[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 170 (Friday, November 21, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H12159-H12172]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 1904, HEALTHY FORESTS RESTORATION ACT OF 2003
Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 457, I call
up the conference report on the bill (H.R. 1904) to improve the
capacity of the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the
Interior to plan and conduct hazardous fuels reduction projects on
National Forest System lands and Bureau of Land Management lands aimed
at protecting communities, watersheds, and certain other at-risk lands
from catastrophic wildfire, to enhance efforts to protect watersheds
and
[[Page H12160]]
address threats to forest and rangeland health, including catastrophic
wildfire, across the landscape, and for other purposes.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 457, the
conference report is considered as having been read.
(For conference report and statement, see proceedings of the House of
November 20, 2003, at page H11686.)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte)
and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) each will control 30
minutes.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I respectfully demand one-third of the time
under clause 8 of rule XXII.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is the gentleman from Texas opposed to the
conference report?
Mr. STENHOLM. No, Mr. Speaker, I am in favor of the conference
report.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under clause 8(d) of rule XXII, the Chair
will divide the hour of debate on the conference report as follows: the
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Stenholm), and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) each will
control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte).
Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the
gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), chairman of the Committee on
Resources, be recognized for 10 minutes for the purposes of controlling
debate.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Virginia?
There was no objection.
Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Today, we are finally able to bring the Healthy Forests Restoration
Act, H.R. 1904, for a vote. In spite of a severely flawed process to
arrive at this point, we have driven a hard bargain, and we have got a
bill that the President will sign. I believe it will make a difference
on the ground, but it is only a first step towards fixing what is wrong
with the management of our public lands.
I worked with two other distinguished full committee chairmen, the
gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) of the Committee on Resources and
the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) of the Committee on
the Judiciary, to craft a bipartisan bill that passed earlier this year
by an overwhelming, and bipartisan, majority. I also want to note the
outstanding efforts of my counterpart in the other Chamber, Agriculture
Committee Chairman Cochran, and our distinguished ranking member, the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), for their efforts.
This bill seeks to address the issues that have tied the hands of our
forest managers: National Environmental Policy Act analysis that drags
on for months, administrative appeals that spring up at the last
minute, and court actions that stall projects for so long that areas
proposed for treatment frequently are destroyed by fires long before
the judicial process concludes. The conference process has produced a
bill that does not do as much as I would like to address on these
issues. I understand there are many in both Chambers who would like to
have seen a stronger product. But this bill creates the first real
relief from bureaucratic gridlock after over 8 years of legislative
effort. It sends a clear signal that the Congress favors results over
process and that protecting our communities, our watersheds, and our
people is more important than producing mountains of paperwork.
There are over 190 million acres of forests and rangelands which
remain at risk of catastrophic wildfires, insect and disease, a
landmass larger than New England. Our bill takes the modest step of
addressing the hazardous conditions on only 20 million acres of this
total. This bill also takes an innovative approach to forest health on
private lands, creating new nonregulatory, incentive-based approaches
to promote conservation on private lands. In short, it takes a national
approach to a national problem.
H.R. 1904 has enjoyed broad support from groups such as the Society
of American Foresters, the National Volunteer Fire Council, the
International Association of Fire Chiefs and others. Professional
wildlife managers, sportsmen, and serious conservation groups all
support this bill.
We as a Congress have more work to do to perfect our forest
management laws. Forest fires are a symptom of a land management system
that suffers from procedural, managerial, and practical gridlock. Our
forest management laws, environmental laws, and procedural laws do not
work well together. They create a process that only highly trained
legal minds can comprehend; and while claiming to encourage citizen
participation, they often achieve just the opposite. So we need to do
more, but we should be proud of what we are doing today. We are taking
a bipartisan step toward better management of our forests. We are
saying that protecting our communities, our watersheds, and our people
comes before protecting the dilatory tactics of those who oppose any
type of sensible land management.
I applaud President Bush for helping to bring this about. We would
not be on the verge of passing this bill without his leadership. I hope
he continues to exert leadership in this field to ensure that the
Federal land managers act aggressively to implement this program as
quickly as possible. I will do my utmost to ensure that bureaucratic
inaction does not delay implementation. I urge my colleagues to support
this conference report.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Healthy Forests
Restoration Act conference report, and I am pleased to be here on the
verge of completing legislation that will give us a chance to return
America's cherished forests back to a healthy landscape. For the last
century, public land managers have suppressed all forms of wildfire,
including natural small-scale fires that restore forest ecosystems.
The unintended result of this policy is a decades-long buildup of
forest fuel, woody biomass, and dense underbrush that is as close as
the next lightning strike or escaped campfire from exploding into a
massive fire. In some areas, tree density has increased from 50 trees
per acre to as many as 500 trees per acre, according to the Forest
Service and fire ecologists. These unnaturally dense forests are a
small-scale ignition away from a large-scale wildfire. These natural
small-scale fires burn at the ground level and at relatively low
temperatures, allowing some trees to survive and, in the process,
renewing the forest.
The suppression of these natural small-scale fires, however, has
resulted in an accumulation of fuel that supports catastrophic
wildfires of unnatural intensity that burn hotter, spread faster and
cause long-term severe environmental damage, sometimes even sterilizing
the soil. America's forest ecosystems are being decimated at an
alarming rate by large-scale catastrophic wildfire and massive
outbreaks of disease, insect infestation, and invasive species. Federal
foresters estimate that an astounding 190 million acres of land managed
by the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior are
at unnatural risk to catastrophic wildfire. Of that, over 70 million
acres are at extreme risk to catastrophic wildfire in the immediate
future.
During the second year of the National Fire Plan implementation, we
witnessed the second largest fire season this Nation has seen in half a
century. An early widespread drought, unparalleled since the Dust Bowl
of the 1930s, affected 45 percent of the country. On June 21, 2002, the
national level of readiness rose to the highest level possible, 5 weeks
earlier than ever before, and remained at that level for a record-
setting 62 days. In fact, wildland fires burned 7.2 million acres, or
nearly double the 10-year average. Colorado, Arizona and Oregon
recently recorded their largest timber fires of the century. And then
we saw the devastation in Southern California.
Forest ecologists, professional land managers, and many environmental
groups agree, the exploding incidence of catastrophic wildfire and
disease and insect infestation pose a massive threat to the health,
diversity, and sustainability of America's national forests. The Nature
Conservancy, one of
[[Page H12161]]
the world's largest and most acclaimed environmental groups, has been a
leader in the environmental community in building public awareness
about the environmental calamities that catastrophic wildfires cause.
Of the three factors that most influence wildland fire behavior,
weather, topography and fuel, land managers can effectively affect only
fuel. Unless we take a proactive approach to fuel reduction, the
remaining components of the National Fire Plan, which include
firefighting, rehabilitation, community assistance and research, will
only continue to increase in cost. Local governments, volunteer
firefighters, professional foresters, conservationists, and labor
organizations agree, it is time to act to protect our forests.
Fortunately, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act addresses these
concerns by giving Federal land managers the opportunity to restore our
forests to a more natural balance while maintaining important
environmental requirements. The conference report before us allows for
authorized hazardous fuel reduction projects on Federal lands, helps
communities in the wildland-urban interface prepare for wildfires,
improves the NEPA analysis process, and augments public involvement and
review. Additionally, the report includes titles allowing grants to use
biomass, providing watershed forestry assistance, addressing insect
infestation research, and establishing private forest reserves.
In closing, let me remind Members that this is not a new issue to
come before the United States Congress. We have been talking about this
issue for years. I remember the tremendous work done by former House
Agriculture Committee chairman Bob Smith and his efforts to reach out
and find a compromise, only to go down in flames because of the
inability of extreme sides of this question to come together.
I am disappointed that certain Members of the House were excluded
from the process that got us here today. That certainly has not been
the case with the House Committee on Agriculture. I commend Chairman
Goodlatte for his bipartisanship and leadership on this important
issue. We all have differing opinions about the various components of
the legislation before us; but in passing this legislation, we will
restore America's treasured landscapes by reducing the risks of
catastrophic wildfires and insect and disease infestations.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
(Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, it is abundantly clear to all of us of all
political persuasions and parts of the country that we need a vigorous,
well-funded, well-prioritized hazardous fuels reduction program in our
national forests.
{time} 1345
The Nation needs that because of a ``perfect storm,'' if I may use
that term, of enormous changes in our climate which have led to
drought, particularly in the western United States, leaving the most
explosive conditions due to the lack of moisture in over 100 years and
because of our misguided and mutually ignorant policy over the last
several decades, if not century, of suppressing all fire, thereby
allowing certain additional density to increase. All of us know we need
a well-prioritized, well-funded, well-defined hazardous fuels reduction
program.
But I, regretfully, cannot support this bill because it fails in
several fundamental ways. It fails to prioritize the taxpayers' dollars
where they ought to be prioritized which is the protect of human health
and property first. It fails to protect our most treasured crown jewels
in our Forest Service of our roadless areas, which I have to tell the
Members in the part of the world where I come from, we treasure the
roadless areas on our weekends and afternoons. It is part of our
culture and our families, and they are unprotected in this bill. Third,
it fails to adequately solve the problem as to why we cannot get these
programs completed, which is money, and I will come back to that. We
today change the law, but not the appropriations that we need to get
this job done.
Let me start with a failure to prioritize in this bill. If I may,
this ought to be job one for the U.S. Congress when it comes to
hazardous fuels reduction. Job one for the U.S. Congress ought to be
protecting, with a protective buffer, the homes and towns and cabins
and barns in our thousands of acres from voracious forest fire, and
this bill does not follow a fundamental precept that when we have got
job one and when we have got limited dollars, we prioritize. To govern
is to choose, and this bill consciously chose not to give the majority
of funds in this program to protect these areas with moats, if I may,
to protect them from this horrendous fire. And we have seen what
happens in California when that occurs. And it ought to be a totally
unanimous agreement here that the majority of our funds in our program
ought to be directed to the areas around our towns and cities rather
than spent up in Timbuktu harvesting commercial lumber.
We have seen that they split the baby 50/50, but spliting the baby
50/50 is not always right nor is it fair, and I will tell my colleagues
why. This conference report says 50 percent of this money will go to
the Wildland-Urban Interface. It will not do to tell people in this
community that we have saved half their houses, and we have sacrificed
the other half to the demands of those who want to continue commercial
logging in our roadless areas. We failed in our duty to prioritize our
precious dollars where they belong, and we have offered a modest
amendment to improve that in the conference committee which were
rejected out of hand.
And let me tell the Members why this prioritization is so important.
