[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9768]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                     NEW MEXICO FIRES AND H.R. 1522

  (Mrs. CHENOWETH-HAGE asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. CHENOWETH-HAGE. Mr. Speaker, at this time, devastating forest 
fires like this are burning vast areas in our Nation. Today, my 
subcommittee is having a timely joint hearing on fire management that 
begin on Federal lands.
  Last year on this subject, I introduced H.R. 1522, which is a very 
simple bill designed to reduce fire risks like this in areas like Los 
Alamos, New Mexico, where the forest meets the town in the wildland 
urban interface.
  Many of these forests are simply too dense, too crowded, with too 
many trees, after 100 years of fire prevention, to be treated by fire 
alone. My bill calls for thinning of forests to make it easier and 
safer to allow fires naturally to return without being destructive.
  On February 9, 1999, at a hearing on my bill, the Clinton-Gore 
administration testified against this bill. They said that these kinds 
of treatments of thinning were simply unnecessary. A couple of weeks 
ago, Secretary Babbitt held a press conference where he announced that 
we need a new strategy to deal with fire risks in these urban-wildland 
interfaces, a strategy that calls for a combination of thinning and 
prescribed fire. What a revelation. We need this now.

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