department of
the Interior........................................... 20
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Hearing held in Washington, DC, July 12, 2000: Department of
Energy Management Practices--Uncertainties at Savannah,
Paducah, and the National Ignition Facility.................... 39
Statement of:
Dr. Carolyn L. Huntoon, Assistant Secretary for
Environmental Management, Department of Energy......... 41
Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Gioconda, U.S. Air Force, Acting
Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs, National
Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy.. 59
Gary L. Jones, Associate Director for Energy, Resources,
and Science Issues, General Accounting Office.......... 71
Prepared statement of:
Dr. Huntoon.............................................. 44
William D. Magwood, IV, Director of the Office of Nuclear
Energy, Science and Technology, U.S. Department of
Energy................................................. 65
Ms. Jones................................................ 74
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Hearing held in Washington, DC, July 19, 2000: Fire Safety
Failures of the Park Service--Caretaker of the Nation's
Treasures Ineffective in Addressing Hazards.................... 87
Statement of:
Jim Wells, Director of Energy, Resources, and Science
Issues, Resources, Community, and Economic Development
Division, U.S. General Accounting Office............... 89
Maureen Finnerty, Associate Director for Park Operations
and Education, National Park Service, U.S. Department
of the Interior........................................ 95
Prepared statement of:
Hon. George Radanovich, a Representative in Congress From
the State of California................................ 88
Mr. Wells................................................ 91
Ms. Finnerty............................................. 97
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Hearing held in Washington, DC, September 13, 2000: Controlling
Wildfires in the Future--What Strategies and Resources Are
Needed?........................................................ 119
Statement of:
Barry T. Hill, Associate Director, Energy, Resources, and
Science Issues, the General Accounting Office.......... 125
Randle Phillips, Deputy Chief for Programs and
Legislation, United States Forest Service.............. 132
Robert H. Nelson, Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies,
the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Professor of
Environmental Policy, School of Public Affairs,
University of Maryland................................. 138
Prepared statement of:
Mr. Radanovich........................................... 120
Mr. Hill................................................. 127
Mr. Phillips............................................. 134
Mr. Nelson............................................... 141
September 20, 2000, memorandum from the Congressional
Research Service to Congressman Herger pertaining to Forest
Fires and Forest Management................................ 122
Management Failures at the National Parks
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 2000
House of Representatives,
Committee on the Budget,
Task Force on Natural Resources and Environment,
Washington, DC.
The Task Force met, pursuant to call, at 2 p.m. in room
210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. George Radanovich
(chairman of the Task Force) presiding.
Chairman Radanovich. Good afternoon and welcome to the
Budget Committee Task Force on Natural Resources and the
Environment.
I would like to thank everybody for being here today at the
first hearing of this oversight Task Force on Natural
Resources. Joining me are Pat Toomey, Wally Herger, and Gil
Gutknecht; and David Price, Ed Markey, and Joseph Hoeffel.
I look forward to exploring this Task Force's purview and
would like to welcome the people testifying today. If you would
like to go ahead and take your positions, we will do that
before the opening statement.
I want to welcome Barry T. Hill, Associate Director,
Energy, Resources and Science Issues for the General Accounting
Office; Kevin R. Garden, Partner, Saltman and Stevens Attorneys
at Law, on behalf of Fred Vreeman who is the President and CEO
of Kings Canyon Park Service Company; and Maureen Finnerty,
Associate Director for Operations and Education for the
National Park Service.
Welcome, and I am looking forward to your testimony.
In the next 2 days, tourists from all over the country will
be making a run on our national parks, particularly the larger
parks that offer lodging. These properties are known as
destination properties and have been established in some of the
Nation's most breathtaking regions. The visitors headed to
these parks for the Memorial Day weekend will be the first
among millions of travelers expected this summer. They will be
among the first this summer to find what the GAO office has
found: substandard lodging that fails to provide some of the
most basic comforts. In Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park,
set in the towering Sierra Nevada Mountains and covered by
groves of giant Sequoias which have stood for thousands of
years, this beauty stands in stark contrast to many of the
facilities provided in the park. The guests who will use these
public bathrooms will be greeted with eyesores such as mildew,
ants, stained shower pans, leaky faucets, spit wads, chipped
paint and graffiti, to name a few. Many rooms at Sequoia and
Kings Canyon do not meet some of the most basic standards,
lacking telephones, locks on doors, windows, electric outlets,
et cetera.
What the GAO found in Sequoia and Kings Canyon is
representative of a concessions program within the Department
of Interior that lacks uniformity, consistency and
accountability.
The General Accounting Office looked at several other parks
in addition to Sequoia and Kings Canyon and released a report
of their evaluation of the National Park concessions program.
The GAO questions the Department of Interior's hiring practices
of the concession staff. It also criticizes the staggering
backlog of expired contracts, the lack of incentives given to
concessionaires to offer quality service, and it highlights the
lack of accountability and direct supervision within the
concessions program. This report is the focus of our hearing
today.
Issues addressed in the GAO report are of particular
interest to me. I represent an area of three national parks and
three national forests, which brings Federal land ownership in
my district up to roughly 65 percent. Consequently, I serve on
the Resources Subcommittee on National Parks and Public Lands.
Our subcommittee has jurisdiction over many of the same issues
that this Task Force will be evaluating, including today's
issue of concessions within the national parks. The Parks
Subcommittee held a hearing several weeks ago which broadly
addressed this issue. I am pleased that we are spending time
today to look into these matters more intently, and I
appreciate the cooperation of the Resources Committee in our
endeavor.
Nearly two-thirds of my district is federally owned. It is
difficult enough when such a large segment of my district's tax
base has been taken out of commission; these difficulties are
compounded by the struggle to ensure honest stewardship of
these lands, something that we are not getting from the
National Park Service. I am sure that my district shares this
struggle with other regions of the United States.
I have been a close observer of the Park Service and
concession issues for many years. Like the GAO, I question
whether the Park Service is doing what it should to see that
optimal services are provided to the visitors of our national
parks. That is why we are holding this hearing, which is one in
a series to ensure that the Federal Government is operating in
the best interests of the people.
The Budget Committee is responsible for providing a
blueprint for how our Nation spends $1.7 trillion annually. The
Chairman has therefore created several Task Forces to evaluate
how Federal money is spent and to ensure that this money is
spent wisely. Our goal is to make sure that the government
agencies will eventually operate effectively in the
administration of the public trust which includes public lands.
Though concessions operations are businesses, they exist to
provide needed services to people visiting public lands. The
quality of the national park visitors' experience hinges
greatly on the quality of the parks' food, lodging, shopping
and other facilities provided by the concessionaires, making
them part of the public trust.
In an effort to improve concessions, Congress has provided
several new funding sources for the parks in recent years. We
have also given more latitude to park superintendents with the
hope that it would result in needed improvements to
concessions.
But what has been done to satisfy the basic needs of
visitors in our national parks? The evidence that we have seen
from the GAO, the Inspector General, and the Park Service shows
that improvements are not happening, and that they have not
been happening despite repeated notices over the past 10 years.
I would like to draw your attention to the chart to my
right. I want to make the statement that the GAO has also
shared some compelling information about concessions contracts.
According to the report, there was no training required for
those who wrote the $765 million in contracts in 1998.
Furthermore, there was no continuing education requirement for
those who write the contracts and no experience required for
writing $1 million contracts. This does not make for good
administration of the public trust.
To shed some light on the problems with the concessions
program, we will be hearing today from Mr. Barry Hill,
Associate Director of Natural Resources for GAO; Kevin Garden,
who will be testifying on behalf of Fred Vreeman, President and
CEO of the Kings Canyon Park Service Company; and Maureen
Finnerty, Associate Director for Operations and Education for
the National Park Service.
We will start with Mr. Hill who will testify on the recent
GAO report outlining the many deficiencies within the
concessions program. These deficiencies have been illustrated
consistently over the last 10 years in reports by the GAO, the
Inspector General and the Park Service itself.
Next, Mr. Garden will speak to Mr. Vreeman's experience
with the National Park Service since entering into a
concessions contract with them 4 years ago. In that time, Mr.
Vreeman has witnessed firsthand the inconsistencies within the
Park Service concessions program. Mr. Garden will tell you that
had the Park Service adhered to the contract and acted in a
timely manner, the lodging facilities at Sequoia and Kings
Canyon National Parks would currently be quite suitable.
Finally, we will hear from Ms. Finnerty who will share her
thoughts on the GAO report.
The Park Service has responded to this report by outlining
some of the changes to the concessions program they are
pursuing. These changes include reforms under the 1998
Concessions Act, the implementation of performance-based
contracting, and staff changes designed to address problems
with management. These reforms all sound viable, although we
have yet to see them enacted. It is safe to conclude from what
we know of the GAO report, the Park Service's response to the
report, and the experience of concessionaires, that there are
major shortcomings in the concessions program. We can further
conclude that these shortcomings are the result of a lack of
diligent oversight and a standard of accountability.
I am looking forward to hearing from each of the witnesses
on ways they think we can address these problems. The GAO
report on National Parks' concessions illustrates that the
program is disjointed and plagued with inconsistency. Whether a
visitor's experience at a destination park will be an enjoyable
one or a poor one, particularly as it relates to lodging, is
the luck of the draw. This is because of the lack of commitment
and oversight within the concessions program. The concessions
operation is weighed down by poorly-trained officials and
suffers from a lack of accountability, and the visitors to
these parks suffer as a result.
Destination parks are the crown jewels of our national park
system. The government has taken the responsibility for this
land in the interest of ensuring that it will be enjoyed by
all. It is incumbent upon the government to make sure that
guest services in the parks are run efficiently, effectively,
and that is clearly not happening. I hope that this hearing
will steer us in the direction of improving the concessions
operation and thereby the visitor's experience at our national
parks.
Before we hear from the witnesses, I would certainly like
to yield to Mr. David Price from North Carolina to make an
opening statement.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't have a formal
opening statement, but I would like to add my word of welcome
to our three witnesses, and I anticipate their testimony with
great interest. We, of course, want to make certain that our
National Park Service is operating in a way that is welcoming
to guests and that reflects good stewardship of Federal
dollars. There are some elements in this GAO report that I look
forward to hearing addressed by those who know the report well
and also those who are attempting to respond to it within the
Agency.
We have set up these Task Forces on the Budget Committee
under the assumption that there is going to be some waste and
fraud to be identified in various operations of government, and
I am sure that is true; but I expect also--and today may be one
of those days--that we will come across some of the problems
associated with underfunding or inadequate support for various
services that our agencies render and we need to know about
that as well. Are the staffing levels adequate? Is the mix
adequate? Are the contract terms that the Park Service is able
to offer to concessionaires, are those adequate? In what ways
can we, through funding and other mechanisms, address these
problems? To what extent are they already being addressed, and
what can we do to help?
I hope that we can approach today's hearing in that kind of
constructive spirit because these are challenges that we ought
to be able to address, and I think with sufficient goodwill and
determination that we can do so.
Welcome, and I look forward to your testimony.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you very much, Mr. Price.
I would ask unanimous consent that all members be given 5
days to submit written statements for the record. Without
objection, so ordered.
I would like to begin by introducing Mr. Hill. Welcome to
the committee and please--I think the way that we will do this,
everybody will be given 5 minutes to make their statement and
then we will open up for questioning with the panel after Ms.
Finnerty. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF BARRY T. HILL, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, ENERGY,
RESOURCES, AND SCIENCE ISSUES, THE GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE
Mr. Hill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Task
Force. It is certainly a pleasure to discuss the management of
the Park Service's concessions program; and if I may, I will
briefly summarize my prepared statement and submit the full
text of my statement for the record.
My comments today are based primarily on two reports. The
first report, which we issued in August 1998, reviewed the
condition of lodging facilities in 10 national parks. The
second report, which we issued in March of this year, addresses
key management problems in the concessions program. Both these
efforts found that the condition of these lodging facilities
varied considerably from park to park and was at times quite
poor, as illustrated by the pictures that appear to the right
of me. If you look to the picture to my immediate right, it
shows exposed wiring in public bathroom and shower facilities
at the Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park. And the picture to
the left of that shows poor conditions of drinking water and
shower facilities at the Death Valley National Park.
Before I discuss the problems we found and options for
correcting them, let me provide some background on the Park
Service's concession program. Concessionaires play a
significant role in providing services to many of the over 270
million visitors who annually visit the Park Service system. In
1998, the latest year for which data are available, 630
concessionaires provided visitor services in many of the 379
park units located across the Nation.
These concessionaires generated $765 million in revenues of
which $479 million, almost two-thirds, came from the 73
concessionaires that provide lodging. Our most recent report
disclosed shortcomings in the agency's overall approach to
managing its concessions programs, and these shortcomings
center on the following three areas: First, the inadequate
qualifications and training of the agency's concession
specialists and contracting staff; second, the agency's out-of-
date practices in handling its contracting workload as well as
its chronic backlog of expired contracts; third, a lack of
accountability within the concessions program.
For the most part, these problems are long-standing and, as
you pointed out in your opening statement, Mr. Chairman, are
consistent with similar concerns raised by the Department of
Interior, the Office of the Inspector General, and the Park
Service concession staff.
Let me discuss each problem starting with the staff
qualifications and training issue. Concerns about the
qualifications and training of the Park Service's concession
staff have been raised in numerous studies as far back as 1990.
The chart to my right lists several notable reports and other
documents that discuss these concerns over the past 10 years.
Primary concerns disclosed by these documents center on the
agency's concession staff not normally having the business,
financial, and contracting backgrounds needed to successfully
carry out the concessions programs.
Despite these disclosures, in the last 10 years the Park
Service has made only limited progress in addressing these
concerns. Specifically, the agency has made little effort to
professionalize its work force by hiring staff with education
or experience in business or hospitality management. Instead,
it has chosen to fill concessions positions by internally
transferring staff out of other career fields rather than
seeking to professionalize the work force. The chief
concessions official in one regional office said the agency has
taken the view that ``anyone can do concessions.'' Our work
indicates that this comment typifies the agency's approach to
managing its concessions program.
In addition to problems with the qualifications and
training of its staff, the Park Service's concessions
contracting practices are out-of-date, and do not reflect the
best practices of the Federal Government, the private sector,
or even other contracting programs within the agency.
For example, contracting staff in other agencies throughout
the Federal Government are encouraged to write contracts that
are performance-based, meaning that the contracts contain
incentives for good performance and disincentives for
performance that falls below expectations. However, the
agency's concessions program is not using performance-based
contracts and had no plans to do so.
Furthermore, for about 10 years the agency's has had
difficulty addressing its contracting workload in a timely
manner, resulting in chronic backlogs of expired concessions
contracts.
The third major management issue affecting the concessions
program is a lack of accountability. Under the agency's
organization structure, the head of the program, the chief of
concessions, has no direct authority over those that implement
the program in individual park units. Thus, the organizational
structure of the agency limits the impact that the head of the
program or other central offices can have on its ultimate
success. This structure relies on regional directors holding
park superintendents accountable for the results of their
parks' concessions programs. However, concessions officials in
the Park Service's headquarters in the two largest regional
offices indicated that this is not occurring.
Further contributing to this lack of accountability is the
fact that there is no process in place for headquarters or
regional staff to ensure that park concessionaires are meeting
the agency's minimum acceptable standards or that the standards
are being consistently applied, such as using independent
inspections that are common in the private hotel/motel
industry.
We believe that the Park Service has two principal options
available for dealing with the problems identified in the
management of its concessions programs: First, using better
hiring and training practices to professionalize the work force
and thus obtain better business and contracting expertise; and/
or, second, contracting for the needed business and contracting
expertise.
Regardless of which option or combination of these options
it selects, the Park Service will need to strengthen its
accountability for and control of the concessions program.
Unless changes are made to better link the concessions program
at the park level with the agency's leadership of the
concessions program, the impact of efforts to improve the
program through the suggested options will be reduced.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, while the Park Service's
concession program continues to affect the experience of
millions of park visitors each year, the management of the
program continues to be plagued by some of the same problems it
faced as many as 10 years ago. Until the agency takes action to
address these management problems, it will continue to struggle
in managing the performance of concessionaires to ensure that
these operators consistently provide high-quality facilities
and services to park visitors. That concludes my statement and
I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Hill.
[The prepared statement of Barry T. Hill follows:]
Prepared Statement of Barry T. Hill, Associate Director, Energy,
Resources, and Science Issues, Resources, Community, and Economy
Development Division, the U.S. Government Accounting Office
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, we are pleased to be
here today to discuss the management of the Park Service's concessions
program. Our comments are based primarily on two reports. The first
report, which we issued in August 1998, reviewed the condition of
lodging facilities in 10 national parks. The condition of these
facilities varied considerably from park to park and was at times quite
poor.\1\ The second report, which we issued in March 2000, addresses
key management problems in the concessions program and options
available to address them.\2\
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\1\ National Park Service: The Condition of Lodging Facilities
Varies Among Selected Parks (GAO/RCED-98-238, Aug. 6, 1998).
\2\ Park Service: Need to Address Management Problems That Plague
the Concessions Program (GAO/RCED-00-70, Mar 31, 2000).
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In summary, our most recent work shows the following:
We found shortcomings in the agency's overall approach to managing
the concessions program that center on three areas:
1. The inadequate qualifications and training of the agency's
concessions specialists and concessions contracting staff;
2. The agency's out-of-date practices in handling its contracting
workload as well as its chronic backlog of expired contracts; and
3. A lack of accountability within the concessions program. For the
most part, these problems are longstanding and are consistent with
similar concerns raised by the Department of the Interior, its Office
of the Inspector General, and Park Service concessions staff.
The Park Service has two principal options available for dealing
with the problems identified in the management of the concessions
program: First, using better hiring and training practices to
professionalize the workforce and thus obtain better business and
contracting expertise or second, contracting for the needed business
and contracting expertise. These two options are not mutually exclusive
in that the agency could contract for expertise in certain functions
while developing the expertise in-house for other functions. No matter
which option--or combination of options--it selects, the agency needs
to strengthen its accountability for and control of the program. Unless
this is done, the effectiveness of other changes to the program will
likely be diminished.
Background
Concessioners play a significant role in providing services to many
of the over 270 millions visitors who annually visit the national park
system. Concessioners, which are private businesses operating under
contracts with the Park Service, provide facilities and visitor
services such as lodging, food, merchandising, marinas, and various
guided services. In 1998, the latest year for which data are available,
630 concessioners provided visitor services in many of the 379 park
units located across the nation. These concessioners generated about
$765 million in revenues, of which about $479 million (almost two-
thirds) came from the 73 concessioners that provide lodging.
For many years, concerns have been raised by the Congress, the Park
Service, and GAO about the need to reform existing concessions law and
better manage the agency's concessions program. In November 1998, the
Congress enacted a new concessions law as part of the National Parks
Omnibus Management Act of 1998. One of the Congress's intentions was
that the new concessions law would increase competition in the award of
new concessions contracts. In addition, the law established an advisory
board whose mission was to advise the Secretary of the Interior on
improvements the agency could make in managing park concessioners. The
problems that we addressed in our report, and are discussing today, are
management problems which will persist even under the new law unless
the agency takes actions to make improvements.
Longstanding Management Problems Affect the Condition of Lodging
Facilities
Concerns about the qualifications and training of the Park
Service's concessions staff have been raised several times since 1990
by the Department of the Interior's Office of the Inspector General and
the agency's own staff. (App. I lists several notable reports and other
documents that discuss these concerns.) The primary concern raised was
that the agency's concessions staff do not normally have the business,
financial, and contracting backgrounds needed to successfully carry out
the concessions program. The Park Service has made only limited
progress in addressing these concerns. The agency has made few efforts
to professionalize its workforce by hiring staff with education or
experience in business management or hospitality management. Instead,
it has filled concessions positions by internally transferring staff
out of other career fields. Once transferred, the agency's concession
staff receive only limited training. A more qualified and better-
trained workforce would have a better understanding of industry trends,
best practices, and the tools needed to effectively manage
concessioners. Rather than seeking to professionalize the workforce,
the chief concessions official in one regional office said, the agency
has taken the view that ``anyone can do concessions.'' Our work
indicates that this comment typifies the agency's approach to managing
its concessions program.
In addition to these problems with the qualifications and training
of its concessions staff, the Park Service's concessions contracting
practices are out-of-date and do not reflect the best practices of the
Federal Government, the private sector, or even other contracting
programs within the agency. For example, contracting staff in other
agencies throughout the Federal Government are encouraged to write
contracts that are performance based--meaning that the contracts
contain incentives for good performance and disincentives for
performance that falls below expectations. However, the agency's
concessions program is not using performance-based contracts, and,
according to several senior Park Service concessions program officials,
has no plans to do so. Furthermore, for about 10 years, the agency has
had difficulty addressing its contracting workload in a timely manner,
resulting in chronic backlogs of expired concessions contracts. Many
concessions contracts expired 5 to 10 years ago, and concessioners have
since been operating on 1- to 3-year contract extensions. These expired
or extended contracts contribute to the varying condition of lodging
facilities because concessioners operating under short-term contract
extensions, or nearing the end of their contracts, are less likely to
invest in their facilities to make needed capital improvements.
The third major management issue affecting the concessions program
is a lack of accountability. While the Park Service, like other Federal
agencies, is trying to improve accountability and program performance
in response to the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) and
other related initiatives, the concessions program is an area where
these efforts need to be improved. Under the agency's organizational
structure, the head of the program--the Chief of Concessions--has no
direct authority over those that implement the program in individual
park units. Thus, the organizational structure of the agency limits the
impact that the head of the program or other central offices can have
on its ultimate success. This structure relies on regional directors
holding park superintendents accountable for the results of their
parks' concessions programs. However, concessions officials in the Park
Service's headquarters and two largest regional offices indicated that
this is not occurring. Specifically, they acknowledged that
superintendents are not being evaluated on the results of their
concessions programs. Further contributing to this lack of
accountability is the fact that there is no process in place for
headquarters or regional staff to ensure that park concessioners are
meeting the agency's minimum acceptable standards or that these
standards are being consistently applied. In the private hotel/motel
industry and the Department of Defense--which manages similar
activities--independent inspection teams are used to determine the
condition of facilities and services being provided to the public. The
Park Service does not have such teams. As a result, Park Service
management has no systematic way of determining what, if any, problems
are occurring throughout the agency; whether corrective actions are
necessary; or whether new initiatives are warranted.
Options Are Available to Address Problems in Managing the Concessions
Program
Two options are available to the agency to deal with the problems
identified in its management of the concessions program: First,
professionalize the workforce to obtain better business and contracting
expertise or second, contract for the needed business and contracting
expertise.
The first option focuses on improving the skills and abilities of
the Park Service's concessions staff by changing the agency's hiring
practices and upgrading its training. Rather than filling concessions
positions with staff transferred from other career fields within the
agency, the Park Service could hire staff with backgrounds or education
in hospitality and/or business management. By doing so, the agency
would gradually develop greater in-house expertise in managing
concessioners in a more businesslike manner. In addition, the agency
could upgrade the training of its concessions contracting staff so that
they were as well qualified as other agency contracting staff outside
the concessions program. As it is now, the Park Service staff
responsible for administering procurement and acquisition contracts
receive far more training than their counterparts in the concessions
program.
The benefit of pursuing this option would be that the agency could
develop a more qualified, better-trained, and professionalized
workforce. However, the agency's past record in taking action to
address these issues is not encouraging. Many of the concerns we have
raised in this report about the qualifications of concession staff have
been raised repeatedly over the past 10 years by the Department of the
Interior's Inspector General and by several different departmental or
agency task forces. Several times over this period, the Park Service
has generally agreed that it needs to professionalize its concessions
workforce. However, as our work indicates, the agency has not made
significant progress in this area.
Alternatively, the Park Service could contract for the expertise it
needs to operate its concessions program. Contractors could be hired to
handle a number of financial and business-related tasks, such as
planning, writing contract prospectuses, performing financial analysis,
assisting with contracting, and evaluating the performance of
concessioners.
Contracting for business-related staff would have several benefits.
For example, through contracting, the agency could obtain a highly
qualified workforce in a short period of time. In addition, the agency
would gain some workforce flexibility because it could adjust the
number of staff needed to fit the size of its upcoming workload.
Contracting would allow the agency to bring more staff on to handle its
backlog of expired and expiring concessions contracts and to reduce the
number of contractor staff when the workload is diminished.
Furthermore, contracting for certain functions has the potential to
improve the program's performance as well as reduce its costs. For
example, traditionally, one responsibility of park concessions staff
was to conduct inspections of the concessioners' facilities and
operations. These inspections can be subjective, and the application of
standards can vary from park to park. If the agency centralized and
contracted for this function, it could perhaps perform inspections with
fewer people and yet achieve greater consistency across the agency.
While contracting has the potential to reduce some costs in the
concessions program, it could also increase some costs, particularly in
areas where the agency would contract for larger numbers of highly
skilled staff than it currently maintains. However, some of these
increased costs could be mitigated by centralizing certain functions,
such as inspections. In addition, the increased costs could be
mitigated by reducing the number of agency staff in the concession
program.
The two options available to the Park Service for dealing with its
concessions management problems are not mutually exclusive, in that the
agency could contract for expertise in certain functions while
developing expertise in-house for other functions. These options are
principally focused on improving the agency's management of its largest
concessioners--most of which are lodging concessioners. In our view,
once the agency has made changes in the concessions program to address
its largest concessioners, the benefits of additional expertise--
whether acquired through hiring, training, or contracting--are likely
to cascade down to improve the management of its smaller concessioners.
Finally, regardless which option or combination of options it
selects, the Park Service will need to strengthen its accountability
for and control of the concessions program. Unless changes are made to
better link the concessions programs at the park level with the
agency's leadership of the concessions program, the impact of efforts
to improve the program through the suggested options will be reduced.
In closing, while the Park Service's concessions program continues
to affect the experiences of millions of park visitors each year, the
management of the program continues to be plagued by some of the same
problems it faced as many as 10 years ago. For the most part, these
management problems are well documented and well known. In fact, the
agency generally agreed with the findings and recommendations in our
report. However, until the agency takes action to address these
management problems, it will continue to struggle in managing the
performance of concessioners to ensure that these operators
consistently provide high-quality facilities and services to park
visitors. To address these problems, our March 2000 report recommended
that the agency first, either improve the qualifications of its own
concessions staff, contract for these services, or engage in some
combination of the two; and second, improve the accountability of park
managers by establishing a formal process for performing periodic
independent inspections of concessioners' lodging operations throughout
the park system and reporting the findings to the head of the agency
for corrective action.
This concludes my statement. I would be happy to answer questions
from you or other members of the committee.
APPENDIX I.--NOTABLE REPORTS AND MEMORANDUMS THAT RAISE CONCERNS ABOUT
THE QUALIFICATIONS AND/OR TRAINING OF PARK SERVICE CONCESSIONS STAFF
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Concerns raised by report/
Source and date of report/memorandum memorandum
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Report of the Task Force on National Concessions staff do not
Park Service Concessions, U.S. normally have the business,
Department of the Interior, Apr. 9, financial, and contracting
1990. backgrounds needed to
successfully carry out the
concessions program.
Follow-up Review of Concessions Agency staff working in
Management, National Park Service, concessions do not have
Report No. 90-62, Office of the sufficient educational
Inspector General, U.S. Department of backgrounds to perform their
the Interior, April 1990. work well. The report
recommends improving the
qualifications of staff
working in the concessions
field.
Report of the Concessions Management This report recommends that all
Task Force, U.S. Department of the agencies within the Department
Interior, Nov. 4, 1991. recruit staff for their
concessions programs with a
basic knowledge of business,
including such subjects as
contract law and
administration, hotel/
restaurant management, and
financial management.
Memorandum from the Director of the The agency needs more
Park Service on Personnel Staffing for concessions staff with
National Park Service Concessions, education or experience in
Jan. 12, 1994. business, accounting, business
law or the hospitality
industry. To recruit qualified
staff, the Director suggests
that the agency look for
candidates outside the
government.
Park Service concessions work group, The agency needs to develop a
June 1994--findings reported in recruitment program, enhance
Concession Careers Future Task Force training and development, and
Report, National Park Service, Oct. improve career development.
97..
Concessions Management Curriculum Task The concessions management
Force Report, National Park Service, program has failed to give its
Sept. 1995. employees the training they
need to manage the complex
concessions program. A
systematic, comprehensive
employment development program
is needed.
Concession Careers Future Task Force This report outlines a series
Report, National Park Service, Oct. of human resource management
1997. processes and recommendations
to strengthen and
professionalize the staff
needed to effectively manage
concessions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: GAO's compilation of agency documents.
Chairman Radanovich. We will hold questions until testimony
is given by all three witnesses.
Mr. Garden.
STATEMENT OF KEVIN R. GARDEN, PARTNER, SALTMAN AND STEVENS
ATTORNEYS AT LAW (ON BEHALF OF FRED VREEMAN, PRESIDENT AND CEO,
KINGS CANYON PARK SERVICE CO.)
Mr. Garden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee. I appreciate and thank you for the opportunity to
testify before you today. My name is Kevin Garden. I am an
attorney with Saltman and Stevens here in Washington, D.C. and
I am before you representing Fred Vreeman who is the president
of Kings Canyon Park Services. Mr. Vreeman was unable to make
the necessary travel arrangements to be here.
In my testimony I am going to discuss some of the specific
experiences that Kings Canyon has had in the last 4 years in
operating a concessions contract it has at Kings Canyon. It is
my hope in discussing his experiences, I will help you better
identify the problems with the current administration of the
Park Service's concession program, as well as the solutions to
those problems.
To give you some brief background, Kings Canyon Park
Service owns and operates various lodging facilities in Kings
Canyon National Park, as well as Sequoia National Forest which
is run by the U.S. Forest Service. They signed a contract back
in October 1996 for a term of 15 years. The contract
specifically called for a construction phase in the first 5
years of the contract and an investment by the contractor of
$3.8 million. This period is very critical to the contract
because the remaining 10 years are then available to recoup the
investment that the contractor makes. The economic viability of
the contract in fact is dependent upon this construction period
being maintained.
When Kings Canyon Park Service entered into its contract,
it intended to complete the construction and remains today
intending to do so, and has the financial wherewithal to do
that. However, in the 4 years it has been operating its
concessions contract, it has been continually frustrated by
National Park Service delays in completing tasks needed to
complete this construction, a lack of cooperation on the part
of the National Park Service, which is critical to performing a
contract of this nature as well as being a fundamental
contracting responsibility, and inconsistent evaluations and
directions from various members of the Park Service.
The reasons for these problems and frustrations is the NPS'
lack of a staff knowledgeable with what is specifically going
on under this contract, and a lack of awareness of the
financial impact of the Park Service's actions on a
concessionaire that is trying to maintain a viable operating
business.
Kings Canyon believes, as Mr. Hill referred to, that the
key to solving these problems is holding the Park Service
accountable for its actions. The GAO report focused on holding
the various parks accountable to the agency overall. Well,
Kings Canyon would also suggest that the Park Service be held
accountable to its contractors.
As to the delays I mentioned, probably the most significant
one for Mr. Vreeman at Kings Canyon has been the fact that the
contract, as I mentioned, called for construction. This was the
demolition and reconstruction of various facilities in the
park. This included some bathhouses and cabins which are
mentioned in the GAO report. In order to do this construction,
Kings Canyon needed the Park Service's approval. The Park
Service, once this construction was proposed, informed Kings
Canyon that an environmental assessment was required under
NEPA. However, the Park Service also informed Mr. Vreeman that
the Park Service did not have the staff to complete this EA,
and if they wanted it done in a timely manner they would have
to do it themselves, so Mr. Vreeman undertook this
responsibility, which was not originally set forth in the
contract.
Kings Canyon submitted the EA in January 1999 and they
repeatedly tried to get the--excuse me, the Park Service
repeatedly tried to get Kings Canyon to include in the EA
various alternatives which were inconsistent with the specific
requirements in the contract. Mr. Vreeman did not want to do
that but he did. He was essentially being asked to write an
alternative contrary to what he had contracted for back in
1996.
He did not get a final response on the proposed alternative
that was consistent with his contract until April of 2000, 18
months later. When that response came, it was a denial of the
EA. However, the frustration he felt was that the basis for the
denial was based on facts that were known to the Park Service
back in January 1999 when he originally submitted the EA. Had
the Park Service operated in an efficient and prompt manner,
they could have told him of their decision sooner, thus making
sure that he could do a better job of maintaining that 5-year
construction window.
I referred earlier to a lack of cooperation, and probably
the most significant example of this involves an incident with
the State Preservation Historic Office of California, also
known as SHPO.
When the contract was first obtained by Kings Canyon, the
SHPO office had reviewed the various facilities on the park and
indicated that they were not eligible for historic status. In
fact, they did this twice. However, after performance began,
apparently the Park Service, from Mr. Vreeman's understanding,
had destroyed some historic structures elsewhere in the park
without consulting with SHPO, and also wanted to take down some
additional historic structures. Therefore, they were looking to
curry favor with the SHPO office.
As a result, they affirmatively went to the SHPO office and
identified for them certain facilities that were intended to be
demolished and reconstructed under the contract and asked that
those be found eligible for historic status. The critical fact
was now an environmental assessment was required to do the
construction. This was not anticipated originally in the
contract and was brought about solely by the Park Service's
affirmative actions.
I believe this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of
their contractual obligations; i.e., the obligation to
cooperate. To take this kind of affirmative action which
frustrates the contractor is inconsistent with that obligation.
I believe that ties in with the GAO comments on the lack of
training in contract matters that the Park Service personnel
have. This is a fundamental contracting responsibility that any
contracting officer in the Department of Defense would be aware
of. But from all respects and all evidence we have, the Park
Service has no understanding of this responsibility.
I just want to give you some examples of some of the
inconsistent evaluations that Kings Canyon has endured. For
example, they recently painted some of the rooms in one of
their lodges and remodeled the rooms. A Park Service inspector
stated that the paint job in the rooms was unacceptable and had
to be redone. Kings Canyon didn't agree with that and contacted
the superintendent's office and a second inspector came along
and stated that the paint job was great.
Another example is that they have an employee housing unit
in the park built in the 1930's. The wiring, of course, in that
unit is quite out of date. An inspector came along one day and
informed Mr. Vreeman he had to rewire the building to make it
consistent with the current UL Code. This made no sense to him.
He has a construction background and he contacted the
superintendent's office and a second inspector came out and
informed Mr. Vreeman that in fact he was correct; the wiring
did not have to be redone because the building had been built
prior to that code coming into effect.
I have a few more examples, but they run along the same
strain so I don't want to take any further time. Again, thank
you for your time and I am happy to take any questions that the
committee members may have later.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Garden.
[The prepared statement of Kevin R. Garden follows:]
Prepared Statement of Kevin R. Garden, Partner, Saltman and Stevens
Attorneys at Law, on Behalf of Fred Vreeman, President and CEO, Kings
Canyon Park Service Co.
It is an honor to appear before this task force. I hereby submitt
this written testimony on behalf of Fred Vreeman, President of Kings
Canyon Park Services (KCPS). KCPS is currently a concessioner with the
National Park Service and operates lodging and other facilities in
Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Forest.
I am Kevin Garden and am appearing on behalf of Mr. Vreeman. Mr.
Vreeman is disappointed that he could not make the necessary travel
arrangements to be here in person.
Background
KCPS is a small family-owned business. In 1996, it was awarded its
current contract with the NPS and took over the facilities in Kings
Canyon National Park which were run-down and long overdue for
replacement. KCPS also agreed to help the NPS complete services to the
public for 2 years in the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park. This
area was scheduled for upcoming demolition when KCPS assumed its
responsibilities. Because of the run-down nature of the Giant Forest
facilities and their pending demolition, completion of these services
resulted in significant financial loss to KCPS. Notwithstanding this
loss, NPS acquired a Government Improvement Fund of nearly one million
dollars as a result of KCPS's efforts. The enticement was placed in
front of this family business that it would be able to recoup its
losses incurred in operating the Giant Forest facilities under its
operation of the concessions contract in Kings Canyon National Park.
However, since competing for and obtaining its current contract to
provide lodging and other services in Kings Canyon National Park, KCPS
has not been able to operate profitably. This unprofitable status is
the direct result of NPS actions which have delayed the construction of
new and improved facilities which were identified in the contract at
the time KCPS bid for and obtained it. Moreover, the construction phase
of the contract has to be completed within the first 5 years (i.e., by
2001) in order for the contract to be profitable. As of the present
date some three and one-half years after contract award, significant
construction has not taken place contrary to KCPS's intentions and many
of the old, deteriorated facilities, some of which are highlighted in
GAO's report, still remain despite the efforts of KCPS to demolish them
and replace them with new, attractive buildings. In addition, KCPS has
incurred unnecessary expenses due to the NPS's inconsistent
administration of the Kings Canyon concessions contract. These delays
and expenses are the direct result of the NPS's improper management of
KCPS's contract.
Unexpected Development Expenses
When KCPS and the NPS signed the long-term contract for concessions
services at Kings Canyon National Park, the contract authorized
construction of 58 additional rooms and the replacement of dilapidated
and worn out facilities. In the Request for Proposal (RFP), NPS
represented to KCPS that, based on the information it was aware of at
the time of award, compliance with the National Environmental Policy
Act (NEPA) for purposes of this new construction was complete. NPS made
these assurances because it was aware, as is any contractor, that
compliance with NEPA's requirements is time-consuming and expensive.
The construction work called for under the contract was consistent with
the Park's Development Concept Plan, which was finalized in 1987.
However, now that the contract has been awarded and notwithstanding its
prior representations, the NPS is imposing new requirements for NEPA
compliance which were not assumed by KCPS under the contract and are
not due to any new environmental information.
The NPS has suspended construction activities while it reviews
environmental studies which were completed pursuant to NEPA and
relevant to the actions which had been clearly set forth under the
original contract. As to these actions, NPS had represented that all
NEPA compliance had been accomplished. However, no new significant
information or changed circumstances related to the environment have
occurred since the contract was awarded. Rather, the delay is due to
admitted lack of staffing needed to promptly review the completed
environmental analysis.
In addition to this action significantly delaying the critical
construction phase under the contract, the NPS also informed KCPS that
it wanted KCPS to prepare the environmental analyses, at its own
expense. KCPS has been told that this is necessary because the NPS does
not have the funds or personnel available to accomplish this task.
Pursuant to NPS's request, KCPS drafted extensive portions of the
environmental compliance documents. However, the NPS refused to edit or
review them in a timely manner and continues to insist that KCPS
include additional new development alternatives that are not
economically viable or consistent with the terms of the contract.
The resulting delays have created unexpected loss of revenue that
was not anticipated when the contract was awarded. Additionally, the
added expense of preparing the environmental analyses was not
anticipated or planned for in KCPS's economic assessment at the time it
bid for the contract. The true cause of these delays is not any
substantive new environmental issue, but rather an inability by the NPS
to efficiently complete the necessary environmental reviews.
Construction inspection and approvals
After development plans are approved, but before KCPS or any
contractor can proceed with construction in the National Parks, it must
obtain NPS approval. Simply put, the necessary approvals at each stage
of the construction process are slow, inconsistent and expensive. KCPS
has found it difficult or impossible to work with the NPS in a manner
consistent with its needs to operate a viable business. Based on KCPS's
experience, the main reasons for this difficulty are lack of
knowledgeable construction inspectors and the inability of the NPS
bureaucracy to provide consistent direction.
In an effort to do more than simply criticize, KCPS offers a
suggestion for a solution on this particular point. NPS could contract
with an entity or agency (whether it be private, county or state) in
each park area that has qualified engineers who are licensed to review
and approve construction projects. NPS would therefore obtain knowledge
of the specific local codes and ordinances which may be applicable to
local construction only when specific projects were being reviewed,
thus not requiring it to incur the expense of a full-time inspector.
Facility inspections
Once a facility is completed, it is subject to inspection to ensure
that it is being sufficiently maintained and meets the necessary
criteria. However, KCPS's experience has been that these inspections
are inconsistent and often conducted by untrained NPS personnel. For
example, different inspectors reviewing the same facility may rate it
differently. In other situations, the same NPS inspector may grade a
facility at one level 1 day and, although the same conditions exist
upon a later visit, give the facility another grade the very next time.
However, this type of inconsistency, which can produce havoc for a
business trying to maintain itself as a viable entity, can be
eliminated. As those in the private recreation business are aware,
professional inspection agencies are available (e.g., AAA, Best
Western, Mobile Travel Service) which would produce consistent reviews.
Another option is that the NPS can contract for independent contractors
which it then can use in several parks.
GAO Report
The recent GAO report entitled ``Park Service: Need to Address
Management Problems That Plague the Concessions Program'' and issued in
March 2000 found deficiencies in the operations of the facilities at
Kings Canyon National Park. While GAO visited Kings Canyon National
Park when many of the facilities were being prepared for the upcoming
season and had been dormant for many months, GAO's report highlights
the problems that KCPS and the Park itself are left with when planned
and needed construction of new facilities is delayed. (The items noted
by GAO were fixed when GAO subsequently visited the facilities after
they had been opened for the season. These were run-down facilities
that KCPS had been trying to replace for 3 years.)
The facilities identified in GAO's report were constructed in the
1920's and 30's. When KCPS became the operator of the facilities in
1996, the facilities were long-overdue for significant renovation or
removal. Although KCPS agreed to renovate or remove and replace these
tired facilities and the contract specifically identified this goal,
the NPS has delayed approvals for the necessary replacement. As
discussed above, the approval process is extremely lengthy with
inconsistent requests for information and slow reviews. It is and has
been KCPS's desire to complete building improvements that are
identified in its contract, appropriate for the park, approved by the
NPS, meet all NEPA standards and are financially sound. But for the
NPS's actions, these efforts would not have been delayed.
Summary
As demonstrated by KCPS's experience, the NPS is not managing the
concession program efficiently. KCPS is a contractor able and willing
to produce a first-class recreation experience for visitors to Kings
Canyon National Park. In fact, it is in KCPS's own interest to do so as
it will obtain the financial benefits from attractive lodging
facilities. KCPS did not compete for the concessions contract at Kings
Canyon National Park under the intention or belief that the facilities
present when it obtained that contract would still largely be in place
today. In fact, in 1997 KCPS completed the construction of the John
Muir Lodge pursuant to its intentions and the contract's
specifications. (This facility was not inspected by GAO because it was
not yet completed at the time of GAO's visit.) The timely completion of
this beautiful and tasteful facility has proven to be the exception
and, when compared to the facilities identified in GAO's report, in
large part highlights the contrast between proper and improper contract
administration.
KCPS is appreciative of the efforts made by Congress to instruct
the NPS as to its administration of its concession contracts. However,
despite this instruction, concessionaires are still faced with
inconsistent contract administration. The arbitrary changes in contract
administration effect the economic viability of KCPS's as well as
others contracts. KCPS prays that the result this task force will
accomplish is to hold the NPS accountable in the proper administration
of its contracts. Only upon the imposition of accountability, which
does not currently exist, will on-the-ground changes be made and
improvements realized.
Thank you for the opportunity to present these positions.
Chairman Radanovich. Ms. Finnerty, welcome. We look forward
to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF MAUREEN FINNERTY, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR
OPERATIONS AND EDUCATION, THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Ms. Finnerty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I request that my
full statement be incorporated into the record and I will
briefly summarize some of the high points.
Chairman Radanovich. Without objection.
Ms. Finnerty. The National Park Service does substantially
agree with the GAO report. We believe that it will provide a
basis for strengthening our program, and working along with the
new Concessions Management Improvement Act of 1998, it will
allow us to truly implement concessions reform in the National
Park Service. The GAO report also deals with many issues that
are also being dealt with and looked at by the legislatively
established Concessions Advisory Board, particularly issues
relating to outsourcing and the professionalization of the work
force.
GAO makes recommendations in three major areas. Here in
summation is what the National Park Service is doing to respond
to those recommendations. On work force professionalization and
training, 60 percent of our 125 permanent personnel who work in
concessions have either relevant education or experience in
business or the hospitality industry. We know we need to do
better. We are aware that we need to increase the
professionalization of our work force.
We are committed to aggressively recruiting from all
sources, from outside sources, again to improve the
professionalization of the work force. We have recently hired
two individuals with MBAs and we have a key position vacant in
Denver, the head of our concessions program center, and it is
our full intention to recruit and fill that job from the
outside, from the business sector, to help increase the
professionalization and oversight of that program.
We do have a Concession Careers Future Report which was
completed a couple of years ago. We are moving forward to
implement various pieces of that report, particularly as it
pertains to training and professionalizationof the work force.
We have already developed competencies for concession employees
and looked at strategies for improving the competency of our
concessions work force.
We also are actively engaged in agreements and arrangements
with Northern Arizona University to work with us on the
hospitality end and increasing expertise on the hospitality
side of concessions management.
We are working with Cornell to strengthen our financial
capability, in-house financial capability, and we are working
with the Army to strengthen and improve many of our contracting
procedures.
The second major area that GAO made recommendations on is
our out-of-date contracting practices. We certainly agree that
this has been the case over a number of years. We now do have a
new law and we have new concessions regulations which went into
effect just about a month ago. We are now working with the
solicitor's office and others to adopt relevant Federal
acquisition regulations for our programs, for example,
performance-based contracting, and certifying those who are
involved in contracting activities in the concessions program.
We are moving forward with dealing with the backlog of
contracts that have expired and that are on short-term
extensions. We have plans in place to essentially redo over 200
concessions contracts this year through the end of the calendar
year, and another 165 are planned for next year. We essentially
will do this through the use of teams made up of senior
concessions personnel and also through outsourcing various
components of the program to help us get the work done.
On the issue of outsourcing or contracting out, in 1990
essentially we didn't contract out any portions of the
concessions program and over the last year we have moved to
contracting out almost $1 million of work primarily in the
areas of financial analysis, appraisals and arbitration. The
advisory board has also been asked to come up with some
recommendations for the secretary and the director on other
areas that we can contract out and other ways that we can tap
into the private sector to help us to professionalize our
contracting capabilities.
The GAO report recommended the outsourcing and
centralization of inspections, particularly of large
operations. We agree with that. We like that idea and we are
moving forward to try to implement that over the next year or
so.
On the question of accountability, last fall regional
directors were told to put accountability and oversight of
concessions in the performance standards for those 132 parks
which have concessions programs. A critical element will be
added to the performance standards of all of the SES
individuals, namely the regional directors who have oversight
of superintendents. This will take place on July 1.
We are critically looking at the phasing out over a period
of time of collateral duty personnel. This has been one of the
issues which has been raised, folks trying to do 3 or 4 or 5
different tasks. It is particularly an issue in those parks
which have big concessions programs and have only part-time
individuals that may not be adequately trained and may not have
the experience.
We have put together a budget request for the 2002 budget
which is the next cycle that we can influence, specifically
requesting additional resources again to help beef up our
professional staff both in parks and regional offices. We have
contracted with PricewaterhouseCoopers. They have started to
look at our entire concessions program. They are doing an
analysis of ways that we can improve it, what are our
shortcomings and deficiencies, and hopefully we will come up
with some recommendations that will be helpful to us in the
years ahead.
Also the Service as a whole is looking at reinstituting an
operations evaluation program which we used to have that
essentially looks at all operational programs in the field and
is another method and practice that really helps improve
accountability. We have not done that in a number of years, and
I think the director is committed to reinstituting that and
putting that in place so we can improve accountability not only
in the oversight of this program but also in others where we
have had some challenges.
That completes my remarks, Mr. Chairman, and I will be
happy to answer questions.
[The prepared statement of Maureen Finnerty follows:]
Prepared Statement of Maureen Finnerty, Associate Director for
Operations and Education, the National Park Service
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss with you the recently
issued report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) on the management
of the National Park Service concessions program. This report, entitled
``Park Service: Need to Address Management Problems That Have Plagued
The Concessions Program'' (GAO/RCED-00-70), highlights issues and
factors that impact the National Park Service (NPS) concession program.
As Don Barry, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks,
indicated in a letter to GAO dated March 16, 2000, overall, we agree
with many of the report's findings. This report offers us an
opportunity to strengthen our program and begin true concessions
reform, while supplementing our ongoing efforts to implement the
Concessions Management Improvement Act of 1998. One such effort
includes a proposal in the President's 2001 Budget to establish a new
Senior Executive Service position in the National Park Service for an
Associate Director for Partnerships and Business Practices, which will
enforce our commitment to improving the concessions program. Another
effort involves the increased consideration of performance-based
contracting measures. Though the report focuses on the condition and
management of lodging facilities operated by concessioners, it appears
that many of the factors that were examined could apply equally to
other aspects of the NPS concession management program. The
implementation of these recommendations will benefit park visitors and
the program in general.
The report covers issues that are very similar to those that are
being dealt with by the National Park Service Management Advisory
Board. This body, created by Congress in the Concessions Management
Improvement Act of 1998, is tasked with advising the Secretary on ways
to improve the concessions program. The Board consists of members from
the hospitality, tourism, accounting, outfitting, and crafts
industries, as well as a member from a nonprofit conservation group,
and a member from a state government agency. The Board is in the
process of preparing a report to Congress pursuant to this act, and it
will deal with many of the issues covered by this GAO report, such as
outsourcing, and the professionalization of the NPS concessions
workforce.
Workforce Professionalization and Training
The GAO report recommends that NPS recruit workers with business
and hospitality backgrounds, and train its employees in these
disciplines. It notes that our program lacks employees with
professional education and experience in business, finance, and
accounting. We agree that NPS must enhance its concessions management
expertise by improving training for current employees, recruiting new
employees with a background in the hospitality industry, and
contracting out when it is more efficient to do so. The NPS previously
identified professionalization of the work force and succession
planning as a priority and identified them as elements in the
Concession Careers Future Report approved by the Associate Director,
Park Operations and Education in 1997. The report outlines a series of
human resource management processes that will allow us to
professionally manage the concessions program into the next century.
The Concessions Management Improvement Act of 1998 could potentially
provide us with some additional fiscal resources, especially to address
immediate needs for appraisals and financial analysis of contracts that
have built up over the past few years.
We understand the need for more concessions staff with a background
in the hospitality industry. We believe, however, that the GAO report
may understate the value of concession managers and staff having broad
experience in other park programs. It is common practice in business to
rotate key staff through different programs within a company to gain a
breadth of experience in company operations. We believe the most
effective team for NPS concession management consists of a good mix of
those with experience in other park programs, teamed up with
specialists from the business community and hospitality industry. In
fact, employees who have a stronger NPS background and insignificant
hospitality experience, administer the outstanding program at Zion and
Bryce Canyon National Parks that was highlighted in this report.
In the same vein, we believe that GAO may have over-emphasized the
importance of specialists from the hotel industry. The majority of
businesses in national parks are not part of the hospitality industry,
which is generally thought to include lodging, food service, marinas,
and merchandising. More than half of all park concession contracts
involve traditional park activities, such as livery operations, river
running, hiking, and climbing, all of which have very little or no
relation to the standard hospitality industry activities and
businesses. Less than 25 percent would be recognized as traditional
industry operations. Alaska, for example, has 400 companies providing
commercial visitor services in 15 national parks. Only three of these
are primarily in the lodging business. The majority is in guide and
outfitting, with the largest revenues and franchise fees generated by
cruise and tour operators. Of course, the majority of concessions
revenue is earned from businesses in the hospitality industry, and our
emphasis should be on improving the oversight and management of these
contracts.
Another area of emphasis is the increased use of performance-based
contracting. People with financial skills, coupled with current
facility assessments and adequate planning documents are necessary for
development of contract requirements, while people with contracting
backgrounds are needed for the actual mechanics of contracting and
contract administration (amendments, extensions, sales/transfers). More
contracting challenges could also arise as competition for new
contracts increases as a result of Public Law 105-391 and sales and
transfers become more complex. Concessioner support of the NPS visitor
service and education mission depends on the traditional agency
abilities and knowledge that park employees bring to the table when
working with concessioners. Yet, we also need contract specialists that
can introduce some of the advances that other agencies and businesses
have made in using performance-based contracts to encourage more
responsive contractors and concessioners.
The National Park Service Organic Act, as well as the new
concessions law, provides for visitor use and enjoyment of an area when
necessary and appropriate and when consistent with the protection of
park resource values. The use component is not an independent or
unconnected arm without any ties to our agency preservation
responsibilities. There must be a coordinated effort that blends
together the use and preservation components seamlessly when providing
a park visitation experience.
The National Park Service will aggressively recruit from the
private business sector when specific positions require that type of
knowledge and expertise. The NPS will also implement the previously
discussed Concession Careers Future Report to ensure NPS employees with
concession responsibilities have mastered program competencies.
Furthermore, the NPS will contract out for expertise when it is
appropriate to do so. In the interim, we are developing a concession
contracting certification program modeled after the Department of the
Interior's contracting officer's warrant certification program, and are
having discussions with Cornell University and the Department of
Defense in the development of an advanced finance course. We have also
discussed with the Department of Defense Training Academy the cross
training of NPS concession personnel and the possibility of developing
specialized training specifically to meet NPS contracting needs. We are
also working with Northern Arizona University to develop a hospitality
curriculum for concessions employees.
We have recommended that $90,000 be dedicated for concession
training in the FY 2001 servicewide program. Additional training funds
may be needed, depending on the mix of training, new hires, and
contracting out.
Out-of-date Contracting Practices
The GAO Report also stated that NPS has outdated contracting
practices. We agree with GAO that concession contracting can benefit
from the best practices of the Federal Acquisition Regulations. There
is, however, a significant difference between concession contracting
and the procurement function. Concessions contracting must have as its
primary goal the protection of park resources. FAR contracting, on the
other hand, is often (but not always) focused on the lowest cost
bidder. Both, however, are intended to obtain the most appropriate
return to the government, so there are issues that apply to both.
We concur with GAO that contract extensions hamper the
effectiveness of the program and affect the quality of visitor services
and facilities. Public Law 105-391 and new concession regulations will
allow us to move forward and address this important issue.
The National Park Service will review the concession program and
update its practices where appropriate. We will also continue to
investigate mechanisms, such as performance-based contracting, for
providing financial incentives to concessioners for exceptional
performance and disincentives for mediocre performance. The development
of certifications and specialized training for our personnel, as noted
above, will help us update our contracting practices.
Outsourcing
The GAO report also recommends that NPS outsource certain aspects
of the concessions program. We agree with GAO and are, in fact,
presently outsourcing significant components of the concession
contracting process. Financial analysis, appraisals, and arbitration
are contracted with the private sector on a regular basis. There are,
however, other significant components of the contracting process, such
as planning, that occur at the park level and cannot be contracted out.
Park planning documents based on General Management Plans, Development
Concept Plans, Commercial Services Plans, and cultural and natural
resource compliance documents relate to the fundamental mission of the
Park Service to preserve park resources, and thus should not be
contracted out.
The National Park Service will continue to contract out portions of
the concessions contracting program. We will also explore the
possibility of contracting out other functions, such as intermittent
inspections of larger, more complex concession facilities with
centralized teams to augment existing park concession management
programs.
Lack of Accountability
We concur with GAO that the NPS must improve accountability of park
managers. A number of factors contribute to this weakness. One factor
is the use of the collateral duty concession manager in parks with
major, complex concession programs. Collateral duty personnel
administer approximately 20 percent of the 90 contracts that gross over
one million dollars. The use of collateral duty personnel contributes
to a lack of understanding of the details of the program, an
inconsistent approach on how the program is managed and a lack of focus
and consideration for the complexity and importance of the concession
management program. Technical assistance to some of these parks could
remove the need for most collateral duty operations. Coupled with a
policy that would place full-time concession specialists in parks that
presently have collateral duty personnel administering the concessions
program, this would ensure a more consistent approach to concession
management servicewide.
We agree with GAO that successful completion of concession
management responsibilities and oversight should be considered during
annual performance reviews. This is a review that must be applied
servicewide.
NPS will ensure successful completion of concession management
responsibilities during annual performance reviews conducted by the
Director for each regional director, and by the appropriate regional
director for each park superintendent with concession responsibilities.
This concludes my testimony. I would be happy to answer any of your
questions.
Chairman Radanovich. Also for the record, we are allowing
the written testimony from the Department of Interior's
Inspector General for the record, and I ask unanimous consent
that the full testimony of each witness be in its full text in
the record. Without objection, so ordered.
[The prepared statement of Earl E. Devaney follows:]
Prepared Statement of Earl E. Devaney, Inspector General, U.S.
Department of the Interior
As the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior, I want
to thank you for this opportunity to provide a statement to the
Committee about the National Park Service's (NPS) management of
concessioners at our nation's parks.
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) has provided extensive audit
coverage of NPS's concessions management, contracting, and fee
collection activities over the past decade. Repeatedly, we have issued
audit reports that describe ineffective, inefficient, and
disadvantageous NPS concessions management practices; inadequate
oversight of concessioners' operations; and concessioners'
noncompliance with Federal law and internal NPS policy. Our audits
reveal three general shortcomings in NPS's concessions management:
1. NPS has not obtained a fair return from concessioners that
operated in the national parks, particularly on franchise fees, which
are revenue-based fees that concessioners pay the Government, and on
fees for the use of park buildings and facilities;
2. NPS has not received full reimbursements for utility and
maintenance services provided to concessioners; and
3. NPS has not employed businesslike practices, such as competitive
procurement practices and unrestricted offerings of concessions
opportunities, in contracting for concessions operators.
Legislation governing Federal concessions policy explains some of
NPS's failures to follow businesslike practices in its management of
concessions. Prior to November 1998, the controlling legislation was
the Concessions Policy Act of 1965, which had few incentives for NPS to
manage its concession program in a more businesslike fashion. For
example, until 1998, all franchise fees were deposited into and
retained by the U.S. Treasury. Thus NPS reaped no financial benefit
from aggressive efforts to obtain higher concession fees. Also, until
1998, concessioners were given preferential rights in contract
renewals--a condition that discouraged competition in concession
contracting.
With passage of the National Park Service Concessions Management
Improvement Act of 1998, NPS was granted the right to retain concession
fees and existing concessioners' preferential rights (with few
exceptions) were no longer authorized by law. Since the Improvement
Act's passage, NPS has not resumed concession contracting. As such, NPS
has not been able to benefit fully from the potentially more
advantageous terms and conditions that might be provided in new or
reissued concessions contracts.