Of the dollars we have spent next year, if we double the amount that
has been appropriated by the majority party, whom I respect, and I
respect their positions on this bill, but if we even double the amount
that was spent in the last 3 years, we will still only do 2 to 3, maybe
4 percent of the acreage of the millions of acres that need to be
treated. We have to prioritize. This bill did not do it.
The second thing this bill did not do, it did not protect our
roadless areas. We have 58 million acres of roadless areas which are
the crown jewels of our national forest, which are pristine, and
everyone loves the trees in our roadless areas. The problem is some of
them love them vertically and some of them like them horizontally. This
bill does not protect our roadless areas from the ones who want to do
commercial logging so that they will be horizontal. It does not protect
them one wit in those roadless areas, and that is most discomforting,
and I will tell the Members why. We should have been able to fashion a
unanimous way to protect those roadless areas. Let me just suggest one
way to do it. I offered an amendment in the conference committee that
would simply say that if we have to, if there is some terrible disease-
ridden patch in the roadless area that we have to build a road to get
to it, to do an emergency program that would be allowed under this
bill, okay; but let us at least restore the road after the project is
completed to its original topography. How can anyone object to that?
How could anyone object to that precept? If we are building a road in a
roadless area to do a hazardous fuels reduction program, when we are
done with the program, why not put the road back in its natural
topography. Who could object to it? I will tell the Members who does
object to it. The timber industry who wants to use these roads to punch
them into the heart of our most virginal forests and then make them
available for commercial harvest, and we do not need to do that to
accomplish our ends here, and it is regrettable we did not solve that
problem.
The third thing that this bill does not do, it does not cut to the
heart of the problem. This bill, its whole fundamental idea is if we
just cut off those pesky environmentalists, by gum there will not be
any more forest fires. I will give the Members bad news. We can outlaw
environmentalists if we want to, and I see some nods. My friend over on
this side of the aisle would like to do that. I take a different view.
They are my constituents. They are people who like to go up and have
clean water out of the roadless areas. They are people who like to go
on a picnic in the roadless areas, and they know, as I do, that if all
we try to do to fix this program is to cut off citizen participation,
[[Page H12162]]
we will not solve the problem of getting these fuels reduction programs
in line, and I will tell the Members why we will not. The reason we
have we are not getting the job done and giving therapy to our forests
is that we have not appropriated one tenth of the money that is
necessary to get this job done. It is not appeals. Come on. The GAO, in
their last study, after four rounds to make sure they got it right,
said that 92 percent of all of these fuels reduction projects go
lickity-split right through the process without any problems and only 3
percent of them were litigated. Ninety-seven percent of these projects
go through without litigation. So why have we not cut the mustard? Why
have we not done enough therapy on these forests? It is because we have
not invested the money to do it. We have only invested enough money to
do 2 to 3 percent, and that is not going to significantly improve in
this bill. Doubling does not even cut it, even if we got the
appropriation. So we are united, I think, unanimously on this floor in
the belief that we need to have a strong fuels reduction program, but
we cannot say that this bill will provide what the American people need
to get this job done in a reasonable fashion.
The fourth, if I can, problem with this bill: It is clear that we
have got to cut down a whole bunch of trees to solve this problem
because they are dense, they have grown up because of our misguided
fuels suppression program, and now we have got this cataclysmic fire
situation. But the question is what do we cut and where? That is really
the issue we need to resolve on the floor of this House. And here is a
tree, a mature tree. I wish I could tell the age, marked for cutting in
the fuels reduction program. There is no reason to cut that tree except
for commercial purposes. We needed to develop a firm definition, so
that the Forest Service can use it to determine what trees to cut, and
it would have been easier if we provided them adequate money to do it,
so they do not have an incentive to log bigger trees to generate money
for this program. But we did not do it, because the appropriations
process did not cut the mustard. So we have a problem that we have not
given adequate definition of what to cut and where.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. POMBO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.
I am glad that the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) claimed the
time in opposition to this because I think it is important for everyone
to see just how difficult this bill has been to finally arrive at this
point of developing a bill and a conference report that is so widely
supported in both this Chamber and the Chamber across the Capitol, that
we have brought together such divergent interests, so many people who
may have initially opposed this bill that are now on board because of
the great compromise that was reached to bring this bill to the floor.
The history behind the Healthy Forests initiative, it has been, I
think, 8 years now since the very first bill was introduced and the
work began to finally get to this point, and we have gone through, I
believe, close to 75 hearings in Committee on Resources alone on this
legislation. There has been a countless number of people that have
testified, and we have gone back and forth. And these past 3 years, we
actually have to give a lot of credit to two of my colleagues in the
House, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis), subcommittee
chairman, and the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden) for the work that
they did in pulling together with all of the different interests to
bring something together, the gentleman from California (Mr. George
Miller), former ranking member on the committee, and the gentleman from
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) and others to put together a bill that was really
a great balance between so many different interests. And I found with
interest the gentleman from Washington's (Mr. Inslee) talk about a
particular tree and saying that we need to resolve on the floor of the
House whether or not that should be cut down. I have got to tell him,
we do not know. That is the job of the professional foresters. The
focus of this bill is to go out into the forests and let the
professionals, the scientists, the people who really do understand what
is going on out there, have them decide where the best place to do
thinning projects is, not on the floor of the House. That is ridiculous
to think that we on the floor of the House should be doing that.
But this is a grand compromise. It is a great bill, and I urge my
colleague to support it.
Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), chairman of the Department Operations,
Oversight, Nutrition, and Forestry Subcommittee of the House Committee
on Agriculture.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me this
time.
And I want to especially thank all those who have been involved, the
gentleman from Virginia (Chairman Goodlatte), the gentleman from
California (Chairman Pombo), and the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Stenholm), ranking member, for all of their work on this legislation.
And in addition, I think we should thank President Bush because of his
leadership on this issue.
Nearly half of the 190 million acres managed by the Secretaries of
Agriculture and Interior are at extreme risk to wildfire. Millions of
acres across the South, the East, and in my home State of Minnesota are
facing disease and insect epidemics. And yet Federal land managers will
treat only about 2.5 million of those acres each year because of the
extraordinarily lengthy procedural and documentation requirements.
Time and again, we have seen the destruction that forest
mismanagement and drought can cause to our landscape and to our
families. This year alone 4.3 million acre of our Nation's forests have
burned and 29 firefighters have lost their lives. Recently, more than
750,000 acres have been burned in southern California, and 22
Californians died trying to escape those fires.
Many see the fires on TV and think this is only an issue for ``out
West.'' Unfortunately, poor forest health is a national problem. The
lack of forest management of our national forests in States across our
country, including my home State of Minnesota, has placed private
forests and communities at risk of fires, insects, and disease. Almost
3 million acres of the National Forest System lands in Minnesota are at
high risk. Standing by and doing nothing to protect this precious
resource is tantamount to criminal neglect. Congress has an obligation
to ensure that we do not neglect our national forest lands and ensure
that they are available for generations to come. Too often, excessive
regulation and what I call ``paralysis by analysis'' has made even the
simplest management project an ordeal of years instead of weeks. H.R.
1904 is critical to begin to solve the problems of proper management of
our forests.
I urge all Members to support this important legislation.
{time} 1400
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).
Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for
yielding me this time, and I thank all of the members of the Committee
on Agriculture and the Committee on Resources who have put so much time
and effort into this. Yes, it was a long process, but I believe that a
good result is worth the work. I wish we had got it done a year ago;
but, hey, we are now finally going to get something in place long ahead
of next year's fire season.
This bill, if properly implemented, will begin to carefully undo 100
years of mismanagement of our national forests. It recognizes that this
is going to be a long and expensive process. It recognizes that it
cannot be done for nothing. This bill includes a $760 million-a-year
authorization. I think we could even go higher. Mr. Speaker, $1 billion
a year could be productively spent in the West, given the magnitude of
the problem; but it is a significant increase over the commitments we
are currently making.
It will bring jobs to hard-hit rural areas in the forests. It sets a
priority that half the funds should be spent in proximity to high-risk
communities in the West, and it also sets priorities for protection of
other high-value resources in high-risk areas.
If properly implemented and fully funded, I believe that we can begin
to step incrementally away from the catastrophic, or potentially
catastrophic,
[[Page H12163]]
conditions that exist throughout the West today.
It contains old-growth language that clearly reflects the intent of
Congress that the objective is to return the forests to presettlement
conditions, which means there will be large, fire-resistant trees more
widely spaced, particularly in the inter-mountain areas; that we would
leave native stands intact, but we would aggressively thin from below.
We would remove ladder fuels, we would remove trees that are growing
into the crowns of the larger trees.
I mentioned earlier the Davis fire in Oregon and the lodgepole that
carried the fire into the crowns of the Ponderosa, that would have
survived the fire otherwise, had we gotten in there and removed those
lodgepoles, which have little commercial value. That is why this
program will be expensive. In many areas, what needs to be removed has
little or no commercial value. Where it has commercial value, we will
use that to offset the costs and to amplify the program.
It does not unduly restrict the right of appeal. It does require that
people participate meaningfully in the process if they are going to
appeal, and that is the way it should be. I want people to be involved
from the beginning in communities, meaningfully commenting on the plans
and proposals of the Forest Service. It allows judicial review if the
bill is misapplied by this or any future administration.
But it will move the process along, and we will begin to chip away at
the backlog. But make no mistake, even if we get the $760 million a
year, this is going to take a long time to return our forests to their
natural state.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New
York (Mr. Hinchey).
Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Speaker, this is an example of not just an act that
will destroy good policy, but it also destroys the language; and it is
consistent with the kind of thing that has been happening here
recently, particularly with regard to environmental policy.
What is the name of this bill? The Healthy Forest Restoration Act. It
reminds me very much of the Clear Skies Initiative that the President
was pushing and the majority in this House was solidly behind. What did
we get from the Clear Skies Initiative? Increased greenhouse gases,
increased acid rain, a big gift to the polluters so that they do not
have to upgrade their equipment. The same kind of thing occurs here.
The rationale behind this legislation as it is stated is that we need
this act in order to carry out thinning processes in places where fires
are likely to occur. Now, one would have the idea, based upon that,
that these thinning processes are being held up. That is what they want
us to believe, these thinning processes are being held up by litigation
and things of that nature.
Well, what does the General Accounting Office say? The General
Accounting Office has a lot of credibility around here. The General
Accounting Office tells us that the appeals and litigation are not
slowing thinning projects at all. In fact, 92 percent of the thinning
projects are being completed without delay.
Now, why, then, are we engaged in this?
