[Senate Hearing 114-337] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] S. Hrg. 114-337 A REVIEW OF PAST WILDFIRE SEASONS TO INFORM AND IMPROVE FUTURE FEDERAL WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES ======================================================================= HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION ---------- NOVEMBER 17, 2015 ---------- Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Available via the World Wide Web: http://fdsys.gov A REVIEW OF PAST WILDFIRE SEASONS TO INFORM AND IMPROVE FUTURE FEDERAL WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES S. Hrg. 114-337 A REVIEW OF PAST WILDFIRE SEASONS TO INFORM AND IMPROVE FUTURE FEDERAL WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES ======================================================================= HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ NOVEMBER 17, 2015 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska, Chairman JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming MARIA CANTWELL, Washington JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho RON WYDEN, Oregon MIKE LEE, Utah BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont JEFF FLAKE, Arizona DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan STEVE DAINES, Montana AL FRANKEN, Minnesota BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia CORY GARDNER, Colorado MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico ROB PORTMAN, Ohio MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia Karen K. Billups, Staff Director Patrick J. McCormick III, Chief Counsel Lucy Murfitt, Senior Counsel and Natural Resources Policy Director Angela Becker-Dippmann, Democratic Staff Director Sam E. Fowler, Democratic Chief Counsel Bryan Petit, Democratic Senior Professional Staff Member C O N T E N T S ---------- OPENING STATEMENTS Page Murkowski, Hon. Lisa, Chairman and a U.S. Senator from Alaska.... 1 Cantwell, Hon. Maria, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from Washington..................................................... 3 WITNESSES Fennell, Anne-Marie, Director, Natural Resources and Environment, U.S. Government Accountability Office.......................... 6 Maisch, John ``Chris'', State Forester and Director, Division of Forestry, Alaska Department of Natural Resources............... 26 Covington, Dr. William Wallace, Regents' Professor of Forest Ecology and Director, Ecological Restoration Institute, Northern Arizona University.................................... 43 Zerkel, Richard, President, Lynden Air Cargo, LLC................ 52 Burnett, Mike, Fire Chief, Chelan County Fire District 1......... 57 Wyss, Jon, Chairman, Okanogan County Long Term Recovery Group.... 64 ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED Burnett, Mike: Opening Statement............................................ 57 Written Statement............................................ 59 Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 128 (The) California Forest and Watershed Alliance: Statement for the Record..................................... 278 Cantwell, Hon. Maria: Opening Statement............................................ 3 Chart 1-Wenatchee Complex in 2012............................ 87 Chart 2-Behive Reservoir..................................... 89 Chart 3-Fire Treated Road.................................... 91 (The) Corps Network: Letter for the Record........................................ 283 Covington, Dr. William Wallace: Opening Statement............................................ 43 Written Testimony............................................ 45 Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 119 Fennell, Anne-Marie: Opening Statement............................................ 6 Written Testimony............................................ 8 Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 114 GAO-13-684 Wildland Fire Management: Improvements Needed in Information, Collaboration, and Planning to Enhance Federal Fire Aviation Program Success dated August 2013............ 144 GAO-15-772 Wildland Fire Management: Agencies Have Made Several Key Changes but Could Benefit From More Information About Effectiveness dated September 2015................... 199 Maisch, John ``Chris'': Opening Statement............................................ 26 Written Testimony............................................ 28 Murkowski, Hon. Lisa: Opening Statement............................................ 1 Wyss, Jon: Opening Statement............................................ 64 Written Testimony............................................ 67 Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 129 Zerkel, Richard: Opening Statement............................................ 52 Written Testimony............................................ 54 A REVIEW OF PAST WILDFIRE SEASONS TO INFORM AND IMPROVE FUTURE FEDERAL WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES ---------- TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2015 U.S. Senate, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Washington, DC. The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m. in Room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Lisa Murkowski, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LISA MURKOWSKI, U.S. SENATOR FROM ALASKA The Chairman. I call to order the meeting of Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Before we commence with the hearing, I think it is appropriate, and I know that on the floor of the Senate at this appointed hour, ten o'clock, a 1-minute moment of silence is being observed for those that were the victims of the horrible tragedy in Paris. So at this moment I would like to observe a 1-minute moment of silence. [Moment of silence.] The Chairman. Thank you. This is a pretty somber way to begin, and it is also a very somber subject this morning as we talk about the 2015 fire season. It was a tragic one. It was punctuated by some fatalities. We lost residents who could not escape the flames and the brave firefighters who gave their lives to keep our communities safe. The Okanogan Complex fire in Washington claimed the lives of three heroes, Thomas Zbyszewski, Andrew Zajac and Richard Wheeler. I want to start by acknowledging them and offering prayers to their families. Each year the wildfire season seems to include new worsts and historical records. For its part 2015 has been marked by a relentless wildfire season that has stretched nearly all year. According to the National Interagency Fire Center more than 9.4 million acres have burned through October 30. This year's season is among the most devastating years for wildfires since reliable records began in 1960, coming close to 2006 when an all time high of nearly 9.9 million acres burned. Mega fires, which are the fires over 100,000 acres in size and incomprehensible just decades ago, are becoming the new norm. Five mega fires were burning at the same time in September alone. The majority of our nation's fires continue to occur in my State of Alaska, and this year was no exception. We had over five million acres burned in Alaska. This is an area the size of the State of Connecticut. Only the 2004 fire season, where nearly 6.6 million acres burned, was worse for us. This year the fire season in Alaska was also unique and not in a good way. We did not have much snow over the winter and the spring featured record warm temperatures creating some unusually dry conditions and then came the lightning. On one day alone, near the summer solstice, lightning struck our state around 15,000 times, so over 15,000 strikes in one day. Ultimately lightning caused more than half of the more than 700 fires in Alaska this season. At one point this summer more than 200 fires were burning in the state, all over the state and all at once. Numerous Native Alaskan villages were evacuated because of fires that threatened air quality and structures. The thick smoke in Fairbanks pushed air quality to hazardous levels, forcing outdoor activities to be canceled. Dozens of homes north and south of Anchorage were lost. Anchorage spent 24 days at preparedness level five. You all on the panel here clearly know what level five is, but for those who are unfamiliar, it is the highest level. These wildfires drained budgets and required so much manpower to battle that officials enlisted the help of international crews at times. Unfortunately there is no easy solution. We cannot simply match the increasing wildfire threat with greater and greater suppression force and call it a day. Wildfire suppression and its escalating costs are economically, ecologically, and socially unsustainable, and the 2015 fire season underscores that point. We must recognize that many of the same factors that are increasing the size, frequency and intensity of wildfires are also driving up wildfire suppression costs both in actual dollars and as a portion of the Forest Service total budget. These factors include excessive fuel loads, due in part to decades of fire exclusion, a changing climate, insect and disease infestation, severe drought, the spread of invasive species and expanding wildland urban interface. But that is not all. Operational factors associated with wildfire management, our objectives, strategies and tactics, all have significant cost implications. This includes the aviation assets that we deploy today. We spent $2.1 billion fighting fires this season and $4.2 billion in total on wildfire management. It is not even clear where these dollars were spent and whether they were well spent. That is due, in part, to the fact that the agencies do not bother to conduct reviews of the large, expensive fires. The Forest Service has claimed that the wildfire problem is a budget problem, but that is probably an oversimplification. We all agree that Congress must end the practice of fire borrowing, but we just cannot throw money at the problem. In the Interior Appropriations bill that I chair the Subcommittee on, we provide a fiscally responsible approach to end fire borrowing. It would budget for 100 percent of the 10- year average for fire suppression and provide a limited emergency reserve, or contingency fund, for fire fighting in the above average years. I think that is part of the solution, but the wildfire problem is not just a budgeting problem. It is also a management problem, and we have failed to appropriately manage our fire dependent forests and fire prone landscapes and that has predisposed our forests to mega fires. We must work with our state agencies, our local communities and the public to increase community preparedness and make our forests healthy again. Healthy, resilient forests are fire resistant forests. Yet, despite knowing the value of fuel reduction treatments in mitigating wildfire risks, increasing fire fighter safety and restoring the health of our forests, active management is still often met with a series of discouraging and near insurmountable obstacles. High upfront costs, long planning horizons and regulatory environment requirements, including what seem like unending environmental reviews, are impeding our ability to implement treatments at the pace and the scale these wildfires are occurring. These are big problems that will take cooperation and commitment to solve. Senator Cantwell and I have agreed to work together and with members of this Committee to develop a better wildfire management strategy for our country. I think it is fair to say that Senator Cantwell and I share the view that this is strategy that should be guided by some principles. The principles include responsibly funding wildfire suppression, ending the unsustainable practice of fire borrowing, improving operational efficiencies to ensure the availability and effectiveness of the aviation fleet and fire fighter safety, increasing community preparedness through Fire Wise activities and implementing community wildfire protection plans, making the necessary investments in a full array of fuel treatments to include not just prescribed fire but also mechanical thinning, increasing the use of technology on wildfires and reducing paperwork to get needed projects implemented in a timely manner. We know this type of strategy is necessary because we have just endured another terrible fire season that has affected many of our home states, many of the people that we know and many of the lands and the landscapes that we treasure. So this is not just any Tuesday morning here at the Energy Committee. This cannot be a review without a purpose where we turn the page, close the book and consider our responsibility is met for another year. We have a lot of work to do, and we need to work together to develop real solutions to the wildfire problem. With that, I turn to Senator Cantwell. STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL, U.S. SENATOR FROM WASHINGTON Senator Cantwell. Well thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you for holding this important hearing. Thank you for the witnesses coming today. We look forward to hearing from all of you. I also want to thank the Chair for allowing us to do a field hearing last August in Seattle, Washington that our colleague, Senator Barrasso, came out for. We certainly appreciate both the field hearing and him joining us for that. We learned many things from the hearings that we have had so far, and we are going to learn more today. We have learned there are actions that agencies can take and that communities can take to decrease the risk of forest fires. We learned about the benefits of creating surge capacity to respond in these cases when we do have extreme events. But what has stood out most for me, from one of the witnesses that we had in Seattle, Dr. Medler from Western Washington University, was that he explained we have not seen the worst yet. This is something that requires immediate action. I want to thank Jon Wyss and Chief Burnett for being here today from the State of Washington. These are two people who are intimately familiar with these issues surrounding wildfires, particularly given our experience over the past two summers. In 2014 our state experienced the Carlton Complex, the worst fire in our state history. So earlier this year when the Committee began work on fire and discussing what we learned from that tragedy, we were scheduling listening sessions all across the State of Washington about what the Federal Government could do better and what we could do to help local communities. What we did not realize at the time that we had scheduled those meetings is that 2015 was going to be an even more dramatic fire season. Almost one million acres in my state burned in about a month. That is an area the size of Delaware. So in addition to severe economic loss to the timber industry, the recreational economy, tribes, and the fire fighters in Washington State, who suffered a tragic loss, these impacts are unbelievable. I want to say that the three Forest Service fire fighters that were killed in the line of duty while protecting the communities in which they live were the best among us, Andrew Zajac, Richard Wheeler and Tom Zbyszewski. A fourth fire fighter, Daniel Lyon, was severely burned in the entrapment and has been going through recovery. Clearly 2015 was a tragedy. As I have traveled across the state looking at various issues I heard compelling stories from fire fighters, business owners and residents who lost their homes or had to evacuate that what we needed to do was to do better. Fire fighters, county commissioners, Forest Service people, legislators, all came forward with issues about coordination, response, making sure that fewer homes burned, making sure our fire fighters are safer, and proactively decreasing the intensity of these fires so that they can be better managed. I know that the colleagues