[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 158 (Tuesday, October 3, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H7736-H7742]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WESTERN CAUCUS: WILDFIRES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
General Leave
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all members may
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and
to include extraneous material on the topic of my Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Arizona?
There was no objection.
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I rise to bring this Chamber's attention to
the devastating wildfires that have ravaged the Nation this year.
The National Interagency Fire Center reports that there have been
49,563 fires that have burned 8,422,251 acres so far in 2017. Wow.
Another 80 million throughout the country are at high-risk status,
including one-quarter of the 193 million-acre National Forest System.
Though the Forest Service has spent a record $2.3 billion to fight
fires in 2017, these resources are being spent on the back end.
Mr. Speaker, the country has literally been on fire, particularly
Western communities. It is far past time that this Chamber pass H.R.
2936 and get serious about combating catastrophic wildfires before they
get started.
Mr. Westerman's bipartisan bill adopts a forward-thinking, active
management strategy and also provides allocation reforms that would
cease the practice of fire borrowing.
I will likely have more comments later, but we have a few folks
pressed for time, so I am going to end my comments there.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tipton), my
friend.
Mr. TIPTON. Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the gentleman's efforts
to be able to highlight the threat from wildfires that we are having in
the West.
Mr. Speaker, in recent weeks, the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and
Irma have dominated our news cycles. Our hearts certainly go out to the
people who have been impacted as they rebuild their lives and continue
to work to ensure that they have the resources they need.
When we hear the term ``natural disaster,'' most of us probably think
of hurricanes, tornadoes, or earthquakes. Unless you come from the
Western United States, you probably don't think of wildfires as a
natural disaster. But they are, and they have devastating effects.
Wildfire season is a part of life in the West, but this year's fire
season is shaping up to be the worst in history. Years of mismanagement
of our national forests have led to conditions where fires are burning
longer and hotter than ever before.
We need to address this problem on two fronts: one, through better
forest management; and, two, by updating wildfire response so it is
more in line with the Federal response to other natural disasters.
On the forest management front, we need to give the Forest Service
the tools to engage in actual forest management. This means removing
the dead and downed timber that serves as a fuel source for either man-
made or naturally occurring fires, empowering local foresters and land
managers to identify and designate areas of high risk, and supporting
collaboration between all levels of government.
These principles are laid out in the Resilient Federal Forests Act by
my colleague, Mr. Westerman from Arkansas. I am proud to be a cosponsor
of this legislation.
We must also reform the Federal budgeting process for wildfire
prevention and the suppression efforts. For too long, the process the
Federal Government has used to allocate money to fight catastrophic
wildfires has undermined forest management efforts that could prevent
these types of fires from igniting in the first place.
Under current law, if firefighting costs exceed an agency's budget,
it must shift money from non-firefighting accounts to make up the
difference. Last year, the Forest Service had to transfer $700 million
from other budgeted line items to cover firefighting costs, which
brought the agency's total firefighting efforts to about 55 percent of
the entire budget.
You would think that firefighting wouldn't be the biggest line item
in the budget for an agency tasked with maintaining healthy forests. It
is critical that we treat wildfires like other natural disasters after
an agency's wildfire suppression funds are exhausted. The cost of any
extraordinary firefighting that goes beyond the agency's annual budget
should be funded through a budget cap adjustment similar to what is
used by FEMA for other natural disasters.
It is my hope that we can continue to bring more attention to
wildfires that are burning across the West and the impacts they are
having on our communities, and also that we can work together to
advance policies that better support forest management and fire
prevention and suppression efforts and forest health.
{time} 1915
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the vice chairman for his comments.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Stewart).
Mr. STEWART. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from
Arizona, who I consider a friend and one of the great leaders in the
Congress, for leading this Special Order and for bringing this
important matter before the Chamber.
2017 will go down as the worst wildfire season in history. My home
State of Utah has definitely felt the effects. In June, the Brian Head
fire burned more than 71,000 acres in my State. It burned for nearly a
month, creating more than $36 million in damage. And that doesn't count
the millions--indeed tens of millions of dollars it took to fight the
fire.
While the fire was burning through my district, I was able to meet
with local, State, and Federal leaders to take a tour of the fire and
to survey
[[Page H7737]]
the damage and to try to find a solution. The images I saw as I toured
this fire were truly heartbreaking. Dozens of evacuated homes, burned
homes, ruined forests, firefighters and volunteers who were working day
and night to try to contain the fire, ash-filled lakes.
I took more than an hour in a helicopter to fly around the
circumference of this fire. As I was flying around looking down,
thinking about, among other things, the wildlife that had been
devastated by this fire, I wondered: How long will it take for us to
recover from this, for this beautiful landscape to recover?
And I can promise you this, it will not happen in my lifetime.
My family owns a ranch, and almost 70 years ago, we had a similar
fire. You can still see the scars from that fire, which is several
generations now.