The OIG continues to have concerns about NPS's commitment to
improving its concessions program. Time and again, we have issued audit
reports making recommendations for improving concessions management,
and time and again NPS has not effectively or fully implemented these
agreed-upon recommendations. For example, in 1990, we issued a follow-
up audit report on concessions management, in 1994 we issued another
concessions management report, and in 1999 we issued an audit about
concession contracting procedures, all of which stated that NPS failed
to ensure that concessioners paid fees that adequately compensated the
Government for the privilege of doing business in the national parks
and for use of park property. Despite NPS's representations that it had
implemented our recommendations on charging concessioners fully for
fees and for their use of park utility and maintenance services, our
follow-up audits have shown that our recommendations have not, in fact,
been fully implemented.
Although the Improvement Act should encourage NPS to adopt a more
businesslike approach to concessions management, we do not believe that
the Act's passage has or will, standing alone, result in effective
management of the concessions program. The deficiencies in NPS's
concessions program that we have identified in our audit reports--the
absence of an accountable management structure, insufficient staff
training and expertise, and insufficient policy and controls to monitor
policy implementation--appear to be ongoing. For instance, in March
2000, GAO issued an audit report, ``Park Service: Need to Address
Management Problems That Plague the Concessions Program.'' That report
reaffirmed our previous findings, such as NPS's having ``out-of-date''
methods for handling its contracting workload and a ``chronic backlog
of expired contracts, lacking accountability in its concessions
management program, and having inadequate qualifications and training
for its concessions staff.
In summary, these recent GAO findings, coupled with OIG's findings
over the past decade, suggest that more is needed to bring NPS's
concessions management in line with responsible businesslike practices.
summary of oig audit reports relating to national park service's
concessions management over the past 10 years
1. In April 1990, the OIG issued ``Follow-up Review of Concessions
Management, National Park Service,'' (No. 90-62). The audit, requested
by the Secretary of the Interior, evaluated NPS's effectiveness in
managing major concessioners' operations. The audit was a follow-up of
an OIG March 1986 report ``Audit of Concession Management, National
Park Service.'' The audit concluded that NPS did not have an adequate
method for computing franchise fees and did not encourage competitive
offers for concessions operations. Specifically, the audit found that:
NPS did not receive adequate fees from large
concessioners. OIG attributed this deficiency to factors such as NPS
not charging fees recommended by NPS rate-setting officials, mutual
agreement clauses in contracts that prevented NPS from establishing
revised fees unilaterally, and concessioner resistence to higher fees.
OIG stated that NPS ``generally opted to obtain capital improvements in
lieu of higher fees'' and that these improvements ``tended to enhance
the concessioners' facilities.'' OIG also said that NPS's concessions
program personnel did not have appropriate or adequate educational
backgrounds to set concession fees. It further referenced an NPS
Concession Funding Task Force's 1988 draft report that found that
``additional training for park managers and other personnel involved in
concession programs was needed.''
NPS generally did not charge concessioners fair rental
value for their use of Government buildings. OIG found that NPS did not
consistently obtain building appraisals and, even when appraisals were
done, NPS did not charge market rates because concessioners made
building improvements and/or resisted the charges.
NPS reduced franchise fees in recognition of
concessioners' agreements to pay for capital improvements. These
improvements, however, generally benefitted the concessioners
exclusively. Also, NPS did not have adequate procedures for ensuring
that concessioners' planned capital improvements were properly financed
and completed in accordance with contract provisions.
NPS did not solicit competition in concession contracting
and provided insufficient information for interested parties to
evaluate offered concession opportunities.
The 1990 audit contained 16 recommendations to correct these
deficiencies in the concessions program.
2. In September 1994, OIG issued ``Concessions Management, National
Park Service,'' (No. 94-I-1211). The audit evaluated whether NPS
received a fair return from concessioners and effectively managed the
collection of and accounting for franchise fees. The audit found that:
NPS did not consistently obtain a fair return from
concessioners because first, NPS had not implemented recommended fees,
second, NPS undercharged for the use of Government buildings, third,
NPS overcompensated concessioners for their park investments, and
fourth, NPS allowed concessioners to exclude the sale of Native
American handicrafts from gross receipts (on which franchise fees are
based).
NPS did not adequately monitor special account deposits,
record as a receivable franchise fees due from concessioners, record
franchise fees accurately, require monthly payment of franchise fees,
or enforce the requirement for electronic fund transfers of fee
payments of $10,000 or more.
Many of the deficiencies identified in the 1994 audit report were
previously identified by the OIG 4 years earlier in its 1990 audit
report. The 1994 report contained 13 recommendations.
3. In February 1997, OIG issued ``Oversight of Concessions
Operations and Fee Payments, Guest Services, Inc., and Rock Creek Park
Horse Centre, Inc.'' (No. 97-I-515). This audit report similarly
evaluated whether the NPS effectively managed the collection of and
accounting for franchise fees from concessioners. The report found that
NPS:
1. Had not reviewed and revised concessioners' operating and
maintenance plans as required by NPS policy;
2. Did not monitor concessioners' operating hours and
seasons;
3. Did not always approve concessioners' rates and prices;
4. Allowed concessioners to operate at facilities that were
not authorized under a concession contract; and
5. Allowed a nonprofit organization to operate in a park
without contract authorization. Also, NPS did not ensure that
concessioners reimbursed the Government for all utility costs
and did not ensure that concessioners implemented adequate
controls over the revenues on which franchise fees are based.
The report contained eight recommendations.
4. In March 1998, OIG issued ``Concessioner Improvement Accounts,
National Park Service'' (No. 98-I-389). The objective of the audit was
to determine whether amounts deposited into concessioners' special
accounts and expenditures from the accounts were appropriate. The
report found that first, NPS did not provide clear, sufficient, and
timely guidance on special accounts; and second, two of five
concessioners made improper deductions from gross receipts in
determining amounts to be deposited into special accounts.
The report contained three recommendations.
5. In March 1998, OIG issued ``Follow-up of Maintenance Activities,
National Park Service'' (No. 98-I-344). In this follow-up audit, the
OIG found that NPS had not taken sufficient actions to recover its
costs of maintaining facilities used by concessioners and other non-
Governmental entities.
The report contained three recommendations.
6. In April 1998, OIG issued ``Follow-up of Recommendations
Concerning Utility Rates Imposed by the National Park Service'' (No.
98-I-406). This follow-up audit concluded that NPS did not revise
guidance on the recovery of utility system capital investment costs,
did not fully recover all utility system operation costs from non-
Governmental users, and failed to ensure that receipts for utility
services were collected and deposited in compliance with NPS policy.
The report contained six recommendations.
7. In June 1999, OIG issued ``Concession Contracting Procedures,
National Park Service'' (No. 99-I-626). The objective of the audit was
to determine whether NPS's concessions contracting was conducted in
compliance with Federal law and in accordance with NPS guidance. The
OIG found that NPS did not fully comply with Federal law and NPS policy
in contracting for concession operations, and that NPS did not ensure
that the Government obtained a fair return from concessions operators.
Specifically, NPS did not comply with its policies for approving
concession contracting actions and fee adjustments and for extending
expired contracts. NPS also did not periodically reconsider fees as
required by law and by provisions in concessions contracts, did not
consistently obtain reimbursement for utility services provided to
concessioners, and did not require all concessioners to assume full
responsibility for maintaining their facilities. Also, NPS did not
always implement or fully implement recommended fee adjustments,
identify the projects for which special account funds were to be used,
or charge building use fees. All of these deficiencies had been
identified in prior OIG audit reports. OIG also found that NPS received
no payments for Government-owned housing used by concessioner
employees. Furthermore, if the concessioners received rent for the
housing, they were not required to include the rent in the revenues on
which their fees were based.
The report contained nine recommendations.
Chairman Radanovich. My first question is for you, Mr.
Hill. And I appreciate Ms. Finnerty addressing each problem and
it sounds like you are on the right track. There is a problem
with the poster over here. We have had 7 reports over 10 years.
One thing that you mentioned that has occurred most recently
has been the recent concessions contract. Mr. Hill, based on
the lack of performance as a result of the last 7 reports over
the last 10 years, in your view will the concessions contract
that was recently adopted--I think it was what, 1998--will that
help in a situation like this or is this an issue of funding?
Is it an issue of lack of response to congressional inquiries?
Mr. Hill. I think you are referring to the National Parks
Omnibus Act of 1998, those requirements that put some
additional or new requirements on the concessions program.
There were a lot of things contained in that law, perhaps the
biggest being getting rid of the preferential right of renewal
provision that the old law provided for. And I think there are
a lot of things that will help the Park Service improve the
program. There are a lot of things in that law that are
consistent with prior findings and recommendations that GAO
made over the years. But I think the problems that we are
talking about today are more management problems and I don't
think that law is really going to address that. I think that
has got to come from within the Park Service and Department of
the Interior itself in order to fix those problems. Those
problems can continue to exist even with the new law.
Chairman Radanovich. Why, after 7 reports over 10 years
articulating problems, is there still no change in management?
Mr. Hill. That is probably a question you should ask the
Park Service. Our feeling is that it has been a low priority.
They have not given it sufficient attention and authority and
come to grips with the problem.
I am encouraged to hear about the positive response that
they are planning to do, but I think there is certainly a need
for the Congress and certainly GAO to continue to provide
oversight and follow through to make sure that they implement a
lot of the provisions that Ms. Finnerty just got done
describing.
Chairman Radanovich. Mr. Garden, for Mr. Vreeman who has
been frustrated with his contract that he signed for Kings
Canyon, is there relief on the horizon? Are you still in the
middle of the problems? I know that you have recently opened
one new facility, but there are more to come, I think. What is
the status? Is this a nightmare that has already happened or a
nightmare that you are in the middle of?
Mr. Garden. A little of both. There has been a nightmare
which put him behind schedule. I do understand that currently
there are discussions that are underway and they are going
fairly well. It is Mr. Vreeman's hope that it is not too late
to get the work done that he needs to get done to make the
contract viable over the full 15 years, but that is by no means
a given right now.
Chairman Radanovich. Ms. Finnerty, your response to--it has
been 7 reports over 10 years, and listening to GAO it sounds
more like a management problem than a funding problem. Would
you care to respond to that? And also perhaps with the results
of what we see here under the lack of experience and qualified
personnel dealing with concessions contracts, has that been--
has that been an issue that is considered low priority with the
Park Service? Does it therefore not get addressed because they
have given attention to higher priority issues?
Ms. Finnerty. Well, I think it is obviously--and we have
had a number of reports, many of which, as GAO pointed out,
have sort of repeated the same findings and concerns. There
have been sporadic attempts to try to deal with this, to try to
issue directives to the field to ask them to start focusing on
this. I think it is a combination of things. I think it is
perhaps not enough resources in the program. We only have 125
permanent people managing a $765 million program. That is down
from what we had a number of years ago due to downsizing and a
number of other things. I don't think that we have had the
resources and been able to put the resources into training and
professionalization.
I would agree with GAO that I don't think the new
concessions law and the procedures that it spells out,
particularly on contracting and that kind of thing, necessarily
are going to fix some of the management problems that we agree
that we have had. But there are two provisions of that law that
are going to help us address this program and the problems.
One is the establishment of an advisory board which is an
external group made up of professionals with a lot of expertise
in the area of concessions management, accounting, finance,
tourism, outfitters and those kinds of things. They have met
twice. They are actively engaged in working with us. At their
last meeting they had extensive discussions on the GAO report
and recommendations. They will be coming forward in November
with a report to the Secretary, which I expect will help us to
address and deal with a lot of these issues so we have that
body that is giving us a lot of assistance.
Secondly, the new law does allow franchise fees to be
retained by the National Park Service. Eighty percent of them
are in the parks where there are concessions and 20 percent go
into a servicewide pot, so we now have a source of funding that
we are tapping into this year already to help us with some of
the outsourcing and the contracting and also some of our
training and professionalization needs.
So I think those two things are going to help us and give
us some resources that we haven't had in the past and we are
very much looking forward to having those things assist us in
the management of the program.
On the issue of training for people who do contracting and
concessions, we obviously agree with those findings. We have
been pretty deficient in the training requirements that we have
asked our contracting people to--in concessions, essentially
they have had almost no training and we now have a 5-year
training program in place. We estimate if we spend about
$450,000 over the next 5 years we can substantially increase
the professionalization of the group. We are also looking at
requiring certification which they do under other procurement
regulations. So I think some of those things are well underway
and I think we will have some real positive influences on the
program.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you. I yield to you, Mr. Price.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hill, let me discuss some background information about
the GAO report and some of the conclusions one might draw from
it about the duration of this problem and the nature of it. How
many parks have you looked at and how did you determine the
sampling procedure as to what you would look at?
Mr. Hill. Over the two audits that we did, the first audit
looked at 10 parks.
Mr. Price. When was that done?
Mr. Hill. It was issued in 1998 and it included the results
of our investigation at 10 parks. The parks that we chose there
were a mixture of parks. Obviously we were focusing on parks
with lodging facilities. We wanted to find some parks that were
operating under the government-owned, concession-operated types
of facilities as well as the concession-owned, concession-
operated types of facilities. We wanted a mixture and a
geographical dispersion. We wanted different concessionaires.
And that audit was strictly focused at looking at the
conditions of these facilities. What we basically found was a
mixed finding. We found all kinds of interesting things. We
found some parks that the lodging facilities were in very good
condition, others were in OK condition, and we found a number
that we thought were in terrible condition.
The second report was geared more toward why. Why the
inconsistency in the facilities out there? We took five of the
same parks that we had originally visited. We took two that
were in very good condition and three that were not in so good
condition. In addition, we added two more parks that had
multiple concessionaires operating it to see what was the
common thread that would create this inconsistency out there.
We looked for a pattern where there was a government-owned,
concession-operated facility or a concession-owned, concession-
operated facility, or maybe it was a seasonal park. We wanted
to get a feel for what was the root cause that would create
these inconsistencies. Maybe it was the contract itself.
The bottom line was that there was no pattern other than
the common thread we found was the lack of management and
attention and accountability that we found pervasive in the
program.
Mr. Price. So you picked a diversity of park and
concessionaire and management arrangements in the initial
sample?
Mr. Hill. That is correct.
Mr. Price. Were you focusing on situations where problems
were reported or suspected? Did that enter into your choice of
situations to investigate?
Mr. Hill. Not really. I think we were looking at the larger
parks. We went to the Park Service and sought their advice in
terms of getting input from them as to what parks they felt
would be good parks to look at. We consulted with them in the
process as well.
Mr. Price. So you wouldn't have much doubt that the range
of findings that you reported could be generalized to the
broader universe?
Mr. Hill. The 12 parks that we went to are among only 30
parks with these types of hotel lodging facilities. There are
an additional 15 parks which have accommodations but they are
considered more rustic or back-country type things. So 12 out
of 30 is a fairly representative sample. I don't think that the
Park Service would question that it was a biased sample and I
think they would agree that it is fairly representative.
Mr. Price. I want to get some parameters established here.
As the Chairman said and you said, this is not the first
report. They go back 10 years at least. What is the time frame?
When did we first have a report roughly comparable to the one
that we are looking at now? Ten years was used; is that
accurate?
Mr. Hill. There have been reports issued by the Park
Service itself, the Inspector General, that have documented
problems with the concessions program over the past 10 years.
Mr. Price. That raises a question about what does it mean
to say that these problems have persisted? One question is, has
the kind of problem we are talking about here remained the
same? And then, secondly, are we talking about the same parks
over time? For example, have Death Valley and Kings Canyon or
Sequoia consistently had problems? In those earlier reports,
were problems identified and fixed and are we now looking at
different parks? Can you put these in perspective? It is not
very helpful if we don't know what kind of mix of parks we are
looking at.
Mr. Hill. That is part of the problem; there is no baseline
data that anyone keeps. It is hard to go back. There are no
centralized inspection records where you can go back and see
inspections done at these parks and the results of those
inspections. These are all done at the park level. They are
self-done inspections basically. The parks are supposed to
maintain the records. But, in some cases they don't. The
information that they collect is not very good. We generally
know that when they do these self-inspections, most of the time
they give satisfactory ratings.
Mr. Price. You are referring to studies and reports that go
back 10 years. Those are not all internal self-inspection
documents. Did GAO not look into the time line on these
situations that you were examining and look back and see to
what extent these problems had existed earlier or had been
dealt with earlier?
Mr. Hill. The problems that were identified in the earlier
studies dealt with the problems that we mentioned in terms of
lack of qualified staff, lack of training, lack of
accountability. Those problems have been raised for the 10-year
period, and we certainly found them present in the audit work
that we did. Our audit was limited to the lodging
concessionaires and the extent of our work was done in
basically the past 2 or 3 years.
Mr. Price. You specifically identified serious problems at
Death Valley and Sequoia-Kings Canyon. Do you have information
about how long those problems have persisted?
Mr. Hill. No, I don't.
Mr. Price. So the generalization that these problems have
been around for 10 years and not dealt with, they don't apply
to individual cases? I don't understand the basis for the
generalization.
Mr. Hill. Those studies were done by the Park Service and
the Inspector General themselves. When we went out and looked
at these lodging facilities, we found those same problems
persisting at those facilities. I can't say what the condition
of those facilities--the lodging facilities were 10 years ago,
because we did not do that work and those reports explicitly,
and we don't have that level of detail in them that I'm aware
of.
Mr. Price. I see. In your opinion, has the leasehold
surrender interest provision of the 1998 National Parks
Management Act improved the efforts of private concessionaires
to upgrade facilities? First of all, if you can explain how
those provisions work, what kind of incentives there are for
and against concessionaire investment in facilities, and what
is your bottom line assessment?
Mr. Hill. I do know that the old law provided for a
possessory interest that the concessionaire would build up in
facilities. That basically was changed by the most recent law
and it does provide a leasehold surrender interest basis. I
don't have much more details than that at this time.
Mr. Price. It is an interesting question. Does that provide
stronger or weaker incentives for a concessionaire to upgrade
facilities? I want to ask the Park Service that question as
well.
Mr. Hill. I don't have an answer right now.
Mr. Price. Let me turn to the Park Service in the second
round. But first, Mr. Hill, in the GAO report you address and
then dismiss several potential mitigating factors on
concessions quality. You say that you don't find significant
differences between seasonal and year-round use or between
public and private ownership, et cetera. Is there anything any
lingering questions here as to the firmness of those findings
that these factors are not important?
Mr. Hill. This is what I was referring to earlier where we
were looking for a pattern in terms of why these conditions
varied so greatly and we did not see a pattern. In one case of
the 12 parks that we went to, the same concessionaire was
operating the lodging facilities at three different parks, and
we found very different conditions even within the same
concessionaire. What that shows is that the quality of the
conditions of the lodging facilities are dependent largely on
the quality of the concession staff that are operating it and
the quality of the park staff that are overseeing that
concessions contract. It has nothing to do with a particular
concessionaire or arrangement; that is, concession-owned and
operated versus government-owned and concessionaire-operated.
We found no pattern in terms of seasonality or anything like
that.
Mr. Price. So the pattern that you do find applies to what?
Mr. Hill. It applies to the degree of management and
oversight that the Park Service officials are providing at the
park unit itself and the extent to which they are accountable
for what they are doing out there.
Mr. Price. Your conclusion is that it is not uniformly
defective, but sporadic. It is sporadic and therefore in need
of systematic attention? Is that a fair statement?
Mr. Hill. It is very park-specific depending on the people
involved in this. We think that there is a greater need for
more centralized oversight and management of the program at the
headquarters and regional office level and the need to make the
parks more accountable to make sure that you have consistency
throughout the entire system.
Mr. Price. Thank you.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Price. Mr. Toomey.
Mr. Toomey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to ask Mr. Hill just a couple of questions.
The March 2000 GAO report dealing with--specifically in the
section where you refer to the Park Service concessions
contracting practices, it mentions that these practices are out
of the date and do not reflect the best practices of the
Federal Government or the private sector or other contracting
parties. It talks specifically about performance-based
contracts being the norm, I think it would be fair to say, is
my understanding of the way that this is written. Has the GAO
specifically recommended the use of performance-based
contracts?
Mr. Hill. We have not specifically recommended that, but it
is part of the FAR requirement; but here again, this particular
program is not required to follow the Federal acquisition
regulations.
Mr. Toomey. But it is your belief that performance-based
contracts are the better way to go; that is the standard for
this kind of contracting; is that correct?
Mr. Hill. That is correct. Not only do we believe that, I
think the Department of Interior believes that in whole,
because we have statistics that show that 77 percent of the
contracts that they let over $100,000 use performance-based
contracts, but not in this program.
Mr. Toomey. In your research have you found any evidence
that the Park Service is moving in the direction of
performance-based contracts in any systematic fashion?
Mr. Hill. We did not find any evidence of that, although I
would defer to Ms. Finnerty who made reference to that in her
remarks earlier.
Mr. Toomey. One of the things that is referred to in the
GAO report, it states that there are several senior Park
Service officials who indicate that the agency's has no plans
to move in the direction of performance based. Maybe the
question should be directed to Ms. Finnerty.
What is the position of the Park Service regarding the use
of performance-based contracts and what kind of progress has
been made, if any, in using them?
Ms. Finnerty. Congressman, we have made and continue to
make progress in the use of performance-based contracting. Much
of the information gathered for this GAO report was gathered in
1998 and 1999, so it is dated. We certainly have moved forward
in the last several months. Even though we do not believe that
the concessions contracts are subjected to the Federal
acquisition regulations as a whole because it is not Federal
funds that are being used, we do agree that there are aspects
of the FAR regulations that can and should be applied to
concession contracting to help us do a better job, and one of
those is performance-based contracting. And we are working
closely with individuals in the departments and with our
solicitor's office to get those procedures in place and
hopefully have them in place starting in calendar year 2001. So
it is our full intention to apply performance-based contracting
as we get into all of the various revisions of contracts that
we have to get underway in the next couple of years.
We also intend to use some of the aspects of FAR as far as
training requirements and certification of individuals that are
doing this contracting in the concessions field. We feel that
is important, and part of our proposal is to get those
individuals trained, to get them warranted, adequate training
so they can be more effective in the issuance of contracts.
Mr. Toomey. What you are saying then, beginning next year
we will start to see greater prevalence of performance-based
contracts. I wonder how long has it been that performance-based
contracts have been the norm or widely accepted as the best
practice for the Federal Government? And assuming that has been
awhile, why is it that it is just now that the Park Service is
starting to use these contracts?
Ms. Finnerty. When this issue came up a number of years
ago, we sought some legal advice about whether FAR regulations
should apply to concessions contracting, and we were told no,
they didn't. So probably we took that answer and went along our
way. But in looking closely at some aspects of that, we realize
that we certainly should be looking at pieces of that and
making that applicable to our program, and we intend to do
that.
Mr. Toomey. Thank you.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you. Mr. Gutknecht.
Mr. Gutknecht. Mr. Hill, how long have you been with GAO?
Mr. Hill. Thirty years next month.
Mr. Gutknecht. So you have participated in a significant
number of these kinds of audits?
Mr. Hill. A significant number, yes.
Mr. Gutknecht. I must say this is some of the toughest
language I have ever read. Can you remember ever using language
like this in an audit before, and can you give us a comparison?
For example, when you say just reading from some of the
comments in the audit, that--you say and I will quote, ``Little
hope for improvement. The agency's past record in taking action
to change its hiring practices and upgrade its training is not
encouraging.'' and you go on to say that the Park Service has
generally agreed that it needs to professionalize its
concession work force. However, the agency's past performance
suggests to us that there can be little confidence that the
agency will address these issues.
Literally, the more I read this, this is one of the most
damning reports I think I have ever read. And it is
particularly troubling because this is a--I mean, perhaps here
in Washington $765 million doesn't seem like a lot of money,
but back home a three-quarters of a billion dollar business is
a big business. And it may well be that to the average consumer
of these facilities, in other words the people who go to the
parks, their level of expectation is such that they may say
well, I guess this is what we expect when we come to Death
Valley. But at the same time we are charging, it seems to me,
pretty healthy rates for these rooms. In some respects,
Americans look at this and say, I am paying for this in my
taxes, and now I am paying up to $80 or perhaps more a night
for these facilities. It just seems to me that we have a
responsibility to treat them like real consumers and that is
not what is happening.
I think the most troubling thing to me is that in your
passages under the headline of Lack of Accountability--and
frankly I was one who really felt that this committee, the
Budget Committee, ought to have some subcommittees and we ought
to have some oversight hearings, because when you look at all
of the money that we spend on behalf of American taxpayers, I
don't think that it is too much for those taxpayers to ask that
we do some effort to make certain that they get their money's
worth.
Let me read some of the quotes, and I would like you to
comment and perhaps Ms. Finnerty would like to comment as well.
This is very troubling to me. ``the former chief of concessions
(who retired during the course of our review) told us that he
did not have information on the condition of the lodging
facilities in the parks.''
He didn't have information. In some respects I have to ask
myself: What is he doing?
``He indicated that our review would provide him with
valuable information about the condition of these facilities.
He did not have such information, because although the
condition of the facilities is generally known by the park
managers, it is not generally known or reported to higher
levels within the agency.''
That is astonishing to me, and it should be astonishing to
every American. Here is a person who is responsible for
concessions in the Federal park system and he doesn't know what
the conditions are out there.
This is not just a simple matter of a little more
management training. There is a fundamental breakdown here in
who is responsible and accountable for what.
I will read another quote. Well, I don't have to read many
more quotes. Is this one of the toughest audits that you have
ever written?
Mr. Hill. I can't say that. It rates right up there. We
have found similar types of concerns in other Park Service
programs. There seems to be a pervasive culture out there where
the park superintendents are given the authority and the
discretion to basically operate the parks with little oversight
by the regional or headquarters staff or accountability to
them. We have found this in numerous areas over the years. This
is another area that we are adding to it. It seems to be the
culture of how the Park Service operates.
We are bothered by it. I can understand a decentralized
organization. You would want the people to operate the park,
but that doesn't mean that you divorce yourself from
headquarters and regional office level in terms of oversight
and management of the program. You need to have performance
measures and objectives, goals. You need to have inspections
and evaluations. You need to know how your program is operating
at all 379 units because you want the taxpayers and the
visitors to have the best experience possible when they visit
these parks.
Mr. Gutknecht. Mr. Hill, in the private sector--and you
hate to say that the parks ought to be run by the private
sector, but they could learn a little bit. It strikes me if you
had people operating facilities like this, at some point one of
them might lose their job. Has anybody been terminated as a
result of some of these things and continual breakdowns in
management accountability?
Mr. Hill. No, not to our knowledge.
Mr. Gutknecht. Ms. Finnerty, do you want to respond to
that? We are here representing the taxpayers. It is their
parks, and we owe it to them to give them a good experience at
a fair price, and it strikes me that is not what is happening
out there.
Ms. Finnerty. This accountability issue and dealing with a
very decentralized organization is something that the Park
Service is struggling with. We have 379 units, seven regional
directors that try to provide oversight, enormously complex and
numerous programs and issues and those kinds of things.
The director is very well aware that this is an issue not
just for concessions but other programs. I think he is
committed to trying to put in place better accountability
systems and better checks and balances and being able to look
at what is going on out there and reporting on--and doing
evaluations and monitoring and those kinds of things.
The ability to roll information up on a national level is
something that we have struggled with. You literally have to go
to the parks to find out what the facts are.
We have made some good progress in the last year to get
some systems in place so we can answer basic questions on a
Service-wide basis. We are just going to keep working on it,
and the director is committed to that. He is very well aware of
this GAO audit and several others that we just have to address
and try to figure out how we are going to become more
accountable and get the information that we need at the
national level and then how are we going to individually hold a
very decentralized organization more accountable than it has
been in some of these programs.
Mr. Gutknecht. Please assure us today that we will not have
a situation 1 year from now where the person who is responsible
for concessions has no idea what condition these facilities are
in. It seems to me if they can't go out to some of these
facilities they can send someone out. Employees from the
National Park Service, if they would stay in some of these
facilities, perhaps you can send a report with them and maybe
give them a discount.
I have to come back to something that the GAO said, and
that is, if you read their report, it essentially says money is
not really the answer. I mean, at some point it really is about
just managing the facilities that you have.
Unfortunately, I am afraid what is going to happen is the
answer to every problem is more money. Well, excuse me, I don't
think that this is going to take a whole lot of money to
resolve. I think once the various park superintendents and
managers understand that they will be held accountable and
responsible for the facilities in those parks, I will bet that
this will improve quickly. But until and unless--and this has
to come from the top level of the Park Service. Until or unless
people understand that they are going to be held accountable,
this story is going to go on and on and on.
We won World War II in less than 4 years. The idea that it
somehow takes year and years and years to get something done,
even by the Federal Government, I think is just grossly
overstated. I am sorry. On behalf of the people that I
represent and on behalf of the people on the Budget Committee,
we are going to demand more accountability of every agency.
Because that is our job, and we are held accountable every 2
years.
I want to thank the chairman for holding these hearings. I
hope that we have more.
It is not just to cause heartburn for folks like you. I do
think that when you read through some of the things in this
report, it is just unbelievable. You are probably--we are all
fortunate that our constituents out there back in fly-over
country really won't get a chance to read this, because I
suspect that people would be very furious if they learned that
we have a $765 million industry that is basically not
accountable to anybody.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Gutknecht.
Mr. Price.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me, Ms. Finnerty, turn to you and ask you, first, to
give us your take on a couple of the questions that I raised
with Mr. Hill about the report itself; and then I obviously
want to ask you about your time line and your plans for dealing
with some of these GAO recommendations.
Do you have anything to add about the 10-year time frame
and the persistence of the problem? Are there things that we
should know about facilities where there have been persistent
problems for 10 years or are we talking about a range of
facilities, comparing apples and oranges? What would you say?
Is it a fair generalization to say these problems have
persisted over 10 years and really have not been dealt with?
Ms. Finnerty. Without the baseline information that we have
admitted and agree that we don't have, it is difficult for me
to say that this has persisted for 10 years. I would expect,
though, that we have had some condition problems and facilities
that have been in various stages of disrepair over a period of
time.
I think some of the management issues dealt with in the GAO
report are things that have contributed to this, and I think
obviously we need to get a better handle on it, and we need to
be more accountable and have better baseline information so we
know what is going on in the field. Beyond that, I could not
speak whether these particular conditions have existed in the
parks for 10 years. You would have to go out to the parks and
look at their inspection reports and those kinds of things to
get that information.
Mr. Price. And the GAO conclusion is that it really doesn't
seem to matter whether you are talking about seasonal or year-
around facilities or whether you are talking about privately
owned or government property. Do you agree with that? In your
own assessments, are there mitigating factors that we should
attend to?
Ms. Finnerty. I think, as we look at the various concession
facilities, we see government-owned facilities that are in good
shape and poor shape. I think there is a real mix. I think
there is no particular pattern as far as seasonality and
ownership. I think there are problems throughout. We haven't
seen anything to indicate that there is more of a trend with
one kind of ownership or one kind of seasonality than there is
with something else.
Mr. Price. Can you just tell us in general terms what the
Park Service's time line looks like for dealing with these
recommendations, especially with respect to hiring practices
and the implementation of a more systematic program of
oversight and accountability?
Ms. Finnerty. We have already started to work on a lot of
these issues.
Looking at the training and professionalization, we have a
5-year training strategy which we have started to implement
this year; and more of it is under development for the next
several years. It is our intention to put more resources into
training and professionalization of our personnel. And we do
now have a source of funding through the 20 percent franchise
fee accounts that we can put some more money into training and
professionalization. We do have under way agreements with
Northern Arizona University, Cornell and the Army to help us
professionalize certain aspects of the program.
As far as our hiring practices, certainly as positions
become vacant it is our intention to try to professionalize
those and to try to hire from outside and try to strengthen and
beef up the background and experience and training of these
people.
As far as the contracting piece, we are actively involved
in trying to apply best practices to contracting, and we hope
at the beginning of 2001 we will be able to start applying some
of those. Most of our contracts have to be redone. We have been
on short extensions. We have had a long moratorium on
contracting that is now over. So we have a good opportunity to
influence lots of contracts that are coming up now for
renegotiation and discussion. That is well under way.
We do have a request in or pending in the 2002 budget to
get at some of the other staffing and professionalization
needs. The idea of centralized inspections is one that we like
a lot, and we are looking at options to try to provide that. We
will continue to look at opportunities to outsource. We are
already outsourcing about a million dollars of work, and I
suspect that we will increase that over the coming years.
So efforts are under way and will continue. I think once we
get the advisory board's report in November and some pretty
strong recommendations from them, that will give us more
impetus to move forward and hopefully to make improvements in
the program.
Mr. Price. Let me ask you about the possible way that you
might determine consumer satisfaction. We have talked about the
quality of service being offered to the consumers, to the
citizens who take advantage of visiting our parks. I assume
that you have some kind of consumer satisfaction or visitor
satisfaction surveys already. Let me ask you a couple of things
about that.
First of all, have you analyzed those and can you say
whether they reinforce or somehow contradict the GAO findings?
Secondly, are there any plans for maybe improving those
instruments or using them in more systematic ways?
Ms. Finnerty. I have here, Congressman, actually a customer
survey report that we do every year in the National Park
Service, and we have done it for a number of years. We do three
to five parks a year. We survey the park visitors to see how we
are doing. Over the last 5-7 years, we have gone to 70 or 80
parks. And on concession services we ask about lodging, food
services and about gift shops. This is system-wide. It is not
targeted--it is targeted at the parks that are surveyed for
that year.
Mr. Price. Can you break it down for the individual parks?
Ms. Finnerty. Yes. The ratings consistently go from 65 to
85 percent customer satisfied with lodging, food services and
gift shops. So they are consistently ranging 65 up to 85
percent, depending on the questions.
That doesn't mean that we couldn't do better, and it
doesn't mean that we can't improve facilities and that kind of
thing. And certainly maybe one of the things that we should
consider, we do have a sociologist that works with us, and we
could perhaps look at and think about doing more tailored
surveying, particularly as it pertains to concession facilities
to see how we might be doing and whether we are making the
improvements. These questions are quite general, but we could
maybe tailor them more specifically and look at some of these
issues more specifically.
Mr. Price. Have you included in these surveys the specific
parks that the GAO looked at and is there anything that you can
say about the consistency or inconsistency of the findings?
Ms. Finnerty. I didn't do that prior to this. I don't have
a list of all of the parks that have been surveyed. We can
certainly do that and compare if some of those same parks have
been visited.
Mr. Price. I would find that of interest.
Ms. Finnerty. OK.
Mr. Price. Your contracting arrangements, you say that your
period of limited contracting is now ending because you have
your regulations in place and you have longer term contracts.
What kind of limitations are going to be on the contracts that
you grant to private concessionaires? What prompts the decision
in the first place about whether to privatize concessions or to
maintain park-owned facilities? And how adequate--when you go
the contracting route, how adequate are your contracting
provisions in terms of holding those concessionaires
accountable and getting the kind of service that you want?
Ms. Finnerty. In response to your first question about
whether we decide to go with a concession contract or decide to
privatize, that case is made on a park-by-park basis.
One, we look at what provides the best service to the
visitor. Do we need to have these facilities in a park to begin
with or can these amenities and these services be provided
outside of the park?
In some cases, we have moved facilities out of the park or
we have determined not to have them in a park to begin with.
This is all part of the planning process where discussions are
held about can this be done outside of the park and still serve
the visitor.
If they are going in a park, there is a lot of planning
that has to be undertaken. We have got to look at compliance
issues and those kind of things.
As far as the contracting is concerned, I think we are
comfortable with the new contracting provisions in the law and
in the regulations. We have been able to streamline the
process. I think there is more provision for competition in the
new procedures; and, obviously, we haven't done it yet because
we are just about to launch into renegotiating over 200
contracts pursuant to the new regulations that have been in
place for less than a month.
I think we have procedures in place, and we will see over
the next year, 12-18 months, when we are looking at many
contracts. But I think we are confident that the regulations
and the contracting procedures will serve us well and will
provide more competition and hopefully a good return to the
government and all of those kinds of things that we look at.
Mr. Price. One further question related to that is the
leasehold surrender provision of the 1998 act. How do you
assess that in terms of the kinds of incentives that it
provides to concessionaires?
Ms. Finnerty. We believe it provides incentives because it
provides a compensable interest to the concessionaires. We have
not applied it yet because we are about to launch into redoing
the contracts.
One of the major intents behind the Concessions Management
Act of 1998 was to make the concessions program more
competitive, to attract more competition for individual
contracts. The preferential rider renewal was removed; and the
feeling of the Congress when they wrote the bill was that LSI,
because it does provide a compensable interest, would put more
competition into the process. And we believe that will happen,
and it remains to be seen as we get in depth into the
contracting procedures whether in fact that is true. We think
that it will be.
Mr. Price. Thank you.
Chairman Radanovich. Mr. Garden, in Mr. Vreeman's contract
with the National Park Service, is there any right to sue for
breach of contract or anything?
Mr. Garden. No, there is no specific clause in the contract
for that. I do know that National Park Service Manual 48 did at
one point refer to bringing claims through the Interior Board
of Contract Appeals. However, that requires a disputes clause
to be in the contract to do that, and that clause is not in
Kings Canyon's contract. I also note that National Park Service
48 is no longer valid. They pulled that recently.
Chairman Radanovich. Any other questions, Mr. Gutknecht?
Mr. Gutknecht. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me come back to a couple of points. I think it is great
that you are doing these surveys, but next week I am going to
go fishing, and I am going to stay in a cabin. I have been
going to this place since I was 6 months old. When we first
started going to this particular resort, the cabins were very,
very basic. They had outdoor plumbing, and they have gradually
improved them, and now they are too nice, and so we like a
little bit of the outdoor experience. Your level of
satisfaction is largely dependent on your level of expectation,
and as you do this questionnaire you ought to allow the GAO to
write the survey.
Here is a question that I want to ask. In terms of the
facilities that we see here, who originally was responsible for
building those facilities and who was responsible for
maintaining them?
Ms. Finnerty. Again, that may be different in different
parks. When they enter into a concession contract, part of the
contract has a maintenance agreement and deals with use and
occupancy of the buildings.
Mr. Gutknecht. But, in general, who built the lodging
facilities at the parks? Were they built by private sector?
Ms. Finnerty. In general, government.
Mr. Gutknecht. In general, they were built by the
taxpayers. There is a difference. If the consumer realized when
they checked into these facilities that, A, they were built
with taxpayer money; and, B, this is a big business, somehow if
there was some disclosure in that questionnaire I think you
would get a lower level of satisfaction. So I hope when we do
these questionnaires there is truth in advertising in terms of
how much we put into it.
In fact, in fairness, at every one of the facilities if you
are going to ask people whether they are satisfied you ought to
tell them the American taxpayers invested $5.3 million building
this particular facility. We also invest X amount of dollars
every year in keeping it maintained. Now against that
backdrop--and you paid $82 a night to stay here; how satisfied
are you now? I think you would get a much different level.
More importantly, if you disclose and people are satisfied,
that is great. That is what we want. We want satisfied
customers. But I think we have to let people know the truth
about how much we have already invested in many of these
facilities. And I think, frankly, my own sense is, and we can
get to the bottom of this, people would be shocked if they knew
how much the American taxpayers had already paid for these
facilities. I also have this instinctive belief that, wherever
possible, concessionaires try to get the taxpayers to pay for
the maintenance as well one way or the other.
Finally, I just hope--and this is just a suggestion because
in some respects I hope we don't have to have you folks back
next year, but, if we do, I hope you or Ms. Orlando will not be
coming forward and saying, I have not seen these facilities. I
hope there will be an effort by the department to make certain
that one or both of you get out and visit most of these
facilities and hold the superintendents more accountable and
remind them how much we have already invested in the facilities
and that we owe it to the American taxpayers to take good care
of them.
I would hope, as you prepare the questionnaires for next
year, you give people complete disclosure; B, that there is a
real commitment by Ms. Orlando and the entire department to
hold people accountable for these facilities.
That is my last word. I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Radanovich. Mr. Price, do you have one last
question?
Mr. Price. On Mr. Gutknecht's point about how a
questionnaire might be designed, let me just say I am not a
professional designer of questionnaires, but it does strike me
that a questionnaire of the sort you describe would be sending
a fairly mixed message. We have spent X million dollars and you
spent the night here, now how do you feel about that? I am not
sure that you would get a more straightforward answer than if
you simply said, did you have a good night's stay?
Anyway, it is, of course, important for people to
understand where their tax dollars have gone. For us to make
certain that they are getting good value and asking them how
they feel about it is surely one way to do that.
Mr. Hill and Ms. Finnerty, you might both want to respond
to this. It is a more general kind of question, but I wonder if
we have really said all there is to be said about the
centralized versus decentralized model of how all of this ought
to work.
I take it that an implication of the GAO study is that Park
Service operations are decentralized to their detriment, that
there is a lack of standardization, there is a lack of
accountability, there is a kind of sporadic quality to the way
that these operations go, and somehow we would be better served
if there was a centralized bureaucracy or system that was
somehow imposing a set of standards across the whole system or
at least monitoring across the whole system. I don't know if
that is a fair statement or not, but often there are some
advantages and disadvantages associated with that kind of
central management and that kind of top-down structure. And I
don't know how far you are taking that recommendation, but I
would appreciate you and Ms. Finnerty reflecting on it.
Are there advantages to this decentralized structure?
Obviously, there are some individual facilities that haven't
had the attention that they should have had. I think everyone
agrees to that. Is the case for more centralized operations? Or
are we overlooking some possible benefits of a looser and more
decentralized and diverse kind of organizational structure?
Mr. Hill. Mr. Price, if I may respond, we are not
advocating centralized operations. There are 379 parks. Each of
them is unique. It has to be done in a decentralized way. The
park superintendent knows what is going on at the park, knows
the community and the surrounding area, knows the problems and
concerns and the issues that need to be dealt with in operating
that particular park.
What we are talking about is centralized oversight from the
agency level in terms of their overall programmatic goal. If a
programmatic goal is to have a concessions program, facilities
that meet nationwide standards, programmatic standards, you
want to have somebody at the central office at headquarters or
certainly down at the regional office level providing periodic
inspections and oversight to make sure that the program goals
and standards are being carried out consistently.
The one recommendation that we made dealing with a formal
inspection program I relate back to comparing it to private
industry. If you have a private motel chain like a Holiday Inn
or somebody who has franchises across the country, they have
inspection teams that go out to make sure that each of those
franchises are meeting certain minimum standards that the
Holiday Inn or whatever facilities has to meet. If those
standards are not met, they take their name off of that
particular facility, and they are not part of that chain any
more.
We have a nationwide park system, and we want that park
system to meet certain standards, and they deal with safety
standards, health standards--in this particular case, lodging
conditions standards. Someone at the regional or central office
I think needs to get on top of it to determine what are the
conditions of these lodging facilities in our parks. And if
there are problems, let's deal with them and get these
facilities up to the standard.
Mr. Price. Ms. Finnerty, do you have any comment on that
issue of organizational structure?
Ms. Finnerty. Yes, I would agree with Mr. Hill's
assessment. I don't think that the answer is more
centralization. I actually think it would be very difficult to
have that work with the system the way that it is structured in
all of the parks.
Having said that, I think we in the Service, for this
program and others, need to do a better job at the top setting
priorities that are important and goals and objectives to be
accomplished; and then that needs to be conveyed down to
regional directors to ensure that the accountability is there.
I think we do need to standardize our procedures on this
program so that we are looking at the same things. I think we
need to continue to work on gathering baseline information and
baseline data so that we can answer questions about what is
going on on a system-wide basis. I think those things can be
done even within a decentralized organization, and we are
working on it, and the director is committed to trying to
improve some of these systems that currently are fragmented and
are not nearly as consistent as they need to be.
I think that is the challenge that we face. I think it is
better systems in place, better accountability and agreement on
objectives and goals and things that are important. All of
these people have enormous workloads and a lot of issues to
deal with, and we have to decide which of those are perhaps
more important than others.
Mr. Price. Thank you.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you, lady and gentlemen, for the
excellent testimony.
This concludes this hearing, and I do appreciate your
participation. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 3:39 p.m., the Task Force was adjourned.]
Department of Energy Management Practices: Uncertainties at Savannah,
Paducah, and the National Ignition Facility
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 2000
House of Representatives,
Committee on the Budget,
Task Force on Natural Resources and Environment,
Washington, DC.
The Task Force met, pursuant to call, at 2 p.m. in room
210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. George Radanovich
(chairman of the Task Force) presiding.
Mr. Radanovich. Good afternoon and welcome to the Budget
Committee Task Force on Natural Resources and the Environment.
Today our hearing is on the Department of Energy management
practices, and I welcome everybody here, including our guests.
Our guests today are Dr. Carolyn L. Huntoon--and thank you,
Carolyn, for coming--who is the Assistant Secretary for
Environmental Management of the Department of Energy, and
Brigadier General Thomas Gioconda--welcome, General--United
States Air Force, Acting Deputy Administrator for Defense
Programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration of the
Department of Energy.
I will go ahead and read my opening statement and then
please ask you to do the same, and the course of this hearing
will be that plus questions that I or others who will arrive
during this time might have of you, and then our second panel
today will be a representative from the General Accounting
Office. So welcome and thank you for taking time out of your
day to come to the Hill and testify.
Today we will be reviewing reports from the General
Accounting Office that touch on disturbing trends within the
Department of Energy. Mismanagement, cost overruns and project
delays are among the recurring themes throughout these reports.
We have witnesses with us today from the Department of Energy
who will speak to these problems and who will hopefully share
some meaningful plans they have to make improvements.
In addition to the GAO reports, this review was spurred by
last year's bipartisan approval of a House Appropriations
Committee report that characterized the DOE's programs as
models of mismanagement and waste. DOE's past record and the
costs associated with some of the Department's projects that we
will be discussing today suggest that congressional oversight
of the Department is an appropriate, necessary role of this
committee. The budget impact of these projects alone is
significant. There is no way to know what costs await us at
other DOE projects, making it imperative that we are satisfied
that the Department is doing everything in its power to make
meaningful changes to ensure cost controls and accountability.
Our first witness today will be the Assistant Secretary for
Environmental Management, Carolyn Huntoon, who will discuss the
Savannah River Project and the Paducah cleanup plan. The
Savannah River In-Tank Precipitation, or ITP, Project is
designed to process high levels of liquid radioactive waste at
the Savannah River nuclear facility in South Carolina. It was
abandoned by the DOE last year after years of criticisms that
ITP would not work. The DOE has gone back to the drawing board
in search of a replacement.
The Paducah site cleanup plan lays out the blueprint for
cleaning up hazardous and nuclear waste at the Paducah,
Kentucky site. It is projected to cost $1.3 billion and be
completed by 2010. But the GAO's office say the estimates fail
to account for numerous factors that would lead to added costs
and the DOE will have difficulty meeting its 2010 date.
Then we will hear from Brigadier General Thomas F.
Gioconda, who is the Acting Deputy Administrator for Defense
Programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration within
the DOE. He will discuss the status of corrective actions at
the National Ignition Facility, or the NIF, a super laser
project under construction at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
in California. It is intended to simulate nuclear weapons
explosions. In June 1999 Secretary Richardson declared the
project on time and on budget. However, the DOE recently
admitted that the project is more than a billion dollars over
budget and will be 4 years late in beginning operation.
On our second panel we will hear from Ms. Gary Jones,
Associate Director for Energy and Science Issues at the GAO,
who will testify about her agency's reports on the Savannah
project and the cleanup plan at Paducah.
The Department has taken steps to address concerns raised
by the GAO and others in each of these three projects.
Nonetheless, many of us on this committee are skeptical when it
comes to the DOE's explanation of how problems and flaws in
major projects will be resolved and managed effectively in the
future. We are skeptical because of the Department's history of
poor performance in managing projects and overseeing
contractors.
Almost since its creation in 1977 the U.S. Department of
Energy has been plagued by chronic management problems,
countless reports by the GAO's office and the Inspector General
and others who have repeatedly identified examples of
mismanagement in the Department's operations, including poor
project management, inadequate oversight of contractors,
inadequately trained employees, and the lack of accountability
at both the Department and among the contractors.
Just this past February Ms. Jones of the GAO had this to
say about DOE's operations: DOE's history of failures in
managing major projects that are critical to its mission have
resulted in significant cost overruns, scheduled delays and
failure to complete and operate those projects. She goes on to
say that past studies have identified basic flaws at DOE. The
complicated, dysfunctional organizational structure and unclear
lines of authority throughout DOE have long resulted in weak
oversight of contractors and poor accountability for program
plans. For years DOE has failed to respond to our report that
has highlighted these weaknesses. Indeed, an internal DOE study
reflected the concerns about problems at the DOE. In 1997, a
DOE internal study noted a lack of clarity, inconsistency and
variability in the relationship between headquarters management
and field organizations. This is particularly true in
situations with several headquarters programs fund activities
at laboratories.
In addition, the President's own Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board, headed by Senator Warren Rudman, expressed
concerns about the DOE's ability to address such problems. In
June 1999, in the wake of the Wen Ho Lee spy case, the Board
said it was extremely skeptical that any reform, no matter how
well-intentioned, well-designed and effectively applied, will
gain more than a toehold at the DOE given its labyrinthine
management structure, fractious and arrogant culture and the
fast approaching reality of another transition in the DOE
leadership.
On that resounding note I will simply say we look forward
to the testimony of the panels, we are anxious to hear about
the DOE's efforts to address these problems, and we anticipate
a future full dialogue. Thank you very much again for joining
us, and I would like to invite other members, Mr. Price, to
give opening statements and also like to state too that anybody
who is not here or anybody who would like to submit a written
statement I would ask unanimous consent that they be given 5
days to do so.
With no objection, Mr. Price.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no formal
opening statement except to welcome the witnesses and to say
that we do look forward to their testimony, to getting a
balanced and objective view of some of these allegations that
the chairman has referred to, and also an honest account of the
Department's efforts to address these questions and concerns. I
am sure you will bring that to us and in that spirit I await
your testimony.
Thank you.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Price. Ms. Huntoon, again
welcome and please feel free to give your testimony at this
time. I see no need to do buttons and whistles, so just please
be welcome to give your testimony.
STATEMENTS OF DR. CAROLYN L. HUNTOON, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY; AND BRIG. GEN.
THOMAS F. GIOCONDA, U.S. AIR FORCE, ACTING DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR
FOR DEFENSE PROGRAMS, NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION,
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
STATEMENT OF DR. CAROLYN L. HUNTOON
Dr. Huntoon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
opportunity to testify before you today. The Department is
making substantial progress in cleaning up the legacy of
radioactive and hazardous contamination at over 100 sites
across the Nation left by nuclear weapon production and energy
research. We are reducing serious risk, as well as accelerating
and finishing cleanup at sites across the country. We are
safely storing and safeguarding excess nuclear materials and
reducing the long material cost of these programs.
To protect the health and safety of our workers we have
established safety as our top priority. To get the most work
done with our budgetary resources we have incorporated state-
of-the-art private sector contracting and management practices
into our operations. To make the most use of our unique
facilities and capabilities we are integrating the use of our
resources across the DOE complex. To reduce cost and schedules
we are investing in science and development of new
technologies. We are working with regulators and stakeholders
to address their concerns and find mutually acceptable cleanup
solutions. And, we are working with Congress to secure the
funding that we need to meet our compliance obligations and our
closure goals.
Our programs at Paducah and the Savannah River site provide
good examples of both of our successes to date and the
challenges that remain. At each of these sites and other sites
across the complex we have made a lot of progress. In the past
several years, we also faced technical, managerial, budgetary
and regulatory challenges to completing the cleanup task. These
challenges reflect the complex and extensive nature of the
hazardous radioactive contamination and materials for which we
are responsible.
At the Paducah site in Kentucky, the EM program is
responsible for addressing serious problems, including soil and
groundwater contamination and radioactive hazardous chemicals,
surface water contamination in ditches, creeks, lagoons,
approximately 65,000 tons of scrap metal stored on-site, 12
burial grounds containing a variety of radioactive and
hazardous waste, 52,000 drums of low level and hazardous
chemicals and two contaminated process plants that have been
shut down.
To date we have significantly reduced risks while ensuring
the safety of workers, the general public and the protection of
the environment. For example, we have addressed the risk
proposed by contamination of off-site residential wells from
contaminated groundwater by supplying municipal water to over
100 residences and businesses. We have installed pump and
treatment systems in groundwater plumes to contain the spread
of contamination. We have eliminated immediate risk and
contamination hot spots. We began the removal of Drum Mountain
last month and expect to complete removal by the end of this
year.
To accelerate our cleanup at Paducah, we have significantly
increased the funding for cleanup in fiscal year 2000; our 2001
request of $78 million is more than twice the funding level for
fiscal year 1999. We are working with the Commonwealth of
Kentucky and the Environmental Protection Agency as well as
with workers and local citizens to accelerate the cleanup.
These efforts have helped us develop a new baseline with the
completion date of 2010. The GAO report depicts a very real
challenge the Department faces at Paducah. The Department
agrees that these factors could affect our ability to meet the
cost and schedules we have laid out. However, the Paducah site
cleanup plan addresses the cleanup that is large in scope,
technically complex, and spans a 10-year period and therefore
has inherent uncertainty.
As recommended by GAO, the Department is preparing an
integrated plan for the Paducah site that will cover all
activities at the site, including the EM cleanup and the Office
of Nuclear Energy materials management responsibilities. The
plan will provide an integrated life cycle baseline describing
the cost, scope and schedule for completing all of the work at
Paducah. We expect to begin implementing the plan in fiscal
year 2001.
We do not support the GAO recommendation to consolidate all
DOE efforts at the site into the EM program. The Office of
Nuclear Energy has a unique capability to perform its mission
at the site. We are also concerned that the consolidation will
lead to reduced funding for the cleanup portion of the DOE
program. The Department appreciates congressional support for
the increased funding in fiscal year 2000. We need your
continued support for the critical funding increases for fiscal
year 2001 that are now before you.
The Savannah River site has approximately 34 million
gallons of high-level waste that requires permanent isolation.
The highly radioactive portion of this waste will be
transformed into a more stable glass form using a process
called vitrification for ultimate disposal. The remaining low
activity portion will be stabilized and managed as low level
waste. Separating out the highly radioactive element in the
waste will significantly reduce the volume of waste that is
needed to be vitrified and therefore reduces processes in
disposal costs by billions of dollars.
In January 1998, after an in-depth technical assessment of
the problem and expert reviews, the Department determined that
the In-Tank Precipitation technology being developed to remove
cesium from the high level waste salt stream could not safely
meet the safety and production requirements. Since then our
efforts have been focused on identifying and evaluating
alternative technologies to replace the ITP process. The
Department's goal is to ensure the technology selected will be
successful.
In response to concerns raised by the GAO and based on our
own experiences with ITP, the Department has established a
rigorous research evaluation process to identify and evaluate
potential technologies. The process that we are now undertaking
ensures sufficient research and development is completed before
a selection is made. It brings internal and external expertise
into the process, including the National Academy of Sciences.
It provides for effective management and oversight of the
project and close involvement by headquarters and senior
management.
Early in 1999, the Secretary decided to remove the contract
to Westinghouse from the selection process for the technology
and to seek a contractor to design and construct the selected
technology through open competition. Based on our own analysis
and recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences, the
Department recently concluded that more research is needed
before we can select preferred technology. We now anticipate
identifying that technology in June of 2001. This approach will
give us the confidence that we are selecting technology that
will work as expected.
In the meantime we will continue to make progress in the
high-level waste program. We continue to produce canisters of
vitrified waste at the current production rate of 200 canisters
per year. We will produce sludge-only canisters through 2010
without increasing the total number of canisters produced. We
will continue to meet our commitments to close high level waste
tanks. We have completed the removal and closure of two tanks
on the Savannah River site and are on track to close another
two tanks ahead of regulatory commitments.
The Department has made significant progress in managing
and cleanup extensive legacy of hazardous and radioactive
contamination from nuclear weapons production. Nonetheless,
there is a long way to go. We face unprecedented technical,
financial, regulatory, and managerial challenges, but we
believe we have established a firm foundation that will enable
the Department to tackle these problems as they arise. We will
continue to work with Congress on this important endeavor.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Carolyn Huntoon follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Carolyn Huntoon, Assistant Secretary for
Environmental Management, U.S. Department of Energy
Mr. Chairman and members of the Task Force, I appreciate the
opportunity to testify about the Department of Energy's (DOE)
Environmental Management (EM) program at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion
Plant in Kentucky and the Salt Processing Project (SPP) at the Savannah
River Site in South Carolina.
Overall, the Department is making substantial progress in cleaning
up the legacy of radioactive and hazardous contamination at over 100
sites across the nation left from the nuclear weapons production
process and nuclear energy research. We are reducing the most serious
risks posed by this contamination, accelerating and finishing cleanup
at sites across the country, safely storing and safeguarding excess
materials that can be used in nuclear weapons, and reducing the long-
term costs of the program.
To protect the health and safety of our workers, we have
established safety as our top priority. To get the most work done with
our budgetary resources, we have incorporated state-of-the-art private
sector contracting and management practices into our operations. To
make the most use of our unique facilities and capabilities, we are
integrating the use of our resources across the DOE complex. To reduce
costs and schedules, we are investing in science and developing new
technologies. We are working with regulators and stakeholders to
address concerns and find acceptable cleanup solutions. And we are
working with Congress to secure the funding that we need to meet our
compliance obligations and reach our closure goals.
Our programs at the Paducah and Savannah River sites provide good
examples of both our successes to date and the challenges that remain.
At each of these sites, and others across the complex, we have made a
lot of progress in the past several years, but also face technical,
managerial, budgetary, and regulatory challenges to the cleanup and
completion of our mission. These uncertainties and challenges reflect
the complex and extensive nature of the hazardous and radioactive
contamination and materials for which we are responsible. Before
discussing our approach to cleanup at Paducah and the Salt Processing
Project, I would like to provide some background on our program and
these issues.
