[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 172 (Wednesday, October 25, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6795-S6796]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Western Wildfires

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am coming to the floor to talk about 
the challenge we have with forest fires that have been raging in the 
West, in Montana and Idaho and Washington and Oregon and California, 
and periodically we have devastating fires in Colorado, New Mexico, and 
Nevada.
  We have to figure out how we do a better job in a multitude of ways. 
First, it is very important that we quit treating terrible fire years, 
enormous fires, as if they are some ordinary event because there is 
currently no FEMA-style reaction to terrible forest fires.
  We respond with FEMA for tornadoes and for floods and for tidal waves 
and for hurricanes and for earthquakes but not forest fires. Well, the 
result is, the Forest Service runs out of funds to fight the fires in a 
bad year, and then they have to drain all the other programs they are 
working on, including the programs to prepare for future timber cuts, 
the programs to thin the forests, the programs to repair the 
infrastructure in the Federal forests, all these other efforts, and 
then they can't resume those efforts until we have restored their 
funding, which can come often far later.
  This fire borrowing has to end. That is why we absolutely need to 
support the bill Senator Wyden, Senator Crapo, and others have been 
working on to say: Let's create a FEMA-like structure for these worst 
fires so we end this fire-borrowing devastation of the fire accounts. 
That absolutely needs to happen.
  Right now, there are three funding issues we need to address. First, 
we need to help out the communities that have been impacted 
economically by these devastating fires. Some have been scorched 
directly, others have been profoundly affected by the smoke in the 
community, others have been affected by highways being shut down, and 
others have been impacted by tourism dropping dramatically. So it is 
very important that we send a message to the Department of Agriculture, 
the Small Business Administration, and the Department of Housing and 
Urban Development to say: Use your emergency programs to assist these 
communities. We really should make sure they are at the front of the 
line, along with those who have suffered the disasters in Texas, 
Florida, and Puerto Rico, for emergency loans and assistance from the 
Small Business Administration and for an augmented share of community 
development block grants to assist them in a very flexible fashion.
  I had the chance to meet this weekend with leaders in the Rogue 
Valley to talk about how smoke had affected them, and company after 
company after company had been dramatically impacted. Some you would 
say was obvious. If you have a zip line company and tourists aren't 
coming because the smoke is very thick, you are going to be impacted, 
but others are a little less obvious; for example, the production of 
wine and the potential impact of the smoke and the fires directly on 
the harvest but then also on perhaps tainting the flavor of the wine, 
which will have an impact down the road.
  So we need to make sure we do all we can to assist these communities 
just as we are assisting the communities that have been devastated by 
Hurricanes Harvey, Maria, and Irma.
  The second thing we need to do is, we need to include $200 million in 
the next package, the third tranche of assistance for the disasters 
this year. We need $200 million to fund the repair and replacement of 
infrastructure and trail infrastructure damaged--the buildings and the 
trails that were damaged by these forest fires. Now, that $200 million, 
that goes half to trails and infrastructure that were damaged by the 
hurricanes and half to those impacted by the fires. Essentially, the 
damage was roughly equally split. Without this type of funding, the 
Forest Service will be forced to postpone or cancel projects in fiscal 
year 2018 to accommodate the recovery. It will compromise the work to 
remove hazardous trees for public safety, road and trail maintenance, 
restoring vegetation in watersheds, and rehabilitating wildlife and 
fish habitat.
  The third thing we have to do is seize the moment and invest in fire 
resilience. Every single time we have a fire season like this--and this 
season we spent almost twice as much, on average, to fight the fires--
people ask: Why don't we do more on the front end to reduce the risk of 
these fires?
  Well, that is such logical thinking to do more on the front end. What 
do they mean by that? We have millions of acres of second-growth 
forests. We clearcut them. Some of them regrew naturally. Others were 
replanted. We replant virtually everything now. After 10 or 20 years, 
the trees are very close together. The branches are very close to the 
ground. This is prime territory for fires. Fires love this. Disease 
loves this. So it becomes a real problem unless you go in and thin the 
trees enormously--take out a lot of those trees--and proceed to get rid 
of the hazardous fuels of branches that accumulate on the ground and so 
forth. But if you do those two things, those forests become much more 
resistant to fire.
  When you are doing this on a stand that is a bit older--20 or 30 
years older--you also get a significant supply of sawlogs for the 
mills. So this is a real win-win situation. You get a forest that is 
better in resisting fire, you get a forest that is better in resisting 
disease, you get a forest that is better for timber stands, and you get 
a forest that is better in terms of being an ecosystem. With all that 
winning, we need to do more to make it actually happen.
  In my State of Oregon, there are 1.6 million acres that have already 
gone through the environmental process. They are ready to be thinned 
and have the hazardous fuels removed. In Washington State, it is at 
least 400,000 acres. There are probably hundreds of thousands of acres 
in every State from Montana and Idaho to California, Nevada, and New 
Mexico.
  This picture shows the difference. This road right here had a stand 
on the left that had not been thinned. If you can make out the colors, 
these trees are dead. They are all brown--dead trees because of the 
heat of the fire when it swept through. This side of the road had been 
treated. The trees had been thinned. The brush had been

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taken out from below. They often call that mowing. It has had 
prescriptive fire in it, which means after you have thinned it, you may 
go 10 or 15 years, and then let fire burn up the shrubs at the base. 
Therefore, on this side of the road, the forest is undamaged.
  In fact, I went out to this area outside of Sisters, OR, this last 
weekend. It is just remarkable how the area that had been thinned and 
treated with mowing and prescription fire became very resistant to the 
fire that was sweeping toward Sisters. It really helped the Forest 
Service fight the fire because they could easily maneuver through the 
area that had been thinned, much more than the area that hadn't been 
thinned. So that Milli fire was stopped before it got to Sisters, 
thankfully. In other places where the forest hadn't been thinned, the 
outcome might have been very different.
  Let's invest now in this win-win. Let's not succumb to the 
traditional timber wars of the past. After fires like this, there are 
those folks who come along and say: We just need to clearcut 
everything. Let's do a 10,000-square-foot timber sale with no 
environmental review and allow everything to be cut. That was the 
1950s. In fact, we have a bill in this Chamber that says: Do exactly 
that, and you can take out the old growth and the big trees. The irony 
of that is those are the trees that are actually fire resistant. Those 
are the trees you want to leave.
  This is a solution that brings the environmental world and the timber 
world together and provides a supply of sawlogs for our mills. Let's 
make that type of vision happen. But to do that, we have to fund the 
effort. We have to have the funds to be able to go in and do that 
thinning and mowing and fire prescription. That is why we are asking 
for about $600 million to help thin the forests of Montana, Idaho, 
Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and wherever else 
there is a forest that has gone through that environmental review. It 
is ready for action. Let's put Americans to work in those forests in 
this win-win strategy.
  Three things we need to do: Help our communities that are scorched, 
proceed to invest in emergency repair of the damaged infrastructure on 
our forest lands, and invest a significant $500 to $600 million in 
thinning the forests that have already gone through environmental 
review.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.