[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 159 (Wednesday, September 26, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H9083-H9086]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COMBATING WILDFIRES IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Higgins of Louisiana). Under the
Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from
Montana (Mr. Gianforte) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of
the majority leader.
General Leave
Mr. GIANFORTE. 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 Montana?
There was no objection.
Mr. GIANFORTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia
(Mr. Garrett).
Honoring Barbara Rose Johns
Mr. GARRETT. Somewhere, Mr. Speaker, someone is watching what is
going on in this Chamber. Even now, probably in a Nation of 320-plus
million, many someones are watching, and most of them don't have a clue
who I am, and that is okay. But the fact that most of them don't have a
clue who the lady pictured to my left, your right, is, is not okay.
On April 23, 1951, in Prince Edward County, Virginia, at the R.R.
Moton High School, a 16-year-old student named Barbara Rose Johns
strode onto a stage and implored her peers at this all-African American
high school to assert their God-given rights of equality.
I am honored today by the presence of Ms. Johns' sister, Joan Johns,
in the gallery. She is tickled when she speaks to me, which tickles me,
because I am tickled when I speak to her. I told her earlier today, Mr.
Speaker, that I was in love with her sister. It is interesting, because
she is sitting with my wife.
{time} 2000
The reason that I say that is that I love America, and as a member of
the State house, I had the honor of carrying legislation that made
April 23 Barbara Johns Day in Virginia. The reason is that Barbara
Johns' story is a story that every American should know.
Someone had the temerity to tell me, as I worked towards creating
Barbara Johns Day, ``That is Black history.'' Mr. Speaker, it is not
Black history or White history. It is American history. And America is
not Black or White or brown. America is an idea.
So when the Founders drafted the preamble to the Constitution and
called for us to form a more perfect Union, the presence of the word
``more'' implied a perpetual duty. And the revolution that cast off an
oppressive government from across an ocean against Great Britain is one
that I would argue was perpetual, and that another hero of mine named
Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, certainly an imperfect man, who
articulated near perfect ideas.
Fast-forward to April 23, 1951. Barbara Johns, with a clean and clear
and bright mind, influenced by her teachers and her Uncle Vernon Johns,
understood that rights are not given by government but by something
bigger, and understood that the duty of a citizen and a free nation was
to assert their God-given rights. So the idea of something as
draconianly oppressive as separate but equal was intolerable.
That day, she implored her students to walk out of Moton High School
and the tar paper shacks and the leaking roofs and to demand equality
not of outcomes, but of opportunity, because that is what America is
supposed to be--without regard to gender, without regard to race,
without regard to faith.
Now, what that manifested itself in was a court case, Davis v. Prince
Edward County. That court case was amalgamated into another case of
which I hope that people have heard, Brown v. Board of Education. The
difference between that case and every other case was that those were
initiated by lawyers, and this case was initiated by a 16-year-old girl
who understood that the promise of liberty was not just to one group or
another, that the American Revolution was perpetual, and that God had
given her rights just like everyone else to be asserted as a citizen in
a free society.
The fact that people watching don't know who I am is fine by me, but
the fact that our students don't understand that America is supposed to
be not Black or White or brown, but an idea wherein all people are
created equal with an opportunity to succeed based on their work and
their merit, that is not okay.
As a result, Mr. Speaker, we filed H.R. 5561, the Barbara Johns
Congressional Gold Medal Act. Her efforts, without lauding herself,
without patting herself on the back--indeed, going forth from this date
and living a humble life as a wife and a librarian, as she aspired to--
are the embodiment of the nameless faces of millions who sacrificed so
that we can live in a country that seeks to employ an idea that is the
greatest idea known to the history of free people.
The civil rights movement is not a Black history story. It is not a
White history story. It is an American history story. We are not a
Black nation or a White nation. We are a nation built on an idea, and
our students and our posterity need to understand that what makes us
great is that this right fought for by people like this lady isn't
universal.
