[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11222-11227]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       HEALTHY FOREST INITIATIVE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Chocola). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Cannon) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks 
on the subject of my general leave.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Utah?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I have some graphics that I would like to 
use down at the other podium if I might.
  Mr. Speaker, as members of the Western Caucus, we come to the floor 
today to discuss H.R. 1904, The Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003. 
This bill will be marked up tomorrow in the Committee on the Judiciary 
and is expected to be brought to the floor early next week.
  Let me put this map up. What you see here is a map. If we can focus 
on the graphic here, what you see here is a map of the United States, 
and you can understand by looking at this map why we as members of the 
Western Caucus are concerned with healthy forests.
  You will recognize that there is a color chart. What it indicates is 
that everything in yellow or green or red or the other colors other 
than white represent Federal lands that are managed by the Federal 
Government that includes also many lands from the Eastern part of the 
United States. And as you might guess, we have in the Western Caucus 
also people who are from the Eastern part of the United States.

                              {time}  2030

  We have at least a couple of people here tonight from the Western 
Caucus who will address some of the issues that are related to the 
problems of healthy forests.
  If we get a fairly tight shot on this, what we can see in this 
graphic on the left, most of these pictures were taken from an area 
where there is a forest fire. The picture on the left is a picture of 
an area that had been thinned and prepared and did not burn. The 
picture on the right is the terribly scarred and destroyed timber, and 
by the way one cannot kill the timber by fire without killing a lot of 
endangered species and destroying watershed and creating huge 
difficulties for the environment.
  That is the difference between the policy that we hope to implement 
through the Healthy Forest Act and what we currently have in much of 
our forests today. I am going to talk in particular and show some 
pictures later on about the effects of mud slides in a town very close 
to where I live in Utah, but I would like to end my piece of this 
introduction by quoting the President when he said, ``I have sent you a 
healthy forest initiative to help prevent the catastrophic fires that 
have devastated communities, killed wildlife and burnt away millions of 
acres of treasured forests. I urge you to pass these measures for the 
good of both the environment and the economy.''
  I think if we focus on what the President said, we will realize this 
is a matter of major concern for all America, not just Americans who 
live in the West, not just for those people who live near federally 
managed forests in the East. This is a problem for all America, and it 
relates to our concerns for a healthy environment, for our concerns for 
endangered species and concerns for our economy.
  I yield to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Otter).
  Mr. OTTER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's leadership on 
this issue.
  The Representative from Utah is the chairman of the Western Caucus 
this year, and given the motivation by the Chief Executive to move 
forward on the healthy forest initiative, I join with my chairman of 
the caucus as well as the rest of the caucus in an enthusiastic effort 
to try to make sure that the healthy forest initiative goes forward.
  Mr. Speaker, as we debate the healthy forest issue tonight, I am 
reminded that we were approaching the 100th-year anniversary of what 
Idahoans refer to as the ``big blowup,'' that is, the fires of 1910. It 
was a series of 1,763 fires that ravaged some 3 million acres and 
killed 85 people during August of 1910. The hardest hit areas were the 
Clearwater National Forest, the Coeur d'Alene national forests of 
Idaho, the Lolo and the Cabinet national forests of Montana.
  I would like to share with my colleagues, if I might, an excerpt from 
``The Big Burn,'' a book that was written on the Northwest fires by 
Stan Cohen and Don Miller:
  ``Daylight was shut out as far north as Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 
Canada; as far south as Denver; and as far east as Watertown, New York. 
To the west, officers of a British vessel 500 miles out of San 
Francisco said that they were unable to take observations for ten days 
because of smoke in the atmosphere caused by the big burn. Some claim 
that smoke from the big blaze reached one-third of the way around the 
world.''
  This big burn started near a little town called Elk City, Idaho, a 
small community surrounded by dead and dying trees. That community is 
struggling to keep its one and only lumber mill in business. During the 
past 20 years, we have seen the growth of the surrounding forests 
double and the mortality rate from bugs and from viruses triple, all 
while the timber cuts steadily decline. In short, the sustainability of 
the forest is declining as the trees die.
  A variety of factors have caused this monumental and potentially 
national disaster, including severe insect infestations, the practice 
of fighting nearly every wildfire and a passive forest management 
philosophy. The forest health crises on our public lands can no longer 
be ignored.
  There are over 190 million acres of Federal land at risk to 
catastrophic fire. The national forest system is home to more than 72 
million acres of high-risk catastrophic wildfire and more than 26 
million acres at high risk to insect infestation and disease.
  The administration must be commended for the action that it has 
already taken, which precipitated the healthy forest initiative through 
its current regulation to reduce procedural delays in preparing 
projects to reduce the fire danger and address forest health problems; 
but more must be done.
  The Healthy Forest Restoration Act seeks to streamline bureaucratic 
procedures that stymie legitimate management efforts without unduly 
restricting public participation. Forest management projects could 
still be subject to rigorous environmental analysis as well as 
administrative challenges and lawsuits, but the process would be 
completed in a matter of months rather than in a matter of years.
  Tough environmental safeguards in the bill would provide heightened 
restriction on management activities in inventoried roadless areas, and 
old growth trees would receive additional protection. At the same time, 
priority would be given to management projects near communities and the 
watershed.
  The measure would also facilitate use of otherwise valueless wood, 
brush and slash for production of biomass energy, a key component in 
our upcoming energy bill; authorize Federal programs to support 
community-based partnerships addressing forest stewardship and 
watershed protection and restoration needs at the State and local 
level; and direct additional research on the early detection and 
containment of disease and insect infestations.
  We cannot tolerate another season of death and destruction. We are 
past the analysis paralysis point, Mr. Speaker; and the point in this 
debate is that we must move forward. It is time we got to work on the 
ground. The sooner we get this legislation through Congress, the sooner 
we begin ensuring the future of our forests. We need to act