that are present here today have experienced similar fire seasons in their states, as Chairman Murkowski just mentioned. Unfortunately, there are only so many spots available on the witness table, or I am sure that every one of us could have filled the whole table with people from our state who are stakeholders in this discussion. So before we begin I would just like to recognize a couple people who are not at the table. From Aero-Flite, Mike, if he is here he can wave his hand, a company that is in Spokane, Washington. The air tanker fleet is very important to how we fight fires and continuing to improve that service with the Forest Service giving contracts, I think is very important. I want to recognize Brian Gunn from the Colville Tribe, who is also here. This summer wildfires spread into the reservation and destroyed 20 percent of their timber. A quarter of the tribe's economy is generated from timber, so to say that this was a big deal is an understatement. They lost upwards of $1 billion of standing timber. This hearing is the third in our Committee that we have had so far since the wildfires of 2015. I am pretty sure that makes a record for the Committee. I think it shows that we are serious about getting something done, and I want to thank Senator Murkowski for outlining some of the things that she and I believe that should be in a bill. Ending the practice of fire borrowing so that we actually do more in prevention and preparedness up front, improving the efficiencies of our operation, ensuring that the fire fighters have the best equipment and those in communities that are challenged by how broad the map has become have every resource available to them, increasing community preparedness through activities such as Fire Wise and risk mapping, and investing in fuel treatments that we know will make a difference such as prescribed burn or mechanical thinning. Dr. Covington, I cannot wait to hear from you today about this issue particularly because I am very interested and will show some maps about thinning success in Washington State and where it mattered in prevention. But also just this overlay as it relates to where our fires are with ponderosa pine. I really want to understand how we are going to protect our forests. Increasing our use of technology and including unmanned aerial vehicles to give us more information, and for us in the central part of the state, it is clear we need a new Doppler system to talk about high wind incidents which we certainly experienced the day that our fire fighters lost their lives. All these are very, very important issues, and I am pleased to be working with the Chair on this. We have also had many conversations with our colleague, Cathy McMorris-Rodgers in the House of Representatives, since her legislative district has been front and center in all of this. I also want to just say that I know that while we have put out a white paper that we discussed in Seattle at our hearing, that there are many inputs that we have received along with what we are going to hear today. I hope, Madam Chairman, that all of us on this Committee of Western States can work together, because I think we see that those who are represented here today understand that we do not want to face the 2016 fire season without better tools, without better processes, without better operations to help our communities and help our states. Thank you very much. The Chairman. Well said. Thank you, Senator Cantwell. With that we will go to the panel before us. Again we appreciate you coming to the Committee this morning and giving us your perspective. The Committee will be led off this morning by Anne-Marie Fennell, who is the Director for the Natural Resources and Environment Team at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. We appreciate you being here. Next we have Mr. Chris Maisch. Chris is the State Forester and Director for the Division of Forestry with the State of Alaska, very skilled and very much an expert in so many of these issues. So we appreciate you traveling to be with us this morning. Next we have Dr. William Wallace Covington, who is the Regents' Professor of Forest Ecology, the Executive Director for the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University. Thank you for being before the Committee this morning. Next we have another Alaskan, who will speak to us from the air tankers perspective and how we deal with these suppression efforts from the air, Mr. Richard Zerkel, who is President of Lynden Air Cargo. Thank you for being here this morning. We also have Mr. Mike Burnett, who is the Fire Chief from the Chelan County Fire. Rounding out the panel we have Mr. Jon Wyss, who is the Chairman of the Okanogan and Carlton Complex Long Term Recovery. We have a lot of expertise here this morning before the Committee, and we thank you for being with us. Ms. Fennell, if you would like to lead off? Please keep your oral testimony to five minutes and your full testimony will be incorporated as part of the record. STATEMENT OF ANNE-MARIE FENNELL, DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE Ms. Fennell. Chairman Murkowski, Ranking Member Cantwell and members of the Committee, I'm pleased to be here today to discuss our recent work on wildland fires. Wildland fires play an important ecological role but cost billions each year and result in damage and loss of life. As you know the 2015 fire season has been especially severe with over nine million acres burned. The Forest Service and Interior are responsible for wildland fire management on Federal lands including contracting for aircraft to help suppress fires. Increased fire intensity has prompted agency efforts to try to better manage fires. Understanding the effectiveness of these efforts takes on a heightened importance since these agencies have obligated $8.3 million over 6 years to suppress fires. My statement today focuses on one, how the Forest Service and Interior assess the effectiveness of their wildland fire management programs, and two, the Forest Service efforts to modernize the large air tanker fleet and challenges in doing so. My testimony is based on reports we issued in September 2015 and August 2013. First, Forest Service and Interior assess the effectiveness of their wildland programs in several ways including through performance measures, efforts to assess particular activities and reviews of fires. In our September report we found that the Forest Service and Interior acknowledged their performance measures needed improvement and were developing new ones. In addition the agencies are undertaking efforts to assess activities to reduce hazardous vegetation that can fuel fires. However, the Forest Service and Interior have not consistently followed agency policy in selecting and reviewing the fires to determine agency effectiveness in responding to fires. Their policies generally direct them to review each fire involving Federal expenditures of $10 million or more. Agency officials told us that these policies over emphasize cost rather than effectiveness in responding to fires. The agencies, though, have not developed specific criteria for selecting fires. For example, Forest Service officials told us that they judgmentally select fires based on such broad criteria as national significance. Accordingly, the Forest Service reviewed five fires that occurred in 2012 and ten that occurred in 2013. But given its broad criteria it's not clear why the Forest Service selected these fires and not others such as the 2013 Rim Fire which burned more than 250,000 acres and was the costliest fire to suppress that year. We concluded that by developing criteria for selecting and reviewing fires the agencies may obtain useful information about effectively responding to fires. As a result we recommended in our September report that the Forest Service and Interior develop specific criteria for selecting and reviewing fires and update their policies accordingly. The agencies generally agreed. Second, in our 2013 report we found that the Forest Service faced challenges in modernizing its fleet of large air tankers which declined from 44 in 2002 to eight in 2013. Specifically we found that the Forest planned to modernize its fleet by obtaining aircraft from various sources over the near, medium and long term but each component of this approach faced challenges. Some of these challenges persist while others are less relevant today. For example, the Forest Service had awarded contracts for seven next generation large air tankers but as of 2013 only one had completed necessary Federal approval and certification processes. Agency officials told us that they now have 20 privately-owned, large air tankers under contract and another seven air tankers transferring from the Coast Guard. In conclusion, the increasing severity and cost of wildland fires highlights the importance of Federal agencies continuously and systematically assessing the effectiveness of their approaches so as to identify possible improvements in combating wildland fires in an ever changing landscape. Chairman Murkowski, Ranking Member Cantwell and members of the Committee, this concludes my prepared statement. I'm happy to respond to questions. [The prepared statement of Ms. Fennell follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Fennell. Mr. Maisch, welcome. STATEMENT OF JOHN ``CHRIS'' MAISCH, STATE FORESTER AND DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF FORESTRY, ALASKA DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES Mr. Maisch. Good morning, Chairman Murkowski and Ranking Member Cantwell and members of the Committee. My name is Chris Maisch. I'm the State Forester and Director of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry and past president of the National Association of State Foresters (NASF). The NASF represents the directors of the state forestry agencies in all 50 states, eight territories and the District of Columbia. This was another difficult wildland fire season for us nationally, and in Alaska it will go down in the record books as the second worst season for acres burned. Approximately 5.1 million acres or about 54 percent of the 9.4 million acres that burned nationally this year were in Alaska. The worst fire season on record for Alaska occurred just over a decade ago at 6.4 million acres a year. And if you would, please look at Figure 1 in your handout. As you examine the graph you will see a dashed line that indicates the rolling 11-year average for acres burned, and you can see that 2004 was the tipping point for the state. The workload, as represented by acres burned, has doubled from the previous long term average and this past season underscored the type of wildland fire season we are faced with on a more frequent basis. I also have to tell you a personal story. It was the year my red beard turned grey in 2004. [Laughter.] Our season began this year with two large urban interface fires, the Sockeye near Willow and the Card Street near Soldotna. The Sockeye fire was initially attacked at two acres and was 1,000 acres by the end of the day, and by the end of the second day it was 9,000 acres. Unfortunately over 100 structures were lost including 55 primary residents. These incidents were a sign of things to come, and in mid- June in a 7-day period over 61,000 lightning strikes ignited 295 fires. And that's Figure 2 in your handout. By the end of the season 45 states and two Canadian provinces had provided resources to Alaska fires. While all this activity was taking place in Alaska, the lower 48 season began to develop into a more active and challenging series of incidents. Many of the Western states, particularly Oregon, Washington and California, were having another difficult fire year. So what did we learn from this past season and what can we do to address these growing problems? Communities at risk. In FY2013 the total number of communities at risk from wildland fire in the U.S. was 72,000. The NASF is a key partner in the development and implementation of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy and its three primary goals: restore and maintain resilient landscapes, develop fire adapted communities, and provide efficient and effective responses to wildfires. I'd like to illustrate the importance of these objectives by sharing a story about the Funny River fire from the 2014 Alaska fire season. The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge has been creating fuel breaks. These are large landscape level projects designed to protect homes, businesses and other values at risk should a fire start on the refuge and move toward the community. Take a look at Figure 4 for a picture of one. These advanced preparations paid off and in the spring of 2004 a lightning initiated fire threatened the outskirts of Soldotna. The fuel breaks made all the difference. The call came in around midnight that the fire was going to hit the Funny River Road. By the time crews arrived there was not much time to start a burn out to rob the approaching fire of fuel. The fuel breaks slowed the fire and allowed crews to safely and successfully light a burn out. Over 2,400 structures were protected with an assessed value of more than $250 million. Next I'd like to talk briefly about another topic, and this topic has to do with our aviation programs. An ongoing problem for many states with wildland fire aviation programs is the issue of carding both individual pilots and aviation platforms. Both the Forest Service and the Department of Interior, through their Office of Aircraft Services, require additional verification of any aviation assets that will be used on a Federal fire. The two agencies are not well coordinated in this effort despite using the same carding standards for certification and this caused some real problems during the fire season. In my written testimony I've listed several specific examples to illustrate the issue, but I'd like to share two with you from my home state. A State of Alaska contract helicopter that is based out of California had been carded at the beginning of the fire season by the Forest Service and had to be re-carded by OAS when it reported to Alaska for work later in the summer. Also in Alaska two National Guard Blackhawk helicopters doing bucket work on a Forest Service fire were not utilized for a second mission when it was determined they were not carded. These examples illustrate some of the challenges faced by states this season and the Federal agencies should engage State forest agencies as equal partners to update the National Wildland Fire Aviation Strategy with an efficient and consistently implemented approval process. I see my time is short so I'd encourage you to examine two other general topics in my written testimony where I've made some recommendations for improving or maintaining programs that help grow and maintain response capacity and the need for more proactive forest management to help address some of the underlying causes of this problem. In conclusion, thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Committee today. My fellow state foresters and I stand ready to assist the Committee at finding ways to address the challenges we all face as the wildland fire problem continues to grow and consume larger and larger portions of our State and Federal budgets. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Maisch follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Maisch. Dr. Covington, welcome. STATEMENT OF DR. WILLIAM WALLACE COVINGTON, REGENTS' PROFESSOR OF FOREST ECOLOGY, AND DIRECTOR, ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION INSTITUTE, NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY Dr. Covington. Chairman Murkowski, Senator Cantwell, members of the Committee, thank you so much for the opportunity to testify before you today about a problem that's important to all of us. It's been important to me for almost 50 years now. My name is Wally Covington. I'm Regents' Professor of Forest Ecology at Northern Arizona University (NAU) and Executive Director of the Ecological Restoration Institute which was established in 2004 by Federal authorizing legislation. We have three institutes, one at Arizona, one at Colorado and one at New Mexico. All of them, working together to provide the best available information that can be had for restoring forest health and preventing the kinds of devastating fires that we're talking about today. Being at NAU for over 40 years now I have had the opportunity to teach fire ecology and management, wildlife forest operations, virtually any topic in the area of forestry and I've also conducted research, primarily fire-based research, confronting the problem of steadily increasing wildfires. In 1976 I'd been there for just a year when my house was threatened by a fire which was then called the biggest and most devastating fire in Arizona history. It was almost 4,700 acres. And then during this 40 years I've seen these increasing gradually, you know, to 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, and now hundreds of thousands of acres. At no great surprise we've seen a couple of things happening. One is that we see fuel building up in the understory of frequent fire forests, like Ponderosa Pine forests. And then in forests that naturally have catastrophic fires like Lodgepole Pine, Spruce, Fir, interior Alaska forests, we see landscapes becoming more and more homogonous. So larger and larger patches of the land are available to burning. The other thing that has driven this clearly has been an increase in the severity and duration of fires, of the fire season. We're now seeing fires burn in at times of the year that are completely unprecedented. We have fires now, we've had fires in Arizona called the January fire and the February fire because we never had fires during that period of time. And now they're coming. They can burn just about any time of year. So my testimony then has five major points, and I'm just going to highlight that briefly. The disruption of natural fires has resulted in a shift in fire regimes and frequent forest types like Ponderosa Pine from surface fires to crown fires. The attempted suppression of fire in areas that are naturally catastrophic fires, like I mentioned before, has resulted in more homogonous landscapes that require heroic efforts to try to suppress. My final point is that the research has shown that there are things we can do about it. One in crown fire regimes where fires are natural, we can break up fuel continuity with fire breaks. You thin it out. You make it so that instead of a million acres being available to burn, maybe you have 50,000 acres available to burn. That's one approach. In frequent fire forests you need to thin across the landscape and remove the excess trees that have come in since fire suppression, conserve the old growth trees and then start burning on a natural cycle. In that way these forests are consistent with their evolutionary environment, no threat to endangered species. Watersheds are protected and so on. We've looked at fires post fire. We've had, as you know, some very large fires in Arizona, half million acres plus. And one of the projects that has been particularly instructive to us was to look at the wall of fire, post wall of fire, look at what happened there and then use a Forest Service developed fire behavior models to determine what the fire behavior would have been had treatments been put in place beforehand, different treatments then we had. What we found was that if you just focused on urban wildland interface treatments, you could reduce the fire size by about 12 percent. You could reduce flame lengths by about 6 percent. However, if you strategically located these treatments across the entire landscape, you could reduce the size of the area burned under high severity by 40 percent and flame lengths by 30 percent. So in closing I'd just like to say that there is strong science available to help inform how we can do these preventive treatments, and using that science we have demonstrated, as have others, time and again that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of pure. If you invest up front you can save houses, you can protect lives, and you can restore landscapes for current and future generations. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Dr. Covington follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Covington. Mr. Zerkel, welcome. STATEMENT OF RICHARD ZERKEL, PRESIDENT, LYNDEN AIR CARGO, LLC Mr. Zerkel. Madam Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to discuss aerial firefighting policy with you today. My name is Rick Zerkel, and I'm the President of Lynden Air Cargo, an all cargo operator of L382G aircraft based in Anchorage, Alaska. Lynden's seven aircraft are the civilian version of the Lockheed C130 and are operated under Federal Aviation Administration Part 121 Air Carrier Regulations, the same requirements followed by all major U.S. airlines including Delta, American and United. This is the highest safety standard under FAA regulations. The U.S. Forest Service is currently operating one C130H under public aircraft rules and plans to add more. This is in direct conflict with the findings of the 2002 Blue Ribbon panel report to the Forest Service titled, ``Federal Aerial Firefighting: Assessing Safety and Effectiveness.'' And I'd like to read a couple of those findings real briefly. Under Finding 3, Aircraft. Under the current system of aircraft certification, contracting and operation key elements of the aerial wildland firefighting fleet are unsustainable. The FAA has essentially said. ``It's a public use aircraft. You're on your own.'' Under Finding 6, Certification. The Federal Aviation Administration has abrogated any responsibility to ensure the continued airworthiness of public use aircraft including ex military aircraft converted to firefighting air tankers. Although these aircraft are awarded FAA type certificates, the associated certifications do not require testing and inspection to ensure the aircraft are air worthy to prepare for their intended missions. The panel found that the Forest Service and BLM leaders do not have a good understanding of the FAA certification and oversight rule regarding public use aircraft. Just like the Blue Ribbon panel, we are opposed to the U.S. Forest Service operating a government-owned airline under public aircraft format for the purpose of fighting wildfires when qualified civilian aircraft are available. Lynden spent substantial capital in one year complying with the regulatory, technical and physical conversion of one of our Hercules in order to lease to a qualified operator under the next generation 2.0 solicitation. A very tight timetable and rigid requirements resulted in our aircraft being rejected while the U.S. Forest Service operated the first of seven C130H aircraft equipped with an obsolete dispersion system and operated without FAA oversight. By necessity the Lynden aircraft was deployed to Australia where it is in service to the National Aerial Firefighting Center. Our message this morning can be summarized in three main points. First, the commercial aerial firefighting industry is entirely capable of providing all of the Forest Service large air tanker requirements at considerably less expense than the current planned use of the C130H aircraft. Second, the acquisition and use of the C130H, in this depends on the structure of the program, may be in conflict with Federal acquisition regulations and the Economy Act. Most importantly though, the non-regulated, public aircraft format proposed for the government-owned large air tanker fleet is inherently less safe than the rigorous standards a commercial fleet must adhere to and has set an unfair double standard. This double standard resulted in the most capable and safest firefighting aircraft being deployed elsewhere while an unregulated and expensive government aircraft fought fires in our country. More importantly we believe that regulatory certification and safety standards mandated by the FAA been established for a sound reason, to mitigate the possibility of loss of life and property. These standards should be applied to all aircraft operating in the harsh environment of aerial firefighting without exception. As we speak it appears the Forest Service intends to operate the C130Hs under the public aircraft category accepting responsibility for their continuing airworthiness and for certifying the design safety of the retardant tank installation. If the Coast Guard is retained as the engineering authority, the expertise of the FAA is completely removed from the process. The Forest Service has been very specific that all commercial large air tankers be modified in accordance with the very demanding and time consuming FAA certification process. Now the industry accepts these parameters and the time and expense it involve, but we strongly disagree the Forest Service should waive this requirement for itself and opt for the less stringent public aircraft option. There should be one safety standard for all aircraft involved in aerial firefighting and it should be the most robust safety standards contained in the FAA regulations. Lynden Air Cargo provides the following recommendations. Number one, commercial aircraft operators, including Lynden and others, are available and ready to meet aerial firefighting requirements of the Forest Service. We urge the Committee to provide direction to the Forest Service to utilize available and qualified aircraft prior to employing any government-owned aircraft. The U.S. Forest Service should be required to certify any aircraft they do operate, certify and maintain the aircraft and dispersant systems to the same rigorous standards as industry. And Number three, no funds should be authorized or appropriated to the Forest Service to acquire or upgrade additional aircraft until private industry has had an opportunity to respond to a final round of the next generation solicitation. As long as commercial operatives can meet the Forest Service requirements the Forest Service should refrain from competing. Madam Chairman and members of the Committee, I welcome your questions. [The prepared statement of Mr. Zerkel follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Zerkel. Mr. Burnett, welcome. STATEMENT OF MIKE BURNETT, FIRE CHIEF, CHELAN COUNTY FIRE DISTRICT 1 Mr. Burnett. Thank you very much, Madam Chair and Senators. Thank you for the opportunity to offer this testimony to the Committee. My perspective comes from that of a Fire Chief in North Central Washington as well as an incident management team member as a planning section chief, one of the type one teams that are put together on a national basis. The fire season for us in our county started in late June with the Sleepy Hollow fire in Wenatchee. We had 30 homes that were lost and three warehouses. Followed by the next tragic fire which was the Reach fire in Lake Chelan. The Reach fire combined with the other fires in the area became part of the Chelan Complex that grew to almost 90,000 acres and destroyed 51 homes and an additional three warehouses. Five days later we had the tragic loss of three firefighters outside of Twist, all that's happened in North Central Washington. The 2015 fire season was also my busiest year as an incident management team member. Our team was deployed to four different fires, the Newby Lake fire which came out of Canada into Northern Washington, the National Creek Complex fire in Crater Lake National Park and then North Central Washington again for the North Star fire and the Tunk Block fire. Efforts are being made to address the growing costs and severities of wildfires. On a regional level the Okanogan/ Wenatchee National Forest, BLM, the Washington Department of Natural Resources and all of the local fire districts have worked together to ensure that we work more collaboratively when a fire occurs. Recently our community hosted a one day summit titled, ``The Wildfire and Us.'' The goal of the summit was to develop a regional approach to reduce the risk of wildfires. Attended by approximately 500 residents it was a great success and illustrated the interest that people in our region have on the subject. Locally Chelan County Fire District 1 has established a connection with the Forest Ridge Wildfire Coalition. Our department has partnered with the Forest Ridge Coalition to assist them with grant funding for fuel reduction projects, participates with their Fire Wise community outreach and has initiated an alert system to notify their board members who in turn activate their phone tree. From a local perspective if we're to improve our ability to respond to wildfires, I believe that we need to address four issues: increase our efforts on education and prevention, support quicker initial attack, continue fuel reduction efforts, and allow for earlier utilization of air resources. Education and prevention needs to occur on a local level. Our firefighters are part of our community and they're trusted, respected and capable of providing the education to the public. The problem is most rural fire districts have limited staffing due to funding. The Sleepy Hollow fire that I referenced earlier had approximately 150 firefighters assigned to it, of which 120 of them were volunteers. Any Federal funding to support a wildfire education and prevention program would pay substantial dividends. Training local firefighters to perform home assessments, cost shares on hardening homes, conducting evacuation preparedness drills and education on the value of beneficial fires are all examples of a good prevention program. The value of a prepared community translates directly to a safer environment for firefighters. Next we need to augment the initial attack capabilities of local resources. I measure initial attack response times in minutes and catching a wildfire in hours. Local jurisdictions need resources available to them and much quicker than what wildland agencies are currently able to provide. We have--we need funding for the seasonal firefighters to be available on a local level so that the initial attack can be more robust and more rapid. These seasonal hires could also be used to enhance the community's outreach with a focus on building a more fire adapted community. We need to continue the fuel modification efforts. The treatment area near the Beehive Reservoir just outside of Wenatchee is a great example of how it can reduce the impacts of wildfire. The Peavine fire in 2012 burned through the area, stayed on the ground as a surface fire and was stopped on a Forest Service road system. And last, the use of aviation resources early on can keep a small fire from becoming another expensive, large fire. Unfortunately as an incident commander from a local fire district I have to rely on the Forest Service or a state duty officer to arrive on the scene, make a determination if the fire is in their jurisdiction or a threat to their jurisdiction before a helicopter can be ordered. Most fire districts cannot afford the cost of air attack resources. If the State and Federal Government want the fire extinguished when they are small and manageable, we need the resources to do the job. Give the local fire chief the authority to call for them when they're needed and have the State or Federal Government pay for it so that the local fire district is not financially devastated. I provided my perception of the complex issue. By no means do I feel that the system is broken; however, there are opportunities to improve our efforts via the funding for rural fire departments, enhancing education and prevention strategies and continuing fuel reduction efforts. In closing I want