Well, the real reason is, just like under the Clear Skies Initiative,
we were not interested in cleaning up the skies, and here we are not
interested in healthy forests. What we are interested in is a big
giveaway to the people who want to go out and cut down the trees that
are on public land. That is what this is all about.
Now, another interesting aspect of it to me is a lot of people in
this House who are dead set against any activity by the Federal
Government, they want the Federal Government out of everything. Now,
however, under this piece of legislation it is, no problem, just give
them this authority, trust the administration, trust the Federal
Government. They will do everything right. Totally inconsistent,
obviously.
So what else does this bad bill do? It fails to focus on projects in
communities that are actually in need of protection. It undercuts NEPA
by eliminating the requirement to consider a full range of reasonable
alternatives. It fails to treat or provide assistance to State, tribal,
and private lands. It throws up unprecedented roadblocks to citizens
across the country and their access to the courts, and it is a direct
threat to the independence of the judiciary in this country on this
specific issue. It curtails the rights to appeal bad projects and
authorizes a new appeals process with no sideboards to be created by
the Secretary.
This is an example of a bad bill and specious arguments driving bad
policy.
Mr. POMBO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
California (Mr. Lewis).
Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding me this time. While I am doing so, I want to express my deep
appreciation to the leadership on both sides of the aisle who have gone
about the compromises necessary to bring this bill to the floor in the
first place.
It is important to know that we have been mismanaging our forests for
all too long now; and if there is a need for a demonstration project
relative to that, all one has to do is look at the recent devastating
fires in Southern California.
My territory is directly impacted. We have lost thousands and
thousands of homes. We have lost dozens of lives as a direct result of
mismanagement of our forests. And as of this moment, the most pristine
areas of Southern California are in jeopardy of total loss because of
mismanagement by this body and by the Federal Government of their
forestlands.
This bill is a good step in the right direction. It is going to cost
some money, but not nearly the billions and billions of losses that we
have already suffered in Southern California.
Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Montana (Mr. Rehberg).
Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Speaker, I would like to add my voice to the chorus
of accolades thanking the various chairmen and subcommittee chairmen
and Members who have worked so hard on this piece of legislation.
It is ironic in this country when something like September 11 occurs,
or a tornado or a flood that creates massive destruction quickly, we
roll up our sleeves and we get to work rebuilding. Yet the cancer that
is caused by drought and insect infestation, disease and such that is
occurring within our forests somehow is treated differently.
What have we seen over the years? In 1988 we burned a large area of
Montana, the Yellowstone ecosystem. We assumed that something would be
done, but it was not. It got stuck back in Washington, D.C., and what
did they do? They talked and talked and talked. And over the years,
while we talked about solutions, what have we done? We have talked our
forests to death. And eventually we go to the corners, and then we sue
our ways back out. It is stupid. It is ridiculous. That is not the way
to present a better forest. This piece of legislation in fact will now
manage the lawsuits.
Please support this compromise. It is a good one.
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Michigan (Mr. Stupak).
Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, as cosponsor of H.R. 1904, the Healthy
Forest Restoration Act of 2003, I rise in support of this legislation
because of the relief it provides to combat the challenges facing our
forest system today. From hazardous fuel reduction to insect and
disease infestation research, this bill gives our forest managers and
our private citizens the money and the technical assistance they need
to help bring our forests back to health.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1904 will work to alleviate the fire hazards that
currently plague our forests. As evident by the rampant spread of the
wildfires that recently ravaged Southern California, our Nation's
forest system is overwhelmed with excess brush and foliage which could
fuel catastrophic wildfires.
This bill provides thinning programs for up to 20 million acres of
at-risk lands near communities and their water supplies, at-risk lands
that serve as habitat for threatened and endangered species, and at-
risk land that is particularly susceptible to disease or insect
infestation.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1904 also provides money and technical assistance
to stop the growing problem of insect and disease infestation. In
southeastern Michigan, for example, Forest Service managers are
battling the emerald ash
[[Page H12164]]
borer. This insect has decimated the population of ash trees located in
a 6-county area. Luckily, officials have responded quickly, and we are
in the process of containing this threat. H.R. 1904 will assist in our
fight against invasive species like the emerald ash borer and others
around our country by promoting new research and quick action to reduce
the impacts on these forest pests.
I strongly urge my colleagues to pass this conference agreement on
H.R. 1904. I want to thank the ranking member, the chair, and all of
the staff for their hard work on this. It is time we reduce the threat
of wildfires to our communities and our environment. Support H.R. 1904.
Mr. POMBO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Arizona (Mr. Hayworth).
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the committee, my
friend from California, and I thank him for yielding me this time. I
rise in strong support of this conference report, which at once is an
important first step and, at the same time, is long overdue.
It has been interesting to listen to the conflicting philosophies on
the floor. There is one point of view represented that true
environmentalism means therapy for the forests.
Mr. Speaker, I think the questions are accurate to be asked. Is it
therapeutic to have such destruction in the forests that the number of
particulates in the air eclipses rush hour in many of our major
metropolitan areas? Is it therapeutic in the forests to see watersheds
destroyed? Is it therapeutic in the forests to see land burned so badly
that, as the gentleman from Texas pointed out, the land is sterilized?
No, the sound environmental position is to have sound scientific
principles embracing healthy forest management. And to the effort of
protecting homes and property and people like the 20-plus who perished
in California, this job is long overdue. We must pass this bill; and,
quite frankly, we should do more, not only for rural America, but for
suburbanites who perished in the recent fires in California.
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Oregon (Ms. Hooley).
Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding
me this time and for all the hard work he has put in on this particular
piece of legislation. I also want to especially thank my two
colleagues, the gentlemen from Oregon (Mr. Walden) and (Mr. DeFazio),
for their enormous work on this piece of legislation.
Mr. Speaker, this is an issue that is very important to my home State
and to my congressional district. Reduction of hazardous fuels. Oregon
has been hit hard by wildfires in recent years, and I am very happy
that we are finally taking steps in this House to make up for years of
neglect of our Federal forests. Forests and timber are vitally
important to the citizens of Oregon. The economic costs of forest fires
in Oregon have been astronomical and the human costs have been even
higher. It is essential we do something about it, and something sooner
rather than later.
Prior to coming to Congress, I served as a county commissioner in
Clackamas County, which owned thousands of acres of forest land. I was
responsible for management of those forests. I know from experience
that it is possible to manage and protect a forest and that in many
cases, it is necessary to manage a forest in order to protect it.
This legislation before us will have a positive impact. Not only will
it help save people's homes and people's lives, it will focus money on
lands that need it most and provide environmental protections.
{time} 1415
At the same time it allows local communities and citizens to remain
involved in the process. What I am most pleased about, however, is that
this legislation provides funding for fuel reduction. The $760 million
authorized in this bill is a great start and will help protect our
forest and our communities.
The House and the Senate have reached an important compromise that is
balanced, and provides money to get the job done. Mr. Speaker, I urge
my colleagues to join with me in supporting this legislation that
fosters a healthy management and protection of our national forests.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New
Mexico (Mr. Udall).
(Mr. UDALL of New Mexico asked and was given permission to revise and
extend his remarks.)
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I compliment the gentleman from
Washington (Mr. Inslee) for his management of this bill. Let me just
talk a little bit about the judicial review test here, because I think
that we are embarking on new ground. When we put in a test that talks
about short-term and long-term, really what we are ending up doing is
saying that if you cut down the whole forest and it is okay in 100
years, then that is all right. I mean, that is the kind of test that we
are putting into this piece of legislation. We do not know what that
means. And so we are encroaching into the judicial arena, trying to
tell the courts what to do. This is a new test. It is a new standard.
It has never been used before.
And what is going to happen? We hear all the talk about lawsuits and
litigation from this side of the aisle. Guess what, folks? This is
going to be a lawyers employment bill. If there is anything that is
going to come out of this, it is going to be more litigation, it is
going to be more billable time, it is going to be more lawyers involved
in this process. And I think what is going to happen further, if we
allow this to happen, if we allow this to happen, we are going to see
this appear across the board in other areas, workers' rights, OSHA, any
place where Federal agency decision-making is going on, this is going
to be imposed on the Federal courts. And I think that is why the
committees that supervise in the Congress judicial review have such a
hard time with this provision.
With that, I would just urge my colleagues to vote against this bill.
The recent firestorm in Southern California acted to once again
remind us of the gravity of rampant wildfires in the west. However,
this issue is of such great importance that I am extremely concerned
about, and strongly object to, the manner that this legislation was
brought before us today.
You may recall that the Committee Print of the Healthy Forests
Restoration Act was released to the members of the Resources Committee
during a recess period, on the Friday afternoon before it was scheduled
to be marked up in Resources committee, a few days later.
Similarly, we are called upon today to vote on the Healthy Forests
Conference Committee report. This report was just released yesterday.
It is my understanding that the rules for the House call for a minimum
of 3 days of review of a conference report before it is voted upon.
So, in what now seems to be standard operating procedure of the
House, we have barely had twenty-four hours, if that, to read and
digest its contents. One day is hardly sufficient to allow all Members
to carefully and thoughtfully consider this vital legislation.
I would like to point out that H.R. 1904 was not the sole option
available for our protection from wildfire devastation. Mr. Udall of
Colorado and I introduced H.R. 1042, the Forest Restoration and Fire
Risk Reduction Act.
Had we had an opportunity to hold hearings on our bill, Mr. Udall and
I would have been able to formally raise some of the issues that I view
are not adequately addressed in H.R. 1904 or the conference report, but
that are critically important to wildlife prevention and protection.
Our bill would place greater emphasis on protection of the
``wildland/urban interface'' without imposing the unprecedented
deadlines and standards for injunctive relief on the Federal judiciary,
and without emasculating our environmental laws that are present in
both H.R. 1904 and the Report.
While the results of the conference are better than the version
passed by the House, the provisions that I view to be most
controversial remain in the text. The agreement places a greater
emphasis on thinning forests very close to communities, but, like the
House bill, it significantly limits environmental reviews of forest
thinning projects and insect infestation field research projects.
I reemphasize that I believe that we must conduct thinning projects
to help reduce the likelihood of unusually severe fires. However, I do
not support the contention that to facilitate such projects we need to
expunge our environmental laws and procedures for public comment and
participation.
The limits placed on fire-risk reduction projects from environmental
review and administrative appeals, especially in the wildland
[[Page H12165]]
urban interface, in effect constrain the provisions of the National
Environmental Policy Act. Furthermore, denying the public the full and
fair opportunity to have viable alternatives to agency action
considered circumvents established policy of public participation.