[[Page 11223]]

quickly before Idaho is faced with another big burn.
  I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding to me.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Idaho for his 
comments, and if the gentleman would engage in a colloquy, I have some 
statistics to go along with what the gentleman is just saying.
  Apparently, the National Association of Public Administration did an 
analysis of the forest service and found that it spends 40 percent of 
its time and 20 percent of its money on planning. This is the analysis 
paralysis that the gentleman referred to. Is that the gentleman's 
experience in Idaho?
  Mr. OTTER. It has been, and when I served on the Committee on 
Resources last year with the gentleman from Utah, as he will recall, 
Dale Bosworth, the new supervisor of the forest, indicated to us that, 
and he was the one that coined the term ``analysis paralysis,'' and he 
indicated to us that so many of the resources of the forest agency are 
being consumed by not only procedures in court but also preparing to go 
to court and then filing such an analysis of overwhelming environmental 
studies hopefully to prevent themselves from having to go to court. I 
believe that the gentleman's figures of 40 percent and upwards are 
indeed quoted from Mr. Bosworth's testimony.
  Mr. CANNON. That is the planning part of what the forest service does 
because the forest service, 20 percent of their resources go to 
planning; but around 50 percent, I have heard as much as 58 percent of 
the resources of the forest service, go for litigation. So we are 
spending the vast amount of our time and money playing and being 
paralyzed by analysis and not using that money to actually make our 
forests more healthy.
  Mr. OTTER. I think that is one of the key components in this forest 
health restoration act and that is allowing for that opportunity to go 
to court if that is necessary, but the players must be part of the 
process prior to the plan being delivered and then taking them to court 
later.
  As the gentleman will recall, many times in the testimony that we 
received in the Committee on Resources last year, there would be one or 
two of these interest groups that would be involved in the planning 
process, that would be involved in the environmental analysis, in the 
NEPA process and all the public hearings, and they would be agreeing 
and they would be working with the forest service; and then when the 
forest service had blocked the sale, the sale in some cases had gone 
through, then another interest group that had never had a dog in the 
fight suddenly rushes over to court with a $20 bill and then a 34 cent 
stamp, and filed an action to stay any future action on that sale.
  In many cases, if it were the restoration or the recovery from a burn 
or some other kind of insect infestation, the opportunity window for 
harvesting what good that can come out of that forest was lost.
  Mr. CANNON. In part, that is because if we get an infestation in dead 
trees, we only have until the next season, the next summer before those 
pine bark needles or whatever, the infestation is mature and goes into 
the live and healthy forest.
  Mr. OTTER. That is right, and I think some of the pictures that the 
gentleman will show later will be very obvious in what can happen to a 
healthy forest that is overgrown and weakened as a result of the 
closing canopy and weakened as a result of the overgrowth.
  I can tell my colleague that testimony I received up in a little town 
called Grangeville, Idaho, just last weekend, my colleague, Senator 
Craig from the Senate, who is from Idaho, joined me in that hearing, 
and we were told that in many cases there is as much as 80 tons per 
acre of fuel that has grown as a result of lack of harvest.
  We had a sustainable yield, sustainable harvest program for years; 
and when we got away from that and took a passive attitude toward the 
management of our forests, the watershed, the habitat, the result was 
that the forest continued to grow. It did not stop. The forest 
continued to grow; and as a result, we have had a tremendous 
overgrowth, and just as is the case with any species, we get them 
crowded in too close of an area and if one gets sick, they all get 
sick; and that is where we are with our forests.
  Mr. CANNON. While we are talking, let me just show a picture here 
that the gentleman was referring to earlier. If we can get a focus on 
that, we are talking in terms of statistics, but we can see on the left 
the terrific fire where we have got this large fuel load on the floor 
and in the forest, and on the right we have a thinned healthy forest; 
and we can see there is not really much of a transaction.
  In fact, the Native Americans used to burn the forests with great 
regularity. When the Pilgrims first came, they could drive their 
carriages through the forest, and all the way down to the Revolutionary 
War they were burning the Hudson in areas around there to maintain 
health.
  The problem is if we, through huge litigation costs and complicated 
processes, interfere with the healthiness of a forest, we get the fuel 
load and this terrible destruction as opposed to relatively healthy 
maintenance by occasional fires that the Native Americans used to 
manage those areas before.
  Mr. OTTER. The other thing I would like to bring to my colleague's 
attention is the picture he shows there, the one closest to him which 
would be on the left. When we have that healthy a fuel loaded, what 
happens when that forest does burn, just as it shows there, it burns so 
hot that it actually calcines the Earth; and when it calcines the Earth 
16, 18, 20 inches deep, it burns all of the natural nutrients right out 
of the soil. So the result is that nothing will grow there for years 
and years. It is like trying to grow something in a jar of marbles. 
There is not anything to hold the root system. There is not anything to 
feed the root system.
  The big blowup that I referred to in my opening statement, part of 
the big burn of that 3 million acres was a place in Idaho in the St. 
Joe, just up from the St. Joe called Slate Creek, and that fire was in 
1910, and today there are still areas in those reaches where nothing 
grows because the nutrients were burnt out of the soil over a hundred 
years ago, and there has been nothing to replace it.
  Mr. CANNON. That is the kind of thing that happens when we get a huge 
fuel load in the forest and get the destruction like we have, this is 
the kind of destruction the gentleman is talking about happening where 
it actually turns the ground into where we burn the nutrients right out 
of the soil with an intense fire.
  Mr. OTTER. Let me just go ahead and make one more analogy for anybody 
that may be watching this.
  In the old days I know when I was growing up and we raked the leaves 
and everything in the fall of the year, we would rake them up into a 
pile; and if we burn them on the lawn, if we even have that little bit 
of fuel, even that little bit of heat, we would have a spot there for 
years to come. Just imagine magnifying that by 100 or 150 times and 
then how long that that spot is going to be there.
  Mr. CANNON. We sort of forget how intense a fire can be. Even a grass 
fire can burn at great intensity, and we have got a ladder that takes 
us all the way up to the trees. We get a terrific burn, but let me give 
the gentleman a couple more statistics.
  The forest service does more environmental statements than any other 
Federal agency, nearly twice as many as any other agency that does 
these; and this is the Federal Highway Administration. So they spend a 
lot of their time doing it more than any other agency, and in addition, 
they have to go through an 800-step decision-making process to complete 
the Upper South Platte Restoration Project, which simultaneously took 3 
years to complete.