One incident manager told me: ``In 29 years of fighting fires, I have
never seen a fire move so fast, burn so quickly and so hot that it
could not be controlled or fought head-on.''
You have to wonder: Why is that?
The answer is very unfortunate. It is due to mismanagement.
Current mismanagement--and it is mismanagement--has left our forests
vulnerable to insects and disease that make for a ripe forest for
catastrophic fires. These heavy-handed regulations paralyze forest
managers so they can't accomplish the critical tasks that are necessary
for proper forest management.
This failure to treat high-risk areas and to remove hazardous buildup
has left our land susceptible to fires that grow in size, severity, and
cost.
So you have to ask yourself: What is the answer? How do we stop this?
How do we stop it from happening again?
And the answer is really quite simple. Federal policies have
contributed to recent catastrophic fires, and wildlife management
begins with proper land management.
That is why I support Representative Westerman's bipartisan Resilient
Federal Forests Act, which allows agencies to do this work so that we
can prevent these catastrophic wildfires.
I look forward to the House passing this important legislation. Let
us bring back the beauty of our forests. Let us bring back the health
of our forests. Let us prevent these catastrophic fires that rage out
of control.
I thank Mr. Gosar for bringing this again to the floor.
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Utah, who has seen the
challenging aspects and destruction from the fires, for his remarks.
I also now want to acknowledge my friend from Montana, who is
actually still seeing the ravaging of the fires. In fact, Seeley Lake,
Montana, set a record for the worst air quality ever recorded there, 18
times greater than the EPA safe particulate limit. Wow, that is a
record that we have got to stop.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Gianforte).
Mr. GIANFORTE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for
bringing the attention of the House to this important matter.
This summer, we had catastrophic wildfires in Montana. We burned 1.2
million acres. That is the equivalent of the size of the State of
Delaware. I have seen this destruction firsthand. I visited with
incident commanders and firefighters on five separate wildfires this
summer.
In Lincoln County, the air quality was so unhealthy that teachers
provided masks to the kids in school so they could breathe.
In August, I had Secretary Zinke and Secretary Perdue come to Montana
and tour the Lolo Peak fire, one of the most expensive fires that was
fought this summer.
I have worked to bring relief to Montanans. In July, emergency relief
for farmers and ranchers was provided by opening up the C.M. Russell
recreation area to grazing. We had hungry cows left from pasture being
consumed and grass available. It was a commonsense solution to put
those two together.
Also in July, we successfully urged FEMA Director Brock Long to
reconsider their denial of one of our fires and declare Montana
eligible for emergency funds. For these two things, I am thankful.
So the negative impact has been severe. And while there has been some
relief, including welcome rain and snow, we can't rely on that. Again,
this summer, over a million acres burned in Montana alone; we lost two
firefighters; livelihoods were threatened; wildlife habitats were
destroyed; smoke hung in the air; and ash rained down on our homes and
our cars.
Air quality reached dangerous levels in our communities. In fact,
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana donated 150 air filters to our
schools so our children could breathe.
I have also seen firsthand the positive results of managed forests.
Just 2 weeks ago, I toured a BLM forest near Miles City, Montana, and
showed the effect of treating and managing forests. A fire burned in
2015 through a forest through the crowns, and when it reached a forest
that had been managed, the fire quickly dropped into the undergrowth,
burned through the grass, but none of the trees were lost.
In the untreated forest, there is just dead trees that won't recover
in our lifetime. In the treated area, all of the trees survived. In
fact, when an overgrown forest is thinned, more surface water came
back, there is better habitat for wildlife, and we just have a better
result.
I saw that also on the Roaring Lion fire, which occurred in the
Bitterroot Valley in 2016, where, there, private property owners had
managed their private property. When the fire on public land reached
there, it was quickly extinguished and hundreds of homes were saved.
So the benefits of properly managed forests are clear. We have
healthier forests. There is more wildlife, more hunting, more
recreational opportunities, more good-paying jobs, and wildfires are
less severe.
One of the biggest problems we have is litigation. We need more
collaborative projects, but litigation is one of the greatest problems.
Parties come to the table in good faith, they work collaboratively only
to be overturned by court action by radical environmental extremists.
The Stonewall Vegetation Project in Lincoln, Montana, is a good
example. Here, the Forest Service worked together with local landowners
over a 8-year period to develop a collaborative forest management
project. Once it was approved a year ago, the lawyers swooped in,
arguing the project would disrupt lynx habitat. The judge overturned
the decision. Fires raged this summer. Now there is no more habitat for
lynx, and all that carbon has been released into atmosphere.
Benefits of forest management are clear. As I have mentioned,
healthier forests, more wildlife, more hunting, jobs, and less severe
fires. It is time to act. We can't control the weather, but we can
control how we manage our forests. It is time to reform our forest
management by passing Bruce Westerman's Resilient Federal Forests Act,
and we also must put commonsense guardrails on the Endangered Species
Act to reduce frivolous lawsuits.
