[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 71 (Tuesday, May 13, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H4003-H4008]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HEALTHY FOREST INITIATIVE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Chocola). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Cannon) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
General Leave
Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks
on the subject of my general leave.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Utah?
There was no objection.
Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I have some graphics that I would like to
use down at the other podium if I might.
Mr. Speaker, as members of the Western Caucus, we come to the floor
today to discuss H.R. 1904, The Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003.
This bill will be marked up tomorrow in the Committee on the Judiciary
and is expected to be brought to the floor early next week.
Let me put this map up. What you see here is a map. If we can focus
on the graphic here, what you see here is a map of the United States,
and you can understand by looking at this map why we as members of the
Western Caucus are concerned with healthy forests.
You will recognize that there is a color chart. What it indicates is
that everything in yellow or green or red or the other colors other
than white represent Federal lands that are managed by the Federal
Government that includes also many lands from the Eastern part of the
United States. And as you might guess, we have in the Western Caucus
also people who are from the Eastern part of the United States.
{time} 2030
We have at least a couple of people here tonight from the Western
Caucus who will address some of the issues that are related to the
problems of healthy forests.
If we get a fairly tight shot on this, what we can see in this
graphic on the left, most of these pictures were taken from an area
where there is a forest fire. The picture on the left is a picture of
an area that had been thinned and prepared and did not burn. The
picture on the right is the terribly scarred and destroyed timber, and
by the way one cannot kill the timber by fire without killing a lot of
endangered species and destroying watershed and creating huge
difficulties for the environment.
That is the difference between the policy that we hope to implement
through the Healthy Forest Act and what we currently have in much of
our forests today. I am going to talk in particular and show some
pictures later on about the effects of mud slides in a town very close
to where I live in Utah, but I would like to end my piece of this
introduction by quoting the President when he said, ``I have sent you a
healthy forest initiative to help prevent the catastrophic fires that
have devastated communities, killed wildlife and burnt away millions of
acres of treasured forests. I urge you to pass these measures for the
good of both the environment and the economy.''
I think if we focus on what the President said, we will realize this
is a matter of major concern for all America, not just Americans who
live in the West, not just for those people who live near federally
managed forests in the East. This is a problem for all America, and it
relates to our concerns for a healthy environment, for our concerns for
endangered species and concerns for our economy.
I yield to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Otter).
Mr. OTTER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's leadership on
this issue.
The Representative from Utah is the chairman of the Western Caucus
this year, and given the motivation by the Chief Executive to move
forward on the healthy forest initiative, I join with my chairman of
the caucus as well as the rest of the caucus in an enthusiastic effort
to try to make sure that the healthy forest initiative goes forward.
Mr. Speaker, as we debate the healthy forest issue tonight, I am
reminded that we were approaching the 100th-year anniversary of what
Idahoans refer to as the ``big blowup,'' that is, the fires of 1910. It
was a series of 1,763 fires that ravaged some 3 million acres and
killed 85 people during August of 1910. The hardest hit areas were the
Clearwater National Forest, the Coeur d'Alene national forests of
Idaho, the Lolo and the Cabinet national forests of Montana.
I would like to share with my colleagues, if I might, an excerpt from
``The Big Burn,'' a book that was written on the Northwest fires by
Stan Cohen and Don Miller:
``Daylight was shut out as far north as Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,
Canada; as far south as Denver; and as far east as Watertown, New York.
To the west, officers of a British vessel 500 miles out of San
Francisco said that they were unable to take observations for ten days
because of smoke in the atmosphere caused by the big burn. Some claim
that smoke from the big blaze reached one-third of the way around the
world.''
This big burn started near a little town called Elk City, Idaho, a
small community surrounded by dead and dying trees. That community is
struggling to keep its one and only lumber mill in business. During the
past 20 years, we have seen the growth of the surrounding forests
double and the mortality rate from bugs and from viruses triple, all
while the timber cuts steadily decline. In short, the sustainability of
the forest is declining as the trees die.
[[Page H4004]]
A variety of factors have caused this monumental and potentially
national disaster, including severe insect infestations, the practice
of fighting nearly every wildfire and a passive forest management
philosophy. The forest health crises on our public lands can no longer
be ignored.
There are over 190 million acres of Federal land at risk to
catastrophic fire. The national forest system is home to more than 72
million acres of high-risk catastrophic wildfire and more than 26
million acres at high risk to insect infestation and disease.
The administration must be commended for the action that it has
already taken, which precipitated the healthy forest initiative through
its current regulation to reduce procedural delays in preparing
projects to reduce the fire danger and address forest health problems;
but more must be done.
