[House Hearing, 108 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] WILDFIRES IN THE WEST: IS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S RESPONSE ADEQUATE? ======================================================================= HEARING before the SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY POLICY, NATURAL RESOURCES AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS of the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION __________ MAY 5, 2004 __________ Serial No. 108-178 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house http://www.house.gov/reform ______ U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 95-222 WASHINGTON : DC ____________________________________________________________________________ For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800 Fax: (202) 512�092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402�090001 COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California NATHAN DEAL, Georgia C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER, CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan Maryland TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Columbia JOHN R. CARTER, Texas JIM COOPER, Tennessee MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee ------ ------ PATRICK J. HARRIS, Ohio ------ KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont (Independent) Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director Rob Borden, Parliamentarian Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs DOUG OSE, California, Chairman EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California JOHN M. McHUGH, New York PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania CHRIS CANNON, Utah DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio NATHAN DEAL, Georgia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan JIM COOPER, Tennessee PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio Ex Officio TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California Barbara F. Kahlow, Staff Director Melanie Tory, Professional Staff Member Lauren Jacobs, Clerk Krista Boyd, Minority Counsel C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Hearing held on May 5, 2004...................................... 1 Statement of: Campbell, William, chairman, Blue Ribbon Fire Commission; Bruce Turbeville, chairman of the Fire Safe Council; William J. McCammon, president, California Fire Chiefs Association; and Amy Mall, senior forest policy analyst, Natural Resources Defense Council.......................... 73 Scarlett, P. Lynn, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget, Department of Interior; and Mark E. Rey, Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, Department of Agriculture.................................. 27 Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by: Campbell, William, chairman, Blue Ribbon Fire Commission, prepared statement of...................................... 76 Mall, Amy, senior forest policy analyst, Natural Resources Defense Council, prepared statement of..................... 145 McCammon, William J., president, California Fire Chiefs Association, prepared statement of......................... 131 Ose, Hon. Doug, a Representative in Congress from the State of California: Cover of a report entitled, ``Science Basis for Changing Forest Structure to Modify Wildfire Behavior and Severity,''............................................ 64 Prepared statement of.................................... 4 Rey, Mark E., Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, Department of Agriculture, prepared statement of......................................................... 43 Scarlett, P. Lynn, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget, Department of Interior, prepared statement of............................................... 30 Tierney, Hon. John F., a Representative in Congress from the State of Massachusetts, prepared statement of.............. 51 Turbeville, Bruce, chairman of the Fire Safe Council, prepared statement of...................................... 118 WILDFIRES IN THE WEST: IS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S RESPONSE ADEQUATE? ---------- WEDNESDAY, MAY 5, 2004 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs, Committee on Government Reform, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:03 p.m., in room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Doug Ose (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Ose, Shays, Tierney, Cannon, Schrock, and Tom Davis of Virginia [ex officio]. Staff present: Barbara F. Kahlow, staff director; Melanie Tory, professional staff member; Lauren Jacobs, clerk; Megan Taormino, press secretary; Krista Boyd, minority counsel; and Cecelia Morton, minority office manager. Mr. Ose. Good afternoon. Welcome to today's hearing of the Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs. Today's subject is: ``Wildfires in the West: Is the Bush Administration's Response Adequate?'' Given that we just got called for a vote, here's the order of battle today. We're going to go ahead and commence the hearing, establish the quorum. I'm going to give my opening statement, and then we are going to recess and go to votes and then we'll be back at the conclusion of those votes, at which time we will swear in the witnesses and commence with receiving their testimony. We'll establish first that there is a quorum present with Chairman Davis in attendance, and I will go ahead and make my opening statement. Today 15,000 fire fighters are on the front lines of wildfires in California. Although we are only 2 days into the southern California fire season, we've already had over 18,000 acres burned. It's timely that we're here today to discuss wildfire policy in the West. Failure to properly address this issue will result in the needless destruction of communities, forests, rangelands, and habitats. After 100 years of well-intentioned, and frankly misguided land management policy, Federal lands that were once healthy and productive are now unnaturally dense and diseased. Due to these unhealthy conditions, our national lands have become increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires. In 2000 and 2002, our country suffered its worst two wildland fire seasons in 50 years. Combined, the fires of 2000 and 2002 burned over 15 million acres of land and cost the Federal Government nearly $3 billion to suppress. The 2002 fire season was particularly severe in the West, with Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oregon reporting their worst fires in modern history. Similarly, in 2003 California experienced its worst fire season when 13 wildfires claimed 24 lives, destroyed 3,600 homes, burned 739,000 acres, and cost $250 million to contain. Faced with these escalating economic and ecological losses, in August 2002, President Bush announced his Health Forests Initiative. This plan sought to reduce the statutory, regulatory, and administrative obstacles to effective fire prevention and rehabilitation on Federal lands. As part of this plan, in December 2002, the Bush administration proposed a series of administrative actions that facilitated timely reviews of forest projects, amended the project appeals process, improved the consultation process required under the Endangered Species Act, and created a more effective environmental assessment process under the National Environmental Policy Act. As shown in the chart on display, in 2003 and 2004, the Departments of Agriculture and Interior promulgated three final rules, one interim final rule, and one notice to implement these changes. In addition to regulatory reform, the Bush administration has sought new statutory authority from Congress to adequately protect Federal lands from wildfires. The resulting legislation, known as the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, was signed into law in December 2003. It's known as Public Law 108- 148. Despite the new tools available to Federal land managers, it is likely that the West will once again experience a severe fire season this year. This problem was not created overnight and it will not be solved overnight. Nonetheless, it is still important that we expeditiously begin the process of removing hazardous fuels and returning our national lands to their former glory. To that end, we are here today to assess whether the reforms realized under the Health Forests Initiative and Healthy Forests Restoration Act are sufficient to eliminate the barriers to effective land management policy in the long term. Additionally, we are here today to discuss ways to enhance cooperation and coordination among Federal, State, local, and private entities. Fires are equal opportunists. They harm everybody. They'll consume privately owned land in the same way they consume adjacent Federal land, State land, or local land. The best way to prevent catastrophic wildfires is to forge alliances among the various stakeholders. Last, we are here today to remind the public of the very real fire danger that exists and of the need to vigilantly address the issue. All too often support for wildfire prevention and suppression is forgotten as soon as the flames are extinguished. In March, four ballot measures to improve fire prediction failed in San Diego County. Think about that. The voters who were most affected by the 2003 wildfires opted not to support actions to increase the ability of the community to prepare and respond to wildfires. For land managers and fire professionals to reduce the wildfire threat, they must have public support. Wildfires remain a significant threat to many communities and habitats throughout the West. As we examine this issue, key questions will include: One, is the Federal Government doing enough to mitigate wildfire risks; two, how can stakeholder relationships be improved; and three, are additional measures needed to address wildfires in the short or long-term? I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses. They include the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget at the Department of Interior, Ms. Lynn Scarlett; the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Mr. Mark Rey; the chairman of the California Governor's Blue Ribbon Fire Commission, Senator William Campbell; the chairman of the Fire Safe Council, Mr. Bruce Turbeville; the president of the California Fire Chiefs Association, Mr. William McCammon; and the senior forest policy analyst for Natural Resources Defense Counsel, Ms. Amy Mall. Unfortunately, we were advised this morning that Governor Martz, who was to testify on behalf of the Western Governors' Association was called back to Montana because of a family emergency. Her written testimony will be submitted for the record. The record will remain open for the next 10 days to allow Members to submit any written questions they may have for Governor Martz. Now, given what I described earlier, the three of us are going to quickly go to the floor. Before we do, I am pleased to recognize the chairman of the full committee for the purpose of opening statement. [The prepared statements of Hon. Doug Ose and Governor Martz follow:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.003 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.004 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.005 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.006 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.007 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.008 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.009 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.010 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.011 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.012 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.013 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.014 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.015 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.016 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.017 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.018 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.019 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.020 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.021 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.022 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.023 Mr. Davis. Thank you. We have a vote on. I thank the witnesses for being here today. It is an important fact-finding hearing for us, and I want to commend you Mr. Chairman, for holding it. Mr. Ose. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Mr. Shays. Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman for holding this important hearing. Obviously, we can learn a lot that needs to be learned. Thank you. Mr. Ose. Thank you. All right. We're going to recess for the purpose of getting over to vote, and we'll be back as quickly as possible. I'd ask the witnesses to stay in close proximity. [Recess.] Mr. Ose. We'll come to order again. I want to apologize for the break. I want to welcome our two remaining panelists on panel one. Again, the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget at the Department of Interior, Ms. Lynn Scarlett, welcome; and the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment at the Department of Agriculture, Mr. Mark Rey. Both are welcome. We have received both of your testimonies and I've actually read both of them, so don't be shocked by that. Now, in this committee as a matter of practice we swear in all of our witnesses, so we're going to have you all rise and be sworn in. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Ose. Let the record show the witnesses answered in the affirmative. Our first witness on panel one is the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget at the U.S. Department of Interior, Ms. Lynn Scarlett. Ma'am, you are recognized for 5 minutes. Please keep in mind we've received your testimony, we've reviewed it, we're making it a part of the record. If there's something you care to summarize or add to it, this is the time to take advantage. STATEMENTS OF P. LYNN SCARLETT, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR POLICY, MANAGEMENT, AND BUDGET, DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR; AND MARK E. REY, UNDER SECRETARY FOR NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE Ms. Scarlett. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for this opportunity to discuss wildland fire. We thank you for your support in helping us to reduce the risk wildland fire poses to people, communities, and our natural resources--risks so evident as fires burn in California this very day. President Bush announced his Healthy Forests Initiative in August 2002, as we are aware. The chief purpose of that initiative was to help us expedite fuels treatment projects so that we could begin to quickly and efficiently tackle the buildup of fuels on our ranges and forests. To achieve this goal, the Council of Environmental Quality issued streamlined environmental assessment guidelines for fuels treatment projects. The environmental assessments are now two to five times shorter than those only a year ago. We have completed nine projects, piloting the guidance. None of the streamlined environmental assessments has been appealed or challenged in courts. The second tool that we put forth under the Healthy Forests Initiative was through the Departments of Agriculture and Interior jointly adopting a new categorical exclusion for certain types of fuels treatment activities and post-fire restoration. Although the tool just became available after the 2004 fuels program was finalized, the bureaus have recognized its value and are beginning to utilize it. We have done one project under a categorical exclusion, for example, at Big Cypress National Preserve on 1,000 acres to reduce dense brush along a highway. Third, we have improved procedures for meeting the goals of the Endangered Species Act. In January of this year, the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce finalized regulations making the consultation process under Section 7 of the act more effective for fuels treatment projects. Alternative conservation agreements under that new approach are now in place with the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Fourth, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Assistant Administrator of NOAA issued guidance in December 2002 directing staff to look at the long-term benefit of fuels treatments to plants and animals rather than just short-term impacts of a given fuels treatment project. In addition to these tools, Congress has made it easier for us to get fuels off the land. The President sought, and in 2003 the Congress provided, long-term stewardship contracting authority for the Bureau of Land Management and expanded the limited authority previously granted to the Forest Service. Stewardship contracts or agreements allow communities, tribes, private companies, and others to retain forest and rangeland products in exchange for performing services for the BLM such as fuel reduction projects. The BLM has begun using this tool. They issued field guidance in January of this year and are already on track to award over 30 contracts in 11 States, with another 80 projects in various stages of planning for 2005. One such project is the Walker/Mono Basin project near Bishop, CA, that will remove fuels from 2,000 acres within the wildland urban interface using a stewardship contract. To further assist agencies in reducing risks of catastrophic wildland fire, Congress passed the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, which President Bush signed in December 2003. We have responded swiftly to implement the legislation. In February of this year, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service issued field guidance to implement the act. Above all, working closely with communities is central to the Health Forests Initiative and Healthy Forests Restoration Act. The principal entity overseeing implementation of the National Fire Plan is the Wildland Fire Leadership Council, on which sit States, local governments, tribal governments, in addition to Federal agencies. I have chaired this council over the last year. How we work with our partners varies across States and across localities. In California, the collaborative effort falls to the California Fire Alliance, a cooperative group consisting of Federal land management agencies, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, and the California Fire Safe Council and others. In Florida, local collaboration occurs through prescribed fire councils, local cooperative associations, and local divisions of the Florida Division of Forestry. Numerous other examples of Federal collaboration with our State, tribal, and local partners are a driving force behind all our efforts. The 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy gives States the lead in prioritizing communities at risk from wildland fire. Last June, the National Association of State Foresters proposed a methodology for all States to use in expanding collaboration and cooperation to better prioritize fuels treatment projects. Reducing risks in the wildland-urban interface is our highest priority. We dedicate over 60 percent of hazardous fuels reduction dollars to projects in or near the wildland-urban interface. From the beginning of fiscal year 2001 to the end of fiscal year 2004, the Department of the Interior will have removed hazardous fuels from over 4 million acres nationwide, including 1.2 million acres in the wildland-urban interface. Mr. Ose. Ms. Scarlett, if I might, one thing I've learned here is that the red light comes on to remind the witness that they need to wrap up. Ms. Scarlett. Sorry. Didn't see that red light. Mr. Ose. OK. Ms. Scarlett. I will wrap up. Just to conclude, the investments that we have made are allowing us to, in California, alone, expend some $21 million, which is an increase of over 50 percent compared to 2001, to tackle these problems. Mr. Chairman, we understand the problems facing the Nation and California. As we sit here today, a number of fires burn in southern California. It is our intent through the wildland fire efforts that we have underway in our fuels reduction projects to begin to change the trendline and turn the corner around these challenges that we face. Thank you very much. I look forward to answering any of your questions. Mr. Ose. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Ms. Scarlett follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.024 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.025 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.026 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.027 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.028 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.029 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.030 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.031 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.032 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.033 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.034 Mr. Ose. Our next witness is a friend of mine in my time here in Congress. He's the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment, U.S. Department of Agriculture. It's nice to see you again, Mr. Rey. You are recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. Rey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My statement for the record includes a summary of the Department of Agriculture's accomplishments under the National Fire Plan and Health Forests Initiative, comparable to that which Assistant Secretary Scarlett recounted for the Department of Interior, but I'll submit that for the record and instead talk a little bit about the fire season that we expect this year and then talk a little bit about funding for Healthy Forests Restoration Act programs. While the fire season nationally is expected to be about average in terms of expected number of fires and acres, much of the interior West and southwest Alaska is expected to have the potential for an above-normal fire season. The combination of drought and an increased of drought-stressed and insect-damaged trees and brush has resulted in a greater potential for large wildfires in the West. A very warm March has led to a significant reduction of western snow packs, and southwest Alaska snowpacks are below normal, as well. Late March and early April storms in the Southwestern States have delayed the onset of the fire season because it starts first in the Southwest and then moves North. However, the Southwest is expecting a rapid escalation to critical fire potential in Arizona and western New Mexico later this month and in June. June will also be an important month in determining the fire season's severity in the Northwest and the northern Rockies. A hot, dry June combined with current low snowpack would likely result in a severe fire season in both of these areas. I'll refer you to the map over on the side, which you have before you. It gives you a detection variance where we predict above-normal fire seasons and below-normal. The green are below normal, the orange are above normal. That gives you a geographical sense of how the fire season should play out based upon the predictive models and the information available at the current time. As Assistant Secretary Scarlett indicated, we are at work aggressively implementing the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, utilizing funds provided by Congress for fiscal year 2004. I have to take respectful issue though, I think, with statements that I've heard in the press for later witnesses that analogize funding from Federal Government for programs to assist States as analogous to virga, or rain that falls from the sky but evaporates before it hits the ground. I think the specific reference here was to southern California. We went back and looked at program payout in southern California, and so far this year we have allocated four projects that are under way on the ground on Federal and non-Federal lands, $67 million to date. Now, I have been in Washington a long time, but I would have to tell you that if $67 million rained down out of the sky on me, I think I could feel the moisture. So there is a great deal of program implementation underway; however, we have looked at program payout in a number of the Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service programs. One of the limiting factors appears to be the non-Federal matching share either in dollars or in-kind. I've directed both the Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service to look at these programs in southern California, and, where possible, either reduce or defer, or in an emergency situation waive the non-Federal share if that will help accelerate program delivery on the ground, so that is underway. Mr. Ose. That's a change. Mr. Rey. That is. Mr. Ose. You're basically--I'm sorry to interrupt, first of all. Mr. Rey. Yes. Mr. Ose. But, if I understand what you just said correctly, you are lowering thresholds, waiving some requirements on matching, and trying to make it easier for localities to respond with Federal assistance? Mr. Rey. Where we have that authority under existing law, we're looking at that, and I believe can do it, and it will help. Mr. Ose. Thank you. Mr. Rey. So with that, I would be happy to respond to any of your questions, but I'd like to leave you with one thought, and I think it is relevant to the dissatisfaction of how fast program accomplishment is occurring, because I think there are some people who believed that with the passage of congressional legislation last year we would end all forest fires, and obviously that is not going to happen. This is a problem whose magnitude and scope is such that it's not a problem. It cannot be solved overnight through a concerted effort and a rapid and steady increase of our effort on the ground. This is a problem that will be with us, but can be resolved in 10 to 12 years time, but it is going to take that amount of time to deal with the problem that has been over 100 years in the making. So with that we would both be happy to respond to any questions that you've got. Mr. Ose. I thank the witness. [The prepared statement of Mr. Rey follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.035 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.036 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.037 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.038 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.039 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.040 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.041 Mr. Ose. I want to recognize my friend from Massachusetts for the purpose of an opening statement. Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank both the witnesses for their testimony and in advance for their response to questions that might be asked. You know, the issues of wildfires certainly is a serious one and timely, and I'm pleased that besides Under Secretary Rey and Assistant Secretary Scarlett, we will be hearing from other experts that work at the State and local levels. I also want to welcome Amy Mall, who is the senior forest policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who will give testimony on the next panel. As we sit here today, as Ms. Scarlett indicated, there are fires raging in southern California, so we should take a moment to salute the fire fighters there and to say how much we appreciate the fact that they are risking their lives to protect others, commend them for their heroism, and certainly hope that Congress continues to provide the strategic and financial resources necessary for them to do their jobs. I'm glad to see that the chairman today asked the witnesses to address the issue of collaboration between Federal, State, and local entities. The only way to be successful in protecting against wildfires is to make sure that it is a cooperative effort. While the Forest Service and the Department of Interior are responsible for the management of Federal lands, the devastation of fires certainly is felt in the communities living outside of those Federal lands. A consensus effort is the only way to ensure that we are providing the highest levels of protection for our communities, as well as caring for our forests. Unfortunately, there is some question about the recent Federal response, both regulatory and statutory, whether or not that is focused on cutting out public access to information and community participation in the name of speeding up forest thinning projects, and I'd like to hear some more from our witnesses on that issue. Certainly, if that's the case it wouldn't be acceptable. As with any government action, the American people have the right to know how their tax dollars are being spent on forest initiatives and how their communities will be affected, and so on their behalf I am going to be asking and listening for answers to three questions, which I'll not take the time of repeating them now, but I will ask them when it is my turn, and then ask that this statement be put on the record without objection, Mr. Chairman, and yield back. Mr. Ose. Hearing no objection, we'll do that. Mr. Tierney. Good. [The prepared statement of Hon. John F. Tierney follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.042 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.043 Mr. Ose. All right. We're going to go to questions here, 10-minute rounds. Ms. Scarlett and Mr. Rey, given the things that we've done here, either the President's Healthy Forests Initiative or the legislation that was passed and signed into law, the Restoration Act, do you believe additional statutory measures are necessary in order to at least make an impact on the fire situation? Ms. Scarlett. I will tackle that first, and then certainly welcome Mr. Rey's comments. At this point, I think we have the tools in place that we need to be able to get these fuels reduction projects on the ground. The combination of the Healthy Forests Initiative administrative actions we were able to take has enabled us to expedite the delivery of these fuels treatment projects. There are things, however, that we still need to refine and can do better. For example, as Mr. Rey suggested, getting those grant dollars on the ground quicker and more efficiently and with less paperwork for the recipients is something that we do need to work on. But, I do believe, in terms of the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act and stewardship contracting, we have the tools that we now need to do the job. Mr. Rey. I would concur with that, Mr. Chairman. I think what we need is a year, maybe 2 years now to get some familiarity with the changes that have been made, both statutorily and administratively, and then be in the position to evaluate whether, and if so what additional changes would be helpful. But, I think what we need now is a couple, several good months of implementation experience to have some data to draw on for that, to respond to that question more accurately. Mr. Ose. This question is to both of you, to the extent that you know. If you take into account all of the suppression costs, that being the actual firefighting, the economic losses to homeowners, the community, the destruction of habitat, the loss of species and the like, how do these costs compare to the cost of prevention? I mean, the thing that keeps running through my mind is, ``An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.'' I'm trying to figure out whether that has been quantified. Is it 16-to-1 to the ounce-to-pound scenario, or is it something different? Mr. Rey. One simple basis of comparison is we spent somewhat over $1 billion in firefighting last year, but the damage to southern California alone for the fires of last fall was $3 billion, and that didn't count any other fires any place else in the country. Southern California fires were the most expensive uninsured loss from fires in our Nation's history. Mr. Ose. Ms. Scarlett, do you have anything to add to that? Ms. Scarlett. I think Mark Rey hit the nail on the head. I will say right now that, in terms of fire suppression, we are upon initial attack actually successfully putting out wildland fires at about a 97.5 or 98 percent rate, so in addition to being prepared and being able to achieve that initial attack success, the real key going forward is going to be our fuels reduction efforts, getting these forests and rangelands into health so we don't have the kinds of catastrophic fires when fires that are often natural do strike. Mr. Ose. How do you quantify the cost of a fire that never occurred? In other words, how do you compare the ounce of prevention, so to speak, with the pound of cure? Ms. Scarlett. That, of course, is very difficult because we never know what fires are going to strike and where they're going to strike and therefore what they will have prevented. I think the best response we can give to that is along the lines that Mr. Rey gave. When these catastrophic fires ignite and when they spread to the degree they are doing and have the destruction that they are putting forth, the tally is in the billions of dollars, far larger than the amount we're actually spending to do fuels treatment, preparedness, and suppression. Mr. Ose. Is the conclusion, is it based on common sense then or is it speculative? I mean, $1 billion is a lot of money. Are you saying that there aren't any scenarios under which you would come to the conclusion that the prevention costs would even approach that? Is that effectively what you're saying? I'm trying to find the scientific basis on which we're making these determinations of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Ms. Scarlett. Mr. Chairman, I think that we are going about setting our goals in a somewhat different way rather than the dollars and cents way. Rather, our goals are we know that we have 190 million acres of land out there that are in poor condition, rangelands and forest lands. We have a LANDFIRE process that is a science process to get better vegetation information and better information about where fires burn with frequency from historical data, and with that try to tailor our fuels treatment to those locations and those acres that will most reduce the risk to communities that lie in the pathway of potential fires. So our goal is to reduce the risk to communities by bringing these lands into better health so that when natural fires strike they don't cause the devastation that we have been seeing. And, we are using science to help us learn where best to apply those fuels treatments. Mr. Ose. OK. I don't remember which of your testimony it was, but one of your testimonies talked about the wildland- urban interface and spending at least 50 percent of your resources treating that. Are you telling us that the science that you have been able to gather allows you to prioritize the circumstances under which fire can be most devastating? Mr. Rey. Yes, essentially. Ms. Scarlett. Yes. Mr. Rey. Based upon the condition of tracts of land, areas of the forest or rangeland, and the amount of fuel, the amount of woody material on there, and the proximity to communities or structures, we can establish clear priorities for where our initial treatments ought to be focused in treating the wildland-urban interface. Then, in addition, based upon data that are available about other resource values--the location of threatened or endangered species habitat, for instance--we can set additional priorities for areas that we would like to have fuels reduced to avoid the destructive effects of a fire that burns in an area that we know is so densely packed with vegetation that the fire intensity is going to be destructive to either ecological values or to human life or property. Ms. Scarlett. I will add just one thing to that. We have both the science question--what's the condition of the land and what's the likelihood of catastrophic fire burning in a particular location? The other is the communities and which communities are at risk. That element we are working very closely with States and the National Association of State Foresters who have developed a checklist, if you will, to help communities identify areas of highest priority risk. We match that up with the vegetation information that our science provides, and that's where we target our fuels treatment projects. Mr. Ose. Regarding the areas that burned in California last year, do you have any information that would indicate these were or would have been high priority areas or any scientific basis for sharing with us a quantification of the danger that existed there? Do you have any base data like that? Ms. Scarlett. From the standpoint of Department of Interior, I have just received information on the location of the fires. We would need to go back and look at where they are, whether we have done fuels treatment, and whether those locations are ones with high community presence. Mr. Ose. You're talking about the fires that burn today? Ms. Scarlett. Yes. Mr. Ose. I'm talking about the fires that burned last year. Ms. Scarlett. I'm sorry. Mr. Ose. Have you done any sort of retrospective look at that as it relates to the underbrush or the intensity of a fire that might burn? Mr. Rey. Yes. We have data that show that much of the area that burned in California last fall would have been relatively high priority treatment areas. Now, a substantial portion of it isn't Federal land, but some of it was Federal land. And, indeed, there are areas that we did treat. In fact, one of the reasons that we were able to save the community of Lake Arrowhead is that we were able to use one of our treatments as a fire break to back fire from to control the fire that was headed toward the community. So while we suffered a devastating loss last fall, upwards of 3,000 dwellings, had we not been able to successfully back fire using the fuel break that was created through treatments that were already done, it is quite possible we would have lost upwards of 30,000 homes because we might well have lost the community of Lake Arrowhead. Mr. Ose. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Massachusetts for 10 minutes. Mr. Tierney. Thank you. Mr. Rey, I understand that the Los Angeles Times ran an analysis last month. They found that vegetation was the single biggest factor in whether a house burned. According to their analysis, 9 out of 10 houses destroyed outside of San Diego during the San Diego County cedar fire had a flammable vegetation within 30 feet. So are we comfortable that we are prioritizing the activities of removing the vegetation near homes as opposed to focusing our funding and other activities in logging somewhere else, which I think is referred to as ``back country'' logging? Can you tell me what the ratio is between our efforts and our financing of making homes fire-wise versus what we are doing with regard to back country logging? And then, if you would, tell me what empirical evidence you have that back country logging actually works? Do we have any studies or reports that actually indicate that's effective, because I understand there's one Forest Service report that raises questions about whether it doesn't exacerbate the problem sometimes in either spreading or intensifying the fire. Mr. Rey. Let me start with your last question and submit for the record a report that the Forest Service released last month. The title of the report is, ``The Science Basis for Changing Forest Structure to Modify Wildfire Behavior and Severity.'' This is an extensive literature search that summarizes all of the science that we know today about the effect of thinning and reducing fire severity and destructiveness. Mr. Tierney. Isn't that the report that indicates that in some instances the back country logging can actually intensify a fire, or is that another report? Mr. Rey. No. There is no Forest Service report that suggests that. There are assertions that is the case sometimes, and there are some cases where, if the logging is done on private property and branches and slash material are left behind to leave fuels behind, that you can have a deleterious effect, but that's only if it is improperly done. Mr. Tierney. While I'll get a chance to read that apparently, after you file it later today, can you tell me now whether there are specific research bases in that study to indicate that back country logging is effective? Actually, let's put it this way--not just effective, but more effective than would be the result of focusing on making homes firewise. Mr. Rey. No. The report doesn't give a comparative assessment between those two, because those two are not either/ or propositions. There is considerable value to making homes firewise and there is considerable value in some locations to thinning forests that are not necessarily within the wildland- urban interface. Mr. Tierney. But, we do have to prioritize them in some sense if we are going to try to put our resources in it. Mr. Rey. Sure, and we have been pretty clear that the highest priority is to do work within the wildland-urban interface, and over 60 percent of the work we are doing is within the wildland-urban interface. But, there are two other competing priorities. One is the recognition that sometimes just working in the wildland-urban interface, alone, won't save or make safe a community, because some of these fires can throw embers and sparks as far as 3 miles in front of the firefront, and if those embers or sparks land on a cedar shake roof, the house is going to burn even if the fire didn't get any closer than 3 miles to the community. So sometimes just treating in the wildland-urban interface isn't enough to make communities safe. Additionally, there are other values outside of the wildland-urban interface that we want to protect from catastrophic fires. Municipal watersheds, for instance, are a clear example. Municipal watersheds, by definition, can't be in the wildland-urban interface. They have to be undeveloped watersheds to assure that water quality is maintained. But, if you have a catastrophic fire in a municipal watershed, as the city of Denver is now experienced in showing, that's going to materially disadvantage water quality. So that's an area where you'd want to do work to reduce fire intensity, even though you are not in the wildland-urban interface. Mr. Tierney. Thank you. Ms. Scarlett, my understanding is that the administration's budget request for this upcoming fiscal year, 2005, would actually reduce the National Fire Plan's allocation by about $325 million. Am I accurate on that? Ms. Scarlett. Overall for the National Fire Plan? Mr. Tierney. Yes, the National Fire Plan. Ms. Scarlett. No. Actually, we have in our 2005 budget overall increases. For the fuels reduction projects we have about a $25 million increase. We have a very slight increase for preparedness, and also a slight increase for fire suppression activities. So, for the Department of Interior, we have an increase, particularly in the fuels reduction areas that we have just been talking about. Mr. Tierney. So the whole National Fire Plan you say it's an increased amount over the 2004 fiscal year as opposed to any decrease? Ms. Scarlett. That's correct, and I would let Mr. Rey speak to the specifics of their budget. Mr. Rey. It's the same for the Department of Agriculture. If you look at all National Fire Plan accounts, the net effect is an increase in 2005 requests over 2004, and 2004 was an increase over 2003. Mr. Tierney. When you use a net effect, you're doing some fancy math here, so---- Mr. Rey. Some accounts that are increasing within the National Fire Plan and some that are decreasing. In 2000 and 2001, for instance, we put a lot of money into capital expenses, acquiring new fire engines and providing grants to States and localities to do likewise. Some of those capital assets don't get replaced every year, so those accounts rise and fall on the basis of capital maintenance or capital acquisition needs. But, the overall funding for the National Fire Plan has been increasing. Mr. Tierney. Are the State and local governments getting the kind of targeted funding that you both feel they need in order to be effective partners? Mr. Rey. Our answer to that would be yes. I'm sure many State and local governments would take issue with that, and that's a creative tension in the cooperative arrangement that we have with State and local governments. This is a problem that's going to have to be addressed through close collaboration with our State and local government partners, and indeed our firefighting effort has historically been a collaborative effort under a unified command structure with Federal, State, and local assets all deployed. Mr. Tierney. Let me just ask one specific question, Mr. Rey. The interim final rule that was issued by the Forest Service in January implementing the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, or parts of it, anyway, seems to lay out a process by which the public can seek administrative review and file objections to any proposed forest thinning projects. But, when you read it, it looks as if there is a provision in there that prevents the public from objecting to any project that's proposed by the Secretary or by you. Mr. Rey. No. The point of the interim rule was to set up an appeals process---- Mr. Tierney. Right. Which is why when I---- Mr. Rey [continuing]. To then challenges. Mr. Tierney. So you would not interpret that in any way as an indication reserving to you or the Secretary the specific right to implement something without any right to object? Mr. Rey. That's correct. Mr. Tierney. OK. Mr. Rey. Now, there is a responsibility that if somebody is going to bring an administrative appeal against one of these projects, that they have exercised their obligation during the preceding public comment period to offer us their comments so we could have a chance to modify the project in accordance with their comments. If they passed on that opportunity, then the language of the statute would prevent them from bringing an appeal. Mr. Tierney. I have some issues with that aspect as you're talking about it, because I think it does limit a little too much, but I also had read it to indicate or at least it could be interpreted that either you or the Secretary could decide on a project and then nobody would have a right to object. I'm glad to hear that you're not interpreting it that way. But also there is, in that interim final rule issued, a process for public comments, but they seemed to be required before the environmental assessments are even available. I'm not sure how that is supposed to allow somebody to really make an effective comment if the timing is such that they don't have all of the environmental assessments at their disposal before they can do that. Mr. Rey. It's not before they are available; before they are final. One of the effects of what we are trying to do is to engage the public earlier in the decisionmaking process, so one of the elements of that interim rule is to direct our field people to send material to the public at an early stage of the deliberations to solicit their comments earlier in the process rather than later, so they will get the opportunity to participate before the decision is final, and then when the decision is final, presuming they have given us their comments, they'll have a right of appeal. Mr. Tierney. Well, that's laudable as long as the assessments don't change between the time you send them out early and the time the final is filed. Is that a likelihood? Mr. Rey. Well, if the assessments change, it will change in part because of the comments they give us, which I think is what most people hope when they give us comments, that we'll be receptive to what they have to say. Mr. Tierney. All right. We will go around here, but in fact that is partially true and partially wrong. If the assessment changes from what they saw or commented to and the final one, then they won't have had an opportunity to look at the final one unless it reflects their specific objection or comment as opposed to somebody else's, so they'll never at any point in time get the total final product to comment on in time to make it good. Mr. Rey. If they believe--if they have participated in good faith in the project before it has become final and then believe after it became final they were subject to sort of a bait and switch kind of an exercise, then they still have the right to bring that up in their subsequent appeal. Mr. Tierney. But, that's an avenue they'd have to take as opposed to being able to just comment on it before it can be made final. It just seems to me that there's a little bit of a chasing your tail aspect to it that probably could be modified. Thank you for your comments. Mr. Ose. I thank the gentleman. I'm pleased to recognize the dean of the Utah delegation, Mr. Chris Cannon. Mr. Cannon. Thank you. Ms. Scarlett, it looked like you wanted to say something additional. Would you like to do that? Ms. Scarlett. Yes. Thank you very much. I was going to add to the comments Mr. Rey gave on that. One of the things we are trying to do with the environmental assessment process is really to engage the public. Collaboration and cooperation with local communities is key. That up-front, early on engagement has resulted in kind of collaborative and consensus selection of projects, so that we hope to get beyond the litigative and kind of appeal approach to begin with. I have been out in the field and seen that working very successfully, and that is our aspiration here. Mr. Cannon. Thank you for those comments. I want to thank our panel for being here, our esteemed panel. It is unfortunate that Governor Martz couldn't be with us. She is a firecracker, very interesting person. I think she would have added something to this debate. I'm going to start by making just sort of a regional petition. Normally we beat you guys up a little bit, but this is asking. We hope that, Ms. Scarlett, since in your position in Interior you have the ability to affect policy to some degree, we hope that you will be considering over there the importance of funding our western counties with payment in lieu of taxes [PILT], at a higher level in the future. I think we are going to have a Donnybrook here over that. It would be a lot easier if you guys would just say, ``These counties need the money. We're not paying for their schools. We're not letting them tax these lands.'' Are you familiar with the APPLE project, which is an acronym that stands for public lands and education? I forget the first part. But it is a series of statistical analyses that show that people in the West in the public lands States, including California, tax ourselves much higher and have a much lower per-child payment for education because of Federal dominance of our public lands. We need to turn that around, to a large degree, and the first place to do that is PILT. These counties need that money, and a full funding of the authorized amount is not that much more, but it would be remarkably helpful to areas that are not able to tax because they have public lands which we decided in the Federal Government not to sell. Now, I personally think we ought to do that, but if we are not going to sell them or turn them over to the States or turn them over to the counties, we need to be paying for the use or for the benefit of those lands. And, if our friends in the Northeast want to claim national ownership, then we ought to have a national responsibility to pay. I could go on like this for a long time. Let me just say I hope you'll consider that in the next budget cycle, Ms. Scarlett. Ms. Scarlett. I am pleased to say that in our 2005 budget we actually did have an amount of $227 million for PILT, which is just a little tad over what Congress appropriated in 2004, so I think we are making progress. Mr. Cannon. My recollection is it was $1 million over what we did last year. We expect that to be much higher, 40 or 50 or 60 percent higher next time. Ms. Scarlett. Well, we look forward to working with you, and certainly we do understand the challenges that counties face. I will add that we are also very interested in working in collaborative agreements with counties in other ways and have, for example, in Moab, UT, a collaborative partnership with a county that actually manages our BLM lands along with State lands for some recreation purposes, so there are a lot of ways we can work together with counties. Mr. Cannon. We appreciate that collaboration. Grand County, where Moab is, is a wonderful place. I used to represent them. I used to represent two-thirds of the State of Utah. Now I'm down to about a quarter. But, we do care about that, and the Western Caucus, of which Mr. Ose is a member, is anxiously engaged on that issue. But we divert. We're talking about forests here, and we really care about how you are doing what we need done in our national forests. We had a late rainy season in Utah. I don't think we are going to have fires for a while, but I am astonished at the amount of fire on our public lands that we already have. I think that the American people are awakening to the fact that we need to control this or we will devastate large areas. And, that doesn't mean houses, which, of course, have been a very significant problem in some places, especially California, but certainly the forest, itself. It's the watershed. It's the habitat of all species, including, in many cases, endangered species, so we care about that. Mr. Rey, we've had reports by GAO and the National Academy of Public Administration that stress the importance of improving cooperation and coordination among all levels of government and the private sector in decreasing wildfire risks. How are these partnerships working, do you think? Mr. Rey. I think they are working very well and improving as we go, and I think we have done a pretty good job at meeting virtually all of NAPA's recommendations. Mr. Cannon. Good. What do you project will happen with those over time? Are we going to have a significant influence on our management and elimination or limitation of fires in the future? Mr. Rey. Well, there are two areas where cooperative interaction among levels of governments is bearing fruit. One is in the organization of the firefighting effort, itself, and a lot of work is being done and continues to be done there to implement some of NAPA's recommendations. And, the second is in working with communities to more quickly identify the areas of highest priority treatment, and that's progressing very well, as well. Ms. Scarlett. Congressman, might I add to that? We have created, 2 years ago, a Wildland Fire Leadership Council. It is the first time that we have a leadership group of all the Federal agencies, also the National Association of Counties, the Western Governors' Association, and tribes and other public representations working together on fire policy, and the National Association of State Foresters. Part of that group actually created the guidelines for developing fuels treatment project priorities, so we are very much working with them and looking to them for their leadership as we move forward. Mr. Cannon. Thank you. One of the things that, in my other committee--I chair the Administrative and Commercial Law Subcommittee, and I think we are going to introduce a bill that would re-establish the Administrative Conference of the United States. That's the group that at one point in time helped create the model for negotiated rulemaking. And if you can negotiate a rulemaking, you should be able to negotiate a permitting, and so if you would consider with the groups you have just talked about the significance of potential negotiated permitting so we can eliminate litigation, I would very much appreciate that. This is an area of great importance, and we ought to be able to do this in a more thoughtful manner so that we don't just stop forestry projects which end up over- burdening our forests with fuel, which end up in these massive and destructive forest fires. So thank you for that. That's very interesting. That's the sort of thing that I care about enormously. Ms. Scarlett, the administration decreased the wildfire preparedness and hazardous fuel reductions budgets and rural fire assistance. How does the administration justify that? Ms. Scarlett. Well, overall, of course, we did increase by $25 million in the Department of Interior fuels reduction projects which will go on the ground in and around communities. We also did increase very slightly in Interior our preparedness budget, and also by about $28 million our suppression budget. We did reduce, as you note, the rural fire assistance from $10 million to $5 million between 2004 and 2005. In part, this is a priority setting matter. We had, as Mark Rey noted, put some moneys out into the communities over the last several years for them to build their preparedness infrastructure, firefighting equipment and so forth, but with the very significant fuels challenges we face, we felt it was the highest priority to get dollars on the ground for those treatments at this point. We certainly look forward to working with Congress on what that right balance over time is between fuels treatment and rural fire assistance. Mr. Cannon. I think as we spoke earlier the overall money invested in the National Fire Plan has been increasing each year. The mix of how that money is spent and in what areas it is invested has changed each year, and it is fair to say that in the 2005 request we focused on increasing as much as we could the fuels treatment account, and the rural fire assistance accounts were decreased, in part because they were so high earlier in the decade when we were helping local fire departments and communities purchase their capital assets that don't need to be purchased every year. Now, I'm sure you are going to hear from some local rural fire departments, ``Look, we didn't get that done in 2000,'' or, ``We didn't get enough to meet our capital needs when that was the first priority.'' That's sort of, I guess, the kind of thing that we talk through during the appropriations process to figure out what the right balance is. But as compared to earlier in the decade when those accounts were higher and fuels reduction was lower, we felt that the best combination for fiscal year 2005 was to reverse that slightly and make fuels treatment higher. I apologize for not having been able to be here earlier, and if this is redundant let me know, but maybe briefly answer. How many acres of land have been treated under the new regulations for Healthy Forests, and what percentage of that acreage is in the wild/urban interface? Mr. Rey. About 60 percent of the lands that we are treating are in the wildland-urban interface. Last year, fiscal year 2003, we treated a total of 2.6 million acres, which is an all- time record, indeed. There is a bar chart over there that shows the acres that were treated in each of the last several years. In 2004, we're going to push close to 4 million acres, which would be a new record, and in 2005 we're hoping to push beyond four million acres, which would be yet another new record. And, we hope to continue that progress into the future. Ms. Scarlett. To put that into a little bit of context, those increases represent a 45 percent increase in 2004 over what we accomplished just 3 years ago, so we have had a major uptake both in the efficiency with which we are getting this done and in the total numbers of acres and dollars expended. For Interior, the numbers are similar in terms of approximately 60 percent of our fuels treatment projects being wildland-urban interface, with the remainder being things like municipal watersheds, utility rights of way where one, of course, wants to protect that infrastructure, and then key fuel breaks to ensure that we have defensible space. One remembers the fire like Sholo a few years ago, which raged 20 miles in just a matter of hours. You need to have those defensible spaces, as well. Mr. Cannon. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I see I have gone over my time, but I would just like to thank our panelists, who have my greatest confidence in the job they are doing. I hope that we can continue to solve these problems that have accumulated over a very long period of time and which need to be turned around so that we can retain our watershed, retain our forests, retain our wildlife, and make America a wonderful and beautiful place that it deserves to be. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. Mr. Ose. I thank the gentleman. I don't know which of you might know this answer, but in terms of the total aggregate demand for lumber in the country, do either of you know what the total is? Mr. Rey. Not offhand, but we could easily obtain that information for you. Mr. Ose. I would like to get that information, in particular. [Note.--The information can be found in USDA's responses to the chairman's written questions at the end of the hearing.] Mr. Ose. Before I proceed, I want to make that report you referenced in conversing with the gentleman from Massachusetts part of the record, without objection. [Note.--The rest of this document can be found in subcommittee files and at http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/ rmrs_gtr120.pdf]. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.044 Mr. Ose. Mr. Rey, does the Forest Service have any estimate of the annual growth in board feet in the National Forests? Mr. Rey. We can get that information. We can give you growth, annual growth, annual mortality, annual harvest if you'd like, and then we can easily give you total annual demand for lumber. Mr. Ose. Well, the purpose I'm trying to get as is to quantify the amount of material being added to the pile, so to speak, that can be burned. Mr. Rey. We can get you that, as well. Mr. Ose. So annual growth, annual harvest, annual natural death by disease or otherwise gives you a net growth across the country, and that will tell us from 1 year to the next how much the forests are growing? Mr. Rey. Or accumulating material. That's correct. Mr. Ose. All right. Mr. Rey. I can tell you easily the accumulation is net. We're adding material faster than we are taking it out, and it is dying faster than it is growing. Mr. Ose. I have been given information that indicates that the annual growth is about 21 billion board feet, that the annual harvest on national forests is about 2 billion board feet, and the annual death on National Forests is about 3 billion board feet. So under that scenario we're getting an annual growth of 16 billion board feet. Now, I don't know whether that's accurate or not. That's why I'm asking the question. Mr. Rey. That sounds about right. I mis-spoke a second ago. The mortality is higher than the harvest. Mr. Ose. Right. Mr. Rey. It's not higher than the growth. So we are accumulating more material every year out there. Those numbers sound in the ball park, but I can get you exact numbers. Mr. Ose. So, going back to my original question about the aggregate demand for lumber in the country, you compare that annual growth of roughly 16 billion board feet under this scenario against a total market--I mean, if the market is 20 billion board feet, we have net growth per year equal to 80 percent of our total market. So the question that gets begged is, you know, do we have to have growth to that level, or is there an opportunity, if you will, or a need to harvest greater amounts of dead or dying trees? In other words, we can harvest significantly more without a net reduction in the size of our forests? Mr. Rey. That's correct, although when we talk about the reduction in the size of our forests, we tend to talk about acreage that is in forests versus acreage that's developed for some other purpose. Mr. Ose. Now, following that same line of thought, given the fires that we're having in California, I would appreciate the same kind of information based on the National Forests in California. I have been given information that indicates that for the El Dorado, Sierra, and Stanislaus National Forest, we have estimated annual growth of 360 million board feet, 200 million board feet, and 300 million board feet, and we have estimated 2004 removals in El Dorado, Sierra, and Stanislaus of 13 million board feet, 8 million board feet, and 10 million board feet. Just in those three National Forests in California, estimated annual growth of about 860 million board feet and estimate 2004 removals of about 31 million board feet. So you can see how the problem accumulates over time. I would appreciate a clarification from the Department on those numbers. Mr. Rey. Yes. Those numbers, as well, sound within the ball park in terms of what I recollect, but we can validate what the exact numbers are for you for both the California National Forests as well as the system, as a whole. Mr. Ose. Now I want to followup on Mr. Cannon's points. One of the difficulties we have in any harvest, whether it is a post-fire harvest or a preventive action of the nature that Health Forests Initiative or Restoration Act would otherwise allow, is the appeals process that the Forest Service has to go through. If I understood Mr. Cannon's comments correctly, the initiative, itself, and the act, itself, change the appeals process--and I think Mr. Tierney touched on this also--to basically force people who want to participate in the deliberative process to participate at some point before the decision becomes final. In other words, they have standing to appeal. They have to be in the process. They can't just come out of nowhere at the last minute or even after the last moment and drop an appeal. Is that correct? Mr. Rey. That's correct. And, the reason for that change-- and that's in Section 105 of the statute--the reason for that change is that we were finding that some people were using the flexibility--I'll use the word ``flexibility''--of the previous appeals process to leverage the outcome by sort of laying in the weeds until the decision was final and then springing their appeal full blown at a time when they had maximum leverage, and that struck us as unfair to all of the people who in good faith participated during the public comment period and also to the agency people who are trying to produce a project that people could generally agree with, because if you don't know what somebody's objections are until the project is final, it's pretty hard to adjust the project and to respond to those objections. Now, that change was unpopular in some quarters. If I was an advocate for a particular point of view and I saw an administrative process that gave me a singular advantage by waiting until the end when my leverage was maximum, I'd be duty bound, ethically bound, to represent my clients most effectively by using the system in a way it could be used, and I don't expect anybody in that position to necessarily be happy that the process was changed, because the process, as it was designed, was beneficial to the way they were using it. Mr. Ose. Do you have any examples of the manner in which this process might have been used to the detriment of the forests? I'm particularly referring to what I call the ``Morgan cut.'' I just want to run through this. This is in North Carolina. In 1992, public scoping began for what was called the ``Hickory Knob timber sale.'' In 1994, the environmental assessment was released. The project was found it contains cerulean warblers, which are listed in the forest plan as a sensitive species. The timber sale was subsequently dropped. In April 1998, part of the old timber sale morphed into the Morgan cut reinvention project, which is a stewardship pilot project, and it was proposed as a regeneration harvest on 12 acres and a thinning on 8 acres, and the area did not contain any cerulean warblers. In February 1999, the consultation was started, and in that same month the district announced a decision on a categorical exclusion. That decision was appealed, subsequently withdrawn. The court subsequently eliminated the use of categorical exclusions for similar small projects--that would be the 20 acre type. In June 1999, the Forest Service district re-initiates scoping, an environmental assessment was released in November, but a decision was delayed pending analysis related to the endangered Indiana bat which was discovered in an adjacent county. In September 2000, a forest plan amendment and biological opinion were released, both containing new requirements to protect habitat for the Indiana bat that lived in the adjacent county. In September 2001, the forest completed a forest-wide management species report in compliance with the recent court decision affecting several national forests in the South. In February 2002, additional surveys were completed for sensitive species and the project's biological evaluation; environmental assessment were reformatted to meet new regional standards. So then the decision notice is released. In March 2000, that decision was then appealed, and the project is currently delayed pending outcome of the appeal. The purpose of going through this litany is to show that it takes 10 years to process an application on 20 acres in which there was no cerulean warblers, which were the basis of the original appeal. Now, how frequent is this kind of thing occurring? Mr. Rey. I think we can fairly describe that project as snakebit because it went through several different trials and still hasn't overcome them all. I don't think that level of futility is the norm, but in general terms one of the driving factors behind the Health Forests Initiative is that we looked at the amount of time and money that is being consumed by administrative process to get this work done, and what we found in the Forest Service--and the number varies for the other agencies, but we found in the Forest Service it's 40 cents on every dollar; 40 cents on every dollar that you gave us to do this kind of work on the ground was being consumed by those kinds of administrative processes. And, so what we've tried to do through the Health Forests Initiative is to preserve the opportunity for the public to participate in the development of these projects, but get the projects done in a way that doesn't take nearly that many years or nearly that much money, because if we continue to spend 40 cents on every dollar going through the kind of matriculation that you've just described, it is obvious that the money you give us isn't going to go very far, and if that continues to be the case, it is obvious that we're not going to stop seeing the kind of fires that we have been seeing each of the last couple of years. Mr. Ose. Well, let's keep in mind what our objective here today is. It is to talk about the regulatory environment that could be used to reduce fire exposure in some of our communities. I want to cite another example along this line, keeping in mind that our objective is to reduce the fire hazard in some of our communities, our forests. This one is from the Coconino National Forest in Arizona, which is the home to the northern goshawk. In 1996, the forest proposed thinning trees near a goshawk nest, partly to protect the bird from fire hazards. The project was stopped due to protests. Ironically, that year a fire destroyed the forest, including the area around the goshawk nest. I don't think that's our objective. It seems to me that the process got twisted to an inadvertent ending that served nobody's purpose, and I'm trying to find out how widespread that is. I apologize to my friend for going over my time. I'll be happy to give him an equal amount if not more. Ms. Scarlett. I'll add another figure that might put that in a little bit of context. As we went through and began to develop the administrative tools, the environmental assessment, speed up the change in appeals process, we worked with the Forest Service to look at how frequent that sort of circumstance was, and approximately close to 60 percent of Forest Service appealable projects were, in fact, appealed. The vast majority of those, upon appeal, actually were not successful, meaning ultimately the projects moved forward. What that meant is, of course, 60 percent of the time--a lot of investment of time and effort and money was suspended just to end up where you were in the first place. That is precisely why the Healthy Forests Restoration Act and the Healthy Forests Initiative have been so very important to us to be able to move forward. Mr. Ose. To be more exact, the GAO numbers are 58 percent of appealable Forest Service land management decisions in fiscal year 2001 and 2002 were, in fact, appealed, and of those 58 percent, 73 percent of the appeals resulted in no changes whatsoever. Mr. Rey. The decisions were affirmed. That's right. Mr. Ose. Correct. I apologize for the length of my questions. I recognize the gentleman. Mr. Tierney. Actually, I just have one small thing that I want to clear up, just for information. We were talking earlier about the budget and whether there had been cuts or not, and maybe I wasn't fine enough in identifying, because you started talking about net cuts and everything, and I want to make sure we don't go. With respect to State fire assistance, the Congressional Research Service tells me at least that in 2004 we had $51.1 million, and the request for 2005 is $34.2. Correct me if I am wrong on that, but if I am correct would you tell me why the disparity and what the theory is behind it? Mr. Rey. I think those are the correct numbers, and the difference there is that we increased State fire assistance and comparable grant programs significantly in fiscal year 2000 and 2001, and that money went to the purchase of a considerable amount of capital equipment, assisting communities in buying new fire engines. And, it is our judgment that not all of those capital expenditures need to be made every year. You don't buy a new fire engine every year. Mr. Tierney. I just want to go along with this step by step. I don't mean to be rude at all, but in 2001 you had $118.5 million, so that's where all that capital equipment was? Mr. Rey. Right. Mr. Tierney. And then you dropped to $87.1 in 2002, went back up in 2003 to $89.3, then down significantly in 2004 to $69.1 overall, and then down to $47. I think those numbers are reflected in the State fire assistance end of it. So you have had 4 years where you were up at over $50 million and then dropped down to $34, so it can't all be in capital equipment or whatever, I wouldn't assume. Mr. Rey. Much of it is. That's the most common use of that account. Now, as I said earlier---- Mr. Tierney. So, you're just basically saying--and I accept it if you are saying that there are basically things that you've taken care of, all of the capital equipment needs, and that none of that equipment has gotten to the point that it's so old it needs to be replaced or any big expense on that? Mr. Rey. Generally, yes, but I'll acknowledge that I will not be surprised if you hear from some locales who say, ``We didn't get it done. We still need money to make some additional capital purchases.'' That's kind of the way the appropriations process works. We make a proposal and the Congress adjusts it and modifies it on the basis of the testimony that they receive during the course of the year, and at the end of the day the accounts may not look exactly like we proposed them but we'll finally work something out. I think the more important thing, the big picture is that there is a combined commitment on part of the Congress, part of the administration, bipartisan fashion that the National Fire Plan accounts are going to continue to increase, and that work on the ground, which is really the most important thing, because that's the preventative work, is going to increase, as well. Mr. Tierney. I guess, you know, if we are going to do that I think it is important that the local communities obviously participate---- Mr. Rey. Correct. Mr. Tierney [continuing]. And, have some of their needs met, so what I'd like to know is: did you propose more and OMB cut back on your proposal? Were there communities that you had originally thought that they might this year get some assistance, and OMB or somebody else in the administration told you this wasn't the year? Mr. Rey. No. The proposal that we sent forward was, by and large, adopted, so we have no qualms with it. Mr. Tierney. When you made the proposal, were there communities that you knew needed things that you just didn't think that you could allow for in this year's budget? Mr. Rey. No. I think what I'm saying is we don't know at the outset, at the beginning of each budget year, necessarily what each community's needs are going to be. Mr. Tierney. You don't ask them? Mr. Rey. We do ask them, and we try to average it out nationwide, but the Congress is going to hear from communities during the course of the debate over the appropriations bill this year and the accounts will be adjusted. That's the way the process works. Mr. Tierney. Well, it works in part. I mean, I would assume that you hear from the communities and you try to allocate things where they are needed, so maybe we're doing it a second time here when we do it in Congress, but I'm assuming that there was a point in time where you asked for community input as to what their needs were, and I guess I want to know did you agree or disagree with them, and did you meet their needs or not? Mr. Rey. We looked at several requests from different programs and tried to strike the best balance we could. Mr. Tierney. Balance between who? Who were you balancing? Ms. Scarlett. I guess I would---- Mr. Tierney. Excuse me a second. Mr. Rey. Between different accounts. Mr. Tierney. All right. But not between the communities' needs and something else? Mr. Rey. No. Mr. Tierney. You would determine that community might have had a valid request and you just couldn't accommodate it because you had to balance between another account. Mr. Rey. Between all of their requests. Mr. Tierney. Because you had an amount that you had to stay within? Mr. Rey. Within an increasing budget for this program area, yes. Mr. Tierney. But an amount that's---- Mr. Rey. It's not unlimited, but it is increasing. Mr. Tierney. All