The Environmental Management Program
Mission: Cleanup of the Environmental Legacy of the Cold War
The EM program is responsible for managing and cleaning up the
environmental legacy of the nation's nuclear weapons production program
and government-sponsored nuclear energy research. The scope and
challenge of this task is enormous, involving managing large volumes of
nuclear wastes, safeguarding materials that could be used in nuclear
weapons, and remediating extensive surface and groundwater
contamination. The EM program is responsible for:
remediating 1.7 trillion gallons of contaminated ground
water, an amount equal to approximately four times the daily U.S. water
consumption;
remediating 40 million cubic meters of contaminated soil
and debris, enough to fill approximately 17 professional sports
stadiums;
safely storing and guarding more than 18 metric tons of
weapons-usable plutonium, enough for thousands of nuclear weapons;
managing over 2,000 tons of radioactive spent nuclear
fuel, some of which is corroding;
storing, treating, and disposing of radioactive and
hazardous waste, including over 160,000 cubic meters currently in
storage and over 100 million gallons of liquid, high-level radioactive
waste;
deactivating and/or decommissioning about 4,000 facilities
that are no longer needed to support DOE missions;
implementing critical nuclear non-proliferation programs
for accepting and safely managing spent nuclear fuel from foreign
research reactors that contain weapons-usable highly enriched uranium;
and
providing long-term care and monitoring, or stewardship,
for potentially hundreds of years at an estimated 109 sites following
clean up.
Accomplishments
Some of the major program accomplishments include:
Active cleanup is complete at 69 of 113 sites as of the
start of fiscal year (FY) 2000.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is open and
disposing transuranic waste. To date, WIPP has received 61 shipments,
or 420 cubic meters, of transuranic waste from Los Alamos National
Laboratory, Rocky Flats, and Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory (INEEL). The first shipment from the Hanford
site will arrive this week.
In FY 1999 alone, we disposed of 49,000 cubic meters of
low-level waste, 14,000 cubic meters of mixed low level waste, and 282
cubic meters of transuranic waste at disposal facilities at DOE sites
and at commercial disposal facilities.
Cleanup of all 22 large uranium mill tailings sites is
complete, as well as 5,300 ``vicinity properties,'' including
elementary schools and homes.
At Rocky Flats, we continue to work toward meeting our
2006 closure goal, including removing all plutonium pits from the site,
beginning shipments of highly-enriched uranium to other sites, and
demolishing a major plutonium research facility.
At INEEL, we completed the new dry storage facility for
spent nuclear fuel and began transferring Three Mile Island spent
nuclear fuel from wet storage to the safer new facility.
At the Hanford Site, we restarted plutonium stabilization
activities to reduce the risks posed by unstabilized plutonium
materials; we have resolved three of the four high-priority safety
issues for the high-level waste tanks, such as the generation of high
heat in one tank and a rise in the surface level in another; and we
have removed liquids from 123 of the 149 old, single-shell tanks.
At the Savannah River Site, by the end of FY 2001 we will
have completed approximately one-third of the planned shipments of
spent nuclear fuel containing uranium originally enriched in the United
States from foreign research reactors around the world. This program
reduces the threat of nuclear proliferation by ensuring enriched
uranium will not be used to make nuclear weapons.
At the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and West
Valley site in New York, we are operating the nation's only high-level
waste vitrification facilities for stabilizing high-level liquid wastes
stored in underground tanks. We have produced over 890 canisters of
vitrified glass since the Savannah River facility began operating in
1996, and we will complete the vitrification of all 600,000 gallons of
liquid high-level waste at West Valley in FY 2001 and begin
deactivation of the facility.
We continue to use new technologies. During FY 1999, DOE
sites used new technologies 218 times in cleanup activities, 129 of
which were used for the first time at a site. Since the inception of
the EM Science and Technology program, we have seen over 450
deployments at DOE sites of over 200 new cleanup technologies. The
deployment of these technologies is yielding significant benefits to
the cleanup of the DOE complex, including: more efficient removal of
highly-radioactive tank waste; containing and treating subsurface
contamination; enhancing in situ bioremediation of organic
contaminants; treatment of mixed low-level waste; and better methods to
deactivate, decontaminate and dismantle facilities while ensuring
worker safety and minimizing risk to the surrounding environment.
Program Management: Principles and Practices
The actual tasks of remediating contamination and storing,
treating, and disposing of wastes are performed at the sites where the
contamination and wastes are located. The role of Headquarters is to
provide program guidance and management as to how this work will be
conducted. We have established several management principles to guide
the program:
Safety first;
Reduce risks;
Meet our commitments;
Accelerate site cleanup and project completion;
Strengthen project management;
Integrate nuclear waste and materials management and
operations across the DOE complex;
Build public confidence and involve stakeholders in
cleanup decisions;
Develop an effective long-term stewardship program for
post-cleanup protection;
Apply the best science and technology to solve technical
problems and reduce costs.
A brief description of each of these principles is contained in the
Appendix to this statement.
Challenges Remain
Despite our progress, there is a long way to go. Our larger and
more complex sites will take decades to clean up. The General
Accounting Office (GAO) has reported on the uncertainties and
challenges facing the Department's cleanup of the Paducah site and on
the difficulties in developing a technology for the processing of
radioactive salts at the Savannah River Site. We certainly agree that
we face uncertainties and other challenges at these sites. These
uncertainties and challenges reflect the nature of our mission. There
are similar complex, technical, regulatory, financial, and managerial
challenges at other sites where we also face unique mixtures of
hazardous and radioactive wastes that must be safely isolated from our
workers and the human environment for many years. However, we believe
we are addressing these challenges in a timely manner. I would now like
to turn to each of these issues.
cleanup of the gaseous diffusion plant site in paducah, kentucky
Cleanup Scope and Progress
At Paducah, EM is responsible for the remediation of environmental
contamination, management and disposal of ``legacy'' waste generated by
decades of uranium enrichment operations, and disposition of surplus
materials and facilities no longer needed for the Department's mission.
Specifically, at Paducah EM has responsibility for:
groundwater contaminated with radioactive and hazardous
chemicals, primarily trichloroethene (TCE) and technetium-99, which has
contaminated private residential wells and continues to migrate off-
site;
surface water contamination in surrounding ditches,
creeks, outfalls and lagoons, and about 65,000 tons of scrap metal
stored on-site that is the main source of the contamination;
surface soils on- and off-site that have been contaminated
by water runoff, spills and releases of hazardous and radioactive
substances, and leakages from buried waste, such as polychlorinated
biphenyls (PCBs), radionuclides, volatile organic compounds, and
metals;
twelve burial grounds containing a variety of radioactive
and hazardous wastes;
52,000 drums of low-level and/or hazardous chemical waste
stored on-site that must be characterized and dispositioned; and
two contaminated process plants, including ancillary
buildings associated with the plants, that have been shut down: the C-
410 Feed Materials Plant and the C-340 Metal Reduction Plant.
Our cleanup strategy for tackling these complex problems is based
on the risks they present to the public, workers and the environment.
To date we have reduced risks to workers and the public and developed a
sound technical foundation for the next stage of cleanup. For example:
We addressed the risks posed by the contamination of off-
site residential wells from contaminated groundwater. We funded the
extension of 12 miles of municipal water supply line to over 100
residences and businesses whose wells were contaminated. We are also
paying their water bills.
We identified the areas of the plumes with the highest
concentrations of contaminants and installed groundwater pump and treat
systems in each plume to contain the spread and treat the higher
contaminant concentrations. Monitoring data show that these systems
have met their objectives. We routinely sample groundwater using a
monitoring network of some 165 residential and other wells installed to
track contaminant migration.
We eliminated immediate risks and contamination ``hot
spots'' and other suspected sources of off-site contamination. Actions
range from removing contaminated soil from areas with high
concentrations of contaminants to reducing potential contamination
associated with the North-South Diversion Ditch, where the highest
levels of plutonium and uranium have been found.
Like any other complex cleanup project, much of our initial work
involved working with our environmental regulators to characterize the
nature and extent of the contamination at the site so that we could
identify and prioritize risk reducing activities and devise sound
technical cleanup solutions. While less dramatic than on-the-ground
work that reduces contamination, characterization is a critical step in
cleanup and is required under an enforceable cleanup agreement. Because
of the hazardous nature of the contaminants and the processes involved,
characterization is also a critical step in protecting the workers who
are doing the cleanup.
As a result of the health and safety investigation conducted in
August 1999 by DOE's Office of Environment, Safety and Health (EH), the
Department also prepared a corrective action plan containing 77
specific actions to address the findings in the report. More than 60
percent of these actions have been completed. We have made improvements
to our radiation protection and workers' safety programs and have
strengthened DOE oversight of the contractor.
We have also improved the pace and effectiveness of environmental
cleanup of the Paducah site, a key area of concern in the EH
investigation. In brief, we have:
Sought increased funding. In FY 2000 the Department
requested and received a $6 million funding increase and transferred
more than $10 million in additional funds to Paducah. In addition, we
sought an additional $8 million for the Paducah cleanup in the
President's supplemental request for FY 2000; Congress recently passed
legislation that would provide the supplemental funds for Paducah
cleanup. Our FY 2001 request of $78 million is almost $16 million above
the current FY 2000 appropriation level, including the $8 million in
supplemental funds.
Established a Tri-Party Working Group with State and EPA
regulators to evaluate the site strategies and priorities and identify
ways to accelerate cleanup. We have identified early actions to remove
contamination sources, are making progress in streamlining the formal
regulatory process, and are continuing to work to resolve issues
related to PCB cleanup levels and future land use designations.
Accelerated cleanup activities. With the additional funds
provided in FY 2000, we have accelerated the removal and disposal of
``Drum Mountain,'' a large scrap pile containing thousands of drums,
which is a suspected source of contamination of the Big and Little
Bayou Creeks from surface run-off. On June 23, 2000, the subcontractor
began to remove the drums. We are on schedule to remove Drum Mountain
by the end of this fiscal year and complete disposal of the packaged
waste in December 2000, a year earlier than previously planned. In
addition, the Department has developed a life-cycle baseline that
details the schedule, scope, and estimated cost to accelerate overall
site completion by 2 years to 2010. The life-cycle estimates associated
with this baseline range from about $880 million to $1.1 billion
depending primarily on whether waste generated from the cleanup can be
disposed of on-site or is required to be disposed of at an off-site
facility. We will continue working with the Tri-Party Working Group to
refine this baseline.
Continued cleanup progress. We began operating the
``Lasagna'' technology in December 1999 to treat shallow soils
contaminated with TCE in the former Cylinder Drop Test Area, a major
source of TCE contamination in groundwater. Named for the layered
``treatment zones'' in the subsurface soil, the Lasagna process
generates an electric field and uses chemical means to destroy the TCE.
We expect to complete TCE removal in the Test Area in FY 2001.
Once Drum Mountain work is complete, we plan to begin removing
other scrap metals at the site, starting early in FY 2001. In
preparation for this, we have replaced silt fences that control surface
water runoff and repaired bank erosion control measures that retard
erosion to creeks and ditches. We will soon start construction of the
pilot-scale unit at the Southwest Plume to test the suitability of
permeable treatment zone technology for the Paducah site and provide
data for full-scale operations. We have completed the workplan for the
treatability study and about 90 percent of the design and technical
specifications for the pilot facility. We expect to complete
construction by the end of this fiscal year.
Challenges at Paducah
The GAO report, ``Nuclear Waste Cleanup: DOE's Paducah Plan Faces
Uncertainties and Excludes Costly Cleanup Activities,'' depicts the
very real challenges the Department faces in keeping this complex
cleanup within the cost and timeframes laid out in the current cleanup
plan. The report identifies uncertainties and other factors that could
increase costs and cause delays. These are:
uncertainties about the nature, extent and sources of
contamination;
uncertainties about whether the technologies being pursued
to address contamination, some of which are new and innovative
technologies, will be successful;
the need to reach agreements with regulators and
stakeholders on aspects of the cleanup, such as land use and cleanup
levels, that will affect what cleanup approaches are taken;
future funding levels; and
other areas at the site, outside of the current scope of
the cleanup program, that are not included in the cleanup plan, but
that the Department will need to address.
The uncertainties that GAO raises are valid. It is clear that the
Paducah site cleanup plan is large in scope, technically complex, and
spans a 10-year period. It is also clear that such a plan, by its
scope, duration and the nature of the complicated site conditions it
addresses, faces inherent uncertainties.
It should be emphasized, however, that the same uncertainties faced
at Paducah exist at many of the technically complex projects EM
manages--and many private sector cleanups as well. The Department has
specifically acknowledged this elsewhere, most recently in the ``Status
Report on Paths to Closure'' (March 2000):
``The future costs of many complex environmental management
and remediation programs are difficult to quantify with
precision, particularly when many projects remain in a planning
stage. As project planning progresses, and more is known about
what will be required to implement a project, cost estimates,
and consequently schedules, may significantly increase or
decrease. Management studies have shown that complex
environmental programs, along with other first-of-a-kind
projects, have some of the greatest variability in life-cycle
cost estimates.''
The question, therefore, is not whether we face uncertainties in
meeting our goals, but whether we are managing those uncertainties
wisely and effectively. As previously explained, the EM program seeks
to manage the uncertainties and minimize their impacts--at Paducah and
at other sites across the complex--in a number of ways. We have
invested in science and research to develop new technologies to
characterize and remediate contamination and to develop more effective
and cost-efficient technologies than traditional approaches. We are
working with regulators and stakeholders to address concerns and find
acceptable cleanup solutions. We are working with Congress to secure
the funding that we need to meet our compliance obligations and reach
our closure goals. And we are integrating our cleanup and materials
management efforts across DOE sites and programs to ensure that the
Department performs these activities expeditiously and cost-
effectively. Let me address more specifically how we are managing the
uncertainties the GAO report highlighted at Paducah.
Managing the Technical Challenges
At all of our sites, we face uncertainties about the size and scope
of the contamination. As previously noted, much of the early work at
Paducah involved working with regulators to characterize and assess the
contamination at the site to support cleanup decisions. From FY 1988
through FY 1999, about $112 million, or almost 30 percent of the funds
have supported characterization and assessment activities at Paducah.
Such characterization work is necessary to devise sound technical
solutions, prioritize work, and to protect the health and safety of the
workers doing the cleanup work. The Department is increasingly pursuing
a strategy that allows us to move forward with cleanup actions when we,
and the regulatory agencies, believe there is sufficient information to
take action, building flexibility into the process to help us deal with
the unexpected. At Paducah, our characterization efforts continue.
However, the Tri-Party Workgroup involving our regulators also has
identified a number of early actions to eliminate potential sources and
reduce contamination, including the removal of Drum Mountain. We will
continue to work with this group to identify ways in which to
accelerate the cleanup even more.
The GAO report also raises legitimate concerns about the need to
pursue effective technologies and technical strategies to address
environmental contamination, specifically groundwater contamination and
its sources. Trichloroethene (TCE), a widely-used degreasing solvent,
is the most commonly occurring contaminant in groundwater across the
country, and is notoriously difficult to extract from groundwater with
conventional pump-and-treat technologies. While there are risks
associated with the use of new and innovative technologies, we manage
those risks by applying the best science and expertise to the problem--
and the risks of relying on conventional technologies that cannot
effectively and efficiently solve the problem are greater. Since early
1999, the Innovative Technology Remediation Demonstration (ITRD)
program has been working with the Paducah site office to identify and
demonstrate innovative technologies that can solve cleanup problems in
a more efficient and less costly manner. The pilot-scale unit being
developed to test the permeable treatment zone technology and the
``Lasagna'' technology now in operation are products of this effort. In
addition, I sent a Technology Deployment Assistance Team to the site in
November 1999, which included experts from the Savannah River Site
Technology Center and the national laboratories, to conduct a technical
review of the groundwater contamination at Paducah and provide
recommendations for expediting cleanup of the groundwater plumes. The
Deployment Assistance Team validated the technologies and approaches
recommended by the ITRD and supplemented ITRD recommendations for
treatment of groundwater source terms and increased plume monitoring.
Groundwater contamination at Paducah is one of the technical
challenges across the DOE complex that our science and technology
program is working to address. EM is investing in science and research
to develop and deploy technologies for environmental problems that need
new or more effective technological solutions. Our efforts are
beginning to make real, on-the-ground contributions. Since the
inception of this program, we have seen over 450 deployments at DOE
sites of approximately 200 new technologies that were sponsored by EM's
science and technology program. One of my priorities since becoming
Assistant Secretary in EM has been, and will continue to be, to bring
the best science and technology to bear on solving the cleanup
challenges facing the Department.
Working Cooperatively to Resolve Regulatory Issues
The Department has worked closely with State and Federal regulatory
agencies and other stakeholders throughout the cleanup process. DOE
conducts the cleanup pursuant to a three-party, enforceable agreement
with the EPA and the Commonwealth of Kentucky under the Comprehensive
Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA),
similar to the regulatory agreements that direct cleanup at most of our
sites. Through the process established by the agreement, the parties
establish priorities, assess contamination, and determine cleanup
remedies. In November 1999, in the wake of concerns raised by DOE's
Office of Environment, Safety and Health investigation and others about
the pace of cleanup at Paducah, the Tri-Party Working Group (made up of
senior managers from DOE, the State and EPA) was formed to evaluate
priorities and strategies and to identify ways to accelerate the
cleanup. Staff that support the Tri-Party Working Group meet on a
monthly basis and have reached general agreement on early actions which
can be taken to accelerate cleanup completion by 2010, including work
not previously included in the life-cycle baseline, such as
decontaminating and decommissioning of two radiologically contaminated
facilities and installing sedimentation basins at specific outfalls. In
addition, the Tri-Party Working Group is considering another
alternative proposed by the Department to further accelerate cleanup by
disposing remediation waste in an on-site cell.
While we may not have resolved all regulatory issues that could
affect the cost and schedule of cleanup, the Department believes it has
a solid and effective working relationship with our regulatory partners
and has in place a process that will lead to mutually supported cleanup
decisions.
Funding the Cleanup
The Department is seeking significantly increased funding for the
Paducah cleanup. The Congress recently approved the $8 million for
cleanup of Paducah that the Administration included in its supplemental
request for FY 2000. The funding request for FY 2001 of $78 million is
more than double the FY 1999 appropriation and almost $16 million more
than FY 2000.
However, as GAO notes, ``[f]unding constraints have always been an
issue, according to DOE, contractor and regulatory officials, and their
recurrence could delay the project and add to its ultimate cost.''
Beginning in FY 1996, the Department saw its funding requests for the
Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning (UE D&D) Fund--
the appropriation account that supports cleanup of the three uranium
enrichment facilities--reduced and, consequently, less funds were
available for cleanup at Paducah. From FY 1996 through FY 1999, the UE
D&D Fund appropriations were reduced from the Administration request by
approximately $10 million, $40 million,\1\ $18 million, and $57 million
respectively, resulting in funds for Paducah reduced, for example, in
FY 1999 by $20 million. The Department, with reduced appropriations,
was required to adjust its cleanup activities and priorities
accordingly.
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\1\ $10 million was later shifted to the UE D&D Fund in FY 1997
through a reprogramming action.
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The $8 million that Congress provided pursuant to the supplemental
request will support two important projects: first, removal of concrete
rubble piles outside the plant fence that may have low levels of
radiological contamination for ultimate disposal in the on-site
landfill; and second, stabilization activities to reduce radiological
risks associated with the C-410 Feed Materials Plant, one of the two
surplus contaminated process buildings for which EM is responsible.
These activities address EH concerns and also make use of the skilled
workers who are subject to layoffs by United States Enrichment
Corporation (USEC) beginning this month.
For FY 2001, the Department has requested $78 million for the
cleanup of Paducah. This funding level will enable us to continue
accelerating our cleanup efforts. At this level, we will continue
accelerating disposition of the remaining 57,500 tons of contaminated
scrap metal stored in outside storage areas at a pace for completion by
FY 2003, allowing characterization of the ground underneath the piles.
We will also continue stabilization activities in the two shut down
buildings; characterize and dispose of the remaining 9,000 drums of
low-level radioactive waste, some of which are currently stored in
deteriorating drums; and ship 2,000 drums of mixed waste to an off-site
disposal facility. In addition, we will issue the record of decision
for the final groundwater remedy and begin remedial design, accelerate
the surface water investigation, and finalize the decision and begin
remedial design for cleaning up the North-South Diversion Ditch.
It is critical that Congress approve the full request so that the
Paducah cleanup can proceed expeditiously and meet the 2010 completion
date. In this regard I am very concerned about the recent House-passed
FY 2001 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill that would
consolidate the two uranium program funding accounts and reduce the
total (from the requested level) by $43 million. This reduction would
impact funding levels at three sites (Paducah, Portsmouth, and Oak
Ridge) and would seriously impede our cleanup efforts at Paducah as
well as the other sites. I urge this Committee to support restoration
of this funding as the appropriations process moves forward.
Integrating Cleanup And Materials Disposition
As it does at other operating sites in the DOE complex, EM shares
responsibilities at the Paducah site with other Departmental programs.
The Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) has on-going responsibility for
management of materials, facilities, and support of the site
infrastructure, or ``landlord'' responsibilities. This office,
therefore, has responsibility for management of materials stored in
USEC buildings in DOE Materials Storage Areas (DMSAs) for potential
reuse by USEC. As these materials are evaluated by NE and USEC, the
responsibility for any materials not needed by USEC would be
transferred to EM. NE is also responsible for the management and
conversion of the depleted uranium hexafluoride currently stored in
cylinders into a more stable form--with the potential of commercial
reuse of fluorine by the nuclear industry.
In addition, USEC is responsible for maintaining facilities and
managing waste generated by its operations. The Department--and
specifically EM--will be responsible for the D&D of the plants when
USEC ceases operation.
While these cleanup and materials management activities constitute
work the Department must accomplish, the division of responsibilities
among programs is essentially consistent with our management approach
at DOE facilities that have on-going operations in several DOE
programs. For example, there are multiple programs with
responsibilities at the Oak Ridge Reservation, including the Offices of
Science, Defense Programs (now a part of the National Nuclear Security
Agency), Nuclear Energy, and Environmental Management. EM is
responsible for environmental cleanup, D&D of surplus facilities, and
management of waste, while other programs are responsible for materials
management and maintenance of site infrastructure and facilities
supporting on-going operations.
With different offices having responsibilities at the same site, it
is important that the activities be integrated, the relationship
between them defined, and the costs for activities and the site
clarified. As recommended by GAO, the Department is preparing an
integrated plan for the Paducah site, and a plan for the Portsmouth
site as well, that will cover all activities at the site. The plan will
be comprehensive in scope and will include current EM and NE
responsibilities, a process for transferring additional responsibility
to EM as materials are determined to be waste, and also will outline
our handling of the return to DOE of the gaseous diffusion plant from
USEC at an as yet undefined time in the future. It will provide an
integrated life-cycle baseline describing the cost, scope and schedule
for completing all the work at Paducah and closing the site, and the
assumptions and uncertainties that underlie the plan.
The integrated plan will provide the basis for the total site
budget, provide the basis for measuring performance, and facilitate
common priorities among all activities. EM and NE are currently working
to develop the plan and define costs and schedules. We expect to
complete the plan this fall and begin implementing the plan in FY 2001.
Response to GAO on consolidating NE and EM Responsibilities
The Department has two concerns with the GAO recommendation that
responsibilities for materials management, infrastructure support, and
other landlord functions currently being performed by the Office of
Nuclear Energy, be transferred to the Office of Environmental
Management. First, the Department is concerned that if these
responsibilities were given to EM at this time, funding for these
activities would directly compete with other cleanup priorities at
other sites--including some with very high risks--for the limited
resources in the EM budget. The House-passed Energy and Water
Appropriations Development Appropriations Bill illustrates our concern.
The House Bill would consolidate funding for all of the uranium
programs at Paducah, Portsmouth, and Oak Ridge into one account, but
only provide approximately the amount of funding requested by EM, thus
resulting in a $43 million overall reduction from the EM request. The
Department believes that maintaining separate uranium programs in NE
and EM for the near term, while developing an integrated management
plan is more likely to enable EM to complete its cleanup by 2010.
Second, consolidation of NE's responsibilities into EM would be
premature at this stage. Although the Department envisions the
combination of these two functions at a future date, at this time NE
has the sole expertise for several of the Department's responsibilities
at Paducah. First, NE is the Office with the expertise for working with
USEC to evaluate the content of the DMSAs to determine which materials
can be re-used at the USEC facilities and elsewhere, and which
materials can be declared excess. These materials will be EM's
responsibilities only after NE has determined that they are excess to
the Department's needs. Further, NE is the Office within the Department
with the expertise to work with the nuclear energy industry on these
recycle issues, such as the potential re-use of fluorine derived from
the depleted uranium hexafluoride inventory. Accordingly, until the
Department, through NE, is able to complete the evaluation of the DMSAs
and develop a clear path forward for the disposition of the depleted
uranium hexafluoride at Portsmouth and Paducah, we believe it is
premature to transfer NE's responsibilities at Paducah into EM.
The Salt Processing Project, Savannah River Site
The Savannah River Site has approximately 34 million gallons of
high-level waste in the form of liquid and salt cake (about 31 million
gallons), and sludge (about 3 million gallons) stored in 49 active
tanks containing about 400 to 450 Megacuries of radioactivity. This
waste, generated primarily by chemical separations activities in
reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and other nuclear weapons components,
is intensely radioactive and will remain so for many thousands of
years, and it therefore requires permanent isolation. The highly
radioactive portion of this waste will be transformed into a more
stable glass form using a process called vitrification and will be
disposed of in a geological repository. The remaining low activity
portion will be stabilized as saltstone, a form of cement, and managed
as low-level waste.
The radioactivity in the liquid and salt cake waste is primarily
associated with plutonium, strontium and cesium in the waste. However,
only about 10 percent of this 31 million gallons of waste is highly
radioactive. By separating out the highly radioactive elements in the
waste, the volume of waste that needs to be transformed into glass can
be significantly reduced, thereby reducing processing and disposal
costs dramatically: using an approach that includes separation of the
high- and low-activity fractions, DOE plans to produce about 5,700
canisters of vitrified waste, at a lifecycle cost of about $18 billion.
If the waste fractions were not separated, one estimate suggests the
Department would need to produce an additional 118,000 canisters at an
estimated lifecycle cost of over $75 billion.\2\
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\2\ General Accounting Office, ``Nuclear Waste: Process to Remove
Radioactive Waste From Savannah River Tanks Fails to Work'' (GAO/RCED-
99-69, April 1999).
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The high-level waste program at the Savannah River Site includes
activities to reduce the volume of high-level waste, pre-treat or
separate the high- and low-activity fractions, vitrify high-level waste
for disposal, and close the high-level waste tanks in compliance with
applicable environmental requirements. The Salt Processing Project
(previously referred to as the In-Tank Precipitation Project)
encompasses the activities necessary to separate the high- and low-
activity fractions of the waste, including the selection, design,
construction, and operation of effective treatment technologies to
prepare the high-level waste feed material for the vitrification
facility, the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), which began
operations in 1996. DWPF is the nation's first high-level waste
vitrification facility for defense wastes. To date, it has produced
about 890 canisters of vitrified waste, or about 15 percent of the
canisters that it will ultimately be produced.
In the early 1980s, the Department began development of the
technology referred to as In-Tank Precipitation (ITP) to remove cesium
from the high-level waste stream, a technology that offered the
potential to significantly reduce life-cycle costs of cesium
separation. Radioactive operation of the ITP facility began in
September 1995, but the process generated benzene at a much higher rate
than expected, which presented a potential explosive and toxic hazard
and significantly decreased production rates. As a result of the
excessive benzene generation, ITP operations were suspended in 1996
and, following in-depth technical assessments of the problem and expert
reviews, the Department determined in January 1998 that the ITP process
could not meet safety and production requirements and halted work on
the technology. In hindsight, this conclusion should have been reached
sooner based on various independent reviews and GAO reviews. Our
challenge at this point is to learn from the experience and establish a
sound scientific process for developing a new treatment technology.
Since that decision was made, our efforts have been focused on
doing just that in order to identify and evaluate the best alternative
salt processing technologies to replace the ITP process. The
Department's goal throughout this selection process is to ensure the
technology selected will, in fact, be successful in removing the cesium
from the waste. We have put in place a new management approach for
conducting the research and applying the criteria to select the
preferred technology alternative. Our management approach makes use of
the best expertise available, both internal and external to the
Department, and ensures that we conduct the research necessary to
reduce uncertainties and give us the confidence that we are selecting a
technology that will be effective and will minimize unexpected future
cost and schedule impacts.
Based on our own analysis and recommendations from the National
Academy of Sciences, the Department recently concluded that more
research is needed on the technology alternatives currently under
consideration before we can select a preferred technology. We now
anticipate identifying a preferred technology alternative in June 2001.
While this may initially take more time, we will continue to make
progress in the high-level waste program at Savannah River Site. For
example:
There is no immediate impact on the DWPF operations. DWPF
will continue to produce sludge-only canisters of vitrified waste at
the current production rate of 200 canisters per year while the salt
processing technology is re-evaluated. Our current projection indicates
that DWPF can continue to produce sludge-only canisters through 2010
without increasing the total number of canisters produced.
We will continue to meet our commitments to close high-
level waste tanks. To date, we have completed the removal and closure
of two tanks at Savannah River ahead of schedule and are on track to
close two other tanks ahead of their regulatory commitment dates of FY
2003 and FY 2004.
We believe the approach and schedule will keep us on track
to meet regulatory commitments for closing old-style tanks and
processing existing inventories of high-level waste, including the
milestone to remove wastes and close all tanks by 2028.
We continue to manage the high-level waste tank farm
operations to support the stabilization of nuclear materials and spent
nuclear fuel in the canyons.
Progress in Identifying a Salt Processing Technology
In response to concerns raised by the General Accounting Office in
its report, ``Nuclear Waste: Process to Remove Radioactive Waste from
Savannah River Tanks Fails to Work'' (April 1999), and based on past
experiences and ``lessons-learned'' with the ITP project, the
Department has established a formal and rigorous research and
evaluation process to identify and evaluate potential technologies. The
process ensures that sufficient research and development is completed
before a selection is made, brings internal and outside expertise into
the process, and provides for effective management and oversight of the
project, with close involvement by Headquarters and senior management.
The Technical Evaluation
At the Department's direction, the contractor,
Westinghouse Savannah River Company, formed a systems engineering team,
whose membership included experts from other DOE sites, academia and
the national laboratories, to identify alternatives to the ITP process
for separating cesium. The team identified approximately 140 processes
that could potentially be used to separate cesium from salt solutions.
These processes were grouped into an initial list of 18 alternative
processing options. The list of 18 was subsequently screened using a
multi-attribute analysis to focus on a ``short list'' of four
alternatives for further research and evaluation.
In 1998, Headquarters established an independent review
team with experts from other DOE sites and the private sector to
provide oversight of the process and results, including the cost
estimates, of the Westinghouse-led team. The team issued reports in
December 1998 and December 1999.
The Department asked the National Academy of Sciences
(NAS) to review the Department's evaluation of technologies to replace
ITP. NAS issued a preliminary report in October 1999, and its final
report is expected to be issued soon. The NAS has agreed to continue
its involvement and provide advice on the selection process.
While the contractor, Westinghouse, is involved in
research on some of the technologies under consideration, the Secretary
determined early in 1999 that Westinghouse would not be involved in the
selection of the technology and that DOE would seek a design and
construction contractor(s) for the selected technology through open
competition.
The Department is now carrying out research and evaluation on four
alternatives for pre-treatment of the salt high-level waste. Three
alternatives: First, small in-tank precipitation using sodium
tetraphenylborate; second, crystalline silicotitinate ion exchange; and
third, caustic side solvent extraction focus on extracting the cesium
from the waste. A fourth technology--alpha removal--is needed to
separate plutonium and strontium from the waste, a necessary pre-
treatment step for the liquid and salt cake wastes.
As a result of its assessment and NAS reviews, the Department has
determined that each alternative required further research and
development to resolve technical and engineering issues and reduce
technical uncertainty before one technology for cesium separation could
be selected. Accordingly, DOE has deferred issuance of a draft Request
for Proposals seeking input from the private sector for proposals to
design and construct the needed separation facilities, and the issuance
of the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) pending
further development of technology alternatives.
Over the next 12 months, the Department will conduct the necessary
research and development and the technical evaluation process on the
alternatives. We expect to have sufficient information to complete the
SEIS and select a technology for cesium separation in June 2001.
Management of the Project
In November 1999, the Department began to implement a restructured
management of the Salt Processing Project. The goal was to consolidate
the Department's Headquarters and field office resources to jointly
manage the project, and to remove Westinghouse Savannah River Company
from the management and decision making for technology alternatives.
The Savannah River Operations Office, EM's program office in
Headquarters and EM's Office of Science and Technology are working
together to find suitable treatment technologies, and to establish a
sound technical basis for the cleanup of the high-level waste tanks at
the Savannah River Site. We are applying lessons learned from the
Savannah River Systems Engineering Review, the Department's Independent
Project Evaluation Team's review, and the NAS's interim report as we
proceed with further research and development to reduce the
uncertainties for each of the technologies under consideration. The
basic elements of our management approach include:
We have established the Technical Working Group, comprised
of staff from the EM headquarters offices and the Savannah River
Office, to manage the research and development activities for the
technology alternatives. The Group is responsible for making the
recommendation to me for a preferred technology alternative by June
2001.
We are making our best technical resources available to
the Technical Working Group to provide advice on knowledge gaps, future
research activities to fill knowledge gaps, and the potential pitfalls
of implementing various alternatives. The Science and Technology
program's Tanks Focus Area will serve as a technical resource on
research and development aspects. The Technical Advisory Team,
consisting of experts from the nuclear and chemical industry with
expertise in implementation (design, construction, and operation) of
treatment technologies similar to those selected for further research
and development, will provide assistance on implementation issues.
We will continue independent oversight of the project
through the continued involvement of the NAS and through project
management oversight by the Department's Office of Engineering and
Construction Management.
We will ensure the involvement of the Department's senior
management throughout the process. I will continue to have close
involvement in the project as it moves forward, and the Department's
Deputy Secretary in his role as Chief Operating Officer will provide
close oversight of the project.
Our process also ensures that Congress is kept informed of
the project's progress. We briefed interested Committee staff in June
2000 and plan to provide updates on our progress on a quarterly basis.
Cost and Budget Implications
In FY 2000, the Department plans to spend about $25 million, which
includes $7.5 million within the Science and Technology program, for
the Salt Processing Project. Our request for FY 2001 is $21.5 million,
plus $7.6 million in Science and Technology program funds. This request
will continue the research and development necessary to reduce
uncertainties associated each of the potential separation technologies
and allow a selection to be made. Under our current schedule we
anticipate beginning design for the selected technology in FY 2002.
The cost associated with each of the alternatives will be
considered in the selection process. There have been rough life-cycle
estimates developed for the different alternatives under consideration
at various points in our evaluation process, but these are only
preliminary estimates and are very uncertain. We are now developing
cost estimates sufficient to support the technology selection decision.
Once a technology is chosen and we move forward in the design process,
we will be able to prepare a firm cost and schedule baseline.
conclusion
The Department has made significant progress in managing and
cleaning up the extensive legacy of hazardous and radioactive
contamination from more than fifty years of nuclear weapons production
and nuclear energy research. Nonetheless, there is a long way to go.
Our mission will not be complete for decades. We face unprecedented
technical, fiscal, regulatory, and managerial challenges. We believe we
have established a firm foundation that will enable the Department to
tackle these problems as they arise. We will continue to work to make
progress at Paducah, the Savannah River Site, and elsewhere throughout
the complex. We will work to accelerate cleanup, apply new
technologies, develop partnerships with our stakeholders and
regulators, reduce costs, and seek the resources we need to do the job,
while ensuring the safety of our workers, the public, and the
environment. We look forward to continuing to work with the Congress on
this important endeavor.
Appendix
Environmental Management Program: Principles and Practices
The actual tasks of remediating contamination and storing,
treating, and disposing of wastes are performed at the sites where the
contamination and wastes are located. The role of Headquarters is to
provide program guidance and management on how this work will be
conducted. We have established several management principles to guide
the program:
Safety first;
Reduce risks;
Meet our commitments;
Accelerate site cleanup and project completion;
Strengthen project management;
Integrate nuclear waste and materials management and
operations across the DOE complex;
Build public confidence and involve stakeholders in
cleanup decisions;
Develop an effective long-term stewardship program for
post-cleanup protection;
Apply the best science and technology to solve technical
problems and reduce costs.
Safety First
The safety of our workers is our highest priority. We have
incorporated Integrated Safety Management into all of our work--the
systems, procedures, and attitudes necessary to meet our safety goals
and improve our safety performance. Managers at all levels are
responsible for safety monitoring, ensuring that safety is a priority
throughout the organization, and participating in feedback systems to
make further improvements. In the recent EM reorganization, we created
the Office of Safety, Health and Security to ensure all EM personnel
understand their responsibilities in the areas of safety and security
and help ensure that these concepts and practices are integral to all
EM programs and activities.
Reduce Risks
Another EM priority is to reduce our most urgent risks. As an
example of this progress, later this year--our target date is November
2000--we will begin to move spent nuclear fuel, some of which is
corroding, in wet storage pools near the Columbia River to a new dry
storage facility further away from the river.
At the INEEL, we will complete the transfer of Three Mile Island
spent nuclear fuel to dry storage and the transfer of spent nuclear
fuel at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC)
from aging, deteriorating underwater storage to safer storage
facilities. We are continuing to reduce risks by stabilizing plutonium-
bearing materials at the Hanford and the Savannah River Sites. At
Hanford, we will resolve high priority safety issues regarding the
liquid high-level radioactive waste in underground storage tanks, such
as flammable gas generation, and we will continue to pump liquid waste
from the aging single-shelled tanks--some of which have leaked--into
safer double-shelled tanks.
Meeting our Commitments
Most of our activities are governed by Federal and state
environmental statutes and regulations and enforceable agreements
between the Department and Federal and state agencies. We are committed
to complying with these legal requirements and agreements. In addition,
we plan to meet our commitments to the Defense Nuclear Facilities
Safety Board. In several cases, we need to work closely with our
regulators and the Board as well as our stakeholders and Tribal
Nations, on the appropriate schedule and milestones for our program. We
will continue to work to reduce costs and accelerate schedules so that
we can meet our compliance requirements in the most practical and cost-
effective manner.
Accelerating site cleanup and project completion
EM has established a goal to clean up as many of the remaining
contaminated sites as possible by 2006, safely and cost-effectively. At
the start of FY 1997, shortly after the EM program first established
this goal, 61 of the 113 sites in the EM program required active
cleanup. We now have completed cleanup at 69 sites, and have 44 sites
that still require active cleanup. We plan to complete cleanup at two
additional sites this fiscal year and at three sites in FY 2001, to
reduce the number of cleanup sites remaining to 39 by the end of FY
2001.
Progress at West Valley--This year, at the West Valley
Demonstration Project in New York, formerly a privately-owned
commercial nuclear processing facility, we will complete high-level
waste vitrification processing, producing the final five canisters, and
begin deactivation of the vitrification facility. At the end of the
vitrification campaign, the Department will have vitrified 600,000
gallons of liquid high-level waste, reducing risks to the workers and
public by converting the waste into a stable form. We will also
complete the shipment of all spent nuclear fuel to INEEL. Removing the
125 spent fuel elements from the spent fuel pool at West Valley is a
prerequisite for decontamination and decommissioning of facilities.
Accelerated Closure of Rocky Flats--The Rocky Flats site is the
largest site at which we are attempting to complete cleanup by 2006. To
date, significant progress has been made toward making this goal a
reality. On February 1, 2000, our new cost-plus-incentive-fee closure
contract with Kaiser-Hill took effect. The closure contract, valued at
nearly $4.0 billion plus incentive payments, provides incentives to the
contractor to finish the work by 2006, and reduces the fees paid for
work completed beyond that date. The Department and Kaiser-Hill are
working to revise the baseline for 2006 closure in accordance with the
terms of the contract. We have come a long way since the previous
contractor estimated a few years ago that it would take $30 billion and
30 years to complete cleanup at Rocky Flats.
Critical elements in the closure strategy are stable funding for
the life of the project and the ability to move nuclear materials and
radioactive wastes from the site, which requires that other sites--
often DOE sites--are available and prepared to accept the materials.
The coordination of these planned shipping campaigns to the receiver
sites demonstrates the Department-wide commitment to the goal of
achieving accelerated closure of Rocky Flats.
Make Progress Toward Closure at Ohio Sites--At the Fernald
Environmental Management Project, we will continue accelerating closure
of this former uranium production facility. We will place a permanent
cap on Cell 1 of the On-site Disposal Facility using an innovative
capping technology. At the Mound Plant in Ohio, we will accelerate
tritium decontamination in buildings on the ``critical path'' to
closure, completing decontamination of three of eight acres in the
Semi-Works building, one of three significant contaminated buildings
that comprise the tritium complex. We will also continue demolition of
surplus buildings. Of the 107 buildings to be removed from the site,
approximately 50 percent will be either demolished or auctioned off by
FY 2001.
Strengthen project management
From the Manhattan Project through the Cold War, contracting
practices of the Department and its predecessor agencies had remained
essentially unchanged. The management and operating (``M&O '') contract
in common use at Department of Energy sites was a non-competitive,
cost-reimbursable arrangement in which the government paid virtually
all contractor costs and relieved the contractor of all risk. During
this period, M&O contracts were typically awarded or renewed on a 5-
year basis without any competition. The pool of private contractors
with nuclear weapons production expertise was limited and operations
were shrouded in secrecy.
After the Cold War ended, much of the Department's mission shifted
from the production of nuclear weapons to management and cleanup of the
nuclear wastes and materials that were left from the nuclear weapons
production era. In many instances, the contractors that had
historically operated the DOE sites did not possess the environmental
expertise to clean-up this legacy of contamination. The old practice of
renewing and awarding contracts without open competition was not suited
to the changing missions and needs at the Department's sites. As the
Department's mission shifted, these historical practices came under
criticism from the GAO, the Department's Inspector General, and the
Congress.
The Clinton Administration immediately recognized and responded to
these contracting problems in 1993 by initiating comprehensive contract
reform. Since 1994, the Department has:
significantly increased competition, recompeting, since
1994, 28 M&O contracts worth over $40 billion. Indeed, over 94 percent
of our new (non-M&O) contracts were competitively awarded in FY 1999
(up from 93 percent in FY 1998). This exceeds the total number of M&O
competitions in the entire previous history of DOE and its predecessor
agencies.
spurred participation in DOE contracting by firms that had
not generally participated in DOE procurements for traditional M&O
contracts;
brought in contractors with environmental expertise rather
than relying on traditional nuclear weapons production contractors to
perform cleanup and encouraged more contracting out by facility
management contractor to apply niche expertise to defined projects;
encouraged the use of fixed-price contracting, where
appropriate, both at the prime contract level and at the subcontract
level. For example, at Savannah River, from FY 1996 through FY 1999, an
average of 97 percent of our total subcontracting commitments have been
awarded as fixed-price contracts--amounting to a total dollar value in
excess of $1.25 billion. Similarly, during the same period at the
Hanford site, 100 percent of the subcontracts awarded by the M&I
contractor (Fluor Hanford, Inc.) and the Environmental Restoration
Management Contractor, or ERMC (Bechtel Hanford, Inc.), have been
awarded on a fixed-price basis--for a total contract value of $661
million;
made performance-based contracting, rather than level of
effort, the norm;
instituted an innovative, performance-based ``closure''
contract at Rocky Flats; and
worked to tailor the contracting mechanism to the job at
hand.
To further improve contractor performance, last year Secretary
Richardson strengthened project management by:
simplifying and clarifying the responsibility and
accountability of line management for program and project performance;
creating the Office of Engineering and Construction
Management in the Office of the Chief Financial Officer to improve
project management throughout DOE, including establishing baseline
change control processes, and quarterly project performance reviews;
conducting external independent reviews by highly
experienced project management professionals in the early planning
stages of a project (with additional reviews as appropriate in later
stages of design and construction), followed by the development and
tracking of corrective action plans, if needed, in order to correct
management, technical, or regulatory deficiencies prior to any
significant cost and schedule impacts;
establishing a Project Engineering and Design (PED)
funding line and authorization to design projects for future years new
starts, which will enable a more credible baseline, derived from 35
percent design, to be used for Line Item project approvals;
making greater use of the National Academy of Sciences in
reviewing projects; and
establishing the Deputy Secretary's ``Watch List'' of
critical or troubled projects that will be subject to intense oversight
at the highest levels within the Department until identified problems
have been corrected.
This year, the Secretary has taken additional actions, including:
requiring all major systems critical decisions, baseline
change proposals, or site selections for all new missions to be
approved by the Deputy Secretary before proceeding to the next
acquisition phase; and
strengthening the Department's ability to sanction poor
contractor performance and reward outstanding performance, including
allowing the Secretary to direct a contractor to remove its top manager
for failure to perform;
EM has similarly improved program and project management, including
establishing the Office of Project Management within EM. This new
office supports our field offices in their project management efforts
and assists Headquarters staff with their oversight of project
implementation. Additionally, the office coordinates internal and
external reviews of our projects and critical decisions for significant
projects not reviewed by the Deputy Secretary. This office is working
with organizations such as the Construction Industry Institute, the
Project Management Institute, and the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, to bring state-of-the-art project management tools and
training into the EM program to enable us to better manage our
projects.
Integrating nuclear waste and materials management
Sharing information and the unique capabilities for managing and
treating nuclear wastes and materials at many of our sites is critical
to our success. Our integration initiative seeks to consolidate
treatment, storage and disposal facilities and use available capacity
rather than construct new facilities; apply innovative technologies at
multiple sites; and apply lessons learned and site successes complex-
wide.
We have integrated our waste and materials management capabilities
in several key programs. The shipment of nuclear materials from the
Rocky Flats site to the Pantex Plant in Texas, the Y-12 Plant in Oak
Ridge, Tennessee, and to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina
provides an excellent example of how we are integrating the nuclear
materials storage and treatment capabilities across the DOE complex.
With respect to waste management, in December 1999, after extensive
technical analyses and consultation with state representatives and
other stakeholders, we announced our site preferences for disposal of
DOE low-level and mixed low-level waste based on the Waste Management
Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. This allowed us to
complete a formal Record of Decision in February 2000 on low-level and
mixed low-level waste treatment and disposal facilities, after further
consultations with the affected states.
The opening of WIPP in New Mexico for disposal operations in March
1999 provides a good example of the benefits of integration. The WIPP
provides a means for the Department to permanently dispose of the long-
lived transuranic radioactive waste that has been stored for decades at
about two dozen sites across the United States. WIPP is critical for
closing sites like Rocky Flats; for meeting compliance obligations for
more than a dozen other sites, including the Idaho Settlement
Agreement; and for reducing storage costs and risks to the public.
Finally, the transport of radioactive waste and material between
sites is critical to the success of our integration priorities. EM is
working with other DOE program offices and with the sites to develop a
strategy to identify packaging and transportation needs, to support
shipping schedules, and to use our transportation assets efficiently.
Building Public Confidence
Good technical work is not enough. Getting the job done requires
cooperation with regulators and others outside of DOE that have a stake
in our actions. By working cooperatively with regulators, stakeholders,
local communities and the Tribal Nations, we have improved the
efficiency of the EM program and have met our regulatory commitments
more efficiently.
Developing Effective Long-term Stewardship
At most sites the Department is performing cleanup that will make
the land available for other uses, but not necessarily unrestricted
use. Cleanup to levels allowing for unrestricted use often cannot be
achieved at DOE sites for economic or technical reasons and has not
been demanded by regulators. The Department has been able to take
advantage of the Superfund administrative reforms developed by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to allow anticipated future land
use to be considered in developing cleanup remedies.
The goal of long-term stewardship is the sustainable protection of
human health and the environment after cleanup, disposal or
stabilization is completed. A reliable long-term stewardship program
can also provide confidence to regulators and the public that non-
removal remedies are acceptable because the Department can be trusted
to care for the sites after the waste is contained in place.
During the past year, the Department has taken action to strengthen
its long-term stewardship program. First, we increased the budget for
long-term stewardship to respond to the greater demand resulting from
the completion of more cleanups. Second, we recently established an
Office of Long-Term Stewardship at our Headquarters office. The office
is addressing these emerging challenges with responsibility for field
guidance and policy development, technical analysis, and identification
of science and technology needs.
In accordance with the FY 2000 National Defense Authorization Act
(NDAA), the Department will provide a report to Congress by October 1,
2000, with the best available information on the cost, scope, and
schedule for long-term stewardship at sites and portions of sites in
sufficient detail to undertake the necessary stewardship
responsibilities.
In addition, we are preparing a study on long-term stewardship
pursuant to the lawsuit settlement agreement (Natural Resource Defense
Council, et. al. v. Richardson, et. al., Civ. No. 97-963 (SS) (D.D.C.
Dec. 12, 1998)). The study will address national, programmatic, and
cross-cutting issues related to long-term stewardship.
Solving Problems Through Science And Technology
Our investments in science and technology are providing the
scientific knowledge and new technologies necessary to help us reduce
the cost and time frame of the complex-wide cleanup effort, and enable
us to tackle cleanup problems that had no effective solutions. Our
science and technology program has made a significant impact on how we
conduct our cleanup operations. Over 75 percent of the approximately
250 innovative solutions made available for use over the past 10 years
are making real on-the-ground contributions. For instance:
Site characterization represents a large portion of the
cost for environmental restoration activities. We now have very
sophisticated, safe methods to identify, characterize, quantify and
monitor contamination.
New remotely operated machines now exist to perform work
in conditions that are too hazardous for humans, such as inside
radioactive waste tanks.
Among the new technologies making a difference is a
process that uses a concentrated caustic solution to dissolve and
remove large quantities of unwanted nonradioactive elements in the
sludge, thereby decreasing waste volume (Enhanced Sludge Washing). This
process has been selected as the technology to be used to pretreat
Hanford tank sludges where it is expected to avoid $4.8 billion in
costs compared to other technology choices.
An in-ground ``wall'' of iron filings (Permeable Reactive
Treatment Wall) has been installed at the Kansas City Plant and
Monticello Uranium Mill Site to remove contaminants from groundwater as
the water passes through the ``wall.'' This eliminates the need for a
more costly ``pump and treat'' system.
A third Passive Reactive Barrier is in place in the Solar
Ponds at Rocky Flats to destroy nitrates and remove uranium from
groundwater. Other reactive barriers deployed at Rocky Flats have been
designed to destroy chlorinated solvents and capture radionuclides.
Optimized use of the existing re-injection well network at
the Fernald site in Ohio will enable the site to accelerate groundwater
remediation.
We are also pleased with the progress of our EM Science Program
(EMSP), which is conducted in partnership with DOE's Office of Science.
Since its inception in fiscal year 1996, EMSP has invested over $224
million in support of 274 research projects. Our open, competitive
approach has ensured the highest caliber of research involving 90
universities, 13 national laboratories, and 22 other governmental and
private laboratories. Research is being conducted in 34 states and the
District of Columbia, two Canadian provinces, Australia, Russia, the
United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic. Our efforts are already
providing some encouraging results. For instance, a high-level waste
research project, being led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory,
focuses on determining the effect of radiation on the stability of
glasses and ceramics at an atomic, microscopic and macroscopic level.
Because these materials are an integral part of the planning for the
final waste forms of a number of DOE waste streams, an understanding of
how radioactive materials influence their long-term stability is
critical in material selection.
The increasing number of deployments of new technologies to solve
real cleanup problems demonstrates that the field is recognizing their
value. Preliminary data, now being verified, indicate that during
fiscal year 1999, DOE sites used innovative technologies 218 times in
cleanup activities, 129 of which were first uses by the site. Of these
deployments, 166 were science and technology-sponsored technologies.
This is a definite and dramatic improvement over previous years. Since
the inception of this program, we have seen nearly 450 deployments at
DOE sites of 194 new technologies that were sponsored by EM's science
and technology program. The accelerated site technology deployment
effort initiated in FY 1998 has contributed to these increased
deployments. A total of 47 projects have been initiated that involve a
total of 92 technologies.
To help ensure that this upward deployment trend continues, the
Department is working with our site contractors to provide better
incentives to use new technologies. Contract incentives, coupled with
the integration of our technology developers and users, will ensure
that the new technology we are providing will accomplish our cleanup
goals at less cost, faster and safely.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you very much.
Brigadier General, welcome and please make your statement
if you wish.
STATEMENT OF BRIG. GEN. THOMAS F. GIOCONDA
General Gioconda. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of
the Task Force. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you
about the National Ignition Facility. NIF will be a key
component of the stockpile stewardship program to maintain a
safe, secure and reliable nuclear weapon stockpile indefinitely
without underground nuclear testing.
Before I talk about the project corrective actions taken
since NIF cost and schedule problems were identified last
August, and the process by which we will provide a revised
final baseline for the project by mid-September 2000, I would
like to put NIF in context for you.
The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory is an essential element in the stockpile
stewardship program for three reasons. First, it is the only
facility that will allow direct experimental study of issues
that affect the aging stockpile in temperature and pressure
regimes approaching those that occur in nuclear weapons.
Second, it will play a major role of providing the
underlying science needed to validate the state-of-the-art
nuclear weapons simulation codes under development by the
Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative, or ASCI.
Third, NIF's unique scientific challenges, including the
demonstration of ignition in the laboratory, will serve to
attract, train and retain the outstanding technical talent
required for success of the stockpile stewardship program over
time. It is not simply for today that we have to think about
what NIF will bring to the stockpile stewardship program. It is
for 10, 20 or more years down the road that we have to think
about NIF now, plan for what NIF can do now, and prepare for
the beneficial use of information that will only be available
from NIF.
We in Defense Programs had asked for a back to basics
reaffirmation of the role of NIF in stockpile stewardship. We
need a successful NIF which will contribute to the maintenance
of our nuclear weapons stockpile. The directors of all three
weapons laboratories concurred in a white paper on this subject
that I offered to committee staff prior to this hearing. But
what you want to know today is where are we with NIF. The NIF
building, representing an investment of approximately $250
million, is about 90 percent complete and remains on cost and
on schedule. The 33 feet in diameter, 150 ton aluminum target
chamber critical for NIF experiments is installed in the
building. The optics assembly building where final precision
cleaning of the optical components will be accomplished and a
central plant and its cooling towers have been completed and
turned over to the laboratory for operation.
NIF will be 60 times more powerful than its state-of-the-
art predecessor laser system, called NOVA, but at just one-
sixth the cost of the unit of energy generated. This advance in
capability is made possible by six major breakthroughs in
technology which the benefit laser technology in the future:
Faster and less expensive laser glass production, large
aperture optical switches, stable high gain preamplifiers,
servo controlled large aperture deformable mirrors, and large
rapid growth frequency conversion crystals and long life final
stage optics.
The one remaining technical challenge that I have mentioned
above is the demonstration of long life final stage optics that
can withstand exposure to high energy levels associated with
operating the laser at the required ultraviolet wavelength. We
are making good progress here. The issue is one of economics.
How often the final stage optics in the system need to be
refurbished or replaced directly does affect cost.
Research is progressing to meet this challenge and we
expect it will be completed in time to fulfill the needs of
stockpile stewardship. Integration, schedule and cost problems
associated with the construction of NIF were identified to me
in late August, actually 3 days after I took over as the Acting
Defense Programs DP-1. On September 3, 1999, the Secretary of
Energy announced a series of actions to address problems before
we proceed any further with NIF at my recommendation. They
involve finding out what went wrong, reviewing management
actions that led to the problems, and the development of a path
forward in which the Secretary would have confidence again.
While the nature and magnitude of the problems had not yet
been identified at that time, Lawrence Livermore management had
concluded that they were outside the project's ability to
handle without a baseline change at the acquisition executive
level. I immediately tasked cognizant DP line managers with
investigating NIF problems so I could determine appropriate
course of action.
Following in-depth consultations between Defense Programs
and Livermore, we concluded that there were several issues that
had to be addressed. First was problems with project
management, as you had mentioned, in the history of the
program. Delays in completing the design were creating cost and
schedule problems, inadequacy of the total original
contingency, especially that associated with clean assembly
requirements for a laser of this magnitude, and baseline cost
and schedule estimates for assembly and installation of the
laser beam path infrastructure were inadequate.
These issues, taken together with the perception that the
project had waited too long before notifying DOE management
about them, helped form the basis of the Secretary's six-point
plan to bring NIF back to a more realistic path forward to
completion. A first critical element of baseline strategy was
to review the actual mission of NIF before we began. Three
reviews were conducted over the past 9 months to look closely
at the NIF mission: The Department's 30-day review, a review of
NIF programs by committee, Target Physics Review Subcommittee,
and a Department of Energy report in classified and
unclassified white papers, as I mentioned, signed off by the
three laboratory directors.
These reviews affirm the importance of NIF to the stockpile
stewardship program. At the Secretary's direction, an
independent task force was formed by the Secretary of Energy
Advisory Panel to review options to complete the project and to
recommend the best technical course of action. The overall
conclusion in the interim report to this SEAB stated the task
force has not uncovered any technical or managerial obstacles
that would in principle prevent the completion of the NIF laser
system. Nevertheless, serious challenges and hurdles remain.
The NIF task force believes, however, that with appropriate
corrective action, a strong management team, additional funds,
and extension of the schedule and recognition that NIF is at
its core a research and development project, the laser system
can be completed.
The task force has concluded this evaluation and will
submit its final report to the Secretary this month or in early
August. This report will also become part of the final
baseline. The Secretary is committed to NIF and an interim
baseline was submitted to Congress on June 1, 2000. The final
baseline will be reviewed and evaluated in August and will be
submitted to the Congress by mid-September. I have been
monitoring the project's progress in preparing the new baseline
proposal very closely, and all of those involved are very aware
that the rebaselining schedule must not slip.
To date, the project is meeting all the milestones, interim
milestones, established for this baseline effort--for this
rebaseline effort. Continued congressional support in the NIF
project as a key element of stockpile stewardship remains
essential. I believe the progress currently in place will
enable DOE to deliver such a baseline by mid-September as
promised by the Secretary.