The Healthy Forest Restoration Act seeks to streamline bureaucratic
procedures that stymie legitimate management efforts without unduly
restricting public participation. Forest management projects could
still be subject to rigorous environmental analysis as well as
administrative challenges and lawsuits, but the process would be
completed in a matter of months rather than in a matter of years.
Tough environmental safeguards in the bill would provide heightened
restriction on management activities in inventoried roadless areas, and
old growth trees would receive additional protection. At the same time,
priority would be given to management projects near communities and the
watershed.
The measure would also facilitate use of otherwise valueless wood,
brush and slash for production of biomass energy, a key component in
our upcoming energy bill; authorize Federal programs to support
community-based partnerships addressing forest stewardship and
watershed protection and restoration needs at the State and local
level; and direct additional research on the early detection and
containment of disease and insect infestations.
We cannot tolerate another season of death and destruction. We are
past the analysis paralysis point, Mr. Speaker; and the point in this
debate is that we must move forward. It is time we got to work on the
ground. The sooner we get this legislation through Congress, the sooner
we begin ensuring the future of our forests. We need to act quickly
before Idaho is faced with another big burn.
I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding to me.
Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Idaho for his
comments, and if the gentleman would engage in a colloquy, I have some
statistics to go along with what the gentleman is just saying.
Apparently, the National Association of Public Administration did an
analysis of the forest service and found that it spends 40 percent of
its time and 20 percent of its money on planning. This is the analysis
paralysis that the gentleman referred to. Is that the gentleman's
experience in Idaho?
Mr. OTTER. It has been, and when I served on the Committee on
Resources last year with the gentleman from Utah, as he will recall,
Dale Bosworth, the new supervisor of the forest, indicated to us that,
and he was the one that coined the term ``analysis paralysis,'' and he
indicated to us that so many of the resources of the forest agency are
being consumed by not only procedures in court but also preparing to go
to court and then filing such an analysis of overwhelming environmental
studies hopefully to prevent themselves from having to go to court. I
believe that the gentleman's figures of 40 percent and upwards are
indeed quoted from Mr. Bosworth's testimony.
Mr. CANNON. That is the planning part of what the forest service does
because the forest service, 20 percent of their resources go to
planning; but around 50 percent, I have heard as much as 58 percent of
the resources of the forest service, go for litigation. So we are
spending the vast amount of our time and money playing and being
paralyzed by analysis and not using that money to actually make our
forests more healthy.
Mr. OTTER. I think that is one of the key components in this forest
health restoration act and that is allowing for that opportunity to go
to court if that is necessary, but the players must be part of the
process prior to the plan being delivered and then taking them to court
later.
As the gentleman will recall, many times in the testimony that we
received in the Committee on Resources last year, there would be one or
two of these interest groups that would be involved in the planning
process, that would be involved in the environmental analysis, in the
NEPA process and all the public hearings, and they would be agreeing
and they would be working with the forest service; and then when the
forest service had blocked the sale, the sale in some cases had gone
through, then another interest group that had never had a dog in the
fight suddenly rushes over to court with a $20 bill and then a 34 cent
stamp, and filed an action to stay any future action on that sale.
In many cases, if it were the restoration or the recovery from a burn
or some other kind of insect infestation, the opportunity window for
harvesting what good that can come out of that forest was lost.
Mr. CANNON. In part, that is because if we get an infestation in dead
trees, we only have until the next season, the next summer before those
pine bark needles or whatever, the infestation is mature and goes into
the live and healthy forest.
Mr. OTTER. That is right, and I think some of the pictures that the
gentleman will show later will be very obvious in what can happen to a
healthy forest that is overgrown and weakened as a result of the
closing canopy and weakened as a result of the overgrowth.
I can tell my colleague that testimony I received up in a little town
called Grangeville, Idaho, just last weekend, my colleague, Senator
Craig from the Senate, who is from Idaho, joined me in that hearing,
and we were told that in many cases there is as much as 80 tons per
acre of fuel that has grown as a result of lack of harvest.
We had a sustainable yield, sustainable harvest program for years;
and when we got away from that and took a passive attitude toward the
management of our forests, the watershed, the habitat, the result was
that the forest continued to grow. It did not stop. The forest
continued to grow; and as a result, we have had a tremendous
overgrowth, and just as is the case with any species, we get them
crowded in too close of an area and if one gets sick, they all get
sick; and that is where we are with our forests.
Mr. CANNON. While we are talking, let me just show a picture here
that the gentleman was referring to earlier. If we can get a focus on
that, we are talking in terms of statistics, but we can see on the left
the terrific fire where we have got this large fuel load on the floor
and in the forest, and on the right we have a thinned healthy forest;
and we can see there is not really much of a transaction.