So, Mr. Speaker, I hope that if the President is watching, he will
file a Presidential Medal of Freedom; I hope that if Members or staff
are watching, they will sign on to the Barbara Johns Congressional Gold
Medal Act; and I hope that if students are watching, they will go to
school tomorrow and tell their peers this is a country where people
stood up so that we all have a chance to be that which we dream to be,
because that is who Barbara Rose Johns was, and it is an American
history story worth telling.
Wildfires
Mr. GIANFORTE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring the Chamber's
attention to the wildfires that have devastated our country this year,
consuming nearly 7.7 million acres across 12 States. This figure,
however, doesn't account for the lives tragically lost, the homes
destroyed, or the livelihoods that went up in flames. This doesn't
account for the smoke from these wildfires that swept from many of our
Western States into the Midwest, creating poor air quality.
The House has passed measures to reduce the severity of our wildfires
and improve the health of our forests. Last November, the House passed
the Resilient Federal Forest Act, written by my friend from Arkansas
(Mr. Westerman). The legislation provides commonsense reforms that will
benefit our forests, economy, and the environment.
Conservationists, organizations, foresters, stakeholders, and local
leaders throughout Montana recognize the need for reforms to get us
managing our forests again. Unfortunately, the other Chamber, mired in
obstruction, has not taken up the bill. The House, however, has not
lost our focus, including critical forest management reforms into other
legislation.
Looking across the West and seeing the devastation of the wildfires
this year, I know we can't afford to wait. I am honored that many of my
colleagues are joining me here tonight who recognize the threat of
catastrophic wildfires and want to do something about them. I look
forward to hearing from them.
At this time, I yield to the gentleman from Utah, John Curtis.
Mr. CURTIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as thousands of Utahans in my
district are returning to their homes after being evacuated due to
wildfires that came within blocks of their homes.
The Pole Creek fire and the Bald Mountain fire have engulfed over
100,000 acres of land and are still burning strong. It is a testament
to our brave firefighters and our incredible
[[Page H9084]]
community of volunteers that not a single life has been lost and
property has been protected.
Although this fire season has been one of the worst our State has
ever seen, it has brought out the best in Utah. During the height of
the Pole Creek and Bald Mountain fires, the Red Cross was overwhelmed.
Now, Mr. Speaker, you might assume that that being overwhelmed came
because of the 6,000 evacuees who needed a home. But, in reality, the
Red Cross was overwhelmed because the list of people coming into the
shelter offering homes was longer than the list of people needing
homes. The Red Cross had to close shop.
As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, I visited the Red Cross shelter and
found a sign on the door that said, ``Please, no more donations.'' They
had too many donations from Utahans.
This is not the first time the Red Cross has had to close shop early.
The people of Utah go out of their way to help others. As usual, Utah
stepped up in the face of tragedy, and I plan to work to prevent future
catastrophic events like this.
Before I came to Congress, I was mayor for 8 years. I understand how
overwhelming it can be to coordinate disaster response, recovery, and
manage the daily operations of a community.
In my district, many small towns and cities are overcome with
challenges as they work out confusing jurisdictional responsibilities
of the State and Federal Government, on top of actively rebuilding and
preparing for the aftermath of the wildfires.
To help in this effort, last week, I convened a group of mayors,
county commissioners, State representatives, and emergency personnel so
that local leaders could have direct access to the Federal Government,
share resources, and prepare for what comes next. I stand committed to
helping our communities obtain the resources they need to rebuild their
homes, businesses, and prevent further damage.
We can all agree that managing our forest is critical. While we won't
prevent every fire, we need forest management reforms to reduce the
risk of fires. I have already started this discussion with my
colleagues in Washington.
Last week, I spoke with the interim Chief of the Forest Service, and
today I met with Secretary Perdue, who oversees the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, which includes the Forest Service. Both of these
conversations focused on how to best manage our forests and prevent
similar fires from happening in the future.
As a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, I look
forward to advancing policies that protect lives and protect property
throughout Utah.
As we look ahead to preventing these catastrophic wildfires, let's
not forget the value of our local officials and their roles in forest
management decisions. They know better than anyone the challenges they
face in their own backyards.