You no doubt will ask what changes have been made so you
could have confidence in that effort. Line and project
management at DOE and Lawrence Livermore have been restructured
and have demonstrated over the last 6 months that they are
capable of managing a project of this scope.
The NIF project method of execution is being changed to
address the increased complexity of this state-of-the-art
system and associated cleanliness problems in assembling and
installing the laser and target infrastructure. For example,
assembly and installation of the beam path will now be managed
and performed by an industrial partner and industrial
subcontractors with proven records of constructing similar
complex facilities.
Changes to clearly define line management, which you also
mentioned in your opening statement, apart from the staff
support functions required to complete the project
successfully, have been made. Line management responsibility
flows now from the Secretary through the Administrator of the
NNSA, his Deputy for Defense Programs, which temporarily is me,
to the Director, Office of NIF that reports directly to me. The
line responsibility then continues directly to the Director of
Livermore to the Livermore Lab NIF project. Everyone else is
staff in that function. That line is directly accountable up
the line to the Secretary.
The project management team at Livermore has demonstrated
over the last 6 months that it is capable of managing this
project with the development of the rebaselining and regaining
the confidence of the Department. In particular, it is engaged
in utilizing industrial experts with relevant experience to
both review and participate in the project. In developing a
rebase--revising the baseline we took the time to examine
options ranking from completion of the NIF in the shortest
possible time to schedules that would stretch the completion
and funding over a much longer time. The quickest completion
project was also the most costly. Plus it would unbalance the
stockpile stewardship program which I have overall
responsibility for.
The stretched out schedule options range from a maximum
increase of 150 million in fiscal year 2001 to no increase in
that particular year. We knew that these options were likely to
result in further schedule delays and increased total project
costs, but we needed to understand if they could lead to a
completed NIF that would support our critical stockpile
stewardship RAM.
On May 3, 2000, the Secretary selected the path forward for
NIF with completion of possible--using the possible options I
mentioned. The Energy Systems Acquisition Advisory Board
proposed further refinements after looking at that path. The
new guidance directed Lawrence Livermore lab to develop a
detail project execution plan cost estimate and a cost profile
that would complete a full capability NIF. To maintain a
balanced stockpile stewardship program, funding was limited to
no more than 95 million over the original request in 2001, no
more than 150 million over the original request in 2002 and
2003, no more than 140 million in 2004, 130 million in fiscal
year 2005 and a declining profile thereafter.
The allocation of funding to meet the fiscal year 2001 need
of 95 million has been requested in the fiscal year 2001 budget
amendment that is before you on June 27th this year. Successful
completion of NIF with this funding profile will deliver first
light or first operation of NIF lasers at the end of 2001, 3
years later than the original schedule, and full NIF capability
in late 2008, 4 years later than the original schedule. At the
time of full deployment the NIF staff will already have
completed 1400 to 1600 shots, beginning to acquire the data in
support of the stockpile stewardship program, which we look
forward to.
The preliminary estimate----
Mr. Radanovich. Mr. Gioconda, pardon me, we do have a vote
up on the board. I am going to have to run off and vote.
Hopefully we can keep this going.
General Gioconda. One page and I am done.
Mr. Radanovich. Go for it.
General Gioconda. The preliminary estimate and total
project costs for the option presented to NNSA is 2.12 billion
with the related cost of approximately 1.14 billion in NIF
readiness and technological base and facilities for
approximately 3.26 billion through project completion. These
estimates could be adjusted as a result of the detail planning
and review and validation of the baseline and we are doing that
right now.
In August, Defense Programs will conduct a detailed cost
and schedule and scope review of the rebaselining plan, as
recommended by the SEAB task force. Ms. Cathy Carlson, Manager
of Nevada Operations, will chair this review, and the Deputy
Chair will be Mr. Dan Lehman of the Office of Science, asking
the rest of DOE to take a look at it. Burns & Rowe will conduct
an independent cost review as part of this process. The
combined review will give the Department a high level of
confidence that the proposed baseline can be successfully
executed as planned and will be formed in time to present the
final baseline plan for approval prior to delivering the
certified baseline to Congress in mid-September.
Mr. Chairman, with that overview I will be happy to answer
any of the panel's questions.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you very much. As you may have heard
the bells, we have got votes coming on. It is one vote. We will
be back. We will shortly have three votes after that. So we
will try to get your questions in and get the testimony of the
GAO in between things. So we will be winging it from here. If
Mr. Gutknecht comes back before I have a chance to get back
here, I will have him resume the hearing. So begging your
indulgence, we will do a quick recess and we will be back here
shortly.
Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you. We will go back into session. We
do have another three votes coming up shortly, so I apologize.
We are going to get through this just as much as we can. What
I'd like to do is ask one question on each side and then invite
the next panel up to give their testimony as well. So if we can
start with the Savannah ITP project, Ms. Huntoon, please tell
me who made the decision to cancel the ITP project and what
information led to this decision that was different from the
information presented in the past?
Dr. Huntoon. Well, Mr. Chairman, the ITP project, as you
probably know, began in the '80s, when the need to deal with
this particular waste was identified. The technology that was
put in place utilizing the ITP was canceled because of safety
and production concerns with benzene. The Department, namely
Environmental Management and Savannah River management, and
Westinghouse all made the decision at varying times, within a
few months of each other I think, to cancel it. The Secretary
made the decision that the contractor involved would not
continue managing the project. The decisions came after we had
reviews from the National Academy of Sciences, as well as our
own internal review process, that led us to conclude that we
were not going to reach our goal with that technology.
Mr. Radanovich. All right. Thank you. Regarding Paducah,
GAO says that Drum Mountain is one of the main sources of the
serious groundwater contamination problems at that site.
Removal began after the press accounts about the potential
hazards to the workers because of Drum Mountain. What was the
schedule for removing Drum Mountain before the press accounts
and what changed about the safety threat that Drum Mountain
presented to the public in the aftermath of press accounts that
led to the accelerated schedule to remove it?
Dr. Huntoon. Well, I am not exactly familiar with the GAO's
report wording on that issue, but let me tell you a little bit
about the way we have undertaken the work at Paducah. For a
number of years we have been investigating the problems down
there dealing with the groundwater issues, dealing with the
regulators on prioritizing the work. Drum Mountain certainly is
a very visible eyesore, as the pictures all indicate. These are
my pictures over here I wanted to show you, because that is us
taking down Drum Mountain. I wanted to let you know that has
begun.
The increased emphasis came because we had some increased
funding due to the visibility of the project. Drum Mountain
wasn't the single biggest risk down there to people or the
environment. Some of the groundwater issues are greater risks
and certainly some of the contamination in the lagoons and
streams are bigger risks. We are, of course, taking care of
those too. Numerous studies had to be done to identify where
these plumes were traveling and where they were coming from in
the subsurface; that has required a lot of emphasis.
But, I do want to emphasize to you that the Commonwealth of
Kentucky, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the
Department of Energy have together deliberated on the
prioritization of the work at Paducah. We were able to add work
because of the increased funding, thanks to you all, and
hopefully we will add more work next year if we can get the
more funding to support that. Over the past 4 years, Paducah
has not received the money that we have requested in our budget
for Paducah, and that has affected our ability to take care of
some of these problems as rapidly as we would have liked.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you very much.
General Gioconda, what permanent changes with regard to
reforms and safeguards have you made for a transient
administration so that next year we will not be here discussing
a revised time line with unforeseen costs with regard to the
NIF facility.
General Gioconda. What we have done to regain confidence,
is get a management team in place that we have confidence in,
so you could have confidence in that management team. And what
we did is allowed that management team to be successful by
cleaning up the lines of communication, cleaning up the line
accountability so the whole organizational structure is cleaned
up.
Second thing that we have done is we have looked at the
complexity of the project realizing what is world class within
the laboratory, is the technical side of it, which they did
magnificently. That is getting lost in this discussion. There
are a lot of things that the laboratory has done very, very
well--and hand over the integration, the project management
parts to world class companies that do this for a living. We
are about ready to release a contract for that ability. So they
have an industrial partner that does the world class things
that they are world class in.
The third part that we have done is we have instituted a
series of milestones and planning such that we know not at the
end or not because it is too late, but the planning is down to
the detail that the only changes have to come up through the
director, the DOE official or myself to make the changes if
something should go off, veering factor. So there is controls,
if you would, at every part of the project.
And then the last part I would tell you is that we have
also instituted in Defense Programs an ethic that had been
missing in project management, more expertise brought in this
project management, both internal training and external
expertise, not only on this project but other projects that was
missing before. We were focused so much on the technology that
the integration and project management was not the focus, and
it should have been.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you very much. And please let me
state too that for one I don't think the purpose of this
hearing is to debate the merits of the NIF program because I
think that there are a lot of other possible fusion
alternatives and such I think are just wonderful. It is mainly
the time delays and cost overrides that are of concern to this
committee.
Also, Ms. Huntoon, I wanted to give you the opportunity to
make available by testimony by the name of Mr. Magwood that is
from the Office of Nuclear Energy and would like to ask
unanimous consent for you to be able to submit that to the
record if there is no objection. We needed to do that for the
order of the business, and thank you.
[The prepared statement of William D. Magwood, IV,
follows:]
Prepared Statement of William D. Magwood, IV, Director of the Office of
Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology, U.S. Department of Energy
Mr. Chairman, and members of the Task Force, I am William D.
Magwood, IV, Director of the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear
Energy, Science and Technology. My office is responsible for the
uranium enrichment-related activities retained by the Department after
the formation of the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) in
1993. I am pleased to have the opportunity to be here today to discuss
the Department's uranium program responsibilities, and in particular,
to discuss the Department's plans to convert the inventory of depleted
uranium hexafluoride to a more stable form, and to update you on the
ongoing actions taken by my office to address the safety concerns
associated with the DOE Material Storage Areas at the Paducah gaseous
diffusion plant site.
With the privatization of Government's uranium enrichment
activities, the Department's remaining uranium enrichment-related
responsibilities fall into five primary areas: management of the lease
under which USEC Inc operates the government's enrichment facilities,
management of related facilities not leased to USEC, management of
various pre-existing liabilities, management of surplus uranium
inventories, and management of the Department's inventory of depleted
uranium hexafluoride. Today, I will focus my remarks on those aspects
of our activities that address environmental issues at the sites.
DOE Material Storage Areas Characterization and Mitigation
Our management of non-leased facilities at the two gaseous
diffusion plants is designed to ensure that buildings and grounds not
under the management of USEC are properly maintained. These activities
include completing work started by the Department before the formation
of USEC to address potential environmental hazards associated with
buildings and materials at the site. For example, we maintain a system
to collect and manage polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) inside the plants
and clean up spills of these materials when they occur.
One of the most important responsibilities retained by the
Department has been responsibility for management of certain materials
and equipment that are stored in 148 locations within the Paducah
Gaseous Diffusion Plant. These areas--referred to as DOE Material
Storage Areas (DMSAs)--are areas containing materials and equipment
retained under the management of the Department in a stable, safe
configuration, pending the final decontamination and decommissioning of
the gaseous diffusion plant. Some of the equipment stored in the DMSAs
includes spare parts and other items specially produced for use in the
gaseous diffusion process and thus, represents a unique and
irreplaceable asset to the Department and USEC.
As Dr. Michaels has testified, last summer, when concerns regarding
health and safety at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site were
raised, Secretary Richardson ordered a full investigation into what had
occurred. As part of this, a two-phase investigation was conducted at
Paducah to evaluate environment, safety and health programs in place at
Paducah since 1990, and the programs in place prior to 1990.
In October 1999, the Department issued a report on the first phase
of the investigation, which examined existing health and safety
programs. This report identified concerns associated with environmental
cleanup, the safety and health programs at the site, DOE and contractor
oversight of safety, and a specific safety concern with the manner in
which materials and equipment were stored in several of the DMSAs.
Specifically, the investigation found that of the 148 storage areas
at Paducah, the Department had insufficient records to verify that the
materials and equipment in 11 of the areas did not contain quantities
of fissile materials that might present a criticality risk under
certain conditions. Although the concern raised did not present an
imminent threat to worker safety, the investigation identified the need
to expeditiously move forward with characterization and, if needed,
remediation of the materials and equipment in those areas.
As a result, our initial actions were focused on ensuring that
interim measures were sufficient to provide adequate protection for
workers while longer term corrective actions were underway and on
determining whether there were additional DMSAs of potential concern.
Subsequently, two additional areas of concern were identified, bringing
the total to 13 DMSAs.
Since that time, the Department, in conjunction with USEC and in
close consultation with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), has
developed and is aggressively implementing a plan for characterization
and mitigation, where needed, of the 13 DMSAs. Characterization of one
of the 13 high priority DMSAs is now complete and was found not to
present a risk of inadvertent criticality. The Department expects to
complete characterization of the remaining 12 DMSAs by July 2000.
Until this work is completed, the Department has established and is
enforcing special restrictions regarding access to and work around
these DMSAs in order to ensure that employees at the site are not at
risk. At the time in which the concern was identified, interim measures
were put in place to mitigate the concern, pending completion of
corrective actions. Once the characterization program is completed, the
Department will have either eliminated these areas as a threat to
worker safety or launched a program to remediate any threats that are
discovered.
DUF6 Management and Conversion Project
A primary mission of the Department's uranium program is to manage
the inventory of the approximately 57,600 depleted uranium hexafluoride
storage cylinders located at Paducah and Portsmouth gaseous diffusion
plant sites and the former K-25 gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge's
East Tennessee Technology Park. About 1600 of these cylinders will be
received by the Department over the next 4 years. Overall, the
cylinders contain approximately 700,000 metric tons of material. The
objectives of the cylinder management program are to maintain the
cylinders in an environmentally compliant manner and to proceed with a
project to design, construct, and operate plants to chemically convert
the Department's inventory of depleted uranium into a more stable form
that would make it acceptable for reuse, if applications for the
material are found, or for disposal.
For decades, as the Department continued its uranium enrichment
program, it filled large 10- and 14- ton steel cylinders with depleted
uranium hexafluoride. This material, which results from the enrichment
of uranium for commercial nuclear fuel or defense, is relatively inert
and easy to store. It is a granular solid at normal temperatures and
the cylinders, if properly maintained, can safely contain this material
for many years without causing a hazard to workers, the public, or the
environment.
However, proper management of this inventory was neglected for many
years. As the Department produced more and more depleted uranium over
the years, it stacked the cylinders in a less than optimal manner. For
example, the Department often stored these cylinders too close together
to allow for periodic visual inspection, and some of these cylinders
were in direct contact with the moist ground, resulting in corrosion.
Over the last several years, the Department has taken positive
action to address this situation. We put in place a comprehensive
program to maintain and monitor the inventory pending its disposition.
In particular, the program performs activities such as:
annually inspecting cylinders, repairing cylinders as
required, maintaining operations procedures, and maintaining cylinder-
related information data bases, including inspection data;
relocating cylinders to permit 100 percent visual
inspection and ultrasonic inspection and procuring concrete bases on
which to place cylinders;
continuing the control of cylinder corrosion by surface
cleaning and painting; and
upgrading and maintaining the cylinder storage yards.
Management of the inventory of depleted uranium hexafluoride is
consistent with the consent agreements with the involved states, and
with Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) Recommendation 95-
1, ``Improved Safety of Cylinders Containing Depleted Uranium.'' We are
confident that this program has successfully corrected problems
associated with the storage of the Department's depleted uranium
inventory. In fact, on December 16, 1999, the DNFSB notified the
Department that the Board considers the recommendation closed, because
the Department has met all of the relevant commitments. In particular,
the Board recognized DOE's efforts to develop a ``workable and
technically justifiable cylinder management program,'' and the
Department's commitment to continuing implementation of the cylinder
management program as part of the accelerated conversion program.
The President's FY 2001 budget request provides $16 million to
maintain the cylinders, about $4 million more than was appropriated
this year. Because of funding shortfalls in previous years, this
increase in funding is needed to enable the Department to meet the
commitments made to the States and the DNFSB, and is important to the
safe and efficient management of the inventory in a manner that
protects the workers, the public and the environment. I ask for your
support for this budget request.
Even though the material is stored safely and managed effectively,
the Department recognizes that it must deal with the final disposition
of this inventory in an expeditious manner. Accordingly, and in
compliance with the intent of Public Law 105-204 passed in 1998, the
Department is proceeding with plans for a project to build and operate
conversion facilities to chemically convert the inventory into a form
better suited to both storage and ultimate disposition.
In fiscal year 1999, the Department's conversion project completed
a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on the management of the
depleted uranium hexafluoride inventory and concluded, in a Record of
Decision, that it would seek to convert the Department's inventory of
depleted uranium hexafluoride into a more stable form that would make
it acceptable for reuse if applications for the material are found or
for disposal. The Department also issued the ``Final Plan for
Conversion of Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride'' to carry out this
conversion as required by Public Law 105-204, as well as a draft
request for proposals (RFP) to find a private sector firm to design and
construct the conversion plants. The Department had planned on issuing
the final RFP around the end of 1999.
As reflected in our FY 2001 budget request, the Department has
delayed the issuance of its final RFP. During the final stages of our
preparation of the RFP last year, the Department collected comments
from and met with industrial companies interested in participating in
the conversion plant program. We found that they were almost
universally worried about how revelations of concerns about past
practices at the gaseous diffusion plant sites might impact this
project. They, and many experts inside the Department, have indicated,
that before the Department can proceed responsibly with the design and
construction of depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion plants, we
must first know with certainty whether and how much of the inventory is
contaminated with significant levels of transuranic materials.
As you know, the primary issue that arose during the last year
regarding past practices at the gaseous diffusion plants was the
concern that transuranic elements such as plutonium and neptunium
contaminated the uranium feed materials normally managed by workers at
the sites. To avoid repeating past mistakes, and to avoid placing
project schedules ahead of worker safety, the Department made the only
decision it could: to wait until we have a full assessment of the
transuranic contamination of the inventory before proceeding with the
project. To do less might endanger future workers' safety and
jeopardize the overall success of the project.To deal with this
challenge, we quickly set forward in November 1999 to define the
contamination in the depleted uranium inventory. We first hoped that we
could draw upon historical data to characterize the contamination.
Unfortunately, our review to date of available data has not yielded
sufficient information to enable us to ensure that future workers could
be adequately protected.
As a result, we began, in December 1999, a sampling program to
characterize the inventory and obtain the data required to design
plants that will get the conversion job done while protecting the
health of future plant workers. We will soon make public a detailed
plan that we will use to complete the sampling program. Once the
sampling program is complete this summer, we will gain an understanding
of the contaminants present in the cylinders such that we will be able
to release a final RFP in October 2000.
The President's FY 2001 budget requests $12 million for the
depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion project; an amount that we
plan to match with an additional $12 million from funds obtained under
the Memoranda of Agreement with USEC, bringing the total to $24 million
in fiscal year 2001. Another $12 million from the Memoranda of
Agreement is reserved for the conversion project and related
activities. This funding will keep the project on track to issue the
final RFP in October, award a contract early next year and begin design
in fiscal year 2001. This will enable the Department to meet the
requirements of Public Law 105-204. The President's FY 2001 budget
request also includes funding for five additional staff at the Paducah
and Portsmouth site offices to assist with management of conversion
activities and to help address environment, safety and health issues.
Conclusion
Mr. Chairman, let me conclude by saying that the Department remains
committed to meeting the goals and requirements of Public Law 105-204
for beginning construction of conversion facilities. I believe that the
additional time to sample the cylinders is a prudent measure to ensure
future workers protection and the ultimate success of the project. I
look forward to working closely with the Subcommittee on this important
project.
Overall, I should emphasize that the Department's strategy for our
activities at all of our sites is risk-driven. The Department's highest
priority is to address the most immediate threat to its workers and the
public. We are working to characterize and manage the areas, materials
and equipment under our control and mitigating the risk where needed.
The Department's strategy and priorities for action are being developed
in conjunction with USEC Inc, State and Federal regulators, and others
with concerns at the site, and we will work to set priorities for the
available funding each year to ensure that it is used to address the
highest risks and support our long-term objectives.
Also, I believe we are making good progress with the resolution of
the DMSA issue. We have worked very closely with USEC and the NRC to
optimize the schedule for completing the characterization work. Once
this work is completed in July, we will be able to assure our workers
and the public about the safety of these storage areas.
I appreciate your attention and would be happy to answer any
questions you have.
Mr. Radanovich. I would like to turn it over to Mr. Price
for questions. Dave.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Huntoon, General
Gioconda, thank you for your testimony, for being here today,
and for answering our questions in a forthright way. We, as you
know, are between votes here on the House floor, so I may have
to submit some questions for the record. But let me go as far
as I can with a line of questioning mainly focusing on the ITP
matter. If you want to bring any of these other cases in by way
of illustration or elaboration, please do so. My question goes
to the kind of process that you have in place or put in place
with projects of this sort, the process of oversight and
evaluation, this system for troubleshooting and catching
problems before they get out of hand. I wonder what you have
learned from that and what sorts of correctives you have made
efforts to put in place.
The GAO report on ITP states that DOE oversight teams, the
Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board, and even Westinghouse
knew quite early in the process that it was likely to go far
over budget, yet these warnings were ignored. Why did it take
DOE so long to determine that the cost of this project would be
so much higher than the original estimates? Is it a matter of
insufficient oversight or were there management problems? Are
there other explanations that would you care to offer?
Dr. Huntoon. Congressman, I believe in all honesty I could
answer yes to your question. Hindsight is wonderful. The ITP
project began in the '80s. At that time a process was
identified, the contractor made a solid effort of trying to
find the technologies that were available in the '80s to deal
with this issue. We put it on a fast track because we thought
we could do that, or the people in charge at the time thought
they could do that. They went into design and construction at
the same time they were doing research, and that is always a
very dangerous, slippery slope because then you start trying to
make things work, to engineer work, to engineer fixes as
opposed to understanding the science. It was going along, I
think, relatively well until one of the big tests showed there
was a lot of benzene there. Then we started working toward
resolving the benzene issue.
Finally, after many reviews we realized that we were not
going to be able to engineer a fix there and decided to look
for other technologies. I believe we are now on the right track
to fix this problem. Of course, we have hindsight to thank but
we also have technologies that are available today that were
not present then. We have identified--started identifying 100
and some technologies, and we narrowed them down to four that
we are studying collecting more data on. We have selected
criteria that we will use to choose the technology, and that
will be done by June of 2001.
What have we learned? We learned that we weren't paying
enough attention to managing this. We learned that perhaps we
did not have the right technical people on the government DOE
side working with the contractor, and we have changed that. We
also learned that when we have review teams come in, good
review teams from outside of the government, outside of
Department of Energy, come in and make recommendations we
should pay attention to them, and we did not in the past.
I think we have had this past year two excellent reviews,
one DOE-led review by experts across the complex looking at
this ITP. We also had a National Academy review. Those two
reviews led us to where we are today: looking at these new
technologies. We have learned, and we put in place more
discipline in project management. I added to my staff in
Washington a project management office to help each of our
sites with their projects and to identify when projects are
having problems. I don't believe we were exercising enough
oversight at headquarters. We didn't have full-up project
reviews as we are now having quarterly on our big projects.
So, we have learned a lot and we have put a lot of what we
have learned into practice. I think this is going to be a much
more successful project because of it.
Mr. Price. As I understand your answer, it goes to the
quality of management. It involves the capacities of your
staff, the technical capabilities at your disposal, and it also
involves a need for not only having outside evaluation but
taking that evaluation seriously.
Dr. Huntoon. That is right.
Mr. Price. When it comes to congressional oversight, as I
understand it, the fact that this project was funded with
operation funds rather than as a construction project did make
it more difficult for Congress to conduct effective oversight
and it did not appear as a line item in the appropriations bill
until the 1990s. I personally don't know the history of that
from the congressional side. Surely this did have something to
do with the failure of congressional oversight. Why was it
handled in this matter? How was that decision made?
Dr. Huntoon. Like you, I wasn't present for the history of
the project but I have been told that in the '80s the rules
that the deputy followed permitted experimental facilities in
support of existing facilities at various sites. This was
something that was going to work with the tank farm down at
Savannah River to get rid of that waste. I think using
operational funds was an acceptable procedure at that time to
make additions to existing facilities. That is what I have been
told, Congressman. I think the issue we ought to remember here,
though, is that the problem, the big problem, was technical and
it remains a big problem. That is why we have taken some down
time to go back and look at some new technologies and find a
better way to do it.
I don't think any amount of oversight would have foreseen
the inability of ITP to deal with the large levels of benzene
that it produced. In fact, only in the last few months have we
understood the chemical processes that led to the benzene.
Mr. Price. I understand those technical aspects, but I am
asking you to back off just a bit from that and think about the
processes that apply beyond the Savannah River case and the
political pressures that might be present. Is it possible, for
example, that the agency's reluctance to abandon this less
expensive method of waste separation was in part a political
decision or at least that it was constrained by political
factors, that perhaps the agency was reluctant to report
failure to the Congress or to dramatically revise its budget
estimates until it absolutely had to?
You know, it could be that we would have been better off
spending a bit more money earlier to make some changes rather
than what we are faced with now. Maybe independent oversight
such as that conducted by the NAS eventually would have made it
easier for DOE to justify revised budget numbers earlier. So
maybe induction of independent oversight earlier would have
saved some time and some money in getting to where we are now.
It is hard to say to what extent there was a kind of
politically constrained reluctance to face facts and to come
clean about the situation and ask for exactly what you needed,
but if you want to comment you may or the General, too, but I
do think this case does raise those sorts of issues.
Dr. Huntoon. I think I understand exactly what you are
saying. Backing away from it, it is hard for me to imagine the
climate in the '80s, when this was going on. Actually before
the environmental management office of DOE was formed this
issue was first dealt with in a production sense. I believe
that there was a strong feeling of let's get on with it and
move out. I can't accept that people were intentionally trying
not to deal with the problems. But, you may well be right.
Perhaps there was reluctance to face the problem, thinking it
could be fixed. I think each day or each month it was
prolonged, the people involved kept thinking they could
engineer a fix for this problem.
Mr. Price. Finally, let me just ask you to elaborate on the
comment you made about technically trained personnel. You say
that one of your corrective measures has been to bring on
skilled people who can understand the technical problems and
deal with these issues more adequately, maybe another instance
where spending a bit more money early on would save money later
on the Savannah River project or perhaps NIF. What about that?
What is your assessment of the extent to which personnel
shortages and a lack of the proper training entered into these
problems and to what extent has that been fixed?
Dr. Huntoon. I think it entered into the problems quite a
bit. Historically our sites were predominantly managed by M&O
contractors and a minor part of the management structure was
Department of Energy. I think we did not have the technical
personnel. I know that the Defense Board has raised this as an
issue. I think the Department has heeded these warnings and has
tried to create positions in management to oversee these
techincal contractors. I know the current management down at
Savannah River has paid a great deal of attention to having
project managers that understood the technical complexities of
what they were managing. But the problem you put your finger on
is complex. Maintaining skilled technical people and managing
these large technical projects are serious issues. It is hard
to keep these people in the government, working on these sorts
of projects.
Mr. Price. They have got lots of options in this economy.
Dr. Huntoon. Today they do.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Price, and thank you, both
of you on this panel, and you are excused.
I would like to welcome up the next panel, which consists
of one person, Ms. Gary Jones. Ms. Jones, may I ask you, since
we did get a vote call, will your opening statements be more
than, say, 5-8 minutes?
Ms. Jones. Probably about 7 minutes.
Mr. Radanovich. OK. We will be timing you. What we will do
is allow you to offer your testimony and then we will have to
recess, unfortunately, for about 3 votes. If you don't mind
waiting until we get back, we deeply appreciate it.
Ms. Jones. That would be fine, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Radanovich. Welcome. And Ms. Jones, of course, is the
Associate Director for Energy Resources and Science Issues with
the General Accounting Office. Welcome, and have at it.
STATEMENT OF GARY L. JONES, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR ENERGY,
RESOURCES, AND SCIENCE ISSUES, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE
Ms. Jones. Thank you. We are pleased to be here today to
discuss our reports on the cleanup of hazardous and radioactive
waste at Paducah, Kentucky and the high level radio waste
project at Savannah River, South Carolina. Rather than talk
about the task ahead for Paducah, I think that Dr. Huntoon did
that; what I would like to begin by showing you our picture of
Drum Mountain. And the reason for showing our picture of Drum
Mountain is because while they have begun to clean it up, I
want to note that after Drum Mountain has been cleaned up and
taken away, there is still 57,000 tons, or 88 percent of the
total amount of scrap metal on site, that will still need to be
removed. Until then contamination washes from the scrap metal
during rainstorms and the runoff carries contaminated soils and
sediments into ditches and creeks.
DOE's current plan is to spend about $1.3 billion to clean
up Paducah by 2010. However, there are a number of technical,
funding, and regulatory uncertainties that may affect DOE's
ability to complete the cleanup within the targeted cost and
schedule. Technical uncertainties include the use of
technologies that are unproven or may not be well suited to the
site condition.
For example, to treat groundwater contamination DOE plans
to install permeable treatment barriers in the aquifer at
depths of up to 120 feet. The treatment barriers are shown with
the blue lines on the map with the groundwater plume. The
technology is new and its success is uncertain because it is
untested for the specific environment found at Paducah. If
groundwater flows too quickly through the barrier and thus
spends too little time in the treatment zone, the barrier may
not have enough time to fully treat the TCE, which is a
hazardous contaminant. In that case the actions of the
barrier's treatment zone could change the TCE to vinyl
chloride, which is even more toxic.
The cleanup plan is also built on some optimistic
assumptions, such as assuming annual funding over the next 10
years that is on average three times what has been spent in the
past. Further, the State is pushing for more stringent soil
cleanup levels than DOE had planned for. If DOE receives less
funding than assumed and/or eventually adopts the more
stringent cleanup level, overall costs will grow.
The Congress and other stakeholders undoubtedly have
expected that when the current cleanup plan has been completed
the site will be clean. It will not. The plan does not include
cleaning up nearly 1 million cubic feet of contaminated waste
and scrap and 104 areas known as DOE material storage areas, or
DMSAs.
As you can see from the pictures, there are barrels of
waste, contaminated process equipment and scrap metal. Some are
stored indoors, some are stored outdoors. The plan also does
not include 16 unused buildings and structures that were
originally part of the enrichment process. Some of the DMSAs
pose a risk to the workers. DOE has announced they have
assessed 11 of these areas and found them to be safe, but that
is only about 10 percent of the 73 areas at risk.
In addition, before the site can be considered clean DOE
will need to address almost 500,000 tons of depleted uranium
stored on the site as well as decontaminate and decommission,
or D&D, the uranium enrichment plant once operations cease.
While no cost estimate has been developed for cleaning up the
DMSAs or the 16 buildings, DOE estimates that addressing the
depleted uranium and D&D may cost up to $3.4 billion.
Subsequent to our report, DOE announced an integrated
sitewide plan that will address all aspects of the site
requiring cleanup as we recommended. We look forward to this
plan as a first step in describing the full scope and cost of
the actual cleanup task at hand and expect that DOE will use
this plan to analyze on a comprehensive sitewide basis the
risks and set priorities for cleanup.
Let's turn to Savannah River. In 1983, DOE selected ITP to
separate high level waste from the 34 million gallons of liquid
waste stored at the site. DOE estimated that it would take
about 3 years and $32 million to correct the facility. In
February 1998, after about a decade of delays and spending
almost a half a billion dollars, DOE suspended the project
because it did not work safely and efficiently as designed.
Let me spend a few minutes describing some of the problems
that contributed to the failure of this project. Contractor
management and DOE oversight of the contractor was ineffective
and resulted in ITP problems not being adequately dealt with.
For example, a DOE technical review team called the Red Team
reported in 1993 that the contractor tended to react to
problems after they occurred rather than working to prevent
them in the first place. The team also found that DOE lacked
the necessary personnel for adequate oversight and as a result
DOE's guidance and responsiveness to the contractor was
limited.
Further, although DOE identified weaknesses in contractor
management in 14 of 16 evaluations of the contract over 8
years, problems continued. In addition, although DOE contractor
and GAO reports all describe the risks and problems associated
with designing and constructing the facility concurrently, DOE
pushed ahead believing that any problems could be solved later.
They were wrong. The management and oversight issues that I
have described resulted in allowing the project to continue
over 10 years, even though the cause of the technical problem
that makes the process unworkable, benzene generation, was not
understood.
As you can see from our time line, during the development
of ITP, GAO in 1992, DOE's Red Team in 1993, and a
recommendation from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
in 1996 all raised concerns about the workability of the ITP
process. After formally suspending the process in 1998, DOE
began a process to select an alternative technology. It is
studying four alternatives and plans to decide on the preferred
alternative in June 2001.
However, in the fall of 1999 in an interim report on DOE's
selection process the National Research Council made a number
of observations. They make it clear that the same problems that
the ITP project had, that I described to you this afternoon,
continue. For example, the Council found that Westinghouse
still lacked an adequate understanding of the chemistry of the
process it was developing to replace ITP. The Council had noted
that to move ahead without adequate R&D carries a high
technical risk and could result in a repeat of the ITP failure.
As a result, as Dr. Huntoon mentioned, DOE has decided further
R&D on each alternative was required to reduce the technical
uncertainty.
Dr. Huntoon also mentioned that she felt that they were on
the right road in terms of R&D. We found that the Council's
report maybe found a bump in that road. The report notes that
there was no well thought out R&D plan and that DOE and
Westinghouse, when questioned by the Council, were unable to
describe an R&D scope that would resolve outstanding issues. We
understand that an R&D plan now exists, but the lack of good
planning really seems to have cost them a year without a sound
R&D plan to move forward. The other question that comes to mind
is why did DOE have to be told by the Council that these
situations were occurring.
In summary, Mr. Chairman, the issues we have raised today
concerning these two projects illustrate the types of issues
that we have raised in the past about DOE activities. For
example, we reported to the Congress in January 1999 that DOE
has had difficulty completing large projects on time and within
budget, DOE contract management remains vulnerable to risks,
and DOE staff lacked technical and management skills. While DOE
has made improvements in all of these areas, many of the issues
are at the heart of DOE's culture as an organization and will
take time and focused management attention to change. Continued
oversight by this and other committees will continue to
spotlight the progress made and challenges ahead to ensure that
DOE continues to improve.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Gary L. Jones follows:]
Prepared Statement of Gary L. Jones, Associate Director, Energy,
Resources, and Science Issues, Resources, Community, and Economic
Development Division, U.S. Government Accounting Office
Mr. Chairman and members of the Task Force, we are pleased to be
here today to discuss management, oversight, and other challenges that
the Department of Energy (DOE) faces in its efforts to clean up
radioactive and hazardous materials at the Paducah, Kentucky, uranium
enrichment site and to remove high-level radioactive waste from more
than 34 million gallons of liquid waste stored at its Savannah River,
South Carolina, site. DOE faces a number of challenges and
uncertainties at Paducah as it attempts to address about 10 billion
gallons of groundwater contaminated with radioactive and hazardous
materials, contaminated surface water that is in creeks and ditches and
leaves the site, contamination in soils that may be spread by rain,
tons of buried waste, and the equivalent of about 52,000 barrels of
waste stored on the site. From 1988 though 1999, DOE spent about $388
million on the Paducah site's cleanup and plans to spend another $1.3
billion over the next 10 years. At Savannah River, we focused on
identifying the factors that caused delays and cost growth of the in-
tank precipitation (ITP) project. In 1983, DOE selected the ITP process
to remove high-level waste from the 49 underground tanks. DOE estimated
that the construction of the ITP facility would be completed in 1988 at
a cost of $32 million. After years of delay and spending about a half
billion dollars, in February 1998, DOE suspended the project because it
would not work safely and efficiently as designed--large amounts of
explosive, toxic benzene gas were produced by the process. Soon after
the suspension, DOE began a process to find an alternative technology
to replace the ITP project. The Department has narrowed the selection
to four technologies.
Our testimony today is based on our April 28, 2000, report on the
Paducah cleanup and our April 30, 1999, report on the ITP project at
the Savannah River Site.\1\ Our testimony describes the challenges and
uncertainties facing DOE in cleaning up the Paducah site and the
effectiveness of DOE's oversight and management of the ITP project. Our
summary follows:
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\1\ See ``Nuclear Waste Cleanup: DOE's Paducah Plan Faces
Uncertainties and Excludes Costly Cleanup Activities'' (GAO/RCED-00-96,
Apr. 28, 2000) and Nuclear Waste: Process to Remove Radioactive Waste
From Savannah River Tanks Fails to Work (GAO/RCED-99-69, Apr. 30,
1999).
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DOE expects to complete the cleanup of the Paducah site by
2010 at a cost of about $1.3 billion. However, numerous technical,
funding, and regulatory uncertainties present challenges to DOE's
ability to complete the cleanup within this time frame and cost
estimate. For example, technical uncertainties include the planned use
of technologies that are unproven or perhaps not well suited to the
site's conditions. If they do not work as planned, or at all, costs
will increase. In addition, even when the planned cleanup has been
carried out, billions of dollars and many years will be needed to
address areas at the Paducah site that are not in the cleanup plan. For
example, the plan does not include cleaning up nearly 1 million cubic
feet of waste and scrap in areas known as DOE Material Storage Areas
(DMSA) and 16 unused and inactive buildings and structures. Some of the
waste and scrap material pose a risk of an uncontrolled nuclear
reaction that could threaten worker safety.\2\ By not including these
areas in the plan, the Paducah cleanup managers cannot assess risk or
plan cleanup on a comprehensive, sitewide basis. Therefore, the picture
of the cleanup task at hand is distorted.
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\2\ In this case, an uncontrolled nuclear reaction could produce a
burst of radiation that generally lasts several hours; it is, however,
a localized event that is not expected to result in an explosion or
release of radioactivity into the atmosphere.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A number of management and oversight problems caused DOE
and Westinghouse Savannah River Corporation (Westinghouse), DOE's
contractor, to spend almost a half billion dollars and to take about a
decade before deciding that the ITP process would not work safely and
efficiently as designed. For example, in 1993, a technical review team
reported that the contractor tended to react to problems after they
occurred, rather than working to prevent them in the first place. The
team also found that DOE lacked the necessary personnel for adequate
oversight. Moreover, DOE and the contractor encountered delays in
starting up the ITP facility because they had begun construction before
the design of the process was completed. DOE and the contractor also
did not adequately understand the cause of the technical problems--such
as a lack of understanding of the chemistry involved in the ITP
process--that made the process unworkable. Some of the problems that
led to the ITP failure may have continued in DOE's efforts to find an
alternative. According to an October 1999 National Research Council
report, a lack of understanding of the chemistry involved in the
process continues, and the contractor appears to be focusing on an
engineering solution on the basis of untested assumptions.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ See ``Interim Report--Committee on Cesium Processing
Alternatives for High-Level Waste at the Savannah River Site,''
Committee on Cesium Processing Alternatives for High-Level Waste at the
Savannah River Site, National Research Council (Oct. 14, 1999). The
National Research Council, as the principal operating agency of the
National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering,
provides the government, public, and scientific and engineering
communities with services and research.
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Challenges and Uncertainties Face DOE in Paducah's Cleanup
In 1988, radioactive contamination was found in the drinking water
wells of residences near the Federal Government's uranium enrichment
plant in Paducah, Kentucky.\4\ In response, DOE began a cleanup program
to identify and remove contamination in the groundwater, surface water,
and soils located within and outside the plant's boundaries. Sources of
the hazardous chemical and radioactive contamination included spills,
leaks from contaminated buildings, buried waste, scrap yards, and waste
lagoons. From 1988 though 1999, DOE spent about $388 million on cleanup
efforts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ A private company, the United States Enrichment Corporation,
operates the plant today under lease and produces enriched uranium for
nuclear power plants.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOE's plan for cleaning up the site includes activities, costs, and
schedule that are estimated to cost about $1.3 billion from fiscal year
2000 through fiscal year 2010. We identified a number of challenges to
accomplishing the current cleanup plan, including uncertainty about the
nature and extent of contamination, technical risks, and optimistic
assumptions about funding and regulatory approvals. In addition, even
when the cleanup identified in the plan is complete, billions of
dollars and many years will be required to address items not included
in the cleanup plan--such as about 1 million cubic feet of waste and
scrap material in DOE Material Storage Areas.
DOE Plans to Clean Up Six Major Categories By 2010 at a Cost of About
$1.3 billion
DOE's January 26, 2000, Paducah cleanup plan focuses on six major
categories of cleanup. The first category is groundwater contamination.
About 10 billion gallons of groundwater contaminated with radioactive
and hazardous materials are flowing toward the Ohio River. For example,
trichloroethene (used as a degreaser and called TCE) has been found in
the groundwater at levels of up to 700,000 parts per billion; far in
excess of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) drinking water
standard of 5 parts per billion. As interim measures, DOE has connected
nearby residences to municipal drinking water and constructed a system
to pump some of the contaminated water out and treat it.
The second category is surface water contamination in surrounding
creeks and ditches. One of the main sources of this contamination is
the thousands of tons of contaminated scrap metal stored at the plant.
During rainstorms, contamination washes from the scrap metal, and the
runoff carries contaminated soils and sediments into the ditches and
creeks. By the end of 2000, DOE plans to have removed that portion of
the contaminated scrap metal called ``Drum Mountain,'' which is made up
of about 8,000 tons of crushed drums that contained depleted uranium.
But, after the crushed drums are removed, 57,000 tons, or 88 percent,
of the total amount of scrap metal on site will still have to be
removed. DOE also plans to dredge ditches and creeks and install basins
to catch the contaminated water so it can be treated.
Under the third category, DOE has identified 72 areas with
contaminated surface soils and has taken interim measures, such as
installing erosion control fences, to prevent further migration of the
contamination; the Department plans to excavate and dispose of about
35,000 cubic yards of soil. The fourth category includes 12 waste
burial grounds containing a variety of radioactive and hazardous
contaminants, including arsenic, beryllium, and polychlorinated
biphenyls (PCBs). DOE is planning to excavate four or five of these
areas and install a protective cover, or cap, over the remaining areas.
The fifth category is the equivalent of 52,000 barrels of hazardous and
low-level radioactive waste stored in various locations on-site--almost
25 percent of the barrels are stored outdoors and are deteriorating.
Before it can ship this waste offsite, DOE must determine the nature
and extent of the waste's contamination and repack most of the barrels
to make them suitable for disposal. Under the sixth and last category,
two buildings that were used in the uranium enrichment process until
1977, which are heavily contaminated, will be decontaminated and
removed.
DOE Faces Challenges in Achieving Its Paducah Cleanup Plan
DOE faces many challenges to completing its cleanup within planned
costs and schedules. Uncertainties about the extent, source, and nature
of contamination yet to be cleaned up could increase cleanup costs. For
example, the full extent of contamination in the surface water and
soils within and outside the plant boundaries remains to be determined
and could affect cleanup strategies and costs. While Kentucky prefers
the installation of eight or nine sedimentation basins as part of the
surface water cleanup, DOE has only budgeted for four.
Furthermore, uncertainties exist about the feasibility of available
cleanup technologies. Some of the technologies are new, and others
remain untested for the specific environment found at Paducah. For
example, EPA officials told us that difficulties with steam injection--
which DOE plans to use to treat the source of groundwater
contamination--were encountered at another site, and there are
questions about whether the technology will work at Paducah because of
the site's complex geologic formation. DOE's ability to treat the
contaminated groundwater is also uncertain. DOE plans to install about
4,000 feet of permeable treatment barriers across the paths of the
highest concentrations of contamination. Installing the barriers
involves injecting a gelatinous, gummy substance containing iron
filings into the aquifer at depths of about 120 feet. The technology is
quite new, and the potential for its success at Paducah is uncertain.
For example, if groundwater flows too quickly through the barrier and
thus spends too little time in the treatment zone, the barrier may not
have enough time to fully treat the TCE. In that case, the actions of
the barrier's treatment zone could change the TCE to vinyl chloride,
which is even more toxic.
In addition to the technical uncertainties, the cleanup plan is
built on some optimistic financial assumptions. The plan assumes that
Federal funding for cleanup at Paducah will increase to an average of
$124 million annually over the next decade--ranging from $78 million in
2001 to a high of $307 million in 2008--compared with the annual
average funding of $43 million over the last 7 years.
The plan also includes optimistic assumptions about quickly
reaching agreement with the regulators on cleanup levels, strategies,
and priorities. In the past, regulators have disagreed with some of
DOE's proposed approaches. For example, Kentucky objected to DOE's
cleanup of PCBs in soils to EPA's standard of 25 parts per million for
unoccupied space, saying that it wanted the soil cleaned up to 1 part
per million. The more stringent EPA standard would allow for industrial
or residential use. The resolution of this issue has been deferred
until DOE submits its plans for surface water cleanup. If DOE receives
less funding than assumed and/or eventually adopts a more stringent
cleanup level than currently planned, total costs to complete the
overall cleanup will grow.
DOE's Cleanup Plan for Paducah Does Not Address All Areas That Require
Cleanup
Even when DOE completes the cleanup that it has planned, billions
of dollars and many years will be needed to address areas at the
Paducah site that are not included in the cleanup plan because they
fall under the purview of a different departmental program.\5\ The plan
excludes nearly a million cubic feet of waste and scrap contained in
148 DMSAs located across the site. Materials in these areas include
thousands of barrels of low-level radioactive waste, PCB waste, and
asbestos waste; contaminated equipment; various items and containers
whose contents are unknown; and scrap metal. DOE has not yet determined
the exact nature and extent of contamination in these areas, but it has
identified 73 of them as posing a risk of an uncontrolled nuclear
reaction. In this case, such a reaction might produce a burst of
radiation that generally lasts several hours but is not expected to
result in an explosion or release of radioactivity into the atmosphere.
At the time of our report, DOE officials said they planned to pay
nearly $5 million to conduct a nuclear criticality safety review on the
10 DMSAs posing the highest risk.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ The cleanup program is the responsibility of DOE's Office of
Environmental Management, while the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science,
and Technology is responsible for maintaining the site's
infrastructure.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cleanup plan also does not address 16 unused buildings and
structures that were originally used as part of the enrichment process.
These buildings and structures, as well as the DMSAs, are excluded from
the plan not because they require no action but because they fall under
a different departmental program--the Office of Nuclear Energy,
Science, and Technology. DOE officials told us that they are hesitant
to transfer any more areas to the Office of Environmental Management,
the office responsible for cleanup, because this office already has a
large workload and funding for cleanup is limited.
In addition, before the site can be considered clean, DOE will need
to address almost 500,000 tons of depleted uranium stored on site as
well as decontaminate and decommission the uranium enrichment plant,
when it ceases operation. DOE estimates that it may cost between $1.8
billion and $2.4 billion to convert the depleted uranium to a more
stable form and remove it from the site. In addition, according to
DOE's January 1998 estimate, another $1 billion would be needed for
final decontamination and decommissioning activities when the United
States Enrichment Corporation ceases operations at Paducah and the
plant is returned to DOE.
To ensure that cleanup risks and priorities are established on a
comprehensive, sitewide basis and that a more comprehensive picture of
the cleanup is presented to the Congress, our April report recommended
that the Secretary of Energy transfer the responsibility for the DMSAs
and the unused buildings and structures from the Office of Nuclear
Energy to the Office of Environmental Management. We also recommended
that DOE address in the cleanup plan, regardless of the current
organizational responsibility, any and all materials at the site that
are potential health hazards and reexamine the sitewide contamination
risks and cleanup priorities, costs, and schedules. In response to our
recommendations, DOE officials announced, in July 2000, that it will
prepare an integrated sitewide plan that will address all aspects of
the site requiring cleanup. However, it has not transferred the
responsibility for these areas to the Office of Environmental
Management. Without doing so, it will be more difficult to establish
priorities and conduct the cleanup in a comprehensive manner.
ITP Fails To Work After 10 Years and a Half Billion Dollars
The ITP process was selected in 1983 as the preferred method for
separating high-level waste from the 34 million gallons of liquid waste
stored at the Savannah River site--a step considered necessary to
effectively handle this large quantity of waste. In 1985, DOE estimated
that it would take about 3 years and $32 million to construct the ITP
facility. After a number of delays, the ITP facility was started up in
1995, but safety concerns about the amount of explosive, toxic benzene
gas that the facility generated halted start-up operations. In February
1998, after about a decade of delays and spending almost a half billion
dollars, DOE suspended the project because it did not work as safely
and efficiently as designed. DOE then directed that its contractor
begin a process to identify and select an alternative technology.
Although originally expected to be completed in the fall of 1999, that
selection process continues today with additional research and
evaluations being made on four alternatives. DOE's plan calls for
making a decision on the preferred alternative in June 2001.
A number of factors combined to cause DOE and Westinghouse to spend
almost a half billion dollars and take about a decade to decide that
the ITP process would not work as safely and efficiently as designed.
First, because of ineffective DOE and contractor management and
oversight during the 1980s and early 1990s, ITP problems were not being
adequately dealt with. In addition, DOE and the contractor experienced
difficulty managing the project's start-up operations. Furthermore,
there was limited oversight and visibility of the project because of
the budgetary treatment it received. Lastly, the ITP process and the
generation of toxic, explosive benzene were not fully understood.
Weaknesses Existed in Contractors' Management and DOE's Oversight
The principal factors contributing to the delays and increased
costs of the project were ineffective management and oversight by DOE
and its operating contractors. A number of these problems were noted in
1993 by a DOE technical review team (referred to as the Red Team) that
examined the project \6\ as well as in semiannual evaluations of
contractor performance.
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\6\ See ``Independent Technical Review of In-Tank Precipitation
(ITP) at the Savannah River Site,'' DOE Office of Environmental
Restoration and Waste Management (June 1993).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Red Team reported that the contractor tended to use ``reactive,
discovery management'' to react to problems after they occurred, rather
than working to prevent problems in the first place. It found that this
approach resulted in a high potential for inadequate process
development, lengthening the project, and increasing its costs. The Red
Team also reported that DOE oversight and support functions at the
Savannah River site were not adequate because DOE lacked the necessary
personnel. As a result, DOE's guidance and responsiveness to
Westinghouse, the site contractor, were limited. Finally, the team
found that DOE's organizational responsibilities appeared unclear and
the DOE staff were forced to respond in a reactive manner to emerging
issues.
Contractor management problems also surfaced repeatedly in the
semiannual evaluations DOE performed to assess Westinghouse's
eligibility for award fees. We found that in 14 of the 16 evaluations
performed from April 1990 through March 1998, DOE identified weaknesses
needing attention in contractor management or ITP planning activities.
For example, a 1992 evaluation stated that performance against planned
work was not adequately monitored and that technical documents had
deficiencies indicating a lack of management attention. A 1995
evaluation noted that insufficient resources had been assigned to meet
the project schedule. In addition, a 1996 evaluation noted that while
safety concerns about benzene gas from the ITP process was a key issue,
the implementation of a program to resolve the benzene issue had been
fragmented and no single manager had been given overall responsibility
for resolving it.
Managing the Project's Start-up Posed Difficulties
The ITP project was managed on a fast-track schedule--concurrent
design and construction--with an emphasis on pushing ahead in the
belief that the problems could be solved later. Rather than expediting
the ITP project, this approach caused a series of delays that prolonged
the project for 10 years while costs mounted. A number of studies in
the early 1990s noted this problem, as the following examples show.
A 1992 Westinghouse management assessment concluded that a
number of start-up activities were begun prematurely--before the
foundation for an efficient program was in place.\7\ The key weaknesses
observed included a lack of a technical baseline and a potential for
inconsistencies among the project's various activities because they
were not completely integrated.
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\7\ See ``Management Assessment: In-Tank Precipitation Project,''
Westinghouse Savannah River Company (Mar. 1992).
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Our 1992 report on Savannah River's Defense Waste
Processing Facility, which included the ITP project, cited the fast-
track management method being used as contributing to the project's
cost growth. We also stated that there was a risk associated with that
method, especially when used with unique and complex facilities. We
recommended that an assessment comparing ITP with an alternative
technology be made.\8\
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\8\ See ``Nuclear Waste: Defense Waste Processing Facility--Cost,
Schedule, and Technical Issues'' (GAO/RCED-92-183, June 17, 1992).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The 1993 Red Team report noted that the project's start-up
was not being managed as a first-of-a-kind chemical-processing system.
It stated that Westinghouse was not following the accepted chemical
engineering practice of completing process development, demonstrating
the operability of the process on a pilot scale, and assessing all
long-term impacts and requirements for sustaining the process before
beginning plant operations. The Red Team recommended that alternatives
to the ITP process be considered.
In response to our 1999 report, Westinghouse acknowledged that the
risks associated with new applications of existing technologies were
not managed well on the ITP project--that is, enough time was not built
into the schedule to allow for the kinds of technical problems that
arose. DOE Savannah River officials noted that ITP was a first-of-a-
kind process and that because of funding constraints, they were scaling
up the technology from lab tests to full-scale without the benefit of
additional test facilities. Furthermore, DOE officials said they
considered alternatives to ITP as the project progressed. DOE said it
determined that risks were inherent in ITP and the alternative
processes but that costs still favored the ITP process, so the project
proceeded. The DOE Savannah River High-Level Waste Division Director
said the Department is now attempting to manage the high-level waste
program, of which ITP is a part, using a systems engineering approach
that dictates that more testing be done up front.
Oversight and Visibility Were Limited By Budgetary Treatment
DOE paid for the ITP project with operating funds that are subject
to less oversight and visibility than capital construction funds.
Capital construction projects are subject to periodic reviews and
reports, and those costing $5 million or more are shown as line items
in the budget requests that DOE submits to the Congress.\9\ Projects
paid for with operating funds do not receive such scrutiny. DOE
officials said they used operating funds for the ITP project because,
throughout the life of the project, they had expected the technical
issues to be solved shortly, thus not warranting its conversion to a
capital construction project, which would be funded as a line item in
DOE's budget request.
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\9\ Prior to fiscal year 1997, capital funded projects costing $2
million or more were to be shown as budget line items.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is not a new issue. We raised concerns about this practice in
our 1992 report, noting that because projects associated with Savannah
River's Defense Waste Processing Facility were being funded from
operating accounts, the Congress was not receiving enough information
to fully understand the magnitude of the continuing cost increases and
delays.\10\
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\10\ See GAO/RCED-92-183, June 17, 1992.
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Inadequate Understanding of the ITP Process Extended the Project
DOE and its contractors did not completely understand the ITP
chemistry that caused excess benzene to be generated. Earlier in the
project, the Westinghouse staff at the Savannah River Site identified
the principal cause of benzene generation as the decomposition of the
chemical (sodium tetraphenylborate) that was added to the tank waste
during the ITP process to separate the high-level waste from the liquid
waste solution. The benzene was thought to become trapped in the
solution and be released with the addition of water and mixing. In
1997, after a recommendation by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety
Board, additional research into the chemistry revealed that a catalyst
or catalysts that produced large amounts of benzene were present in the
waste solution.
The contractor based its initial belief on the results of the full-
scale test conducted in 1983 and on subsequent smaller-scale tests. For
the 1983 test, sodium tetraphenylborate was added to a tank with about
500,000 gallons of waste. During the test, a good separation of high-
level waste occurred. However, a significant release of benzene was
also observed--for 6 hours, the benzene levels were higher than the
level that the instruments in the tank could register. As a result,
additional studies were conducted.
According to many DOE ITP project employees with whom we spoke, the
test in 1983 was viewed as successful and provided credibility for the
project's technology. However, an ITP engineer told us that the fact
that the benzene level went over the instrumentation scale for 6 hours
was not widely known. The test results seemed to have been forgotten
over time. For example, two ITP project managers involved with the
project since 1997 told us they were unaware of this aspect of the
test.
During the development of the ITP process, we and the Red Team
raised concerns about unresolved technical issues and the level of
understanding the ITP process, as shown in the following:
Our 1992 report raised concerns about the ITP process's
unresolved technical issues and delays and recommended that the
Secretary of Energy direct that an assessment of an alternative
technology (ion-exchange process) be prepared to determine whether DOE
should replace the ITP process.\11\
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\11\ See GAO/RCED-92-183 (June 17, 1992).
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In 1993, the Red Team noted that the chemistry of the ITP
process was not adequately understood and that the ITP process appeared
to cause more problems than it solved. These problems included a need
to control benzene emissions; increased flammability risks; increased
risk from aerosols, foams, and respirable particulates; increased
chemical reactivity of high-level waste, leading to possible
explosions; and the introduction of extremely complex organic
chemistry.
The Red Team also questioned whether the chemical used in
the ITP process--sodium tetraphenylborate--was the best way to remove
cesium from the liquid waste. It concluded that effective technologies
were available and could be implemented. It noted that if the state
environmental regulators adopted a more restrictive benzene emissions
policy, the entire high-level waste complex, as well as the Savannah
River Site itself, would be better served by a thorough reevaluation of
alternative technologies.
In response to our 1999 report, DOE Savannah River officials told
us that they considered the concerns raised but did not change their
approach for a number of reasons. In their view, in 1992 and 1993, ITP
was considered to be the best technology available for the type of
high-level waste at the Savannah River Site. In addition, they believed
that they understood the benzene generation problems and thought the
problems had been identified, evaluated, and resolved. A number of
modifications were made to the ITP facility, primarily to address the
generation of benzene and to meet the more stringent safety standards
that were adopted for all DOE facilities. Throughout this period, DOE
Savannah River officials said that they considered the ITP process to
have the lowest technical risk and the lowest cost of all the
alternatives.
DOE is Evaluating Four Alternatives to Replace ITP
Although pointed out by the Red Team, the Defense Nuclear
Facilities Safety Board, and us, the lack of understanding of the
chemistry of the ITP process may plague the selection of the
replacement for ITP. In the fall of 1999, the National Research Council
released an interim report on the alternative processes being
considered for the high-level waste at the Savannah River site.
Regarding one of the alternative technologies, called small-tank
precipitation, which basically uses the same chemical to separate the
high-level waste as the ITP process does, the report found that
Westinghouse lacked an adequate understanding of the chemistry
underlying the process responsible for benzene generation. The Council
further reported that in place of such an understanding, Westinghouse
appeared to be focusing on an engineering design solution that was
based on untested assumptions about maximum likely benzene production.