In fact, the Native Americans used to burn the forests with great
regularity. When the Pilgrims first came, they could drive their
carriages through the forest, and all the way down to the Revolutionary
War they were burning the Hudson in areas around there to maintain
health.
The problem is if we, through huge litigation costs and complicated
processes, interfere with the healthiness of a forest, we get the fuel
load and this terrible destruction as opposed to relatively healthy
maintenance by occasional fires that the Native Americans used to
manage those areas before.
Mr. OTTER. The other thing I would like to bring to my colleague's
attention is the picture he shows there, the one closest to him which
would be on the left. When we have that healthy a fuel loaded, what
happens when that forest does burn, just as it shows there, it burns so
hot that it actually calcines the Earth; and when it calcines the Earth
16, 18, 20 inches deep, it burns all of the natural nutrients right out
of the soil. So the result is that nothing will grow there for years
and years. It is like trying to grow something in a jar of marbles.
There is not anything to hold the root system. There is not anything to
feed the root system.
The big blowup that I referred to in my opening statement, part of
the big burn of that 3 million acres was a place in Idaho in the St.
Joe, just up from the St. Joe called Slate Creek, and that
[[Page H4005]]
fire was in 1910, and today there are still areas in those reaches
where nothing grows because the nutrients were burnt out of the soil
over a hundred years ago, and there has been nothing to replace it.
Mr. CANNON. That is the kind of thing that happens when we get a huge
fuel load in the forest and get the destruction like we have, this is
the kind of destruction the gentleman is talking about happening where
it actually turns the ground into where we burn the nutrients right out
of the soil with an intense fire.
Mr. OTTER. Let me just go ahead and make one more analogy for anybody
that may be watching this.
In the old days I know when I was growing up and we raked the leaves
and everything in the fall of the year, we would rake them up into a
pile; and if we burn them on the lawn, if we even have that little bit
of fuel, even that little bit of heat, we would have a spot there for
years to come. Just imagine magnifying that by 100 or 150 times and
then how long that that spot is going to be there.
Mr. CANNON. We sort of forget how intense a fire can be. Even a grass
fire can burn at great intensity, and we have got a ladder that takes
us all the way up to the trees. We get a terrific burn, but let me give
the gentleman a couple more statistics.
The forest service does more environmental statements than any other
Federal agency, nearly twice as many as any other agency that does
these; and this is the Federal Highway Administration. So they spend a
lot of their time doing it more than any other agency, and in addition,
they have to go through an 800-step decision-making process to complete
the Upper South Platte Restoration Project, which simultaneously took 3
years to complete.
{time} 2045
Talk about analysis paralysis: An 800-step process and 3 years while
there may be some kind of either buildup of fire load, fuel load, or an
infestation. That is just absolutely unacceptable and part of the cause
for the problems we are seeing last summer and this summer.
Mr. OTTER. And sometimes it gets to the point where good people get
very frustrated. I know in Idaho we have had some good people quit the
Federal agencies there because of the fact that they just were not
allowed to do their job, and they just got frustrated and they left.
Another aspect of that is since 1989, just 14 short years, we have
shut down half of our ability to saw logs. We have shut down half of
our lumber mills, about 37 lumber mills thus far. All those jobs are
gone.
We get to the point that in many places in Idaho, these small
communities that lived and worked for generation after generation, that
grew up in those communities, school systems counted on those
communities, the infrastructure around it, and when those lumber mills
shut down, the towns died, the schools went away, and people then
transferred. They end up having to transfer into the more populated
areas, and to then go through vocational education to get a new job,
ruining the historical fabric, ruining the work ethic, if you will, of
the folks not only in the agencies, but also those folks that watched
their grandfathers and grandmothers and their mothers and fathers that
grew up in those areas, that went to college from those areas, and then
came back to become silvaculturalists or become foresters because their
great effort in life, their great desire in life was to go to work for
the Forest Service.
I have traveled around the world in many capacities. In my private
business capacity I was the president of the international division,
and between that and being the Lieutenant Governor of Idaho for 14
years, it was my job to sell our groceries, to get around the world and
strut our stuff and show these other countries what we had, and in the
process I went to some 82 different countries. One of the things I
found, when we got into some of these developing countries, is that
they wanted to know about the School of Forestry, the College of
Forestry at the University of Idaho. It had a reputation worldwide.