Such participation is an important aspect of our democratic process
for making decisions affecting public lands. Limiting public comment
and ignoring the provisions of NEPA and other laws designed to protect
our environment does not assist in developing sound forest management.
I believe, however, that the conference report is a better bill than
the version passed by the House. The Report contains specific
provisions to protect the wildland urban interface. Furthermore, the
report authorizes tribal watershed management programs for Indian
tribes, an issue that I have strongly advocated for since we began
working on this legislation in the 107th Congress.
Nonetheless, I am afraid that this legislation is just another
assault by the Bush Administration on our Nation's forests. Most of the
attacks over the last year have been below the radar--in arcane rules,
stealth riders and misnamed legislation. In this many-fronted assault,
big timber is the winner.
Under the guise of buzz words such as forest health, catastrophic-
wildfire prevention and streamlining, the Administration's initiatives
transform forest policy in ways that are staggering in their scope as
well as in their implications for democracy.
The changes revamp laws fundamental to sound forest management,
including the National Forest Management Act, the Appeals Reform Act
and NEPA. The cumulative effect of these changes is to undermine or
eliminate open decisionmaking, agency accountability, resource
protection and recourse in the courts.
It began in December 2002, when the Administration proposed a forest-
planning regulation that renders public involvement virtually
meaningless. The rule ignores scientific involvement, eliminates fish
and wildlife protection, and fails to protect roadless areas.
It skews the planning process to favor logging, mining and off-road
vehicle use. It renders plan standards more discretionary, further
reducing agency accountability. Most shocking, the final rule, due out
imminently, exempts forest plans from environmental analysis and
eliminates the opportunity for the public to appeal the final plan.
The Forest Service assured critics that it would undertake in-depth
environmental studies when specific logging projects were proposed. Not
so.
In June 2003, the Administration abolished environmental review of
logging done in the name of ``hazardous fuels reduction'' on up to
1,000 acres of land as well as post-fire rehabilitation projects on up
to 4,200 acres.
One month later, the Administration carved out more loopholes for
National Environmental Policy Act exemptions for commercial logging by
setting acreage limits of 70 acres for timber sales and 250 acres for
salvage sales. These projects have few, if any, meaningful constraints.
For example, the projects must be ``consistent'' with local forest
plans. Yet, under the soon-to-be final planning regulations, forest
plans can be amended simply by changing the plan on an interim basis
with no public notice.
Under the banner of hazardous fuels reductions, large-scale,
intensive commercial logging projects may take place virtually anywhere
in our forests, regardless of forest type or tree size. In effect, the
conference report allows logging and associated road building with
limited environmental analysis, administrative appeals, judicial review
and public involvement.
The Appeals Reform Act of 1992 gave citizens a statutory right of
appeal after the Forest Service tried to eliminate appeals on timber
sales. Although billed as part of the ``Healthy Forests Initiative,''
changes to these regulations significantly curtail rights to appeal a
broad range of timber sales and land management decisions--not just
those pertaining to fire risk.
H.R. 1904 sets no time frames for appeal, no required stay of action
provision during the appeal, and no guaranteed right to appeal.
Instead, the Forest Service would have 30 days after enactment of this
legislation to develop the new administrative appeals process.
This legislation also pushes citizens out of the picture. In addition
to altering the intentions of the Appeals Reform Act, H.R. 1904 reduces
environmental review on logging projects not already given a wholesale
exemption and severely restricts opportunities for public involvement.
Furthermore, it encroaches upon the courts' ability to review the
legality of logging projects almost anywhere on our publicly owned
forests, including roadless areas and old growth. If bug and disease-
control are the purported reasons for logging, projects up to 1,000
acres will bypass all environmental review and appeals.
With millions of dollars authorized in the act for any hazardous
fuels project on public lands, logging without laws can proceed
throughout the backcountry.
The synergistic effects of these radical rollbacks are breathtaking.
I predict that the assault will only foment more controversy and
stimulate more distrust of the Forest Service for years to come.
I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson).
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise to urge everyone if
you want forests to be healthy and be managed, to support this bill. I
have heard stated here that we have mismanaged, that the Forest Service
and other agencies cannot manage forests under the current law. It is
impossible to manage.
In the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania, the finest hardwood
forest in America, we just had 10,000 to 20,000 acres of blow-down in
July. It has been assessed at somewhere between $50 to $100 million in
value lying on the ground. The Forest Service chief there just
determined that it would be at least 3 years before he could have
people there harvesting trees on the ground. Tell me that the system
season broke, that it makes sense to have $100 million worth of
American assets to lie there and rot because in 3 years they are of
little value at all.
Folks, this system is broken. We do not want judges managing our
forests. We want soil scientists, fish and wildlife biologists, and all
the people that our Forest Service hires. They have every kind of
scientist there is managing our forests. They should make those
decisions.
Mr. POMBO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Arizona (Mr. Renzi), who brought a renewed vigor to this debate.
Mr. RENZI. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman for his
leadership, and I especially want to thank the gentleman from Colorado
(Mr. McInnis) for his fighting spirit and 3 years of perseverance that
it took us to finally get to this point.
I also maybe want to offer a little bit of a different view for those
limousine environmentalists from the inner city, who do not necessarily
live in the forests as we do. Coming from Flagstaff, Arizona, the
largest Ponderosa pine forest in the world, where we suffered the likes
of the Rodeo-Chedeski fire, a fire of 500 thousand acres.
I want my colleagues to know there is a science that is being ignored
here. We are taking half the money and putting it into wildland urban
interface right on the boundaries of our communities. Yet the forest
managers want to be able to attack fire in the outlands. What they
understand is in the West we have canyons. While they may have concrete
canyons in New York City, we have real canyons in Arizona. In those
canyons, we have up-slope terrain. When up-slope terrain combines with
wind and temperature, that fire burns so hot and so fast that wildland
urban interface and limiting the money will not be able to give us
fallback positions for our firemen. It is a compromise that we have
proposed here. Vote in favor of the bill.
Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Georgia (Mr. Burns).
Mr. BURNS. Mr. Speaker, I want to join my colleagues in support of
H.R. 1904, the Healthy Forest Initiatives. I want to thank the
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), the gentleman from California
(Mr. Pombo), my distinguished colleague from Texas (Mr. Stenholm). We
think about the healthy forests, we think about our homes, the
wildlife, the lives of the men and women who live near and certainly
the forest, and we want to protect those.
In California, we saw the devastating fires of this year. I can think
of no better way to ease the minds of those in the West than to pass
the Healthy Forest Initiative.
In Georgia, we do not have the wildfires and the large forest fires
that we see in the West, but we have pests, and we have disease. We
have millions of acres that are at risk in Georgia due to the southern
pine beetle and other insects. We have seen a 278 percent in increase
in pine beetle infestation last year alone. This Healthy Forest
Restoration Act provides the Federal land managers with great
flexibility to deal with the fire dangers in the West, but it also
provides them with the authority to do innovative things in detection
[[Page H12166]]
and suppression of pests that really threaten eastern forests.
Mr. Speaker, the Healthy Forest Restoration Act is a national
solution to a national problem. I urge Congress to vote yes.
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. POMBO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Oregon (Mr. Walden), the coauthor of the legislation.
Mr. WALDEN of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, this legislation provides for
major improvements in how we will manage our forests. First of all, it
reduces unneeded government analysis. Second, it provides for actually
more public involvement, especially in the beginning, through better
notice and better participation requirements. It requires and reforms
the appeals process so we can end the costly delays that do keep our
professional foresters from doing the work they need to do to make our
forests more healthy.
Finally, it does require the courts to more quickly move on appeals
and, more importantly, consider the catastrophic affect on forest
health of preventing these projects from going forward.
Now, we have heard today about the problem with the General
Accounting Office, but let us talk about what the General Accounting
Office actually found. This is what the GAO report found: 58 percent of
eligible thinning projects in the United States were appealed in fiscal
year 2001 and fiscal year 2002. Fifty-two percent of the eligible
forest thinning projects proposed near communities in the wildland
urban interface were appealed. Half the projects, half the projects
right around communities were appealed. The GAO found an overwhelming
number of Forest Service appeals were found to be without merit.
Seventy-three percent of the appeals were rejected.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have to change the process. That is what we
are doing today. We are going to fund the work that needs to be done.
This year alone we are going to spend $420 million to go in and thin
out our forests so we will not have catastrophic fires in the future. I
would like to see this bill expanded beyond 11 percent of the forests
that need this kind of treatment, but that is as far as we could get
under this act. I want to see our communities protected.
This legislation relies on the underlying National Forest management
plans to protect old growth forests. My colleague, the gentleman from
Washington (Mr. Inslee) talks about protecting old growth. We do that
in this bill because the underlying plans protect the old growth. And
the alternative of defeating this bill is to have old growth forests
that are blackened, burned and destroyed, and I will not stand for
that. Vote for the bill.
Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from
Colorado (Mrs. Musgrave).
Mrs. MUSGRAVE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer my gratitude to the
chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, the gentleman from Virginia
(Mr. Goodlatte), the ranking member, the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Stenholm), the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), and especially to
my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis).
In the West we care very deeply about this legislation, particularly
in Colorado. We have had the Buffalo Creek Fire, we have had the Hayman
Fire in Colorado, we have had massive loss in acres of our beautiful
forest land. We have had immeasurable damage to the environment, to our
water quality.
The Denver Water Board spent over $20 million cleaning up after the
last fire. Habitat has been destroyed. Our tourism industry has been
harmed greatly. And, more importantly, we have lost the lives of our
brave firefighters in Colorado.
We are in strong support, those of us that care about our national
forests and our private forests, are in strong support of this
conference committee report. And I commend all those who have worked so
hard on this conference committee and this legislation.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bass). The Chair would like to announce
that the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) has 3 minutes remaining,
the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) has 1 minute remaining, the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) has 7 minutes remaining, the
gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) has 5 minutes remaining.
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
California (Mr. Dreier).
(Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this conference
report. And I was told that I had to spend my entire 2 minutes praising
the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), but I am going to instead talk
about the benefits of this bill. And I want to compliment my colleague,
the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), and the chairman of the
conference, our good friend, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr.
Goodlatte), the chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, the gentleman
from Oregon (Mr. Walden), and others who have been so involved in this
measure.
I happen to represent the Los Angeles area in southern California.