The Council believed it would be advantageous in terms of time and cost
to undertake this research and development work before the process
might be selected and deployed. The alternative--namely, to proceed
with deployment immediately and engineer around the gaps in chemistry
knowledge--carries a high technical risk and could result in a repeat
of the ITP failure. As a result of the National Research Council
report, DOE decided that further research and development on each
alternative was required to reduce technical uncertainty prior to
selecting a preferred alternative.
The National Research Council's report also suggests that
Westinghouse may have a bias for its process, which is the small-tank
precipitation alternative. The Council reported that the research and
development resource allocations have been markedly inequitable for the
four alternative processing options that DOE and the contractor are
considering. It said that this funding disparity appears to be
primarily responsible for the different levels of technical maturity of
the four processing options, independent of their likelihood of
success. The Council found in its discussions with the contractor and
DOE staff that the contractor did not appear to be serious about
pursuing research and development on any option but small-tank
precipitation. These concerns were addressed when DOE removed research
and development management responsibility from Westinghouse for the
other options in October 1999 and limited its responsibility to the
small-tank precipitation process. Although the Secretary of Energy had
announced in April 1999 that a new contractor would be sought to
continue work on separation processes at Savannah River, Westinghouse
remained responsible for research and development on all the
alternatives until October 1999.
In addition, DOE officials told us that first, DOE has developed an
action plan and project schedule that includes the steps necessary for
choosing a preferred alternative by June 2001 and designing,
constructing, and operating the facility by 2010; second, DOE is
developing selection criteria that will be used to pick the preferred
alternative, which may include such factors as technical maturity,
risk, life-cycle cost, and implementation confidence; and third, DOE is
using a technical working group to oversee the research and development
being undertaken.
In summary, Mr. Chairman, the issues we have raised today
concerning these two projects illustrate the types of issues that we
have raised in the past as part of the major performance and management
challenges at DOE. For example, we reported to the Congress in January
1999 that DOE has difficulty completing large projects on time and
within budget, that DOE contract management remains vulnerable to risk,
and that DOE's staff lack technical and management skills.\12\ These
were touched on in the examples we provided today. While DOE has made
improvements in all these areas, many of the issues are at the heart of
DOE's culture as an organization and will take time and focused
management attention to change. Continued oversight by this and other
committees will continue to spotlight the progress made and challenges
ahead to ensure that DOE continues to improve.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ See ``Major Management Challenges and Program Risks:
Department of Energy'' (GAO/OCG-99-6, Jan. 1999).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Chairman, this concludes our prepared statement. We will be
pleased to respond to any questions that you or members of the
committee may have.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you very much. I appreciate you
leaving me time to go vote as well. We will recess this hearing
and apologize. We have three votes. But I will be back just as
soon as I can. Thank you for your patience.
[Recess.]
Mr. Radanovich. We are back in session and thanks again.
Ms. Jones, I will ask a series of questions about all three
projects, and if you care to respond, I would appreciate it.
Ms. Jones. OK.
Mr. Radanovich. How would you compare the management and
oversight problems by DOE in the handling of Savannah ITP
projects compared to problems that you have reported on in the
past? How are they different from in the past?
Ms. Jones. The kinds of management problems that we saw at
Savannah River for ITP are similar to what we have seen in a
lot of other projects throughout our work at DOE. We saw lack
of technical expertise at Hanford and at other places. The fact
that you have an organizational structure that doesn't give you
clear lines of accountability, so therefore the contractors
really are not held accountable. We have seen that at Lawrence
Livermore and Hanford and a number of different sites. So they
are similar types of problems.
Mr. Radanovich. Reoccurring?
Ms. Jones. Yes, sir.
Mr. Radanovich. You said DOE has failed to respond to our
reports that highlight management weaknesses. When you look at
the changes that DOE has made at Savannah and other complexes,
do they give you confidence that we will not be here a year
from now with more unscheduled delays and finger pointing?
Ms. Jones. While DOE has made some progress in this area,
we have noted recently, let me give you two examples. Looking
at ITP, while I think the DOE witnesses told you they have made
some changes in terms of their organizational structure for the
ITP oversight, you basically have Dr. Huntoon, who is going to
be making the decisions. That is a positive thing. It is also
positive that DOE brought in the National Research Council. But
when you look at the lines of accountability, it seems to me
that it is being managed on a day-to-day basis by a technical
working group, which is four people. Who is really accountable
there? You have two laboratories involved and you have the
operations office at Savannah River who is also involved. If
something went wrong, who is accountable on a day-to-day basis?
We also did a report looking at the tank waste project at
Hanford in 1998 and talked about problems there in terms of
lack of technical skills and oversight and just this last year
an internal group saw the same kinds of problems. So, like
Savannah River, there had been no move forward to try to make a
change there.
Mr. Radanovich. In June 1999, reporting in the wake of the
Wen Ho Lee spy case, the President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board said that the board is extremely skeptical that
any reform effort no matter how well designed and effectively
applied will gain more than a toehold at DOE given its
labyrinthine management structure, its fractious and arrogant
culture and its fast-approaching reality of another transition
in DOE leadership.
Do you agree with that view? Are you confident that the
cycle of problems has been stopped?
Ms. Jones. I am not confident that the cycle has stopped.
Our past work at DOE has shown while they will react to the
situation and put a plan in place, those plans are not always
carried out. We will come back a couple of years later and see
the same kinds of things are going on. There is a culture where
there needs to be some change in terms of holding DOE employees
and contractors accountable. I am not sure any changes put in
place recently will solve that problem. The Secretary has put a
killer clause in the DOE contracts where they can take away all
of the fee, but I don't think that DOE has shown that they have
the will to do that over time. They wait until something
egregious happens and then they take it away rather than doing
it all along to direct the contractor in the right way.
Mr. Radanovich. Moving on to Savannah River, after about 10
years and $488 million, what does DOE have to show for its
efforts regarding the treatment and disposal of the high level
nuclear waste there at Savannah? Have we gotten our money's
worth?
Ms. Jones. We know that the ITP process produces a lot of
benzene. They still have a lot of R&D work to be done. The
National Research Council report states that all three of the
processes that they are looking at still require research and
development, and we think that now that there is a plan in
place, they can move forward and do the research that they need
to make a good decision.
Mr. Radanovich. DOE's own documents indicate the potential
for leaking at the tanks is real. In fact there has been a tank
leak already. What confidence do you have that the Department
is taking adequate steps to ensure the stability and safety of
the tank farm?
Ms. Jones. We haven't looked at the issue of the leaking
tanks at Savannah River, so I wouldn't be able to comment on
that.
Mr. Radanovich. What are the potential costs associated
with taking additional steps to prevent leaking if there are
additional delays in the project?
Ms. Jones. I don't know about the leaking tanks. I do know
if there is a delay in the project, you do still have high
level waste being created that they are going to have to find a
place to put it. At some point in time in the future they are
not going to have a place and they will have to use old tanks,
which have the potential for leaking and have to be
retrofitted, or build new tanks which will also increase the
cost. There is an issue of the timing of them; being able to
develop this new process is critical.
Mr. Radanovich. Can you venture to say how much percentage-
wise the $488 million, how much was effectively spent and how
much might have been a waste?
Ms. Jones. I don't know if I can characterize it from a
dollar standpoint. What I would say is that 10 years seems to
be a very long time to keep after the same technical issue. It
seems, again hindsight is 20/20, but they had a lot of people
telling them, as you can see from our timeline, that there was
an issue and they seemed to believe that resolution was right
around the corner. If they had stopped earlier, that would have
helped.
The other issue is that we had been told a number of years
ago when one of the other processes now being considered was
being developed through DOE's innovative technology program,
Savannah River was approached as well as other sites and asked,
do you think this might work for your vitrification process?
Savannah River said, no, we are going to go with ITP. Maybe if
they had listened several years ago, they would have been
further along in developing that process for Savannah River.
Mr. Radanovich. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the map behind
the poster to the left was a cleanup site of Savannah River,
wasn't it?
Ms. Jones. No, the map that we had up was Paducah. That was
to show the plumes of ground contamination at Paducah.
Mr. Radanovich. I did have a question regarding that one.
We will move to Paducah. A couple of questions. Figuratively
speaking, how many drum mountains are out there? How many DOE
sites have major environmental problems not generally known to
the public like this?
Ms. Jones. I am not sure that I can answer that, Mr.
Chairman. Certainly DOE has a lot of characterization to do at
a number of their sites. I think this is a very complex
undertaking. I know that at a hearing a week ago, when the
Department of Energy was asked how many buildings and
facilities were not part of the plan, they couldn't tell the
committee the answer. So I don't know the answer to that.
Mr. Radanovich. Is funding just the issue on this? I know
that one of the testifiers was reacting to the fact that they
had just gotten some funding. Is this strictly a funding issue?
Ms. Jones. I am not sure that it is strictly a funding
issue. While their plan assumes that they need more money, I
think we have to look at the plan because from a technical
standpoint, they are looking at several technologies that are
innovative. So just throwing more money before they demonstrate
their groundwater technologies may not be a good thing to do.
Some of this cleanup has to be sequenced. You have to do
certain things before you do other things. So again, I would
want to look very closely at their budget submissions to see
that they could effectively spend increased funds.
Mr. Radanovich. On the map you show black dots forming a
square around the site. That is a barrier that has been
installed. Was that to further prevent the plumage that has
taken place there?
Ms. Jones. No. The treatment barriers are actually the blue
lines. The plume is the yellow and the dark red going out, and
there is a blue line that goes across those. Those are the
projected treatment barriers. They only have one installed, a
small one, that they are trying to demonstrate whether the
technology will work at Paducah.
Mr. Radanovich. But it just prevents the plume from moving
any more?
Ms. Jones. That's correct, it prevents contamination from
moving because it's designed to clean the water. There is stuff
on the other side of the barrier that will continue to go to
the river.
Mr. Radanovich. There is no plan to deal with that?
Ms. Jones. That's correct.
Mr. Radanovich. So the plan is just preventing more
leakage?
Ms. Jones. It is trying to clean up the groundwater that
will be coming through at some point in time. The stuff that
has already passed those barriers will not be treated.
The other problem is that they have--the source of the
groundwater contamination is also very difficult to clean up.
It is TCEs at the bottom of the aquifer, and they are going to
try to extract them, but that is also a technology that they
are trying to demonstrate. Unless they can get that source out,
it is going to continue to contaminate the groundwater over
time.
Mr. Radanovich. What are the black dots?
Ms. Jones. That is the plant fence. I had to ask to make
sure that I was right.
Mr. Radanovich. Which is not stopping much.
One more question. In your report you characterize DOE's
approach to their efforts to reach an agreement with the EPA
and the State on issues as optimistic. This optimism you say
makes it uncertain that the cleanup can be done within the time
frame and cost. Can you give us an example?
Ms. Jones. There are a couple of examples. One is the
sedimentation ponds. Basically the State wanted to have, I
think it is about seven, and DOE is only budgeted for four. So
if the State gets what they would like to have, DOE is going to
have to put more money in for that.
On soil contamination, right now DOE is assuming that they
are going to clean up to EPA standards of 25 parts per billion,
which is for unoccupied space, and the local community and the
State is saying we want it 1 part per billion, which is
residential and industrial. So they are putting off that
decision until they come up with their plan.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you.
Mr. Spratt.
Mr. Spratt. Thank you very much. I am sorry that I wasn't
here earlier. I have followed this for some time and it is not
surprising. If we go out to Hanford, there are twice as many
tanks, I believe?
Ms. Jones. Yes, sir.
Mr. Spratt. And the chemistry in those tanks is still not
understood?
Ms. Jones. That's correct.
Mr. Spratt. Nobody has a solution. At one time I guess
Rockwell was the goco at that time. They used ferrous cyanide
and they had an adverse reaction and it started bubbling
hydrogen and other explosives and combustible output and scared
the dickens out of everybody.
Ms. Jones. That's correct.
Mr. Spratt. Right now they have a witch's brew at Hanford
and no progress at all.
Ms. Jones. They just cancelled the contract with BNFL, who
was going to go forward and continue the design of that
process. That project right now is being relooked at. They are
trying to make a decision in terms of what kind of contract and
funding they are going to go forward with.
Mr. Spratt. The good fortune at Savannah River, Dupont were
the original site contractors and Dupont are--is primarily a
company of chemists and they understood the chemistry in these
tanks better than anybody else, frankly. When you look at what
happened, it is just--to some extent it is a measurement of how
much we know and how much we are simply taking plunges in the
dark as we try to resolve this problem.
To put it into context, the State of South Carolina was
pressuring Savannah River-Dupont and Savannah River-
Westinghouse because the tanks in South Carolina are single
lined for the most part. They sit on the top of the Tuscaloosa
Aquifer. If they established a plume like that, they could not
only damage the immediate surroundings, they could have
irreparable damage to one of the larger aquifers in the
Southeast. So there was lots of pressure on the contractor to
get something done.
We funded a defense waste processing facility, and once we
got it underway, it followed that this process had to be
brought along in line with it because it was clear to everybody
we couldn't afford the cost of vitrifying 35 million gallons of
liquid waste. We had to reduce its volume by a whole order of
magnitude to make the project sustainable, and that is where
all of this got started.
We say there has not been any oversight but I have been
there half a dozen times, and I have been through this process
a number of times. I don't know any chemistry, so before I
would cast any stones at the lack of expertise of DOE, I would
confess my own lack of expertise. I know that I can learn and
listen and turn to other people, but it is difficult to follow
the complexity of this.
We had a panel created on the Armed Services Committee at
my instigation because I thought we, Congress, was woefully
inadequate in our efforts to deal with oversight. The Energy
and Water Subcommittee of Appropriations was not paying nearly
as much attention to this as they were to civilian water
projects, and on the Armed Services Committee we had one or 2
days of hearings and unless you had a dog in the fight, a
project that was being funded, you probably didn't come to the
hearing.
We put together a panel and we paid more attention
particularly to the waste cleanup, environmental remediation
problems than anything else. In fact, we shifted over 3 years
almost a billion dollars out of the regular defense budget into
the DOE budget for environmental remediation. We created the
new Facilities Safety Board because we saw the need for some
outside oversight.
The person who probably described as well as anything what
happened to the whole complex and why, why this accumulation of
environmental problems, was a man named Richard Meserve in a
report done for the National Academy of Sciences in the early
1990s, late 1980s. Basically they laid out very graphically how
for 40 years production of nuclear materials had trumped
everything. It had trumped cost considerations, environmental
considerations; getting the materials ready for the bombs and
warheads that were being built was imperative. It was a matter
of national survival, and so few questions were asked other
than is production on schedule.
We have inherited that. You can blame a lot of people, but
that philosophy is probably more to blame than for any single
individual or lack of due diligence of any contractor in any of
these processes.
I simply make those comments. I think you have done an
excellent job in your report of summarizing what has happened.
I have followed it from some distance, and I understand it
better after seeing what you have put together here. But I am
still about as unclear as to where we go from here as I was
before I picked up your report and read it.
Do you have any observations on how soluble this problem
is, whether or not it can be done for reasonable cost in a
reasonable period of time?
Ms. Jones. I don't think that we are going to know that
until DOE does some more research and development on the
processes that they are considering. The fact that they have
widened the span of processes that they are looking at gives us
pause in terms of maybe there is a solution. I think putting
some more R&D dollars into it now to know what you are facing
will give us a lot more confidence as we move forward.
Mr. Spratt. Wouldn't you agree if the ion exchange
technology would have been more complicated and less mature
than this precipitation technology that they opted for?
Ms. Jones. My understanding at the time they were starting
to look at all of these processes, in the early eighties, there
was some issues with the ion exchange. You are correct, it was
more costly.
Mr. Spratt. Do you have any opinion about whether or not
the small tank alternative is a viable alternative?
Ms. Jones. No, sir, I don't. Not at this time.
Mr. Spratt. Thank you very much for your work and your
testimony.
Mr. Radanovich. I don't have any other questions. If nobody
else does, this hearing is adjourned. I want to thank you very
much for coming and also the people who testified before. Thank
you very much.
[Whereupon, at 4 p.m., the Task Force was adjourned.]
Fire Safety Failures of the Park Service: Caretaker of the Nation's
Treasures Ineffective in Addressing Hazards
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 19, 2000
House of Representatives,
Committee on the Budget,
Task Force on Natural Resources and Environment,
Washington, DC.
The Task Force met, pursuant to call, at 10:12 a.m., in
room 210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. George Radanovich
(chairman of the Task Force) presiding.
Members present: Representatives Radanovich, Herger,
Gutknecht, and Price.
Mr. Radanovich. Good morning, and thank you all for being
here.
Today's hearing of the Task Force on Natural Resources and
the Environment will focus on fire safety within our national
parks. Scheduled burns that rage out of control or catastrophic
summer fires sparked by cigarettes that destroy thousands and
thousands of acres of park land have been high profile in the
news lately. Today though, we are going to discuss a different
safety issue within the national parks, and that is buildings
and structures that are used by the public within the national
parks.
Over the years, the Federal Government has acquired some of
the nation's most prime real estate, as well as many of its
valuable historical and cultural assets and placed them under
the purview of the National Park Service. In establishing a
system that promotes access for all people to our national
treasures, the Federal Government has assumed the
responsibility of ensuring that they are enjoyed safely.
Unfortunately, in a report released several weeks ago, the
General Accounting Office found that the Park Service is not
doing all it can and should to protect the safety of park
visitors and employees. Many of the parks that the GAO
evaluated for the report lacked regular inspections, working
fire suppression systems, and either their own fire brigades or
arrangements with local fire companies, conditions that the
Park Service acknowledges could be found throughout the 379
unit park system.
GAO has also cited a 1998 internal Park Service report
which showed the Service's lack of attention to the issue. The
internal report said, in part, there is widespread agreement
that the structural fire program in the National Park Service
lacks priority and emphasis. There is little acknowledgement at
the headquarters level of the structural fire program.
It is incumbent upon the Park Service to ensure two things:
one, that fires be prevented to the extent possible; and, two,
that in any case they do happen, there are proper measures in
place to facilitate a quick and competent response to their
occurrence. Apparently the Park Service is seeing to neither of
these issues.
Joining us today are Jim Wells, who is the Director of
Energy, Resources and Science Issues at the General Accounting
Office, and Ms. Maureen Finnerty, the Associate Director of
Operations and Education at the Park Service.
Again, thank you to both of you for being with us. Maureen,
it is good to see you here again, and we look forward to
hearing what you have to say about this matter.
I will say, too, that members have five legislative days to
submit statements and other material for the record, and I
would like to turn it over to Mr. Price before we hear any
testimony to see if there is any desire to give an opening
statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Radanovich follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. George Radanovich, a Representative in
Congress From the State of California
Good morning and thank you all for being here. Today's hearing of
the Task Force on Natural Resources and the Environment will focus on
fire safety within our National Parks. We are not talking about
scheduled burns that rage out of control, or catastrophic summer fires
sparked by a cigarette butt that destroy thousands and thousands of
acres of park land. We are instead going to discuss the safety of the
structures in our National Parks.
Over the years the Federal Government has acquired some of the
nation's most prime real estate, as well as many of its valuable
historical and cultural assets, and placed them under the purview of
the National Park Service. In establishing a system that promotes
access for all people to our national treasures, the Federal Government
has assumed the responsibility of ensuring that they are enjoyed
safely. Unfortunately, in a report released several weeks ago, the
General Accounting Office found the Park Service is not doing all it
can and should to protect the safety of park visitors and employees.
Many of the parks that GAO evaluated for their report lacked regular
inspections, working fire suppression systems, and either their own
fire brigades or arrangements with local fire companies--conditions
that the Park Service acknowledges could be found throughout the 379
unit park system. GAO also cited a 1998 internal Park Service report
which showed the Service's lack of attention to the issue. The internal
report said in part ``[T]here is widespread agreement that the
structural fire program in the NPS lacks priority and emphasis * * *
There is little acknowledgment at the * * * [headquarters] level of the
structural fire program.''
It is incumbent upon the Park Service to ensure two things: one,
that fires be prevented to extent possible; and two, that in case they
do happen, there are proper measures in place that facilitate a quick
and competent response to their occurrence. Apparently, the Park
Service is seeing to neither.
Joining us today are Jim Wells, Director of Energy, Resources, and
Science Issues at GAO; and Maureen Finnerty, Associate Director of
Operations and Education at the Park Service. Thank you both for taking
the time to be with us. We look forward to hearing what you have to say
about this matter.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate the chance to be here this morning, and I want
to welcome the witnesses to the Task Force hearing. I look
forward to your testimony.
I share with other members of this Task Force the view that
our Park Service is a great national treasure and that we must
strive to ensure that we are properly preserving and showcasing
the natural wonders of this country.
In that regard, we should certainly work to ensure that
Park Service facilities are safe for visitors, and that the
risk of fire is reduced.
The subject matter for today's hearing bears some
resemblance to last week's hearing and suggests a certain irony
with respect to the mission of this Task Force. It is my
understanding that the common theme in our hearings was to be
the issue of waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government,
and that the goal was perhaps to save Federal dollars by
rooting out such waste, fraud, and abuse. Of course, that is a
worthy goal which I think is widely shared.
But one of the primary things we have established in our
hearings is that effective management of government programs
requires adequate funding and accurate funding requests.
Effective management and oversight does not necessarily mean
that we spend less or that we spend more. It is surely going to
vary from one program to the next, and the main requirement is
that we spend intelligently and strategically.
Effective management requires an accurate assessment of
when money should be spent. More money spent early in the life
of a program can save us from spending more later. I think we
have learned that, and perhaps we will learn that again today.
In the case of fire safety, more money spent for prevention
can save us from the cost of catastrophic fire later on.
Witnesses from the GAO, I realize, may introduce new
information into today's hearing, but based on what we have
now, I see no evidence in the GAO report that the Park Service
is guilty of waste, fraud, or abuse. Instead, I see evidence
that we and the Park Service must better evaluate the short
term and long term funding needs of Park Service programs.
So I look forward to hearing what our witnesses have to
say, and I hope we can have a good discussion of how Congress
and the Park Service can work to improve fire safety
preparedness at our national park facilities.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Price.
And we will begin with our first and only panel, first off
with Mr. Wells of the GAO and then from Ms. Finnerty from the
National Park Service.
Welcome, Mr. Wells, and please begin your statement.
STATEMENT OF JIM WELLS, DIRECTOR OF ENERGY, RESOURCES, AND
SCIENCE ISSUES, RESOURCES, COMMUNITY, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
DIVISION, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; MAUREEN FINNERTY,
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR PARK OPERATIONS AND EDUCATION, NATIONAL
PARK SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Mr. Wells. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee.
Once again, we are pleased to be here today to discuss the
Park Service structural fire safety efforts. Our comments today
are based primarily on the report that was released in May 2000
of this year addressing the Park Service's not meeting its
structural fire safety responsibilities.
The report itself, the picture that it painted was not very
pretty, 1,400 structural fires over the last decade. The Park
Service is a national steward, as was referred to in the
chairman's comments, for over 30,000 structures, including
hotels, motels, cabins, visitor centers, historical buildings
such as Independence Hall, and many of the former Presidents'
homes.
Despite these stewardship responsibilities, our report
raised serious concerns about the agency's commitment and its
priority to ensure that the risks of the structural fires to
visitors, employees, resources, and other assets were minimized
as best as possible.
In summary, our report used words like ``no fire plans,''
``low priority,'' ``little commitment,'' ``inadequate
training,'' and ``equipment.'' In short, structural fire safety
efforts in national parks are not effective.
The structural fire activities at the six parks we visited
lacked many of the basic elements needed for an effective fire
safety effort. We're talking about such fundamental things as
inadequate fire training for employees, inadequate or
nonexistent fire inspections, and for many buildings inadequate
or nonexistent fire detection and suppression systems.
These situations have led to many existing fire safety
hazards. We found fire extinguishers that had not been checked
for years, overnight accommodations that have not been
inspected by qualified fire safety people, cabins without smoke
detectors, and visitor centers that did not have fire
suppression systems.
Furthermore, even when fire hazards are detected, they can
go uncorrected and did go uncorrected for years. For example,
during a visit to Ford's theater earlier this year, we noted
that there were serious deficiencies concerning stairwell and
stage doors that had not been corrected even though they were
first identified in 1993.
If I could refer you to the Ford's Theater poster, this is
an example, of a door that's a fire hazard. The bottom of the
door had been cut off so that wires were run underneath the
door. What safety fire hazard you have is the inability to
close a door that will, in fact, slow down the progression of a
fire to give visitors more time to get out of a building.
Here is another example of what we found in Ford's Theater.
This is the roof of the building with installed sprinkler
suppression systems. The requirements call for the sprinklers
to work effectively. To do this they need a minimum of 18
inches of clearance for the sprinkler heads to disburse water.
We are talking about finding storage boxes almost right on top
of sprinkler heads.
Just 1 month before our report was released, we accompanied
a DC Fire Department inspector to Ford's Theater to inspect the
theater once again, and they found over 50 fire and safety
concerns.
These types of deficiencies, Mr. Chairman, in our opinion,
occur primarily because local park managers are not required to
meet minimum structural fire safety standards and because
structural fire activities, in our opinion, have been a low
priority within the agency for many years.
Even though the Park Service issued policy to local park
managers about how to address structural fire safety, park
managers are not required to follow the agency policy, nor are
they required to even meet any minimum set of fire safety
standards.
Instead, individual park managers are permitted to define
the scope and emphasis given to the threat of structural fires
locally. Our work shows that structural fire safety has been
near the bottom of the park's priority list.
The Park Service has acknowledged problems in implementing
its current structural fire safety program, and they have
begun, to their credit, a number of positive initiatives to
address them. I'll let Maureen of the Park Service discuss some
of those initiatives.
But in closing, let me say that our report clearly got the
attention of the Park Service. We made numerous
recommendations, and the Park Service has indicated that they
agree and are proceeding to take corrective actions.
Getting new initiatives started to correct the problem is a
good thing. However, the bad thing is that fixing the problems
takes time, and these initiatives have only recently begun.
Until these initiatives are completed, the safety of park
visitors, employees, buildings, and artifacts are still in
jeopardy and are vulnerable to fire that could cause damage,
destruction, severe injury, and even loss of life.
Until the agency takes action in these areas, the problems
we identified will clearly persist.
I am going to close now. This concludes my statement. I
will be glad to answer questions of the panel. [The prepared
statement of Jim Wells follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jim Wells, Director, Energy, Resources, and
Science Issues, Resources, Community, and Economic Development
Division, U.S. General Accounting Office
Mr. Chairman and members of the Task Force, we are pleased to be
here today to discuss the Park Service's structural fire safety
efforts.\1\ Our comments today are based on our May 2000 report in
which we evaluated:
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\1\ Structural fires include fires in buildings, dumpsters, and
vehicles.
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1. Whether the parks were meeting their structural fire safety
responsibilities;
2. If not, why not; and
3. What efforts were underway to address any identified
problems.\2\
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\2\ Park Service: Agency Is Not Meeting Its Structural Fire Safety
Responsibilities (GAO/RCED-00-154, May 22, 2000).
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Our report raised serious concerns about the agency's commitment
and priority to ensuring that the risks of structural fires harming
visitors, employees, resources, and other assets were minimized.
In summary, we found:
Structural fire safety efforts in national parks are not effective.
The structural fire activities at the six parks we visited lacked many
of the basic elements needed for an effective fire safety effort. These
gaps included such fundamental things as inadequate fire training for
employees, inadequate or nonexistent fire inspections, and--for many
buildings--inadequate or nonexistent fire detection or suppression
systems. These situations led to many fire safety hazards. We found
fire extinguishers that had not been checked for years, overnight
accommodations that had not been inspected by qualified fire safety
people, cabins without smoke detectors, and visitor centers that did
not have fire-suppression systems. Furthermore, even when fire hazards
are detected, they can go uncorrected for years.
These deficiencies occur principally because local park managers
are not required to meet minimum structural fire safety standards and
because structural fire activities have been a low priority within the
agency for many years. Even though the Park Service issued policy to
local park managers about how to address structural fire safety, park
managers are not required to follow the agency policy, nor are they
required to meet a minimum set of fire safety standards. Instead,
individual park managers are permitted to define the scope and emphasis
given to the threat of structural fire. Our work shows that structural
fire safety is near the bottom of the parks' priority lists.
The Park Service has acknowledged problems in implementing its
structural fire safety program and has begun a number of initiatives to
address them. These include:
1. Developing new agency policies for addressing structural fire
safety responsibilities;
2. Placing specific minimum fire safety requirements on park
managers; and
3. Developing a process for structural fire inspections and
performing assessments of structural fire risks at each unit of the
national park system. However, these initiatives have only recently
begun. Until these initiatives are completed, the safety of park
visitors, employees, buildings, and artifacts are being jeopardized and
are vulnerable to fire that could cause damage, destruction, severe
injury, and even loss of life.
Background
Today, the Park Service is the nation's steward for over 30,000
structures, many of them historic; many national icons, such as the
Statute of Liberty; and over 80 million artifacts. These structures
include hotels; motels; cabins; visitor centers; interpretative
centers; and historical buildings, such as Independence Hall and many
former presidents' homes. In terms of buildings alone, the Park Service
is the Federal Government's third largest landlord--behind only the
Department of Defense and the U.S. Postal Service.
The Park Service is responsible for ensuring that the buildings and
artifacts entrusted to it are protected and that the people who visit
or work in them are safe from undue hazards or risks. However, one
risk--the threat of fire--has been a recurring issue. While much public
and media attention has historically focused on spectacular wildland
fires, like those that occurred in Yellowstone National Park in 1988,
or around Los Alamos, New Mexico, earlier this year, building or
structural fires within parks have not received much attention.
Nonetheless, since 1990, more than 1,400 fires have occurred in
national park buildings and other facilities. These fires have killed
five people, caused serious injury to many others, and resulted in
millions of dollars in property loss.
Key Elements Generally Missing From Parks' Structural Fire Safety
Activities
None of the six parks we visited had effectively addressed their
structural fire safety responsibilities.\3\ In fact, most of the basic
components necessary for addressing parks' structural fire risks were
missing at each park. These gaps have resulted in significant and, in
some parks, long-standing deficiencies that have seriously compromised
fire safety. Although we visited only a few parks, according to the
Park Service's Deputy Chief Ranger who is responsible for the agency's
structural fire program, similar problems with park structural fire
programs would be found whether we visited 6 or 60 parks.
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\3\ The six parks were Ford's Theatre National Historic Site in
Washington, DC; Olympic National Park in Washington State; Prince
William Forest Park and Shenandoah National Park in Virginia; and
Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park and Yosemite National Park in
California.
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According to structural fire safety experts from the National Fire
Protection Association, U.S. Fire Administration, and fire experts from
six other associations and government agencies we contacted, an
effective structural fire safety effort has three essential components:
fire prevention and protection, fire response, and funding. Both the
fire prevention and protection component and the fire response
component have a number of key elements associated with them. However,
at each of the six parks' that we visited most of the key elements were
missing.
Fire Prevention and Protection
According to the structural fire experts we contacted, the key
elements to effective fire prevention and protection are first, a fire
plan for handling fire risks and incidents, second, fire inspections
conducted by qualified staff, and third, an incident reporting system
to analyze fire incidents and identify corrective actions to the fire
safety program. However, the parks that we visited were lacking in most
or all of these components.
None of the six parks that we sampled had adequate fire plans. At
each park, the plans were either out of date or not coordinated with
nearby community fire departments or had some combination of these
problems. For example, the fire plan at Shenandoah National Park was
prepared in 1991 but has not been updated since that time to reflect
the addition of new buildings or other changes in park operations.
Updating the plan is particularly important at this park because,
according to park managers, the park has an inadequate fire response
capability and, therefore, must rely heavily on fire departments from
local jurisdictions outside the park to respond to fires.
Similarly, regarding inspections, none of the parks we visited had
their facilities regularly inspected for fire safety by qualified
individuals. Examples of structural fire inspection deficiencies that
we identified included the following:
At Yosemite National Park, until 1999, none of the park's
structures had a formal structural fire safety inspection, including
the 123-room Ahwahnee Hotel--a national historic landmark. In fiscal
year 1999, the park hired, for the first time, a trained structural
fire inspector to begin fire inspections for its 800 structures.
Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park had not conducted any
structural fire safety inspections, even though the park has about 250
buildings and other facilities, and has had 41 structural fires since
1988.
During a visit to Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, we
noted that serious deficiencies concerning stairwell and stage doors
had not been corrected even though they were first identified by a Park
Service contractor in 1993. The contractor's report also raised
concerns about the theater's sprinkler system and noted that, ``If the
sprinkler system fails or does not operate as designed, a fire in the
stage area, particularly during a production, has the potential to kill
several hundred people. * * * Fires in other theaters show that a
severe fire can develop in a few minutes.''
The remaining key element in fire prevention and protection is an
incident reporting system to analyze fire trends and causes in order
that corrective measures can be devised and initiated. Three of the six
parks we visited did not participate in an agencywide fire incident
reporting system. Failure to report this kind of information undermines
the agency's ability to understand the scope of fire problems and
vulnerabilities throughout the national park system as well as the
agency's ability to set priorities for its safety needs.
Fire Response
According to the structural fire safety experts that we contacted,
two key elements are needed to effectively respond to fires, namely,
first, fire detection and suppression systems and second, fire brigades
and/or agreements with community fire departments. None of the parks in
our sample had an adequate fire response capability.
Suppression systems, such as sprinklers, should be a key component
in any structural fire safety effort, according to fire experts, and
are especially important to the Park Service because of the remoteness
of many facilities and the delayed fire response capabilities generally
found in many parks. In addition, where fire detection and/or
suppression systems are installed in buildings, experts agree that it
is critical that these systems be maintained and tested periodically to
ensure they are working properly. Each of the six parks we visited were
either missing detection or suppression systems in key facilities, such
as visitor centers and overnight lodging facilities, or were not being
maintained and tested properly, if at all.
At Prince William Forest Park, smoke detectors were not
installed in many cabins used as overnight accommodations by visiting
guests. Frequently, these guests are youth organizations.
At Yosemite National Park, none of the sprinkler systems
installed in park buildings have been tested since they were installed
to make sure that they are operating properly. In addition, we found
that park officials did not replace defective sprinklers involved in a
well-publicized nationwide recall. A park manager told us that the park
did not meet a 1999 deadline set by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety
Commission and the manufacturer to qualify for the reimbursement of
labor costs associated with replacing, parkwide, about 1,000 recalled
sprinkler heads. These sprinkler heads are used in fire suppression
systems in residences where park employees live. The defective
sprinkler heads, identical to those installed at Yosemite, failed to
function in at least 20 fires. Nonetheless, the park has not replaced
these sprinkler heads and is still relying on them as a key part of its
fire safety effort.
To complement fire detection and suppression systems, adequate fire
response requires fire response crews that are properly trained and
equipped. Within the Park Service, adequate fire response is frequently
accomplished by the use of fire brigades. Fire brigades are similar to
community fire departments and include firefighters, fire equipment,
and flame-retardant clothing located in or near the park. The Park
Service has come to rely on the use of fire brigades in parks that are
some distance from community fire departments. In parks that are not
remote, the park managers frequently have agreements with nearby
community or other fire districts for initial response or additional
backup for responding to fires. Each of the six parks we visited either
did not have a qualified or properly equipped fire brigade or their
response capability was not fully coordinated with local fire
departments. For example:
At Yosemite, in 1999, 42 of 45 of the firefighters
stationed in Yosemite Valley--the central and busiest area of the
park--had not taken the agency's annual 16 hours of required minimum
training or had no record of any training.
Shenandoah National Park does not have qualified personnel
to respond to structural fires. The park has a collateral-duty fire
brigade that has not been trained to enter a burning structure and
lacks the necessary equipment to respond to vehicle fires. The park's
policy is to rely on local fire departments for entering burning
structures. However, the departments' response times range from 10 to
over 45 minutes, in contrast to a much shorter response time--4 to 6
minutes--that is generally needed to respond to burning buildings.
Olympic National Park has fire response agreements with
only two of nine fire departments in the surrounding area. As a result,
many areas of the park have no formal arrangements with local fire
departments for a structural fire response.
Funding
Fire experts generally agree that sufficient, consistent funding is
necessary to support an effective structural fire safety effort.
However, there is no specific appropriation dedicated to structural
fire activities in the Park Service. Individual park managers are
permitted to determine the funding levels, if any, for structural fire
activities. Park managers at the six parks we visited acknowledged that
structural fire safety activities received insufficient funding.
Our findings on the gaps and problems in the parks' structural fire
safety efforts appear to be consistent with the Park Service's own
analyses. A 1998 Park Service report stated, ``sooner or later the NPS
stands to be seriously embarrassed (at a minimum) by the catastrophic
loss, either of an irreplaceable historic structure or collection, or
of human life, from a structural fire.'' In addition, in December 1997,
the Director of the Park Service expressed serious concerns when an
internal agency report identified about 1,900 fire safety deficiencies
associated with the agency's museum collections--such as the storing of
flammable liquids and materials near museum storage spaces. Yet, as of
January 2000--over 2 years later--almost 75 percent of these
deficiencies have not been corrected. According to the director,
``These deficiencies can be corrected at a modest cost. To do otherwise
would be negligence.''
Key Reasons for the Agency's Ineffective Structural Fire Effort
The parks we visited lacked an effective structural fire safety
effort because the agency first, has not fully specified the minimum
structural fire safety standards individual parks must meet and second,
has placed little emphasis on structural fire safety. As a result,
managers at these parks gave this aspect of operations a low priority.
This low priority is inconsistent with Park Service assertions that
health and safety issues are a top agency priority.
Currently, the Park Service provides park managers with a
generalized policy on what their fire safety efforts should include.
However, the policy does not require parks to meet minimum fire safety
standards. It places primary responsibility for daily management and
compliance for structural fire safety with individual park managers.
The extent to which such activities are implemented at each park,
however, depends on how individual park managers define the scope,
priority, and emphasis given to structural fire safety efforts.
While the policy places primary responsibility on park managers to
carry out structural fire safety activities, little support or emphasis
for the effort appears to exist at the headquarters or regional levels.
Furthermore, the Park Service has no process for ensuring that plans
for renovating existing facilities or constructing new structures is
routinely reviewed for fire safety. The lack of agency attention to
structural fire seems inconsistent with the Department of the
Interior's and the Park Service's statements that addressing unmet
health and safety concerns is a top priority. In April 1999, the
Department of the Interior provided its component agencies--including
the Park Service--with guidance that identified health and safety
issues as a top funding priority. This guidance explicitly identifies
violations of national fire protection standards as requiring immediate
attention. Although the Park Service's fiscal year 2001 annual
performance plan stresses that employee and visitor health and safety
are top agency priorities, in the case of structural fire safety, the
Park Service's practices and activities have not been consistent with
this policy.
Initiatives to Address Problems, but Practical Results Depend on
Effective Implementation
The Park Service is aware that there are major weaknesses in its
structural fire safety effort and has begun a number of initiatives to
address them. It is unclear, however, whether the Park Service will
follow through on these initiatives to ensure that an effective
structural fire safety program is developed and implemented.
Park Service officials are aware that structural fire safety is a
low priority at many parks, and the agency has begun a number of
initiatives to revitalize and improve its effort. In 1998, the agency
appointed a structural fire safety steering committee, which drafted a
fire management policy and mission statement. These documents defined
the purpose, scope, and general policy toward structural fire in the
agency. Also in 1999, the Park Service hired a new structural fire
chief and directed the individual to develop an agencywide structural
fire safety program. This program is now being developed. Once
implemented, these initiatives are likely to increase the level of
structural fire prevention and response over that currently in place.
Over time, such initiatives would shift the agency's focus from one
that currently emphasizes fire response to one that emphasizes fire
prevention--an approach that, according to program administrators, is
much more cost-effective.
While the initiatives under way are certainly steps in the right
direction, their success depends on their being effectively
implemented. However, it appears that the planned levels of resources
for these structural fire safety initiatives will not be sufficient to
get several key initiatives completed, including one of the agency's
most critical efforts--completing an overall assessment of the
structural fire risks facing facilities and structures throughout the
Park Service.
In closing, as a result of the findings in our report, we
recommended that the Park Service complete and implement the various
structural fire safety initiatives that have recently begun in the
agency. This effort should include, among other things, establishing
minimum structural fire safety requirements, developing and
implementing a plan for correcting the fire safety needs and
deficiencies, and ensuring that new and rehabilitation projects comply
with generally accepted fire codes. In addition, to ensure that local
park managers elevate the priority given to addressing structural fire
safety needs and deficiencies, we also recommended that park managers
be held accountable for meeting the agency's health and safety
responsibilities by requiring them to develop and implement effective
structural fire safety programs.
In commenting on our May 2000 report, the Park Service agreed with
our findings, conclusions, and recommendations. The agency also
indicated that is was continuing to work on its ongoing initiatives and
considering plans to implement our recommendations. Until the agency
takes action in this area, the problems that we identified will likely
persist.
This concludes my statement. I would be happy to answer questions
from you or other members of the committee.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you for your testimony.
And, again, we will hear from Ms. Finnerty first, and then
we will go to questions.
So, again, welcome, Ms. Finnerty, and please begin.
STATEMENT OF MAUREEN FINNERTY
Ms. Finnerty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I will summarize my remarks and ask that my full statement
be incorporated into the record.
The National Park Service agrees with GAO's report on
structural fire. We believe it accurately reflects the status
of the structural fire program, and it will help us to develop
a comprehensive strategy for dealing with it.
The National Park Service has given serious attention to
this program for the last 18 months, well before the start of
the GAO audit, which started November of 1999. In the last 18
months we have established an interdisciplinary steering
committee to help us look at the program and design the program
as it needs to be.
We have hired a full-time structural fire program manager.
We have drafted a new policy, Director's Order 58, which
mandates a number of actions that need to be taken in the
structural fire arena.
We have developed a structural fire building inspection and
assessment process, and we have designed an incident reporting
system to report on structural fire incidents.
GAO, as they indicated, did visit six parks, and they did
look at seven key elements of a structural fire program. I will
briefly highlight each of the seven elements and give a listing
of some of the events that we have underway as a result of the
findings.
The first thing the report called for is a dedicated
funding source. This fiscal year, Fiscal Year 2000, we have
already reprogrammed $1 million out of our existing budget to
start doing building inspections and assessments. That will be
done by contract, and the work should start within a couple of
weeks, and hopefully we will be finished by the end of
September.
In Fiscal 2001, we are looking at reprogramming of funds to
try to beef up some of the staffing needs, primarily in the
regional offices that need to provide oversight to parks on
structural fire.
And in the Fiscal Year 2002 budget process, we do have a
package that is working its way through the priority system of
funding needs for the year 2002, again, to provide oversight
and staffing for the program, training, and those kinds of
things.
The second item listed in the GAO report talks about lack
of structural fire plans. Our new revised policy, Director's
Order 58, does mandate that each park will have a structural
fire plan, and those efforts will be underway. It specifically
spells out the requirements of what should be in those plans,
and parks will be required to do them.
The third element in the GAO report is the building
inspection program, and again, as I indicated, we have
reprogrammed $1 million this year to do it. We do have
standardized formats and methodologies that we are looking at.
So we will be looking at the same kinds of things as we inspect
these buildings.
Twenty-five parks will be visited over the next couple of
months, and we will look at 180 building, giving primary
emphasis to those where there are overnight accommodations,
where there are multiple dwellings, historic structures, and
places of assembly will receive the first priority for the
inspections.
The fourth recommendation was that we develop an incident
reporting system, and we do have a standardized structural fire
report designed. We still need to put a system into place that
will enable us to roll this information up on a Service-wide
basis. So we have the start of it in that parks will be able to
input information into the system on various incidents in
structural fire, and we have a funding request, again, that is
working its way through the process for the 2002 budget that
will enable us to set up a Service-wide reporting system that
will deal not only with structural fire incidents, but other
incidents that we need to report on.
The fifth recommendation was the installation and
maintenance of detection, prevention, and suppression systems,
and again, our new Director's order adopts National Fire
Protection Association codes and standards. That was one of the
findings of GAO, that we were not applying any kind of
consistent standards from park to park.
The inspection and the building analysis that will start
very shortly will determine additional needs that we have on a
Service-wide basis, and we do have at the present time 46
projects that are in line for approval and funding to remedy a
lot of the detection problems, and those projects total $6.6
million, and they cover the years 2001 to 2005. So they are
already in the program; they are in the queue. Funding will be
available. So we should be able to remedy some of these
deficiencies.
The sixth recommendation called for trained and qualified
personnel, and, again, our 2002 budget initiative has a request
in there for a sustained annual funding source so that we can
get our people adequately trained to oversee this program.
We will try to reprogram some funds in 2001 both to deal
with the training and the hiring of people to provide
oversight, and we are designing course work for
superintendents, structural fire for park managers to get them,
again, oriented and grounded in some of the requirements of
managing a structural fire program.
We are looking at standardizing fire brigade training.
Those parks where we do need to have fire brigades, we
obviously first need to determine which parks need that, and
then obviously we have to get those people trained in that
particular event.
And the new Director's order and the resource manual that
is being prepared will very clearly set out minimum
requirements for both suppression and prevention training, and
again, we have not had that in the past.
The final recommendation dealt with fire response
capability. We do have 43 parks that have fire brigades. This
is handled on a collateral duty basis. Part of the assessment
that we are undergoing will determine how many of those parks
really need fire brigades. We like to use these as a last
resort. We prefer that the parks enter into agreements with
surrounding communities and have fire suppression dealt with in
that manner.
But we recognize that there are parks that because of the
nature of the facilities and the isolation factor, will have to
have brigades. So our first determination is which parks are
those, and then secondly getting those folks adequately
trained.
This concludes my formal remarks, and I certain will be
happy to answer any questions that you may have. [The prepared
statement of Maureen Finnerty follows:]
Prepared Statement of Maureen Finnerty, Associate Director for Park
Operations and Education, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the
Interior
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss with you the recently
issued report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) on the National
Park Service structural fire safety program. This report, entitled
``Park Service: Agency Is Not Meeting Its Structural Fire Safety
Responsibilities'' (GAO/RCED-00-154), analyzes the National Park
Service (NPS) efforts to prevent and respond to fires in the many
structures in the national park system.
As Don Barry, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks,
indicated in a letter to GAO dated May 17, 2000, overall, we found that
the report accurately reflects the general status of issues in the
National Park Service structural fire program. This report offers us an
opportunity to begin the development of a comprehensive structural fire
program. The implementation of these recommendations will benefit park
visitors and the program in general.
Background
The National Park Service has more than 20,000 buildings located in
parks throughout the United States and we have the responsibility of
protecting these buildings, and the people using them, from fire. Fire
safety and the protection of people and property is essential to the
mission of the National Park Service and is a significant component of
our overall safety program.
We have been addressing structural fire issues for many years, but
not until recently have we begun to develop a comprehensive structural
fire program. Until 1987 most structural fire issues were addressed by
individual parks. In 1987 the first National Park Service guidelines
were developed to provide direction in addressing the complex issue of
structural fire.
Our goal is to develop a comprehensive structural fire program
based on preventing fires through engineering, education, and
developing and maintaining fire departments and brigades in areas where
we are unable to address the structural fire requirements through other
means.
Prior to the GAO audit we had taken steps to address structural
fire issues. These steps included:
development of an interdisciplinary steering committee to
provide direction for program development;
hiring a structural fire program manager to design and
develop a comprehensive structural fire program;
drafting of a new agency policy for addressing structural
fire;
development of a structural fire building inspection and
assessment process to identify needs and deficiencies; and
design of a structural fire incident information reporting
system.
In the spring of 1999 Congress requested, and the National Park
Service collected, compiled and provided, information on past and
current fire inspections. In November 1999 the GAO audit of National
Park Service structural safety was initiated. The report concluded that
the National Park Service is not meeting its structural fire safety
responsibilities.
Steps We Are Taking
The audit consisted of using ``seven key elements of a structural
fire program'' to evaluate the program in six park units. The seven key
elements are requirements of a comprehensive structural fire program
and were reviewed and agreed to by the National Fire Protection
Association, U.S. Fire Administration, Department of Energy and General
Services Administration. The GAO audit involved site visits to six
National Park Service units. In the review of the parks none met the
seven program requirements. I will go over each element and the steps
that we are taking to implement the element on a servicewide basis.
1. Consistent funding sufficient to support an effective structural
fire safety effort. Consistent funding is necessary to implement a
comprehensive structural fire program. We have begun to identify the
funding needs to address current and projected deficiencies within
existing or likely funding levels. Estimates to address all parks and
buildings must be based on information collected during building
inspections and park analysis. We anticipate that the estimates for
this more detailed tier of work will be proposed to support our fiscal
year 2002 budget proposal.
2. A structural fire plan that includes overview and key elements.
Completion of the NPS Director's Order 58, Structural Fire, and the
corresponding reference manual will establish the minimum structural
fire safety requirements for the National Park Service. The Director's
Order has been drafted and circulated for agency and public review. The
comment period ended on June 26, 2000 and comments are being evaluated
and incorporated into the draft. When the comments and recommendations
have been incorporated, the Order will be sent forward for the
Director's review and approval. A portion of the Director's Order
requires each park to develop structural fire plans.
3. A defined building inspection program that identifies the scope
and methodology including standards, frequency, and personnel. We have
allocated funding to implement our fire inspection and analysis system.
Inspections and analysis will include high-risk buildings including,
but not limited to, overnight accommodations, single and multiple
person dwellings, places of assembly, and historic structures. This
system, based on National Fire Protection Association standards, will
identify safety needs and deficiencies and is being adopted as the
standard for the National Park Service. Inspection and analysis of park
buildings and infrastructure will be an ongoing process and three
National Park Service employees have been assigned to the Structural
Fire Program Manager to assist in accomplishing this task. It is our
goal to develop a structural fire program that includes sufficiently
trained and qualified personnel to conduct these fire inspections.
4. An incident reporting system including criteria, reporting
methodology and analysis. Incident reporting provides the foundation of
information necessary to identify deficiencies, and take corrective
action. Therefore, collecting specific and reliable information is
crucial. A standardized NPS structural fire incident report has been
designed based on nationally accepted structural fire reporting
standards. Service-wide implementation of the report is waiting for the
development of a mechanism for individual parks to input the
information to a centralized location.
5. The installation and maintenance of fire prevention, detection,
and suppression systems. The Director's Order adopts National Fire
Protection Association codes and standards. These codes and standards
are nationally recognized as minimum requirements for addressing
structural fire safety. They include standards for installation and
maintenance of fire alarms and detection systems.
The implementation of the inspection and analysis system is the
first step in identifying fire safety deficiencies and what is required
to correct them. A contract is currently being developed to conduct
these inspections using qualified structural fire safety personnel. The
information generated from the inspections and analysis will then be
used to correct deficiencies that can be addressed immediately and
develop plans for correcting more complex deficiencies.
Currently, we have 46 structural fire safety related projects that
have been identified in PMIS and scheduled for implementation over the
next 5 years. Included in these projects are the installation of fire
suppression and fire alarm systems and upgrading fire hydrants. The
cost for these projects is more than $6.6 million.
6. Trained and qualified personnel. Structural Fire is a broad and
complex issue. To develop an effective program will require
establishing a foundation of personnel as well as adequate funding. The
program involves a wide variety of elements and issues including
building design, building construction, installing and maintaining
detection and suppression systems in buildings, regular inspections of
buildings and systems, training, establishing and maintaining fire
agreements, and in some cases developing, maintaining and operating a
fire-fighting force.
To help us implement an effective program we will reallocate
existing resources to support structural fire related positions. The
position functions include program management, fire prevention, fire
training, and program support. In addition, we are establishing
structural fire management officer positions in each of our seven
regional offices. We intend to accelerate our efforts by reallocating
or reprogramming funds to fill the positions in fiscal year 2001. These
positions will be responsible for implementing the structural fire
management program and providing parks with structural fire expertise.
We will also reallocate funds for fire prevention and fire
protection training. The U.S. Fire Administration, National Fire
Academy, will be the main provider for fire prevention classes. Fire
suppression training will be provided by contractors and outside
agencies as we develop the capabilities within the agency.
We are working with the International Fire Service Training
Association (IFSTA) to develop NPS structural fire brigade standardized
training materials, lesson plans, and instructor guides. A structural
fire for superintendents class is being developed. This class will
provide superintendents with the background, program requirements and
tools to effectively address structural fire at the park level.
Director's Order 58 and the corresponding reference manual identify
minimum training standards for both fire prevention and fire
suppression. We have collected employee structural fire training
records and entered them into a database so we can use the information
to identify employee training levels.
7. Fire response capability including the necessary equipment and
trained and qualified personnel. Fire departments and fire brigades are
complex and costly to operate. If a park requires a fire brigade or
fire department because of location or lack of available local
resources, it must meet national fire standards. Brigades and fire
departments will be evaluated through the inspection/analysis system.
This will identify personnel, equipment, training and funding
requirements.
Currently, in approximately 13 percent of NPS areas, the structural
fire response is accomplished by NPS fire brigades. These fire brigades
are similar to volunteer fire departments in that they rely on persons
working and or living in the area to work as firefighters. These people
are not full-time firefighters but are trained as firefighters and
respond when needed. We rely on fire brigades in parks that require the
ability to respond to structural fire incidents and are located in
areas that do not have structural fire fighting resources available
from adjacent communities. In parks that are located close to
communities that can provide structural fire suppression services, we
encourage development of formal agreements for fire suppression
services. We do not want to increase the number of NPS fire brigades
unless our park analysis shows that is the only viable option.
Conclusion
We have responded to the individual park deficiencies that were
identified during the General Accounting Office audit and we are
undertaking the development of a comprehensive structural fire program
based on national fire standards. The standards are clear and they will
be used to build a strong foundation for the program.
Only by implementing an agencywide building inspection and analysis
program will we be able to identify the scope of our structural fire
deficiencies. With this information we will be able to estimate the
financial requirements necessary to meet our fire safety
responsibilities.
This concludes my statement. I will be happy to respond to any
questions that you may have.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you very much. I will go ahead and
start the questioning, and this will not just be one round of
questions. I think we will be a little bit flexible, and if
something comes up where members was to re-question, that
should not be a problem.
Mr. Wells, when did issues come up? The date 1987 kind of
rings a bell as I was going through the literature and the
material on this. When questions started to arise, you know,
about the adequate inspections or lack of them in the Park
Service, this has been an ongoing problem. This has been
something that just hasn't come to the surface recently and
then has begun to be addressed by the Park Service. Do you
agree to that?
And can you illuminate a little bit on the history of this?
Mr. Wells. Yes, I can, and we would agree with that
statement. When our auditors began the investigation, one of
the first things that we do is we look at what has the agency
itself done over the years in terms of identifying some of the
deficiencies and the problems.
It is true that there was an internal assessment done in
1987 that you referred to that talked to somewhat of an
immediate need for hiring full-time positions, people that had
fire structure safety management type skills that needed to be
placed throughout the Park Service to assist them in providing
safety and health issues, particularly involving new projects
and new construction.
Thirteen years later when we began the work, that
recommendation had not been acted upon, and we understand that
one of the items in their initiatives, is to put into the '02-
'01 budget money to get those positions finally filled that
were identified back in 1987.
But there were other instances. For instance, in 1997 the
Park Service did an internal assessment involving their museum
collection type items. At that time they identified over 1,900
safety and health deficiencies that they were concerned about,
many of which were identified as being types of things that
could be accomplished at minimal cost, and here it was 3 years
later when we began our work. We found that over 75 percent of
those deficiencies had not been corrected.
So there had been a period of time where even with their
internal looks, the corrective action had not been fully
implemented, yes, sir.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you.
Ms. Finnerty, can you tell me? You know, the Park Service
has been in existence what, 150 years now?
Ms. Finnerty. Not quite that long.
Mr. Radanovich. Not quite that long?
Ms. Finnerty. Eighty-four.
Mr. Radanovich. You know, in cities and in public places I
understand the national parks are visited by about 240 million
people a year. Many of them do spend time in public buildings
and even spend the night in lodging facilities. Any city or
small town or even an unincorporated town that you go into all
across the United States has a fire marshal or somebody who is
in charge of maintaining the local building fire and safety
codes.
What has been the problem with the National Park Service
over all this time for not directing that responsibility
anywhere?
Ms. Finnerty. Well, I think the GAO report is accurate. It,
for whatever reasons, has not been a priority. It has not been
staffed. At the present time we still only have one full-time
person at the national level working on structural fire, and
there are a couple of other experts in the organization, but
that is it, and it has, for whatever reason, not come up high
on the priority list and obviously we need to change that, and
we intend to change that because it does affect property and
lives and those kinds of things.
Some things are now coming to the top as things that we are
obviously going to have to pay much more attention to and put
more resources into, and this is certainly one of those.
Speaking for the Director, I can say that he is very committed
to doing this and has been very clear to the Regional Directors
and others that we have got to turn this thing around, and we
have got to do it as quickly as we can, not only shifting
existing resources where we can this year and perhaps next
year, but then putting together finally a good strategy.
We have to have some expertise out there in the regions to
provide some oversight to parks, and in some parks, we also
probably need to have some expertise in structural fire. It has
got to come up on the priority list, and we have got to get
these positions funded.
Mr. Radanovich. Correct. I think I am aware of at least in
annual budgets the Park Service asks for anywhere between one
to $300 million for land purchases, and your annual budget is
over $1 billion.
Has there been, to your knowledge, any funding request made
specifically for fire safety structure and safety code
enforcement and the establishment of fire marshals?
Ms. Finnerty. As I mentioned in my comments, we do have a
package that is working its way through for 2002.
Mr. Radanovich. Right.
Ms. Finnerty. I am not aware that we have had anything. I
cannot speak more than the last 2 or 3 years, but it has not
shown up, but clearly now it is, and it has gotten everyone's
attention, and I think you will see it very high on the
priority listing to get some of these positions funded.
Mr. Radanovich. I am most familiar with Yosemite National
Park because I was born and raised right next to it, and the
small town of Mariposa in some cases, well, of course, by law
has a fire marshal. Are there within the National Park Service
now any agreements to utilize local fire safety authorities to
actually cover the park as well, as possibly they do in
building codes enforcement and such?