to thank the Committee again for hearing my testimony and I appreciate the opportunity to provide a voice in this important discussion. [The prepared statement of Mr. Burnett follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] The Chairman. Thank you, Chief. Mr. Wyss, welcome. STATEMENT OF JON WYSS, CHAIRMAN, OKANOGAN COUNTY LONG TERM RECOVERY GROUP Mr. Wyss. Senator Murkowski, Senator Cantwell and members of the Committee, thank you for holding this hearing today. I was born in Thermopolis, Wyoming, son of a seventh and eighth grade science teacher and raised in Worland, Wyoming just east of Yellowstone National Park. Growing up in Wyoming allowed me to have great respect for our natural environment, natural resources, natural parks and people. It also allowed me to see my first wildfire disaster in 1988 when Yellowstone was set ablaze by a lightning strike. Who knew 27 years later I'd be in the middle of back-to-back wildfires in Eastern Washington which have destroyed over 500 structures in a community with less than one percent vacancy rate. After graduating high school I attended college in Texas, and I worked for the U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee offices in four separate states, then served as a Chief Deputy Assessor in Spokane County and even served three days as a state senator when Senator Benson was on military leave. I now work for my wife's family company, Gebbers Farms, who provided suppression resources in 2014 and in 2015. We also lost 7,000 acres of our private timberlands that abut the Forest Service and DNR. My upbringing and background and Chair as the Long Term Recovery Group give me a perspective at looking how these fires disrupted our communities. The 2015 Washington wildfires consumed one million acres and consisted of eight fires. The fire storms called multiple level 3 evacuations including my own home. When it came time to evacuate not all the memories could be packed up, not all the animals could fit in one trailer and so gates swung open, fences were cut and animals were left to fend for themselves. When people could return some came back to their homes standing. Others lost everything including their animals, only to be known by the bangs tag in the dead animal's ear. Then as the fires raged on and the winds picked up we heard over the radio a call that no firefighter ever wants to hear. We have seven firefighters trapped. On that fateful day the bell rang for the last time for three brave souls, excuse me, as they tried to escape. We pay our respects to the victims and their families where they sacrificed everything. At the time Washington State's FEMA application, an estimated $123 million in suppression costs were expended. We question if some of these costs could have been avoided with better real time weather information. The National Weather Service Doppler radar network has a gap in coverage in our state where we can't see below 10,000 feet in Chelan, Douglas or Okanogan Counties where most of these fires occurred. In Washington State the U.S. Forest Service has four times more land than that owned by the state. Over the last 27 years we've seen a change in forest management practices and a decline in timber harvest in our state. By not allowing fires to burn as they historically have or thinning out all the trees that have resulting growing up we've increased the fuel load and lowered the timber value and increased chances for massive wildfire. After back-to-back fires many are saying log it, graze it or watch it burn. But we do not want to promote unabated logging and landscape alterations. Common ground can be found on these issues. A local rancher and forester told me, ``We must remember, fire is good for the environment when it can burn along the ground in a controlled manner. Fire is not good when it races through untreated corridors of riparian area that have been untouched for 30 years leading to bad fire. These conditions can be changed with proper management that isn't paralyzed by incessant threats and appeals. It's not a zero sum game where these disasters have to happen before we hit the reset button.'' What lessons can and have we learned from the fires? Lesson one. It starts here, right here today is what decides it all. The Committee hearing and the comments from those testifying will be decided where we go in the future. It starts right here with you, the elected officials who can pass legislation and have oversight so this doesn't happen again. It starts from the agencies wanting to make sure the changes that are needed are being bold in their choices to ensure this doesn't happen again. For example, on this summer's fire near me a state contracted CAT was being used to build a fire suppression line through state and private lands. When the CAT and driver hit the Forest Service grounds the CAT was stopped, stopping suppression activities because the CAT didn't have a Federal certification. Lesson two. For the first time in decades Washington put out a call for volunteers to come help fight fires, but we didn't have enough fire-trained bosses to lead those volunteers. Lesson three. The land is precious. What we can all agree is the land is precious. We've learned over the years that it's expensive to manage lands, but even more so to repair them devastated by fire. It's time we end fire borrowing and put the money back into the proper management of lands to make our lands healthier, our forests healthier and our national, our natural resource economy vibrant in our local and tribal communities. What are the cascading impacts of wildfire in our communities? As you heard 20 percent of the managed timber lands of the Colville Reservation burned with up to $1 billion in value. The Spokane Tribes estimated in the Carpenter Road fire they lost $1 million of timber. Citizens of this great nation are owners of the land. It ought to mean something. After the Carlton Complex fire the State House passed Representative Joel Kretz's bill, House Bill 2093, unanimously. Passage of this bill was important as on August 14th the lightning strike struck in the Carlton Complex donut hole, as we call it. The Paradise fire was threatening 22,000 acres of which half was Forest Service ground. Gebbers Farm mobilized the necessary equipment to surround the fire, contain it from spreading, utilizing the new law. What could have been a 22,000 acre fire was 2.7 acres and out immediately. I would be remiss if I didn't thank the Forest Service, USDA, Department of Interior, FEMA and a host of other Federal agencies who have worked closely with our long term recovery group to assist our community in recovery efforts. Last, Senator Cantwell, we appreciate that you held the meeting in Wenatchee and then co-hosted a meeting in Spokane with Representative Morris Rogers. The meetings with various fire chiefs, industry leaders and elected officials kept this issue in the forefront and has led to ideas gathered that will lead to change. Right here today we can make a difference, and right now it's up to us. Thank you for your time. [The prepared statement of Mr. Wyss follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Wyss. Your testimony reminds us that there are true consequences, unfortunately, very tragic consequences when we fail to manage properly. There is a lot of discussion around these halls about needing to end fire borrowing, and it is more than just about money. We have to make sure that we have the resources, but I think we also recognize that we have some management issues that we have to deal with. We need to make sure these resources that we direct are spent wisely. So to listen to some of what you have just pointed out, what Mr. Maisch has pointed out, what Mr. Zerkel has pointed out, in terms of the lack of coordination, the double standards, the failure to manage some of what we are looking at, these are some of the concerns that I hope we will get out on the table today as we try to address the bigger picture that we are facing and again, the ever increasing threat to our forests. I wanted to ask a little bit about aviation coordination. Mr. Maisch, you brought it up initially, and I think, Ms. Fennell, you alluded to it a little bit with your discussion about the aviation assets. It is really discouraging, extraordinarily discouraging, to hear that you have different standards for aircraft used for fire suppression between the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior and that you can literally be poised to move in to address the fire and you are held back because you do not have the proper certification. You do not have the aircraft carded. How do we get around this? Mr. Maisch, you have been dealing with these different standards and you see how it impacts the efficiency and the ability of our agencies to effectively engage in these fire suppression efforts. What do we need to do here? It should not be this hard, and we have had hearings before this Committee that I have been part of where we say, particularly in a state like Alaska where you have got your BLM lands, you have your Forest Service lands, you have your State lands, and you have tribal lands. The fire does not care whose land it is. The fire is going to go where the fire is going to go. Why can't we do a better job with this interagency coordination? What do we need to do? I will start with you, Mr. Maisch, and anyone else that would like to contribute is welcome to join. Mr. Maisch. Ah yes, thank you, Senator, for the question. It's a good question but unfortunately it's not an easy solution. We've been working on this for several years to try and streamline and get the two agencies to basically have a seamless process that if one agency cards a ship, it's good to go. It's not another cooperator letter or another carding process that it has to go through. They are carding to the exact same standards, so it's very perplexing. The Chairman. Then if they are carding to the same standards, why do you have to have multiple cards or multiple certifications? That makes no sense. Mr. Maisch. That's an excellent question. I wish I had an answer for you on that, but we've been frustrated for years. And you see the about eight examples we gave, specifically in the written testimony, about other examples around the country. Incidents happened in Oregon, Nevada, Alaska, Montana. So it's not just a one off situation, unfortunately. And the point I made about treating the states as equals and allowing them to basically modify the agreements we currently have with the Federal Government to reflect that if one agency does the process and approves the ship and the pilot, it's basically good to go across the board. And it's basically some bureaucracy there. The Chairman. Does anyone else have an answer for how we address it? I hear the frustration. We all have the frustration, but it ought not be this hard and recognizing that we do have the same standards that should be okay. What Mr. Zerkel raised with the standards that we have between the commercial aircraft and the government-owned aircraft that, to me, is absolutely unacceptable. You go with your highest standard, and those set by the FAA, it seems to me, makes sense. But to have safety standards that are less, if a government-owned aircraft verses a commercial aircraft, we have got to get that one worked out. Ms. Fennell, do you have any observations based on your reviews? Ms. Fennell. We haven't looked specifically at the carding issue that is mentioned here, but we did note in our reports that there are challenges associated with collaboration amongst the agencies. And in fact, for one of our reports we did have a recommendation where we called for enhanced collaboration amongst the agencies in terms of looking at the performance of aircraft. But to date-- The Chairman. We have been doing that for years. This is not a case of first impression here. This has been going on for years. I am just stunned that we are not any better, not further along. Let me turn to Senator Cantwell and then we will come back for a second round of questions. Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Madam Chairman. There are a couple things I wanted to mention before I ask questions. First of all, Mr. Wyss, thank you and Gebbers for everything you did in the Carlton Complex. I think you are talking in testimony about so many things. You mentioned it, but I do not think it really is crystal clear what you were saying that is that you and individual citizens and employees of Gebbers basically went out and held the line and really prevented a lot more acres from burning and did an incredible job of also helping the Town of Pateros. So thank you, and thanks for being here. Chief Burnett, thank you so much for everything that you have done over these fire seasons and for helping us illuminate some of the issues about what I have heard on the ground in Washington State that I just call hasty response, which is just how can we be more active in using people to jump on fires immediately when they start. So thank you for articulating that. I also want to mention that last night the Forest Service did announce $300,000 to Chelan for recovery. But I wanted to get to these handouts I gave my colleagues. So if we could put these up, there are handouts that actually show three slides. One, the 2012 Wenatchee Complex and fires. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] One thing, Mr. Burnett, you did not mention when you kept saying warehouses were burned down. Could you explain to people what was in these warehouses? Mr. Burnett. Yes, the community of Wenatchee, we lost approximately $110 million worth of assessed value. The fire spotted from the Broadview neighborhood over a mile into an industrial area, took hold initially in a recycling plant and spread to the roofs of a chemical warehouse storage building and then spread to two large fruit packing plants. So yes. Senator Cantwell. All of this is the home to the apple industry in Washington State and why it is so--okay so the next chart demonstrates the Beehive Reservoir. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] So the red is encroaching fire from this season and the community that was trying to be protected. This Beehive Reservoir area is where you did actual treatment. Is that correct? Mr. Burnett. Right. So you can barely see it there, but the Forest Ridge neighborhood is a Fire Wise community. They've taken a lot of efforts to protect the approximately 70 homes that are there, and we've done grant funding with them to do fuel modifications right around the neighborhood. We've tried to partner with the state agencies as well as the Federal agencies on choosing those areas where the fuel treatments would be best suited. The Beehive Reservoir has had a lot of fuel treatment around there by Forest Service and that fire that, you see the perimeter, is the Peavine fire that was coming into, threatening that area. It's less than two miles away. The fuel treatment in Beehive Reservoir area was significant in controlling the fire. In 2012, the Wenatchee Complex had over 60 fires that we were dealing with and so being able to allocate a limited number of resources in that area on a fire suppression effort that took a minimal amount of resources was significant for us. Senator Cantwell. Well and fuel treatment, you are saying that was a success in a year that we actually even saw places where the fire jumped the Columbia River. So we had extreme weather conditions blowing that up. Mr. Burnett. Yes. Senator Cantwell. So can you go to the last page which I actually wanted Dr. Covington or Mr. Wyss to comment on. This is an up close of the area that Bryan Petit from our staff was just there visiting. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] You can see on one side of the road the treated area, and on the other side the burned area, so basically it did not jump over to the other side of the road. I think one of the most important things that you said in your testimony is this issue about surface to crown. From our state agency, from our DNR Director and everybody, it is all about the crowns, right? The ferocity of our fires are from crown to crown. What we are talking about here is reducing the ability to get to crown level by basically reducing the surface timber. So if you wanted to further elaborate on the challenge that we have with all this Ponderosa Pine not having been treated for some time and what that means as far as the ability to go crown to crown and the kind of devastation we're seeing? Dr. Covington. Yes. So about 90 percent of our mega fires are in the dry forest types in the West. This last season we saw mega fires in areas where crown fires are normal, just not crown fires of that size, of the size that we encountered. So they are separate problems. On the one hand with frequent fire forests, like Ponderosa Pine, they were originally, before fire regime suppression, were open and park like. The fires naturally burned through the understory. The plants and animals were adapted to these fires. These fires are easy to control, if you want to control them, although it's not always clear why you might want to control surface fires. As the forest filled in we moved from a frequent fire regime in Ponderosa Pine to a crown fire regime. So we essentially created the kinds of fuels that occur naturally in Spruce, Fir and Lodgepole Pine over tens of millions of acres throughout the West. So the solution in that type is restoration, is thinning out the post-settlement trees, conserving the old growth trees which are so important for wildlife and aesthetics, biodiversity and then reintroducing natural fires, fires that would burn on the two to maybe, 15 year interval. In the crown fire types, in Spruce, Fir, like in interior Alaska, Lodgepole Pine types, we have a different problem. There the fires have always been crown fires but they were smaller crown fires on the scale of like in the case of the Yellowstone ecosystem, somewhere on the order of 100,000 acres, 200,000 acres. But what we've seen over time with fire suppression is that we get an area that's ready to burn now. Fifty years from now being adjacent to five other areas that have accumulated crown fuels to the point that they'll support fires, it's a lot easier to fight a 100,000 acre fire where you know that's as far as it's going to go than it is a million acre fire. When we're dealing with mega fires we--this is very recent. We just don't have the capability to deal with fires of that size, so the restoration in that area of sizes, it's patch sizes, involves putting in fuel breaks. If you weren't worried about aesthetics, it would probably be clear cut fuel breaks between these different patches to break them up so that they can then burn at a more normal size. Senator Cantwell. Thank you. And thank you, Madam Chairman, I know my time is up. The Chairman. Senator Daines? Senator Daines. Thank you, Chairman Murkowski and Ranking Member Cantwell for holding this critically important hearing. I have got to say I am tired of talking about this. I want to see action out of Congress. We need to do something. Like much of the West, Montana had a very difficult fire season. Over 300,000 acres burned, multiple evacuations of populated communities were ordered. In fact one firefighter from Stevensville, Montana was the only survivor of that four member crew where three of them lost their lives in Western Washington that was referenced twice in this hearing already. This year's fire season demonstrated the need for a strong wildfire funding solution that is a support of the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act. I strongly believe Congress should relieve the Forest Service of the suppression costs of fires that are truly natural disasters, but at the same time the fire season also demonstrated the urgent need for restoration work to be done in Montana and other parts of the country. Consider, for example, lessons of the Bear Creek fire in the Flathead National Forest. I was up at the Incident Command Center of West Glacier here when the big fires in Glacier were burning this summer. Bear Creek is not too far away. It was incredibly hot with flame lengths reaching 100 feet. As the fire progressed to the Meadow Creek trailhead, it went to a spot where we had a recently completed a thinning project. However, when it hit the recently completed thinning project, guess what happened? It settled down considerably. Local Forest Service officials said the thinning project really worked. That is the good news. Now here is the bad news. The thinning project was part of the larger Spotted River project that was hamstrung by litigation for several years. According to nonpartisan research done by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana the case was in court for over 1,000 days. So instead of planning for a new forest restoration project, 18 Forest Service personnel spent nearly 2,000 hours responding to the lawsuit. Further, the study found that over 100 forest project jobs were threatened. It pointed out that the litigation delayed efforts to improve recreation access and wildlife habitat. I was chasing elk just this last weekend in Montana, and you hear both the quantitative as well as qualitative stories about when you thin the forest it improves the habitat for the wildlife. It is quite possible that the work that was upended by the litigation could have further mitigated the damage when that fierce, fierce, Bear Creek fire swept through. The Forest Service ultimately prevailed in court, but the impacts of litigation against this project and many, many others are extensive and they are severe and they should not be accepted. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let's come together and pass a wildfire funding solution as well as timber management that includes some litigation reform so we can move forward here and protect our forests, protect our jobs and protect the lives of the men and women who fight these fires. Dr. Covington, you talked about the importance of thinning and prescribed burns, you also talk about the dangers of excessive stand densities. Do you think that providing the Forest Service with additional tools such as expanded categorical exclusion authorities could help the agency get substantially more restoration work done? Dr. Covington. Yes, of course it could. One of the problems that we've solved, I think, in a lot of the collaborative work is that when you get local people together to support a project, if you have strong, local, political support, you can, kind of, head off legal action that might otherwise stop a project. So there's the one approach that you're describing is let's have more categorical exclusions and that, obviously, if that could get through, you'd still have potential political blow back from it that could slow a project down. If you have local, political support that's well organized and engaged in it, in many ways I think that would be more robust. Senator Daines. Yes. Mr. Covington, in addition to, I think, that reform is needed, would include incentives for the collaborative efforts as well. It is working in Montana. The problem is the extreme environmental groups that litigate the collaborations are not part of the collaboration. They are waiting at the courthouse to file the lawsuit once the collaboration wants to move forward. Dr. Covington. That's right, and so it seems to me, Senator Daines, that there's, just like there are variations across the landscape in fuel accumulation and forest types, there are variations across the political landscape that make different solutions more helpful in one area than in another. And we don't typically analyze that. Senator Daines. Right. Let me ask one last question, Ms. Fennell, because my time is out. Ms. Fennell, I think performance metrics and accountability are vital and thank you for being here. You note in your testimony that the Forest Service is beginning to improve at understanding fuel treatment effectiveness. Do you have any other thoughts on how Congress can further enhance accountability on the agency in terms of both finding the most effective fuels reduction treatment for a given area and in maximizing the amount of effective fuels reduction projects it does each year? Ms. Fennell. Senator, I think it would be important to continue oversight in terms of the new efforts that they are putting into place regarding looking at the effectiveness of their fuel treatment program. They--we noted in 2007 that, they did not have sufficient information by which to evaluate the effectiveness of the fuel treatment programs, and therefore had impacts in terms of how they would allocate the resources accordingly. Since that time they have established a new system called the Fuel Treatment Effectiveness Monitoring Program. It is in process, and I think it would be important to continue oversight over it to see how it's progressing and whether it's getting the information that's needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the fuel treatment program. Senator Daines. Thank you. I am out of time. The Chairman. Senator Heinrich? Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Dr. Covington, I want to start with you, and I want to start with a thank you actually because I think in oh, seven years of Natural Resources Committee meetings on both sides of the Capitol in both the House and the Senate, I think you are probably the first person to succinctly articulate that we need different strategies for different forest types and that what works in a Ponderosa Pine forest that should be burning every 2 to 15 years is not exactly the same prescription that we are going to need in a closed canopy forest, be it Spruce, Fir, or Lodgepole Pine further north. I think that is really helpful. I think we tend to oversimplify things here in Washington, but I think that comes with the territory. You said you used the phrase, ``an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.'' I think we all wish that everyone agreed with that approach, but one of the challenges we have had has simply been being able to show and justify the restoration efforts and show that they actually do pay off economically in the long run. And that goes back to the question that Senator Daines was raising as well about evaluation of those. Can you talk a little bit about data capture and particularly one you are able to wrap things in like the potential impacts to municipal water supplies and soil impacts, about the cost effectiveness of being able to do, especially these Ponderosa Pine, restoration projects rather than waiting for these areas to burn and starting from scratch? Dr. Covington. So quickly then there. We have studies where we've approached this two ways. One is looking at areas that have already burned over, large landscapes and then examining the portions of those landscapes that had been treated before with restoration treatments. And repeatedly what we see is that in areas where the forest had been restored to more natural conditions they stand up, even under the most severe fire conditions. Senator Heinrich. Right. Dr. Covington. They survive well. Fires burn through the understory, and then once they get out of the treatment they get up in the crowns again and run. These kinds of fuel breaks, restoration-based fuel breaks in Ponderosa Pine, we see have saved houses, have saved entire communities as well. In the back country this works also to protect Mexican spotted owl nest sites and other highly-valued portions of the landscape. So one way is an ex post facto is to go out there, see what happens and the evidence is overwhelming. It works. The other thing that we've done is what I mentioned in my testimony, is we've looked at fires and then analyzed what the potential fire behavior would have been had treatments been put in elsewhere. When we do that sort of analysis what we see is, by breaking up landscape scale fuel community, continuity. Senator Heinrich. Right. Dr. Covington. You can protect values at risk, including homes, where if embers are coming two to four miles away. Senator Heinrich. Gotcha. Dr. Covington. Being dropped into communities. Senator Heinrich. Thank you. I want to shift real quick to Ms. Fennell. I want to start by just saying that I think it is clear that at this point using the 10-year average to budget for fires is no longer working for us. If you look back at the last 9 of 11 years, using the 10-year average has underestimated the Forest Service's suppression costs 9 out of those 11 years and it was actually 40 percent below actual costs during that period. With the climate shifting that we are seeing we do not see that trend exactly slowing down, so the ten-year average standard was created at a time to ensure that in most years the agencies would have the funds that they needed to cover those costs. That is not what we are seeing work out today. So if that no longer works as a construct do you have advice for how we should be budgeting for something that can be as variable as fire suppression costs from year to year? Ms. Fennell. Senator, we haven't specifically looked at that particular issue as part of our current effort. I think the last time we looked at various options available for legislative action was about 2004. We noted that there are various pros and cons with each approach that's taken, but we haven't specifically looked at the current issue that you're raising as part of our current work. Senator Heinrich. Does anyone else have a comment? Mr. Maisch. Yes, I'd like to respond to that. We do much the same in the state. We talk about a 10-year average and budget for that but what we found, as you alluded to because of changing weather patterns and climate, you have these extreme events much more frequently. And it's hard for a 10-year average to fit to that kind of a scenario. So you really need the flexibility from an agency perspective to do a disaster declaration which is what we do in our state and the supplement suppression accounts when those kinds of events have occurred. You've got to have some kind of system that allows that flexibility because it's hard to anticipate the kinds of events that we're seeing. Senator Heinrich. That is helpful, thank you very much. The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Barrasso? Senator Barrasso. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. You know this year is another example why it is a necessity to conduct more prescribed fires, perform more fuel reduction treatments and undertake more vegetation management projects to thin our unnaturally, overcrowded forests. According to the Forest Service between 62 and 82 million acres are in need of treatment and are at risk of catastrophic wildfire over 40 percent of the entire National Forest system and the number is growing. We simply cannot allow the status quo to continue. That is why I have introduced S. 1691, a bill called the National Forest Ecosystem Improvement Act. It is designed to make treating our forests a priority it needs to be. The Forest Service also states specifically there are about 12 and a half million acres in need of mechanical treatment such as thinning. With these numbers in mind do each of you agree that Congress must take action to increase the pace of treatment using both prescribed fire and mechanical methods to restore forest health and reduce the severity and the size of wildfires? Everyone agrees with that? [Witnesses shaking heads yes, simultaneously.] Senator Barrasso. Alright. Dr. Covington, in your written testimony you say it is too late to use controlled burning alone to protect communities and restore forest health. You then explain why first thinning and removing unnaturally high tree densities and then introducing fire produced stunning results. Would you elaborate on why you think it is too late to just use controlled burns alone and what are some of the stunning results that you are seeing? Dr. Covington. Okay. So when I first started out in this work back in `75/'76 I was pretty much thinking that if fire exclusion had caused this problem you just put fire back in. It ought to solve the problem, and so I embarked on a 6-year program of study working with cooperatives with the Forest Service to try this. What we found in dense forests of Ponderosa Pine which is 95 percent of the Ponderosa Pine type is that we could not develop a safe prescription. On several circumstances we had fires get into the canopy, become independent crown fires and fortunately we had enough suppression force around to knock them down again. But I was on the verge of becoming the shortest lived professor in the school of forestry. I would have been fired if we'd burned up the San Francisco Peaks from those early experiments. Then that caused us to look at thinning out the post settlement trees to try to restore natural conditions, and those first experiments have just been so stunning. We've now done this throughout areas in the West, especially Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. What we see is old growth trees that have put on no growth at all for decades start growing like teenagers. We see abundant grass production and wildfire production understory, a tremendous blossoming of birds, songbirds, butterflies and everything. So every aspect that we look at in forest health shows that these work. The difficulty that we've got, Senator Barrasso, is not all areas are accessible for being able to remove all of the biomass and the thin material. So a problem that we're dealing with right now is trying to figure out how can you do onsite disposal of some of these materials while not creating excessive fire hazard or dumping a lot of smoke into the atmosphere. We're talking about putting a lot of treatments down there around urban interface areas, and that's where people live and people have asthma and they have lung diseases and they like to breathe clean air. So right now we're putting a lot of focus on how we can deal with that biomass issue. Senator Barrasso. In terms of this wildland urban interface that you just made reference to, you also write about the reduced mega fire potential when treatments in all high risk areas were performed verses treatments only in the wildland urban interface. Why are the risks of the mega fires reduced when treatment is not limited to around communities only but also treating the greater landscape as a whole? Dr. Covington. Well, thank you for the question. The treatments around communities are designed to protect houses, primarily, you know, to help out with fire department operations. When you're talking about mega fires across the landscape, that's only 5 percent or less of the landscape in most circumstances. In the back country is where we have our natural resource values, the watershed function, biological diversity, wildlife, recreation opportunities and so on. So I don't think anyone wants just the houses in burned over landscapes. I had one study area over in Los Alamos back with the Cerro Grande fire. This one elderly couple had a brick home. They had cleared out around their house. It survived the Cerro Grande fire. They got smoke damage payments. All the houses around them burned, but they didn't want to live in a burned over landscape. Out back, you know, from their door was a wonderful little canyon that just burned to a crisp, killed all the old growth trees. And ironically on their property there was an old growth tree that had been labeled in Forest Service research in 1911--it was 480 years old--that had survived. It had fire scars on it. It survived 40, 50 fires, and then in that one fire it burned up. So most people that are living in this country don't want their cabin or their house or their subdivision in a burned over landscape. So we've got to look at it in the whole habitat point of view, I think. Senator Barrasso. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman. The Chairman. Senator Stabenow? Senator Stabenow. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman and our Ranking Member for holding this hearing. These are very, very important issues and it is interesting to me that I find myself on the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, Energy Committee and Budget Committee, I am, I think, the only member on all three committees that are touching all of this, and it is incredibly important. Let me start out by saying we just held a hearing in the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee a few weeks ago, and we found amazing consensus around the issue on the budget and on Senators Crapo and Wyden's bill. In fact it was interesting. Every single person that testified from across the political spectrum was saying that we needed to start the wildfire discussion by fixing the Forest Service budget and the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act. So I want to applaud Senator Wyden and Senator Crapo for that because I do think when we are looking at mega fires, like you have been talking about today and natural disasters, that it is incredibly important that we understand what is coming and more and more and deal with it in a different way. I would like though to start, Mr. Maisch, with talking about what happens, because we are taking all the funding. I mean, we passed a Farm bill in 2014 with the most robust funding we have ever had in a forestry title to try to get ahead of things by doing it and creating a number of tools to deal with prevention and so on. All that money is going to fight the fires, so we are not able to get ahead of it. Because you concluded in your written testimony support for the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, I wonder if you might talk some about the basic Forest Service functions and programs in Alaska that are suffering because the agency is forced to spend so much of their budget on wildfire suppression? Mr. Maisch. Ah yes, thank you for that question, Senator. It's not as much in Alaska as in other parts of the country because, of course, the Tongass is not a fire driven ecosystem. So there's different issues affecting the Tongass of which I'm sure we don't have time to go into. But I can speak to the issue of more active management on Forest Service lands. When they have to divert funds, essentially borrow funds, to pay for suppression costs it takes away from all the proactive activities, pre-commercial thinning, commercial thinning, restoration work. You can almost name the type of activity. It restricts the funds available for that type of work. I think you heard from everyone on this panel and as you alluded from other panels that you've heard from that you have to get in front of this problem. You have to be proactive, and you can't just pay for fighting fire. We need to pay to prevent fire where we don't want fire. Senator Stabenow. Thank you. To that point, Mr. Burnett, I wondered if you might speak a little bit more to the fact that our forests are not just on Federal lands, as we have all said, or even on state lands, there is private land as well. And our private landowners and states have a huge role in making forests more resilient to wildfire, both to protect lives and property and safeguard drinking water and so on, all the issues we have talked about today. We have worked again back into what we did in the forestry title of the Farm bill to expand what is called Good Neighbor Authority a couple of years ago, and we have seen some Good Neighbor Agreements signed recently in Wisconsin and Michigan that are positive. I wonder if you could speak a bit from your experience to the importance of forest health efforts between Federal, State, and private land boundaries and what types of policies and concepts should we be thinking about as we build on the Good Neighbor Authority? Mr. Burnett. Thank you, Senator. So it is not just a Federal issue. The local fire districts are your first line of defense in protecting those homes that are in the wildland urban interface. The homeowners also have to understand that they have a responsibility to help harden their homes and to take the efforts to reduce the fuel around their homes. They need to work as a community. The Sleepy Hollow fire, part of the neighborhoods that were affected, had defensible spaces around them and we were able to steer the fire around that. It got into the Broadview neighborhood and those homes are tightly packed together and they're sitting right on top of a ravine that has old growth sage in it. When the fire hit that it came up over the homes and was basically a tidal wave of flames, and there's nothing that we could have done to protect those homes. It is not just the Federal efforts, but it is the local efforts as well. The city of Wenatchee has enacted the WUI fire codes from ICC, and those types of efforts need to happen both on a city and a county level to help us give us the tools to be successful when the fire does come into a WUI interface area. Senator Stabenow. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. Senator Risch [presiding]: Thank you, Senator Stabenow. Senator Gardner, you are up. Senator Gardner. Thank you, Senator Risch. And to the panelists, thank you for being here. According to the Congressional Research Service, since 2000 we have had an average of about 74,000 wildfires burning an average of 6.6 million acres. We have talked about the numbers and how 7 of the past 11 years have been beyond that. During the 1990's the annual average of burned acres was 3.6 million acres. So I appreciate the work Dr. Covington is doing and appreciate the presence in Colorado at the Institute. We have obviously felt the burn as well in Colorado in terms of the forest fires and the destruction that has occurred. In June 2013 the Black Forest fire, northeast of Colorado Springs, saw 14,280 acres and 488 structures destroyed. A year earlier in June 2012 the Wallow Canyon fire, outside of Colorado Springs, saw 18,000, nearly 19,000 acres burned and 346 homes destroyed. In 2012 we saw the High Park fire in Larimer County destroy nearly 87,000 acres and 259 structures. In 2010 the Four Mile Canyon, northwest of Boulder, saw 6,000 acres burned and 170 structures burned down. And of course, one of the most infamous wildfires in Colorado history occurred in June 2002 when the Hayman fire burned 136,000 acres and saw the destruction of 600 structures. While we have experienced significant wildfires over the past 15 years, our state's development, like the rest of the country with an interest to fire developing in the wildland urban interface, as we have talked about here this morning. According to a 2007 Colorado State University study between 2000 and 2030 there will be a 300 percent increase in Colorado's WUI interface from 715,000 acres to more than 2.1 million acres. Building upon that study in late October of this year the American Forest Foundation came out with a report on wildfires that highlights areas of our nation that are most at risk for wildfires and threat to watersheds. The analysis found that there are 52 million acres at high risk for fire on private land, on family forest land in addition to the 93 million acres on public land. Of these 52 million acres, 1.3 million of them are in Colorado. And so, Mr. Burnett, I have a question for you. Given that you serve in an area of Washington with significant fire risk that also has considerable wildland urban interface, what steps do you think we should take to address the risk to private or family forest land? Mr. Burnett. As I said before, the rural fire departments are staffed with primarily volunteers, and there's a need for additional resources to make an initial attack and keep the fires small and prevent it from becoming one of the larger fires. The ability for us to extinguish the fire on that initial attack is critical. I mentioned the fact that we need the ability to activate air resources in order to fight those fires and not wait for the Federal or State agencies to come in to assist us with that and to call for those assets. I think that's my answer. Senator Gardner. Yes and I think at the beginning of your testimony you talked about four points. I think you talked about education, quick attack, fuel reduction, and aerial response. Mr. Burnett. Yes. Senator Gardner. When it comes to aerial response in Colorado there has been significant debate about whether or not there should be a state aerial firefighting fleet. Is that something that you have seen in Washington or other states looking at that? Mr. Burnett. Yes. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources has eight helicopters available for deployment. Chelan County Fire District One actually has a UH1 medium helicopter that we acquired years and years ago. It was leased to DNR for many years and then they built up their fleet and decided that they no longer needed it. As you've heard in testimony here, our helicopter is not available to be utilized on State and Federal fires because our pilots aren't carded for long line operations. The helicopter itself is carded but not our pilots. Senator Gardner. That is something I think that we have seen in Colorado too, because down in the Southwest corner of the state where you have the narrow gauge railroads and you have a privately-owned railroad that draws thousands of tourists every year. The railroad company has a firefighting fleet but they are restricted to activities within 50, I cannot remember the number of feet, the right of way that they are allowed to act in, but if they go beyond that they get in trouble from the Forest Service for trying to put out a fire. I understand the Forest Service has to try and protect themselves and make sure that people are taking safety into account and doing the right thing, but do you see the Forest Service willing to work with you and others on this certification issue so that we can address questions like this railroad issue to allow more private resources to be brought to bear, to allow the state to be able to provide resources more timely when available? Mr. Burnett. There have been efforts regionally for us to be able to utilize our helicopter, for example. Two years ago we would have to set down when the State or Federal helicopters entered into the air space. Last year we were allowed to actually continue flying when they entered into the air space, but they will not call or utilize our helicopter. Senator Gardner. I know I am running out of time. Ms. Fennell, has GAO taken a look at some of the ways that our Federal disaster designations work? Here is what I mean by that question. If you have a significant burn we know that any significant moisture event after that fire is going to result in flooding because of hydrophobic soil conditions and other problems that occur. Oftentimes though that next or that secondary disaster is not included in that first disaster and people have to go back and reapply, resubmit, adding cost when if they were able to address the damage done to the soil conditions to prevent that flood from occurring which you know will occur because of the next moisture event, you would have saved money in the first place. Has the GAO done any kind of look into whether we could be more efficient and effective with the initial disaster dollars by preventing the secondary disaster that comes from a fire? Ms. Fennell. We haven't specifically looked at that particular issue, but we would be happy to work with the Committee staff in terms of any interest in terms of looking at