And the world knows that we have just suffered devastating fires in the
southern California area. It impacted the districts of my colleague,
the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) who represents the area in
the Inland Empire to the east of Los Angeles, further east of the area
I represent, and several others of our colleagues in San Diego. I know
that my colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), as we
all know, lost his home. And this impacted the district of the
gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham). And I can go through the
litany of our colleagues. Many members of the California delegation had
their districts impacted by this. We lost lives, we lost a tremendous,
tremendous amount of property. I lost in excess of 50 homes in the area
that I represent.
And I was very pleased when the gentleman from Virginia (Mr.
Goodlatte) was before the Committee on Rules yesterday and talked about
the fact that within this measure we will be able to have resources to
deal with things like the bark beetle which has played a role in
creating a problem in southern California when these trees were not
cleared. And that played a role in starting these fires.
We know that some resources were provided through the Department of
Agriculture to deal with this, but it was not handled appropriately
from the reports that we had from the head of the Office of Emergency
Services there. It is important for us to do everything that we can to
ensure that the loss of life and property is diminished. I am convinced
that passage of this conference report will go a long way towards doing
just that. And I thank all my friends who played such an important role
in making this happen.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bass). The Chair will advise that the
closing order will be the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) first,
the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) second, the gentleman from
Washington (Mr. Inslee) third, and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr.
Goodlatte) fourth.
{time} 1430
Mr. POMBO. Mr. Speaker, I have one additional speaker to close.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Michigan (Mr. Smith).
(Mr. SMITH of Michigan asked and was given permission to revise and
extend his remarks.)
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, our Committee on Agriculture is a
great committee in terms of Republicans and Democrats working together.
Our forests in this country are one of our strong resources that not
only help us economically but also help the environment, and conserving
the environment is important. Our forests certainly are an important
part of Michigan, but they are also a very important part of our
economic strength in the United States.
In the West, catastrophic wildfires recently have decimated those
forests over the last several years. We have made a mistake over how we
want to control forests. And sometimes in our overzealousness to
protect from fires, we have increased the potential of additional
damage. Two days ago, we
[[Page H12167]]
passed an energy bill. In this bill there is also language to utilize
the natural renewable resources of our woodlands of America to also
contribute to energy.
Removing some of the bureaucratic red tape for performing fire
prevention measures is not only environmentally friendly but also
fiscally responsible, as fire prevention costs American taxpayers
approximately one-fourth of what it costs to fight catastrophic forest
fires. The Healthy Forests Restoration Act authorizes the Bureau of
Land Management (BLM) to reduce the amount of underbrush and deadwood
buildup in forests that serve as kindling and fuel for the hottest,
most dangerous fires. It would regulate BLM's activities by putting
limits on the tree removal and road construction that has provoked
controversy at times in the past. This would give BLM the tools it
needs to confront the increasing threat of destructive forest fires on
federal lands that have had serious impacts both on people and
wildlife.
The bill takes additional measures to improve our forests. These
include provisions to encourage energy production from renewable energy
sources, protection of watersheds in forest areas and the creation of a
forest reserve program aimed at preserving and rehabilitating up to one
million acres of degraded and rare forest lands.
Disease and insect infestations are not only detrimental to our
woodlands, but also to our tree-lined streets and backyards. In
southeast Michigan, we are combating an exotic beetle known as the
Emerald Ash Borer. The bettles' larvae feed on the sapwood and
eventually kill branches and entire trees. This invasive pest has
resulted in the quarantine of all ash products in six counties and
southeastern Michigan. There are 28 million ash trees in the six
quarantined counties and an estimated 700 million ash trees in
Michigan. We are not finding that the pest is spreading into Ohio. The
magnitude of this problem is serious. Preliminary data from the Forest
Service estimates that the potential national impact of the Emerald Ash
Borer is a loss of ash trees up to 2 percent of total timber with a
value loss of between $20-60 billion.
Following discussions with Secretary Veneman and gaining the support
of the Michigan delegation, Michigan Department of Agriculture, and DNR
we were able to get the approval of substantial millions of dollars in
emergency assistance from USDA to combat the Emerald Ash Borer. This
federal funding will supplement resources provided by state and local
authorities and will be used for pest surveillance, quarantine of
infected areas, and some tree removal. In order to more efficiently
combat destructive pests like the Emerald Ash Borer, the Healthy Forest
Restoration Act puts in place measures that will allow accelerated
information gathering on such insect infestations. By removing
bureaucratic red tape and being more proactive in maintaining forest
health, the Healthy Forest Restoration Act is a step in the right
direction towards efficiently managing our forests, preventing
catastrophic fires, controlling damaging insect infestations, and
protecting our environment.
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to give two of my
remaining minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) for
the purposes of closing.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bass). Is there objection to the request
of the gentleman from Texas?
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte)
has 2 extra minutes.
Mr. POMBO. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of our time to the
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis), the subcommittee chairman and
co-author of the legislation.
Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the yeoman's work of the
chairman and the guidance of making sure that we could get this bill
through. I also wish to acknowledge deeply the gentleman from
Virginia's (Mr. Goodlatte) service and especially the service of the
staff who have worked so hard in making sure that we could come
together on this side of the aisle so that when we approached this side
of the aisle we had a package that had common sense. We had a package
that people like the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), the gentleman
from California (Mr. George Miller), and the gentleman from Oregon (Mr.
DeFazio) could come to the table and work with us on. And a lot of that
was guided, a lot of the going back and forth was guided by someone who
I consider an artist and that is the gentleman from Oregon (Mr.
Walden), somebody who can negotiate between both the Republicans and
the Democrats.
It was about 99 years ago when Teddy Roosevelt used his State of the
Union address to urge Congress to create a national forest system to
ensure proper stewardship of these tremendous assets that we have in
our huge public lands. And by the way, I live in a district that has 23
million acres of public lands. It is fitting now that 99 years later,
99 years later we have one of the most significant pieces of forest
legislation that has come in since.
What this piece of legislation does is over the 99 years we have seen
the leadership, the guidance, the expertise and the science taken away
from the Green Hats, who I complimentarily refer to as our Forest
Service people, the people who understand the forests, the people who
dream of running the forest, the people who have been educated in the
forests. We have seen through some very tactical maneuvers their power
and their authority taken by the Sierra Club-types and moved to the
courts and moved to the Congress.
What this bill does is this bill allows this authority to go back to
those people on a commonsense approach, on a balanced approach which is
demonstrated by the fact that this will pass with bipartisan support,
to let it go back to the Green Hats, to let the Forest Service manage
those forests.
The passage of this legislation today means that the Congress, all of
us are responding to the America forests health crisis, the crisis that
was demonstrated recently in the State of California, the crisis which
we have seen in the State of Oregon, the crisis through bug
infestation, not just fires, but bug infestation down in the South.
Storm King Mountain, the mountain that I grew up on, the mountain that
I took bodies off of, we finally are responding and we are coming back.
I am pleased that we are coming back and giving that authority where
Theodore Roosevelt thought that authority ought to exist, and that is
with the United States Forest Service.
Once again I want to compliment my colleagues on the Democratic side
that have worked with us. And I want to point out those who have not.
It amazes me that one like the gentleman from New York City (Mr.
Hinchey) would stand up and make the kind of statements that he made
and speak from a wooden podium. A little ironic.
This is a good bill. It is bipartisan, and it is going to make a big,
big difference.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I will be closing, so when the appropriate
order comes, I will take my turn.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The closing order will be the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Stenholm), the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), and,
lastly, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte).
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I will yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) if he
would like to engage in a colloquy on monitoring.
Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. STENHOLM. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.
Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I will clarify a point that the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) is interested in. Let me state that the
projects authorized by title IV are primarily scientific efforts, and
scientific methods should be the primary means of assessing them. While
we encourage multiparty monitoring, it is not our intent to require it,
particularly for projects conducted under title IV.
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I will state I certainly agree with the
chairman. I understand the benefit of multiparty monitoring. However,
the chairman is correct in expressing that our intent with respect to
projects conducted under title IV are to be scientifically conducted
and multiparty monitoring is not a requirement of these projects.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude by thanking all who have worked
so diligently for so long to bring us to this point to where we truly
have a compromise that will move our forest policy in a desirable
direction.
I thank the staff, all who have worked on both sides on the aisle so
diligently under somewhat trying conditions from time to time as we
have had some of the internal strife that unfortunately finds its way
into this House of Representatives. But that certainly has not been the
case regarding
[[Page H12168]]
the House Committee on Agriculture, and the bipartisan support there is
something that I have enjoyed and working with the chairman and the
gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) and others as we have strived to
put together what is basically a good bill.
When you read the bill, much of the complaints about what we have
heard today are not in the bill. If you are going to have sound
forests, if you are going to have a sound forest policy, sound science,
common sense has got to replace the opinions of many who have a
difference of opinion regarding what is good conservation, what is good
management, and how we do, in fact, manage our forests so that we do
have lumber for housing and other projects.
So all in all, this is a good sound compromise worthy of overwhelming
support of this body. I thank all of those who have worked on it. It
certainly has been something that I personally have worked on for many,
many years. I am glad to see it is getting to this point. I urge a very
strong vote in favor of the project.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee)
has 5 minutes remaining.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I commend all of the people who have worked on this
bill. There are a lot of technical and difficult issues trying to
fashion a hazardous fuels reduction program. And I am unable to support
this and I hope my colleagues will join me and the Sierra Club and the
League of Conservation Voters and other main-line commonsense groups
who have committed their lives to protecting our national forests in
defeating this bill and moving on to a better one, and I hope that my
colleagues will join me.
Underlying that position is the basic belief that the medicine that
we are providing here is both inadequate and misguided. It is misguided
because it is based on a myth; and that myth rising to an urban legend
is that these fires have consumed thousands of acres because people
have questioned what some government officials have done, and that is
an abject falsehood.
The GAO report shows that 92 percent of these projects go ahead
unimpeded. In California, you know why the California projects did not
get done? It was not environmental project appeals. In the last 3
years, there has not been one hazardous fuel reduction program that
held up national forests in Southern California the last 3 years. The
reason some of this work did not get done is Uncle Sam, us, did not
appropriate enough money for California to do the job. The State of
California asked for $430 million last April to solve this problem. And
what did Uncle Sam do in the Bush administration? They did not give it
to them. And the fires occurred.
This is a failure of appropriations, not a failure because certain
citizens once in a blue moon have the temerity to stand up on their
back legs and question decisions by the Forest Service to do disguised
commercial logging which has on occasion happened, thankfully not very
often. Maybe 2 percent of the time. We are not doing enough to really
solve this problem.
What we have done is in one of the most serious reductions of
citizens' ability to question their government is reduce the ability to
have their oversight of our Federal officials.
