[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 13328-13330]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          SECURE RURAL SCHOOLS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson) is 
recognized for 12 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, 
Chairman Bishop and Chairman Hastings.
  As an individual from Pennsylvania, from the eastern portion of the 
United States, I do get it. This is a problem that obviously--as you've 
heard from my colleagues from the western part of the country--is 
devastating there. It's devastating in communities in Pennsylvania's 
Fifth Congressional District. We have the Allegheny National Forest 
there. I have four counties--schools, municipalities--which struggle 
because of a failed policy in terms of forest management. They struggle 
economically.

                              {time}  1815

  When we do not have healthy forests, we do not have healthy 
communities. So I stand here very appreciative to Chairman Hastings' 
work and certainly supportive of H.R. 1526.

[[Page 13329]]

  As chairman of the Agriculture Committee's Forestry Subcommittee, I 
continually point out that the Forest Service is housed within the 
USDA--rather than the Interior--and was done so for very specific 
purposes.
  This decision was made long ago because our national forests were 
intended for multiple use. The most important function of that mission 
is to properly manage these forests and grasslands in order to retain 
the ecological health of those resources for sustained economic and 
recreational use.
  You can't adequately manage a forest without harvesting timber. Just 
look to our private and State forests to see how to manage a forest 
cost effectively and environmentally responsibly. National forestlands, 
when managed correctly, will be more ecologically healthy and 
economically beneficial to the local communities.
  Representing a forested district and as an outdoorsman, I've been 
very alarmed at how precipitously our annual harvests have dropped off 
in the past 20 years. Between 1960 and 1989, the Forest Service was 
harvesting roughly 10 billion to 12 billion board feet per year. Since 
the early nineties, the annual harvest across Forest Service lands fell 
below 2 billion board feet and hit its bottom in 2002 at 1.7 billion 
feet. This is about one-fifth of what they've been harvesting in an 
average year.
  We have seen firsthand the economic impacts of reducing our 
harvesting levels in national forests. Under longtime Federal law, 25 
percent of the timber receipts generated on national forests are 
required to be returned to the county of origin. The purpose of this is 
that since there is no tax base there for the local government, timber 
receipts were to provide a consistent source of revenue to the counties 
to be used for schools, police, and local expenses.
  In 2000, this lack of timber dollars plummeted so low that Congress 
created the now expired Secure Rural Schools program to make up for the 
loss of the county revenues in the national forestlands. This program 
simply would not have been needed if the Federal Government was keeping 
its promise to these rural areas by managing and harvesting the 
appropriate amount of timber.
  In the Allegheny National Forest located in my district, we have 
slightly inched up in meeting the recommended level of harvest, but we 
are still nowhere near where we need to be. This is especially true 
across almost every other national forest around the country where they 
typically are generating only a few percent of the recommended level.
  Too little harvesting will have a significant impact on overall 
forest health. Decreased timber harvesting means more dead trees and 
more highly flammable biomaterials that do little more than serve as 
fuel for wildfires. According to the Forest Service, the instances of 
wildfires each year have actually decreased in recent years. However, 
fires that we've been seeing recently are much more intense than they 
have been in past years. Why? The reason is because of increased 
flammability in the forests as a result of materials that have been 
accumulated and not removed through management activities.
  According to the U.S. Forest Service, 65 million to 82 million acres 
of forestland are at high risk of wildfires. Last year, wildfires 
burned 9.3 million acres while the U.S. Forest Service only harvested 
approximately 200,000 acres. This means that 44 times as many acres 
burned as were responsibly managed and harvested.
  As an original cosponsor of H.R. 1526, I want to applaud Chairman 
Hastings for his leadership and introduction of the bill. This 
legislation will provide responsible timber production on forestlands 
and does so in areas specifically identified by the agency.
  Access and retaining the multiple-use mission of the Forest Service 
is paramount to ensuring that our rural forest communities continue to 
flourish and be viable.
  At this time, Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to recognize my good friend, a 
Western Caucus colleague, Mr. Pearce.
  Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for yielding and 
for his work on behalf of H.R. 1526.
  New Mexico is a home to multiple national forests. We see firsthand 
the effect of our national Forest Service policy. Last year, in the 