                              {time}  2045

  Talk about analysis paralysis: An 800-step process and 3 years while 
there may be some kind of either buildup of fire load, fuel load, or an 
infestation. That is just absolutely unacceptable and part of the cause 
for the problems

[[Page 11224]]

we are seeing last summer and this summer.
  Mr. OTTER. And sometimes it gets to the point where good people get 
very frustrated. I know in Idaho we have had some good people quit the 
Federal agencies there because of the fact that they just were not 
allowed to do their job, and they just got frustrated and they left.
  Another aspect of that is since 1989, just 14 short years, we have 
shut down half of our ability to saw logs. We have shut down half of 
our lumber mills, about 37 lumber mills thus far. All those jobs are 
gone.
  We get to the point that in many places in Idaho, these small 
communities that lived and worked for generation after generation, that 
grew up in those communities, school systems counted on those 
communities, the infrastructure around it, and when those lumber mills 
shut down, the towns died, the schools went away, and people then 
transferred. They end up having to transfer into the more populated 
areas, and to then go through vocational education to get a new job, 
ruining the historical fabric, ruining the work ethic, if you will, of 
the folks not only in the agencies, but also those folks that watched 
their grandfathers and grandmothers and their mothers and fathers that 
grew up in those areas, that went to college from those areas, and then 
came back to become silvaculturalists or become foresters because their 
great effort in life, their great desire in life was to go to work for 
the Forest Service.
  I have traveled around the world in many capacities. In my private 
business capacity I was the president of the international division, 
and between that and being the Lieutenant Governor of Idaho for 14 
years, it was my job to sell our groceries, to get around the world and 
strut our stuff and show these other countries what we had, and in the 
process I went to some 82 different countries. One of the things I 
found, when we got into some of these developing countries, is that 
they wanted to know about the School of Forestry, the College of 
Forestry at the University of Idaho. It had a reputation worldwide.
  I talked with the President here just a while back and he said, you 
know, we may have to close down that school. We have already closed 
down some of the other natural resource schools because nobody is 
managing them anymore. We are making all our decisions in court. None 
of the decisions are being made on the forest floor. None of the 
decisions are really being made for the health and the cleanliness of 
the watershed, for the health and cleanliness of the water itself, the 
streams that run into those reaches of the mountains. As a result, we 
are losing our national reputation. We are losing, unfortunately, one 
of our real national heritages in our culture.
  Mr. CANNON. I think that is absolutely true. The West has had a 
pretty severe drought. I think everyone in the Nation by now knows that 
we have had a severe drought. In Utah, and maybe the gentleman has had 
the same experience, we have had recently the worst of all worlds. We 
have had more rain in the last 2 or 3 weeks than we have had in the 
last 4 or 5 years. As a result of that, Utah is pretty green now on the 
surface. The problem is, come July, we have now added a couple of steps 
in that ladder we are missing, that fire ladder, so that fire will take 
off like crazy. We went from what we thought would have been a lesser 
burn season this year, because of the dryness and because of the lack 
of that ladder, to now what looks like maybe a much worse burn season. 
Is that what the gentleman is facing in Idaho?
  Mr. OTTER. We have had some great rains. In fact, the farmers all 
call them million-dollar rains. I think Bonneville Power said the other 
day they had an $80 million week, the week that it rained so hard up in 
the Pacific Northwest. Because of the watershed, because of the snow 
and the watershed going into the reservoirs, they were going to have 
much more water in those reservoirs for the production of power than 
they thought they were going to have.