I talked with the President here just a while back and he said, you
know, we may have to close down that school. We have already closed
down some of the other natural resource schools because nobody is
managing them anymore. We are making all our decisions in court. None
of the decisions are being made on the forest floor. None of the
decisions are really being made for the health and the cleanliness of
the watershed, for the health and cleanliness of the water itself, the
streams that run into those reaches of the mountains. As a result, we
are losing our national reputation. We are losing, unfortunately, one
of our real national heritages in our culture.
Mr. CANNON. I think that is absolutely true. The West has had a
pretty severe drought. I think everyone in the Nation by now knows that
we have had a severe drought. In Utah, and maybe the gentleman has had
the same experience, we have had recently the worst of all worlds. We
have had more rain in the last 2 or 3 weeks than we have had in the
last 4 or 5 years. As a result of that, Utah is pretty green now on the
surface. The problem is, come July, we have now added a couple of steps
in that ladder we are missing, that fire ladder, so that fire will take
off like crazy. We went from what we thought would have been a lesser
burn season this year, because of the dryness and because of the lack
of that ladder, to now what looks like maybe a much worse burn season.
Is that what the gentleman is facing in Idaho?
Mr. OTTER. We have had some great rains. In fact, the farmers all
call them million-dollar rains. I think Bonneville Power said the other
day they had an $80 million week, the week that it rained so hard up in
the Pacific Northwest. Because of the watershed, because of the snow
and the watershed going into the reservoirs, they were going to have
much more water in those reservoirs for the production of power than
they thought they were going to have.
But any time there is that much fuel, and as the gentleman knows,
come July and August when we hit those 100, 105 day temperatures out in
the West, out in our country, out in the Rockies, that is going to dry
that fuel. And unless we graze it with the cattle or have some other
method of removing that, we are going to have that stairstep that the
gentleman talked about, that stepladder that the gentleman talked
about. We will have the grasses low, which will then meet the interface
of the browse and the brush itself, and then right on up into the
trees.
Mr. CANNON. And that is why it is so important to look at what the
President said when he pointed out, ``I have sent you a healthy forest
initiative to prevent the catastrophic fires that devastate
communities, kill wildlife, and burn away millions of acres of
treasured forest. I urge you to pass these measures for the good of
both our environment and our economy.''
We need to do this now because our problem is acute right now as we
speak.
Mr. OTTER. Tomorrow is not too soon. And I know, looking at Idaho,
where we have the overgrowth, where we have high unemployment, all
these counties that I talked about where that 1910 fire went up, I have
six counties that run right up through that vein where that 1910 fire
went that all have double-digit unemployment, they are all ready to go
to work. All we need to do is to pass the hiring mechanism, and that
hiring mechanism, that action mechanism is this bill.
Mr. CANNON. I thank the gentleman for his participation.
We have the pleasure of having with us a man of great experience in
this area, and I would yield now to the gentleman from South Dakota.
Let me say first, however, that he comes to us with a world of
experience as the long-time Governor of the State and having followed
these issues and been responsible for them from the State point of view
for a very long time.
Mr. JANKLOW. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I have to
apologize for this laryngitis I have this evening.
I asked myself as I sat here listening to my colleagues from Utah and
from Idaho, why am I sitting down here this evening in an empty Chamber
when I could be like everybody else and be someplace else? The fact of
the matter is I am here because it is incredibly important that the
people of America understand what we are doing to ourselves, because
that is what it is. We are on a self-destructive tour that is
[[Page H4006]]
really bringing about the death of human beings. All we need is to have
one of these fires in the West, like we have had in the last several
years.
Now, I live in the State of South Dakota. The State of South Dakota
in the year 2000, we had a couple of forest fires that burned 132,000
acres of the 1.2 million acres in the Black Hills National Forest. That
is approximately 10 percent of the entire Black Hills burned down in
2000. We had 600 soldiers and airmen on Active Duty. We had all of the
South Dakota Highway Patrol there. We had 150 local fire departments,
all but one of them volunteer fire departments, from all over South
Dakota. In addition to that, I called the Governor of Minnesota, the
Governor of Wisconsin, the Governors of Nebraska, Montana, and Wyoming.
I told them this was beyond our capability. I asked them for help, and
they sent their fire trucks. The inmates in our State prison system put
in 43,632 hours fighting these fires.
But I tell my colleagues what is more important. At a time during our
Nation's destiny, at a time in our Nation's history when we need
funding for schools, we need money for diabetes research and cancer
research, we need money for Lou Gehrig disease research and muscular
dystrophy, we need money for all kinds of things, we have spent $6
billion, $6 billion, in the last 3 years in this country just fighting
the forest fires through the U.S. Forest Service. And that does not
count the hundreds of millions and billions that have been spent by
local governments, the time for volunteers, or I should say the
volunteer farmers and ranchers and citizens who have never booked for
their own time, utilizing their own equipment and their own resources
to try to put these fires out in the West.