middle of the year, a fire broke out. It was about 4 acres for 2 or 3 
days. The Forest Service's policy was basically ``let it burn.''
  They let it burn for 3 or 4 days, had enough people to swat it out 
with whisk brooms, when suddenly the winds got up, as they do in New 
Mexico always, and blew that fire into 10,000 acres. It almost 
immediately started burning down homes, 255 homes. It's at that point 
we began to speak publicly about the Forest Service policies that would 
create infernos in our western forests.
  Formerly, we had a policy in the Forest Service of the 10 a.m. rule. 
It was, if you get a fire, you put it out by 10 a.m. tomorrow. If 
you're not successful by 10 a.m. tomorrow, then it's 10 a.m. the next 
day. You dedicate all the resources you can to putting out the fire.
  Those policies have been amended by current Forest Service Chief Tom 
Tidwell into saying, We're going to let them burn. We're watching right 
now wondering if the sequoias will survive this Forest Service policy.
  Many of the forests in New Mexico and the West are not surviving. 
Hundreds of millions of acres are at risk every year. It's not a matter 
of if they will burn, but when.
  As we talked publicly about Forest Service management policies during 
that fire, then we started getting calls from individuals around the 
country who had retired out of the Forest Service saying, Yes, keep 
talking. We, as retired professionals, disagree with the current 
philosophies in the Forest Service.
  We invited one of those 30-year employees--Bill Derr--into our 
district to run a congressional study and to come up with 
recommendations. He basically had two, after months of study. He said 
we should be mechanically thinning our forests--that is, logging in our 
forests--and, secondly, returning to the 10 a.m. policy.
  What are the downstream effects of bad Forest Service management?
  First of all, we're losing the habitat for millions of species; we're 
burning millions of species in the fire. These are endangered species 
sometimes, but otherwise we're just killing lots of animals.
  Also, we're destroying a watershed. In New Mexico, in the Whitewater-
Baldy fire, the forest around one of the lakes there that provides 
drinking water for Alamogordo was at risk. The Forest Service said they 
should clean it, and instead lawsuits were filed to stop that. The fire 
burned right up to the edge of the lake, and the lake now has 50 feet 
of fill in it. All the fish are dead, starved for oxygen, exactly like 
the gentlelady from Wyoming said. The streams are now filling with 
silt.
  Forest Service personnel tell us we will be having to empty that lake 
for the next 15 years. That's 15 years of dead fish; 15 years 
downstream facing flooding; 15 years without the drinking water that 
sustains a community of about 30,000. These are what we face.
  Also, the West is starved for jobs because of Forest Service policy. 
The original Organic Act, the act that created the U.S. Forest Service, 
said that they should be logging to create local commerce and jobs and 
they should be protecting the watershed. The U.S. Forest Service is 
negligent on both of the underlying reasons for their existence. We in 
the West are suffering lost education opportunities, destroyed habitat, 
and destroyed forests. Those forests will not grow back for 100 years 
according to the Forest Service personnel.
  It's time for us to pass H.R. 1526. I support it.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I would like to recognize the gentleman 
from California (Mr. LaMalfa).
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, every year, rural America, especially the 
western States and areas like mine in northern California, are in the 
news. It's not for something good, but for something like we see going 
on with so many of the wildfires around the country. There's no reason 
for this. That's why I support this bill here today that

[[Page 13330]]

would actually make our forests perform for us, instead of being a 
detriment to us and our health in California and the western States.
  We can have either the type of air quality problems that are 
happening--like in the central valley of California, for example, one 
of my colleagues was talking about, although we've had challenges there 
in recent years, they've actually improved things. The air quality 
right now is much worse because of these fires than anything going on 
by people or after the improvements that have gone on with other air 
quality issues. In my own part of the State back in 2008, the whole 
summer and into the fall, brown, dirty--including the areas close to 
the fire--kids couldn't go outside because the quality was 10 times 
above health levels for them to be safe.
  We see our small communities that are devastated by an economy that 
has shifted away due to forest management and Forest Service policies 
that don't work for them. This legislation would allow our forests to 
perform for us and help these economies, help the health of the forest, 
the health of the people, and the health of the local economies to be 
strong once again, and, as was mentioned earlier, our rural schools.
  So let's do commonsense legislation instead of watching our forests 
burn. I urge you to support this.

                          ____________________