Should another fire strike, I am confident that Utahans will once
again step up to the challenge and take care of our great State and the
wonderful people in it.
Mr. GIANFORTE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah for his
comments, and especially for his leadership on this important issue,
bringing the knowledge of local government here to this House to help
us deal with this devastating situation out west.
At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona, Mr.
Paul Gosar, for his comments on wildfires.
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Montana for
organizing this tonight.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring this Chamber's attention to the
multitude of wildfires that have devastated the Western United States.
Now, Mr. Speaker, the West is on fire and has been on fire since
April of this year. This has undoubtedly been one of the worst wildfire
seasons in recent memory.
Last month, more than 100 active fires scorched nearly 2 million
acres, killed at least 12 people, and caused hundreds of millions of
dollars in property damage. As of today, more than 75 wildfires
continue to burn throughout the United States.
Wildfires are getting worse, in fact, in the United States just as
they are getting better in more similarly advanced nations. A study
published in Science last year found that the amount of acreage burning
globally has declined by 25 percent over the past 18 years,
irrespective of climate and temperature variability. The study's
findings point to day-to-day human factors, especially land management,
as the most consequential determinants of wildfire acreage burned.
Substantial research and common sense continue to suggest that an
imprudent combination of prematurely extinguished spontaneous small
burns preventing controlled burns and limiting brush, hazardous fuel,
and timber thinning to near-negligible amounts is producing tinderbox-
like conditions in our forests, conditions that overdetermine the
eventual outcome of catastrophic wildfire.
Our misguided land management assumptions, practices, and policies
have ended up as a highly significant factor in ensuring our country's
experience with wildfires is worse than that of similarly situated
peers. The sad truth is that mismanagement has left our forests
vulnerable to insects and disease ripe for catastrophic wildfires.
That is why the Western Caucus led efforts to pass a strong forestry
title in the farm bill. The House base bill includes 10 categorical
exclusions that allow for active management of our Nation's forests and
critical response.
On September 13, a letter spearheaded by the Western Caucus from 40
bipartisan Members of the House was sent to the farm bill conferrees
urging conferrees and leadership to include active forest management
provisions in the final version of the farm bill. The base bill also
reauthorizes the Landscape Scale Restoration Program.
The first meaningful step that can be made to ensure that we can
mitigate the frequency and intensity of wildfires next year is for the
farm bill conference committee to include these forestry provisions
within the final conference report. Otherwise, next year's wildfires,
sadly, may be larger than this year's and will be the result of this
Congress.
Mr. GIANFORTE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for
his principled approach to getting reform so we can start managing our
forests again.
At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania
(Mr. Thompson), for his comments on wildfires.
Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
his leadership. I congratulate him on some great legislation that was
passed out of the Natural Resources Committee earlier today, which I
know will be extremely important to the citizens who are lucky to have
him as their Representative.
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be here this evening. As vice chair of the
Agriculture Committee and as a former chair of the House Forestry
Subcommittee and a proud member of the Western Caucus--I always say I
am on the eastern frontier of the Western Caucus, being from
Pennsylvania, but we have the same issues. We really do.
I have a national forest, one of the more profitable national forests
in the country, but facing a lot of the issues: rural communities,
school districts that are dependent on secure rural schools, and just
so many issues--energy production, development--and so I am proud to be
here this evening on an issue that is incredibly important, an issue
that impacts the lives of so many and heavily impacts our Western
States.
I am honored to represent Pennsylvania, obviously, and as some have
described our forest, Mr. Speaker, as asbestos forest in Pennsylvania,
probably because of the 90-some-thousand miles of streams that we have.
We have plenty of moisture. I wish we could put a bunch of that water
in a pipeline and sell it to you. We would send it your direction.
But as it is, while the devastating impact on our forests is invasive
species--that is a subject for another evening--I can tell you, when
the wildfires occur in States such as Utah, Montana, Colorado, and
throughout the West, California, these devastating wildfires, there is
a large sucking sound, as I like to describe it, out of my national
forest, and it comes in the form of resources, money that is taken away
because of the necessity that I support of having to fight those fires.