Ms. Finnerty. Yes. This is part of the information database
that we are just now starting to collect, finding out exactly
what is going on out there in the field, and the information I
got this morning was that there are 225 agreements that exist
at the present time throughout the system that we are aware of.
Some parks may have two or three agreements with different
jurisdictions, but I think there is not a lot of consistency in
them. Various standards are applied or not applied, as the case
may be. Some of them are more closely adhered to and work
better than others.
So we are sort of finding that we are all over the place on
that, and one of our objectives is to get a handle on those, to
do some good model agreements, and to be sure that where we do
enter into agreements with locals to provide our fire
suppression and to assist us with the program, that we are
covering all of the things that we need to cover and that they
are familiar with the structures and all that.
So we are very much aware that we have got to improve that
whole arena, too.
Mr. Radanovich. All right. Mr. Price.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank our witnesses and first turn to Mr. Wells
and maybe concentrate on the GAO report in this first round of
questioning.
We had a hearing, of course, earlier on the Park Service,
and at that time we had an interesting discussion, I thought,
somewhat inconclusive, about the benefits of centralized
oversight and management within the Park Service versus the
benefits of a more decentralized and flexible management
structure. That, of course, comes up in these discussions, in
terms of exactly what we are looking for here.
You know, we are dealing with a very diverse organization,
a very diverse network of facilities. We are talking about
Ford's Theater here in the same breath with Yosemite, and these
obviously are very different kinds of facilities. They have
very different kinds of fire risks. They have different
resources available.
Are there limitations you would put or qualifications you
would put on the centralized management recommendation that you
basically urge in this report?
Mr. Wells. Yes, Congressman Price. Let me respond by
stating that clearly one shoe does not fit all, and no one is
suggesting that command and control from the top is the way to
go. It is not always the most effective, although it is
sometimes the most direct and gets the most immediate
attention.
The Park Service, as you clearly articulated, is a very
decentralized organization, and rightfully so. Having local
park managers sitting on the ground, they know best what is
actually in their particular park. Clearly there are advantages
to that.
GAO is not making the recommendation that centralized
command and control is the way to go. I think what we tried to
capture in our recommendations was a little bit of a common
sense scenario that is somewhere in between. Our recommendation
was that clearly minimum requirements where there are none
today would assist in providing some specific, identifiable,
measurable guidance to the local park managers that says at a
minimum you will ensure that your facilities that you have
within your boundaries, someone will be looking at them, for
instance, as part of an annual inspection.
That may be a minimum requirement imposed centrally, but
clearly, if a local park manager has millions of visitors and
has buildings that are in such positions that they may require
more frequent inspections or more frequent follow-up to find
out if deficiencies are corrected, again, it is that
flexibility is what makes sense from a common sense
perspective.
We are very encouraged that the Park Service has, in fact,
issued their Directive 58 for the first time putting such
minimum requirements, which does assist the local park
superintendents getting the handle on what they are responsible
for and measuring whether they are, in fact, doing it or not
doing it. So we think we are encouraged. That is a positive
step.
Mr. Price. Good. Let me turn to the question of funding,
which of course centrally involves or concerns this committee.
Do you have any recommendation as to the appropriate level
of funding for fire prevention at the parks, the kind of
improvements, the kinds of measures you consider in your
report? And do you have any estimation as to whether these
levels of spending are feasible without reducing other
essential park operations?
Are we looking at some kind of tradeoff here or are we not?
Mr. Wells. Clearly, we do not have the answer to how much
funding is going to be needed. Until the Park Service has the
opportunity to go out and perform inspections at not just the
25 parks that they are beginning to do the work, but they have
379 parks that they need to make an assessment. Until you have
an accurate look at what needs to be fixed, it is hard to
predict what the money amount will be.
Regarding tradeoffs, the answer clearly has to be, yes,
there will be tradeoffs. I would like to point out that it is
clearly easy to jump to the conclusion that the solution is
more money, but much of what we saw here clearly goes to a
management issue; that these parks, as was indicated, do have
$1.5 billion worth of funding. They do have other sources of
funding besides operating money.
They have recreation fee money that is now coming into the
parks that they are able to retain, in the area of $150 million
there. They have regional and Service-wide initiatives that are
available for prioritization and getting projects and getting
some of these health and safety things done.
My point is that while everyone needs more money, there is
a lot of money in these parks. Much of what we are talking
about is some local management decisions about prioritization.
What is more important? Do we prioritize trying to fix the
safety hazard or do we construct something new or do we buy
something new?
Those are not money issues. Those are management issues in
terms of dealing with the dollars that you currently have, and
I think that would be our recommendation and our first
direction to encourage the Park Service to make some of those
tradeoff calls.
Mr. Price. I do want to come back to some of those
management issues in the second round.
Mr. Wells. OK.
Mr. Price. But to close out this round, let me just give
Ms. Finnerty an opportunity to comment on the cost issues and
the competing funding priorities.
Do you have anything to add on that?
Ms. Finnerty. Well, I guess I would essentially agree with
Mr. Wells' comments. I think it is a question of priorities. I
think there are some funding sources available, and he has
indicated what some of those are.
We are starting to direct parks to use some of those pots
of money, whether it is 5 year repair/rehabilitation funds or
the recreation fee funds and start addressing some of these
needs.
I also would agree with the statement that until we get a
good baseline of information, I do not think we ought to be
throwing a lot of money at the program until we find out
exactly what is the scope of the problem. What is the issue?
What are the needs? And that is why these building assessments
and building this baseline database is so very important to us.
Because once we have that, then we can start earmarking the
funds that are available. And if, in addition to that, we need
more funds, then we can certainly go after those.
We really think, and I do not know what the total amount is
that we really need, and until we do these assessments we will
not have that figure, but you cannot provide oversight for a
program of this importance with one person working nationally,
and that is why we need to fill these regional positions, at
least one position in each region that can provide specific
oversight for structural fire for the parks in that region.
And maybe we also need some positions in some of these
bigger parks if you are truly going to get it all the way down
to the front line because one person working nationally just
cannot possibly do that.
So that is where the oversight needs to happen. It needs to
happen at the regional level if we can get some of these
positions filled.
Mr. Price. Well, back to the funding issue specifically
though, you have not included specific funding requests,
specific line items for fire prevention; is that right?
Ms. Finnerty. We have a package that we put together for
the 2002 budget that deals with training. It deals with
professionalization. It deals with oversight in the regions. It
deals with the inspections, the assessments, all those kinds of
things, and that is working its way through the budget process
that we follow in the department.
But it is very definitely there, and it is high priority at
least for the Park Service. Now, a lot of people, you know,
will look at those kinds of priorities, but it is very high for
us.
Mr. Price. But you are telling us that there are no major
competing priorities that should prevent the Park Service from
dealing with this?
Ms. Finnerty. I would like to say there are no competing
priorities, but that is not the way the process works.
Mr. Price. Well, we know that is not the way the world
works, but I am talking about specific tradeoffs, specific
budget----
Ms. Finnerty. I can assure you that this issue is extremely
important to the Director. We discuss it frequently when we are
talking about budget and putting the budget together for the
next cycle, and this has always remained at the top of the
list.
So I know, at least from his perspective, that he will make
that case hopefully to the department and OMB, and that it will
be retained in a high position.
Mr. Price. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Radanovich. All right. Thank you, Mr. Price.
Mr. Herger from California.
Mr. Herger. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And, again, I thank you for having this hearing on this
very important issue.
I thank both of our witnesses for being here. I represent
an area in the West and northeastern California that has all of
our parts of 11 national forests and a number of parks,
national parks, within that, and certainly this is very
important to us.
It is also an area, unlike the East and the Midwest, where
the Federal Government owns a tremendous amount of our land
base. I have counties, my ten counties, that have as much as 80
percent owned by the Federal Government. So there is a great
deal of concern.
Over the years, I have been here in my seventh term, and
our families had the incredibly great pleasure of being able to
visit a number of our historic treasures here in this
Washington area, including the Ford Theater, over the years,
and I was very concerned to read here of the problems that the
Ford Theater has had in the area of being basically unsafe
because of fire problems and the fact that it has gone
uncorrected for 7 years.
I think about how I hear from my constituents, my small
business people on a continual basis how they feel they are
harassed by the Federal Government on this, on them keeping up
rules, and I guess I would have to ask you, Ms. Finnerty. How
long do you think, if the Ford Theater were a private
enterprise, how long do you think it would have gone without
being closed down by local fire marshals if the same type of
conditions had existed there?
Ms. Finnerty. Well, certainly I do not know how long it
would have gone, but certainly I think the deficiencies there
and the fact that they have not been corrected is not
defensible.
Mr. Herger. Seven years.
Ms. Finnerty. It is not defensible.
Mr. Herger. What are you guessing? Another 6, 7 years or--
--
Ms. Finnerty. Well, we can give you----
Mr. Herger [continuing]. What do we have when you think
they will be?
Ms. Finnerty. I am aware of the fact that they are being
addressed. Some of them have already been corrected. Others are
planned to be corrected. Some others will take additional
funding, but----
Mr. Herger. Is there a timetable here? I mean, we are 7
years now. Is there any whenever?
Ms. Finnerty. Well, I think those things that can be fixed
quickly within existing funds are being taken care of. Those
that may need more money we will have to reprogram or find it
and get them done, but they are being addressed.
Mr. Herger. Mannana some time maybe 10 years, I mean?
Ms. Finnerty. I hope sooner than 10 years, Congressman.
Mr. Herger. Now, you mentioned money a couple of times. Is
money a problem?
Ms. Finnerty. I think money----
Mr. Herger. You haven't requested any money. I was just
wondering.
Ms. Finnerty. No, I think it is an issue as far as program
oversight is concerned. I think it is an issue as far as
program oversight.
Mr. Herger. I see here that you have requested $300 million
to acquire more private land to take off the tax rolls, and
many of our areas in the West that are already--but you have
not requested any in 7 years of repairing some of these. Is
this what we can expect when you use this $300 million to
purchase more property, that we will have buildings there that
will also be unsafe for 7 years and no deadline for when they
are going to be repaired?
Ms. Finnerty. Well, we certainly hope not, Congressman, and
that is why we are trying to use the recommendations, get a
handle on where we are, assess where we are, reprogram funds to
get stuff done this year and next, and then we do have a
funding package that we hope will be funded in 2002 that will
get this program back on line.
Mr. Herger. But no great priority in setting some time
period that 6 months, 3 months, a year, 7 years, 10 years it
will be done?
Ms. Finnerty. The Director----
Mr. Herger. That has not been done yet?
Ms. Finnerty. The Director----
Mr. Herger. You have not seen fit to do that yet?
Ms. Finnerty. The Director has made it very clear to the
Regional Directors that this is serious, that they have got to
correct these deficiencies.
Mr. Herger. Right.
Ms. Finnerty. They have got to do the inspections. We have
got new guidance, mandated direction out there, and he has made
it very clear to them. So----
Mr. Herger. But did he make it clear 7 years ago or when
exactly has he made it clear?
Ms. Finnerty. Well, he made it clear this year.
Mr. Herger. This year. Well, very good.
Mr. Wells, do you have any comments on this?
I mean this seems unbelievable. Again, what would you say
if this were the private sector? The Ford Theater owned by one
of my constituents, how long would that have gone before it
would have been shut down?
Mr. Wells. Five minutes.
Mr. Herger. Five minutes, not 7 years?
Mr. Wells. Mr. Congressman, in April of this year we
accompanied a DC Fire Marshal team into Ford's Theater. We were
led to believe as we conducted that tour that they would have,
had that not been a Federal facility, they would have closed
that building immediately.
Mr. Herger. In other words, evidently the Clinton-Gore
administration, what is good for the private sector is not good
for our own Park Service buildings, and it is a priority, but
not a priority high enough to be 5 minutes or certainly not 7
years.
Mr. Wells. Clearly, within days of the release of the GAO
report, the Director's press release, as well as the directive
and memorandum announcing his Directive 58, included in there
is a statement that he will look at the national standards and
codes that exist and will make those minimum requirements in
his facilities. So he has immediately announced that as soon as
that order becomes final some of these things must be done.
Mr. Herger. And, Ms. Finnerty, can you understand the
dismay that I have?
Ms. Finnerty. Certainly, certainly.
Mr. Herger. And I believe that I am reflecting for the
700,000 people I represent in an area that the Federal
Government already owns too much. It is a priority to
appropriate $300 million to buy more, but yet it is not a
priority to even have in the appropriations system money to
repair what we already have.
This is not to you personally, sincerely, but this is
incredibly outrageous. It is unbelievable. It is something that
I do not believe the American public should be tolerating. It
is something that we should be doing--five minutes. I think it
is that type of priority rather than just some time in the
future. It is something we need to take care of right away, and
I would urge you in the strongest terms to do so.
Ms. Finnerty. We understand, and we clearly have gotten the
message, and it has gotten folks' attention.
Mr. Herger. And it is understood more now than it was 7
years ago?
Ms. Finnerty. Yes.
Mr. Herger. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Herger.
I am going to ask both of you this question. Regarding the
379 national parks, each park has a superintendent. While the
superintendents are given a lot of leeway as far as the
implementation of the duties in those parks, there's a lot of
autonomy given to each park superintendent.
Mr. Wells, if you would respond first, how do you in the
scheme of the National Park Service or in the structure of it,
how would you see the ability to mandate that each one of those
provide uniform safety for the structures in each park in light
of the autonomous nature the superintendents have?
Mr. Wells. I would start to answer that question by clearly
saying under the current practice the Park Service has decided
that the superintendent will be accountable and responsible for
everything, and unfortunately when you have a situation where
you are accountable for everything, you end up not knowing what
you are supposed to do, when you are supposed to do it or even
having some kind of ability to assess whether all the
requirements that you are accountable for, whether you even
know what those requirements are, and I think that is what we
are seeing in the Park Service.
We attended a conference somewhere and learned that many
times the Park Service superintendents are being asked to look
at four long pages worth of laws and regulations with the
stipulation that are you aware that you are accountable and
responsible for the correct full implementation of four pages
worth of these things.
And unfortunately, there is not clear minimum requirements.
There is not a lot of guidance or detail in terms of the
implementation plan that is available to the superintendent.
So, my answer is that--and it would be interesting to see
how Maureen feels about this--the superintendents have a great
responsibility, and as a result, they are not being held
accountable when things do not work, and that is a problem.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you.
And, Ms. Finnerty, it seems to me it is not a very
difficult thing to give that authority to a Park Service
superintendent, but also mandate that the fire safety code be
assessed and enforced. I mean, it doesn't seem to be that hard
to give the order.
But from what I understand, since even these problems were
highlighted in 1987 and the fact that nothing really has been
done or begun to happen until recently, that something so
simple should not have been done sooner. So it makes me wonder.
Why is there the problem that you cannot just tell your
superintendents to enforce this?
Ms. Finnerty. Well, I think it is an issue of priorities. I
think Mr. Wells is correct. Park superintendents do have a lot
of autonomy. They have a lot of authority. They also have
hugely complex jobs and many, many issues to deal with.
So it is a question of sorting out those areas, those
programs, those issues that are more critical perhaps,
structural fire being one of them because of the potential
impact that it has, and making that a very high priority. We
are shifting from just giving them the general guidance to
mandating that certain standards and codes and things be
followed.
But then I think the key is on the front end you have got
to make it a priority, but we have to have some kind of
mechanism in place to monitor to see is it being followed, and
I think so often that is where we struggle in the Park Service.
We issue a lot of directives from the top, and they may or may
not get complied with, and we are not out there at the back end
finding out what is happening. Is it being complied with? There
is apparently a breakdown in the implementation side at the
field level.
So I think one of the things that we need to build in is
mechanisms where we can assess and evaluate and monitor and be
sure that these things actually are happening at the field
level, and I think that can be done and it needs to be done for
a program like structural fire.
Mr. Radanovich. Well, granted a Park Service superintendent
has a lot of responsibilities, and I would think that giving
that responsibility, the fire marshal type responsibility, to
somebody else who would have, you know, some authority to go in
and close structures down, limit access to various places when
there are too many people in buildings, those kinds of things,
is giving away some of a superintendent's authority.
Is it an ego issue with superintendents? Is it the lack of
the desire to want to give away the authority that has been
given to them that causes this problem?
Ms. Finnerty. Well, you know, having been a superintendent
I can put that hat on. I mean, they like to maintain
independence. They like to have a lot of authority to make
decisions at the front line level, and I think that is
important.
However, I think we have also got some programs that are
critical and that are important from a service-wide basis, and
this is probably one of them, where we may have to look at
different ways on how we are going to provide oversight. We may
have to pull some authority back. We may have to put some
direction and guidance in there and be sure it is being
complied with.
And the Director has indicated a willingness perhaps to do
that in some of these programs, where we have really got to get
the program back on track, and we have got to be sure we are
providing safe buildings and accommodations for people.
Mr. Radanovich. Can you tell me what the National Park
Service might view as higher priorities than public safety
issues such as this that might get further attention or better
attention in the way of funding?
Ms. Finnerty. Well, certainly public safety issues have got
to be right up there and important; preservation of resources,
too. I mean, that is sort of our dual mandate, but clearly this
is very important, and we have got to figure out a way to make
it happen, to get ourselves up to standard, and then to
maintain those standards over time.
Mr. Radanovich. You would agree with me then that there
really is no other higher priority than public safety?
Ms. Finnerty. Well, I would be hard pressed to say what. It
has certainly got to be at the top of the list, I would think.
Mr. Radanovich. It has been neglected for a long time.
My concern, too, as was evidenced by the Forest Service and
Park Service, not so much the Park Service, but the Forest
Service change in management practices in the maintenance of
fuels. Since the Forest Service has determined to use or cut
back logging as a means of managing fuels on public lands,
which of course will not necessarily affect the Ford Building
downtown, but does affect parks like Yosemite and Kings and
Sequoia and many of the other parks in the West because these
parks adjoin Forest Service lands.
This management practice, I think, is going to turn out to
be a nightmare that you will see a lot more Los Alamos
situations because of bad forest management practices. Don't
you see that if that is true, that there is more of a threat to
structure safety within the national parks as well?
I mean even with this recent change in management practices
and in the fact that the forests are more at risk in my view as
a result of that would further hasten the Park Service to begin
to properly monitor their structures.
You may want to respond to that or not, but I think that
there is not very good management of our resources to the parks
that are joining Forest Service lands, and it just further
heightens the critical need for this issue to be taken care of.
The other thing I do want to mention is that waste, fraud,
and abuse is a mandate of this committee or part of its
structure, but mismanagement of resources is one as well. And I
think mismanagement is a good term that describes the lack of
protection of the 280 million visitors to our national parks
with no fire and safety code enforcement.
With that, Mr. Price, please.
Mr. Price. Thank you.
Mr. Wells, I'd like to return to the suggestion you made
that while funding was important, that there were also
questions of management that seemed to have very little to do
with funding levels. I'd like to ask you to elaborate on that
because in some of the more disturbing aspects of your report,
it seems there was a failure to perform management tasks that
really wouldn't have required funding one way or the other, for
example, these defective shower heads at Yosemite and other
examples.
It seems that one important element in reform is improved
levels of accountability, greater performance incentives. I
wonder if you could comment on that and elaborate on any
suggestions you have for more effective implementation.
Mr. Wells. Yes, sir. Let me start by saying that funding--
there are a couple of different ways I want to go here. Much of
what we saw are funding issues, but clearly there are things
like nine cent batteries in smoke detectors.
At Prince William Park, which we visited, the comment was
given, ``The reason we do not have batteries in smoke detectors
or fire extinguishers on the stands were that we suppose or
suspect that they will be stolen.''
That is really not a funding, lack of money issue. It is a
management issue in terms of, there are ways, and we made
recommendations. There are protective covers that can be placed
over smoke detectors, minor things. Even billing the guest once
they leave if, in fact, the fire extinguisher is missing. I
mean, clearly, these are management type things, not
necessarily dollars things.
In terms of the big picture dollars and what is more
important, this is not a scientific study. I have had an
opportunity to visit some of the parks looking at the
recreation fee money that's a new permanent appropriation
whereby through the collection of fees, the parks can collect a
projected $150 million worth of additional funds that 80 cents
on every dollar that is collected can be given to the local
park superintendent to make decisions about how he can use that
money to assist and provide an enjoyable experience for the
visitors to that park.
Quite frankly, I can say that I have looked at the list of
the projects that were approved and how that money was going to
be spent, and what I see is a lot of new things being done or
constructed or bought and not necessarily repair or fixing
things that need to be fixed. That is something that I think
someone ought to be paying some attention to.
Those are the types of minor management issues that I think
play into this.
Mr. Price. In terms of the structures of accountability,
the incentives to people actually in operational roles to
attend to these things, any suggestions along those lines?
Mr. Wells. GAO has been a big proponent of GPRA results
accounting, accountability, identifying measurements as to what
is being achieved with the taxpayers' dollars that are given.
Clearly I think safety and health is one of those issues that
can identify itself. When you have 1,900 recommendations for
deficiencies that need to be fixed, accountability ought to lie
to someone somewhere who did not fix 75 percent of those
things. That ought to be in a performance rating for a
superintendent or a park manager as to whether they are
accomplishing their job and spending the U.S. taxpayer dollars
wisely.
Mr. Price. Thank you.
Ms. Finnerty, you, in your last remarks, returned to a
theme that came up in the hearing on the concessions program,
that is, the need to gather better data across the park system
and the need to use that data to hold park managers more
accountable for addressing agency priorities.
I gather both the GAO and the Park Service have noted this
need for better information and a better use of information. I
gather you would agree that this organizational problem is
contributing to the performance problems both in the
concessions area and in the structural fire safety area.
Could you address this directly in terms of corrective
action?
Ms. Finnerty. I would agree with that. The accountability
piece is something that the Park Service struggles with in a
number of program areas, and structural fire is just the
latest. We had a number of efforts underway to fix this.
Clearly the organization needs to and is struggling to perform
in a more business-like manner, to be fully accountable for
funding and resources and those kinds of things.
We have always had great difficulty rolling up information
on a service-wide basis. We now have some systems that are
starting to do that and we are getting standardized across the
organization, and I think we will continue to build on those.
We have had a need and are working toward getting funding
for an incident reporting system that would certainly help us
in structural fire, but it would help us in a number of other
programs, too, and again, just continuing to work to get
databases built so you can make decisions, based on good data.
You can move resources to meet GPRA goals, and then you can
measure the outcomes.
You know, we are new to the GPRA business, too, and I think
we are making some progress there and getting things
standardized. So I think a lot of things are coming into play
that are going to help us become more business-like and be able
to measure and hold people specifically accountable for things
that are and are not getting done.
Right now it is really more hit and miss. Some regions do a
better job of it than others, and clearly I think that is
ultimately where you need to be, is if there are problems and
issues, then the person that is not dealing with that person or
persons, they need to be held accountable.
And I think that is where we still have more work to do. We
are moving in that direction, but clearly we have some more
work to do in that area.
Mr. Price. Well, let me finally just ask both of you to
suggest quite concretely what kind of data, what kind of
information we are talking about here in this area of fire
safety. I am not certain that that is clear, and I am not
certain to what extent there is a kind of technical fix here
that might actually be promising.
You talk about incident reporting. And Mr. Wells, too. What
sort of data, what sort of information generation are we
talking about here? Something that would be genuinely helpful.
Ms. Finnerty. Yes. I mean, there are two things. One, the
incident reporting system. That is something that we need on a
Service-wide basis to do just that, report incidents that
occur, fires that occur and those kind of things.
Mr. Price. I understand.
Ms. Finnerty. So that you can track that kind of
information and data and know where the issues are and where
the problems are.
The other baseline of information though that we are going
to start to compile here in the next couple of weeks starting
in 25 parks is to actually build a baseline of what are the
needs building by building throughout the Park Service. We have
over 20,000 buildings. We are obviously not going to look at
all of those buildings, and we are going to start with those
where people are staying overnight, the overnight
accommodations, the multiple dwellings, places where people
assemble, places where people are in the most threat, and to
see what is needed in those buildings.
Do they have needs for fire suppression? Do they have need
for detection and those kind of things? Building that kind of a
baseline, and then you can start channeling your resources to
address some of those things.
You know it is difficult to start throwing money at
problems when you really do not have a good idea what all the
problems are. I mean, GAO looked at six parks. We have got 379
parks, and you know, we just need to get a better handle, and
we are obviously going to start with the ones that potentially
have the most impact on public safety.
Mr. Price. Well, and these needs are surely high priority,
even emergency needs, in terms of the basic fire fighting, fire
suppressing equipment. I would hope some of this would not
await the assembling of a full data collection system.
Ms. Finnerty. Oh, no. By the end of September, we should
have a pretty good handle on 25 of our big operations and see
what that is showing is. I mean, is that going to show some
kind of a trend or pattern or that kind of a thing? And then we
can certainly start addressing some of those needs because
there are some funding sources available at the current time
that we can start marshalling to do some of that work.
The other thing that we really need to get a handle on is
this issue of how many parks do we really need fire brigades
in, versus parks that we really should have good, strong
agreements with the local fire departments, and then in those
parks where we do have brigades, we have got to be sure those
folks are trained because this is a collateral duty, and we do
not want to be sending people out to fight building fires if
they are not trained at all.
So that is the kind of database and information that I
think once we--we are already starting to get it, and I think
in the next little bit, we will have even more of that
information so that we can make better decisions and then hold
people accountable for those.
Mr. Price. Mr. Wells, is this the sort of thing that GAO
had in mind?
Mr. Wells. Absolutely. Let me give you two specific
concrete examples in terms of how important data is and what
type of data would really make a difference. Let me just give
you two specific examples.
Early on in my testimony I said we were able to show or say
that the Park Service had reported 1,400 fires over the last 10
years. There is no system to collect how many fires they have.
What they do is have someone monitor daily activity reports
that come in.
If a local park had a fire, it may or may not be reported.
It may or may not have been picked up. That is the type of
data, looking at lessons learned in terms of what you're
collecting that would be of benefit to other park
superintendents. The type of fire that occurred, why the fire
occurred, flammable material stored too close to something;
these are lessons learned that someone can look at from a
preventive standpoint.
The second point I would make is a lesson learned type
thing. As referred to earlier, just something as simple as
making good agreements with local communities to assist in fire
inspection, we found parks that had no agreements, had never
even thought about going out and asking for local assistance.
Could it be possible that a local community could send their
fire chief over and make suggestions for fire safety?
Other parks were making great use of that. Nine communities
surrounding the parks all had been contacted. All were built
in. Again, unevenness. Data collection allows managers to see
what is going on elsewhere and say, ``This makes sense. Why
aren't I doing the same thing?''
That type of data will go a long ways not necessarily
providing money, but just providing lessons learned that can
correct a lot of these things.
Mr. Price. Thank you very much. Thanks to both of you for
your testimony.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you.
Mr. Herger.
Mr. Herger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, again, I do thank you, both of our witnesses, for
being here, and it is obvious that we are all on the same side.
I have to believe that our goals are the same. It is just
getting in and taking care of a very serious problem that
exists.
And, you know, as I look back at some internal Park Service
memos, one from December 1997, the Director of the National
Park Service expressed concern about 1,900 fire safety
deficiencies, and then back in May 1998 in another internal
Park Service report stated, ``Sooner or later the National Park
Service stands to be seriously embarrassed, at a minimum, by
the catastrophic loss either of an irreplaceable historic
structure or collection or for human life from a structural
first.''
And what I would like to ask is: realistically, Ms.
Finnerty, when would you say, what is your estimate? I think we
all need some guidelines or goals that we have.
What is your goal of when we can repair what we have been
talking about and be able to have such problems as at the Ford
Theater, these 1,900 fire safety deficiencies? Do we have a
time line on this?
Ms. Finnerty. Well----
Mr. Herger. And if not, could you perhaps give us what you
think would be a reasonable time?
Ms. Finnerty. Why don't we do this, Congressman? Obviously
those six parks that were identified in the report are all
working on remedying those deficiencies. What I would like to
do is prepare for you a detailed report of what has been done,
what is planned to be done and a time frame and estimate for
when that--because they are all at various stages.
Some of them will require funding, and in that case we are
going to have to identify a funding source, whether it is
repair/rehab or some other pot of money to be sure we get the
work done, but clearly, I think that those deficiencies in
those six parks we need to fix as quickly as we can within
existing funding or to find other funding to do it.
And then this assessment that we are going to have done by
the end of September that looks at 25 additional parks,
anything that comes out of that, I think, clearly we need to
look at see how serious those deficiencies are and identify
ways to remedy those, and hopefully with some time frames built
into that.
Mr. Herger. And the concern I have, again, is that--which I
would not want to have happen. I am sure you would not either--
is 7 years from now we are back here with a hearing, and we are
still reading reports of how we are working on it.
Again, I do not think I have heard a time line. I am not
sure if I hear that this is really a priority sufficient enough
at this time with the Park Service that someone is stating,
``This is our goal. By the middle of next year, by the end of
next year.''
Mr. Wells mentioned that the local fire marshal would shut
down if it were privately held in 5 minutes the Ford Theater. I
mean I do not think it is unreasonable to be asking what is a
time frame that we are going to have the Ford Theater and other
1,900 fire safety deficiencies repaired, other than, ``Well, we
are working on it, and we are going to come up with something
later on.''
I really do not know if that is going to be good enough
that in 7 years from now we will not be in the same place.
Ms. Finnerty. We will be happy to provide that for you. I
do not want to throw a date out----
Mr. Herger. Right.
Ms. Finnerty [continuing]. That is not correct, and there
are a number of deficiencies at Ford's Theater, for example,
which you are very well aware of, and I would like to go back
and look at all of those, itemize them, and give you some very
specific concrete information that hopefully will get this
situation remedied as quickly as possible.
Mr. Herger. OK. As quickly as possible. Any guesstimate of
what is quickly as possible?
And, again, I think it is important that the Park Service
analyze this, all of these deficiencies, and come up with some
time frame, whatever it is, that is reasonable, but I think it
is very important that we have a time frame.
I mean we all work under time frames.
Ms. Finnerty. I agree.
Mr. Herger. That we are not going to continue to be in the
same situation we have been in.
Ms. Finnerty. I think that is a reasonable request, and we
will honor it.
Mr. Herger. I appreciate that.
Mr. Wells, do you have any comments on this?
Mr. Wells. In the spirit of fair, balanced and accurate
reporting, GAO gets paid to point out deficiencies and things
that are wrong. I think it is fair for us to say that 1 week
before this hearing my audit team went to Ford's Theater to
once again look to see what had been done between May and the
date that I was going to appear for this hearing.
I can report to you that these wires that are now shown
under the door had been removed. Those wires were not at Ford's
Theater last week.
These boxes that you see in the ceiling that were covering
those sprinkler heads are no longer there. The superintendent
accompanied us when we did this inspection a week ago. The
superintendent was not there in April when we went in with the
DC Fire Marshal.
So there has been immediate corrective action. Prince
William Park is buying smoke detector batteries. So there are
immediate actions being taken, and that is encouraging.
Mr. Herger. That is encouraging, and thank you.
But we have a number of others. As was mentioned, 1997,
1,900 just in this one report, and we owe it to the American
public.
And I appreciate the fact that I believe I hear a
commitment that you will get with your associates and come up
with some time frame, realistic time frame that we can correct
these.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Finnerty. Thank you.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you.
Mr. Gutknecht. Mr. Chairman, if I could, I apologize for
being late. We had another hearing. In fact, I have got three
hearings going on at the same time.
I just wanted to thank you for having this hearing. This is
an ongoing effort by this budget committee to hold Federal
agencies accountable, and I think, you know, it is something, I
think, that our taxpayers, the shareholders of this company we
call the Federal Government, expect some accountability, and I
think the more we begin to turn over some rocks, the more
questions that need to be asked, and I think it is our job.
And I apologize for not being here earlier, but I
understand that you have had a vigorous hearing here today, and
I think it is just one more step in bringing more
accountability back to our Federal Government.
So I thank you for having the hearing, and I apologize that
I have got too many other things going on today.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Gutknecht. It is good to
have you here. We appreciate you making it.
I would like to clarify one thing, if I could, Ms.
Finnerty. Will you be submitting a timetable? Is that what I
understand?
And will this be a timetable not just for the six parks
that were mentioned in the report, but will be a timetable for
the implementation of these initiatives?
Ms. Finnerty. Yes. We need to go back obviously and gather
the various--as I understood the request, it was looking at the
six parks that were in the report and what progress was being
made and what has been accomplished and what plans to be
accomplished and when that is going to get done.
I also offered that once we had these 25 parks that we are
going to be looking at over the next month or two, depending on
what those assessments show, that we could have some discussion
of how big an issue that is going to be and maybe set out some
time frames for getting some of that resolved over the next
year or so.
So I hear it is broader than just the six parks; is that
correct?
Mr. Radanovich. Correct, yes.
What will be the consequences to the managers if they do
not fulfill these, if they do not clean up the issues in their
parks? Will there be accountability?
Ms. Finnerty. Well, the Director has made it pretty clear
in a recent memo, as recently as a week ago, that he fully
intends this to be a top priority. These things need to be
addressed and dealt with, and if they are not. Then the people
will be held accountable, and their performance will be
determined by how well they either comply or do not comply. So
I think that is pretty strong.
Mr. Radanovich. You mentioned the Director many times. Is
the Secretary engaged in this as well?
Ms. Finnerty. The Secretary, of course, all of the reports
go to the Secretary, and he is certainly well aware of this,
and he may have had some discussions with the Director. All of
my conversations have been with the Director. I can tell you it
definitely has his attention.
Mr. Radanovich. In closing, I just have one question for
both of you. Do you think Americans should feel safe when they
are in these buildings in the national parks?
Mr. Wells. Concerned, yes.
Mr. Radanovich. Safer?
Mr. Wells. Concerned, yes.
Mr. Radanovich. OK.
Mr. Wells. They should be concerned.
Mr. Radanovich. Ms. Finnerty.
Ms. Finnerty. I would guess I would maybe be concerned
depending on where they are and depending on what we find. I
mean, I do not know that I could make a blanket statement
because, again, we do not have the baseline information on
everything.
I know many of our buildings are very safe, and I know that
buildings that have had renovations and those kinds of things,
a lot of these issues have been dealt with and addressed.
So obviously we need to be sure they are all in as good of
shape as we can get them.
Mr. Radanovich. OK. Well, I want to thank you both very
much for coming today and testifying and answering the
questions.
I want to thank members of the panel for being a part of
this hearing.
And with that, this hearing is closed. Again, thank you
very much.
[Whereupon, at 11:23 p.m., the Task Force was adjourned.]
Controlling Wildfires in the Future: What Strategies and Resources Are
Needed?
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2000
House of Representatives,
Committee on the Budget,
Task Force on Natural Resources and Environment,
Washington, DC.
The Task Force met, pursuant to call, at 2:05 p.m. in room
210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. George Radanovich
(chairman of the Task Force) presiding.
Chairman Radanovich. Welcome to the hearing. I want to
advise you that we are waiting for at least one more member to
show up, so it will be a couple more minutes. Thanks. [Recess.]
Good afternoon and welcome to the final hearing on the Task
Force for Natural Resources and the Environment.
As you know, a large portion of the western United States
has been on fire this past summer. These fires have been
nothing short of catastrophic, costing people their homes,
their possessions and, in the case of some firefighters, their
lives. In his radio address this weekend, President Clinton
claimed that extreme weather and lightning strikes helped spark
the many fires this summer. Others in the Clinton
administration have made similar claims when explaining these
fires. And while the claim may be true, it does not tell us why
the fires have been so intense and so difficult to contain.
Extreme weather and lightning strikes in the West are not
some sort of anomaly. Dry weather and lightning have been a
presence in the West since time immemorial. So the question
remains, just why are these fires so severe? As we will hear in
later testimony, the role of the government management policy
is a key element of this problem. This issue was addressed in a
General Accounting Office report issued in April of last year,
well before the fires started. To summarize, the report noted
that an overaccumulation of vegetation leading to an increasing
number of large, intense, uncontrollable, and catastrophically
destructive wildfires were in part a product of the Forest
Service's decades-old land management practices.
Those land management practices include an emphasis on
roadless policies and an overreliance on prescribed burns, with
little use of mechanical thinning and failure to heed the
warnings of the past. The new plan we will be discussing
presents an opportunity to reverse these trends and provide for
greater public and private sector involvement in fuels
reduction.
When the GAO released its report almost 18 months ago, the
Forest Service recognized 39 million acres of forestland in the
interior West was at high risk of wildfire.
Yet, it was not until just a few days ago that the
President released his plan, accepting the recommendations of
the Secretary of Agriculture and Secretary of Interior to
reduce fuels on public lands. While we are pleased this
proposal has finally been put forth, some of my colleagues and
I remain skeptical that it will be implemented. After all,
there has been a minimal response by this administration to the
years of warnings by the GAO, the Forest Service, and others
that fires like those burning now would happen someday.
Additionally, we have some concerns about a number of
aspects of the plan. I expect that our discussion of the issues
involved in this proposal will make for a fruitful dialogue
this afternoon.
Finally, I want to thank the witnesses for taking the time
to be here today. They are Barry Hill, the Associate Director
for Energy and Science Issues at the General Accounting Office;
Randy Phillips, Deputy Chief for Programs and Legislation at
the U.S. Forest Service; and Robert Nelson, Senior Fellow for
Environmental Studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute
and a professor of environmental policy at the School of Public
Affairs at the University of Maryland.
We look forward to your input on this matter and with that,
Mr. Price, I will invite you to make any opening statement that
you wish to do.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Radanovich follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. George Radanovich, a Representative in
Congress From the State of California
Good afternoon, and welcome to the final hearing of the Task Force
on Natural Resources and the Environment.
As you know, a large portion of the western United States has been
on fire this past summer. These fires have been nothing short of
catastrophic, costing people their homes, their possessions--and in the
case of some firefighters--their lives.
In his radio address this past weekend, President Clinton claimed
that ``extreme weather and lightning'' strikes helped spark the many
fires this summer. Others in the Clinton administration have made
similar claims when explaining these fires. And while the claim may be
true, it does not tell us why the fires have been so intense and
difficult to contain. Extreme weather and lightning strikes in the West
are not some sort of anomaly. Dry weather and lightning have been a
presence in the West since time immemorial. So the question remains--
just why are these fires so severe? As we will hear in later testimony,
the role of government management policy is a key element of the
problem.
This issue was addressed in a General Accounting Office report
issued in April of last year, well before the fires started. To
summarize, the report noted that an ``overaccumulation of vegetation''
leading to ``an increasing number of large, intense, uncontrollable,
and catastrophically destructive wildfires'' were in part a product of
the Forest Service's decades-old land management practices.
Those land management practices include an emphasis on roadless
policies, an over-reliance on prescribed burns with little use of
mechanical thinning, and a failure to heed warnings of the past. The
new plan we will be discussing presents an opportunity to reverse these
trends and provide for greater public and private sector involvement in
fuels reduction.
When the GAO released its report almost 18 months ago, the Forest
Service recognized 39 million acres of forestland in the interior West
was at high risk of wildfire.
Yet, it was not until just a few days ago that the President
released his plan--accepting the recommendations of the Secretary of
Agriculture and Secretary of Interior--to reduce fuels on public lands.
While we are pleased that this proposal has finally been put forth,
some of my colleagues and I remain skeptical that it will be
implemented. After all, there has been a minimal response by this
administration to the years of warnings by the GAO, Forest Service and
others that fires like those burning now would happen someday.
Additionally, we have concerns about a number of aspects of the
plan. I expect that our discussion of the issues involved in this
proposal will make for a fruitful dialogue this afternoon.
Finally, I want to thank the witnesses for taking the time to be
here today. They are Barry Hill, Associate Director for Energy and
Science issues at the General Accounting Office; Randy Phillips, Deputy
Chief for Programs and Legislation at the U.S. Forest Service; and
Robert Nelson, Senior Fellow for Environmental Studies at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, and professor of environmental policy
at the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland. We look
forward to your input on this matter.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't have a formal
statement but I do want to welcome the witnesses here and thank
them for appearing.
As we know, the 2000 wildfire season has been one of the
most serious on record, with more than 6\1/2\ million acres of
public and private land being burned. That is more than double
the 10-year national average. We will be interested in learning
more today about the reasons for this and the ways that we can
protect ourselves in the future.
There are lots of allegations and accusations that have
been raised, and naturally when a catastrophe like this occurs,
you see some of that. We would like to know about the
relationship of logging policy to this year's wildfires and
their severity. What are the indications in terms of more or
less commercial logging and its relationship to the potential
for disaster? Are there relationships to the so-called roadless
initiatives or any other policies currently in place? And what
are the funding implications for these fire-related Forest
Service programs, in terms of the direction in which they ought
to go.
I am sure that you will help us understand the complexity
of this issue. It is not a matter of simplistic solutions. But
we await your testimony and look forward to your contributing
to the ongoing deliberations over how to deal with this very
serious national crisis. Thank you.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Price.
Congressman Herger, do you have an opening statement you
would like to make?
Mr. Herger. I do. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I particularly appreciate you having this hearing on an
issue that is so important to our Nation and certainly to the
northeastern part of California that I represent, which has
parts of or all of 11 national forests in it. It is the site,
regrettably, of the Storrie Fire that was in the news, national
news, for about a month and a half earlier this summer; some
40,000 acres burned there, about 80,000 acres throughout my
district.
And again, this hearing is so important because the people
of our Nation and certainly of our district deserve, I believe,
accountability from those who are managing our forests.
If we look back, it is not like we did not know our forests
were going to burn. It is not if they are going to burn, it is
when they are going to burn unless we do something about it.
I am reminded of a report by the National Commission on
Wildfire Disasters in 1994 which warned of an extreme fire
hazard for the extensive buildup of dry, highly flammable,
forest fields across the West. That was 6 years ago. Then in
1995 the Forest Service itself in a report estimated that one-
third or 39 million acres of interior West lands--I am quoting
here--it manages were at risk of, quote, ``large
uncontrollable, catastrophic wildfires,'' close quote. That is
5 years ago the Forest Service itself was aware of this. Today
that has gone from 39 million to 56 million acres at risk.
I guess we are wondering why this is happening; why
something has not happened over the last 5 or 6 years, and I am
sure our witnesses will shed some light on that. What is
important is that we change this, what I feel is a lack of
policy, lack of implementing policy, including the Quincy
Library legislation which I passed, or I authored, in this
House a year ago; passed overwhelmingly, almost unanimously
passed out of the Senate on bipartisan vote--Senator Feinstein
carried it in the Senate--and which is a plan to help prevent
fires and yet is being--the Forest Service is throwing every
monkey wrench they can in the system not to implement that
which Congress has overwhelmingly said to implement.
So there are a lot of these questions I have, and hopefully
they will be answered by this hearing today. Thank you very
much, Mr. Chairman.
[Material submitted by Mr. Herger follows:]
Hon. Wally Herger,
House of Representatives,
Washington, DC, September 20, 2000.
Hon. John Kasich,
Chairman, Committee on the Budget, Cannon House Office Building,
Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Kasich: Pursuant to the unanimous consent request
made at the Task Force on Natural Resources and the
Environment's September 13, 2000, hearing, I hereby request
that the attached report from the Congressional Research
Service be made a part of the hearing record. The report
relates to a line of questioning pursued during the hearing
regarding the impact of cutting trees on the frequency of
wildfires on public lands.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Wally Herger,
Member of Congress.
[Memorandum from the Congressional Research Service]
September 20, 2000.
From: Ross W. Gorte, Natural Resource Economist and Senior Policy
Analyst, Resources, Science, and Industry Division.
Subject: Forest Fires and Forest Management.
Following release of an August CRS memorandum on timber harvests
and forest fires, CRS has received numerous comments and requests for
clarification and analysis. The earlier memorandum statistically
explored the limited and possibly misleading question of a potential
relationship between acres burned and timber volume harvested in the
national forests, without providing background information: (1) on the
context of the relationship between forest management and wildfires
more generally; (2) on the limits of the data used for statistical
analysis; or (3) on the limitations of the statistical techniques
employed. This memo broadens the discussion with more complete
recognition of wildfires as an enormously complex phenomenon; for more
information, see CRS Report 95-511 ENR, Forest Fires and Forest Health.
1
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ A CRS long report updating and expanding on the information in
Forest Fires and Forest Health is in preparation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The volume of timber harvested is not the principal forest
management question involved in assessing the extent and severity of
fires. Public and private forestry practices and policies--commercial
logging and slash disposal, thinning, road construction or obliteration
(closing the road and attempting to restore it to near-natural
conditions), roadless area protection, etc.--can alter a forest's
susceptibility and resistance to fire and other threats, and its
resilience to changes. However, other independent variables, such as
recent and past weather patterns (e.g., short-term and long-term
drought, wind speeds and patterns) and site-specific factors (e.g.,
slope, aspect, and fuel loads) are critical factors in determining the
extent and severity of any particular fire.
The extent to which timber harvesting from the national forests in
any particular year, or even over several years, affects fire extent
and/or severity in a given year cannot be determined from the available
data, as suggested by the following table and figure that were included
in the August 22 memorandum. 2 For example, two of the four
worst fire seasons in the past 80 years--1987 and 1988--occurred in a
decade with relatively high timber harvest levels, yet the other two
worst fire seasons--1994 and 1996--occurred in a decade with relatively
low timber harvest levels. In other years with high harvest levels
(e.g., 1986 and 1989), the fire seasons were relatively mild, while
other years with low harvest levels (e.g., 1995 and 1997), also had
relatively mild fire seasons. Thus, these data suggest that one cannot
draw conclusions about the severity of a fire season based on the level
of timber harvested nationally.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ These data re only for Forest Service protected lands. Of the
6.8 million acres burned to date in the 2000 fire season, 33 percent of
the acres burned have been Forest Service protected lands. Other lands
burned include other Federal lands (36 percent) and State and private
lands (31 percent).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although one cannot draw conclusions at the national level, at the
local level, on a specific site, timber harvesting can affect the
extent and intensity of wildfires. The severity of a fire (rate of
spread and level of damage) depends on numerous site-specific factors,
such as the slope and aspect of the site and the flora and fuel load on
the site, as well as on both general and site-specific weather factors,
such as humidity and fuel moisture content, ambient temperature, and
especially wind. Timber harvesting can alter the flora and fuels on a
site, removing the relatively large diameter wood that can be converted
into wood products, but leaving behind the ``slash'' (e.g., the
branches and needles). Fire protection is one of the principal reasons
for disposing of logging slash. 3 Slash disposal following
the timber harvest is standard practice on public and private lands,
and in most national forest timber sales, the Forest Service requires
purchasers to deposit funds into a special account (called ``brush
disposal'') which are then permanently available to the agency to pay
for slash disposal. 4 However, information on the extent of
various slash treatments, and on the fuel reduction resulting from such
treatments is lacking. In addition, other treatments, such as
precommercial thinning and prescribed burning, are also used to reduce
fuel loads, and might be as, or more, effective and efficient at
reducing fuel loads as timber harvesting with slash disposal, depending
on the site-specific circumstances.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ David M. Smith, The Practice of Silviculture, 7th ed. (New
York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1962), pp. 312-313.
\4\ The U.S. General Accounting Office (Forest Service: Better
Procedures and Oversight Needed to Address Indirect Expenditures, GAO/
RCED-98-258, August 1998) found that, from 1993-1997, the Forest
Service had spent nearly $40 million (27 percent) of deposits to the
brush disposal fund to pay for overhead and other expenses not directly
related to the purposes of the brush disposal fund.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, it should be noted that the public's attention generally
focuses on the extent of fires (i.e., acres burned), but not on the
severity or intensity of fires. However, intensity is of greater
consequence for assessing the effects of fires. ``Light'' fires that
burn surface fuels (e.g., grasses and needles) at relatively low
intensity can produce significant ecological benefits, even if they
cover large areas; recognition of these benefits led to modification of
the policy of aggressive fire suppression efforts on all wildfires in
the late 1970's, and is the basis for today's prescribed burning
efforts. Areas with heavier fuel loads may burn more intensely than
areas with lower fuel loads, and thus may cause more resource damage,
as well as be more likely to burn structures. Timber harvesting (with
effective slash disposal) and other treatments remove fuels. It is
logical, and widely accepted, that reducing fuels will reduce the
severity of wildfires, but no research literature documenting this
relationship has been found. Furthermore, damage appraisal methods are
not adequate to quantify the magnitude of the benefits of various fuel
treatments and their relationship to other factors contributing to
wildfire area and intensity.
TABLE 1.--NATIONAL FOREST TIMBER HARVESTS AND ACRES BURNED ON FOREST SERVICE-PROTECTED LANDS
[In millions of board feet and total acres burned]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fiscal year Harvest volume Acres burned Fiscal year Harvest volume Acres burned
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1980......................... 9,178.2 308,400 1990............ 10,500.3 346,350
1981......................... 8,036.2 209,631 1991............ 6,558.9 163,540
1982......................... 6,747.3 44,622 1992............ 7,289.6 585,052
1983......................... 9,244.0 66,498 1993............ 5,916.9 208,376
1984......................... 10,548.7 141,139 1994............ 4,815.3 1,476,402
1985......................... 10,941.3 568,297 1995............ 3,865.9 218,993
1986......................... 11,786.5 353,128 1996............ 3,724.6 1,092,672
1987......................... 12,712.1 1,162,757 1997............ 3,285.3 143,663
1988......................... 12,596.4 1,549,955 1998............ 3,297.6 172,582
1989......................... 11,950.9 475,799 1999............ 2,938.6 605,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Figure 1. Forest Service Acres Burned in Relation to Millions of Board
Feet Cut
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Herger. We look forward
to having some answers to these questions.
I would ask unanimous consent that all members and
witnesses would be given 5 days to submit non-extraneous
statements for the record. If there are no objections, it is so
ordered.
Again, I want to welcome our guests and those testifying.We
will allow every speaker to give their opening statement, and
when we are done with Mr. Nelson, we will go ahead and open up
for questions. If you read your statements first and then we
will go to questions afterwards, that is how we will start this
thing.
Chairman Radanovich. Welcome, Mr. Hill. And again, please
begin your testimony. Let me properly introduce you as the
Associate Director for Energy and Science Issues at the General
Accounting Office.
Mr. Hill, please begin.
STATEMENT OF BARRY T. HILL, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR ENERGY AND
SCIENCE ISSUES, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE
Mr. Hill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee. I will briefly summarize my prepared statement and
submit the full statement for the record.
Chairman Radanovich. Sure.
Mr. Hill. It is very sobering to be here today to discuss
the status of efforts to reduce the risk of catastrophic
wildfires to communities and natural resources in dry, lower-
elevation regions of the interior western United States. So far
this year, such wildfires have burned over 6.5 million acres of
public and private land, and that is more than twice the 10-
year national average and more than in any other year in
decades.
Lives have been lost, over 1,000 homes have been destroyed,
and the estimated damage to human property and forest and
rangeland and ecosystems totals billions of dollars. The cost
to the United States Treasury to suppress these fires and to
rehabilitate and restore burned areas will exceed $1 billion in
this fiscal year alone.
Reducing the future risk of catastrophic wildfires to human
lives and property as well as to the forest and rangeland
ecosystems will require development and implementation of a
comprehensive management strategy that includes three
components. Two of these components are reactive: Suppressing
wild fires after they have become wildfires, and rehabilitating
and restoring forests and rangelands after they have burned.
The third component is proactive. That is, reducing the risk of
future fires by removing accumulated hazardous fuels including
small trees, underbrush, and dead vegetation.
As requested, my testimony today will focus on the
proactive hazardous fuel reduction component. Specifically, I
will discuss the following three points: First, why conditions
on Federal forests and rangelands have reached the point that
they now pose a significant risk to the nearby communities and
to the ecological sustainabilty of lands and natural resources.
Second, the history and status of efforts by the Department of
Agriculture's Forest Service and the Department of Interior to
reduce these risks. And third, budget-related issues that
should be addressed to better ensure that the agencies spend
effectively and account accurately for funds appropriated to
reduce hazardous fuels. I may also add that my comments today
are based primarily on GAO products that we have issued over
the last decade.
In summary, the media and others have attributed much of
the blame for this year's destructive wildfire season to the
prolonged drought that has gripped the interior West. However,
the Forest Service has observed that in hindsight, quote,
``Uncontrollable wildfires should be seen as a failure of land
management and public policy, not as an unpredictable act of
nature,'' end quote.
Past land management practices that contributed to current
conditions included harvesting timber by selectively removing
the larger, more valuable, fire-tolerant trees or by
clearcutting, which is removing all of the trees from a site at
one time.
In addition, millions of acres of forest and wildlands were
cleared for agricultural crops and livestock pastures, and
grass cover and soil were lost as a result of intensive
livestock grazing. Moreover, during most of the 20th century,
the Federal Government's policy was to suppress all fires, and
for 75 years, Federal land management agencies were highly
effective at implementing this policy.
The Federal Government's approach to reducing hazardous
fuels has evolved over time in response to new information and
events. From the 1950's to the 1970's, land managers within
Interior experimented with allowing fires ignited both by
lightning and by the managers themselves to burn under
controlled conditions. By 1972, both Interior and the Forest
Service had formally adopted the policy of using fire as a tool
to reduce the buildup of hazardous fuels. Until recently both
agencies continued to emphasize prescribed fire as the tool of
choice in reducing the accumulation of hazardous fuels.
However, in the past several years, land managers have
increasingly recognized that in many areas the volume of
accumulated fuels has increased to the point that thinning and
mechanical treatments must be used before fire can be
reintroduced into the ecosystems.
Both the Congress and the administration now appear to be
prepared to fund an aggressive campaign to reduce hazardous
fuels. It is therefore imperative that the Forest Service and
Interior act quickly to develop a framework to spend
effectively, and account accurately for what they accomplish
with these funds. For example, according to the Forest Service,
priority for treatments to reduce hazardous fuels should be
given to areas where the risk of catastrophic wildfires is the
greatest to communities, watersheds, ecosystems, or species.
Identifying these areas is particularly important in that even
if the agency receives the $12 billion it says it needs over
the next 15 years to reduce hazardous fuels, it estimates that
at the end of that time, 10 million acres would either remain
at high risk of long-term damage or would have already suffered
long-term damage as a result of catastrophic wildfires.
However, currently neither the Forest Service nor the
Interior knows how many communities, watersheds, ecosystems and
species are at high risk of catastrophic wildfires, where they
are located, and what it will cost to lower this risk.
Therefore, they cannot prioritize them for treatment or inform
the Congress about how many will remain at high risk after the
appropriated funds are expended.
In addition, rather than allocating funds to the highest
risk area, the Forest Service allocates funds for hazardous
fuels reduction on the basis of the numbers of acres treated.
Similarly, both the Forest Service and the Interior use the
number of acres treated to measure and report to the Congress
their progress in reducing the threat of catastrophic
wildfires, rather than using the number of acres treated in the
highest priority areas or reductions in areas at high risk of
long-term damage from wildfires.
In closing, we are faced with a pay-me-now or pay-me-later
situation in which paying me now is likely the most cost-
effective alternative. However, restoring fire-adapted
ecosystems and protecting the communities that have developed
alongside and in these ecosystems will require that the
resources for reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires be
well spent. To do so will require that the Forest Service and
the Interior clearly identify not only how they spend funds
appropriated to reduce hazardous fuels, but also what they will
accomplish with these funds.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hill follows:]
Prepared Statement of Barry T. Hill, Associate Director for Energy and
Science Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office
Mr. Chairman and members of the Task Force, it is very sobering to
be here today to discuss the status of efforts to reduce the risk of
catastrophic wildfires to communities and natural resources in dry,
lower-elevation regions of the interior western United States. So far
this year, such wildfires have burned over 6.5 million acres of public
and private land--more than twice the 10-year national average and more
than in any other year in decades. Lives have been lost, over 1,000
homes have been destroyed, and the estimated damage to human property
and forest and rangeland ecosystems totals billions of dollars. The
costs to the U.S. Treasury to suppress these fires and to rehabilitate
and restore burned areas will exceed $1 billion in this fiscal year
alone.
Reducing the future risk of catastrophic wildfires to human lives
and property as well as to forest and rangeland ecosystems will require
development and implementation of a comprehensive management strategy
that includes three components. Two are reactive--suppressing wildland
fires after they have become wildfires and rehabilitating and restoring
forests and rangelands after they have burned. The third component is
proactive--reducing the risk of future fires by removing accumulated
hazardous fuels, including small trees, underbrush, and dead
vegetation. As requested, our testimony today will focus on the
proactive hazardous fuels reduction component. Specifically, we will
discuss (1) why conditions on Federal forests and rangelands have
reached the point that they pose a significant risk to nearby
communities and to the ecological sustainability of lands and natural
resources, (2) the history and status of efforts by the Department of
Agriculture's Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to
reduce this risk, and (3) budget-related issues that should be
addressed to better ensure that the agencies spend effectively and
account accurately for funds appropriated to reduce hazardous fuels.
Our comments are based primarily on GAO products issued over the last
decade.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ See App. I for Relevant GAO Products on Hazardous Fuels
Reduction.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In summary:
The media and others have attributed much of the blame for
this year's destructive wildfire season to the prolonged drought that
has gripped the interior West. However, the Forest Service has observed
that, in hindsight, ``uncontrollable wildfire should be seen as a
failure of land management and public policy, not as an unpredictable
act of nature.'' Past land management practices that contributed to
current conditions included harvesting timber by selectively removing
the larger, more valuable fire-tolerant trees or removing all of the
trees from a site at one time (clearcutting). In addition, millions of
acres of forests and wildlands were cleared for agricultural crops and
livestock pastures, and grass cover and soil were lost as a result of
intensive livestock grazing. Moreover, during most of the 20th century,
the Federal Government's policy was to suppress all fires, and for 75
years, Federal land management agencies were highly effective in
implementing this policy.
The Federal Government's approach to reducing hazardous
fuels has evolved over time in response to new information and events.