Now, the government, if it wants to, has the right to burn down its
forests, but it does not have the right to burn private people's
property. It did not have the right to kill 23 firefighters in this
country last year. It did not have the right to burn down hundreds of
homes, hundreds of homes in this country last year. And it does not
have the right to destroy private property like they treat their own.
The reality of the situation is that for decades, every time we had
insect infestation, we sprayed them and tried to kill the insects.
Every time we had a fire, we tried to put it out. And all we did was
allow the forest to do what these gentlemen call building the fuel
loading per acre, building what is called the ladder fuels in the
forest. The ladder fuels are where we have a fire down on the bed of
the forest, but then they get so hot they climb up to the top of the
trees where they are called crowning, and then they start racing from
treetop to treetop.
We had a fire in the Black Hills in the year 2000, the Jasper fire,
moved 10 miles in 1 day. Ten miles in one day. All the firemen could do
was run for their lives. I gave an evacuation order for 64 square miles
of the Black Hills of South Dakota. I was asked by the forest
supervisor to evacuate an area 8 by 8; 64 square miles of people went
running for their lives grabbing what they could. You should have seen
the panic in their faces as all of a sudden they get the word to run
for their lives. They race into their houses, some of them trying to
grab papers, some trying to grab the parakeet, the cat or the dog; some
frantically looking for their children and family members; all thinking
this fire will be upon them in a moment's notice, and we not knowing
which direction or where those fires are going to go.
For too long we have made political decisions in these forests.
Before our committee came the representative for the Foresters of
America. The representative for the Foresters of America testified on
behalf of the State foresters, and what did he say? He said he
represented every one of the 50 State professional foresters in the
country. And every one of them, through their testimony, said they
support, they support, this healthy forest initiative.
This initiative guarantees that the public has a right to be heard.
As a matter of fact, a substantive decision cannot be made unless the
public is given notice and an opportunity to be involved. What it does
say is if you do not involve yourself in the decision process, then you
cannot involve yourself in the appeal process. That has been the law in
the civil jurisdictions of America since almost this country was
founded. If you try a case in the civil courts, and you do not raise an
issue, you cannot raise it for the first time on appeal. You have to
raise it in what they call the trial court to raise it in the appellate
court.
Well, we are setting up the same process administratively in this
bill. We say if you have a comment, if you have an objection, if you
are for it or against it or just want to be interested, you must
participate and give your input into the decision, or you cannot be
involved in the appellate process.
This comes about as a result of all the Western Governors, all of
them, Democrat and Republican alike, standing shoulder to shoulder,
North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho,
Washington, Oregon, Alaska, New Mexico, Colorado, all coming together
in a summit saying to the Federal officials, the Secretary of
Agriculture, Mr. Glickman at the time, and the Secretary of the
Interior Mr. Babbitt that there has to be a better way. We all agreed
with each other. And out of it came the healthy forest initiative that
the Western Governors supported, and from that it moved forward to this
legislation.
For too long the decisions have been made by judges. Judges should
interpret the law. The decisions need to be made in a democracy by the
majority, after consulting, after receiving input, after having
suggestions and involvement by the minority. But the majority has to
rule.
Mr. Speaker, the most important thing of all is what I have saved
until now, and that is that when these forests burn, Mr. Speaker, like
the fires from hell as they burn in the West, thousands and thousands
of acres, all of that ash material in the air, look how it shortens the
lives of people with emphysema. We have no records of how many people
have had their life shortened and ended that have emphysema or
bronchitis, or suffer from asthma, or suffer from lung cancer or sinus
trouble or a whole host of the cardiovascular kinds of problems.
{time} 2100
Imagine a little child, the family bringing him home at birth from
the hospital, the excitement and the joy as all the extended family and
the community gathers together in Rapid City, South Dakota; in Custer,
South Dakota; Gillette, Wyoming; Boise, Idaho; Colorado Springs or
Pikes Peak. And here you have this tiny child breathing all these
contaminants, these carcinogens, these things that will inhibit the
development of the lung tissue and affect the ability of this child to
live.
For too long, we have played politics with our natural resources. For
too long we have played politics with our, and I use the word, national
resources. And for too long we have played politics with the lives of
our elderly, our working people, and our children. So I have a great
deal of pride to say that I come here to support this legislation. It
is good legislation.