[[Page H9085]]
{time} 2015
We also have personnel that are deployed out of my national forest.
So that means that our timber, the money for our timber marketing, and
harvesting, and the multi-use comes almost to a screeching halt.
So I am pleased with the leadership that we have done, in both the
Natural Resources Committee and the Agriculture Committee, to address
this issue. As vice chair of the Agriculture Committee, I am proud of
the Forestry Title of the House farm bill. It contains a number of
reforms intended to provide the Forest Service and our private
foresters with more authorities and flexibilities to help better
manage; that is both in increasing timber production, but it is also in
managing a forest that is healthy and, therefore, managing the
understory, the fuel load that has built up over decades of
mismanagement.
By providing new authorities and encouraging new timber markets, we
do that in a number of ways, Mr. Speaker. The bill encourages active
forest management. We reauthorize the Landscape Scale Restoration
Program, and that allows for more partnerships to tackle critical
challenges such as forest health, and wildfires, as well as drinking
water protection.
The bill supports, in many ways, these types of initiatives but,
specifically, on the wildfires, Mr. Speaker. Over the past 2 decades,
wildfires have been an increasing challenge for the Forest Service as
costs have skyrocketed to fight them.
Since 1995, the Forest Service's annual wildfire budget has increased
from 13 percent of the budget to nearly 60 percent of the budget, Mr.
Speaker. Last year was the costliest fire year on record, with the
Forest Service spending $2.4 billion in 2017 alone.
Year after year, the agency runs out of fire funding, forcing it to
draw additional funds from non-fire accounts and other forests,
national forests, including to cover basic operational and forest
management funds that pay for timbering, and research activities, and
even proactive fire prevention.
Unfortunately, this occurs because the Forest Service has been unable
to access additional funding when the fire funds runs out due to a
budget cap.
Now, finally, the 2018 omnibus included a ``fire borrowing fix'' by
creating a wildfire cap adjustment, which will treat wildfires like any
other natural disasters; just like we saw down in the Carolinas with
Hurricane Florence.
Now this change will free up the Forest Service to fight wildfires
and do so without transferring funds from non-fire accounts. These are
accounts that help to prevent fires with restorative cuts, and managing
the understory, dealing with the fuel load, the standing dead timber
because of, perhaps, disease.
For forests around the Nation, especially in the East, this will mean
more funding for other essential activities such as management,
timbering, and even recreation and research activities.
Now, along with fixing the budget cap, the omnibus currently provides
the Forest Service with new management authorities, and these reforms
are specifically intended to help the Forest Service better manage and
proactively prevent forest fires from breaking out.
Specifically, these new authorities will streamline the environmental
analysis, reduce litigation, and provide timber harvest contract
certainty. Some of these reforms include, within our proposed farm
bill--which we are in conference in right now, and we need the Senate
to realize these improvements were based on the successes we had in the
last farm bill, which has really helped our forest products industry,
our timber industry, helped make our forests more healthy; and when
they are healthy, they are more resilient to wildfires.
So it includes: Categorical Exclusions for Wildfire Resilience
Projects; Healthy Forest Restoration Act inclusion of Fire and Fuel
Breaks; 20-year Stewardship Contracts; Cottonwood Reform; Fire Hazard
Mapping Initiative; Fuels Management for Protection of Electric
Transmission Lines; and Good Neighbor Authority Road Amendment.
Forest fires do not recognize or respect boundaries. If they start in
a national forest, they are going to wind up in State forests, they are
going to wind up on private property land.
So we are doing all the right things. I am very pleased, and we need
to do this.
When I look at the communities, such as the ones that the gentleman
from Montana represent, as a result of wildfires, we see a loss of
life; we see a loss of homes; a loss of the economy; a loss of the
taxpayer-owned assets, whether it is national forests or State forests;
and certainly a loss of assets for those private property owners that
have forests.