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Montana, who I am
sorry to see have such a hard time this year in forest management, for
his remarks.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr.
McClintock), my friend and colleague.
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Gosar of the
Western Caucus for arranging this Special Order tonight and especially
for his exemplary leadership as chairman of the Western Caucus.
The wildfire crisis facing our forests across the West comes down to
a very simple adage. Excess timber comes out of the forest one way or
the other. It is either carried out or it burns out, but it comes out.
When we carried out our excess timber, we had healthy resilient
forests and we had thriving, prosperous communities. Excess timber
sales from Federal lands not only generated revenues for our mountain
communities, but created thousands of job.
But in the 1970s, we adopted laws like the National Environmental
Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act that have resulted in
endlessly time-consuming and cost-prohibitive restrictions and
requirements that have made the scientific management of our forests
virtually impossible.
Timber sales from our Federal lands has dropped 80 percent in the
intervening years, with a concomitant increase in forest fires. In
California alone, the number of saw mills has
[[Page H7738]]
dropped from 149 in 1981 to just 27 today.
Timber that once had room to grow healthy and strong now fights for
its life against other trees trying to occupy the same ground.
Average tree density in the Sierra Nevada is three to four times the
density that the land can actually support. In this weakened condition,
trees lose their natural defenses to drought and disease and
pestilence, and they ultimately succumb to catastrophic wildfire.
Three years ago, an estimated 25 million trees in the Sierra fell
victim to these stressors. Two years ago, that number doubled to 50
million trees. Last year, more than 100 million dead trees are now
waiting to burn in the Sierra.
Well, after 45 years of experience with these environmental laws--all
passed with the promise that they would improve our forest
environment--I think we are entitled to ask: How's the forest
environment doing?
All around us the answer is damning. These laws have not only failed
to improve our forest environment, but they are literally killing our
forests.
The same politicians responsible for these failed laws have recently
conjured up two new excuses. One is climate change. The other is that
we are putting out too many fires.
Putting out too many fires?
That invites an important question: Exactly which fires did they
propose that we allow to burn?
Perhaps the King fire that almost wiped out the towns of Georgetown
and Foresthill on its way to Lake Tahoe in 2014?
Or perhaps the Detwiler fire this year that almost wiped out the town
of Mariposa on its way to the Yosemite Valley?
Or any one of the more than 1,000 fires in the Sierra that CAL FIRE
has put out this year, any one of which could have grown into a
megafire but for the vigilance and competence of our fire agencies?
Which of these fires would they allow to burn into a conflagration?
True, controlled burns play an important role in clearing out
underbrush, but as firefighters bitterly complained to me at the
command center at the Detwiler fire this year, these same laws make it
virtually impossible to get permits to do the controlled burns.
The other reason that we hear is climate change. Well, let's put that
to the smell test. Throughout our vast forests, it is often very easy
to visually identify the property lines between well-managed private
forests and the neglected Federal lands.
Now, I have seen it myself on aerial inspections. The private managed
forests are green, healthy, and thriving. The neglected Federal forests
are densely overcrowded and often scarred by fire because we can't even
salvage the fire-killed timber while it still has value. You can
literally tell from the condition of the forest where the property line
is. How clever of our climate to know exactly what is the boundary line
between private and government lands.
And if carbon dioxide is the problem, doesn't it make sense to mill
fully grown trees to sequester the carbon and replace them with young,
growing trees that absorb much higher levels of carbon?
But, again, these same laws prevent this.
This is not complicated. Our forests are catastrophically overgrown.
Drought is a catalyst. It is not the cause. In overgrown forests, much
snow evaporates in dense canopies and cannot reach the ground. The
transpiration volume in an overgrown forest is a big problem in a
normal rain year; in a drought, it becomes lethal.
Pestilence is a catalyst; it is not a cause. Healthy trees can
naturally resist bark beetles; stressed trees cannot.
{time} 1930
A properly managed forest matches the tree density to the ability of
the land to support it, but we cannot properly manage our forests
because of the laws now in place.
Mr. Westerman's Resilient Federal Forests Act and other measures will
restore proper scientific management of our national forests, but we
are running out of time to enact them, because we are running out of
forests to save.
Mr. Speaker, I again thank the gentleman for yielding today, I thank
him for his leadership, and I thank him for arranging this hour
tonight.
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for his
thoughts. He brought up some specific facts that need reiteration just
because they are so plentiful.
The Forest Service only harvested 2.5 billion board feet in 2016,
compared to over 10 billion board feet in 1990. To make matters worse,
litigation and other challenges have caused a significant reduction in
active sawmills nationwide from over 1,300 in 1995, to just over 220
today.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden).
Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for
yielding and for his leadership on this, and to my other colleagues
from the West, who understand what we face, the problems we face, and
what has happened to our forests.
I stand united with all of you in the Western Caucus, because this is
something we have done some work on in the past and then we have been
stalled out, especially in the last 8 years. I know that President
Trump stands with us, wanting to pass legislation, get it down to his
desk so he can sign it so we can begin to be better stewards of our
great public forests, these public forest lands important to all of us.
As we saw painfully this summer, smoke chokes our citizens, it chokes
children. Literally, in my district, elementary school children had to
be sent home because of the smoke in their schools because of forest
fires.
In Oregon, we have seen some of the worst fires in our State's
history. It seemed as if every day came with new reports of more fire,
more smoke. While this year's fire season has been particularly intense
and devastating, images like these are nothing new for Oregonians. Each
summer, smoke has filled our skies in Oregon year after year after
year. Vast swaths of our land in our beautiful State are charred.
Unlike private forest owners, the State of Oregon, which I am very
proud to be a resident of, and our forest policy and tribal lands and
county lands, after a fire, they go in and clean it up, they replant,
they get a new, healthy, young forest growing, which if you are
concerned about reducing carbon emissions, you want healthy trees,
because they actually sequester carbon. Burned, dead, decaying old
trees actually emit carbon.
So we can do good things for the ecology of our world by planting new
trees after a fire. We will talk about that in a minute.
Smoke inhalation has become a health hazard for Oregonians in their
communities. I can't tell you how many in my communities, day after day
after day, were given warnings by our health authority that the air was
too dangerous to breathe, that it was unhealthy to breathe.
A recent study found that wildfires contribute three times as much
fine particulate matter into the air as previously thought, and this
definitely can cause respiratory problems and make it difficult to
breathe, as the citizens of our great State found this summer.
Wildfires also pollute our atmosphere with carbon. In 2002, the
Biscuit fire in southwest Oregon burned more than 500,000 acres, half a
million acres. The carbon dioxide emitted during that fire amounted to
almost one-quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted in the entire State of
Oregon this year.
By the way, we have burned 678,000 acres this year in Oregon at a
cost of more than $340 million to fight those fires, State, local, and
Federal costs, mostly Federal.
Tomorrow, the Energy and Commerce Committee, which I chair, will hold
a hearing to take a look at the air impact of fires, in part because I
have constituents who have seen that, in some cases, fires are not
aggressively fought if they are in certain federally designated areas,
wilderness areas. There is a temptation, apparently, to not use all our
tools, and to instead let them burn. That doesn't take into account
what happens to air quality and the health of our citizens when fires
are allowed to ravage and burn.
So we will take a look at the issues involving air quality and
pollutants emitted into the atmosphere and discuss how better
management of our
[[Page H7739]]
forests could help prevent catastrophic fires and actually protect our
airshed and our health.
Each of us today faces a similar situation. Devastating fires ignite
across the West as fuel loads build across our public lands--Mr.
McClintock did a great job laying that out--while broken Federal forest
policy stands in the way of better management, healthier air,
protection of our habitat and our watersheds and our streams and our
forested communities.
8.2 million acres burned this year. By the way, my colleagues, that
is an area larger than Maryland, it is three-and-a-half or so times the
size of, I believe, Puerto Rico, which has been wiped out. We talk
about the devastation and disaster there and in the Virgin Islands and
every other place, but somehow we sort of overlook the fact that we
lose this almost every year in our West and in our forested land.
Communities watched their mills close, meanwhile, as Federal policy
and lawsuits and litigation has prevented proper management of our
forests. So we have lost our jobs, we have lost our infrastructure, we
have lost the revenues for our schools, and, in some cases, for basic
services like law enforcement.
Now, promises that somehow recreation and outdoor activities would
replace those good family-wage jobs, tourism, they are falling short,
because guess what, events are being canceled because now the fires are
destroying the airshed.
Constituents of mine have been sending photos this year about some of
the fires. This one right here is from Mike, who was returning from a
hunting trip just a few weeks ago. This was the Eagle Creek fire
burning in the scenic Columbia River Gorge area between Cascade Locks
and where I live in Hood River.
We had an evacuation notice within a half a mile of where I live on
Rand Road. It was level 1, but they had them higher than that as you
got closer to this fire.
Meanwhile, events like Cycle Oregon, its 30th anniversary, canceled
because of the smoke; Sisters Folk Festival canceled because of the
smoke. Down in Ashland, the Oregon Shakespeare Theater, world-renowned
festival, they had to cancel nine of their shows at a cost of $400,000
direct revenue loss, not to mention the concerns they have about
indirect loss, people who didn't show up for other performances, and
might even affect their annual sales.