Mr. Speaker, let me also say that when it came out of our committee,
when it passed out of the Committee on Agriculture, it was by a voice
vote, a strong, strong bipartisan vote. Democrats and Republicans stood
together from all over this country on that committee, and a
significant majority of them voted ``aye'' when asked if they supported
this legislation. So I am excited about this legislation. It is going
to finally turn the corner. We have, the testimony was, 120 million
acres. If you can imagine the size of that, the State of South Dakota
is 80 million acres. So it is something that is almost twice the size
of the State of South Dakota that is in danger of fires. And 70 million
of those acres of forests throughout America, only the national
forests, 70 million of them are in extreme danger of fire. This is
wrong. This is unconscionable. This is immoral. This is something we
can fix.
And so I ask you, Mr. Speaker, and I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of
this Congress, support this bill. Vote to save our natural resources
and our national resources. Vote to extend the lives of our people.
Vote to stop spending all the money that we have to spend on these
unhealthy forests. Vote to stop spending all the money that we waste on
fires, and let us invest it in the children of America, the sick of
America, the problems of America.
[[Page H4007]]
Mr. CANNON. Would the gentleman consent to a colloquy?
Mr. JANKLOW. Yes, sir.
Mr. CANNON. I was struck by a number of the things you pointed out.
People with emphysema suffering. By the way, a large forest fire in the
West affects people across the whole country.
Mr. JANKLOW. Sir, the fires in Idaho stink up the air and plug up the
lungs in South Dakota and Minnesota.
Mr. CANNON. And places east.
Mr. JANKLOW. And places east. All the way across the country. It
affects the sunlight. It affects the haze that we get, the smell that
we get. But more importantly, that haze is what we are breathing into
the lungs of our sick people and our healthy people.
Mr. CANNON. And our children.
Mr. JANKLOW. And our little children.
Mr. CANNON. There are people who do not care very much about children
or people with emphysema.
Mr. JANKLOW. I think they care. I do not think they think about it.
Because sometimes, especially in this country, we all get so driven
that we are going to accomplish our objective our way that we ignore
the needs of other people. It is the old expression, and in my State we
say, those are the kind of people that say, it's my way or the highway.
That is what we are dealing with. These are not crazy people. These are
not screwballs. They are very bright people, but it is their way or no
way.
Mr. CANNON. So they tend to stop the ability we have to clean up our
forests, to thin them out, to preserve them.
Mr. JANKLOW. Sir, all I want to do is save them. I am for saving the
forests. I am 63 years old. I am out of here soon. But I have got
grandchildren. I have got five grandchildren. These forests belong to
them. Those forests are their heritage, and they are entitled to see
them and not breathe them.
Mr. CANNON. That is right. To see them and not breathe them. Most of
the people who, by the way, have a hard time with what we are doing in
our forests, who create litigation to stop us from creating healthy
forests, are also people who are adamantly opposed to adding
CO2 to the environment, and instead of sequestering
CO2 like we do when we have healthy forests, these people
are unleashed to get a torrent of CO2.
Mr. JANKLOW. Sir, the forest fire in Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming,
you pick your State, Washington, Oregon, California, South Dakota, the
forest fires there in the last several years, each of the years, those
fires, it will take over 100 years to sequester the carbon back into
the soil. Everybody knows that carbon dioxide, everybody knows the
release of that carbon contributes to global warming. We hear that all
the time with respect to smokestack industries and burning of coal and
burning of petrochemicals. The fires in the West release a year's
supply of automobiles. But the sequestration to get them back in the
soil will take a century.
Mr. CANNON. You get almost infinitely more mercury in the system from
a forest fire than you get from all the coal-fired power plants around
the world.
Mr. JANKLOW. You not only get more mercury but now you have destroyed
the watershed. You have destroyed the things in the hills that
contribute to clean and healthy waters running into the streams. In
Lead, South Dakota, in Deadwood, the home of Wild Bill Hickok and
Calamity Jane, Deadwood, the home of the largest gold mine in the
western hemisphere, the old Homestake gold mine, the community of
Deadwood had the Grisly Gulch fire that burned about 12,000 acres and
only by the reason of the volunteer firemen and women because the
Forest Service only sent three fire trucks for a fire that was racing
into the communities of Lead and Deadwood. These fires were stopped by
the volunteers. Then a couple of weeks later, 2 inches of rain came one
evening and a river of muck came roaring down the hills, doing millions
of dollars worth of damage with this muck and ash that was 2, 3, 4 feet
deep in some spots.