  But any time there is that much fuel, and as the gentleman knows, 
come July and August when we hit those 100, 105 day temperatures out in 
the West, out in our country, out in the Rockies, that is going to dry 
that fuel. And unless we graze it with the cattle or have some other 
method of removing that, we are going to have that stairstep that the 
gentleman talked about, that stepladder that the gentleman talked 
about. We will have the grasses low, which will then meet the interface 
of the browse and the brush itself, and then right on up into the 
trees.
  Mr. CANNON. And that is why it is so important to look at what the 
President said when he pointed out, ``I have sent you a healthy forest 
initiative to prevent the catastrophic fires that devastate 
communities, kill wildlife, and burn away millions of acres of 
treasured forest. I urge you to pass these measures for the good of 
both our environment and our economy.''
  We need to do this now because our problem is acute right now as we 
speak.
  Mr. OTTER. Tomorrow is not too soon. And I know, looking at Idaho, 
where we have the overgrowth, where we have high unemployment, all 
these counties that I talked about where that 1910 fire went up, I have 
six counties that run right up through that vein where that 1910 fire 
went that all have double-digit unemployment, they are all ready to go 
to work. All we need to do is to pass the hiring mechanism, and that 
hiring mechanism, that action mechanism is this bill.
  Mr. CANNON. I thank the gentleman for his participation.
  We have the pleasure of having with us a man of great experience in 
this area, and I would yield now to the gentleman from South Dakota. 
Let me say first, however, that he comes to us with a world of 
experience as the long-time Governor of the State and having followed 
these issues and been responsible for them from the State point of view 
for a very long time.
  Mr. JANKLOW. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I have to 
apologize for this laryngitis I have this evening.
  I asked myself as I sat here listening to my colleagues from Utah and 
from Idaho, why am I sitting down here this evening in an empty Chamber 
when I could be like everybody else and be someplace else? The fact of 
the matter is I am here because it is incredibly important that the 
people of America understand what we are doing to ourselves, because 
that is what it is. We are on a self-destructive tour that is really 
bringing about the death of human beings. All we need is to have one of 
these fires in the West, like we have had in the last several years.
  Now, I live in the State of South Dakota. The State of South Dakota 
in the year 2000, we had a couple of forest fires that burned 132,000 
acres of the 1.2 million acres in the Black Hills National Forest. That 
is approximately 10 percent of the entire Black Hills burned down in 
2000. We had 600 soldiers and airmen on Active Duty. We had all of the 
South Dakota Highway Patrol there. We had 150 local fire departments, 
all but one of them volunteer fire departments, from all over South 
Dakota. In addition to that, I called the Governor of Minnesota, the 
Governor of Wisconsin, the Governors of Nebraska, Montana, and Wyoming. 
I told them this was beyond our capability. I asked them for help, and 
they sent their fire trucks. The inmates in our State prison system put 
in 43,632 hours fighting these fires.
  But I tell my colleagues what is more important. At a time during our 
Nation's destiny, at a time in our Nation's history when we need 
funding for schools, we need money for diabetes research and cancer 
research, we need money for Lou Gehrig disease research and muscular 
dystrophy, we need money for all kinds of things, we have spent $6 
billion, $6 billion, in the last 3 years in this country just fighting 
the forest fires through the U.S. Forest Service. And that does not 
count the hundreds of millions and billions that have been spent by 
local governments, the time for volunteers, or I should say the 
volunteer farmers and ranchers and citizens who have never booked for 
their own time, utilizing their own equipment and their own resources 
to try to put these fires out in the West.
  Now, the government, if it wants to, has the right to burn down its 
forests,