People are really tired of this. They expect this Congress to take
action to try and protect and become good stewards of our national
forest land, but this picture tells you what we faced. The Columbia
Gorge, where I grew up right near here, I can't remember a time the
freeway was closed as long as it was this summer. We had to go over
across the river to Washington to our good friends on Highway 14. All
the freeway traffic was diverted there, and there is still one lane
here that can't pass, because now we are worried about mudslides and
rockslides and trees coming down the hillsides.
We need to get back to positive, active management in our Federal
forests.
Five years in a row, the U.S. House has enacted legislation, sent it
over to the Senate, that would give our professional foresters, our
scientists, the tools that they clamor for and need to better manage
our forests and reduce the overloading of debris, of dead and dying
trees, open up these stands to what they should be naturally, get back
in balance with nature. Every year this goes over to the other body,
and somehow it never comes back. That has to change.
So tonight, I thank my friend from Arizona who organized this. He
knows what forest fires are like in Arizona. My colleague from
Washington, my colleague from California, myself, our colleague from
Montana, we have dealt with this year after year after year. Now, more
than half of the Forest Service budget is spent fighting fire. That is
not what we should do as a matter of bad policy.
We need to change Federal policy. We need to let our scientists
manage these forests, restore jobs to our forested communities, protect
our airsheds, our watersheds, and get back in balance. So I commend my
colleagues in the Western Caucus for moving this forward.
I just finished a very positive meeting with the Speaker of the
House, who is committed to helping us on this matter. I look forward to
us having the opportunity to vote on the Resilient Federal Forests bill
and get our Senate colleagues on board as well.
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman so greatly for his
indulgence in coming down and expressing the problems that have been
faced in Oregon and thank him for the timely hearing tomorrow in Energy
and Commerce. We certainly appreciate it.
We need to enlighten all Americans as to the tragedy that is going on
in our public Western lands.
Mr. WALDEN. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. GOSAR. I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, I hope they will tune in tomorrow and watch
the testimony at that hearing. I think they will get a better
understanding of what the people in our districts have faced. For a
month this summer, schools had to be closed, festivals canceled, people
choking, going to the hospitals. This is serious stuff, and we need to
address it.
Mr. GOSAR. I want to highlight one thing that the gentleman actually
brought to attention. Catastrophic fires also cause significant damage
to the environment. Robust data from NASA has concluded that one
catastrophic wildfire can emit more carbon emissions in a few days than
total vehicle emissions in an entire State over the course of the year.
Phenomenal. We just have to make sure people understand.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.
Mr. WALDEN. We appreciate it.
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Washington
(Mr. Newhouse), my dear friend.
Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from
Arizona, my good friend, Mr. Gosar, for holding this Special Order and
for giving us the opportunity not only to address the House on this
very important issue, but also to address our Nation.
Mr. Speaker, this year alone, over 8 million acres have burned across
our country. And get this: ten times that, another 80 million acres,
are considered high risk to threat of catastrophic wildfires.
If this doesn't amount to a national disaster, nothing does. If we
don't acknowledge that it does, this will only continue to devastate
our rural communities across the Nation.
The previous speaker, my friend from Oregon, talked about the impact
of the health to people living in these communities. I could attest to
you myself, living in central Washington, we had smoke where the
visibility was less than a quarter of a mile for weeks at a time. I
knew people who had chronic coughs as a result of this smoke. Myself,
get this: I had to come back to our Nation's Capital for my cough to
clear up over our August break. The air was that bad.
So, Mr. Speaker, this evening, as you have heard from my colleagues
from across the Western United States, as we gather to draw attention
to this devastation, these catastrophic wildfires, what they pose to
our communities, so States from Arkansas to Arizona, from Colorado to
California, Montana to New Mexico, from Wyoming, from Oregon, to the
great State of Washington, we are here to stress the importance of
addressing the broken funding systems as well as the lack of
resources that are necessary to adequately prevent and then suppress
and fight these wildfires.
So we gather to highlight the dire need to reform the mismanagement
of our Federal forests, which leads to the exacerbation of this
devastation. Mr. Speaker, we gather to give voice to our often
forgotten communities and our constituents.
Now, you have heard these Special Orders before. We as Members of
Congress take these good opportunities to simply speak about a problem
and bring light to its actuality, to let people know about it, but
tonight is different, because my colleagues and I are here not just to
talk about this, not just to highlight the major problem of wildfires
across the country, but, in fact, we bring good news as well. We offer
solutions to this important issue.
[[Page H7740]]
So this evening, I rise in support and urge support of two provisions
originating right here in Congress, the people's House, to address
these issues.
First of all, H.R. 2936, the Resilient Federal Forests Act, which is
sponsored by my good friend from the State of Arkansas, Mr. Westerman,
which addresses the disastrous consequences of catastrophic wildfires
by utilizing tools the Forest Service and other agencies can use to
reduce the threats that are posed by wildfires, by insects, by disease
infestation, and dangerous old forest overgrowth that serve as a
tinderbox for wildfires.