other, perhaps relevant GAO disaster work that could be applicable to this particular situation. Senator Gardner. Very good, thank you. Senator Risch. Thank you, Senator Gardner. I am going to exercise the Chairman's prerogative here and just say that I think, probably, Mr. Zerkel might have some thoughts on that exchange between Mr. Burnett and Senator Gardner. Would I be correct on that? Mr. Zerkel. Pertaining to? Senator Risch. The aerial firefighting that was referred to in the exchange between the Senator and Mr. Burnett. Mr. Zerkel. Well I can say that from our perspective the method by which the Forest Service wants to operate the C130's that they're designated is probably not the best way to go about it, that public use format. And that's really our message today is it is a poor way to go about operating aircraft. Industry has very rigid standards that must be met in order to modify an aircraft, such as putting a tanker into it. Under that public use aircraft format those rules are not applicable. I'm not saying that they don't do a good job of engineering or whoever they get to do it wouldn't do a good job of engineering, but there is not prescribed process to make sure there's no pieces missing, no holes that haven't been filled, and that's the real danger of that type of operation. Senator Risch. Thank you for thoughts, Mr. Zerkel. Mr. Maisch. Senator, might I add to that answer? Senator Risch. Please. Mr. Maisch. Yes, thank you. I didn't answer a question earlier from Senator Murkowski as well as I could have on this topic of carding, but you did have an excellent example in Colorado this year of this which illustrates this problem. You have a multi-mission aircraft the State owns. It was requested on an infrared mission in Oregon. The aircraft had been carded in Region 2, the Forest Service region, in your area and then it went over there to Region 6 and had to be re-carded again. So that's the situation, and I think the way to get at fixing this is we have various memorandums of understanding, cooperator standards, and mobilization guides that the agencies use to move things like this around the country. We need to ensure that those agreements with the states and the agencies recognize each other's standards and will accept them right up front, so there's no more of this back and forth well, it's Region 2, it's Region 6, it's OAS. Those agreements have to explicitly state if it's carded in one jurisdiction, it's good to go nationally. I think that would really help. Senator Risch. That unfortunately makes too much sense. [Laughter.] Senator Franken? Senator Franken. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I heard Senator Gardner say that Colorado felt the burn, and I was actually at the HELP Committee with Senator Sanders and apologize for not being here but I am sure that he appreciated the shout out. [Laughter.] And-- Senator Gardner. I was hoping nobody was paying attention as those words left. [Laughter.] Senator Franken. I did. Last night I read a lot of the testimony, and we are hearing common themes about the balance that is spent of suppression as opposed to prevention, the balance shifting, of course, to suppression. Also in prevention you are trying to get rid of hazardous materials as part of that. And then we heard just a lot of talk, a lot of testimony about the wildland urban interface. I would like to see and I think this is an opportunity for helping to pay for the removal of hazardous fuels from the, especially from the wildland urban interface, if we use this waste as a source for electricity because this would put a value to that biomass and also reduce the risk of fire in that space which as all the testimony says is growing. We can utilize this in terms of combined heat and power and other facilities that use woody biomass. Dr. Covington, let me ask you, are there places where forest waste is being used for biomass electricity generation, and what are the benefits of that from a forestry perspective? Dr. Covington. Yes, there are a number of places throughout the West where biomass, the slash material that's not suitable for making traditional dimension lumber or engineered forest products are being converted to electricity. So that technology exists. It's mostly an older technology that's there. So for example, in Arizona we have a plant that takes biomass from within about a 50 mile radius and generates electricity. That plant has contracts with a couple of the universities, I mean, the electrical providers in Arizona to buy that. One of the problems we've got is that with the decrease in the price of fossil fuels there's a disincentive then to use biomass which now is more expensive, even than solar. But still as part of a comprehensive package it's important. We're talking about health a few minutes ago. That biomass that's burned in a plant generates very little smoke and other items in smoke that threaten human health. So instead of burning it out in the woods if you can burn it in a facility, a biomass conversion facility, you can solve that problem. Right now the biomass part of this is a major stumbling block to how we can pay for and do effective landscape scale restoration, more work needs to be done. We've got ecological restoration institutes, state foresters and University of Idaho are working together in February to examine this biomass issue to try to look at innovative ways to do that, both for onsite disposal back in the woods without generating as much smoke and then being able to use it actually for electricity. Senator Franken. Now I have great interest in that and have. Ms. Fennell, last May Chief Tidwell testified to this Committee on the interaction wildfire and climate change and has done this a number of times. This is, in a way, I think that climate change, we have seen a change in the duration of the wildfire season. We have seen the change in the intensity of these fires and the size of these fires. This is now the new normal. I am supporting Senator Wyden's bill, the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act of 2015 because, and Mr. Chairman I am just going to go a little bit over, if that is okay, just a minute or so. Senator Risch. Do I have any choice? [Laughter.] Senator Franken. Actually, you do. Senator Risch. Go ahead. Senator Franken. Okay, thank you. Thank you for exercising your option to give me the minute or so. It seems to me that we have so much, that we are doing so much fire borrowing that we should be treating this as the new normal and that is disastrous. Superstorm Sandy caused about $60 billion in damage, or at least the cost to Federal Government that this, I think, should be treated as a new normal. I think we should be treating these as disasters, especially these super huge fires, and about 30 percent of the cost comes from that. So I would just make a plea for Senator Wyden's act which would use 30 percent as a disaster fund and treat it in that way because I think that is what it is. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Risch. Thank you, Senator Franken. Let me help you out a little bit with your interest in biomass. This is not new, particularly in Idaho. They have been running at this for over ten years, and they have been notoriously unsuccessful in doing it. Dr. Covington, rightly pointed out there's additional research going on it. I would disagree a little bit with Dr. Covington in that one of the real challenges is the fumes and smoke and what have you that is put off by the burning of the biomass. Now certainly, it is better in a controlled atmosphere than it is in the woods. But having said that, the EPA would probably disagree a bit with you, Dr. Covington, that this is something that needs additional work because the private companies that have tried to do this have not been successful at it. There have been some successes but they are very, very limited. The only way, I think, that is it is going to be done, at least under present circumstances, is with subsidies from the Federal Government. I know that does not particularly trouble you, but there are those of us who are not looking down that road very favorably, but-- Senator Franken. May I respond very quickly? Senator Risch. Please. Senator Franken. We have a combined heat and power plant in St. Paul, Minnesota that generates electricity and also does the end, does the heat and cooling for downtown St. Paul. I think they have been successful and that this has been done successfully in other places. Senator Risch. That is correct, and in the old days it was very, very common. Every small town in Idaho had a sawmill, and that sawmill had what they called a tepee right next to it. The tepee was a co-gen facility that generated heat and steam and electricity, and it was very, very, common. Every small town had one. They are all gone. I don't know, do you guys have tepees left in your states? They are gone from Idaho. But Senator Franken, you were correct. It was very, very common, but because of the cost of it and because of the environmental challenges they have been wiped out. They are gone. I am not saying it should not continue to be pursued. The University of Idaho is doing some great work in that regard. Senator Franken. It is a great university. Senator Risch. It is. It is my alma mater, I might add. [Laughter.] As long as we have mentioned that, my undergrad, as most of you know, was in Forest Management. A little over half a century ago I sat in the classroom. I took a couple of semesters of fire behaviors. If it was not the class, it was at least part of the studies in that particular class. But really, with all due respect, the things I have heard here today and the things I have heard over the many, many hearings we have had on this have really not put anything new on the table. Back then, half a century ago, we were only 53 years from the Big Burn in Idaho. Now we are over a century but back then it was only a half a century ago. The professors who taught, the people who worked in the woods, they all knew the Big Burn and they knew what had happened and they knew how fire behaved and what caused it and what the problems were. So this is not new. The problem here is not the problems that you, all of you, have described. Those problems have been known for a long, long time. The problem here is very, very political, and I do not mean republican versus democrat. With all due respect to our colleagues that live east of the Mississippi River, they really do not have an understanding of what fire is like in the ecosystem that we live in the West. And with all due respect to Senator Stabenow, who talked about private lands, look, in Idaho two out of every three acres is owned by the Federal Government. We never had a major fire in Idaho that it was not the Federal Government that was in it up to their ears and a lot of it due to poor management. The Good Neighbor laws or policies Senator Stabenow talked about, the people in Idaho do not particularly look at the Federal Government as a good neighbor when it comes to management of their yard. They do not cleanup their yard, and the result of that is we have major, major catastrophic fires and are sitting on the edge of it. When I was Governor we had a summer that had particularly bad fires, so I spent a lot of time in an airplane looking at those fires from the air. It was stunning to me. I knew this before this happened and it is not rocket science, but it was stunning what happens when a fire comes up against land that has been treated or even land that has been harvested, just harvested, or and more commonly and we have it in Idaho very commonly, and that is it comes against an area that had been burned within recent years and the fire just stops. It changes, its character changes, everything changes and the fire is much more containable. So the problem, I guess I am following the camp with Senator Daines, and that is I am just tired of talking about this, you know? We all know what the problem is, and assent of the Crapo/Wyden bill is a really, really important and good response to this. What it does so simply, it tells the Forest Service that you should be using your prevention money for prevention instead of putting the fire out. If we did that one of you said, and I do not remember who it was, that this whole thing starts right here with this Committee. You are absolutely right. This is where it starts, and we really need to get it done. Thank you for holding the hearing, again, Madam Chairman. One would hope that at some point in time we are going to be able to move forward on this. So, thank you. Mr. Wyss. Senator Risch, if I may? The Chairman [presiding]: Mr. Wyss? Mr. Wyss. The one thing that is not being discussed in all of this, we're talking about pretreatment and treatments. My job is to do long-term recovery for all the fires that have occurred in our state and around, and it comes with post- treatment as well. Once the timber has burned and it is still standing, cleaning up the fuel load of the burned timber which if not done will fall and become the next fire, and coming up with options for that including bio-char are significant items that we can look at. Because the market becomes so flooded with the burned timber, we have to find alternative options. And our state is looking significantly at bio-char and other options with that burned timber to get it out of the forest so it doesn't become fire again and fuel for the next fire. So I think we have to look at it not only as pretreatment, but post- treatment as well. Senator Risch. Thank you very much, I appreciate it. Madam Chairman, thanks. The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Risch. There has been a lot of discussion about the need to do more treatment either pre- or post- and I certainly understand that. Of course it does come down, to a certain extent, to the dollars, the resources that are made available. But we also know that we have got some obstacles just in doing that and obtaining the necessary permits. I think Senator Daines was one who mentioned it. I would throw this out to you, Mr. Maisch, maybe to Chief Burnett or Mr. Wyss as well. In terms of those obstacles that keep us from really carrying out the hazardous fuels reduction program, what is in our way? Is it just a matter of dollars? Are there more politics to it that we need to address? Can you outline some of that for me? Mr. Maisch. Yes, I'd be happy to. I think it is a suite of things. It is, in part, funding but probably the bigger part is at least on Federal lands, as we had some discussion here in the Committee, on the litigation side of this issue. Do you get at it through some kind of categorical exclusion process that would help with some of that? Do you do programmatic level NEPA that would clear very large projects on a landscape level so there's only one NEPA process and then you implement projects that are covered by that, in that umbrella NEPA project? So the potential litigants only get one bite at the apple instead of repeated bites every time we do smaller scale projects across the landscape. I think we have to start thinking in bigger terms and a broader, all hands, all lands. I think you've probably heard that term from previous committees. It's not just the Federal lands. It's the State. It's local jurisdictions. But we do have to get a handle on that Federal piece, because that's where the road block often is right now. The Chairman. Any other comments? Mr. Wyss. I would concur that in getting a handle on that. We have a DNR section of state land owned in the Carlton Complex fire that was cleared for treatment. NEPA, CEPA were both done, and the DNR was going to clear the burned timber. That is still tied up in litigation, and that timber is now falling to the ground and the wind storms and unable to clean it up or even recover dollars from that. So