[[Page 11225]]

but it does not have the right to burn private people's property. It 
did not have the right to kill 23 firefighters in this country last 
year. It did not have the right to burn down hundreds of homes, 
hundreds of homes in this country last year. And it does not have the 
right to destroy private property like they treat their own.
  The reality of the situation is that for decades, every time we had 
insect infestation, we sprayed them and tried to kill the insects. 
Every time we had a fire, we tried to put it out. And all we did was 
allow the forest to do what these gentlemen call building the fuel 
loading per acre, building what is called the ladder fuels in the 
forest. The ladder fuels are where we have a fire down on the bed of 
the forest, but then they get so hot they climb up to the top of the 
trees where they are called crowning, and then they start racing from 
treetop to treetop.
  We had a fire in the Black Hills in the year 2000, the Jasper fire, 
moved 10 miles in 1 day. Ten miles in one day. All the firemen could do 
was run for their lives. I gave an evacuation order for 64 square miles 
of the Black Hills of South Dakota. I was asked by the forest 
supervisor to evacuate an area 8 by 8; 64 square miles of people went 
running for their lives grabbing what they could. You should have seen 
the panic in their faces as all of a sudden they get the word to run 
for their lives. They race into their houses, some of them trying to 
grab papers, some trying to grab the parakeet, the cat or the dog; some 
frantically looking for their children and family members; all thinking 
this fire will be upon them in a moment's notice, and we not knowing 
which direction or where those fires are going to go.
  For too long we have made political decisions in these forests. 
Before our committee came the representative for the Foresters of 
America. The representative for the Foresters of America testified on 
behalf of the State foresters, and what did he say? He said he 
represented every one of the 50 State professional foresters in the 
country. And every one of them, through their testimony, said they 
support, they support, this healthy forest initiative.
  This initiative guarantees that the public has a right to be heard. 
As a matter of fact, a substantive decision cannot be made unless the 
public is given notice and an opportunity to be involved. What it does 
say is if you do not involve yourself in the decision process, then you 
cannot involve yourself in the appeal process. That has been the law in 
the civil jurisdictions of America since almost this country was 
founded. If you try a case in the civil courts, and you do not raise an 
issue, you cannot raise it for the first time on appeal. You have to 
raise it in what they call the trial court to raise it in the appellate 
court.
  Well, we are setting up the same process administratively in this 
bill. We say if you have a comment, if you have an objection, if you 
are for it or against it or just want to be interested, you must 
participate and give your input into the decision, or you cannot be 
involved in the appellate process.
  This comes about as a result of all the Western Governors, all of 
them, Democrat and Republican alike, standing shoulder to shoulder, 
North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho, 
Washington, Oregon, Alaska, New Mexico, Colorado, all coming together 
in a summit saying to the Federal officials, the Secretary of 
Agriculture, Mr. Glickman at the time, and the Secretary of the 
Interior Mr. Babbitt that there has to be a better way. We all agreed 
with each other. And out of it came the healthy forest initiative that 
the Western Governors supported, and from that it moved forward to this 
legislation.
  For too long the decisions have been made by judges. Judges should 
interpret the law. The decisions need to be made in a democracy by the 
majority, after consulting, after receiving input, after having 
suggestions and involvement by the minority. But the majority has to 
rule.
  Mr. Speaker, the most important thing of all is what I have saved 
until now, and that is that when these forests burn, Mr. Speaker, like 
the fires from hell as they burn in the West, thousands and thousands 
of acres, all of that ash material in the air, look how it shortens the 
lives of people with emphysema. We have no records of how many people 
have had their life shortened and ended that have emphysema or 
bronchitis, or suffer from asthma, or suffer from lung cancer or sinus 
trouble or a whole host of the cardiovascular kinds of problems.