This legislation would enable the necessary management techniques to
address our forest health crises and significantly improve the
resiliency of our Nation's forests.
On top of that, H.R. 167, the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, which is
sponsored by my good friend and colleague from Idaho, Mr. Simpson,
fixes the way that we budget for wildfire suppression by treating these
catastrophic wildfires like any other natural disaster, which they are.
Currently, agencies like the Forest Service are forced to borrow
funding from accounts outside of their firefighting in order to address
these fire suppression costs. This has become known as fire borrowing.
This tool was intended to be an extraordinary measure, but in the past
8 of the last 12 years, the Forest Service has had to move funds from
other operating accounts to fight these fires.
Mr. Speaker, this problem is systemic, it is dire, and we must
address it.
{time} 1945
The Wildfire Disaster Funding Act is a necessary solution to solve
the crisis.
Mr. Speaker, the fourth district of the State of Washington, which I
am proud to call my home, has been devastated by wildfires in recent
years, from the Carlton Complex Fire of 2014, which at the time was the
largest in State history, to the Okanogan Complex Fire, which only the
next year surpassed that record. In addition to that, we lost three
firefighters in the process.
Our communities know what it means to live with the overwhelming
consequences of continual disastrous wildfires year after year after
year, and it doesn't have to be this way. We can solve this problem.
My colleagues and I gather tonight to shed light on this problem and
to offer solutions and to let our constituents know that we will not
give up in this effort.
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. Speaker, the two speakers have now brought up the issue that the
House has repeatedly passed resolutions and ideas in regards to funding
and taking care and mitigating our forest tragedy. There is an old
adage around here that the Democrats may be the opposition, but the
Senate is always the enemy. What we are here to do is light a fire
under the Senate. Their talk is cheap; their actions speak. So let's
light a fire.
To do that, I now yield to the gentleman whose Resilient Federal
Forests Act is the topic for this evening, H.R. 2936.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman.)
Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from
Arizona (Mr. Gosar) for his leadership in setting up this Special Order
on the importance of proper forest management, proper forest management
on our Nation's Federal lands. I would also like to thank him for his
unwavering support of my bill, H.R. 2936, the Resilient Federal Forests
Act of 2017.
It is my sincere hope that we see H.R. 2936 move off the floor of the
House with strong bipartisan support and then move through the Senate
and get it on the President's desk so he can sign this and we can start
the process of reversing something that has been going on for many
years.
As a person educated in forestry, I can tell you that forests grow
slowly. We almost don't recognize the change in the forest because it
happens so slowly over time. But given enough years, we see what has
happened to our timberland out West. I have a map here of all the
forest fires that we have seen out West this summer.
We didn't just get to this point overnight. It happened over a series
of years. It happened when, back in the 1990s, I believe, we had an
overreaction to probably some forest management practices that weren't
the best that they could be. The pendulum swung way too far, and we got
in a position where, what I say is, we were loving our trees to death,
and we stopped managing our trees.
But we kept putting fires out, and fire is nature's natural way to
manage overgrown forests. So what we have seen happen over time is we
have seen more insects and disease infestations. As these trees grow
closer together and fill the growing space, they start competing for
water; they start competing for sunlight; they compete for nutrients;
they become weak, and they become susceptible to insect attacks; they
become susceptible to disease; and then they die. We get lightning
strikes or we get fires to get out, and then we are dealing with a
catastrophic event.
But it doesn't have to be this way. If we would employ sound forest
management practices, we can do a lot to mitigate the intensity and the
number of these fires.
As we look at issues that are created with these fires, we know that
this has been the worst fire season on record, but it broke the record
that was set in 2015 as the worst fire season on record. I predict
that, if we don't start managing our forests now, in the next coming
years we are going to see new worst fire seasons on record.
This is a process that will continue to get worse unless we address
the problem. It is to the point where it is going to take time to
reverse what has happened and to get the forest back into a healthy
state.
I was notified this week about a sheep farmer down here in southeast
Wyoming, in Torrington, who was a young guy getting into the business,
and he lost five sheep. He took them to the veterinarian to do a
postmortem analysis and found out they died from smoke inhalation.
Now, the fire that was creating the smoke that was drifting down
there was about 800 miles away in Montana. If it is causing that kind
of health risk to sheep, what is it doing to the residents that live
out here? I know that there have been schools closed, there have been
people who have to stay indoors, but this creates a health risk. It is
more than just a risk to healthy forests. It is a risk to healthy
humans.
We have got another map here, and this shows the smoke drift on a
particular day. I believe this was September 14. This is a map that was
produced by NOAA, and you can see where the fires were, and you can see
how the winds carry the smoke. The red shows the most intense areas of
smoke, the lighter green the intermediate, and then the darker green
shows where the least smoke intensity was.