right. But I guess, you know, I'm really not trying to trick you or anything here, so I don't know why we're having this struggle, but the bottom line of it is that you had an amount that you thought that you could spend in your department, and within that amount there were some needs that you thought you could meet and others that you didn't think you could meet? Mr. Rey. Yes, I wouldn't dispute that. I think that's the way every budget has worked since time immemorial. Mr. Tierney. That wasn't painful at all, was it? Mr. Rey. Yes. And, in this particular cycle, given the importance of doing this hazardous fuel reduction work, we put a higher premium on that, and that's something that we're going to continue to debate over the course of the year. Mr. Tierney. But, now we have something to tell the communities when they come to us and say they went to you and they had a need and you didn't accommodate it. We now know what your thought process was, which is what I was trying to get at. Mr. Rey. Right. Mr. Tierney. Thank you for your answer. Mr. Rey. And, the other complexity of it is that in the program affected here, which is our program of assistance to States and communities, there are other non-fire program accounts that they told us that were very important and asked us to fund at significantly increased levels, as well. And, some of those had to play in the same priority setting. What we think we did in our State and Private Forestry budget is respond as favorably to what the States and communities told us were their top priorities. Now, that's sort of a national whole, listening to their national organizations. I would concede--and I think we both recognize--that in some cases and in some regions those national priorities aren't going to be reflective of what a particular State would say is their top priority, and that will work itself out as the appropriations process proceeds. Mr. Tierney. I thank you. It was important for us to understand what your reason and your rationale was and how we ended up with that differentiation in those numbers. Mr. Chairman, I thank the witnesses for their testimony, and I apologize to the next panel but I have to go to the floor to manage a bill, and so I'm going to have to leave at this point in time. I'll try to get back if I can, but I thank you for having this hearing and I thank the witnesses for their testimony. Mr. Ose. I thank the gentleman. I just want to followup on this question or this issue that you raised earlier, Mr. Rey, having to do with what administrative adjustments might be possible in terms of the Federal/State matching. You mentioned that there might be--and this is important to California, because I know a lot of people are watching the news tonight. They're not watching us, they're watching those fires. I'm curious as to what adjustments you have in mind along this line. Mr. Rey. Let me be a little more specific and tell you what I've asked our folks to take a look at. There are two agencies involved in spending out the money that was provided in the fiscal year 2004 omnibus appropriations bill. One is the Forest Service and one is the Natural Resources Conservation Service. In the Natural Resources Conservation Service, there is roughly $17 million that has already been spent for post-fire recovery work, and about $120 million that was provided for hazard tree removal, both under the Emergency Watershed Protection Program. The Emergency Watershed Protection Program requires a 25 percent match, and, in the three counties involved, San Bernadino County and Riverside County have both come up with an in-kind match, and San Diego County is still struggling to meet that standard. We do have the authority to waive that 25 or reduce the 25 percent match in an emergency situation, and what I directed the NRCS to do is to look into whether we can reduce it or defer it--the match money is spent later in the year or in out years--or to waive it if there is absolutely no way the county is going to provide its in-kind, so we'll work on that. The Forest Service has a number of programs for which we-- -- Mr. Ose. Before we leave that one issue, will all the counties be treated the same in terms of the waiver issue? Mr. Rey. No. In this case we would have to declare a specific emergency if we were going to give San Diego County a waiver. Mr. Ose. OK. Mr. Rey. And, we've done that a couple of times before, so there is some precedent for it. Mr. Ose. Thank you. Mr. Rey. What I'd like to see is, if that's the impediment to getting the money out there more quickly before we decide that we want to go that way, because it means that there will be less money overall doing the work on the ground. The Forest Service programs require or generally involve a 50/50 match, again either with cash or in-kind, and I've directed the Forest Service to look into whether any of the payout is being delayed as a consequence of difficulty in hitting the 50/50 match. We don't have the authority, I don't think, to waive it completely, but I think we can reduce the share if need be or again defer the payout so that it comes in in the out years for project support. So I've directed both agencies to look into that in the interest of getting more work done on the ground more quickly, particularly because all of those program accounts are going to removal of beetle-killed trees in those three counties in southern California. Mr. Ose. I just want to make sure we've got a clear understanding of what that is. The Federal Government has this pot of money, but the only way to access it is by virtue of a match that comes from the local or State coffers. Absent a financial contribution from the local or State coffers, the money stays in this Federal account unless there's a waiver of some sort or another, and that's the thing you're looking at now? Mr. Rey. Correct. The only thing I would amend to what you just said is that the State and local contribution can be cash or in-kind. Mr. Ose. OK. Any idea when that deliberative process will be completed? Mr. Rey. We can get you a work out on that in about 2 weeks. Mr. Ose. I want to thank you for thinking about that, because I think that is very important in California, and I suspect it is going to be important in other communities across the West as the year progresses. Mr. Rey. Well, in addition to talking with you over the last 2 days, I have been talking with Senator Feinstein and Senator Boxer, so we have been working on this as you have asked us to for about 48 hours now. Mr. Ose. All right. Thank you. I have no further questions for these panelists at the moment. We are going to leave the record open for Members to submit questions in writing for 10 days. To the extent you can respond in a timely fashion, it would certainly be appreciated. I do want to thank you for taking the time to come visit with us for 1 hour and 45 minutes. It's always a pleasure to see you. Ms. Scarlett. Thank you very much. Mr. Ose. We're going to take a 5-minute recess. [Recess.] Mr. Ose. I want to thank the panel for gathering so timely. As you saw in the first panel, we routinely swear everybody in, so if you would all please rise. Raise your right hands. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Ose. Let the record show the witnesses answered in the affirmative. Our second panel is composed of the following individuals: we have the chairman of the State of California Governor's Blue Ribbon Fire Commission, Senator William Campbell; we're also joined by the chairman of the Fire Safe Council, Mr. Bruce Turbeville; we have joining us representing the California Fire Chiefs Association the president of that organization, Mr. William McCammon; and our fourth witness on this panel is a senior forest policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Ms. Amy Mall. Again, you saw how the first panel worked. For those of you who haven't been here before, what we do is we recognize each of you for 5 minutes. We have received your testimony, your written testimony, and we have reviewed it. To the extent that you can summarize or add anything new within that 5 minutes, that would be great. We would appreciate that. Senator Campbell, it is good to see you again. You are recognized for 5 minutes. STATEMENT OF WILLIAM CAMPBELL, CHAIRMAN, BLUE RIBBON FIRE COMMISSION; BRUCE TURBEVILLE, CHAIRMAN OF THE FIRE SAFE COUNCIL; WILLIAM J. MCCAMMON, PRESIDENT, CALIFORNIA FIRE CHIEFS ASSOCIATION; AND AMY MALL, SENIOR FOREST POLICY ANALYST, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL Mr. Campbell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here. Before I begin, I would like to add to what you started with and give you the latest update on the California fires. They have now consumed over 24,000 acres. We've lost 16 homes, 14 injuries, and the greatest threat is in Riverside County right now with the Eagle and Cerritos fires, which threaten over 1,000 homes. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members, I am honored to be invited to testify before your subcommittee. My name is Bill Campbell, and I am a retired State Senator from California who was asked by former Governor Gray Davis and then Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger to be the chairman of the Governor's Blue Ribbon Fire Commission. The Commission was formed on November 2nd of last year in the wake of the California's unprecedented series of wildland-urban interface fires that ravaged southern California in October of last year. Southern California experienced the most devastating wildland fire disaster in the State's history. Over 739,000 acres burned; 3,631 homes were destroyed, including the home of your colleague, Chairman Duncan Hunter; 36 commercial properties and 11,069 outbuildings were destroyed; 246 injuries; 24 fatalities, including one fire fighter. At the height of the siege, 15,631 personnel were assigned to these fires. Presidential declarations of disaster were declared in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Bernadino, Ventura, and Riverside Counties. And, in the aftermath of the fires, in San Bernadino County a barren mountain canyon landscape impacted by a rain storm produced a flash flood and mudslide causing even more tragedy and destruction. Sixteen more lives were lost on this follow-on disaster on Christmas Day of 2003, and 2 weeks ago they found the remains of the last victim, an 11-year-old boy 15 miles from the site where he was originally located. Thirty-four Blue Ribbon Fire Commission members comprised of Federal, State, and local officials assembled to examine the wildland fire disaster's response and the critical public policy issues that impede or strengthen our firefighting efforts. We were honored to have Senator Diane Feinstein and Representatives Jerry Lewis and Susan Davis on our Commission. I am truly grateful for their leadership, dedication, and support. In addition, we had representatives from the Department of Defense, the Department of Interior, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Homeland Security. As you said, you have a copy of this, and so I am going to skip some of this. We were given 120 days to examine and deliberate on these issues and report back to the Governor with recommendations, and the Commission just published a report of our findings and deliberations, and I've submitted two copies of that report for inclusion in the official record. The executive summary of this report is part of my submitted written statement, and I would like to share just a few of the key Federal recommendations from the report at this time. The Commission recommends that the Federal agencies, to include Departments of Interior and Forest Service, work in conjunction with California State and local fire agencies and the military to jointly develop and adopt agreements, regulations, and operating policies for the deployment of aerial assets during wildland-urban interface firefighting efforts. The Commission recommends that Congress increase efforts to provide training for local fire departments through Federal grant programs and expand the rural fire assistance grant program. And, the Commission recommends that sufficient standardized frequencies be issued by the Federal communications system to meet the interoperability communication needs of fire and emergency personnel. Our 48 recommendations have been categorized as primarily public policy solutions or fiscal issues. The Commission was sensitive to the financial plight of government at all levels and recognized that few of the fiscal recommendations would have meaningful value in the absence of critical public policy changes that first must proceed them. In summary of our Commission's examination, let me state that the magnitude of the tragedy, not only in terms of the loss of human life and property, but in the loss of valuable watershed, wildlife, and critical environmental habitats, was truly catastrophic. After a series of extensive and deliberative public hearings, the Commission determined that, while the bravery and dedication of California's fire service continues to be exemplary, many lessons from similar past tragedies had gone unlearned by those responsible for development of fire safety and prevention policies. Foremost among those lessons is the lack of political will to prioritize among competing but very important public policy goals. Vegetation and fuel management, habitat preservation, and environmental protection have often conflicted with sound fire safe planning in the development of wildland areas. When adverse weather and fuel conditions combine, our fire fighters have been given the impossible task of protecting life and property in the face of these policy conflicts. Additionally, the Commission recognized the difficulty the Fire Service faces in meeting the fire protective challenges of explosive development along the wildland-urban interface, and among the findings and recommendations the Commission urges the same commitment to professional training afforded the valiant men and women of law enforcement to our California Fire Service. In closing, Chairman Ose and members of the subcommittee, I believe it is essential to understand that unless and until public policymakers at all levels of government muster the political will to put the protection of life and property ahead of competing political agendas, these tragedies are certain to continue. This concludes my oral testimony, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Ose. I thank the gentleman. [The prepared statement of Mr. Campbell follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.045 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.046 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.047 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.048 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.049 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.050 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.051 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.052 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.053 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.054 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.055 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.056 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.057 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.058 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.059 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.060 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.061 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.062 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.063 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.064 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.065 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.066 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.067 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.068 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.069 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.070 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.071 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.072 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.073 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.074 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.075 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.076 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.077 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.078 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.079 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.080 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.081 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.082 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.083 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.084 Mr. Ose. Our next witness is Bruce Turbeville, who is the chairman of the Fire Safe Council. Sir, we appreciate your attendance today. We have received your statement in writing. It has been submitted in the record. You are recognized for 5 minutes to summarize. Mr. Turbeville. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here. I appreciate the opportunity. I am Bruce Turbeville, chairman of the Fire Safe Council. I'll give you just a quick background. The Fire Safe Council actually was formed in 1993 when we recognized that State government alone could not enforce all of the fire prevention needs and did not have enough money for public education. So, we looked at the fact that public-private partnerships might help, so we formed the Fire Safe Council looking at the insurance industry, the real estate industry, and other entities that had a vested interest in reducing fire damage. As time progressed, the Council grew, and it became clearly evident that the Council concept could be put to use at the local level, so local Fire Safe Councils began to form, and what that did is give us community effort, with people understanding that they have a position and a place to deal with their concerns as related to wildfires. As these grew and became more entrenched at the local level, we noticed that just the volunteerism side of it didn't work and they needed funding. Almost simultaneously, the National Fire Plan funding became available, and grants were made available to continue the public education. In 2001, during the first year we had close to 100 grants fulfilled up and down the State, and at the time we only had 50 or 60 Fire Safe Councils. The success has been to the point now we have 120 local Fire Safe Councils, and they are all taking it upon themselves to do fuel treatments around and within the communities. They are the perfect channel for the Federal grant funds to come down from Interior and Agriculture to the county level, the community level. The success has been phenomenal; however, now we are fearful of the loss of funds. The community assistance grant total available for 2005 appears to be little, if any, compared to what we've had in the past. We have a growing need and a diminishing supply of funding, it appears. Just this last year we had 393 grant requests totaling $49 million. We had available $5 million, so 10 percent of the folks that want to do the job. I point out again the value of the community. These are the people that live there and recognize that there's a problem and they want to do something about it. It is an ideal situation, and we need to keep it going if at all possible. The Health Forests Initiative and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act are both programs that the Fire Safe Councils are the perfect conduit from the top down to the bottom. As they become in place, we're taking advantage of those and helping them become effective. I think the most important thing to recognize here is you've got the grassroots willing to do the work if we just give them a little seed money. It seems to be working better than I ever imagined it would be, and we just can't let it wither away. You did ask a question, Mr. Chairman, a while back about the ounce of prevention and a pound of cure. I think I may have prompted that by my statement where I said for every $1 you put in prevention you save $10 in suppression and damage. And no, I can't prove it because I made it up, but nobody else has disproved it. I just wanted that to be on the record. The sort of things we have been dealing with over the last few years as far as funding, when the finance officer for the State of California asked me in a hearing similar to this, ``Show me a fire that you prevented,'' I can't show you a fire prevented, but I point to all of the ones that haven't started. I leave you with one question, and that is: why is there always enough money to put out the fires and there's never enough to prevent them? I thank you for the opportunity. Mr. Ose. That's an excellent question. I thank the gentleman for his testimony. [The prepared statement of Mr. Turbeville follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.085 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.086 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.087 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.088 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.089 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.090 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.091 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.092 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.093 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.094 Mr. Ose. We're going to go to our next witness. That would be the president of the California Fire Chiefs Association, Mr. William McCammon. Chief, welcome to the witness table here in front of our committee. You're recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. McCammon. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Chairman Ose and committee members. My name is Bill McCammon. I'm the fire chief of the Alameda County Fire Department in California. I'm also the president of the California Fire Chiefs Association and board member of the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association. It is an honor to provide testimony regarding the challenges fire-service professionals and communities face in mitigating, managing, and responding to wildland fires. If there is one lesson we've learned about the devastating effect of the most recent fires, it is in the end we all lose. In the recent fires in southern California, there were critically sensitive habitat areas where fuels management programs were not completed prior to the fires. That habitat is now destroyed. There were property owners that didn't manage the vegetation adjacent to their homes. Those homes are no longer standing. There were lives lost and critical watershed destroyed after the fires as heavy rains caused mudslides in the recently burnt-out areas. In 1966, the County Supervisors' Association in conjunction with the forest protection agencies recommended the need for comprehensive and coordinated land use planning, including declaration of hazardous fire areas, clearance of flammable vegetation around developments, and standardized building codes and zoning ordinances. In 1970, California was burning. In 13 days there were 773 fires burning over 570,000 acres, consuming 772 homes with 16 lives lost. The 1970 task force recommended, among other things, fuel and hazard reduction programs, land use and building code changes, and expanded fire prevention programs. Again, in 1972, 1978, 1980, 1985, 1991, and 1993 California experienced devastating fires with large numbers of homes, lives, and critical habitat lost. Task forces were formed and reports were written with recommendations very similar to those included in the recent Blue Ribbon Fire Commission report. In almost all of these cases, the identified weaknesses with suppression efforts have been corrected. It has been recommended time and time again and proven that in areas where there have been fuels management programs combined with effective land use planning, the effects of fire have been minimized. In 2002, Congress and the Federal land management agencies asked the National Academy of Public Administrators to examine six fires that occurred and make recommendations on wildfire issues. The series of reports concluded that the Nation's readiness and capacity for hazard reduction was the least developed of all the critical issues related to wildfire suppression. The reports also concluded that it will increasingly depend on intergovernmental and public and private partnerships capable of reducing large-scale risks affecting multiple owners. Some progress has been made to bring together the stakeholder groups to develop common goals and practices in California. The California Fire Alliance was formed, bringing together Federal, State, and local government agencies to play a role in fire policy to coordinate efforts toward the implementation of the National Fire Plan at the local level. The Fire Alliance has formed a grants clearinghouse that provides a streamlined, online grant application process for National Fire Plan grants. This program has been very successful in moving what limited funding has been available from State and Federal agencies to local Fire Safe Councils. The ongoing critical challenge is to have State and Federal agencies allocate more funding to these local programs. California Fire Chiefs Association, in conjunction with ``Fire Engineering Magazine'' held two wildfire summits. Ten States were represented, along with local, regional, and national leaders. The results included recommendations, most of which dealt with hazard reduction. We realized as a result of the summits that greater involvement from the environmental community is essential. Plans are already underway to host a summit bringing the environmental community together with local and county planners to develop more consensus around fuels management strategies. Even with these positive efforts moving forward, having a coordinated political effort between local, State, and federally elected officials to standardize regulations for fuels management and building and zoning standards is essential. The grants that have been offered through the National Fire Plan have been well received, but the total amount available for these efforts has been diminishing. Funding for these types of programs is, as has famously been told, analogous to virga rain that falls from the sky and evaporates before it hits the ground. The grants come from two different departments and five different agencies, each with their own set of priorities, each with different matching requirements ranging from no match to 100 percent match, and, most importantly, each with a different system of communicating the opportunities to the local communities. In California this disconnected, uncoordinated process caused the formation of the Fire Alliance. Even with the attempts to coordinate the grant process, the system does not promote participation and clearly does not receive sufficient funding to come close to addressing the need. Today in California there are over 1,100 communities that have been identified as at risk and over 850 are adjacent to Federal lands. This year there were 393 grants submitted totaling over $49 million, and there was less than $7 million available for those programs. The recent passage of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act at face value appears to begin to address funding for critical fuels management programs along with community and stakeholder involvement in the development of fuels treatment projects. The success of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act will be dependent upon a full commitment from all stakeholders and sustained funding. As I have stated in my testimony, unless we are able to address the issues of political will, fuels management, stakeholder consensus, and adequate funding, we will continue to experience major wildland fires that will destroy communities, critical habitat, watershed, and become an ever- increasing economic drain on our society. Thank you for the opportunity. I will be available for questions. Mr. Ose. Thank you, Chief. [The prepared statement of Mr. McCammon follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.095 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.096 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.097 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.098 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.099 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.100 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.101 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.102 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.103 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.104 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.105 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.106 Mr. Ose. Our fourth witness for today's hearing comes to us from the Natural Resources Defense Council, where she serves as a senior forest policy analyst, Ms. Amy Mall. Ms. Mall, welcome. You are recognized for 5 minutes. Ms. Mall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for your invitation to testify today. My name is Amy Mall. I am the senior forest policy analyst at NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national, nonprofit organization with over 550,000 members dedicated to the protection of public health and the environment. Forest Service research has found that the most effective way to protect homes or other structures is to focus on the building, itself, and its immediate surroundings. This is known as making homes firewise. Last year's fires in California were strong evidence that these methods work. Throughout southern California, homes remained standing if they had proper home materials, design, and landscaping, but many homes across the West are not yet firewise, and homeowners need immediate help with information and financial assistance. Collaboration is essential because most of these homes and communities are not on Federal land. Instead of focusing on firewise activities and State and local assistance, however, the Bush administration is spending millions of dollars a year on logging trees miles away from the nearest home in what is called the ``back country.'' Despite what Under Secretary Rey asserted earlier, there are virtually no peer reviewed empirical studies that show that such logging leads to a systematic reduction of forest fire intensity. In fact, I have a list with me of Forest Service research--and it is cited in my written testimony--that shows that these activities can actually increase fire intensity or spread. The administration has also adopted regulatory changes that are unnecessary, increase the burden of public participation, and will lead to more controversy and bureaucratic complication. The environmental review process before the Bush administration took office worked well, with no factual evidence that any aspect of the process seriously hampered the protection of homes and communities. To the contrary, GAO found that more than 95 percent of hazardous fuels reduction projects were ready for implementation within the standard 90-day review period. Only a tiny percentage of the projects and acreage were delayed by litigation. And agencies already had procedures to expedite approval, including categorical exclusions, NEPA's emergency authority, and the Forest Service authority to exempt appeals from the mandatory stay. Nevertheless, in 2003 the Bush administration issued new categorical exclusions from NEPA, allowing agencies to avoid public environmental review on projects up to 1,000 acres of land, regardless of the intensity of logging or the trees cut, including old growth trees. And, after exempting many logging projects from environmental review, the Bush administration adopted new regulations to exempt these projects from appeal. For projects that are still eligible for the appeal process, new regulations set up numerous obstacles to members of the public wanting information and input. The 2003 appeal regulation and the 2004 protest rule under the Healthy Forest Act share many of the same problems, making it more difficult to oppose projects, even if those projects might increase fire risk. Contrary to what Under Secretary Rey said earlier, Section 218.6(A) of the 2004 interim final rule does say that environmental assessments are not circulated for public comment in draft form. The 2004 protest rule also exempts from protest any project the Forest Service claims was proposed by Under Secretary Rey, ignoring a court decision that recently rejected a similar exemption. Again, contrary to what he said earlier, the regulation in Section 218.12(B) does say that it exempts authorized hazardous fuels reduction projects that are proposed by the Secretary or the Under Secretary of Agriculture. The Bush administration has also used these regulations to advance its efforts to restrict judicial review for logging projects. The President's fiscal year 2005 budget request also fails to prioritize community protection. The percentage of acres the Bush administration plans to treat in the areas closest to communities is only 51 percent. That's in the administration's budget request. That means that 49 percent of the acres to be treated in fiscal year 2005, which is 1.4 million acres, would be in the back country, far from the nearest home or community. Some of these projects are over 40 miles from the nearest home or community. As discussed above, these activities can actually worsen fire risk, according to firecologists. In addition, the administration has proposed cutting funding for State and local assistance by 32 percent. This will weaken collaboration and it will reduce assistance to the jurisdictions that have the primary responsibility for protecting western homes and communities. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify today. Mr. Ose. Thank you, Ms. Mall. I appreciate your brevity. It's very unusual around here that somebody stays within their 5 minutes, so thank you. [The prepared statement of Ms. Mall follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.107 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.108 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.109 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.110 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.111 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.112 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.113 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.114 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.115 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.116 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.117 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.118 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.119 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.120 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.121 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.122 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.123 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.124 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.125 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.126 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.127 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.128 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.129 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.130 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.131 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.132 Mr. Ose. I want to recognize the gentleman from Virginia. Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here. I have been in Defense markups all day, so that's why I wasn't here for the first part. This is an incredibly important topic. My closest friend was a former fire chief in Los Angeles County, Dave Parsons. I don't know if anybody knows him. So, I heard a lot from him when I was out there. My sister's home was in the Piedmont section when they had the big open fire in the Coldecut Tunnel, and my wife's aunt and uncle had a home in Emerald Bay that was impacted when they had fires down there, and she and I lived a couple miles from Anaheim when they had the Anaheim fires. Our family just hasn't had a lot of good luck. I know it is an incredibly important topic. Senator Campbell, you are dead right. If there is the political will to do it, it can be done. The fact that California has experienced more of these I think than any other State--unless I just read it wrong--something clearly has to be done to help that State or it is going to burn down. The sooner we can address that, the better. Mr. Turbeville, I agree--prevention is certainly a lot better, whether it is fire, health care, or whatever. The sooner that sort of philosophy can be ingrained in the system, the better, but I don't know if we ever will. Chief McCammon, you said the system was not coordinated to handle fires. Help me through that. Or did I misunderstand you? It seems like there has been enough experience in California so that things would have been very well coordinated, unless I misunderstood what you were saying. Mr. McCammon. I wasn't commenting about the suppression efforts. I think we have one of the best mutual aid systems in the world. Mr. Schrock. OK. Mr. McCammon. I was talking about the grant process, getting money from the Federal Government through the different agencies actually down to the local Fire Safety Councils. Mr. Schrock. I see. Mr. McCammon. And, the complexity of that. Mr. Schrock. You heard what Ms. Mall said. I'd be curious what your comments are on that. I heard a lot of things about the Bush administration, but my sister was in a fire during another administration. My wife's family was in another administration. We were in the Anaheim fire in another administration. So I would be curious to know what your thoughts are on what she said about current regulations as proposed and created by this administration. Mr. McCammon. Well, I don't want to comment about the forest issues specifically because I don't have experience there, but her comments were dead on in terms of the idea of creating defensible space around homes. There is some issue in the field now whether 30 feet, 100 feet, or 300 feet is the number, but we had some wonderful examples in Ventura and Los Angeles County last September where communities were saved because they were built with defensible space in mind, and when communities really get together and create those kind of buffer zones, it gives us an opportunity to kind of slow the fire down a little bit and really suppress the fires in those neighborhoods. Mr. Schrock. Help me understand defensible space. Is that just a fire break between the green stuff and the houses, or-- -- Mr. McCammon. That's correct. Mr. Schrock. OK. Mr. McCammon. It is an area anywhere from 30 feet to in some areas they are recommending 300 feet where they have fire- resistive vegetation or no vegetation at all, so that when the