Now, it is kind of a conservative position to be rightfully sometimes
distrustful of our Federal officials. Now, I have got to say there have
been occasions, thankfully few, where these projects have been
disguised timber sales. And the reason is because we are not
appropriating enough to the Forest Service to do their job. And when
that has happened, less than three pearls of the time there has been a
brief appeal of that decision, and most frequently these things get
worked out. But until we increase tenfold our appropriations, we are
not going to cut the mustard in this program.
Now, let me mention something else, too. We have not talked about
what the real debate is about here. The debate is as much about roads
as it is about forests, because the real issue here is where we are
going to build roads. We have 440,000 miles of Forest Service roads in
our forests, 440,000 miles. They are falling apart, and we ought to be
putting our money in and fixing those roads before we punch new roads
into roadless areas.
Let me put this into real-life perspective. Take a couple in
northeast Washington who is not getting adequately protected by this
bill. Their house is surrounded by pine trees in the national forest.
We have not prioritized those pine forests around their home for
treatment like we should have in this bill. We did not do it. Now, when
that couple leaves their home to drive over to the Olympic Peninsula to
the Jupiter Ridge Roadless Area, if they hike out to a nice little
picnic spot, they will find two trees. They are about maybe 6, 7, 8
feet in diameter, cedars, right next to each other. We call them
Jefferson and Washington.
In this bill, neither protects that couple in their home surrounded
by the pine forest, nor the two trees they go to visit in the roadless
area.
Their home is not protected from fire adequately, and those two trees
are not protected from chainsaws adequately in this bill.
It is my hope that this bill will be defeated and we will come back
and make some very modest but important improvements on it to solve
both of those problems.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Let me start by thanking the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) for
yielding me 2 additional minutes for this close, but more importantly
for the very cooperative way in which the House Committee on
Agriculture has produced this legislation. This is truly the example of
why this bill will pass by an overwhelming margin here today.
It passed out of the House Committee on Agriculture originally on a
voice vote; and when it came to the floor, I believe, 19 of the 24
Democrats on the committee, Members who represent rural areas, Members
who represent areas that are forests, voted for this legislation,
nearly 80 percent.
Had we had that kind of support elsewhere in the Congress, this
legislation would have been adopted a long time ago. It has been 8
years that we have been working on it. And I would have to say to the
gentleman from Washington State (Mr. Inslee) that if we were not to
pass this conference report, not to send it to the President, we would
be working on this for many more years. We would see more years like
this year where 6\1/2\ million acres of forest land in this country
were burned to the ground.
{time} 1445
That is what we are faced with. That is why we need to begin this
first step of solving this problem by giving the Forest Service the
tools that it needs.
It is absolutely incorrect that these forest fires are not related to
the problems that the Forest Service is presented with. Certainly,
money is a problem. Certainly, we are going to have to deal with that,
but in addition, massive parts of the Western part of this country are
tied up in legal cases, including the entire southern California area
that is tied up over litigation related to the spotted owl. This is
clearly, clearly needed to address the problems that we face across the
country.
I want to thank also the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo). He
recognizes very clearly the nature of this problem, and the gentleman
from Colorado (Mr. McInnis), I want to congratulate him on his
leadership in bringing this bill to the floor as well. He is leaving
the Congress at the end of this term, and this is his signature bill.
This is his legacy in the Congress. So I commend him as well.
I also commend Members who have fought against this process like the
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and the gentleman from
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio). They have seen the light. They understand what it
takes. They understand that it is time to get about the business of
solving the problem, rather than another 8 years of fighting, and I
would say to those few remaining who do not understand, get on board,
get this done.
Yes, there is additional work that needs to be done. Yes, we will
look forward to working with them in future
[[Page H12169]]
Congresses, but now is the time to give the President the ability to
sign a bill that will put our Forest Service to work, to get this
problem underway. We will come back for additional legislation because
this problem is going to persist, and this is only a beginning.
Support this conference report. It is a good one.
Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. Mr. Speaker, my home state of
California has just been through a terrible series of wildfires. The
fires burned more than 800,000 acres, destroyed over 3,300 homes,
caused over $12 billion in property damage, and tragically took the
lives of 22 people.
What could have been done to prevent it? What should we do now to
prevent such occurrences in the future?
The answer, it seems to me, is active management and control of
overgrown areas near development, usually referred to as the Woodland-
Urban Interface. This will go a long way to preventing fires from
destroying homes and worse, killing our citizens.
We have a bill in front of us today, H.R. 1904, The Health Forests
Initiative, that its proponents tell us will help prevent the kind of
devastation that we endured in California.
This conference report is certainly better than the initial House
version of the bill. In the House bill, money used for clearing would
have had to come from nearby logging activities. In the chaparral of
Southern California, there is no logging, and that means no removal of
forest fuels would have occurred to protect our homes and our families.
The House-Senate compromise that is before us today is a step in the
right direction. Most importantly, it provides $760 million to fund
clearing forest fuels to prevent catastrophic wildfires. Nevertheless,
there remain some fundamental problems with the bill.
First of all, the Healthy Forests Initiative is only effective for
federal lands. Roughly two-thirds of the lands that burned in
California was not federal land, and therefore would be unaffected by
the healthy forests initiative.
Second, only half of the $760 million is set aside for forest
clearing within 1\1/2\ miles of structures--the Wildlife-Urban
Interface. The other half will go toward thinning in other areas.
Moreover, where in the initial bill the clearing was paid for by nearby
profitable logging, now we are giving $365 million to commercial
loggers for these thinning activities. So, instead of asking logging
companies to contribute their fair share to forest management and fire
mitigation, we are subsidizing them to do it.
I am disappointed with this bill. We had an opportunity to craft a
bipartisan bill, one that would have addressed the pressing issue of
protecting lives and property in the Wildlife-Urban Interface. Instead,
the Healthy Forests Initiative puts commercial logging interests ahead
of protecting our vulnerable communities. Once again, the Republican-
controlled Congress has it priorities all wrong.
While this bill does not sufficiently address this important
priority, I am supporting an effort that does. I am working to provide
more funding for community and individual-initiated and driven
initiatives to clear fire fuels in their areas. We should be empowering
local communities to clear these areas--they have the greatest
knowledge of the environments in which they live, and the greatest
personal stake in the success of these efforts. I am hopeful that this
initiative will generate broad bipartisan support.
In the meantime, I regret that I must oppose the Health Forests
Initiatives, principally because it uses a great deal of resources, but
it won't do very much to make our Southern Californian forests any
healthier.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, today the House of
Representatives accepted the conference report for H.R. 1904, the
Healthy Forests Restoration Act. I was appointed as a conferee, as was
Representative Inslee of Washington and Representative Conyers of
Michigan. Unfortunately, instead of using the conference process to
reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of the
legislation, certain members of the conference committee were included
in bicameral meetings to craft a compromise acceptable to the group of
negotiators. In short, the negotiating group picked people from the
conference committee who would agree with them and did not invite
others to participate. Official members of the conference committee
were invited to a conference meeting to consider the product negotiated
outside the conference process. The conference consideration did not
provide for a real debate of amendments and the Chair moved to close
the conference 30 minutes after it began. This does not contain the
elements of a democracy but the elements of arrogance of power.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, I am going to vote for this
conference report.
It has flaws. But if its provisions are properly implemented it can
help reduce the risk of severe wildfire damage that now threatens lives
and property in many communities in Colorado and other States--and for
me that is the bottom line.
I am convinced we need to act to protect our communities and their
water supplies. For that, a variety of things must be done, including
working to reduce the built-up fuels that can increase the severity of
the wildland fires that will periodically occur nearby.
That's why I have introduced legislation to expedite those thinning
projects. It is also why last year I joined with my Colorado colleague,
Representative McInnis, and other Members to develop a bill that was
approved by the Resources Committee.
I voted for that bill last year, and if H.R. 1904 as it came to the
House floor earlier this year had been the same as that bill, I would
have voted for it again. But it wasn't the same bill, which was why I
voted against it.
Instead of building on last year's work in the Resources Committee,
the Resources and Agriculture Committees this year brought forth a
quite different measure--one that added a long list of new provisions
while omitting some of the key parts of last year's bill. As a result,
it has taken much longer than I though it should have for us to reach
the point of being ready to vote on a measure that has a good chance of
clearing both chambers and being sent to the President for signing into
law.
Because H.R. 1904 as passed by the House rejected key compromises
that we worked our last year, the bill encountered more resistance in
the Senate than otherwise would have been the case, and it was that
much harder to shape compromises on a number of difficult points.
However, in the end the Senate passed a bill that made important
improvements on the House version--and this conference report, while
far from perfect, is itself a definite improvement over the legislation
that I voted against earlier this year.
Let me briefly outline some of the ways in which the conference
report is enough of an improvement over the House bill that I can and
will vote for it today:
funding focus
Like the Senate bill, the conference report requires that at least 50
percent of all thinning-project funds be spent in the interface areas.
Last year's Resources Committee bill would have required 70 percent of
the money to be spent in the interface, but H.R. 1904 as passed by the
House did not include any such requirement. So, the conference report
is an improvement over the House bill in this area.
wildland/urban interface
I think the highest priority for fuel-reduction work needs to be on
the forest lands where accumulated fuels present the most immediate
risks to our communities--those within the wildland/urban interface, or
the ``red zone,'' as it is called in Colorado--and to municipal water
supplies. These are the places where forest conditions present the
greatest risks to people's lives, health, and property, and so they
should be where our finite resources--time, money, and people--are
concentrated.
To properly focus on these areas, we have to properly identify them.
In that regard, I had no quarrel with the provisions of H.R. 1904 as
passed by the House. By referring to lands within either an
``interface'' or ``intermix'' community, it provided an appropriate
limitation on the discretion of the agencies without drawing an
arbitrary mileage line that would not appropriately reflect the reality
that a community's exposure to the risk of wildfire depends on terrain,
forest conditions, and other factors that can vary greatly from one
place to another and over time.
However, proper focus also requires assured priority status for funds
to carry out projects to protect communities and their water supplies.
The bill reported by the Resources Committee last year required that at
least 70 percent of the funds provided a for fuel-reduction purposes
would have to be used for such projects--but no similar provision is
included in H.R. 1904. I offered an amendment to restore the provision,
and its absence was a major reason I voted against the House bill.
The Senate bill had a basic limit of one-half mile from a community's
boundary, with some exceptions--if a larger area was identified in a
community protection plan developed through a collaborative process; or
if land near a community was steep; or if there was a geographical
feature that would provide a firebreak within three-quarters of a mile,
in which case the interface would go to that feature. The ``community
protection plan'' provision was particularly good, in my opinion,
because it did not require an arbitrary cutoff, and because it allowed
both Federal and non-Federal land to be included. The rest of the
definition was problematical.