But just as importantly, it now cleared away the hillside, so every
time it rains, for dozens of years, every time it rains, you are going
to have these waters racing down the hills into the valleys. But in
addition to that, when you mix water with these ashes, you get lye. You
get lye. When you take these little baby fish and these little fry, you
kill them with lye. Lye is not good for human beings when they drink
it. It is not a healthy substance. There are carcinogens in that. We
have Federal laws that will put you in jail if you give cancer-causing
ingredients to people. Yet no one seems to be bothered by giving
cancer-causing ingredients to people as a result of forest fires. We
cannot stop forest fires, but we can stop these kinds of forest fires
by good forestry.
All I am asking for is best science. That is all I am asking for is
best science.
Mr. CANNON. When I wrap up, I am going to show some pictures of these
devastating mud flows that happen after a forest fire. I could not help
while you were talking but think about the gentleman from Idaho (Mr.
Otter) when he was talking about working out deals with
environmentalists. Then an unrelated group comes in and stops the
process. It seems to me what the President has asked for in this
legislation is a comprehensive response to a large problem in our
system as opposed to these fragmented environmental groups who stop us
here and there and everywhere.
Mr. JANKLOW. I will not attack the environmental groups. I am an
environmentalist.
Mr. CANNON. I am an environmentalist.
Mr. JANKLOW. My grandchildren drink the water. They bathe in it.
Their food is cooked in it. I want it to be nothing but healthy. But
the worst environment in the world, a lousy environment, is when you
are cold and you are hungry and you are unemployed. That is a bad
environment. That is what the West being burned up is doing to people.
Mr. CANNON. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Speaker, although Utah is primarily an arid State, it is famous
for its beautiful and Sierra landscapes. In fact, I invite anyone who
might be listening to come to southern Utah and visit Lake Powell,
which is this incredible barren red rock and beautiful blue water
juxtaposed together. It is absolutely remarkable. In spite of that view
that many people have of the beautiful part of Utah, we have about 16
million acres of forest, about 8 million of those are managed by the
National Forest Service; and so we have a huge interest in what
happens. I would like to give just a couple of anecdotes to sort of
help people understand why it is so important that we create some
changes. We had some recent severe weather in the eastern part of the
State of Utah, in the Uinta Basin and we had a blowdown of a number of
trees. This happened in 2000. The dead trees developed a spruce beetle
infestation, which then spread to some of the live trees nearby. The
Forest Service acted quickly and decided it was a very small situation,
only a few thousand board feet, maybe 12 or so truckloads of wood, a
small area of destruction. They moved quickly with an environmental
analysis and did a 90-page environmental assessment. Shortly after
making the decision, they were given an appeal, a 19-page appeal that
stayed the whole process and that is now under review.
We are looking now in Utah at another area that is going to be
terrifically unhealthy and terrifically subject to the kind of
devastating fires that you see in this graphic, if we can focus the
camera on that for a moment. You see the haze and the smoke and the
billowing carcinogens that are going to be breathed in South Dakota by
children and other ill people and people all the way east of us where
the prevailing winds blow.
Let me give you a second vignette which I think is significant and
instructive. We had a huge fire in an area that is one of our most
beautiful forested areas. It has the Green River, which is among the
most exciting trout fishing in the whole world. I know that many of the
people from other States will claim that, but this is really marvelous
trout fishing.
A fellow was driving along with a camper when the wheel came off and
as one would expect, he began dragging the trailer without the wheel
and sparks flew. He saw what happened, realized he was dragging the
trailer, realized that sparks were flying everywhere and that actually
had caused the beginnings of a fire, stopped his truck
[[Page H4008]]
and started to put out the fire. A Forest Service agent came by almost
immediately and ordered him back into his truck to drive away from the
fire and to not put the fire out, which was at that point controllable.
He got back in his truck, started to pull forward, he emitted sparks
from the dragging axle, started a couple of other little fires, a local
policeman came by and ordered him to stop. He said, Just be consistent.
Do I stop or not? At that point a group of river runners stopped by.
They had water in their car. They jumped out to help put out the fire.
The Forest Service agent told them not to do that. The fire then raged
out of control and burned hundreds of thousands of acres. As the news
reports, the cost was $3 million to suppress the fire. The local rural
electric cooperatives there tell me that it cost them over $600,000
just to replace the poles with their electric power lines on them. The
lost revenue from tourism that did not come has not been evaluated, but
the area was hit hard by irrational activity, irrational activity that
resulted, that came from the fact that we have unhealthy forests.
I would like to just show some pictures, including some of the areas
where we have the aftermath of a fire. So if we could focus the camera
here, we have the burned area in the Squires Forest. It is devastating.
We thought of drawing an owl in here, an endangered owl with a little
wisp of smoke coming out of his head to point out that this is bad for
endangered species. The following pictures are pictures that were taken
in a little town called Santaquin just outside my hometown of Mapleton.