the litigation piece is a significant challenge to it. But it's not only litigation. We have another track that's above Highway 20 in between Twist, Washington and Okanogan, Washington where it's a multiple jurisdiction ownership. The BLM has ownership, and the Forest Service has some ownership. Trying to do the necessary treatment, post-fire, has been slowed down because the two agencies do not work together. They need to streamline that piece to get, I mean, it's all approved. But the BLM and the Forest Service are still having a slight disagreement, so on the best way to manage the removal of the timber. And that's what's causing our challenges of not being able to get this done. The Chairman. Ms. Fennell, you have in your report looked at the, just the reviews, the fire reviews and the concerns that we are seeing that we have not been doing the reviews as has been directed. Are some of the things, for instance, that Mr. Wyss just mentioned in terms of the agencies not coordinating well with one another? Is that something that we need to beef up or make sure are included as part of these reviews is what happens after the fire? Ms. Fennell. We think that the reviews are a very important way of assessing the effectiveness of their ability to respond to fires and to suppress fires. And we called for, specifically, that they consider specific, clear criteria that they can use to select fires and then to conduct the fires and update their policies accordingly. We think that they can consider a multitude of criteria in selecting those fires and look for reducing how they are going to implement our recommendation to do so. The Chairman. This might not be a fair question, but I am going to ask it anyway. Is there one agency--does Forest Service do a better job than BLM or a State? Can you give me an indicator as to whether or not there is one model that might be working better than others or are all of these equally fraught with problems? Ms. Fennell. Our work has shown that both Forest Service and Interior could benefit from greater information to make informed decisions. And we've noted in our recent work that both are looking to implement a number of different efforts to improve the way that they are fighting wildland fire. But there has been a lot of studies that have gone before these particular reports and we still think that they need to target better information in terms of what the large fire reviews have shown, what the performance of different aircraft to fight fires has shown and also better ways to deal with preparedness and effectiveness. So we think there are opportunities for both agencies. The Chairman. Well coming from a state where we have got a lot of land that goes up in smoke every year and as a state we feel like we are pretty in tuned with what is going on with fires, and the state is a pretty good example to look to of how you bring all hands in to address threats, not only to communities, property, but just to the land itself. Are our Federal agencies not synching in sufficiently with our States and our local fire experts here? Is this part of our problem? Chief Burnett, you are smiling. Mr. Burnett. You're asking the tough question. I can't tell you why it doesn't happen. I can tell you that it needs to happen and that the benefits are clearly articulated in this panel. So, you know, Forest Ridge Wildfire Coalition has received grants from the Department of Natural Resources to do fuel modification efforts around there. We coordinate with the State agencies as well as the Federal agencies to do fuel treatments in that prescribed or in that general jurisdiction or geographical area. We're working well with our partners as far as the restrictions that they have to go through in order to make it happen. You know, that's and it's, I think it's a political issue and a logistic or a litigious concern. The Chairman. I appreciate that. I am going to ask Senator Cantwell to wrap up with the final questions, but I do not want to conclude without a final question to you, Mr. Zerkel, because you have raised the issue of aviation assets and where we are. You have questioned, very clearly, I think, the wisdom of the government-owned tankers and the proposal going forward with these next gen air tankers. You have noted, very clearly, I think, for the record that what we have is not only an inconsistency. You call it a double standard between the government-owned aircraft like the C130Hs and the fact that you have a different standard that is held toward the commercial aircraft that are stepping up. Do you think that the private air tanker industry can meet the need for 18 to 28 next gen air tankers with the specifications that the Forest Service has called for? Mr. Zerkel. Senator, given a specific defined requirement and a specific contractual procedure I have no doubt that industry can meet any requirement that the Forest Service might have for large air tankers. We have a large amount of experience. The industry has been at it for an awful long time, but the problem in the past has been a mixture and an undefined set of qualifications that industry faces. We're not going to spend a whole lot of capital if we don't know exactly what it is the Forest Service requires and for how long they require it. The Chairman. So you would not only need specific criteria for standards, although you are saying look, we just go by the FAA standards. You also need some definition in terms of how long that commitment from Forest Service would be to whether it is Lynden or other operators that would provide such aircraft. Mr. Zerkel. That's correct for the industry at large. First of all the range of tankers that they think they require. The 18 to 28 is a little difficult for industry to comprehend. Is it 18? Is it 20? Is it 25? Is it 40, which it was before 2002. So that's what I mean by defined set of requirements in terms of the numbers of large air tankers and then clear, concise contracting procedures. The Chairman. Just for the record, you had indicated you had stepped up to make the build out for your Hercules so it could meet the requirements that had been set forth by Forest Service, but because of tight timeframes, you were not accepted into that pool of eligible aircraft for contracting. What does it cost to basically outfit an aircraft to meet these standards in terms of investment that you made to prepare for this what was the commitment there? Because I understand now this aircraft is not even being used here in the country, and it is being used for fire fighting in Australia, I think you said? Mr. Zerkel. That's correct. Lynden spent about $4.5 million in the procurement of a retardant tank drop system, the installation and the training of our personnel to bid for that next gen 2.0 contract. We were not successful in the bid and maybe rightfully so because of one portion of our supplemental type certificate was incomplete. We accepted that. We're going to fix that, and we are going to bid at the next opportunity. But the point is that we have those requirements, all of industry, not just Lynden, not just any of the other ones. The Forest Service, under this program, the public format program, would not have that. They could basically do whatever they wanted to do. Now I'm not saying they wouldn't do a good job or the Coast Guard or a vendor or whatever that they get to do it wouldn't do a good job. But the fact is they don't have to whereas the rest of industry does. And it's-- The Chairman. So it is-- Mr. Zerkel. Yes. The Chairman. A different standard. Mr. Zerkel. Absolutely. The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Cantwell? Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I wanted to go back Chief Burnett and Mr. Wyss about the after effects because we are talking a lot here about obviously the economic loss of timber lands. But I am not sure we have given everybody a clear picture of how long it takes to recover. And one thing I mentioned earlier, the $300,000 from the Forest Service to help restore the impacts from the Wolverine fire-but can we talk about where we are one year after the Carlton Complex? Mr. Wyss. Sure. Senator Cantwell. And what we need to do and what happens when the money runs out? What happens? Chief Burnett, if you wanted to comment on that as well. Mr. Wyss. Okay. So one year after the Carlton Complex, I mean, we had $100 million worth of damage in a community and a county that's the 13th largest county in the United States and 39,000 people. So 39,000 people are trying to dig out of $100 million hole. It makes it challenging when you lose 500 structures. Our community took a significant financial impact to the loss of value. 20 percent of our school district value is gone, 20 percent of our hospital district value is gone, and that drives significant cost factors. When you lose 50 people out of the community in Pateros because 34 homes burned inside the city limits, you no longer have people paying into the water system and the water fees go up double because there's less people paying into the system and it has to be repaired. Our communities, our small businesses, when including in Chelan this year with the Wolverine fire in Chelan and the Reach fire, for 10 days were closed, completely. Our small businesses paid the credit card impact fees for the reservation in and the reservation out which are non-reimbursable. The communities and the small businesses who rely on tourism lost $1 million a day in the Winthrop and Twist area and $2.5 million in Chelan because the tourists were not allowed to come in because we were under immediate evacuations. When you look at the forestry and timber, the value of timber has dropped in half because the timber that was marketable burned and now there's limited market. When you burn 200,000 acres last year and then 500,000 acres this year and then millions of acres in Alaska, the timber market starts to get pretty flooded with burned timber and you have to get that off within a short period of time before it blue stains. Then you look at our reservations where, you know, they're going to face 20 to 25 percent of their budget comes from timber and a billion dollar hole comes over a span. So our long-term recovery efforts are going to be 10 to 15 years in our small community to try to recover. For the rebuilding of homes and construction, only 40 people qualified, who were the most needy of needy to have homes rebuilt by volunteers through the VOAD partners and the national VOAD partners in donations. So we have 11 of those homes completed and done, and we were thinking we were on the upward trend when this fire hit and we lost 100 more homes. So back-to-back impacts have really hit our economy hard, our budgets hard, our roads, our transportation and infrastructure, but not only that, we're going to suffer ramifications of unintended consequences with flood. We actually washed out a highway with just one inch of rain this last year because the trees couldn't absorb it, and we'll have it again this year with floods and snow pack. And we have 10,000 wildlife without a place to eat because we've burned all their habitat which then goes, Senator Stabenow talked about agriculture and Senator Cantwell you know we have the best apples and cherries in the world in our state. Well those deer eating the limbs and the buds off the trees which are impacting the agriculturalist's future because they don't have anything to eat. So our ramifications and long-term impacts are going to be felt for a number of years, and it's going to cause some of our folks to lose their businesses, their farms and ranches. And we will recover. I mean, that is my job as the lead recovery efforts, and we will do it. But we will come out of it stronger, more efficient and better. We just thank you, Senator Cantwell and Senator Murkowski, for holding these hearings to bring these issues to the forefront. Senator Cantwell. Mr. Burnett, did you want to say anything about, you had a concern about logs, potentially, you know, more trees falling and potentially putting more at risk in the future? Mr. Burnett. Right. As Jon was speaking that there is a lot of timber that's harvested afterwards. But back to the competing interests of how to best deal with the wildfires and post-wildfires there's a lot of logs that are not, a lot of standing timber, that is not allowed to be logged post-fire. And it creates a significant danger with hazard trees. We've lost many wildland firefighters from tree hazards. The burn scars area that we look at for trying to catch a fire, as an incident management team we'll look out ahead for any kind of natural barriers or manmade barriers. The natural barriers are, you know, rocks, trees, rivers or previous fire scars. If those previous fire scars are left untreated that is a hazard area that we can't send our fire fighters into in order to gain access to other areas or to fight the fire in that area. Senator Cantwell. Well Madam Chairman, thank you for this hearing. I want to thank all the witnesses, and obviously each of you have been dealing with this from one or more facets so we thank you for that. That is why, Madam Chairman, I want to work with you and see what we can do to move forward. I think the thing that might be different than some of the discussions that we have had before is the fact that, as Mr. Wyss said, the economic impacts here are something that we are going to feel for a long time. I think the threat that we see coming at us, that these are not the two worst years we are going to see, that the worst is still yet to come, I think demands us to think in new ways and figure out how to better prepare our nation for the economic, incredible economic, damage and loss that is going to occur and figure out a strategy for prevention and preparedness. So I look forward to working with you on that. The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cantwell, and know that we both agree we have got a lot of work to do. I do think that we gained some good insight from the panel this morning and from the questions that were raised by other colleagues. You speak to the economic damage and the economic impact, post-disaster, post-fire, and you clearly have seen that in your state. Typically in Alaska we will see more acreage burned and very little lost in terms of property value. This year was different losing 55 homes in and around the south central area. I think that causes us to recognize that when we think about the economic impact, the loss, not only from a financial, but really from an emotional perspective is something that we need to be very, very cognizant of, but we also then need to be very wise, very smart and very strategic in how we manage these fires and finding these levels of efficiency because, as you and I both know, the Federal dollars here are not getting that much more generous. I know in my state we have made dramatic reductions in our state's budget this year which further restricts the ability of our state to be engaged. We need to be smart in how we are managing this, so to hear that we have assets that are either being held back or are somehow or other just not being as efficient as we need them to be, when you have agencies that are not coordinating, when you have differing standards, when you have inefficiencies that are built into this system, that is something that we can control. You and I cannot stop that fire today, but we can make sure that as we are dealing with these fires we are working smart and we are working efficiently and collaboratively. So I look forward to working with you and all of you. We appreciate the time this morning. Thank you. [Whereupon, at 12:16 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.] APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED ---------- [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]