From the 1950's to the 1970's, land managers within Interior
experimented with allowing fires ignited both by lightning and by the
managers themselves to burn, under controlled conditions. By 1972, both
Interior and the Forest Service had formally adopted the policy of
using fire as a tool to reduce the buildup of hazardous fuels. Until
recently, both agencies continued to emphasize prescribed fire as the
tool of choice in reducing the accumulation of hazardous fuels.
However, in the past several years, land managers have increasingly
recognized that in many areas, the volume of accumulated fuels has
increased to the point that thinning and mechanical treatments must be
used before fire can be reintroduced into the ecosystems.
Both the Congress and the administration are now prepared
to fund an aggressive campaign to reduce hazardous fuels. It is,
therefore, imperative that the Forest Service and Interior act quickly
to develop a framework to spend effectively and to account accurately
for what they accomplish with the funds. For example, according to the
Forest Service, priority for treatments to reduce hazardous fuels
should be given to areas where the risk of catastrophic wildfires is
the greatest to communities, watersheds, ecosystems, or species.
However, currently neither the Forest Service nor Interior knows how
many communities, watersheds, ecosystems, and species are at high risk
of catastrophic wildfire, where they are located, or what it will cost
to lower this risk. Therefore, they cannot prioritize them for
treatment or inform the Congress about how many will remain at high
risk after the appropriated funds are expended. In addition, rather
than allocating funds to the highest-risk areas, the Forest Service
allocates funds for hazardous fuels reduction on the basis of the
number of acres treated. Similarly, both the Forest Service and
Interior use the number of acres treated to measure and report to the
Congress their progress in reducing the threat of catastrophic
wildfires rather than using the number of acres treated in the highest-
priority areas or reductions in areas at high risk of long-term damage
from wildfire.
the increasing risk of uncontrollable wildfires reflects an unintended
Consequence of Past Land Management and Public Policy
The media and others have attributed much of the blame for this
year's destructive wildfire season to the prolonged drought that has
gripped the interior West. However, the Forest Service has observed
that, in hindsight, ``uncontrollable wildfire should be seen as a
failure of land management and public policy, not as an unpredictable
act of nature.''\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Course to the Future: Positioning Fire and Aviation Management,
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (May 1995).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
More than a century ago, most forests in the interior West and
their associated species were fire-adapted and some--known as short-
interval, fire-adapted ecosystems--relied on frequent, low-intensity
fires to cycle nutrients, check the encroachment of competing
vegetation, and maintain healthy conditions. However, before the turn
of the last century, these short-interval, fire-adapted ecosystems and
species--such as ponderosa and other long-needle pines--began to be
replaced by fire-intolerant ecosystems and species--such as Douglas and
other firs. These changes resulted mostly from the nation's increased
demand for fiber and food. As a result, (1) the larger, more valuable
fire-tolerant trees were removed by selective timber harvesting or all
of the trees from a site were removed at one time (clearcutting); (2)
millions of acres of forests and wildlands were cleared for
agricultural crops and livestock pastures; (3) grass cover and soil
were lost as a result of intensive livestock grazing; and (4) burning
by Native Americans was curtailed to accommodate other land uses. In
addition, during most of the 20th century, the Federal Government's
policy was to suppress all fires, and for 75 years, Federal land
management agencies were highly effective in implementing this policy.
As a result of these human activities, the composition and
structure of the forests changed from open, park-like stands of
approximately 50 large, older-aged, and well-spaced fire-tolerant trees
per acre to dense ``dog-hair'' thickets of more than 200 mostly small,
fire-intolerant trees per acre. Unnaturally dense forests cause
individual trees to compete for limited quantities of water, and during
drought conditions, weakened trees become susceptible to insect
infestations and disease outbreaks. Such trees die in unnaturally high
numbers, adding to hazardous fuel loads.
The composition of many rangelands has also changed. Native grass
species, including Idaho fescue and bluestem, have been replaced by
invasive plant species, such as cheat grass, that fuel and thrive on
wildland fires. These exotic species follow fire wherever it goes, are
opportunistic, and repopulate a burned landscape faster than native
species. Cheat grass grows earlier, quicker, and higher than native
grasses and then dies, dries, and becomes fuel for the next year's
fires.
As the composition and structure of public forests and rangelands
in the interior West were changing, so too was their interface with
human structures and other property. Communities have developed
alongside and in these forests and rangelands, resulting in a patchwork
of homes interspersed among public lands. These areas are collectively
referred to as the ``wildland-urban interface.''
The Federal Government's Approach to Reducing Hazardous Fuels has
Evolved Over Time
The Federal Government's approach to reducing hazardous fuels has
evolved over time in response to new information and events. From the
1950's to the 1970's, land managers within the Department of the
Interior experimented with so-called ``prescribed fire programs.''
Under these programs, fires ignited by lightning as well as by land
managers themselves are allowed to burn, under controlled conditions,
so that the ecological benefits of fire can be reintroduced into fire-
adapted ecosystems.
By 1972, both Interior and the Forest Service had formally adopted
the policy of using fire as a tool to reduce the buildup of hazardous
fuels. From then until 1988, Federal land managers allowed thousands of
prescribed fires to burn in wildlands. This changed in 1988, when a
number of fires started by lightning in and around Yellowstone National
Park burned out of control, resulting in a controversy over what the
media termed the government's ``let burn'' policy. In 1989, an
interagency review team reaffirmed the benefits of fire and tasked
Federal land managers to (1) reevaluate the use of management-ignited
fires and other methods for reducing hazardous fuels and (2) develop
fire management plans for each of their land units before allowing a
prescribed fire to burn. However, some land managers continued to
subscribe to the policy of suppressing all fires, and some land units
were slow to develop the required plans.
During the early 1990's, both the Forest Service and Interior
emphasized prescribed fire as the tool of choice in reducing the
accumulation of hazardous fuels. As recently as in its fiscal year 1997
budget justification, Interior made no mention of other methods to
reduce accumulated hazardous fuels, such as thinning dense stands of
trees and mechanically removing underbrush. However, in the past
several years, land managers have increasingly recognized that in many
areas, the volume of accumulated fuels has increased to the point that
thinning and mechanical treatments must be used before fire can be
reintroduced into the ecosystems.
The Forest Service and Interior Must Develop a Framework to Spend
Effectively and to Account Adequately for What They Accomplish With
Funds Appropriated to Reduce Hazardous Fuels
An aggressive campaign to reduce accumulated fuels will require
money. However, before this fire season, neither the administration nor
the Congress assigned a high funding priority to reducing the threat of
catastrophic wildfires. Both the Congress and the administration are
now prepared to fund an aggressive campaign to reduce hazardous fuels.
It is, therefore, imperative that the Forest Service and Interior act
quickly to develop a framework to spend effectively and to account
accurately for what they accomplish with the funds.
A Lack of Funds Has Been a Limiting Factor
For a number of years, both the Congress and the administration
have been aware of the increasingly grave risk of catastrophic
wildfires as well as the need to aggressively reduce hazardous fuels.
However, until recently, neither had assigned a high funding priority
to reducing the threat.
In a 1994 report, the National Commission on Wildfire Disasters
stated that:
``The vegetative conditions that have resulted from past management
policies have created a fire environment so disaster-prone in many
areas that it will periodically and tragically overwhelm our best
efforts at fire prevention and suppression. The resulting loss of life
and property, damage to natural resources, and enormous costs to the
public treasury, are preventable. If the warning in this report is not
heeded, and preventative actions are not aggressively pursued, the
costs will, in our opinion, continue to escalate.''\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Report of the National Commission on Wildfire Disasters (1994).
The Commission was established on May 9, 1990, by the Wildfire Disaster
Recovery Act of 1989 (P.L. 101-286).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Commission observed that: ``The question is no longer if
policymakers will face disastrous wildfires and their enormous costs,
but when.'' To mitigate this risk, the Commission recommended, among
other things, that Federal land management policies, programs, and
budgets place a high priority on reducing hazardous fuels in high-risk
wildland ecosystems ``for at least a decade or more.''
Similarly, in 1995, the administration undertook a comprehensive
interagency review of wildland fire policy. On the basis of the review,
which was summarized in a 1995 statement,\4\ the Departments of
Agriculture and the Interior predicted serious and potentially
permanent environmental destruction and loss of private and public
resource values from large wildfires.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy and Program Review,
Department of the Interior and Forest Service, Department of
Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: 1995).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In April 1999, we reported that 39 million acres on national
forests in the interior West are at high risk of catastrophic wildfire
and that the cost to the Forest Service to reduce fuels on these lands
could be as much as $12 billion over the next 15 years, or an average
of about $725 million annually. We observed that this was more than 10
times the $65 million appropriated for reducing fuels in fiscal year
1999, and that the agency, contrary to its earlier plans, had requested
the same amount for fiscal year 2000. We also observed that funding to
address the increasingly grave risk of catastrophic wildfires may be
too little too late.
In December 1999, the Forest Service estimated that it would need
up to $825 million a year and almost $12 billion over 15 years to
reduce fuels on 40 million acres nationwide.\5\ However, the agency's
fiscal year 2001 budget justification, submitted to the Congress 2
months later, requested $75 million.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Protecting People and Sustaining Resources in Fire-Adapted
Ecosystems: A Cohesive Strategy (Draft), Forest Service (Dec. 1999).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interior has not, to our knowledge, developed similar cost
estimates. However, the Department spent about $34 million in both
fiscal years 1999 and 2000 to reduce hazardous fuels. It requested $52
million for these activities in fiscal year 2001, even though,
according to Interior, more than half of the 95 million acres of
Federal wildlands identified as requiring periodic burning or other
fuel treatment are on lands managed by the Department.
The Congress and the Administration Agree that Funds Should Be
Increased to Reduce Hazardous Fuels
The Congress and the administration now agree that money should be
made available to begin an aggressive campaign to reduce hazardous
fuels. The Congress is considering appropriating an additional $240
million--about $120 million to both the Forest Service and Interior--in
fiscal year 2001 to reduce hazardous fuels in high-risk wildland-urban
interfaces. Similarly, for fiscal year 2001, the administration is now
requesting an additional $115 million for the Forest Service and an
additional $142 million for Interior.\6\ Thus, between $367 million and
$395 million may be available in fiscal year 2001 to reduce hazardous
fuels. Moreover, the Forest Service estimates that up to an additional
$325 million a year could be made available from within its existing
budget to fund hazardous fuels reduction activities and research.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Managing the Impact of Wildfires on Communities and the
Environment: A Report to the President in Response to the Wildfires of
2000, U.S. Departments of Agriculture and the Interior (Sept. 8, 2000).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Accountability Must Now Become a Priority
With the Congress and the administration now prepared to double or
triple the Forest Service's and Interior's funding for reducing
hazardous fuels and with up to five times the current fiscal year's
appropriation already available from within the Forest Service's
existing budget for these activities and related research, we believe
that the Forest Service and Interior must act quickly to develop a
framework to spend effectively and to account accurately for what they
accomplish with the funds.
For example, according to the Forest Service, priority for
treatments to reduce hazardous fuels should be given to areas where the
risk of catastrophic wildfires is the greatest to communities,
watersheds, ecosystems, or species. However, currently neither the
Forest Service nor Interior knows how many communities, watersheds,
ecosystems, and species are at high risk of catastrophic wildfire,
where they are located, or what it will cost to lower this risk.
Therefore, they cannot prioritize them for treatment or inform the
Congress about how many will remain at high risk after the appropriated
funds are expended. According to the report on managing the impact of
wildfires released by the administration last Friday, regional and
local interagency teams will be assigned the responsibility for
identifying communities that are most at risk.
Moreover, rather than allocating funds to the highest-risk areas,
the Forest Service allocates funds for hazardous fuels reduction to its
field offices on the basis of the number of acres treated. Thus, the
agency's field offices have an incentive to focus on the easiest and
least costly areas, rather than on those that present the highest risks
but are often costlier to treat, including especially the wildland-
urban interfaces. Similarly, both the Forest Service and Interior use
the number of acres treated to measure and report to the Congress their
progress in reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires. For
instance, they report that they have increased the number of acres
treated to reduce hazardous fuels from fewer than 500,000 acres in
fiscal year 1994 to more than 2.4 million acres in fiscal year 2000.
However, they cannot identify how many of these acres are within areas
at high risk of long-term damage from wildfire.
The Forest Service and Interior note that reducing the threat to
communities, watersheds, ecosystems, and species can often take years
and that annual measures of progress must, therefore, focus on actions
taken. We agree, but believe that they must be able to show the
Congress and the American public that these actions, such as the number
of acres treated, occur within the highest-priority areas. Furthermore,
over time, they should be able to show reductions in areas at high risk
of long-term damage from wildfire.
Finally, although we have not examined this issue as thoroughly at
Interior, our work to date at the Forest Service has shown that, over
time, the link between how the Congress appropriates funds and how the
agency spends them has weakened as the Forest Service's field offices
have been required to address issues and problems--such as hazardous
fuels reduction--that are not aligned with its budget and
organizational structures. Forest Service field offices must now
combine projects and activities from multiple programs and funding from
multiple sources to accomplish goals and objectives related to reducing
hazardous fuels. We have observed that the agency could better ensure
that the up to $325 million a year that may already be available from
within its existing budget to fund hazardous fuels reduction activities
and research will be used for these purposes by replacing its
organizational and budget structures with ones that are better linked
to the way that work is routinely accomplished on the national forests.
We have also observed that the Forest Service's research division and
state and private programs should be better linked to the national
forests to more effectively address hazardous fuels reduction as well
as other stewardship issues that do not recognize the forests'
administrative boundaries.\7\ However, according to the Forest Service,
it has no plan to replace its program structure with one that is better
linked to the way that work is routinely accomplished on the national
forests.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Forest Service: Actions Needed for the Agency to Become More
Accountable for Its Performance (GAO/T-RCED-00-236, June 29, 2000).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In closing, we are faced with a pay-me-now or pay-me-later
situation in which paying me now is likely the more cost-effective
alternative. However, restoring fire-adapted ecosystems and protecting
the communities that have developed alongside and in these ecosystems
will require that the resources for reducing the threat of catastrophic
wildfires be well spent. To do so will require that the Forest Service
and Interior clearly identify not only how they spend funds
appropriated to reduce hazardous fuels but also what they accomplish
with these funds.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my formal statement. I will be pleased
to respond to any questions that you or other Members of the Committee
may have.
Appendix I.--Relevant GAO Reports and Testimonies on Reducing Hazardous
Fuels on Federal Lands
Federal Fire Management: Limited Progress in Restarting the Prescribed
Fire Program (GAO/RCED-91-42, Dec. 5, 1990).
Western National Forests: Catastrophic Wildfires Threaten Resources and
Communities (GAO/T-RCED-98-273, Sept. 28, 1998).
Western National Forests: Nearby Communities Are Increasingly
Threatened by Catastrophic Wildfires (GAO/T-RCED-99-79,
Feb. 9, 1999).
Western National Forests: A Cohesive Strategy Is Needed to Address
Catastrophic Wildfire Threats (GAO/RCED-99-65, Apr. 2,
1999).
Western National Forests: Status of Forest Service's Efforts to Reduce
Catastrophic Wildfire Threats (GAO/T-RCED-99-241, June 29,
1999).
Fire Management: Lessons Learned From the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos)
Fire (GAO/T-RCED-00-257, July 27, 2000).
Fire Management: Lessons Learned From the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos)
Fire and Actions Needed to Reduce Fire Risks (GAO/T-RCED-
00-273, Aug. 14, 2000).
Chairman Radanovich. Before we begin our next presentation,
you might note that we have two bells, that there is a vote
call going on. We will go ahead and go to the next
presentation. If it is a little bit long, Mr. Phillips, I may
need to cut you off, if that is OK. Then we will recess
quickly. We will run off and vote and be back here and start up
shortly after.
Chairman Radanovich. Our next speaker is Mr. Randle
Phillips, who is the Deputy Chief for Programs and Legislation
for the United States Forest Service. I believe we have met
before under similar circumstances, Randle. Welcome to the
hearing and please begin.
STATEMENT OF RANDLE PHILLIPS, DEPUTY CHIEF FOR PROGRAMS AND
LEGISLATION, UNITED STATES FOREST SERVICE
Mr. Phillips. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you
for the opportunity to speak today concerning the wildland fire
situation and the GAO report on the need to develop a strategy
to address these catastrophic threats. I will briefly summarize
my testimony and ask that my full text be submitted for the
record.
Mr. Chairman, this fire season is one of the worst in
recent memory, and it is not over yet. Fire has burned, as
previous people have said, more than 6 million acres not of
just Federal land, but also State, tribal and private lands.
The Forest Service to date has spent over 650 million in its
attempt to contain these fires and prevent loss of life,
property, and protect critical natural resources. Forest
Service firefighters and their interagency partners, including
volunteer fire departments, have done an outstanding job in
very difficult situations. So far this year, they have put out
76,000 fires.
This year's fires also reflect a long-term disruption in
the natural fire cycle that has increased the risk of
catastrophic fires in our forests and grasslands. During the
last century, the fires have been aggressively extinguished in
the West. As a result, the annual acreage consumed by wildfires
in the lower 48 States have dropped from 40 to 50 million acres
a year in the early 1930's, to about 5 million acres in the
1970's.
Now, while the policy of aggressive fire suppression has
successfully protected homes and forests for the most part
during the last century, it has also inadvertently prevented
fires from naturally clearing out brush, shrubs, and downed
material that can fuel fires and make them hotter and more
difficult to control. Invasive species such as cheatgrass,
which is pervasive on today's western landscape, have also
caused problems. It grows earlier, quicker, higher than native
grasses; then dies, dries out, and becomes fuel for fires.
Decades of aggressive fire suppression have drastically
changed the look, fire behavior, and ecological condition of
western forests and rangelands and, ironically, increased the
costs and difficulty of suppressing those wildfires when they
occur.
In addition to the unnatural fuel buildup developing in our
forest and rangelands, wildland firefighting has become more
complex in the last 2 decades because of drastic increases in
the West's population. Of the 10 fastest growing States in the
United States, 8 are in the interior West. As a result, new
development is occurring in fire-prone areas often adjacent to
Federal land, creating a wildland/urban interface situation.
Wildland firefighters today are often spending a great deal of
more time in an effort to protect these structures than in
earlier years.
The Forest Service and its interagency partners have
increased their efforts to reduce risk associated with the
buildup of brush, shrubs, small trees, and other fuels in the
forest with a variety of approaches including controlled burns,
the physical removal of undergrowth, and the prevention and
eradication of invasive plants.
In 1994 the Forest Service was treating approximately
385,000 acres across the United States. Today we have
successfully increased that annual treatment almost fourfold.
Last year we treated about 1.4 million acres of hazardous
fuels.
The GAO report of April 1999 indicated, as has been stated,
the most extensive and serious problem related to the health of
national forests in the interior West is overaccumulation of
vegetation. Regional forester for the Rocky Mountain Region,
Lyle Laverty, lead a team that developed a draft report known
as the Cohesive Strategy to Respond to Concerns Raised by GAO.
The report is a strategic blueprint that utilizes national data
to assess the problem of fuel buildup across the West. But it
will be up to regional and local Forest Service leadership to
collaborate with the public and use the best science to decide
the most effective strategies in the context of determining the
right balance of management among all the resources.
I think it is important to realize also the first round of
forestland management plans that occurred in the early 1980's
did not include fuel management strategies, with the exception
of some of the southern forests, because the overall national
policy at that time was still to extinguish all fires at all
costs.
Now, during his trip to visit fires in Idaho on August 9,
the President requested reports from the Secretaries of
Agriculture and Interior, outlining the agencies' plans for
immediate and short-term activities that will help rehabilitate
burned areas and assist the rural communities to recover from
the impact of fire.
The President's report covers five major areas: continuing
to make the necessary firefighting resources available to
protect communities and forests as the fire season continues;
restoring landscapes and rebuilding communities impacted by the
fires; investing in projects to reduce fire risk; working
directly with communities to increase local firefighting
capacity and reduce fire hazards; and being accountable through
the creation of a Cabinet-level coordinating team.
The President's report builds on many actions that we have
already undertaken and that were outlined in the draft cohesive
strategy. However, given the magnitude of the fire season and
its effects, there is clearly a need for additional action and
resources that would otherwise, then, be possible within our
baseline programs. Burned area emergency teams are already
mobilizing and conducting preliminary assessments and projects
needed to present further loss of life, property, and
resources.
The recommendations in the President's report would also
expand our efforts working with the National Association of
State Foresters, National Fire Protection Association, and
local firefighting organizations to help ensure that home
protection capabilities are improved. Our FIREWISE program has
been very successful in helping homeowners and communities
reduce damage to their homes.
The President's report recommends increased resources to
continue making progress in reducing fuels, particularly in the
wildland/urban interface areas. The recommendations are
entirely consistent with our draft Cohesive Strategy for
Hazardous Fuels Reduction.
In the area of accountability, the President's report
establishes a Cabinet-level coordinating team to ensure that
actions recommended by the Department receive the highest
priority.
Chairman Radanovich. Mr. Phillips, I am sorry to interrupt
you.
Mr. Phillips. That's OK.
Chairman Radanovich. I want to make sure we have the full
benefit of your testimony. Let's recess briefly now and then we
will vote and we will continue with the conclusion of your
statement.
Mr. Phillips. OK.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you very much. [Recess.]
Thank you very much. We are back in session and if you will
please continue, Mr. Phillips, we would appreciate it. Thank
you for waiting.
Mr. Phillips. My pleasure.
I was going to wrap up by touching on the accountability
aspect of the actions under the President's report in the draft
cohesive strategy.
The President has called for a Cabinet-level coordinating
team so that the Departments would receive the highest
priority. And the integrated management teams in the regions
that are also called for should take primary responsibility for
implementing the fuels treatment, restoration, and preparedness
programs.
The report to the President identifies a need for an
additional $1.57 billion per year for the Departments of the
Interior and Agriculture, starting in 2001, to implement the
recommendations. Increasing funding for the work that needs to
be accomplished will require new investments beyond our current
program capabilities.
In closing, I want to stress that it is important to
recognize that as hazardous fuels in the West built up over
many decades, restoring the health and resilience of these
ecosystems while protecting nearby communities from the effects
of catastrophic fire will take many years. Our strategic
approach will be led by the Departments of Agriculture and
Interior in concert with our partners and will treat areas that
pose the highest risk to people, property, and natural
resources. This will require working with a lot of people, will
require resources and a commonsense approach to avoid needless
controversy.
This concludes my statement. I will be happy to answer any
questions at the appropriate time.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Phillips.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Phillips follows:]
Prepared Statement of Randle Phillips, Deputy Chief, Forest Service,
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Mister Chairman and members of the Task Force, thank you for the
opportunity to speak with you today concerning the wildland fire
situation and the GAO report on the need to develop a strategy to
address catastrophic wildfire threats in our western national forests.
I am Randle Phillips, Deputy Chief for Programs and Legislation of the
Forest Service.
I appreciate your interest in what the agency is doing with respect
to catastrophic wildfire. The 2000 fire season is one of the worst in
recent memory, and it is not over yet. Fire has burned over
approximately 6.6 million acres of federal, State, tribal, and private
land so far this year. The Forest Service has spent over $650 million
in its attempt to contain these fires and prevent loss of life and
property, and protect critical natural resources. Six battalions of
military have assisted our fire-fighting efforts, and specialists,
equipment, and crews have been called in from several other countries
to supplement our resources.
I would like to cover two major topics today:
The GAO Report and the Forest Service's response;
The President's request for a report strategizing
restoration efforts and actions to reduce wildfire effects on
communities;
Before I get into the details of these topics, I would first like
to briefly discuss some of the reasons why we are in this dire
situation today.
This fire season is a result of extremely hot and dry weather
conditions in the west. The weather phenomenon known as La Nina,
characterized by unusually cold Pacific Ocean temperatures, changed
normal weather patterns when it formed 2 years ago. It caused severe,
long-lasting drought across much of the country, drying out our forests
and rangelands. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the
drought followed several seasons of higher-than-normal rain, which
fueled the growth of grasses and other plants that quickly dried when
the rains stopped. This left millions of acres susceptible to fires. To
make matters worse, this weather pattern also spawned a series of
mostly dry thunderstorms with heavy lightning across the West. Because
of the drought conditions, lightning strikes have ignited more new
fires than would normally be associated with such storms.
The current season corresponds to a historical pattern of extensive
wildfires during similar unusual weather conditions. The result has
been an extended, severe fire season with wildfires burning
simultaneously across the western United States. Forest Service's fire
fighters and their interagency partners have done an outstanding job in
these difficult conditions. So far this year, they have put out a
remarkable 76,000 fires.
This year's fires also reflect a longer-term disruption in the
natural fire cycle that has increased the risk of catastrophic fires in
our forests and rangelands. During the last century, fires have been
aggressively extinguished in the West. As a result, the annual acreage
consumed by wildfires in the lower 48 states dropped from 40 to 50
million acres a year in the early 1930's to about five million acres in
the 1970's. During this time, firefighting budgets rose dramatically
and firefighting budgets rose dramatically and firefighting tactics and
equipment became increasingly more sophisticated and effective.
While the policy of aggressive fire suppression has successfully
protected homes and forests during the last century, it has also
inadvertently prevented fire from naturally cleaning out brush, shrubs,
downed material, and small trees that can fuel fires making them hotter
and more difficult to control. In some cases, peat management practices
including timber harvesting and grazing practices may also have been a
contributing factor to the loss of large, fire resistant trees and the
over accumulation of brush. Invasive species such as cheatgrass, which
is pervasive on today's Western landscape, have also caused problems.
Cheatgrass is one of the first plants to establish after a fire, and it
grows earlier, quicker, and higher than native grasses. Then it dies,
dries, and becomes fuel for fires.
In short, decades of aggressive fire suppression have drastically
changed the look, fire behavior, and ecological condition of western
forest sand rangelands and ironically increased the cost and difficulty
of suppressing fires. Forests a century ago were less dense and had
larger, more fire-resistant trees. For example, in northern Arizona,
some lower elevation stands of ponderosa pine that once held 50 larger
trees per acre, now contain 200 or more smaller trees per acre. In
addition, the composition of our forests have changed from more fire-
resistant tree species to nonfire resistant species such as grand fire,
Douglas fire, and subalpine fir. As a result, studies show that today's
wildfires, typically burn hotter, faster, and higher than those of the
past.
In addition to the unnatural fuel buildup developing in our forests
and rangelands, wildland firefighting has become more complex in the
last two decades due to dramatic increases in the West's population. Of
the ten fastest growing states in the U.S., eight are in the interior
West. While the national average annual population growth is about 1
percent, the West has growth rates ranging from 2.5 to 13 percent. As a
result, new development is occurring in fire-prone areas, often
adjacent to Federal land, creating a ``wildland-urban interface''--an
area where structures and other human development meet or intermingle
with undeveloped wildland. This relatively new phenomenon means that
more communities and structures are threatened wildland. This
relatively new phenomenon means that more communities and structures
are threatened by fire. Wildland firefighters today often spend a great
deal more time and effort protecting structures than in earlier years.
Consequently, firefighting has become more complicated, expensive, and
dangerous.
The Forest Service and its interagency partners have increased
their efforts to reduce risks associated with the buildup of brush,
shrubs, small trees and other fuels in forest and rangelands through a
variety of approaches, including controlled burns, the physical removal
of undergrowth, and the prevention and eradication of invasive plants.
In 1994 the Forest Service was treating approximately 385,000 acres
across the United States to reduce hazardous fuels. Today, we have
successfully increased annual treatment almost four-fold. Last year we
treated approximately 1.4 million acres. Reversing the effects of a
century of aggressive fire suppression will take time and money
targeted to high priority areas of protecting people, homes, critical
watersheds, and wildlife habitat.
Today, high-risk areas such as the wildland/urban interface have
become our high priority for treatment. There are many opportunities to
treat these high priority areas to reduce fuels. Our approach, with
needed new investments, focuses on protecting communities at risk from
unnaturally intense fires by removing small, generally noncommercial
fuels through a combination of thinning, prescribed fire, and working
with landowners to reduce fuel buildups and other hazardous conditions
on their own property.
The work anticipated to address fuels reduction and other needs
associated with the President's Report would be done under all existing
environmental laws. Full public involvement will be done, with
collaboration between the agency, cooperators, and with the public.
At the request of the New Mexico delegation, we recently outlined
our approach for reducing fire risks by removing small-diameter trees
and nonmerchantable material in the wildland/urban interface. I would
like to submit for the record Chief Dombeck's May 23, 2000, letter to
the New Mexico delegation.
The GAO Report and the Forest Services Response
The General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report in April, 1999,
titled: Western National Forests: a Cohesive Strategy is Needed to
Address Catastrophic Wildfire Threats (GAO/RCED-99-65). The GAO
asserted, ``The most extensive and serious problem related to the
health of national forests in the interior west is the overaccumulation
of vegetation.''
Regional Forester Lyle Laverty led a team that has developed a
draft report, known as the cohesive strategy, to respond to the
concerns raised by GAO. The report is not operational in nature, but
rather is a strategic blueprint that utilizes coarse-scale national
data to assess the problem of fuel buildup across the west.
In addition to this data, the draft report calls on the agency to
consider fire management strategies that would be consistent with
current forest plans or within the context of revising or amending
forest management plans. The strategies mentioned in the report that
may be useful for the agency to consider are those that remove brush,
small trees, and other fuels through mechanical methods or controlled
burning or a combination of both. It will be up to regional and local
Forest Service leadership to collaborate with the public and use the
best science to decide the most effective fire strategies in the
context of determining the right balance of management among all of the
resources within ecosystems. Two examples of this already happening are
the planning efforts underway for the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the
Interior Columbia River Basin.
With regard to implementation, it is important to realize that the
first round of forest management plans that were written in the 1980's
did not include fire management strategies, with the exception of some
of our southern forests, because the overall national policy was still
``extinguish all fires at all costs.'' Therefore, many innovative
approaches to reduce fuels in forests and near communities are stymied
by these outdated forest plans. However, the opportunity to change
these plans has never been better. As required by law, the agency is
presently revising or has plans to revise most of its 150 or more
forest plans, a process that will take most of the next 5 years or more
to complete. As Congress discusses the amount of money to be made
available for fuel treatment, it must also consider the money needed to
revise and amend forest plans. Innovative projects to fire proof
communities and forests must be supported and in compliance with
innovative forest plans.
In the past year, we have also issued reports addressing large fire
costs and workforce capacity and configuration. Teams are in place to
begin implementing the recommendations of these reports. As you can
see, we have been working on many fronts to deal with fire management
issues.
The President's Request for a Report Outlining Restoration Efforts and
Actions the Agencies Can Take to Reduce Wildfire Effects on Communities
During his trip to visit fires in Idaho on August 9, 2000, the
President requested a report from the Secretaries of the Interior and
Agriculture outlining the agencies' plans for immediate and short-term
activities that will help rehabilitate burned areas and assist rural
communities to recover from the impacts of fires. In addition, the
President asked us to develop actions to help protect communities and
natural resources from the risk of future unnaturally intense fires.
The Secretaries have completed the report and the President has
accepted the report (hereafter referred to as the President's Report)
and its recommendations. I would like to share the major findings and
points made in the President's Report with you today.
The President's Report covers five major areas:
Continuing to make all necessary firefighting resources
available to protect communities and forests as the fire season
continues;
Restoring landscapes and rebuild communities and
landscapes impacted by the fires;
Investing in projects to reduce fire risk by removing
brush, shrubs, and small trees;
Working directly with communities to increase local
firefighting capacity and reduce fire hazards, and;
Being accountable through creation of a cabinet-level
coordinating team.
The President's Report builds on many of the actions that we are
already taking. However, given the magnitude of the fire season and its
effects, there is clearly a need for additional action and resources
than would otherwise be possible within our baseline programs.
Continuing to Make All Necessary Firefighting Resources Available
The President's Report's recommendations reinforce the need to have
additional initial attack and extended attack resources. It also
reinforces the need to address firefighter pay equity issues. As a
first priority, the Departments will continue to provide all necessary
resources to ensure that firefighting efforts protect life and
property.
Restoring Landscapes and Rebuilding Communities
Burned area emergency rehabilitation teams are already mobilized
and conducting preliminary assessments and rehabilitation projects
needed to help prevent further loss of life, property, and resources
from the first damage-producing storms that may cause excessive
erosion, water quality degradation, and other damage from burned areas.
In addition to this work, we will invest in landscape restoration
efforts such as tree planting, watershed restoration, and soil
stabilization and revegetation.
The recommendations in the President's report would also expand our
efforts working with the National Association of State Foresters, the
National Fire Protection Association, and local firefighting
organizations to help ensure that home protection capabilities are
improved and to educate homeowners in fire-sensitive ecosystems about
the consequences of wildfires and techniques in community planning,
homebuilding, and landscaping to protect themselves and their property.
Our FIREWISE program has been very successful in helping homeowners and
communities reduce damage to their houses.
Investing in Projects to Reduce Fire Risk by Removing Brush, Shrubs,
and Small Trees
As stated earlier, we are steadily increasing our capacity to
reduce hazardous fuels and are focusing these efforts on the wildland/
urban interface, but the scale of the problem is beyond our current
means. The President's Report recommends increased resources to
continue making progress in reducing fuels, particularly in the
wildland/urban interface areas. The recommendations are entirely
consistent with our draft cohesive strategy for hazardous fuels
reduction.
Working Directly with Communities to Increase Local Firefighting
Capacity and Reduce Fire Hazards
Working with local communities is a critical element in restoring
damaged landscapes and reducing fire hazards near homes and
communities. This will be pursued through expanding community
participation, increasing local capacity, and learning from the public.
being accountable through creation of a cabinet-level coordinating team
The President's Report establishes a Cabinet-level coordinating
team to ensure that the actions recommended by the Departments receive
the highest priority. The Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior
will cochair this team, and integrated management teams in the regions
should take primary responsibility for implementing the fuels
treatment, restoration, and preparedness programs.
Funding and Budget Issues
The report to the President identifies a need for an additional
$1.57 billion per year for the Departments of Interior and Agriculture
starting in FY 2001 to implement the recommendations. This funding will
be used for fire preparedness, fire operations, State and volunteer
fire assistance, forest health management, and economic action programs
related to accomplishment of the report's recommendations.
Increasing funding for the work that needs to be accomplished will
require new investments. Congress and the Administration must work
together to address this issue in order to help the agencies achieve
this important goal of reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfire
across the landscape and implement an effective recovery and
rehabilitation program.
Summary
The Forest Service and other Federal agencies with firefighting
responsibilities are committed to minimizing the losses from future
unnaturally intense fires such as those in New Mexico, Idaho, Montana,
and across the interior West. The Forest Service is committed to
working with communities to implement a strategy to restore and
maintain healthy ecosystems on National Forest System lands. That means
reducing hazardous fuels, while ensuring cautious and consistent
protocols in any use of prescribed fire.
We will continue to provide the national leadership and to work
with our federal, State, and local firefighting cooperators, and
Congress to ensure that the Federal firefighting agencies and their
cooperators have the resources needed to assist in educating home and
land owners about fire risks, fire risk reduction strategies, and to
protect the public, property, and resources when fires occur.
As I have stated before, it is also essential to recognize that
hazardous fuels buildups in the West occurred over many decades.
Restoring the health and resilience of these ecosystems while
protecting nearby communities from the effects of catastrophic fire
will take many years. That reality, however, is no excuse for inaction.
Our strategic approach, which will be led by the Departments of
Agriculture and the Interior, will treat areas that pose the highest
risk to people, property, and natural resources, and to do so in the
most expeditious manner possible. This will require partnerships,
resources, and common sense approaches that avoid needless controversy.
This concludes my statement. I would be happy to answer any
questions you or the members of your Task Force might have.
Chairman Radanovich. Next up is Robert H. Nelson, who is
the Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies with the Competitive
Enterprise Institute and a professor of environmental policy at
the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland.
Mr. Nelson, welcome and we look forward to your testimony.
Please begin.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT H. NELSON, SENIOR FELLOW IN ENVIRONMENTAL
STUDIES, THE COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, PROFESSOR OF
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, UNIVERSITY OF
MARYLAND
Mr. Nelson. I am pleased to be here. I might also add that
I worked from 1975 to 1993 in the Office of Policy Analysis,
Office of Secretary of the Interior, so that is part of my
background on this subject.
The principle conclusions are summarized in seven points
which I will go over quickly. The first is that the forest
fires of 2000 have shown the need to rethink some of the basic
assumptions of Federal land management. Forest fire is partly
an accident of the weather and other circumstances. It is also
subject to extensive human influence. A forest can be managed
to be much more or less susceptible to catastrophic fire. The
management decisions made over many decades left the national
forest in a tinderbox condition. So there were many
administrations that were responsible. This included many
decades of suppression of fire. And then in the decade of the
1990's, far too little was done to redress the dangers created
in the previous decades. All this failure calls for a broad
review of the Federal forest management regime which created
such unacceptable results over such a sustained period.
The problems of wildfires in the West this year to some
extent are illustrative of broader problems of the Forest
Service. Its land use planning system, by wide agreement, does
not work well. The General Accounting Office has studied the
decision-making process of the Forest Service on a general
basis and described it as ``broken.'' A state of gridlock is
the normal characterization of the current Forest Service
situation.
I think Congress itself can share in some of the blame for
these broader problems, because it itself has been gridlocked
in attempts to resolve some of the land use planning problems
and to change some of the basic statutory framework for the
Forest Service, despite abundant evidence that these problems
exist.
Point number two is that actions are urgently needed to
reduce excess fuel loads in order to restore the national
forests and other western Federal forests to a healthier and
less fire-prone condition. Since at least the early 1990's,
various expert groups have been warning that excess fuel levels
were building up on western forests, posing the risk of
widespread catastrophic fire. Such warnings have been issued by
the National Commission on Wildfire Disasters, the Forest
Service, the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior in a 1995
report, and the General Accounting Office in 1998 and 1999.
There was some, but nowhere near enough, response of the
Federal forest agencies in comparison with the magnitude of the
problem. They in effect gambled with the lives and property of
the West. You might say they were hoping for good weather and
low winds and lost the gamble in the summer of 2000.
We now at this point need a large-scale program of fuels
reduction. Not all the acreage is going to require action, but
the upper limit of activity involves 50 million acres in the
worst condition, and another 50 million or so forest acres
which are in deteriorating condition and which face abnormal
fire-prone conditions.
Point three: States and local communities should take the
lead in developing plans for reducing fire hazards in their
vicinity, including Federal forests. Basic social values will
be involved in resolving the best management strategy.
Prescribed burning will require that nearby residents and
property owners put up with smoke and possible health hazards
and take the risk that the fire might get out of control,
potentially even threatening their lives. Mechanical thinning
will require a willingness to cut large numbers of trees on
national forestlands, a position that has been anathema to many
vocal environmental groups in recent years. Doing nothing may
involve the fewest immediate costs but will pose the risk that
the whole forest might burn up in a catastrophic fire.
We also have the problem that various studies and
experiments have been conducted, but there are many large
technical and ecological uncertainties that remain with respect
to fuels reduction. The same treatment methods that work in one
place may yield much different results in another place.
For many years the track record of the Forest Service has
been to overstate the degree of scientific knowledge and then
to seek to impose common answers from a national level in the
service of a fictitious scientific consensus; the most recent
example has been the emphasis on prescribed burning and
resistance to mechanic thinning which dominated the response of
the 1990's.
It is a time for a new approach and a new era. This will
mean much more real decentralization of authority and much less
unilateral assertion of Federal authority. It will be a
continuation of existing trends already seen in the 1990's.
The watershed movement represents an important effort to
decentralize. A 1996 report by the Colorado Law School
documented and studied closely the role of 76 watershed groups
that had formed to seek solutions to common problems at the
local level. More of that will be needed.
Point four: The Forest Service should be directed to
publish full forest fire risk assessments for each community in
close proximity to a Federal forest, giving estimates of the
likelihood of various fire outcomes within specified time
frames. If communities are going to take the lead in developing
fire and fuels management plans, they need to have better
information. That is a role that the Forest Service can very
effectively play, to provide that kind of information.
Point five: The cost of the fuels reduction program can be
substantially held down by selling commercially marketable wood
and other products resulting from fuels reduction efforts. A
program of government-subsidized thinning, costing hundred of
millions of dollars and at Federal taxpayer expense, is not
needed. Contrary to a wide impression, the total volumes of
wood on the national forest have been increasing steadily for
many years. The composition of the national forests, however,
has shifted radically to small-diameter and, thus, lower-
quality trees. At present, these small-diameter trees have a
limited commercial market. This can be a short-term situation,
however. The demand for wood and paper in the United States
continues to grow unabated. There has been a steadily growing
use by the timber industry of low-quality trees across the
United States.
The national forests now contain large supplies of this
kind of lower-quality wood that can be used to meet the needs
of the timber industry and can be sold even for positive
revenue at a gain to the Federal treasury.
A large new program of selling small-diameter trees on a
much larger scale can be a win-win situation, economically it
saves the government money, helps the economy of small
communities in the West, and environmentally reduces fuel
loads, cuts the risk of fire, and saves the ecological harms
that often result from current fires.
It will be necessary, however, to provide some certainty of
future supply for mill operators and others involved in the
utilization of low-diameter trees that does not exist at
present. No one can be expected to invest money in a new small-
diameter mill in the West that may take 10 years to earn a fair
return when the supply of small-diameter trees from the
national forests, where the largest concentrations exist, could
dry up at any time under current confrontational land use
planning and other working arrangements on the national
forests.
Congress needs to act in this area, because existing law
will not allow the existing security of supply to provide the
right incentives to get private sector behavior.
Point number six: I believe a cost-sharing formula should
be implemented in conjunction with the much larger role of
State and local governments, wherein the Federal Government
shares the burdens of fuel reduction programs with
participating State and local governments. Cost-sharing has
many benefits and it is used in many Federal programs. It
provides an incentive for States and local governments to seek
cost solutions, and in many cases they are the ones who have
the real authorities, such as zoning and so forth, that are
necessary to managing these fire dangers.
And point number seven and the final point: Prompt action
to reduce excess fuels on national forests will require limits
on the existing ability of many parties to national forest
decision-making to exercise in effect a unilateral veto power
over future management actions. Because of all the appeals
processes and procedural hurdles that now exist, the current
system is in effect strongly biased in favor of those who favor
a no-action alternative. It is possible for a group of
concerned parties to discuss forest management options, develop
a fuels reduction plan that has wide community support, and yet
any one of those parties at the end of process can have the
ability to prevent its implementation. It is an impossible
situation for workable achievement of rapid response to a
problem such as we are seeing now with western fires.
I believe that if Congress wants to see any action soon to
address the problems of western national forests, it will have
to confront this problem as well. And so, as I said at another
point in my testimony, I think that Congress in various policy
areas has to resolve certain disagreements within its own body,
as well as the Forest Service taking much more effective action
than they have in the past. But their problems are partly
problems that have been forced on them by congressional
inaction.
That concludes my testimony.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Nelson.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Nelson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Robert H. Nelson, Senior Fellow in Environmental
Studies, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Professor of
Environmental Policy, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland
My name is Robert H. Nelson. I am a Professor of Environmental
Policy at the School of Public Affairs of the University of Maryland
and a Senior Fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. From 1975
to 1993, I worked in the Office of Policy Analysis in the Department of
the Interior. This office is the principal policy office serving the
Secretary of the Interior. I served on assignment as the senior
economist of the Commission on Fair Market Value Policy for Federal
Coal Leasing (1983-1984), as research manager for the President's
Commission on Privatization (1988), and as economist of the Senate
Select Committee on Indian Affairs (1991). I am the author of three
books on public land management, The Making of Federal Coal Policy
(Duke University Press, 1983), Public Lands and Private Rights: The
Failure of Scientific Management (Rowman & Littlefield, 1995) and A
Burning Issue: A Case for Abolishing the U.S. Forest Service (Rowman &
Littlefield, 2000). I received a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton
University in 1971.
The principal conclusions of my testimony can be summarized as
follows.
1. The forest fires of 2000 have shown the need to rethink basic
assumptions of Federal land management.
2. Actions are urgently needed to reduce excess fuel loads in order
to restore the national forests and other western Federal forests to a
healthier and less fire-prone condition.
3. States and local communities should take the lead in developing
plans for reducing fire hazards in their vicinity, including Federal
forests. They should work in conjunction with the Federal land
agencies, environmental groups, the timber industry and other elements
of ``civil society.''
4. The Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and other parts of
the Federal Government should serve primarily to facilitate discussion,
to provide information and other technical assistance, and to handle
administrative implementation of resulting fuels reduction plans on
their own lands.
5. The Forest Service should be directed to publish full forest
fire risk assessments for each community in close proximity to a
Federal forest, giving estimates of the likelihood of various forest
fire outcomes within certain specified timeframes.
6. The costs of the fuels reduction program can be limited by
taking steps to facilitate the sale of commercially marketable wood and
other products resulting from fuels reduction efforts. A program of
thinning costing hundreds of millions of dollars at Federal taxpayer
expense is not needed.
7. A cost-sharing formula should be implemented whereby the Federal
Government does share any public burdens of excess fuels reduction with
participating state and local governments.
8. Prompt action to reduce excess fuels on Federal forests will
require limits on the existing ability of many parties to national
forest decision making to exercise a unilateral veto power over future
management actions.
I will address each of these six points in turn.
Rethinking Federal Land Management
Almost a century of fire suppression on the national forests and
other western forests has led to a build-up of large loads of trees and
wood. Suppressing fire paradoxically results in an increase in fuel
loads in the future and increasing fire hazards. Since the 1970's, the
extent of wildland fires in the West has been growing and these fires
have been less controllable; have burned at higher temperatures; have
been more likely to be crown fires; and have often occurred outside the
range of previous wildland fire experience. The economic losses have
included destruction of homes and other structures, soaring Federal
expenditures for fire fighting, loss of tourism, loss of potentially
harvestable wood, and other costs. Catastrophic wildfires have also
caused sterilization of the soil, excess siltation and runoff into
streams, destruction of remaining large trees, loss of biodiversity and
other environmental damages.
These trends culminated in the fire season of 2000. Thus far, more
than 6.5 million acres (about equal to the land area of the State of
Maryland) have burned, more than twice the normal amount for this time
of year. At least 1,000 homes have been destroyed. Fire fighting costs
to the Federal Government will very likely exceed $1 billion in 2000.
The State government of Montana was forced to limit recreational access
to forests covering one quarter of the area of Montana. The
environmental costs are more difficult to quantify but they are large
and will be visible in the years to come.
Forest fire is partly an accident of the weather and other
circumstances; it is also subject to human influence. A forest can be
managed to be more or less susceptible to catastrophic fire. The
management decisions made over many decades of the 20th century left
the national forests in a tinderbox condition. Such a management
failure--sustained over many decades, and including the 1990's when
much too little was done to redress the dangers created by suppression
in previous decades--call for a broad review of the Federal forest
management regime which created such unacceptable results over such a
sustained period.
Early on, the general policy of fire suppression was initially
resisted by many local communities but was forced on them by a Forest
Service determined to implement a single vision of ``correct'' forest
management. This reflected the ethos of ``scientific management'' in
which the Forest Service was conceived in 1905 and the normal
expectation in science that there is a one ``right answer.'' In the
1990's, following the more recent recognition that fuel loads had built
up to very dangerous levels on the forests, there was again an attempt
to formulate a single correct policy extending over the national forest
system. The Forest Service determined that prescribed burning was the
superior method--more ``natural''--of reducing fuel loads on the
national forests. The level of prescribed burns on the national forests
rose by a factor of three or four from 1994 to 1999 (although still
small relative to the overall acreage of fire prone forest). Although
many communities and expert groups outside the Forest Service strongly
advocated the use of mechanical thinning of the national forests as
well to reduce fuel loads, very little thinning took place.
The track record of the Forest Service shows that its
``scientific'' determinations are often influenced by intellectual
fads, political pressures and other nonscientific elements. Where the
science is incomplete and the knowledge base weak, the agency has often
sought to make stronger claims for scientific knowledge than were
justifiable. The experience and record of forest fire management
illustrate that an approach of trial and error will have to play a
larger role in the future than has been the traditional Forest Service
understanding of ``scientific management.''
Recent theorists of ``adaptive management'' have called for much
greater flexibility in natural resource management. It will be
difficult or impossible to apply forms of adaptive management to
address forest fire concerns without significant decentralization of
authority and other basic changes in the institutional arrangements for
Forest Service management of the national forests.
Excess Fuel Loads Must Be Reduced
Since at least the early 1990's, as shown in Figure 1, various
expert groups have been warning that excess fuel levels were building
up on western forests, posing the risk of widespread catastrophic fire.
Such warnings have been issued by the National Commission on Wildfire
Disasters (1994); the Forest Service itself (1995); the Secretaries of
Agriculture and Interior (in a joint 1995 report); and the General
Accounting Office (1998 and 1999). There was little response of the
Federal forest agencies in comparison with the magnitude of the
problem. The predictions of impending catastrophic fire have been
realized in the 2000 fire season--and in 1994 and 1996 devastating
fires had already raged across large areas of the West.
In February 2000 the Forest Service published the first reliable
data on the extent of the forest health problems and the excess fuels
buildup on the national forests. As shown below, 28 percent of the
forested lands in the national forest system are rated as very
unhealthy and fire prone--characterized by large numbers of smaller
trees outside the historic range of variability, and representing a
large fuel load buildup. In total the national forests include 169
million acres of forested land. The total area of national forest land
posing the largest fire risk thus equals 47 million acres. Lands in
deteriorating condition where excess fuel loads and fire risks are
currently building up and pose an abnormal fire hazard cover another 60
million acres.
Not all of these fire prone lands will require fuels reduction
treatment. Some are in remote areas where fire poses little danger to
human habitation, the costs of forest treatments would be large and the
environmental damages from forest fire would not be too great (or fire
might be beneficial). Mechanical thinning to reduce fire risks would be
illegal in formally designated wilderness areas. It would be difficult
to undertake thinning in roadless areas (according to Forest Service
figures, more than half of the 43 million acres recently placed under a
road building moratorium are unhealthy and fire prone). Prescribed
burning is limited in its applicability because of the many hurdles it
faces, including the risk the fire will get out of control; air
pollution concerns; administrative costs; and the necessity for the
right weather conditions. Prescribed burning is not feasible at all in
many national forest areas because the fuel loads are already so great
that any fire would soon become a large conflagration that might well
spread rapidly to other forests.
TABLE 1.--STATE OF FOREST HEALTH, FORESTED LANDS IN NATIONAL FOREST SYSTEM, BY U.S. FOREST SERVICE REGION
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deteriorating
FS Region Healthy health Very unhealthy
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Region 1........................................................ 20% 41% 39%
Region 2........................................................ 41% 43% 15%
Region 3........................................................ 15% 42% 43%
Region 4........................................................ 59% 34% 7%
Region 5........................................................ 24% 28% 48%
Region 6........................................................ 14% 47% 39%
Region 8........................................................ 70% 22% 8%
Region 9........................................................ 43% 26% 31%
All FS Lands.................................................... 37% 35% 28%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory, Historical Fire Regimes
by Current Condition Classes (Missoula, Montana: February 15, 2000).
Note: ``Healthy,'' ``Deteriorating Health,'' and ``Very Unhealthy'' correspond to the Forest Service categories
of ``Class 1,'' ``Class 2,'' and ``Class 3'' lands, respectively.
There are three options for national forest lands where excessive
fuel loads pose a large forest fire risk: prescribed burning,
mechanical thinning, or do nothing (and simply take the chance that no
fire will break out). There is not likely to be any one answer that is
universally applicable across the national forest system.
Decentralize Decision Making
Basic social value choices will be involved in resolving the best
management strategy to deal with existing unhealthy forests and excess
fuels loads. Prescribed burning will require that nearby residents and
property owners put up with smoke (and possibly attendant health
hazards) and take the risk that the fire might get out of control and
damage their properties or even threaten their lives. Mechanical
thinning will require a willingness to cut trees on national forest
lands--contrary to the positions of many vocal environmental groups in
recent years. Doing nothing may involve the fewest immediate costs but
will pose the risk that the whole forest might burn in a catastrophic
fire.
The science of forest treatments to reduce fuel loads and fire
risks is still on an early part of the learning curve. Various studies
and experiments have been conducted but there are many large technical
and ecological uncertainties that remain. The scientific difficulties
are compounded by the site-specific character of the problem. The same
forest treatment methods in one place may yield a much different forest
outcome at another location. The science of ecology at present lacks
the ability to make precise predictions.
For many years the track record of the Forest Service has been to
overstate the degree of scientific knowledge and then to seek to impose
common answers from the national level in the service of a fictitious
scientific consensus. It is time for a new approach and a new era. This
will mean more decentralization of authority and less unilateral
assertion of Federal authority.
It will be a continuation of existing trends already seen in the
1990's. The ``watershed movement'' already represents an important
existing effort to decentralize management in the West. In some cases
it has been driven by the intermingling of state and private lands with
lands of the Forest Service and other Federal agencies. No one land
owner is in a position to plan and manage for the interconnections
among such diverse properties, requiring the development of new
collaborative mechanisms. A 1996 report by the University of Colorado
Law School documented the existence of 76 watershed groups that had
formed to seek solutions to common problems at the local level. The
Western Water Policy Review Commission in 1998 recommended the
development of new governance ``mechanisms that help integrate the
management of river basins and watersheds across agencies, political
jurisdictions, functional programs and time.''
In Southwest Colorado, the Ponderosa Pine Forest Partnership was
formed in the mid 1990's to plan actions to restore forests in the area
to a healthier condition and to reduce fire hazards on the national
forests and adjacent state and private lands. The predominant method
selected was mechanical thinning of the forests, to be followed by
prescribed burning. The participants in the effort included local
government, the San Juan National Forest, Fort Lewis College, the
Colorado timber industry and the Colorado State Forest Service. Because
of the broad participation and range of local support achieved, a
mechanical thinning program was carried out on a test basis, an outcome
that would probably have been impossible at the initiative of the U.S.
Forest Service alone.
The effort was initiated and much of the leadership came from the
Montezuma County Commission and its Federal Lands Program. Commission
leaders were confronted with finding new management approaches over
250,000 acres in mixed Federal and nonfederal ownership that had been
harvested for timber early in the 20th century. In the absence of fire
over the course of the 20th century, these lands had now evolved into
fire prone forests of small diameter, stagnated, second growth
ponderosa pine. The county government decided it would be necessary to
involve various other groups as well in fact finding, technical
education, and discussions of fuel reduction options and the
formulation of plans.
A New Federal Role: Facilitation and Administrative Assistance
The many mistakes of past Federal forest management require a new
Federal modesty of aims and prescriptions. Instead of the controlling
force (who may listen to others but in the end acts alone), a new
Federal role is required in which the Federal Government becomes merely
one participant in a larger group process of decision making. Federal
officials may bring certain special capacities to the table. These may
include the money to fund research and other studies, knowledge of
various technical forestry subjects, and the administrative instruments
and capabilities to implement elements of group decisions and plans on
their own lands.
Traditionally, the Federal Government also held the final decision
making authority for national forests and other Federal lands. However,
in a new role the Federal Government will be constrained from acting in
the absence of wider agreement. When many individual lives and property
are at stake, and the economic and environmental future of the
surrounding area depend so much on land management decisions, Federal
land managers should not presume to possess unique decision making
capabilities. This is especially the case when the existing state of
forestry and ecological science at any given time may be capable of
justifying a wide range of possible options.
New instruments of cooperation and governance will be necessary for
the management of Federal forests. Here as well, there is no single
answer. The Second Century report, the result of a collaborative study
effort involving the timber industry, environmentalists and other
parties, recommended in 1999 that five models be considered in
reorganizing the basic framework for national forest management and
decision making. All involved significant decentralization. One model
involved the creation of what would amount to a public board of
directors to oversee the management of individual national forests.
Another model would put less emphasis on participative decision making
and achieve local accountability by requiring individual national
forests to charge fees and otherwise raise revenues to cover their
costs. The discipline of the market would act to insure that national
forest managers do in fact serve public demands. Excess fuel loads
would be reduced, for example, because this action would increase long
run revenues--in terms of future timber sales, recreational fee
collections, hunting and fishing access charges, etc.
Community Risk Assessments
In the role of facilitator, a first key step will be for the Forest
Service to provide communities throughout the West with more complete
information on forest conditions and fire risks in their vicinity. A
full ``risk assessment'' should be prepared and widely distributed for
each community, giving the probability of different types of fires and
damages over different time frames. This risk assessment should also
relate risk projections to possible future changes in forest conditions
that might result from management actions.
At Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in
December 1999 identified ``wildfire as the greatest threat to Los
Alamos operations.'' In mid April 2000, Diana Webb, the chair of the
Los Alamos Ecology Group, told a small meeting of concerned citizens
that ``It's not a matter of if but when wildfire will again threaten
the Lab, Los Alamos and surrounding areas. We can't stress this
enough.'' Yet, this risk information was not available in a
quantitative form and not widely enough disseminated to the Los Alamos
community. If more citizens had known more precisely and earlier of the
real large risks to their community, they might have demanded earlier
and more effective action to reduce fire risks in nearby forests. The
Los Alamos fire broke out on May 4, 2000, destroying 400 homes and
doing other large damage.
The Congress would need to establish a schedule with tight
deadlines--perhaps first drafts by next summer, final documents by the
summer of 2002--for the publication of full risk assessments for forest
fire for each western community in close proximity to a Federal forest.
Legally fixed deadlines are desirable because the publication of such
risk assessments is bound to be a sensitive and controversial matter.
Without an outside forcing action, the Forest Service or other Federal
agency is likely to be taken up in a long internal discussion and
debate, possibly delaying for many years any publication of results.
Commercial Sales of Small-diameter Trees
Contrary to a widespread impression, the total volumes of wood on
the national forests have been increasing steadily for many years--the
result of fire suppression acting to build up wood loads, at the same
time that levels of timber harvests have been below net growth of wood
each year. The composition of the national forests, however, has
shifted radically. As many larger and older trees were harvested as
part of the traditional timber program, and with fire suppression,
western forests have increasingly been stocked by stands of small-
diameter trees. In ponderosa pine forests 100 years ago, for example,
there might have been 30 to 50 large old trees each three to four feet
in diameter. Today, the same forest might have 300 to 500 trees--
including ponderosa pine, white fir, grand fir, and lodgepole pine,
among other possibilities--packed together in dense stands, most of the
trees in the range of 4 to 12 inches in diameter. It is these new
conditions of densely packed stands of small-diameter trees--virtual
kindling wood for fires--that create the much greater fire hazard
currently being faced.