The conference report improves somewhat on the Senate bill. It (1)
retains the ``community protection plan'' part of the definition; (2)
keeps the basic one-half mile limit; but (3) allows the interface to go
to 1\1/2\ mile, if the slopes are steep or if there is a firebreak-
feature within that distance and the lands are very susceptible to
fire. Like the Senate bill, it
[[Page H12170]]
also defines the interface as including a route identified as necessary
for escape from a threatened community.
I think it is well established that reducing the fuels closest to
structures pays big dividends in terms of reduced fire risks. However,
I do into favor defining the interface in terms of arbitrary lines on
the map, because fires do not respect those lines and because our
experience in Colorado has shown that some of the high-priority ``red
zone'' areas are extensive. A prime example is the Hayman fire--it was
among the largest in our State's history, but all of the lands involved
were within the ``red zone'' as defined by our State Forester (a
definition that is included in my bill, H.R. 1042).
Nonetheless, on balance, I think the conference report is acceptable
on this point because of the emphasis that it puts on community-
protection plans. This should encourage at-risk communities, like those
along the Front Range, to develop protection plans and to encourage
owners of non-Federal lands to join in working to reduce fire risks.
COMMUNITY-PROTECTION PLANS
I strongly support increased public involvement during the planning
and other initial stages of fuel-reduction projects. That was the
purpose of an amendment I offered during the markup of the House bill.
The ideal is to make it less likely those projects will be delayed by
controversies or lawsuits, by developing support at the front end for
projects that are urgently needed, narrowly tailored and scientifically
sound. I think the conference report's provisions related to community
protection plans can foster such involvement and promote a
collaborative approach that will do much more to reduce conflicts and
delays than will the provisions related to NEPA analysis,
administrative appeals, and judicial review.
NEPA ANALYSIS AND JUDICIAL REVIEW OF THINNING PROJECTS
On judicial review, the Senate bill is slightly better than the House
bill, and the conference report follows the Senate bill.
On NEPA analysis, the conference report is a compromise between the
House and Senate bills. Under the House bill, no alternatives to a
proposed action would have to be analyzed; under the Senate bill at
least the ``no-action'' alternative would have to be analyzed, and so
would a third if proposed during scoping. The conference report would
follow the House bill for projects within the interface, but follow the
Senate bill for projects outside the interface.
As passed by the House, H.R. 1904 clearly reflected the premise that
the land-managing agencies are laboring under procedural burdens that
unnecessarily delay work on fuel-reduction projects--a premise that I
think has not been proved beyond doubt.
The Chief of the Forest Service has testified that the agency has
been slow to act to reduce the risks of catastrophic wildfire because
of ``analysis paralysis,'' meaning that the fear of appeals or
litigation has made Forest Service personnel excessively cautious in
the way they formulate and analyze fuel-reduction--and other--projects.
The chief may be correct in that diagnosis--certainly he is in a better
position that I am to evaluate the mental states of his subordinates.
But it is important to remember that the Chief has also testified that
he does not think revision of the environmental laws is required in
order to treat this condition--and on that point I am in full
agreement.
Nonetheless, I supported some restrictions on NEPA analysis last
year, and because the conference report does not go as far in that
direction as the House bill I am prepared to reluctantly accept this
part of the conference report as well as its provisions related to
administrative appeals and judicial review even though I would have
preferred the provisions of last year's Resources Committee bill or
this year's Senate bill dealing with those topics.
OLD GROWTH AND BIG TREES
The House bill had no specific protection for old-growth stands, and
only weak language to require that thinning projects focus on removing
small trees. The Senate bill had provisions intended to protect old-
growth stands and slightly stronger language to put emphasis on
thinning out smaller trees. The conference report falls far short of
ideal in these areas--in this respect it is weaker than either the
Udall-Hefley bill of 2001 or H.R. 1042. However, it is an improvement
over the House-passed bill.
FUNDING
The House bill had no specific authorization for funding thinning
projects; the Senate bill authorized $760 million per year, and the
conference report follows the Senate bill.
This part of the conference report is a definite improvement over the
House bill, because the main obstacle to getting needed work done has
been lack of funds, and lack of focus on red zone areas, not the
environmental laws or the appeals process.
Of course, an authorization alone will not assure appropriation of
adequate amounts, and nothing in the conference report will protect the
funding that is appropriated for thinning projects from being used to
fight fires if Congress does not provide adequate funding for that
essential purpose. However, the specific authorization may assist in
both respects by demonstrating the importance that Congress attaches to
thinning projects.
OMITTED PROVISIONS
The conference report drops a number of provisions that the Senate
added to the original House bill. I think some of those provisions
should have been retained, such as those dealing with health monitoring
of firefighters, monitoring of air quality, increases in the fines for
violations of regulations related to fires on Federal lands, and the
enforcement of animal fighting provisions of the Animal Welfare Act. I
also would have preferred the deletion of some parts of the original
House bill that have been retained in the conference report. On
balance, however, neither the omission of some good Senate provisions
nor the retention of some defective House provisions is enough to make
the conference report unacceptable to me.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, let me say that while I am voting for
this conference report, I do not expect this to be the last time
Congress addresses the matters it addresses. I am under no illusions
about the flaws in this legislation, and will be working to improve it.
I will also do all I can to make sure that it is implemented in a way
that is consistent with sound, balanced management of the Federal
lands.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, the problem of forest fires in the West
that are aggravated, in some cases caused, by human mismanagement has
been a problem as long as I have been in Congress. I am pleased that
with the work of Oregonians Representative Peter DeFazio, Senator Ron
Wyden and Representative Greg Walden, the bill that's moving forward is
better than the bill I voted against in the past.
I wish I could vote for H.R. 1904 in good conscience, but it still
has three fundamental problems. First, the procedural fix far exceeds
any procedural problem. This bill would undermine the National
Environmental Protection Act, the judicial process, and the system of
administrative appeals to fix a perceived problem of too many projects
being tied up in environmental litigation. However, the Government
Accounting Office estimates that only 1 percent of forest management
projects have been tied up in litigation. This type of sweeping
procedural change is unnecessary.
Second, the bill opens up our forests to much broader timber harvest.
This should be debated on its own merits and not under the guise of
forest health and fire prevention. If we want to substantially increase
timber harvest on Federal lands we ought to be clear and deal with it
directly.
Last, and most troubling of all for me, is that this bill does not
adequately protect families whose lives and property are at risk
because of forest fire hazard. This bill does not focus our resources
on the interface between residential properties and forest land, in
what we are coming to know as the ``flame zone.'' Focused hazardous
fuel reduction around communities could substantially reduce the risk
of fire damage by providing a buffer to help slow and stop advancing
fires.
This is a better bill than before but it is still a missed
opportunity. To adequately protect families and businesses we need to
take a few, simple, proactive steps. We need to strengthen building
codes and insurance requirements for ``firewise'' construction and
``defensible space'' landscaping. According to Forest Service
scientists, these precautions can increase a home's ability to survive
a wildfire by more than 90 percent. We need to educate homeowners of
the dangers before wildfires start so they can adequately prepare, and
make informed choices on where to live. We need to implement smart
land-use planning that guides development away from fire-prone areas.
And, we need to provide affordable, livable housing options for
families away from danger.
Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the conference
report. Others will come to the floor to discuss the threat of wild
fire to the health and general welfare of segments of the American
population.
Others will come to the floor to discuss other elements of this
legislation, such as its provisions concerning insect infestation which
threatens some of our forests and forest industries.
I am not unmindful of the need to address the issues raised by the
bill, but in our view, we would do so in a more prudent and responsible
manner.
There is one issue in the pending legislation, however, which
transcends the debate over forest fires and forest health: the
independence of our judiciary and the right of Americans to seek
redress from the courts when they believe they are aggrieved by a
governmental action.
Indeed, the judicial review provisions of this bill would set a
dangerous precedent for anybody concerned with civil liberties, civil
rights, workers' rights and any other issue that may come before our
judiciary.
[[Page H12171]]
Simply put, this legislation curtails access to the courts by
American citizens by limiting where challenges can be brought, by whom,
and on what issues.
This legislation interferes with how judges run their courtrooms. It
arbitrarily requires courts to lift injunctions and stays after 60 days
unless affirmatively renewed by the court.
A dangerous precedent and very bad policy. Our Constitution clearly
delineates three branches of government. This conference report
tramples on that tenant of our Constitution.
Incredible. Simply incredible.
This bill tells the court that litigation involving thinning trees is
more important than prosecuting suspected Al Qaeda terrorists.
To judge suits over forest thinning projects more important than all
other civil cases, let alone criminal cases, is seriously misguided. To
make this policy law is absurd.
I have been here long enough to remember when conservatives did not
trust the federal government and did not endorse expanded and unchecked
federal powers.
It is unfortunate, it really is, that the sponsors of this bill chose
to inject this controversial attack on the independence of our
judiciary in a measure of this nature.
These provisions are a poison pill, and do a disservice to our
addressing issues such as forest insect infestation and forest fires in
a prudent and responsible fashion.
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 1904, the
Healthy Forest Restoration Act. I would like to thank leadership for
allowing this long overdue bill to come to the floor today, and most
importantly, I would like to thank Forest Subcommittee Chairman Scott
McInnis, whose hard work and dedication this bill has brought us to
this point today.
Mr. Speaker, there are many reasons to cut through the current
procedural and bureaucratic thicket that has engulfed the U.S. Forest
Service. It is time to eliminate the ``analysis paralysis'' of
administrative appeals and litigation that has heretofore prevented the
U.S. Forest Service from conducting badly needed thinning projects that
are needed to protect communities and wildlife.
The fires of the last few years have ravaged the west. My district
was no exception, where the 137,000 acre Hayman Fire tore through the
Pike National Forest last year. That wildfire--the largest and most
destructive in state history--burned homes, fouled streams and
reservoirs, and may even have pushed an endangered butterfly into
extinction. Fires like these have proven once and for all that no
management on our public lands, is bad management.
Unfortunately, much of the destruction caused by these fires is
attributable to the bureaucracy, appeals, and red tape that have
hamstrung land managers for years. The Hayman Fire, for example,
occurred in part in an area slated for treatment. Unfortunately, the
treatments took years to plan because of arcane procedural rules, and
were then further held up by frivolous appeals filed by a host of
environmental groups. Before the treatments could begin, the fires
reduced the area to ashes. This bill will seek to streamline that
process, and curtail frivolous litigation so that we can avoid the
large scale environmental devastation caused by these catastrophic
fires in the future. In addition, the bill will help reduce costs to
the American taxpayer.