So I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this topic and issue,
and I really appreciate his managing this Special Order this evening on
a very important topic of wildfires.
Mr. GIANFORTE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from
Pennsylvania, especially that he is a member of the Western Caucus
joining us there, and pointing out the national implications of the
massive wildfires we have out west on resources back east; on the
forests that you have in Pennsylvania and the resources there.
Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Nationwide impact.
Mr. GIANFORTE. The gentleman mentioned many of the things that--the
livelihoods, the lives. You know, the other thing that we often neglect
is the amount of smoke that is discharged into the air and the effect
on people with asthma and other lung issues. I am sure many, many have
died as a result in our communities, so it is a public safety issue as
well.
Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. It really is.
Mr. Speaker, our watersheds, most of our water sources start--many of
them start in national forests. They are certainly in forests, but a
lot of national forests. And with wildfires, you create a situation
where there is no stability in the soils. And so where these wonderful
trout streams, streams that support life, support communities, support
families with clean water, these wildfires, they basically caramelize
that soil so that, essentially, the flash flooding, the runoffs, it
puts all these solids within those streams, it creates turbidity, the
solids, the nutrients that go in there.
So the impact of wildfires, as the gentleman said, it is the land, it
is the air and, quite frankly, it is the water, and that is why we have
to do a better job of preventing these wildfires to start with.
Mr. GIANFORTE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania
for his comments.
This past summer, nearly 7.7 million acres have burned across
America. Wildfires consumed thousands of acres in Glacier National
Park.
The Howe Ridge Fire in Glacier National Park consumed over 14,000
acres. I was there. I saw the devastation. It destroyed homes on the
shores of Lake McDonald. These are historic national buildings, lost to
fire.
Last year in Glacier National Park as well we lost Sperry Chalet,
which also had historic value and had created memories for thousands of
tourists who had visited that facility.
Our courageous firefighting efforts did save the main Wheeler cabin,
with great effort. It even threatened the Going-to-the-Sun Road. I met
with the incident commanders there and the brave firefighters at the
Howe Ridge Fire.
Last summer, we saw similar behavior. Nearly 8.5 million acres burned
in our country last year. In Montana alone, last summer, Mr. Speaker,
we lost 1.25 million acres.
Just to put that in perspective, 1.2 million acres is the equivalent
of the entire State of Delaware, burned in Montana last summer. And I
saw the destruction firsthand. I was on five of these fires, visiting
with the incident commanders, and seeing devastation.
In one county alone, we burned 270,000 acres, and we had over 60,000
cattle with no grass. Fortunately, we were able to work with the
Department of the Interior to get retired grazing allotments in the
C.M. Russell opened up to fill that need for those ranchers, but those
livelihoods were suspended.
The habitats were destroyed. Smoke hangs in the air. My own driveway
in Bozeman, Montana, on mornings when the fires are burning the worst,
we come out to cars covered with ash that we have to brush off before
we can drive them. The air quality is dangerous and unhealthy.
[[Page H9086]]
And even where there weren't fires, we saw smoke from the tragic,
destructive California fires that filled our skies in Montana.
As bad as the wildfires have been, I have seen the impact of properly
managed forests. This year, when I was at the Glacier National Park
fire, it was interesting to me, as the incident commanders explained
what they were doing there. It turns out there were four fires being
managed, all started by the same lightning storm, through lightning
strikes.
Three of those fires started in national forests where there had been
hazardous fuel reductions. The forest had been managed. One started in
a national park, and it was such a stark example to me to see that the
three fires that had been started by the same storm in the national
forests where there had been hazardous fuel reduction, on the day I was
there, had been constrained to two to 300 acres each. And yet, the one
that started in a national park was burning over 10,000 acres.
Now I am not advocating to go log our national parks, just to be very
clear. But it is a stark example of the impact.
I have been in eastern Montana, southeast of Miles City, and I have
seen where the BLM has done forest management. I saw a situation where
a fire had burned through a landscape and, in an area where there had
been no forest management, no fuels reduction, no thinning of the
forest, the fire burned so hot that, even years later, it still looked
like a moonscape. Nothing was growing.