If we can focus tightly on that, what we see is a river of mud that has
come downhill and affected these homes. Here is a closeup picture. You
can see that that mud has come down from this direction and affected
these houses. We do not think of mud as having a lot of power because
it normally does not come knocking on the door, but you can see as you
look down here how high up the mud has come, halfway to the door and
windows and filled the whole yard.
In this picture, we can see that it has carried rocks and debris that
are going to crush things. Here you have a whole area of the house has
been torn out by this mud as it comes down. You can see the devastation
of this home here. This is just dirt that got saturated with water
after a forest fire. We had similar forest fires just north of this
area in Provo. The difference is we had three-quarters of an inch in a
very short period of time, in a very harsh storm that caused this to
flow, whereas we cannot control nature. In Provo we had about the same
amount of water, but it was more gradual over a longer period of time.
We can see the terrific destruction, cars buried, windows shattered,
mud going into basements, cars stranded. When you unleash the forces of
nature, it is just almost beyond imagining how much damage can be done
to an area because of that.
We have a problem today, Mr. Speaker. We have a problem. We have
forests that are not healthy. That is the result of years and years and
years of neglect. It is the result of years and years and years of
people who have been narrow in their interests and who have stopped the
sale of timber, who have stopped the thinning of timber, who have
stopped our forest men and women who understand how to have healthy
forests, stopped them from doing what they know how to do and left us
with desperate circumstances, 70 or 75 million acres of forestland that
is ready to be destroyed by fire.
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We have suffered in the West with the worst drought in recent
history, probably as bad as anything back to the Dust Bowl of the
1930s. These are terrible things. They have displaced people, destroyed
farms and lives, and now we are going to add to that the further
destruction of the forests through fire.
We had thought, and, in fact, we had some charts earlier that showed
the anticipated fire damage in the West was going to be less this year
than it was last year. Last year, of course, was a record year. We
burned much of that which was ready to burn last year. Unfortunately,
this year we have had some water over much of the West, and that,
unfortunately, has created a fire ladder so that what was not as
endangered 2 months ago is now viewed as being subject to devastating
fires.
If we look at Utah today, it is as green as I have ever seen it.
Unfortunately, that green over the next month or 2 or 3 is going to
turn to brown grass that will light at any provocation, a lightning
strike, a match or a cigarette carelessly thrown out of a window, a
campfire burning out of control. Those things could all happen and will
happen, we suspect, this summer with devastating effects.
We need to pass the forest health bill now.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr.
Janklow).
Mr. JANKLOW. Mr. Speaker, I am going to be extremely brief. This
healthy forest initiative is an initiative that is incredibly
important. It is not very often that we deal with things of that much
substance. This is one of those opportunities. For too long we have
made the forests into political issues where people fight with each
other. The reality of the situation is every time we get that strong of
emotions on all sides, usually we end up with a bad result. That is
what we have here.
There is no one, there is no one, who says these forests are healthy,
and when I say forests, I am talking about a couple hundred million
acres of land in America, virtually the entire part of many of our
States. In my State it is the Black Hills, which is the westernmost
portion of the State. But there is no one who says these forests are
being properly managed. There is no one who says we have been doing the
right thing.
The arguments are what do we do to fix the problem, or do we just let
God burn them down? It is okay to let God burn them down, but we are
burning up people in the process. We are burning up people's homes in
the process. We are destroying people's lives. We are shortening the
lives of people. We are making it incredibly unhealthy for human
beings. We are contributing to the wiping out of endangered species, be
they plant life or be they animal life. So what we need to do is
something different.
This is a reasonable approach that involves input from all corners of
the philosophies. It preserves the right of anybody who does not like
the decision to go to court, but more than anything else, it starts us
on another track away from the track that we all agree has not worked.
For the sake of this country, for the sake of its resources, for the
sake of our families, for the sake of endangered species, for the sake
of our economy, and for the sake of our health, we need to pass this
initiative.
Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr.
Janklow). I appreciate that, and I am reminded of his earlier words
about the unanimity of the Committee on Agriculture, and it dawns on me
that those people who see the problem and understand it have a tendency
to agree. Locals who know it have a tendency to agree. We have lots of
people with incoherent or separate, disparate ideas who get to pursue
those ideas, through litigation or otherwise, stopping the process.
What we have here before us with this bill is a coherent and
considerate approach that is good for the air, will help with clean
air, will help with clean water, will help people in the economy, will
help endangered species, and will also help species that are not
endangered now. So I urge passage of this bill, Mr. Speaker.
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