The cost to extinguish these abnormally massive fires to protect
communities and their water supplies has cost more than $1 billion.
With the passage of H.R. 1904, rather than continuing to treat the
expensive symptoms of this dangerous buildup of dead and diseased trees
in our forests--we will finally get at the root cause of the problem.
Mr. Speaker, I believe every dollar we spent on a thinning project
that prevents a fire, is several dollars saved in suppression and first
responder costs when the fire starts. Restoring our forests to a
healthier state by clearing out dead fuel and bug-infested trees before
they feed wildfires isn't just good environmental policy, it's good
fiscal policy too.
Mr. HERGER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1904, the
``Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003.'' For the Northern
California Congressional District I represent, this bill is long
overdue. My District comprises 5 national forests, and wildfires are an
annual and growing threat. Each day, month and year that good forest
management is stymied, communities are placed in greater danger.
Mr. Speaker, in my view, this bill doesn't go far enough to address
our monumental and compounding forest health crisis. With 190 million
acres of forests at risk, and only 2 million acres being treated
annually, we have to do much, much more. But it takes an important
first step forward in the face of tremendous resistance from the
radical environmentalists. And I want to commend my colleagues--
Chairman Pombo, Chairman Goodlatte, Chairman McInnis and Congressman
Walden--for their staunch leadership and dedication in fashioning a
collaborative bill that is able to win a majority of the House and
Senate. President Bush also deserves a great deal of credit and thanks
for his efforts in bringing our growing forest health crisis to the
attention of the American public, and to the forefront of our
environmental policy debate.
An extraordinarily cumbersome environmental review process, which can
delay forest health projects for years, has elevated the review
``process'' over good management and professional judgment. The Forest
Service Chief, Dale Bosworth, testified to Congress that his agenda
spends 40% of its time on planning and process activities. Litigation
and an appeals process that is ripe for abuse have been utilized by
radical environmental groups to stop community-supported forest health
projects. A General Accounting Office study indicated that 59% of all
projects eligible for appeal are appealed, the vast majority from
radical environmental groups. The percentage is even higher in
California. Meantime, our forests are literally burning up. Lives are
being lost. Catastrophic fires are causing billions in property damage
and costing the taxpayer billions in suppression and rehabilitation
costs. Public health and safety demands that something be done.
For too long radical environmental groups have hijacked our forests
to advance their own so-called ``environmental agenda.'' Their
handiwork has contributed to an immense forest health crisis where
lives and property are threatened, billions of taxpayer dollars are
spent to suppress destructive fires--instead of on common sense forest
health projects that could prevent them--and millions are wasted on
endless environmental reviews and litigation. It's high time for the
rest of us to take our forests back.
This bill will not solve this enormous and compounding crisis. But it
takes an important step forward by streamlining environmental reviews
and preventing abuses of the appeals process, which will allow urgently
needed management to move forward in a small portion of our at-risk
forests. It will give forest professionals the tools they desperately
need, and provide positive momentum for continuing active management
throughout all of our forests to restore them to a healthy condition,
and address a very serious and growing threat to lives and property. I
urge my colleagues to support it.
Mr. MATHESON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Healthy
Forests bill. This legislation will help restore Utah's forests that
have been devastated by fire, drought, and insect infestations.
I am hopeful that this legislation will prevent a repeat of this
year's severe wildfire season and stop fires from spreading so quickly
and affecting our communities. This legislation focuses its resources
on hazardous fuel reduction efforts close to home by prioritizing
efforts to prevent fires within a mile and a half of at-risk
communities. This bill also provides grants for states and local
communities to perform the fuel reduction activities that will benefit
them the most.
Not only will this legislation help prevent forest fires, but it will
address the infestation of the bark beetle that has affected much of
southern Utah. This bill requires the Forest Service to develop a plan
to combat insect infestation and allows for the expedition of projects
that would help eliminate this problem that has turned Cedar Mountain
in the Dixie National Forest into a skeleton of what it once was.
The passage of this bill is critical to protecting the health of the
forests in Utah and throughout the West. We've seen too much
devastation and damage in recent years to allow the situation to go
unchanged. I am committed to this legislation as an important first
step toward remediating our forests.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bass). All time has expired.
Without objection, the previous question is ordered on the conference
report.
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the conference report.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, this 15-
minute vote on the conference report will be followed by 5-minute votes
on H. Res. 453, on which the yeas and nays were ordered, and S. 1156,
on which the yeas and nays were ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 286,
nays 140, not voting 8, as follows:
[Roll No. 656]
YEAS--286
Aderholt
Akin
Alexander
Baca
Bachus
Baird
[[Page H12172]]
Baker
Ballance
Ballenger
Barrett (SC)
Bartlett (MD)
Barton (TX)
Bass
Beauprez
Bereuter
Berkley
Berry
Biggert
Bilirakis
Bishop (GA)
Bishop (UT)
Blackburn
Blunt
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bonner
Bono
Boozman
Boswell
Boucher
Boyd
Bradley (NH)
Brady (PA)
Brady (TX)
Brown (SC)
Brown-Waite, Ginny
Burgess
Burns
Burr
Burton (IN)
Buyer
Calvert
Camp
Cannon
Cantor
Capito
Cardoza
Carson (OK)
Carter
Castle
Chabot
Chocola
Clyburn
Coble
Cole
Collins
Cox
Cramer
Crane
Crenshaw
Culberson
Cunningham
Davis (AL)
Davis (CA)
Davis (TN)
Davis, Jo Ann
Davis, Tom
Deal (GA)
DeFazio
DeGette
DeLay
DeMint
Diaz-Balart, L.
Diaz-Balart, M.
Dicks
Dooley (CA)
Doolittle
Doyle
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Edwards
Ehlers
Emerson
English
Etheridge
Everett
Feeney
Flake
Foley
Forbes
Ford
Fossella
Franks (AZ)
Frelinghuysen
Frost
Gallegly
Garrett (NJ)
Gerlach
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gingrey
Goode
Goodlatte
Gordon
Goss
Granger
Graves
Green (WI)
Greenwood
Gutknecht
Hall
Harman
Harris
Hart
Hastings (WA)
Hayes
Hayworth
Hefley
Hensarling
Herger
Hobson
Hoekstra
Holden
Hooley (OR)
Hostettler
Houghton
Hulshof
Hunter
Hyde
Isakson
Issa
Istook
Janklow
Jenkins
John
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, Sam
Jones (NC)
Keller
Kelly
Kennedy (MN)
King (IA)
King (NY)
Kingston
Kline
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaHood
Lampson
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Latham
LaTourette
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Linder
Lipinski
Lucas (KY)
Lucas (OK)
Manzullo
Marshall
Matheson
Matsui
McCarthy (NY)
McCotter
McCrery
McHugh
McInnis
McIntyre
McKeon
Mica
Michaud
Miller (FL)
Miller (MI)
Miller, Gary
Miller, George
Mollohan
Moran (KS)
Murphy
Murtha
Musgrave
Myrick
Nethercutt
Neugebauer
Ney
Northup
Norwood
Nunes
Nussle
Oberstar
Obey
Ortiz
Osborne
Ose
Otter
Oxley
Pearce
Pence
Peterson (MN)
Peterson (PA)
Petri
Pickering
Pitts
Platts
Pombo
Pomeroy
Porter
Portman
Pryce (OH)
Putnam
Radanovich
Ramstad
Regula
Rehberg
Renzi
Reyes
Reynolds
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Rogers (MI)
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Ross
Royce
Ryan (WI)
Ryun (KS)
Sandlin
Schrock
Scott (GA)
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shadegg
Shaw
Sherwood
Shimkus
Shuster
Simmons
Simpson
Skelton
Smith (MI)
Smith (TX)
Smith (WA)
Snyder
Souder
Spratt
Stearns
Stenholm
Strickland
Stupak
Sullivan
Sweeney
Tancredo
Tanner
Tauzin
Taylor (MS)
Taylor (NC)
Terry
Thomas
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Thornberry
Tiahrt
Tiberi
Toomey
Turner (OH)
Turner (TX)
Udall (CO)
Upton
Vitter
Walden (OR)
Walsh
Wamp
Weldon (FL)
Weldon (PA)
Weller
Whitfield
Wicker
Wilson (NM)
Wilson (SC)
Wolf
Wu
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
NAYS--140
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allen
Andrews
Baldwin
Becerra
Bell
Berman
Bishop (NY)
Blumenauer
Brown (OH)
Brown, Corrine
Capps
Capuano
Cardin
Carson (IN)
Case
Clay
Conyers
Cooper
Costello
Crowley
Cummings
Davis (FL)
Davis (IL)
Delahunt
DeLauro
Deutsch
Dingell
Doggett
Emanuel
Engel
Eshoo
Evans
Farr
Fattah
Ferguson
Filner
Frank (MA)
Gonzalez
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Hastings (FL)
Hill
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Hoeffel
Holt
Honda
Hoyer
Inslee
Israel
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
Johnson (IL)
Johnson, E. B.
Jones (OH)
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kennedy (RI)
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kind
Kirk
Kleczka
Langevin
Lantos
Leach
Lee
Levin
Lewis (GA)
LoBiondo
Lofgren
Lowey
Lynch
Majette
Maloney
Markey
McCarthy (MO)
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
McNulty
Meehan
Meek (FL)
Meeks (NY)
Menendez
Millender-McDonald
Miller (NC)
Moore
Moran (VA)
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal (MA)
Olver
Owens
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor
Paul
Payne
Pelosi
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Rodriguez
Rothman
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Ryan (OH)
Sabo
Sanchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Sanders
Saxton
Schakowsky
Schiff
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Shays
Sherman
Slaughter
Smith (NJ)
Solis
Stark
Tauscher
Tierney
Towns
Udall (NM)
Van Hollen
Velazquez
Visclosky
Waters
Watson
Watt
Waxman
Weiner
Wexler
Woolsey
NOT VOTING--8
Cubin
Fletcher
Gephardt
Green (TX)
Kucinich
Quinn
Ruppersberger
Wynn
Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bass) (during the vote). Members are
advised 2 minutes remain in this vote.
{time} 1509
Ms. Jackson-Lee of Texas and Messrs. Crowley, Evans, Abercrombie,
Deutsch, Lantos, Owens, Delahunt, Costello and Jefferson changed their
vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
Mr. STRICKLAND changed his vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
So the conference report was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
____________________