This map really illustrates how fires in certain areas, the smoke
gets picked up by the wind and gets carried to different places across
the country.
When I look at this map of the Western United States--and me being
from Arkansas, some might ask: How do these fires affect forestry in
Arkansas?
Well, we have talked about fire borrowing. When we take money from
one account in the Forest Service budget and put it in the firefighting
account, that takes money away from management practices that could
take place on the forest in Arkansas and other places to the east where
we don't have as many catastrophic fires. On top of that, we see how
the smoke drift affects many, many parts of the country.
When we think about the smoke, what is that smoke? It is mainly
carbon. One of the main purposes of a healthy forest is to fulfill the
cycle of photosynthesis, where it pulls carton dioxide out of the
atmosphere, takes that in through the leaves, converts it into sugars,
and releases oxygen back into the air. The forests clean the air except
when they are burning at the rate that they are burning right now, at
8.5 million acres of our Federal timberland that went up in smoke,
putting hundreds of millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. If
we want to talk about taking carbon out of the atmosphere, the solution
to that is a healthy forest.
But not only do forests clean the atmosphere, they clean the water.
The more ground cover we have, the more water gets filtered as it goes
into the ground, as it goes into streams.
[[Page H7741]]
But overstocked forests can also prevent water from actually getting
into the ground table and getting into streams. In areas in the West
where we are having water shortage problems, proper management of
forests can help to alleviate those problems.
We are not talking about clear-cutting. I get so tired of people
saying, ``All they want to do is clear-cut our Federal forests.'' We
don't want to clear-cut the Federal forests. We want to manage them. We
want to use practices like thinning from below, where we take out small
stock, where we take out the smaller trees. Some of it is merchantable;
some of it is not. We can produce timber that can be used in the rural
areas where it is grown to help the economies out there.
But the end goal is to have a healthy forest with larger trees spaced
further apart without all the fuel ladders going down to the ground so
that, when a fire moves through these areas, it burns at a low
temperature through the ground. And guess what. That creates great
wildlife habitats when we do that.
There are so many benefits of having a healthy forest, and as a
forester, a forester who was trained at a school that was started by
Gifford Pinchot, who is the father, along with Teddy Roosevelt, of our
Federal forests, it is embarrassing to me what has happened to our
Federal lands across this country.
Roosevelt and Pinchot talked about conservation. They talked about
leaving our resources in better shape than we found them in. Right now,
we are not doing that. We are allowing the lack of management to
destroy these resources for future generations. We are allowing the
lack of management to emit hundreds of millions of tons of carbon into
the atmosphere and also take that vegetation away that provides
wildlife habitat, that provides a filter for clean water, and that
provides timber that is pulling carbon out of the atmosphere.
We can do better than this. We have provisions in the Resilient
Federal Forests Act to allow the Forest Service to actually manage the
timber. We require them to do a no-management analysis, because when
you look at the dynamic nature of a forest, if you say, ``We are not
going to do anything,'' well, you just made a management decision.
Again, the trees are living, growing organisms. Even though the
Forest Service says, ``We are not managing it,'' they are going to
continue to grow. They are going to fill the growing space. If we
continue to suppress fire, the fuel load is going to get worse, and we
are going to have more and more forests subject to catastrophic
wildfire of, I believe it is, 192 million acres of Federal timberland
in this country. About 60 million acres right now, according to the
Forest Service, is subject to catastrophic wildfire.
It is time to act. We have waited too long, and the problem continues
to get worse. It will continue to get more severe as time moves on if
we don't start intervening now.
Mr. Gosar, I want to again thank you for putting this together, for
the efforts that you are putting forth so that we can take a proactive
stance to make not only our air cleaner by not having all these
catastrophic wildfires, but to conserve our forests so that they are
healthy, so that they are functioning the way that they should be.
I want to thank you again for all that you are doing, the work for
the Western Caucus and all the members here, realizing, on both sides
of the aisle, how important it is that we do the right thing, that we
pass H.R. 2936, and that we start addressing this problem now.
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas for his
excellent leadership. He is very modest.
Listen, folks, I made a comment. Around here in Washington, D.C., we
talk about the Democrats being the opposition and the Senate being the
problem. Well, as you know, this is a very bipartisan bill. He is very
modest.
Let's go back through what H.R. 2936, the Resilient Federal Forests
Act, actually does.
It allows for the streamlined review of projects up to 30,000 acres
if the management strategy is put forward by collaborative
stakeholders. Imagine that, something so simple.
It also requires litigants opposing active management projects to
propose an alternative proposal as opposed to just saying ``no.''
``No'' isn't a solution. It is what you are for.
It removes incentives for extreme special interest groups to file
frivolous lawsuits--boy, once again, coming to the table with a
solution.
It empowers local stakeholders and decisionmakers. So often we
overlook the people on the ground, on Main Street, who have to live
with the consequences for bad policy decisions.