fire--those wind-drive fires, as they approach those types of housing tracts, really need some space because you're getting extreme flame lengths. Mr. Schrock. But in a fireball type situation, 30 feet-- that's probably half the width of this room. That doesn't seem like a lot of space when winds are kicking up. Mr. McCammon. Exactly. Mr. Schrock. As I recall, when it came from Oakland through the Coldecut Tunnel, the fireball, and then it went on to the Piedmont area, and that was miles away. Mr. McCammon. Yes, it did, sir. I was there from the very beginning and lived in Oakland and experienced that. Mr. Schrock. Yes. I yield back. Mr. Ose. I thank the gentleman. I want to clarify a point here. In terms of defensible space, the fire break issue, if you will, there have been a number of studies and recommendations done to help flesh out that, both in terms of national standards, where people are in the wildland-urban interface, or with building codes across the country. Study after study after study have shown that those are successful, that the use of non-combustible roof material or siding that is combustive-resistant or these 100-foot to 300-foot areas where you have clear space around your house, those are all successfully identified by research and implemented in the field. Curiously enough, in the context of the same studies that identified building code standards and clear spaces, there was also studies--and I have a compilation of these studies right there that I'm going to enter into the record, and this is just a sampling--there have been studies that also talk about reducing the fuel buildup in the areas outside that 100-foot footprint or that 300-foot footprint. Now if, in fact, building codes in California--and many of these communities have evolved to where construction is now taking place with fire-resistant roof material or siding, and if landscape design features are such that the footprint becomes 100-foot radius for protective purposes, why is it we're still having these significantly catastrophic fires? And, it begs the question, it seems to me, that the causes--one of the non-implemented features that has been highlighted in study after study after study, which is the continuation of the buildup of fuel within the forests. Now, Senator Campbell, you sit on the Governor's Fire Task Force. What has your research or study come to the conclusion of? Mr. Campbell. We still have the conflict there in the public policy issue. It seems that common sense has become a stepchild to the issue of fire protection of fire and property in this whole debate. We had one witness in Ventura testify that he received an order from the fire department to clean 100 feet around his house in Malibu, and he received another order from the Coastal Commission denying him the right to do that. These are the kinds of conflicts I think that we run into. There was a news report in the Los Angeles Times about the need to protect the kangaroo rat in certain areas prevented the clearance and the clearing out of specific areas, and also the gnat catcher. As a result we lost houses and property and, as you know, there were 22 lives lost in the fires in southern California last year. So, somewhere along the line, you know, 40 miles is not a long distance. Our front line, our fire line was more than 40 miles long at one point in southern California of fire. So for a fire to travel 40 miles inland, and most people have never experienced the Santa Ana wind conditions, and when you experience them you understand that once those winds hit the dry chaparral and shrubbery and vegetation, there's nothing that the firefighters can do. I mean, we're getting 55 mile an hour winds with gusts up to 70. One pilot--we had to ground the planes at this time, but one pilot saw a piece of 6 x 8 plywood flying by his windshield at 500 feet when he was dropping. When you drop the retardant or the water you have to be down low so it doesn't evaporate before it hits the ground. So, unless we start doing the clearing and the vegetation, then the irony of all this, as you so eloquently stated earlier, was that the habitat and the vegetation that we're trying to protect is also destroyed. The kangaroo rat was destroyed along with the houses and the property and the vegetation in the cedar fire, which is the one to which they specifically referred. So that's where the public policy people have to come together and say, ``We just can't allow this to continue to happen.'' We had a fire in northern California last year called the Cone Fire, and it burned over an area where they were doing a demonstration project of how to control vegetation. Three of the four areas that you looked at after the fire were devastated. The fourth area you could hardly tell a fire was there because they had cleaned the vegetation, they had removed some of the unnecessary trees, they got rid of some of the chaparral, and the result and effect was that they were able to control the fire in that one area because they had good forest management practices. Mr. Ose. Mr. Turbeville, on the Fire Safe Council, near as I can tell from the testimony, you focus on building materials and setbacks and things like that. Now, if I'm incorrect, No. 1, I need to be corrected. But, second, as I look, I'm wondering whether or not you share my conclusion to this point that we've had some of these measures implemented but some we have not, and those that we did not implement, either for policy reasons or otherwise, are they contributing to the issues we're dealing with today with these fires? Mr. Turbeville. Well, one of the comments I made in my presentation to you was the new regulations, going back to what was presented here shortly ago--in Simi Valley, for example, in that new construction area there was no problem at all because of the defensible space, correct building materials, fire safe building materials. Where those are in place, there's a much greater chance because it is a combination effort--the defensible space and a mosaic landscape away from the defensible space as you get in, to reduce the fuels. It is correct building materials and building processes. The vent holes around the attic line or the footline open without any covering allows sparks to get inside. Another thing that people don't seem to realize, you've got 30 feet of clearance, you've got 10 foot brush, and then wind. As Senator Campbell said, you've got 100-foot flame lengths, so 30 feet doesn't do a lot of good. So, it's all a combination and it all has to be put together. There has to be fuel breaks within communities, surrounding the whole community, to stop it. If you are unfortunate enough to get a couple of houses going, it will go house to house just because of the extreme heat generated by the fire. If there are fuel breaks, wide streets, etc., hopefully you are going to be able to get in there, like Bill said, and get the engine companies in there to stop it from doing that. In an unprotected area, it is going to go until it wants to stop, and that's it. Mr. Ose. Ms. Mall, from NRDC's investigations, one of the things I'm trying to figure out is whether we can approach this issue from a problem-solving standpoint by doing one, two, three, or all of the things that have been identified in these studies. I take from your testimony that you support the building material issue, the setback, but I detect some reluctance on your part about the fuel issue that might be built up in the forest. Am I correct in that understanding? Ms. Mall. Well, if you're talking about fuel that is far away from homes, yes, you are correct, because while there may be some scientific studies that you've seen that shows some areas that have been logged far away from homes ended up burning less intensively in a fire, there are also studies that show that areas have been logged have burned more intensively in a fire. Therefore, the science is not conclusive. Actually, attached to my testimony is a letter from the Nation's top firecologist---- Mr. Ose. I read it. Ms. Mall [continuing]. To the President saying that very thing. And, basically in my testimony what we were trying to say is that we do know conclusively that we can protect homes by doing the work immediately around homes. The work far away from homes we do not know. The Forest Service has a research budget, and they can use the research funds to look into getting to a better place in the science. But, right now, if the goal of the government is to really protect homes and communities, that's where the resources should be focused. Mr. Ose. I actually did read your attachment from the various individuals across the country, and I do believe what they were saying was that the science was inconclusive as it relates to some of the proposals under Healthy Forests Initiative or Restoration Act. Ms. Mall. Yes. Mr. Ose. I have to break things down simply in my mind because I have to remember too many different things. So it is your testimony around houses that the removal of fuel by virtue of 100-foot or 300-foot or whatever the setback is is effective in preventing catastrophic fires, but that the removal of fuel in remote locations--I think your phrase, though lacking in technical bureaucratese, ``back country''---- Ms. Mall. Yes. Mr. Ose. Removal of fuel in back country situations, you're saying the science is inconclusive in terms of its impact on fires? Ms. Mall. Its effectiveness on fire intensity. Mr. Ose. So it is conclusive in close proximity to houses, but it is inconclusive in back country? Ms. Mall. I do want to add, in proximity to houses, removing fuel is not, as some of the other witnesses have said, is not the only thing that will make a home firewise. Mr. Ose. I understand. Ms. Mall. There's also the building materials. Mr. Ose. Right. I got that. Ms. Mall. And landscaping. But yes, it is a different situation closer to houses. If we are trying to protect homes and communities, we know how to do that. What we can't know for sure is how a fire will burn, where it will burn, where it will start when it's out in the back country, and therefore there is not clear science on how to move forward with those projects. Mr. Ose. OK. I just want to make sure I understand. In that wildland-urban interface then, as part of a larger package, the removal of fuel from close proximity to residential structures is an effective tool in an arsenal of tools to fight fires. Ms. Mall. But, we're not---- Mr. Ose. But, in the back country, if I understand your testimony, there's no conclusive evidence to support that same conclusion? Ms. Mall. My testimony is not that the work around the homes will prevent a fire or will stop a fire; my testimony is that will protect the home. Mr. Ose. What's the difference? Ms. Mall. Well, the difference is that we can't control where a fire will start and when it will start and what the wind will be that day and where it will travel, but we do know that we can protect the home site if the fire goes in that direction. Mr. Ose. Does the removal of the undergrowth around a house reduce the intensity of the fire? Is that your testimony? Ms. Mall. Well, I'm not exactly sure how to answer that question, but---- Mr. Ose. Well, yes or no would be sufficient. Ms. Mall. Well, it will protect the home. Mr. Ose. OK. Ms. Mall. The fire will not---- Mr. Ose. So, removal of fuel in back country---- Ms. Mall. Yes. Mr. Ose [continuing]. Won't help protect the forest? You see, I'm trying to get an explanation of how removal of fuel in one area---- Ms. Mall. Sure. The home site is already an open area. There is some open space, and---- Mr. Ose. Once cleared, that's correct. Ms. Mall. Many home sites have driveways, they are near streets, there's a sidewalk, there's a yard, there's already areas that are cleared. That's very different than a wild area where there has been no clearing. Mr. Ose. Actually, before I came to Congress I was in that business, and the typical minimum setback from a street is 20 feet and the typical single family elevation setback from a side yard is 5 feet, and the typical rear yard in my community is a minimum of 20 feet, so I have more than a passing knowledge on design standards. Ms. Mall. Yes. Mr. Ose. I think your point is that the open space in that wildland-urban interface of 100 feet or 200 feet serves this purpose. Ms. Mall. It is a very different landscape than a wild forest that's a natural area that has not been logged before. Mr. Ose. OK. But removing fuel from that area around those houses is part of the fire attenuation process or not part? Ms. Mall. If it is brush and it is small trees, it is extremely flammable, and that is the stuff that generally you're removing when you're making a home firewise. Mr. Ose. OK. Ms. Mall. If you go into a forest and you're just taking out the brush and you're just taking out undergrowth and very small trees, that's very different than a logging project where you're taking out medium or large trees. That changes the---- Mr. Ose. It changes the canopy cover and everything else, so---- I'm sorry, I'm probably not going to make this vote, but I wanted to ask you, in terms of the component parts that are identified in study after study after study of what is appropriate fire attenuation programs, in a highly urban area like Sacramento, where I live, and you've got lot and block subdivisions, you're seeking noncombustible materials on the roof and fire-resistant materials in the construction underneath the roof? Mr. McCammon. That's correct. Mr. Ose. OK. As a means--for instance, there are even some communities that require sprinklers in single family houses and apartments now. Mr. McCammon. Yes. Mr. Ose. In an area where we have the wildland-urban interface, the same applications would apply to beneficial use, if I understand your testimony. Mr. McCammon. Yes. Mr. Ose. And then on top of that, given the geographic location, your testimony is that having some sort of 100-foot setback or fuel removal program is positive in terms of preventing a catastrophic fire? Mr. McCammon. Yes, sir. Mr. Ose. OK. Mr. Turbeville, I want to talk to you about the grants process a little bit. On the grants process, I'm told that there was a provision in the budget that was passed by the House that sets aside $500 million protected from a point of order, the purpose of which would be to go either to a grants process in part or to prevent the raiding of the grants process funding as other emergency situations arise. Are you aware of that? Mr. Turbeville. I'm vaguely aware of it. I just heard of it a couple of days ago and have not had an adequate explanation. Mr. Ose. OK. And, you followed Mr. Rey's announcement earlier today about the flexibility in terms of the matches and what have you. That's not part of the grants process you're talking about? Mr. Turbeville. I don't believe so. Mr. Ose. OK. In terms of the fire plans that you talk about as the body of the grassroots effort that are getting developed, can you tell us what measures should be--I just want to come back. I'm beating the horse to death here if I can. What measures should be included in the establishment of these fire plans in particular for the purpose of mitigating fire risk? Mr. Turbeville. Well, there's multiple things that go into a fire plan. Also, are you talking about just a community fire plan, or are you talking about the California State fire plan, or---- Mr. Ose. I'm talking more specifically about the community fire plan. I want to know how it works on the ground for some of these fires that might otherwise be prevented in California or any of the western States this year. Mr. Turbeville. Basically, it's a matter, at the community level, of working collaboratively with the fire agencies and the other interested entities in setting priorities, determining a chain of events that have to occur based on the priorities. What are the biggest at-risk hazards, which ones need what kind of work? How soon can that work be done, and descending down from there. It is a simple planning process. It's setting the priorities, determining who is going to do it, how it is going to be done, and who is going to pay for it. Mr. Ose. So, the fire plan that might exist, say, at Lake Arrowhead might be significantly different than the fire plan that exists in Santa Monica as compared to the fire plan that might exist in Sacramento, CA, depending on the circumstances? Mr. Turbeville. Theoretically, every fire plan should be different, should take into consideration exactly what they're dealing with at the local level. Mr. Ose. Now, the fire plan is a plan for a snapshot in time, a circumstantial situation, or is it something that is a long-term effort by a community? Mr. Turbeville. It should be a long-term effort, because not only do we need to do the clearance of fuel around a community, we have to remember that fuel starts growing back immediately, so it must be maintained to be effective forever. Mr. Ose. So, within a community's fire plan you might have budget standards? Mr. Turbeville. Yes. Mr. Ose. Setback requirements? Mr. Turbeville. Right. Mr. Ose. Spaces between structures, width of roads for firefighting equipment and the like, fuel reduction plans? Mr. Turbeville. Yes. Mr. Ose. What about the use of some of the chemicals that I'm aware of that retard the growth or the regrowth of fuel? Mr. Turbeville. Fuel modification through chemical modification? Mr. Ose. Yes. Mr. Turbeville. If it is allowed--very difficult with some of the environmental compliance issues. In some areas it does work and is allowed. Mr. Ose. OK. Mr. Turbeville. But, it needs to be considered. If it is a potential remedy, use it. Mr. Ose. All right. How far afield does a community go when it is considering a fire plan? For instance, does it address the circumstances of fire in its watershed? For instance, if a community draws water--like San Francisco draws water from Hetch Hetchy. I mean, that's the No. 1 water source for San Francisco. Does San Francisco's fire plan address conditions in and around Hetch Hetchy? Mr. Turbeville. Common sense would tell me that if my water supply is coming from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, I'd better be thinking about it, even if I am in San Francisco on the receiving end of that water, because the responsibility--it is someone's responsibility to consider it. You can't automatically assume that it's always going to be there. Mr. Ose. You may have just opened up Pandora's Box. So, Senator Campbell, in the State of California Statewide--I mean, you know Sacramento. We get our water from Folsom and it comes out of the Sierra Nevadas. San Francisco gets it from Hetch Hetchy. Shasta supplies it. How do we, across jurisdictions, deal with this issue? Mr. Campbell. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to make one comment on the community plans, because one of the biggest successes was the community plan in the Lake Arrowhead/Big Bear area. That's the evacuation portion of the plan. In Lake Arrowhead in that area they evacuated up to 70,000 people out of those mountains on two-lane highways without even a fender bender. It was one of the most amazing success stories in the fire siege down there in southern California. Now, the water supply--San Francisco has an advantage. They also, since the earthquake, pump water out of the San Francisco Bay specifically for firefighting efforts. If they have to use the salt water, they will do it. But the State water, we are in the midst of a massive, massive drought in California all over the State, and as we look at the fires right now in southern California particularly, one thing we haven't mentioned is there are over a million dead trees from the bark beetle in the San Bernadino Mountains, and they are kindling, and they are ready just to explode the minute heat hits them of a high proportion. So, what we found out is we missed out in spring this year for California. We went from winter, you know, the April showers that are supposed to bring May flowers, we didn't get the April showers and now we are having May fires--a bad pun, I might add. But, nonetheless, here we are in the early part of the season fighting massive fires already in southern California. And, if they ever get into the mountain areas with the dead bark beetle trees and the Santa Ana winds hit again this fall, we could lose up to 30,000 homes in that area. Now, the water isn't coming in as rapidly for southern California from the State water project or from Hoover Dam or Boulder Dam. That water supply is dwindling. The water supply from down river out in the Imperial area is dwindling. The water supply, Folsom Lake, if you have been out--I'm sure you've been there--recently there's not as much water as there is supposed to be. That's in all our reservoirs up and down the State. As you know, most of the water in the State of California is used in agriculture. Overwhelmingly, about 80 percent or more is used in agriculture, and industrial production takes about 10 and residential used to be 5 or 7 or somewhere in that neighborhood. So, we have a drought, a critical issue hitting California, and we could see the same kind of fire siege this year as we saw last year, and not just southern California but all over the State of California. So, what do we do? We plan. The Commission, by bringing together the State, the local, and the Federal officials, we worked out some real problems; however, we've got to start moving on those problems, like the interoperability of communications is a major problem in any siege, because you have the communications between the Federal fire service with Interior, with Forest Service, with the military, and with the State, and then with the local fire departments and fire districts, and then you throw on top of that the public utilities and CalTrans and emergency medical, and for an incident commander to be able to control that situation becomes very difficult, and cell phones--individual captains on the engines were using cell phones to communicate with each other, and in the mountainous terrain that was difficult to do. I don't know what to tell you, Mr. Chairman, about what are we going to do. We're just going to hope for the very best and rely heavily upon the expertise and the good will of the fire fighters in California. Mr. Ose. I want to ask each of you the following question. Mr. Rey testified that, while the Restoration Act set a minimum of 50 percent of these funds being spent on reduction activities in the wildland-urban interface, they're actually spending 60 percent. Do you have a recommendation as to what-- before you answer that, that's a 5-minute vote. Mr. Turbeville, I know you've got a plane to catch, so unless you go now you're not going to catch it, so I'm going to go ahead and excuse you. Mr. Turbeville. Yes, I do. Mr. Ose. If you don't leave now, you're not going to catch it, so I'm going to go ahead and excuse you. I have to go make this second vote. I will be back in about 12 minutes and we'll finish this panel. I appreciate your patience. Mr. Turbeville, I know your situation, so I apologize I couldn't get this done, but we appreciate your coming. Mr. Turbeville. I understand. Mr. Ose. We're recessed for about 12 minutes. [Recess.] Mr. Ose. I appreciate your patience. I was on the verge of asking about the distribution of funds in treating fuel reduction. The testimony of one of the earlier witnesses was that 60 percent of USDA and DOI's, Agriculture and Interior's, combined fuel reduction funds are being spent on the wildland-urban interface. My question is whether or not that's too much, too little, the right amount, what have you. Mr. Campbell. Mr. Chairman, I hate to say this. I'm not qualified to answer that question. I would defer to---- Mr. Ose. An honest answer. Mr. Campbell [continuing]. Chief McCammon. But, a quick observation is we have to do something about cleaning the areas, not just around homes but doing some significant mainstream management of our forests. Mr. Ose. OK. Chief. Mr. McCammon. Well, as Senator Campbell, I don't know that I can speak to whether 50 percent is enough or 70 percent is enough, but I can tell you from California's perspective we believe more funding needs to be dedicated toward those fuels management issues in the wildland-urban interface. Mr. Ose. OK. So let's say 50 percent was spent last year. We need to be higher than that. And, I don't know the numbers, frankly. Mr. McCammon. Well, the difficulty I think is trying to understand where those acres are that have been managed, and, you know, for us in California we have some significant issues that haven't been managed, and so I can't speak to the other States that are involved, but in California we'd like to see more funding dedicated to dealing with those issues. Mr. Ose. With that wildland-urban interface? Mr. McCammon. Urban interface, yes. Mr. Ose. Ms. Mall. Ms. Mall. We do believe that a great deal more should be focused in the wildland-urban interface close to homes and communities until all homes are made firewise, especially for people who don't have the financial wherewithal to do it themselves. That should be the priority. It is especially important, I want to note, in areas like southern California where a lot of the areas at risk are not forested. Most of the fires in southern California were not trees that were burning. I believe, according to the National Fire Center's report that I read this morning, most of those fires today burning are brush fires. And, in particular, when you're logging in areas, that's not going to help the communities that are not forested. Mr. Ose. The pictures I've seen of the before versus after is that it is almost chaparral-like, low manzanita type brush with the highly combustible, almost fuel-like plant fluid that just explodes on you when it catches fire. Chief, is that your experience, too? Mr. McCammon. Yes, sir. Mr. Ose. OK. Senator, do you agree with that? Mr. Campbell. Yes. Mr. Ose. At least in terms of the areas that we have had such catastrophes in, that tends to be the characteristics we're dealing with. We haven't really had what someone might call a traditional Yellowstone type fire. Mr. McCammon. Well, I think some of the areas in San Bernadino County get close to that. We only saw 3 percent of the trees that were dead from the bark beetle infestation actually burn in those fires--the whole Grand Prix fire. But, clearly you could have a Yellowstone type situation had those winds continued to blow East and take the mountain out, itself. Mr. Campbell. And, they reach a point, Mr. Chairman, where they jump from crown to crown with those kinds of winds, and you know, they get the underbrush later. It comes down. But with the wind blowing at the speed at which it blows when the Santa Ana conditions are evident, there's just nothing you can do. Can I go far afield for a second? Mr. Ose. Certainly. We're an investigative committee, so you can do anything you want. Mr. Campbell. We played around, Mr. Chairman, in the discussions with the predator, and the reason for that is the predator technology can take pictures and relay information at night time and through smoke and through fog or whatever, through areas, and what we would like to see happen is for the Federal Government to dedicate a couple of predators without the military potential of the rockets, but just from the technical aspects of their ability to look down on a fire at nighttime and tell us what that fire is doing, because right now it is hard to know where that fire is going to come out in the morning if we can't look down and see what's happening, and so I know it is top-secret technology that you're utilizing, but if the Federal Government could provide a couple of those available for major fires like we had in southern California, it would give us a little indication as morning comes where we could set up our lines and maybe have a little better opportunity to at least slow the fire down or to stop it. Mr. Ose. All right. Chief. Mr. McCammon. Could I maybe elaborate on your question about the 50 percent or 70 percent? One of the things as I've reviewed the way this process works is that--and I spoke to it early about the discoordinated nature of the whole process in that you have several different agencies that are funding fuels management programs in different areas. Sometimes I don't think they even know which ones they are doing or not doing as it relates to one another, and I think that there really needs to be a concerted effort to focus on development of the community fire plans so that we take those at-risk communities and we start building from the community fire plan forward and then begin to understand the types of fuels management programs that they need and how they need to implement those and get all of the Federal agencies working together. I think you see the California Fire Alliance has put an effort forward to try and do that. I think any time you can maximize the use of funds by working together, you are going to get a better product. Mr. Ose. All right. I just have just a few remaining questions. Senator Campbell, in the report from the Commission published in April of this year, on page 13 there was a comment that the most destructive, costly, and dangerous wildfires occurred in older, dense vegetation burning under extreme conditions. What do you mean by ``extreme conditions?'' Mr. Campbell. The buildup of the area, the forest area, or the chaparral area where all the underbrush is there and it dies out and then you have new underbrush that grows the next year and it dies out. It piles one up on top of the other. You have no thinning of trees or even shrubbery or the small trees around there. By the way, the bark beetle is indigenous to southern California. I mean, it's not something that just happened. But because of the drought it dried up the sap of the trees which was used to kill the bark beetle, and thus we have over a million bark beetle trees dead there. But when these extreme conditions come together with the drought, with the dryness--and, by the way, southern California has been racked with over 100 degree temperatures for the last 2 weeks--and the winds, and the cool breeze that blows in off the ocean, when that stops and you have them coming in off the desert and you have the Santa Ana wind conditions, when those hit--let me state this again--there's nothing we can do to stop that fire. I mean, we have to have--what we do beforehand is more important than what we do at that point. Mr. Ose. Are you suggesting that, so to speak, we are not out of the woods yet? Mr. Campbell. We're in big trouble right now. Mr. Ose. This is going to keep coming and coming and coming? Mr. Campbell. No. But unless we get the good forest management, unless we manage the forest properly to clean out the dead vegetation, to make sure that we protect the watershed, to make sure that we do everything that we can to get rid of the combustible material that's on the ground and in the area, you have growth in our forests in southern California where you have the big trees, but all of the small trees that are growing up around it, and feeding off the same water system as does the large tree, and thus the drought affects all of the large trees and the small trees die off, and they just lay there and act as fuel for the next fire coming in. When those things, all those combination of factors come together, that's when we get the kind of conflagration we got last fall. And, we're ripe for it again this year, I hate to say. Mr. Ose. Chief, your colleagues in the firefighting business, frankly, have to deal with the reality of this. In terms of where we have gone with urban development in California and the buildup of fuel, the lack of advance planning in some of these communities, do you see any decline in the challenge we face in the coming days? Mr. McCammon. For the firefighting community? Mr. Ose. For the firefighting issues. Mr. McCammon. No. We saw this last fall. Flame lengths and rates of spread that we haven't seen before, and fire fighters were asked to do things in this last fire siege that they haven't had to do in the past. It was a phenomenal experience down there. And, you're seeing areas throughout the State of California where those conditions exist, and so we are having to train our personnel in different ways than we've done in the past. We used to take our apparatus and station at particular structures to do structure protection. Well, we have to make decisions about whether we want to protect those structures any more because of the types of occurrences that we've seen. I think that all of our comments about managing the interface areas are appropriate, but those are long-term issues that we're going to have to deal with, because it isn't going to happen overnight. And, as Senator Campbell said, once you get the urban interface area taken care of, it is growing back all the time. As an example, in the city of Oakland we experienced the Oakland Hills fire; 3,000 homes, the same number of homes were lost in southern California in 2 weeks. We did it in 18 hours. The city of Oakland recently had the voters re-approve vegetation management districts so they can begin to still manage that vegetation that's growing back. Mr. Ose. I had the unfortunate experience of becoming a member of an insurance board a year after that fire, and we waived limits on all the coverages. It must have cost us $2 billion. We wrote a lot of checks. So that gives you some sense. And, that was 12 years ago. That gives you some sense of the scope of the problem. I don't have any further questions. We're going to leave the record open. I know there are people here from California who have submitted testimony or letters both to me and to other Members of Congress. I have read those letters. To those of you who might be in the audience, I have read those letters. We are going to leave the record open for questions of our witnesses, and in the context of those questions we're likely to ask things related to your material that you submitted. I do want to thank our witnesses for coming and visiting with us today and providing the input. It is clear that California remains pretty much at the center of a dilemma from a policy standpoint, and that is: how do humans and the patterns of growth that exist in high-growth States like California or other western States, how do we reconcile the demand for housing and community development with bumping up against some areas that traditionally have not been subjected to urban development? That's that wildland-urban interface. We have related issues compared to as population grows in California we're going to need water, and the water that supplies many of these new growth areas comes from a long way away, and so how do we protect or what do we put in place policy-wise to protect the watersheds in those areas from having catastrophic fires and then having a complete collapse of the ecosystem in those watersheds that plug the natural streams or fill up the reservoirs with silt and what have you from erosion? These are all inter-related. Senator Campbell, I appreciate your service in the Governor's Commission. Chief McCammon, obviously your day-to-day experiences are greatly appreciated and probably not sufficiently recognized by you and your team. We appreciate that. Ms. Mall, we appreciate your coming and sharing with us the viewpoint from the organization you represent. We will share these findings and this testimony with the rest of Congress as is normal practice. Again, I thank you all for coming today. This hearing is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 5:15 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] [Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.133 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.134 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.135 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.136 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.137 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.138 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.139 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.140 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.141 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.142 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.143 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.144 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.145 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.146 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.147 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.148 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.149 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.150 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.151 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.152 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.153 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.154 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.155 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.156 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.157 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.158 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.159 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.160 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.161 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.162 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.163 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.164 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.165 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.166 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.167 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.168 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.169 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.170 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.171 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.172 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.173 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.174 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.175 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.176 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.177 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.178 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.179 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.180 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.181 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.182 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.183 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.184 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.185 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.186 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.187 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.188 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.189 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.190 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.191 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5222.192