At present, the small-diameter trees have a limited commercial
market. This can be a short term situation, however. The demand for
wood and paper in the United States continues to grow unabated. The
national forests now contain large supplies of wood fibres that can be
used to meet these needs. At the same time, large reductions in the
excess fuel loads of small-diameter trees in the national forests are
needed to reduce fire risks and improve forest health. It can be a win-
win situation economically and environmentally. With appropriate
government policies, forest health can be improved, fire risks reduced,
and large supplies of wood provided for home building and other
purposes. Rural communities in the West--some depressed economically--
can also receive a significant income and employment boost.
Much increased utilization of small-diameter trees can also bring
in substantial revenue to the Federal Government. There are various
suggestions being made at present for large new commitments of Federal
funds for a program of thinning of overstocked western forests. This
large expenditure of public money is unnecessary and undesirable. There
is no need to create a new large drain on Federal revenue sources and
national taxpayers--and a large accompanying bureaucratic apparatus--
when small diameter trees themselves have a large commercial potential.
A recent study published in August 2000 in the Journal of Forestry
found that in southwest Colorado, for example, ``forest restoration
projects can achieve ecological objectives and pay for themselves.''
The potential uses of small diameter trees are numerous. Various
wood products--including oriented strand board, house logs, laminated
lumber, studs, excelsior products, waferboard, posts and poles, and
firewood--are possible. Oriented strand board was minimally produced
until the early 1980's but now supplies 11.2 billion board feet of
sheet and other wood products per year, equal to 63 percent of the
volume of total U.S. plywood production. The timber industry in the
United States has generally been shifting in many areas toward the use
of chips and particles from lower quality trees and wood--for example,
making increasing use of hardwoods as a wood fibre source. Better glues
and other technology make it possible to create newly strong and
attractive wood products from such lower quality sources. In 1950, the
total wood outputs represented 70 percent by weight of the wood inputs
going into the production process. Today, because of increased
utilization of all parts of trees, this figure has increased to 95
percent.
Small trees can also supply pulp for paper production. Still
another important and potentially profitable use of small-diameter
trees is as a source of biomass to generate electricity.
As with any new product area, it will take time to develop the
technology of utilization of small-diameter trees and to find the most
suitable and profitable uses. The development of new wood processing
technology has been most rapid in areas such as hardwoods where much of
the wood supply is on private land. In the case of the western United
States the supply uncertainties and other problems of doing business
with the Federal Government on Federal forests have inhibited a similar
pace of technological and industrial infrastructure development. If
every computer manufacturer had had to depend on a Federal ``chip''
supplier with the same bureaucracy and reliability as the U.S. Forest
Service supplies wood ``chips,'' the U.S. personal computer industry
would likely still be back somewhere in its infancy.
Small-diameter trees also are limited in their marketability in the
West at present because there are few contractors with the best
harvesting equipment for these trees and few local mills with the
capacity to handle them. The small-diameter trees thus are often
harvested inefficiently and then sent to distant markets where the
transportation costs can be half or more of the total costs.
The best future role of the Federal Government--focused on
technical assistance and other facilitation efforts--in forest
management is illustrated by the work of the Forest Products Laboratory
in Madison, Wisconsin, a joint effort of the University of Wisconsin
and the Forest Service. In recent years it has conducted various
studies of the economic potential of small-diameter trees and
explorations of potential markets. For example, the Forest Productions
Laboratory is working with the Watershed Research and Training Center
in Hayfork, California. Experience to date has shown that removal of
small-diameter trees costs $208 per thousand board feet for sale as
green raw logs and that these logs can earn $200 in revenue per
thousand board feet--thus involving a small loss but much lower net
costs than simply paying for removal of the logs with no subsequent
commercial sale. Use of the trees for processing and sale as flooring
increases the costs to $800 per thousand board feet; the revenues,
however, rise to $1,200 per thousand board feet, yielding a substantial
profit surplus in this form of utilization of small-diameter trees.
The Los Alamos fire this year focused new attention on similar fire
prone forests in the watershed area for the nearby city of Santa Fe,
New Mexico (the Los Alamos fire started as a prescribed burn on
Bandelier National Monument but then escaped and soon spread to the
Santa Fe National Forest where it erupted in the tinderbox conditions
of this forest and where most of the actual burning occurred). If a
similar fire were to burn in the Santa Fe watershed, massive siltation
and runoff might threaten the city water supply. Seeking protection
against this outcome, the city and its water board are working with
various groups to plan a thinning program. Given the large procedural
hurdles and delays facing actions on Federal lands, the first thinning
efforts planned in the watershed will take place on private lands. It
is expected that some of the thinned trees will be sold commercially,
thereby reducing the expected bids from contractors to complete the
job.
It will require new legislation to achieve the full large potential
for utilization of small-diameter trees. The legislation will need to
authorize planning for forest thinning over a longer time frame and
government commitments to make sufficient wood volumes available to
justify new local mills designed for processing of small-diameter
trees. The supply commitment might have to cover a five to 10 year
period in order to allow for a sufficient period to pay off an
investment in a mill and other facilities. Similar considerations have
dictated long term contracts of up to 10 years duration with
concessionaires in the National Park System. Transfer of the park
concession model to fuels reduction programs on the national forests
might prove appropriate in other respects--for example, a specific
large area for tree thinning could be designated (perhaps as a result
of a local collaborative process) in an area surrounding a community
and then a long term contract might be awarded to a ``concessionaire/
tree harvester'' to do the job, including the building of a new mill to
process the small-diameter trees.
Cost-sharing of Fuels Reduction
Although commercial sale of small-diameter trees can significantly
reduce the public costs of thinning forests to reduce fire hazards,
many fuels reduction efforts may still require some element of public
funds. The state and local government partners in the planning and
development of these efforts should also contribute a share of the
costs. Much of the benefit of excess fuels reduction will accrue to the
citizens of the states and localities. It is often their actions in
building homes and other structures in forested areas that increase the
dangers of wildland fire and the costs of fire fighting. States and
localities have the regulatory authority to control the location of
such development in fire prone areas. In general, states and localities
will have an incentive to plan for a more cost-effective approach to
fuels reduction in surrounding forests, if they are contributing a
share of the costs.
An equal division, 50 percent Federal and 50 percent state and
local, might be an appropriate cost sharing formula.
Curbing Unilateral Veto Power
Numerous observers have described the current decision making
process for the national forests as ``broken.'' The land use planning
system, by most accounts, does not work. It promotes conflict and
polarization as much as agreement. The process of planning takes long
periods and causes many delays. In the end, the land use plan often
fails to provide the basis for actual management decisions. Land use
planning thus becomes more a matter of public relations, or litigation
strategy, than the basis for rational decision making that was
originally the goal of Congress in mandating planning in the 1970's.
The land use planning and other procedural requirements afford so
many opportunities for appeals and other delays that outside groups in
effect can often exercise a unilateral veto power--if not forever, at
least for the duration of the appeal process, and then perhaps through
continuing rounds of further appeals. Litigation then often arises
which involves its own burdens and delays.
The effect of the current system is often to impose a de facto
management decision of no action. Reforming the current system has been
complicated by the fact that some groups have in fact preferred the no
action alternative, and thus have strenuously resisted any efforts to
curb the existing opportunities for delay and obstruction. It may have
seemed that no action was a reasonable approximation to a policy of
achieving ``natural'' conditions on the forests--if no management
actions were taken, then the human role would seemingly be minimized
and natural forces might appear to be driving the system.
However, the forest fires of 2000 have shown the limitations of a
no action strategy, and the fact that it will not achieve ``natural''
conditions on the forests. Because of a century of fire suppression,
the fires that have burned have been much more intense and otherwise
far out of the range of ``natural'' fire. They in fact have imposed a
substantial human-caused change on the ecological condition of the
national forests. There is in fact probably no management strategy at
this point in time--including no action--that could validly be
described as achieving a ``natural'' result.
Yet, the current system in effect is strongly biased in favor of
those who prefer the no action alternative. It is possible for a group
of concerned parties to discuss forest management options and develop a
fuels reduction plan that has wide community support, and yet any one
of these parties will have the ability to prevent its implementation.
Indeed, marginal parties who may disagree and who may not have
participated in the management decision process will also have this
unilateral veto power, if they possess a minimum of money and legal
skill.
The existence of an outside veto power partly reflects the distrust
of the Forest Service and other Federal agencies on the part of many
people in the West. They are reluctant to let the agencies act on their
own when the agencies have made so many mistakes in the past. However,
if management decisions on Federal forests reflect a much wider range
of participation and buy-in, the existence of an outside veto power is
less justifiable and in fact becomes a serious obstacle to effective
management actions.
If a veto power on the actions of Federal agencies is necessary, it
should in any case not be a unilateral veto power available to anyone.
It should be assigned to a state or local official who in fact
represents politically a much wider segment of public opinion. The
approval of the governor of a state, for example, might be required in
order to implement any fuels reduction plan on the national forests. Or
a similar requirement for approval might be given to the mayor of the
community in the immediate vicinity of a national forest where a
prescribed burn or thinning were being planned.
In any case, if the Congress wants effective action to improve
forest health and reduce forest fire hazards at any time in the near
future, it will have to address the problem of the procedural hurdles
to management action created by numerous past statutory requirements
for planning, environmental impact statements, and other decision
making requirements.
Figure 1.--1990's Warnings of Catastrophic Fire
1993--A panel of leading American foresters meets in Sun Valley,
Idaho. Its report states that the policy of suppressing forest fire, as
has been followed in western forests for most of the twentieth century,
has resulted in a large buildup of ``excess fuels'' As a consequence,
``Wildfires in these ecosystems have gone from a high-frequency, low-
intensity regime which sustained the system, to numerous high-intensity
fires that require costly suppression attempts, which often prove
futile in the face of overpowering fire intensity. High fuel loads
resulting from the long-time absence of fire, and the abundance of dead
and dying trees, result in fire intensities that cause enormous damage
to soils, watersheds, fisheries, and other ecosystem components.''
1994--The National Commission on Wildfire Disasters, created by
Congress, declares that ``millions of acres of forest in the western
United States pose an extreme fire hazard from the extensive build-up
of dry, highly flammable forest fuels.''
May 1995--The U.S. Forest Service publishes Course to the Future:
Repositioning Fire and Aviation Management, declaring that under
current policies ``the potential for large, catastrophic wildfires
continues to increase'' and when they occur, as they inevitably will,
``it will directly conflict with our ecosystem goals.''
December 1995--The U.S. Secretaries of Agriculture and of the
Interior jointly issue a report on Federal Wildland Fire Management,
stating that ``millions of acres of forests and rangelands [are] at
extremely high risk for devastating forest fires to occur.'' The
Secretaries declare that many forested areas are ``in need of immediate
treatment'' to reduce fire hazards.
1997--A panel of leading foresters reports to Congress that ``fires
in the [wetter] Pacific Northwest occur less frequently than in the
inland West, but can be even more catastrophic because of the high fuel
volumes (dead trees). The limited road system and infrastructure make
Federal lands in this region increasingly susceptible to catastrophic
fires.''
1998--Barry Hill, Associate Director for Energy, Resources, and
Science issues of the General Accounting Office, testifies to the
Congress that as a result of past policies of fire suppression in the
interior West, ``vegetation accumulated, creating high levels of fuels
for catastrophic wildfires and transforming much of the region into a
tinderbox.''
1999--The General Accounting Office issues a report on Western
National Forests--A Cohesive Strategy is Needed to Address Catastrophic
Wildfire Threats. The report finds that the Forest Service ``has not
yet developed a cohesive strategy for addressing several factors that
present significant barriers to improving the health of the national
forests by reducing fuels. As a result, many acres of national forests
in the interior West may [still] remain at high risk of uncontrollable
wildfire at the end of fiscal year 2015.''
Chairman Radanovich. I appreciate the comments from all
three members of the panel. I will begin with a few questions
and then we will open it up for questions from other members.
Mr. Hill, given the fact that there was a report in 1994 by
the National Commission on Wildfire Disasters, 1994, I will say
again, why did the Forest Service need a report from you
highlighting a lack of a cohesive strategy even in April 1999
in order to force the Service to produce such a report? Why did
it take that long?
Mr. Hill. Well, that is a good question. I don't know if I
have the right answer. My speculation would be that, hopefully
at least, our report served as a catalyst to kind of bring it
all together into one document, what the problem was and the
need for a strategy. Certainly, as you point out, there have
been a number of studies done over a number of years since 1994
that have pointed out the seriousness of the problem and the
fact that it would take priority efforts and funds in order to
address it.
And the other thing I think is since the early 1990's, the
trend has been an increasingly growing number of fires each
year, an increasingly growing number of acres that are burned
each year, a significantly increasing number of catastrophic
wildfires that have occurred year after year. And certainly it
culminated this summer in the disastrous fire season that we
have had this year.
So I think there are a number of factors that have gotten
the Forest Service to the point where they realize this is a
desperate situation that perhaps requires some bold action at
last.
Chairman Radanovich. Did the administration react directly
after the release of your report in April 1999? Or maybe you
can educate us as to what the difference was or maybe the
possible reaction when your report came out and then the
reaction by the President who recently toured--I guess it was
Montana and Idaho and the fires there just recently, and his
call for another strategic plan or something?
Mr. Hill. Right. In our April, 1999, report, we did
recommend that the Forest Service develop a cohesive strategy
that would deal with the problem. Shortly thereafter--they
agreed with the recommendation, and shortly thereafter they set
to work to develop such a cohesive strategy, and we saw an
early draft of that late last year. To my knowledge, they have
been continuing the work on that draft. We have not seen the
draft come out in final yet. We understand it still is in
draft. Certainly the President's action that occurred recently
triggered the report to the President has been the most formal
action that has been taken since our report was issued.
Chairman Radanovich. Mr. Phillips, what happened between
1994 and this fire season this year?
Mr. Phillips. The draft cohesive strategy is not the first
study. It probably culminated several studies that had taken
place previously, one by regional forester Bob Jacobs and
Michael Raines that looked at individual fires, large fires
that had occurred and identified where some problems were. So
we had a lot of information that, when the GAO took a look at
the situation and said you need to bring it all together in a
cohesive strategy, a lot of that information was there. We had
identified the existence of high-risk areas across the country.
So the work that we did after the GAO report was not the first
effort. But I would compliment the GAO on helping us bring it
all together with the way they looked at it.
Chairman Radanovich. As I understand, in the President's
plan it emphasizes local decisionmaking as part of the
decisions on management of forests. Yet that reminds me of a
California forest plan called the Quincy Library Group which,
as you know, was a forest plan that was put together by the
three adjoining forests in Mr. Herger's district not long ago
that included timber harvesting as an effective management tool
to manage the environment within the three national forests in
that area, a plan that the President encouraged the development
of when he toured the effort during the Spotted Owl wars I
think during 1992.
The community took him seriously, put together a plan that
included timber harvesting, came to the Congress with it and
met stiff opposition from the administration until they
realized that that is what they were out there encouraging in
the first place, and then it passed by 426 votes in the
Congress, and eventually the President signed it into law.
Now that we have accomplished--those of us that believe
that timber harvesting is part of a good management tool for
the forests believe that we have had a victory. It then met to
be stymied by the administration through its policies and is
currently not being enacted and has almost run out of its
charter in Quincy. How do you respond to that when the
President or at least in part of this plan is encouraging local
decisionmaking and local input when, to this point, it has been
demonstrated it has been ignored so far?
Mr. Phillips. I have had a particular interest in this. I
have met with Congressman Herger on a couple of occasions to
look at where some of the stumbling blocks were to get this
moving along.
I started my career on the Plumus, either marking timber or
fighting forest fires, so I have a large interest in the
success of this.
Let's look at what has happened since Congress passed the
bill that I am aware of. They had about, I think, 300 days to
complete the EIS and came pretty close to meeting that, maybe a
couple of days over. So they are really in their first year of
implementation in terms of getting the projects out. A big part
of that was defensible fuel profile zones, testing a lot of
those concepts. This year they will have accomplished somewhere
between 17 and 19,000 acres. They are also working on an
additional 25,000 acres of projects for next year.
We are talked about getting the funding strategy together
that they need to fund those projects. So I think they are
making some progress. They are doing a lot of the work on the
east side, low elevation east side. If you look at a fire map--
--
Chairman Radanovich. Isn't that where none of the timber
is, though? You are really talking about areas and acreage
where there is very little, if any, forest; and you are talking
about the area within these forests that are nonproductive for
timber purposes.
Mr. Phillips. But a big part of this strategy is to reduce
fire hazard.
Chairman Radanovich. Isn't a part of the strategy of the
administration to squelch any idea of selective timber
harvesting in any of the Nation's forests? Even when it was law
that was passed and signed into law by the President, he is
still using that administrative force or the administrative
authority to stop the implementation of a plan that encourages
local control?
Mr. Phillips. I don't believe so.
Chairman Radanovich. You are talking about areas within
that forest that are not productive forest-wise at all, very
simple to maintain because there is very little forest there.
Mr. Phillips. Again, they are trying to concentrate where
the defensible fuel profiles need to be placed. There are
issues over viability of the owl that we are having to work
through with Fish and Wildlife Service. I think we are making
progress there.
Chairman Radanovich. Isn't the implementation of the owl
standards more focused on the areas of the Quincy Library Group
than there are more so than any other part of the forests in
California or Oregon simply because the harsher standards are
put there to stop the implementation of the Quincy Library
Group plan?
Mr. Phillips. I don't think so. I have seen documentation
from leading owl biologists that say that there is a large
concern over viability; and what we are trying to do under the
law which said we had to comply with all Federal laws, we are
trying to meet that intent.
Chairman Radanovich. Isn't the implementation, though, of
that plan in that area to stop what some environmental groups
perceive or desire and that is lack of footprint or management
or harvesting in any way as far as the management of forest
health or forest maintenance?
Mr. Phillips. Not by the Forest Service. But it is no
secret that there is not a unanimous agreement among the public
that this is a good project. But our intent is to implement the
law.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you.
Mr. Nelson, I was just out in my district in California and
took a tour of the Manter fire, which was a fire that was
recently happening in the Sequoia National Forest. It burned
thousands of acres. I am not sure of the total. But I had an
interesting discussion with some of the Forest Service
employees in that area who had mentioned with regards to the
use of fire as an understory, as a maintenance tool in the
management of forests.
Their statement was--if you are not familiar with the
Sierra forest system, there are 10 national forests in the
Sierra Nevada mountains; and their statement was that in
order--if you had to depend solely on fires for maintenance of
understory and such and not rely on timber harvesting, that you
would have to harvest or, excuse me, burn a total of 20,000
acres per each of those 10 forests in order to keep up with the
fuel load buildup. And that, on an average year, there is about
5,000 acres that burn per forest, not just in the forest but
down lower elevations in BLM land and in private land.
So for the Sierra Nevada system, as you know, it is right
next to a very large basin, the San Joaquin Valley, which has
an inversion layer and over a million people in the basin that
might suffer air quality problems if 20,000 acres per forest of
the 10 forests were burned every summer in order to keep up
with the fuel load. I guess my question is, when are people
going to realize that you can't depend on fire as a means of
forestry management and understory load and that timber
harvesting of big and small trees in addition to controlled
burns is really the best fire forest management tool available?
Mr. Nelson. Well, of course, as you probably know, I can't
answer exactly when people are going to realize that, but I
think you have put your finger on the problem. Why hadn't we
done anything after, say, the National Commission on Wildfire
Disasters came out with its report in 1994, which itself was
actually part of the followup to the 1988 Yellowstone and other
fires across the West. So in the year 2000, we already had
indications 12 years ago that we were getting into a new kind
of fire regime with much hotter and more rapidly spreading
fires.
I think that the answer really at the fundamental level
goes to certain attitudes which have been very prevalent in the
environmental movement, that the goal of national forest
management should be to achieve a natural form of management.
And it is hard to figure out what natural actually means in
practice, but people have been making the effort.
One conclusion they reached, applying this general
philosophy, was that prescribed fire was at least an
approximation of natural--although, if you set it, fire really
wasn't exactly natural. But that thinning was not natural and,
in fact, that thinning came in the same category as timber
harvesting. Also, a lot of the environmentalists--to tell you
the truth, it was not a big surprise--don't trust the Forest
Service. And they were concerned that if you let thinning in
the door, it would be the opening wedge for what they regarded
as a large new program of logging the forests. So, the
environmental movement in this country has basically been very
strenuously opposed to a thinning program.
Then, as I mentioned earlier, there are all the loopholes
in the law which allow for unilateral veto powers on the part
of a lot of people when it comes to Federal management actions.
So if you have an important group with a fair amount of
money, a lot of political clout, some good lawyers, their
wishes can often dominate the final outcome. And, in effect,
for a lot of environmentalists, they preferred no action. They
preferred it even though in fact no action can lead to burning
down the forests and all kinds of negative environmental
consequences. Once we had all these years of suppression, no
action could never be truly natural. Still in the way a lot of
environmental groups think--and, of course, they had a lot of
influence on the administration--they thought of no action as
being natural. So for them, they weren't that unhappy with the
idea of a system of unilateral vetoes that basically produced
no action.
So when is that going to change? I think actually the fires
this summer are causing a reassessment, even within the
environmental movement. A lot of the change has to take place
there, given its large influence. It is partly because these
fires have driven home the recognition that by just sitting
there and doing nothing, it in fact may produce an extremely
undesirable result.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you very much, Mr. Nelson.
Mr. Price.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to get at this association or a lack of
association between logging practices and susceptibility to
these devastating fires.
As you know, the Congressional Research Service recently
analyzed the relationship between the level of logging and the
number of forest acres burned and found a basically nonexistent
relationship. It found there is very little correlation between
the volume of timber harvested in national forests and the
acres of forests that burned over the period 1960 to 1999. In
fact, for some years within that period they found a positive
relationship, that more timber harvest had correlated with more
acres burned. But basically they found no relationship.
I would like to invite all of you to comment on that,
whether that is a credible finding and, if not, how you would
dispute it.
And, Mr. Phillips, I would like to ask you in particular
the follow-up on the underlying question. Are this year's
wildfires the result of reduced logging in our national forests
and would allowing more commercial logging--and by commercial
logging I mean the removal of large, commercially valuable
trees--would that reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire?
Mr. Phillips. Since this fire season, there have been a lot
of reports issued by a variety of different organizations. A
lot of it is anecdotal. What is really important in the forest
in terms of the effect on wildfire is how much fuel you have
and where it is located. Is it located on the forest floor? Is
it located at the midstory that allows the flames to jump into
the overstory? Or is all that fuel biomass located in, in fact,
the overstory?
I would say that, from my experience timber harvesting, as
long as you deal with the fuels that are left, the logging
slash, as long as you treat that, you are probably not going to
create a situation that is going to exacerbate a fire when it
comes through there.
I will refer to--probably one of the best examples was when
I was a ranger in Denver we did a lot of harvesting and allowed
fuel, that was really the demand at that time, to be used as
the by-product from that harvesting. So the forest floor was
left fairly clean. We would also go back in and do a prescribed
burn on the needles and the limbs that were left.
This summer, early this summer, the high meadows fire
burned through that area. I went back and looked at that about
a month ago. You could see where the fire burned in the
untreated area, in other words, lots of stems per acre, lots of
trees per acre. When it hit the area that had been managed,
where there was fuel reduction that had taken place, the fire
basically fell out of the tops of the trees on the ground; and
they were able to control it a lot better. So it is really a
function of how you treat the area when you are in there
managing it.
Let me just--if one of the staff could take these pictures,
I will show you an example of where on the Shasta Trinity
National Forest, Congressman Herger, where we went in and did
some mechanical treatment and what this looks like after we did
it. Category III areas, that we classified Category III, high
hazard fuels, you are going to have to do some level of
mechanical treatment in most cases. You can't go in and
prescribe-burn it.
Mr. Nelson. If I could answer your question about that CRS
study, technically, in terms of the calculations, there was
nothing wrong, but the question posed was simply the wrong
question; and the result in terms of the issue that we are
addressing here was bordering on meaningless. The study
basically asked, is there a correlation between the level of
timber harvesting in this year and the level of fires in this
year. Nobody, even the most severe critics of the
administration that I am aware of, has ever suggested that that
is the relationship.
These critics claim that a predisposition against logging
got transferred over by environmentalists into a very negative
attitude about mechanical thinning. As a result of the
antagonism to logging that was reflected in the fact that
logging in the national forests fell from 12 billion board feet
in 1989 to less than 3 billion board feet in 1999, there was an
associated reduction, there was an unwillingness, a refusal to
expand the thinning program. Thinning is what would have been
necessary, as has just been mentioned, to expand the fuel
reduction effort on the national forest system.
So as far as logging itself, in any given year the total
logging program of the Forest Service has never involved more
than about 500,000 acres at a time. And we are talking in terms
of a magnitude of the total national forest acreage which is
exposed to fire hazard of about 100 million acres. So obviously
500,000 acres, whatever you do on it, even if the logging
promoted or didn't promote fire, wouldn't have much effect on
the level of fire in that year. In fact, the magnitude of fires
this year is something like 15 times the total area logged in
the normal timber harvest season.
Mr. Price. Yes, but we are talking, aren't we in this
study--and I don't want to quibble over this. Maybe you could
submit something for the record if you wish to. But we are
talking here, not talking 1 year at a time, we are talking
about a cumulative period from 1960 to 1999, is that not true?
Mr. Nelson. I don't think so. Unless I misunderstand the
analysis--and it wasn't perfectly clear--but I believe what it
did was a statistical correlation as to whether there was a
relationship between the level of timber harvesting in 1 year
and the level of fires in 1 year, looking at a 20-year period.
Mr. Price. That is not the way the findings were presented.
Mr. Nelson. I think that there may have been some
motivation on the part of people to take the study title, which
is no relation between logging and harvesting, and not look in
detail into the actual analysis done. As I say, it wasn't
explained with a crystal clarity. But at least to the extent I
was able to understand it, and I looked at it and spent some
time studying it, what was actually done was a correlation--a
statistical correlation or regression analysis, if you want to
call it that--where the explanatory element was the level of
logging in any given year, and the dependent variable, or the
number that was being correlated with, was the level of fire or
acreage burned in that year.
I think anyone who knows how these kinds of statistics work
would understand there is not going to be any relationship of
that nature. The real question is, to what degree over a number
of period of years have we engaged in a thinning program to
reduce the level of excess fuels on the national forests? If
someone could show that, well, there are certain areas where
there were excess fuel reductions over a certain period of time
and that had no effect on the levels of fire in those areas,
well, that would be a significant analysis. But I don't believe
this is what was done.
Mr. Price. The study aside, do you agree with what I
understand Mr. Phillips to be saying, namely, that whether or
not the removal of large, commercially valuable trees is taking
place is not the critical variable? That what the critical
variable is is whether these smaller trees and other materials
are removed. That is the critical variable.
Mr. Nelson. Absolutely. That is the question. The argument
that is being made is that these forests have developed these
very large numbers of very small diameter trees, between 4 and
12 inches, let's say, which historically have been marginal
commercially but increasingly are being used on a commercial
basis because the industry finds they need to turn to this. And
those trees are virtual kindling wood and they built up because
of fire suppression over many decades, the danger was
recognized by the 1970's in some circles. But by the 1990's, on
a widespread basis in the forestry profession, people were
saying, this is a kindling wood situation out there. These
forests are going to burn if you don't somehow get rid of this
wood.
The Clinton administration knew about it, but they were
tied to the idea of prescribed burning as opposed to mechanical
thinning because thinning, in the lingo of these perceptions,
became logging and logging was bad. We had just been through
the spotted owl episode. The environmental movement had won a
great victory in their mind. They had sharply reduced logging
in the Pacific Northwest, and then similar environmental
pressures caused it to decline all over the West.
All of a sudden, from their perspective, they were
confronted with the possibility that this surrogate policy
called fuels reduction, which they had never heard of until
recently, was going to be used as a way of sneaking back into
the Forest Service and the national forests a massive new
timber program. That was anathema to many leading
environmentalists so they used every means at their disposal to
resist this effort to, as they saw it, reestablish a logging
program in the name of fuels reduction program, by going in and
taking these 4- to 12-inch trees, of which there is an enormous
volume.
Contrary to most perceptions on the national forests, in
the West the volume of wood on the national forests has
increased steadily over the decades. Taking the Intermountain
West--I actually looked it up here just before I came here or
else I wouldn't have the number right at hand--but the volume
of wood on the intermountain national forests--that is where
all these fires have burned this summer--was 57 billion cubic
feet in 1952. In 1992, it was 70 billion cubic feet. And there
are projections that if we don't increase our levels of harvest
way above what we are thinking of in terms of this environment
of no timber harvesting that we are in right now, we are going
to see continuing increases, as much as 20 or 30 percent more
in the next 20 or 30 years.
What will probably happen, of course, is that some of that
wood, the volume won't increase, because it will actually burn
instead of increasing. But that is part of the choice we have
to make at this time.
Mr. Price. Mr. Phillips, let me get back to you. I know we
have limited time here.
Apart from whatever allegations anyone wants to make about
people's motivations, I would like to just return, if we could,
to what the fact of the matter is here. And the fact of the
matter seems to be that whether we are or are not removing
these large, commercially valuable trees is basically not
related to the fire hazard. The critical variable is the
smaller trees, the brush, the material closer to the ground. Is
that right?
Mr. Phillips. Those are the critical variables. But I also
want to be clear that if you remove the large trees and don't
treat the limbs and such, the fuels that are left over that you
don't take out of the woods, if you don't treat those, then you
do run the potential of increasing the fire hazard.
Mr. Price. Absolutely. That seems very clear.
Mr. Phillips. I would also say, the reduction of the fuel
hazard situation around the country, I hate to see it turn into
a logging/no logging debate. It is really about removing fuels,
treating the hazardous fuels that need to be treated.
Mr. Price. I think it is very important to get past the
logging/no logging debate. That is exactly where I would like
to take us today in the line of questioning I am trying to
pursue.
There is a problem, isn't there, though, that most of these
small trees, the other materials that need to be removed in the
thinning operations, have very limited commercial value? What
are the possibilities of devising commercial uses, for
stimulating the development of commercial products that rely on
these materials? Any comment on that?
Mr. Phillips. As I mentioned earlier, when I was a district
ranger in Denver, there was a high demand for fuel wood. We
could sell it for a lot of money. Unfortunately, that demand is
not what it was then. However, we have been doing a lot of work
in trying to find new products, and the President's report
actually addresses the need to do more of that.
We have a project called the Four Corners Project where we
are working with local communities to better sort the products,
to make them more available. Our research program is doing some
really--what I call unique work, consider unique work on the
development of small diameter materials into products that are
more usable. I will send this up for you to look at. But it is
basically using what we see in 2 by 4s today, joining them in
finger joints on a circular plane, so you can take material,
especially a lot of the large pole pine that you find in the
West, and join that and make a more valuable product out of it.
Mr. Price. Thank you. I will pick up on this in the second
round of questioning.
Chairman Radanovich. Mr. Herger, you are up.
Mr. Herger. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
I want to again thank each of our witnesses for being here
today, Mr. Hill, Mr. Phillips, Mr. Nelson. I really appreciate
the fact that we are getting into what I believe is some of the
crux of the problem.
I would like to invite my colleagues to join us in what--we
have an annual woods tour in our district. It is usually at the
base of 14,000 foot Mount Shasta in which we do what we term,
as Paul Harvey says, tell the rest of the story. And a lot of
the questions I think that have been asked are answered during
this period of time of this woods tour. We have had
approximately 40 Members of Congress over the years in 10
different tours that have been there.
I would like to address just some of what I see as the crux
of this challenge we have. I remember back when I was first
elected in my first term in 1987, I was in a hearing in the
Agriculture Committee in the Forestry Subcommittee and one of
the witnesses, one of my friends from the environmental
community, made a statement that 90 percent of the trees had
been cut.
Having flown and driven through our district, which is
96,000 square miles in our area, you can drive for hours and
fly for hours and all you see is forest. I asked him, I said,
let me make sure I understand this. Ninety percent. That means
nine out of every 10 trees has been cut. There is only one left
out of 10? Kind of think a little bit.
But I think this really is an example of the misinformation
that we have been hearing for years concerning what our
challenges are out in preserving the health of our national
forests. I think it really stems as something that is
relatively simple, I believe.
I heard a comment used earlier, I believe it might have
been from you, Mr. Phillips, which I certainly agree with, and
that is returning to the natural process. I think probably all
of us would like to do that. But I would like to address that a
bit.
We do not have a natural process going in the forest now.
We should all be aware of that. Those of us who aren't--the
reason we don't is, starting at the beginning of this century,
very well-meaning people, as we began building more and more
homes out in our forests, began preventing forest fires. As a
matter of fact, we prevented all of them--the Smokey the Bear
program which has been very successful over the years.
What has happened is that, unlike the natural process,
which even the American Indians, the Native Americans, would
promote because they would set fires out in which you would
have regular fires going through our forests where the brush,
the smaller trees would be thinned out and you would have the
large trees, the commercial trees, as my colleague Mr. Price
was pointing out, that would be large, and it would be a
positive thing. What has happened when we prevented all these
forest fires is that now we have fire ladders. We have forests
that are not 90 percent missing. Just the opposite is true. We
have forests that are three and four times denser than they
have been, as was alluded to.
These are interesting statistics. In 1952, was it you, Mr.
Nelson--I was trying to write this down--we have 57 billion
board feet.
Mr. Nelson. In the intermountain West.
Mr. Herger. In the intermountain. That had increased to 70
billion. We have some forests that are two to three to four
times denser because we have eliminated fires.
Now in addition to that, what we have now are fire ladders.
So now when we get the natural process, when we get a lightning
strike or when a fire starts or when our own government goes
out, as we saw happen in New Mexico and has happened in my
district up around the Lewiston fire just last year where we
actually go out and set the fires ourselves, a so-called,
quote, control burn which ends up burning hundreds of thousands
of acres because it gets away from us, we have these fire
ladders that we can't control. It is not natural anymore.
The only way we can return to that is to begin going in and
thinning this out, removing the brush, returning it to the way
it was historically. We can't do it by just setting a match
there and starting it, because everything burns down, we have a
catastrophic fire. But what we do do is go in and do it in the
right way.
That is what the Quincy Library bill is about, which is
bipartisan, which passed this House in 1998, a bill that I
authored, 429-1. You might say it was unanimous. We had a
former Libertarian who votes no on everything, was the only no
vote. Everyone voted for this bill. It was bipartisan.
In the Senate, Senator Feinstein, a member of the other
party, sponsored the bill over there. It passed overwhelmingly
there. It was signed by the President.
But that is where we get into the controversy here, Mr.
Phillips. Because, as Mr. Radanovich was asking questions
earlier about its implementation in the district, I can
represent--I can tell you that those people who wrote the
bill--and I didn't write it. We had the local community write
it, the local environmentalists wrote it, local people worked
in the forest products, locally elected individuals.
The reason it was called Quincy Library is that is where
they met, because they thought that is the only place they
wouldn't yell at each other. Therefore, they met for several
years, worked out a plan that they all agreed on.
This is impossible, what happened. But they did the
impossible. It was a plan that was environmentally safe that
they worked on. It was a plan that protected the environment.
It implemented all the current science and all the current laws
in a way that they could go in and begin restoring these
forests the way they were historically, going in and thinning.
Mr. Price, let me mention what they do there is not go in
and take out all the commercial trees. They basically are
thinning. And as was pointed out by Mr. Nelson, Mr. Phillips
and others is, fortunately, we are beginning to learning how to
use the smaller trees as we thin them out. We see an example of
that. But we also occasionally need to take a larger tree here
and there, not clear-cut them but thin them out so as to make
sure that the plan that they came out with--guess what; this is
unbelievable--it doesn't cost the taxpayer money. As a matter
of fact, it makes $3 for every $1 they invest.
These are environmentalists that are working. It is just
some common sense that they used to make it--so there is a
little bit of incentive there, and the taxpayers aren't paying
for it. But, actually, it is a win-win-win, something almost
unheard of in this environmental logjam, everybody disagreeing
with everybody else like we are living in today. Therefore,
just a little bit of background, a little bit of history.
Mr. Price, I would like to personally invite you to our
next woods tour where we go out and look at all of this and
allow you a chance to ask questions. We have it every year, so
if you can't make it this next spring, the invitation is open
to you. We would love to have you and your wife come out and
see the rest of the story.
With that, let me ask a question, if I could, Mr. Phillips.
And I want to thank you and I want to thank what I hear now
coming from the administration right now of they are beginning
to talk about thinning. I think those of you have explained it
very well, how it is beginning to evolve. Hopefully, we are
getting now where we can work together to save the environment.
There aren't any Spotted Owls can live when we have these
catastrophic burns we have. Nothing can live there. And we
lost--what is the number--about 6.2 million acre feet of burn
this year. That is more than double or triple the national
average.
It is not like it is something we didn't know was coming.
It has been projected since 1994, at least--even by the Forest
Service itself. But maybe it takes this little bit of extra
push to get us all working together to do this. As you
mentioned, hopefully the environmental community itself will
begin working with us rather than against us.
I do have to refer, though, to this Quincy Library plan
which passed virtually unanimously. I can tell you that these
individuals--and I would like to have you comment again if you
would like to--but the individuals who wrote it, who live in
these communities, could not be more unhappy--and I am putting
that very mildly. They do not agree with your comment earlier
that Mr. Radanovich asked you how it was being implemented. And
you felt it was being implemented--I think you said, basically,
well, you gave some statistics of what they had been working.
I would just like to remind you that this is only a third
of what the law says that you would treat, that we were talking
about east side. East side of the Sierra Nevada mountains is
where it is being implemented. Most people have no idea what
that means but let me, being born and raised around there, tell
those who are listening what it means.
The east side is the desert side of the mountain, as you
know. As the rain comes off the Pacific or the clouds come off
the Pacific Ocean and work their way up the mountains, it
falls. We have very healthy, fast-growing forests. As it gets
around to the east side, there isn't any more rain anymore, and
so you have basically a desert. You have trees that basically
don't grow.
So to be treating in that area, I am not going to say it is
a waste of time, but, comparatively, it is almost a waste of
time. And where we need to be treating is where we have this
three and four times growth. Yet the Forest Service, for
whatever reason, the Clinton-Gore administration for whatever
reason, the direction coming down is not allowing the Quincy
Library plan to be implemented where it has this greatest need.
If that weren't bad enough, the forest right around these
three, they are cutting two and three times more in those areas
than they are an area that we need to be treating. And the big
forest fire that we read in the news and saw the story fire,
that is 40 or 60,000 acres that have burned within this same
area.
Again, it is tragic. We do have a plan that has been worked
out. I think we have a model that we can work on that everyone
agreed on and the Congress said you will implement, but yet for
some reason the Forest Service is not implementing. I would
certainly appreciate your comment.
Mr. Phillips. I would just reiterate my earlier comments. I
talked to the forest supervisors out there. I feel that they
are working very hard to implement it.
The east side, if you look at a fire history map of the
Plumus and the Lassen, the east side and the lower elevation
west side is where most of the fires occur. I understand also
the need to treat the center part of that around Quincy,
Greenville and those towns also. They are trying to work
through the environmental concerns that are raised in order to
implement that. It doesn't do us any good to get tied up in
court. They are trying to do a product that allows them to move
forward. There is already one lawsuit on the project right now
that they are trying to work through.
Mr. Herger. That lawsuit is probably suing because you are
not enforcing it enough, I believe.
Let me also make a comment about working hard. I want to
commend the Forest Service, the people, my constituents, who
live in that area that work very hard, that are dedicated
people. My concern is these policies that are coming down from
the Clinton-Gore administration that tend to not allow them to
implement or do what I feel they would like to do and as they
are trained to do. But I just want to let you know that the
people who wrote this legislation, the real experts, not me but
them, who live there, environmentalists as well, are very
unhappy with the near lack of the implementation of the Forest
Service. I am just telling you that is what they tell me.
Mr. Phillips. I talk with them, also.
Mr. Herger. You must hear the same thing I do.
Mr. Phillips. I talk with them. I hope to get out there
after Congress adjourns and look closer at the implementation.
Mr. Herger. I can assure you they are not happy campers.
Again, thank you. I thank each of you. Hopefully, we are
beginning to turn the corner where we can begin doing the type
of thing that will preserve these forests and doing it in a way
that we don't cut down all the commercial trees, just a few of
them, along with the thinning which we are learning to be able
to utilize as well and make it a win-win.
By the way, I have 42 mills that have closed just in the 10
counties that I represent, in an area where my statistics are
probably higher than what you mentioned in the Rocky Mountains
as far as the amount of trees, that we have more today than we
had back in the 1950's.
Mr. Nelson. If I could make just a comment.
Mr. Herger. Please do.
Mr. Nelson. When the Congress deals with these situations
like the Quincy Library and it finds that it is unable to get
the results that it is looking for, as I said, I think that
these fires and the whole situation of excess fuels has created
a situation where Congress needs to look at the whole framework
and a lot of the basic assumptions of public land management.
But one option, and I don't think--it certainly wouldn't
work for the Forest Service as a whole--but on, say, an
experimental basis, possibly five areas or something like that,
would be to take something like Quincy Library and go much
further in actually decentralizing the authority and move into
the role of thinking about actually empowering local groups in
a much more vigorous way than we have seen so far. Having the
Federal Government move out of the role of the final
controlling manager and more into the facilitator, source of
information, source of technical assistance and maybe
implementor of some of the actions on their own lands but where
you might have, for example, a board of directors that would
actually have some kind of legal authority that would be
composed of local government officials and timber people and
environmentalists.
There are many ideas that are floating around. Lots of
study groups and so forth have been looking at some of these
out of the box solutions in terms of traditional forest
management. As I say, I can't imagine that anyone would propose
them at this point for the Forest Service system as a whole,
but it seems to me that the time may at least be getting close
where these things could be done experimentally for particular
situations.
Mr. Herger. Thank you, Mr. Nelson.
Of course, that was the whole purpose of Quincy Library. It
was a pilot plan over parts of three national forests, 5 years,
to see whether it works. What is so--we feel it will work. I
think we can look at examples, places that we can see where
parts of it has been, where we have thinned out, how it has
worked--several of you have given examples of that--but to see
how--at least through the Clinton-Gore administration has been
disallowing this 5-year program to go forward is incredibly
distressing to our area, and I think is very harmful to our
Nation and to our natural resources.
Thank you.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Herger.
I, too, want to reiterate Wally's concern for Forest
Service and the great job that they have done in fighting the
fires. The rank and file of the Forest Service are incredible
people, including you, Mr. Phillips, and the work that you do.
The problem I do have is with the administration and the
powers that be that influence that administration on forest
policy. I am really kind of concerned about this idea that if
you buy fuels management as a means, commingle it with fires
for maintaining fuels management and forest health that you
have got to leave the big trees out of that. What is the long-
term objective if you are going into the forest consistently
clearing out underbrush and taking out small trees and leaving
big trees? Don't you end up with a forest of big trees that is
less dynamic, that all die at once, that you are all back in
the same situation at one time where you have fuels buildup and
it is just in the form of dead big trees? That is a pretty
undynamic way of looking at forest management, wouldn't you
agree, Mr. Phillips?
Mr. Phillips. In some respects, yes. In others, it really
depends on the objectives you have for that piece of land. If
your objective is to manage that land for commercial purposes,
then you might do both of them simultaneously. If your
objectives are to manage it for some other type of use, you may
go in for an action just to reduce fuel. It really depends on
the objectives for that area. Those objectives are determined
by the public through the land management plans, and then the
local people on the ground who are trained determine the best
way to manage that.
Chairman Radanovich. Mr. Nelson, do you want to comment on
that?
Mr. Nelson. Yes. I think that, as most everyone here knows,
in the 1990's the Forest Service has been implementing the idea
of ecosystem management which is a somewhat fuzzy idea, but you
can say that it shifts the attention from the old multiple-use
idea, which was that basically the forests existed to serve
human uses, to an idea that the goal of management now is to
actually achieve a certain forest condition, ecologically
speaking.
So that raised the question, well, OK, what are we trying
to accomplish by our ecosystem management? If it is not
maximizing human uses like we used to do, taking all the uses
into account, figuring out how to maximize the value, what is
our ecosystem target?
The people in the field have kind of struggled, and out of
a struggle that has gone on a few years has basically come the
following idea, that what we are trying to do is establish
something which is natural. We don't exactly know what natural
is. So as a practical matter, if we have to implement
something, we will define natural to be the forest condition
prior to European settlement in the West. That means before
human action came along in a heavy-handed way and started
changing the forests, fire suppression and all the rest.
So, actually, if you look at what the Forest Service is
doing now and other Federal agencies, they have extensive
research teams out there which are trying to figure out what
the condition of the forest was in approximately 1870 or 1880
or maybe 1850. It depends on the place that you are talking
about; and then the goal of management is going to be to return
the forest and the ecological system to about where it was in
1870.
I consider that that is a pretty radical shift in the
nature of management for the national forests, which are, after
all, 10 percent of the United States. In a State like Idaho, 40
percent of the land area of Idaho is in the national forest.
Some people who look at this in a somewhat cynical way say
we are almost creating theme parks out there. It is like
Williamsburg or something, except a natural version of this,
and that we are recreating something real, even assuming we can
do it, which in many cases is quite questionable. It may
actually be more of a fantasy that we have accomplished this
than we have actually accomplished it. But let's even assume we
can do it. Is it really true that we want to take 10 percent of
the land in the United States and try to manage it according to
what its condition was in 1870?
It certainly raises some questions in my mind, and I would
also think that before we would do that as an operational basis
for management that the U.S. Congress ought to give some fairly
clear and explicit instructions rather than the Forest Service
just go ahead to do this on its own, which is the way things
have been working out.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you.
Mr. Hill, is there evidence to suggest that parts of the
areas covered under the President's roadless policy are near
urban areas? And what would be the impact of that agency's
ability to fight fires in roadless areas?
Mr. Hill. Yes, there is evidence that there are some
roadless areas near urban areas. But most of them--most of the
roadless areas are in remote areas. There is not sufficient
information--I think that is part of the problem we have noted
in terms of this issue, is there is not a lot of clear
information as to where these urban interface areas are in
relation to some of these more open areas and where the roads
are and where the high-risk areas are and how it all kind of
fits together. That is part of the problem here.
As far as the impact on fighting these fires in these
roadless areas, yes, they are currently fighting them in the
roadless areas. It is a little more difficult, a little more
costly. The fact is they can fight them, but it is just more
costly and more difficult.
Chairman Radanovich. Mr. Phillips, I am not sure of the
area, but as you know a few years ago there was a bark beetle
infestation. I think it was during the drought. It seems to me
it was responsible in part for the intensity, say, of the Boise
National Forest fire, I think the Yosemite fires which I was
involved in back in 1989, 1990. During that time the Congress I
think passed a law that would allow the burned areas to be
logged in order to get a lot of the dead debris out of there,
keep it from falling, number one, harvest it while it was good
for commercial purposes before it fell on the ground and rotted
but also to prevent fuels buildup in the future.
Yet the administration I think--I know that passed the
Congress, and I understand that the administration held that up
as well. I believe that the lack of the harvesting of some of
the dead and dying trees that were due to the bark beetle
infestation, it was very likely the cause of some of the fire
buildup that has been happening even this year. Do you
anticipate the same type of administration reaction when the
concern about going in and logging up some of that dead and
burned trees come before the Congress?
Mr. Phillips. I think it is reasonable to expect that there
will be some commercial sales, whatever is needed in many cases
to restore the land to the way it needs to be, to a healthy
condition. So I don't anticipate there will be any direction
prohibiting commercial sales.
I would also point out that in the last couple of years we
did in Idaho go in and assist the forest with policy to harvest
some insect salvage that they had there. So we are trying to
help there where we can.
Chairman Radanovich. By and large, most of those infested
trees were left rotting on the ground, though.
Mr. Phillips. Where is this?
Chairman Radanovich. By and large, on the average, I think
most of those trees were left dead and dying.
Mr. Phillips. Are you talking about from the 1990
situation?
Chairman Radanovich. Yes.
Mr. Phillips. Are you referring to the salvage rider?
Chairman Radanovich. Yes.
Mr. Phillips. I may not have my facts correct. I was the
forest supervisor in North Carolina at the time. I know that we
implemented that there. Nationally, I can't really respond.
Chairman Radanovich. I think nationally the evidence would
show--and we will both have to go look up our facts, that it
was effectively stopped, at least in the Sierra and Stanislaus
National Forests, the areas that I represent.
Mr. Phillips. I know there was a volume target associated
with that. I believe there was. And I had heard that nationally
that target was met by the agency, but, again, I can't say that
for sure.
Chairman Radanovich. Mr. Price.
Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I suspect we are not going to settle here today some of the
underlying issues that have been addressed. Suffice it to say
that, on the question of whether it is necessary or even
desirable to include the harvest of these large, commercially
valuable trees as part of these management plans is open to
active question and dispute.
I would like to refer in the record here to testimony of
three professors of forestry from the western States,
Professors Morgan, Neuenschwander and Swetnam, last year before
the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, Committee on
Resources, where they say, and I am quoting, it is very
important to leave the large trees in the forest when we thin
or burn. These trees are the insurance for the future. They are
critical to ecosystem resilience. Foresters call the needed
prescription thin from below because it removes the smaller
trees and their crowns while leaving the bigger trees. If there
are few tree crowns of low bulk density near the ground and
there is little vertical continuity between the crowns of the
small and big trees, forests can often withstand surface fires
even in dry, windy conditions. This will limit the development
and spread of crown fires, particularly if the horizontal
continuity of the crown bulk density in the principal canopy
layer is also broken. It is the small trees that contribute the
most to fire risk as they provide ladders for the fires to
climb from the surface into the crowns.
So perhaps at least we can agree on that. We are talking
essentially about clearing out these smaller trees; and that is
a challenge in terms of commercial viability, as you begin to
describe, Mr. Phillips. You say there are some commercial uses
for these materials, some possibility for developing commercial
products. That is where I would like to pick up here in this
period of questioning.
I just wonder, we have had here a minor reflection, I
suppose, of the timber wars today with some of the claims back
and forth. I wonder if this September 8 report to the President
from the Interior and Agriculture Departments represents
something of an opportunity to get past this conflict between
the environmental communities and the logging communities. To
what extent does an increased and aggressive effort to reduce
fuels in the national forest offer the prospect of commercial
development, of employment opportunities for communities that
have depended on logging in the past?
Mr. Phillips. Do you want to go ahead?
Mr. Price. Mr. Phillips first, then I will hear from the
others.
Mr. Phillips. I think it offers some good potential for
contracts. Again, I will go back to when I was working on a
Ranger district, we had a situation like that and made
contracts available to local people who came in and did the
thinning and gained some employment from that. So I think there
is a lot of potential. Whether you have a merchantable product
or not, you still have a need to go in and treat the fuels, and
we will do a lot of that through contracts.
Mr. Nelson. Well, the small-diameter trees, I think there
is a very large potential market out there. I would cite, for
example, a product called oriented strand board, which was
virtually zero in terms of national production as recently as
1980 and is now up to about 11 billion board feet a year. The
production of oriented strand board, which has some
similarities in use to plywood, is up to two-thirds of the
level of plywood in the United States. So it has actually
become just in 20 years a major part of the wood supply of the
United States, and one of its attractions is that oriented
strand board can be made from these small-diameter trees.
There are other things that are going on. Again, partly
because of the pressure of reductions in traditional softwood
harvests, the timber companies have been making increasing use
of hardwoods as a source of supply. And, again, they often use
it--these are inferior quality woods--by chipping it, they make
it into particles. They now have superior glues.
I think actually we are only really at the beginning of
these technologies, and the technology responds to the demand.
As long as lumber was cheap and we had abundant supplies, the
industry did not have the incentive. But now that we are
getting to a situation where these low-quality trees may be one
of our main sources of wood fiber supply in the United States,
I think that there are many more technological developments out
there that have not even been discovered. However, at least as
far as the Federal lands are involved, the incentive is still
not there right now.
No one is going to invest in a mill in Colorado or Idaho, a
new mill, in the current supply situation. They need 10 years
to recover their investment. And right now who would know
whether they would even get 1 year of supply. And to the extent
that the technologies are fairly site-specific, they have to
have local adaptations, they are not even going to invest in
the research and development effort to find the best
technologies to work in Colorado or Idaho.
The Forest Service, which does not have to worry about
making a profit, actually has done some very valuable work in
this area in Madison, WI. For the last 5 or 10 years, their
Forest Products Laboratory has been devoting increasingly large
amounts of time to both the technological and also the economic
aspects of small-diameter trees. And they have put out a series
of reports that are available for anyone who wants to look at
them, basically talking about what the current economic
situation is, but also what the prospects are. And in general
if you read through the reports, they are very optimistic about
the potential economically of this form of wood utilization.
Mr. Hill. If I may add a quick comment to that. Our past
work has also demonstrated the lack of a commercial use for
some of the smaller undergrowth. And regardless of whether you
take the big trees down or not, aside from that debate, you
will have to take the smaller trees out. And there really is no
commercial market right now for using a lot of that biomass.
And I think that is something that has to be encouraged and
provide incentives and developed, because if we can develop the
commercial industry to use this smaller biomass, that will help
pay for a lot of the expense of doing the work that is needed
to be done.
Mr. Price. Thank you. I know we have a vote on the floor,
and we are trying to wrap up. I again thank you all for being
here. It has been very enlightening testimony.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Price.
Mr. Herger.
Mr. Herger. Are we starting a new round?
Chairman Radanovich. No. You are finishing up the second
round, if you would like.
Mr. Herger. Sure.
Mr. Nelson, do you have any estimate about the government
revenues that might come in if we were to begin?
Mr. Nelson. Well, I have tried to figure this out. I do not
have any definitive numbers. These are sort of back-of-the-
envelope calculations. So the Forest Service or somebody can do
a more definitive study, but I would think if we could provide
assurances of continuity of supply so that someone could invest
in a mill, and they would be assured that they would have
enough supply to continue for 10 years, we could probably get
maybe $25 to $50 a thousand board feet in stumpage fees for a
lot of these small trees.
And we are talking about enormous amounts of boardfeet. I
mean, if this industry develops, it will not be a minor fringe
industry. It will be a major contributor to the total wood
supply in the United States, because as I mentioned before,
just in the intermountain West there are 70 billion cubic feet
of wood in the intermountain West. No one is saying we will cut
it all, but even if we cut 10 or 20 percent in the areas where
fire hazards are the greatest, we are talking about large
supplies of wood, and I believe it can actually earn revenue. I
would say in the future we could certainly be talking about a
half-billion dollars a year or something like that in revenue.
Mr. Herger. We are talking about net over expenses?
Mr. Nelson. I am talking about stumpage fees. I am assuming
we would still sell by competitive bid like we have under the
old timber program, but now we would be selling the small-
diameter trees.
I think our bidding procedures have to be looked at and
revised. I think Congress will have to take a look at that,
because I don't think the existing bidding system for timber
sales works very well when you don't have a mill there. So you
are going to have to combine the investment aspect of the
situation with making the timber available in a more integrated
way. When someone agrees to buy the timber, they also need an
assurance of long-term supply. They need enough supply to be
capable of building a mill. Or at least they need to know where
they will send any purchased small-diameter timber to a mill.
If they have to send it 250 miles away, they will not be
willing to bid anything. But if a lot of policy changes are
made, and a lot of these will be in the hands of Congress, to
revise its timber sale policy and then the Forest Service
implement them, I could certainly see $500 million a year or
something like that in sale revenues. Again, this is a back-of-
the-envelope calculation.
Mr. Herger. Let me try to clarify, if we can. So we are
talking about not just spending hundreds of millions of
dollars, of taxpayer dollars, to go out and thin out these
small trees in the brush so as to make our forests more fire-
resistant, but we are actually talking about an industry, if it
is done right, that we can actually produce dollars----
Mr. Nelson. It can be a major new wood product industry.
Mr. Herger [continuing]. For the economy and help open up
some of these 42 mills that have closed in my area.
Mr. Nelson. It is a win-win situation all the way around.
It is environmentally beneficial, forestry beneficial,
economically beneficial to the Treasury, and produces jobs and
income for rural communities, some of which have suffered a
lot. But the question is whether we can move fast enough.
Mr. Herger. Before it all moves down.
Mr. Nelson. And people all move away, and even the existing
mills close, which I doubt right now. I don't think that under
the existing system that it is capable of moving fast enough.
Mr. Herger. Thank you very much.
The Chairman said we were running out of time. I thought he
was talking about the vote. But he was really referring to we
are running out of time before the forests burn down before we
do this. So it just emphasizes how important it is that we all
work together, and I think this example that was set in Quincy,
a small little town of a few hundred people in the Sierra
Nevada Mountains maybe 60 miles north of Lake Tahoe where the
environmentalists and the wood products people and everyone got
together and worked out a plan, that this, I think, is an
example of what we can do nationally to solve these very real
problems we have of our forests completely burning down and
having no environment left. So hopefully we can all work to do
that again.
Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
Chairman Radanovich. Thank you.
Forgive me. We are just closing up our meeting before we
have to go scamper off and go vote.
Last I checked, every American runs into wood products
every day of their lives, and I think it is a little
disingenuous for us to have a national policy of a no-cut
policy in the National Forest when it is a part of our daily
lives and we are all consumers--even the most ardent
environmentalist is a consumer--of wood products. As long as we
can harvest and maintain forest health and a dynamic forest, I
see nothing embarrassing about making a buck off of trees in
our forests. I think that needs to be reiterated as we close
this hearing.
Mr. Hill, thank you.
Mr. Phillips, good to see you again. Thank you for being
here.
Mr. Nelson, thank you for contributing to what I think is
an excellent hearing.
Thanks again, and we will adjourn the hearing.
[Whereupon, at 4:05 p.m., the Task Force was adjourned.]