                              {time}  2100

  Imagine a little child, the family bringing him home at birth from 
the hospital, the excitement and the joy as all the extended family and 
the community gathers together in Rapid City, South Dakota; in Custer, 
South Dakota; Gillette, Wyoming; Boise, Idaho; Colorado Springs or 
Pikes Peak. And here you have this tiny child breathing all these 
contaminants, these carcinogens, these things that will inhibit the 
development of the lung tissue and affect the ability of this child to 
live.
  For too long, we have played politics with our natural resources. For 
too long we have played politics with our, and I use the word, national 
resources. And for too long we have played politics with the lives of 
our elderly, our working people, and our children. So I have a great 
deal of pride to say that I come here to support this legislation. It 
is good legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, let me also say that when it came out of our committee, 
when it passed out of the Committee on Agriculture, it was by a voice 
vote, a strong, strong bipartisan vote. Democrats and Republicans stood 
together from all over this country on that committee, and a 
significant majority of them voted ``aye'' when asked if they supported 
this legislation. So I am excited about this legislation. It is going 
to finally turn the corner. We have, the testimony was, 120 million 
acres. If you can imagine the size of that, the State of South Dakota 
is 80 million acres. So it is something that is almost twice the size 
of the State of South Dakota that is in danger of fires. And 70 million 
of those acres of forests throughout America, only the national 
forests, 70 million of them are in extreme danger of fire. This is 
wrong. This is unconscionable. This is immoral. This is something we 
can fix.
  And so I ask you, Mr. Speaker, and I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of 
this Congress, support this bill. Vote to save our natural resources 
and our national resources. Vote to extend the lives of our people. 
Vote to stop spending all the money that we have to spend on these 
unhealthy forests. Vote to stop spending all the money that we waste on 
fires, and let us invest it in the children of America, the sick of 
America, the problems of America.
  Mr. CANNON. Would the gentleman consent to a colloquy?
  Mr. JANKLOW. Yes, sir.
  Mr. CANNON. I was struck by a number of the things you pointed out. 
People with emphysema suffering. By the way, a large forest fire in the 
West affects people across the whole country.
  Mr. JANKLOW. Sir, the fires in Idaho stink up the air and plug up the 
lungs in South Dakota and Minnesota.
  Mr. CANNON. And places east.
  Mr. JANKLOW. And places east. All the way across the country. It 
affects the sunlight. It affects the haze that we get, the smell that 
we get. But more importantly, that haze is what we are breathing into 
the lungs of our sick people and our healthy people.
  Mr. CANNON. And our children.
  Mr. JANKLOW. And our little children.
  Mr. CANNON. There are people who do not care very much about children 
or people with emphysema.
  Mr. JANKLOW. I think they care. I do not think they think about it. 
Because sometimes, especially in this country, we all get so driven 
that we are going to accomplish our objective our way that we ignore 
the needs of other people. It is the old expression, and in my State we 
say, those are the kind of people that say, it's my way or the highway. 
That is what we are dealing with. These are not crazy people. These are 
not screwballs. They are very bright people, but it is their way or no 
way.
  Mr. CANNON. So they tend to stop the ability we have to clean up our 
forests, to thin them out, to preserve them.

[[Page 11226]]