It also empowers Tribal communities to be part of the solution and to
help reduce the risk of wildfire. We see this time and again, that the
Native Tribes that are in charge of their forests have pristine
management practices.
H.R. 2936 also maintains current protections for our environmentally
sensitive areas, including wilderness and roadless areas. What a
concession.
We need to be clear about larger risk areas and get to these in a
more timely manner that we really want to handle.
This bill is good for forest-dependent species as it allows for
improvements to their habitat.
This bill adopts a forward-thinking, active management strategy that
combats dangerous wildfires before they get started, which includes
reforms that would end the practice of fire borrowing.
I want to thank the gentleman for his excellent piece of legislation.
It is time that it moves forward.
Once again, it is not the House that is the problem, but our
colleagues across the street. Once again, talk is cheap; actions speak.
Americans need help.
The fact that these disasters are quite natural might lead one to
think they are inevitable, but according to forestry officials and
experts, it is our stunted Federal forestry management and underfunded
and misallocated Forest Service accounts that are to blame.
{time} 2000
Our system is broken. These fires start naturally and decimate our
natural ecosystems, but the ultimate cause at the level of their
severity and recurrence is manmade.
The facts about the relationship between management and wildfires
speak for themselves. Forest Service data indicates that active forest
management reduces wildfire intensity, while improving forest health.
In spite of this, only 1 to 2 percent of high risk areas are actively
treated and subject to forest management.
The United States Forest Service expends too many resources fighting
fires after they break out to work to prevent them in any significant
way before they start. By performing routine thinning, culling
hazardous fuels on the forest floors, and conducting controlled burns,
they could accomplish exactly that, but such a course of action would
require ample resources and wise allocation. As you could guess, my
professional diagnosis is that both of those are in short supply.
I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle are able to hear
what I say next. If you care about carbon emissions, you should care
deeply about this issue, no matter where you live in the country, no
matter where you live.
NASA data shows that one wildfire can emit more carbon in a few days
than total vehicle emissions in a State for the whole year. To put it
in perspective, controlled burning releases roughly 10 percent as much,
and is only one part of an overall active management strategy.
So the correct choice in this situation is obvious: we spend a little
more on the front end so that we can save ourselves much of the
economic, environmental, and familial displacement costs on the back
end. These costs are year after year, and they are catastrophic when
they are left untreated.
Treatment is the right course of action, but it requires a little bit
of planning, due diligence, and yes, action on our part. I know
Congress is a big fan of the word, but when you look at the track
record, Congress isn't a big fan of actually acting.
In response to this dire situation, Members of Congress from across
the country will be sharing their thoughts and experiences within their
home States. They will be discussing this during the year, and this
past year of terrible wildfires. These are stories that need to be
recounted.
They will also be speaking about the solutions that we have come
together
[[Page H7742]]
with, for forestry officials and stakeholders across the country.
Tackling this problem has become a collaborative and holistic national
policy effort, and the policy proposals we have produced are reflective
of this fact. They are also bipartisan.
But, Mr. Speaker, we can't let this just be a rhetorical exercise. We
are united in demanding Congress do something. This Chamber has the
knowledge and aptitude to deliver policy solutions. Now we need the
political will to turn that knowledge into congressional action. Only
then will huge portions of the country finally see some relief from
these disasters.
When your home is on fire, it is straightforward, it is a nonpartisan
issue. You call the fire department, and after the problem is dealt
with, you make sure that you eliminate what caused the fire so that you
don't see it again.
Mr. Speaker, our Nation was on fire this year, and I demand that we,
as this Chamber, unite in the same spirit of decisive problem solving
as we do for our natural disasters. Let's put these fires out, and then
let's stop the brunt for next year's fires before they start.
In my four terms as a Congressman from Arizona, I have had to witness
the largest catastrophic fire in Arizona history, and also the most
catastrophic life-taking, the Yarnell fire. The first was the Wild Well
fire in northeast Arizona, and the second was the Yarnell fire that is
now in the movie theaters that took the lives of 19 firefighters. That
is a travesty.
This is something that gives when it is managed right. The people
back home know the right answer. Let's give them the tools, the working
power, and the policy that allows them, instead of being victims, to be
stalwart solutions for a policy that gives back.
As the gentleman from Arkansas said, as Teddy Roosevelt said: Leave
our natural resources better than we found them.
Mr. Speaker, the speakers tonight shared their stories. We want
America to hear those loud and clear. These are natural disasters no
different than hurricanes, but these, in one case, are different. They
are manmade.
Let's bring this commonsense policy that Mr. Westerman has put
forward. He is a true advocate and smart in regards to those reforms;
that is why we want to make sure that H.R. 2936 gets moved through this
Chamber, and then put the onus back on the Senate, so that we actually
reward the people for good policy and making sure that the victims are
turned upside down and made stalwart solution makers.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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