And yet, when it hit the managed forest, where the forest had been
thinned, the fire quickly dropped into the underbrush, burned the grass
and twigs, but not a single tree was lost. A year later, that forest
was healthier than it was, and yet, the forest that had burned
completely will not recover in our generation. This is a stark example.
In other areas, where forest management has been done, where trees
have been thinned, the water comes back into the streams again, the
surface water. These are healthier habitats.
So there are many benefits of a properly managed forest. We get more
wildlife. There is more habitat. There is more opportunity for
sportsmen and women. We have more recreational opportunities. You can
gain access to the forests again. We have good-paying timber jobs.
Wildfires are less severe, and the health of our communities are not
threatened.
One of the biggest problems is litigation. We need more collaborative
projects, but litigation is one of the greatest obstacles to managing
our forests. A good example is the Stonewall Vegetation Project in
Lincoln, Montana. I toured that site.
It took 8 years to get a permit to thin the forest, and then the
lawyers swooped in, arguing the project would disrupt lynx habitat. A
judge overturned the permit, and that summer, that entire forest
burned.
And, Mr. Speaker, there is no lynx habitat anymore. There is no
habitat for any animal there because that forest is gone.
The House did take action this past year. We passed the Resilient
Federal Forests Act that Congressman Westerman of Arkansas authored and
I cosponsored. It would get us back into our forests, managing them
again. Unfortunately, the Senate, tied up with obstruction, didn't act
on it.
But we have made progress. Back earlier this spring, we overturned
the Cottonwood decision, which has been used as a tool to invalidate
existing forest management permits. We have been cutting red tape to
accelerate the removal of hazardous fuels.
The Forest Service estimates that 6.3 billion dead and dying trees
are across 11 States. I know in my own home State, in our State
capital, Helena, Montana, if you drive west into the Lewis and Clark
Forest, you can look at a hillside and, in some cases, because the
forests have not been managed and they have overgrown, nearly 90
percent of the trees are standing. It is a tinderbox waiting to go up
in flames.
We have also reformed how we pay for catastrophic fires. This was
fixed also earlier this year, through legislation in this House, and it
was signed into law, that will allow us to treat large fires just like
we do large hurricanes when they exceed budgets, because the cost of
these fires has expanded so much, it is consuming the majority of the
U.S. Forest Service budget.
Mr. Speaker, last year, forest firefighting costs consumed 55 percent
of the Forest Service budget.
{time} 2030
That takes away money for trail maintenance and recreational
programs. It is consumed in fighting these fires.
We have also added some provisions to the farm bill which is now in
conference, adding Good Neighbor Authorities, extending that capability
for categorical exclusions down to county commissioners and local
government so that they can be involved in making our forests
healthier.
We have also provided for expedited salvage operations so we can cut
dead and dying trees at landscape size without the frivolous litigation
shutting down these projects.
Mr. Speaker, 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 how we
manage our forests by passing commonsense forest management reform. We
need to reduce the severity of the wildfires. We need to get our
forests healthy again.
This is good for wildlife. It is good for recreationists. It is good
for hunting. It creates good-paying jobs in our mills. Montana can't
afford for Congress to continue kicking the can down the road and let
important projects be tied up in unnecessary, frivolous litigation.
This is an urgent issue, and we need to address it quickly.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleagues bringing to the attention of
this Chamber the wildfires and the need for forest management reform.
The House has offered commonsense solutions to get us back to managing
our forests. The evidence shows that a properly managed forest is a
healthier forest. We have less severe wildfires. I have seen this
firsthand in the field.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the efforts of Mr. Westerman, who has been
a leader on the issue and a forester by training, and my colleagues who
know the destruction of a catastrophic wildfire brings us to know how
critical it is to deliver meaningful reforms.
Like my colleagues, I urge the Senate to act on commonsense measures
this Chamber has sent so that Montanans can spend the summer in their
forests enjoying them, not having to breathe them at home.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________