  Mr. JANKLOW. Sir, all I want to do is save them. I am for saving the 
forests. I am 63 years old. I am out of here soon. But I have got 
grandchildren. I have got five grandchildren. These forests belong to 
them. Those forests are their heritage, and they are entitled to see 
them and not breathe them.
  Mr. CANNON. That is right. To see them and not breathe them. Most of 
the people who, by the way, have a hard time with what we are doing in 
our forests, who create litigation to stop us from creating healthy 
forests, are also people who are adamantly opposed to adding 
CO2 to the environment, and instead of sequestering 
CO2 like we do when we have healthy forests, these people 
are unleashed to get a torrent of CO2.
  Mr. JANKLOW. Sir, the forest fire in Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, 
you pick your State, Washington, Oregon, California, South Dakota, the 
forest fires there in the last several years, each of the years, those 
fires, it will take over 100 years to sequester the carbon back into 
the soil. Everybody knows that carbon dioxide, everybody knows the 
release of that carbon contributes to global warming. We hear that all 
the time with respect to smokestack industries and burning of coal and 
burning of petrochemicals. The fires in the West release a year's 
supply of automobiles. But the sequestration to get them back in the 
soil will take a century.
  Mr. CANNON. You get almost infinitely more mercury in the system from 
a forest fire than you get from all the coal-fired power plants around 
the world.
  Mr. JANKLOW. You not only get more mercury but now you have destroyed 
the watershed. You have destroyed the things in the hills that 
contribute to clean and healthy waters running into the streams. In 
Lead, South Dakota, in Deadwood, the home of Wild Bill Hickok and 
Calamity Jane, Deadwood, the home of the largest gold mine in the 
western hemisphere, the old Homestake gold mine, the community of 
Deadwood had the Grisly Gulch fire that burned about 12,000 acres and 
only by the reason of the volunteer firemen and women because the 
Forest Service only sent three fire trucks for a fire that was racing 
into the communities of Lead and Deadwood. These fires were stopped by 
the volunteers. Then a couple of weeks later, 2 inches of rain came one 
evening and a river of muck came roaring down the hills, doing millions 
of dollars worth of damage with this muck and ash that was 2, 3, 4 feet 
deep in some spots.
  But just as importantly, it now cleared away the hillside, so every 
time it rains, for dozens of years, every time it rains, you are going 
to have these waters racing down the hills into the valleys. But in 
addition to that, when you mix water with these ashes, you get lye. You 
get lye. When you take these little baby fish and these little fry, you 
kill them with lye. Lye is not good for human beings when they drink 
it. It is not a healthy substance. There are carcinogens in that. We 
have Federal laws that will put you in jail if you give cancer-causing 
ingredients to people. Yet no one seems to be bothered by giving 
cancer-causing ingredients to people as a result of forest fires. We 
cannot stop forest fires, but we can stop these kinds of forest fires 
by good forestry.
  All I am asking for is best science. That is all I am asking for is 
best science.
  Mr. CANNON. When I wrap up, I am going to show some pictures of these 
devastating mud flows that happen after a forest fire. I could not help 
while you were talking but think about the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. 
Otter) when he was talking about working out deals with 
environmentalists. Then an unrelated group comes in and stops the 
process. It seems to me what the President has asked for in this 
legislation is a comprehensive response to a large problem in our 
system as opposed to these fragmented environmental groups who stop us 
here and there and everywhere.
  Mr. JANKLOW. I will not attack the environmental groups. I am an 
environmentalist.
  Mr. CANNON. I am an environmentalist.
  Mr. JANKLOW. My grandchildren drink the water. They bathe in it. 
Their food is cooked in it. I want it to be nothing but healthy. But 
the worst environment in the world, a lousy environment, is when you 
are cold and you are hungry and you are unemployed. That is a bad 
environment. That is what the West being burned up is doing to people.
  Mr. CANNON. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. Speaker, although Utah is primarily an arid State, it is famous 
for its beautiful and Sierra landscapes. In fact, I invite anyone who 
might be listening to come to southern Utah and visit Lake Powell, 
which is this incredible barren red rock and beautiful blue water 
juxtaposed together. It is absolutely remarkable. In spite of that view 
that many people have of the beautiful part of Utah, we have about 16 
million acres of forest, about 8 million of those are managed by the 
National Forest Service; and so we have a huge interest in what 
happens. I would like to give just a couple of anecdotes to sort of 
help people understand why it is so important that we create some 
changes. We had some recent severe weather in the eastern part of the 
State of Utah, in the Uinta Basin and we had a blowdown of a number of 
trees. This happened in 2000. The dead trees developed a spruce beetle 
infestation, which then spread to some of the live trees nearby. The 
Forest Service acted quickly and decided it was a very small situation, 
only a few thousand board feet, maybe 12 or so truckloads of wood, a 
small area of destruction. They moved quickly with an environmental 
analysis and did a 90-page environmental assessment. Shortly after 
making the decision, they were given an appeal, a 19-page appeal that 
stayed the whole process and that is now under review.
  We are looking now in Utah at another area that is going to be 
terrifically unhealthy and terrifically subject to the kind of 
devastating fires that you see in this graphic, if we can focus the 
camera on that for a moment. You see the haze and the smoke and the 
billowing carcinogens that are going to be breathed in South Dakota by 
children and other ill people and people all the way east of us where 
the prevailing winds blow.
  Let me give you a second vignette which I think is significant and 
instructive. We had a huge fire in an area that is one of our most 
beautiful forested areas. It has the Green River, which is among the 
most exciting trout fishing in the whole world. I know that many of the 
people from other States will claim that, but this is really marvelous 
trout fishing.
  A fellow was driving along with a camper when the wheel came off and 
as one would expect, he began dragging the trailer without the wheel 
and sparks flew. He saw what happened, realized he was dragging the 
trailer, realized that sparks were flying everywhere and that actually 
had caused the beginnings of a fire, stopped his truck and started to 
put out the fire. A Forest Service agent came by almost immediately and 
ordered him back into his truck to drive away from the fire and to not 
put the fire out, which was at that point controllable. He got back in 
his truck, started to pull forward, he emitted sparks from the dragging 
axle, started a couple of other little fires, a local policeman came by 
and ordered him to stop. He said, Just be consistent. Do I stop or not? 
At that point a group of river runners stopped by. They had water in 
their car. They jumped out to help put out the fire. The Forest Service 
agent told them not to do that. The fire then raged out of control and 
burned hundreds of thousands of acres. As the news reports, the cost 
was $3 million to suppress the fire. The local rural electric 
cooperatives there tell me that it cost them over $600,000 just to 
replace the poles with their electric power lines on them. The lost 
revenue from tourism that did not come has not been evaluated, but the 
area was hit hard by irrational activity, irrational activity that 
resulted, that came from the fact that we have unhealthy forests.
  I would like to just show some pictures, including some of the areas 
where we have the aftermath of a fire. So if we could focus the camera 
here,

[[Page 11227]]

we have the burned area in the Squires Forest. It is devastating. We 
thought of drawing an owl in here, an endangered owl with a little wisp 
of smoke coming out of his head to point out that this is bad for 
endangered species. The following pictures are pictures that were taken 
in a little town called Santaquin just outside my hometown of Mapleton. 
If we can focus tightly on that, what we see is a river of mud that has 
come downhill and affected these homes. Here is a closeup picture. You 
can see that that mud has come down from this direction and affected 
these houses. We do not think of mud as having a lot of power because 
it normally does not come knocking on the door, but you can see as you 
look down here how high up the mud has come, halfway to the door and 
windows and filled the whole yard.
  In this picture, we can see that it has carried rocks and debris that 
are going to crush things. Here you have a whole area of the house has 
been torn out by this mud as it comes down. You can see the devastation 
of this home here. This is just dirt that got saturated with water 
after a forest fire. We had similar forest fires just north of this 
area in Provo. The difference is we had three-quarters of an inch in a 
very short period of time, in a very harsh storm that caused this to 
flow, whereas we cannot control nature. In Provo we had about the same 
amount of water, but it was more gradual over a longer period of time. 
We can see the terrific destruction, cars buried, windows shattered, 
mud going into basements, cars stranded. When you unleash the forces of 
nature, it is just almost beyond imagining how much damage can be done 
to an area because of that.
  We have a problem today, Mr. Speaker. We have a problem. We have 
forests that are not healthy. That is the result of years and years and 
years of neglect. It is the result of years and years and years of 
people who have been narrow in their interests and who have stopped the 
sale of timber, who have stopped the thinning of timber, who have 
stopped our forest men and women who understand how to have healthy 
forests, stopped them from doing what they know how to do and left us 
with desperate circumstances, 70 or 75 million acres of forestland that 
is ready to be destroyed by fire.

                              {time}  2115

  We have suffered in the West with the worst drought in recent 
history, probably as bad as anything back to the Dust Bowl of the 
1930s. These are terrible things. They have displaced people, destroyed 
farms and lives, and now we are going to add to that the further 
destruction of the forests through fire.
  We had thought, and, in fact, we had some charts earlier that showed 
the anticipated fire damage in the West was going to be less this year 
than it was last year. Last year, of course, was a record year. We 
burned much of that which was ready to burn last year. Unfortunately, 
this year we have had some water over much of the West, and that, 
unfortunately, has created a fire ladder so that what was not as 
endangered 2 months ago is now viewed as being subject to devastating 
fires.
  If we look at Utah today, it is as green as I have ever seen it. 
Unfortunately, that green over the next month or 2 or 3 is going to 
turn to brown grass that will light at any provocation, a lightning 
strike, a match or a cigarette carelessly thrown out of a window, a 
campfire burning out of control. Those things could all happen and will 
happen, we suspect, this summer with devastating effects.
  We need to pass the forest health bill now.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. 
Janklow).
  Mr. JANKLOW. Mr. Speaker, I am going to be extremely brief. This 
healthy forest initiative is an initiative that is incredibly 
important. It is not very often that we deal with things of that much 
substance. This is one of those opportunities. For too long we have 
made the forests into political issues where people fight with each 
other. The reality of the situation is every time we get that strong of 
emotions on all sides, usually we end up with a bad result. That is 
what we have here.
  There is no one, there is no one, who says these forests are healthy, 
and when I say forests, I am talking about a couple hundred million 
acres of land in America, virtually the entire part of many of our 
States. In my State it is the Black Hills, which is the westernmost 
portion of the State. But there is no one who says these forests are 
being properly managed. There is no one who says we have been doing the 
right thing.
  The arguments are what do we do to fix the problem, or do we just let 
God burn them down? It is okay to let God burn them down, but we are 
burning up people in the process. We are burning up people's homes in 
the process. We are destroying people's lives. We are shortening the 
lives of people. We are making it incredibly unhealthy for human 
beings. We are contributing to the wiping out of endangered species, be 
they plant life or be they animal life. So what we need to do is 
something different.
  This is a reasonable approach that involves input from all corners of 
the philosophies. It preserves the right of anybody who does not like 
the decision to go to court, but more than anything else, it starts us 
on another track away from the track that we all agree has not worked.
  For the sake of this country, for the sake of its resources, for the 
sake of our families, for the sake of endangered species, for the sake 
of our economy, and for the sake of our health, we need to pass this 
initiative.
  Mr. CANNON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. 
Janklow). I appreciate that, and I am reminded of his earlier words 
about the unanimity of the Committee on Agriculture, and it dawns on me 
that those people who see the problem and understand it have a tendency 
to agree. Locals who know it have a tendency to agree. We have lots of 
people with incoherent or separate, disparate ideas who get to pursue 
those ideas, through litigation or otherwise, stopping the process.
  What we have here before us with this bill is a coherent and 
considerate approach that is good for the air, will help with clean 
air, will help with clean water, will help people in the economy, will 
help endangered species, and will also help species that are not 
endangered now. So I urge passage of this bill, Mr. Speaker.

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