[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8065-8066]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         DROUGHT AND WILDFIRES

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this afternoon I wish to call attention to 
the severe drought and wildfires that are already burning in my home 
State of Oregon and across the West.
  Earlier today, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, on which I 
serve, held a hearing on drought. There is no question that communities 
in many of our Western States are experiencing very uncertain times. 
Our farmers are concerned about water for their crops. Outdoorsmen and 
business owners fear low reservoir and river levels are going to ruin 
the summer season. Conservationists worry about a lack of cold water 
for fish habitats.
  Drought and fire are a dangerous combination and create a trend 
continuing this year. Fire seasons have gotten drier. The fires have 
gotten hotter, and they have become far more expensive to fight. And 
severe drought is now compounding the crisis. We ought to make no 
mistake about what is going on in the West. The West is now bone dry, 
and the tragic fact is that this is the new normal for Oregon farmers 
and ranchers. Water is an increasingly scarce and precious resource.
  Right now, every last square mile of Oregon is experiencing 
abnormally dry conditions, and almost 70 percent of my State is under 
severe drought. Fifteen of Oregon's 36 counties have declared drought 
emergencies or have been declared a drought emergency by the Governor. 
The unusually warm winter in my home State meant record low snowpack, 
which devastates summertime runoff, which is so important to Oregon's 
water supply.
  Drought raises enormous issues for communities and State and Federal 
agencies. They have to find ways to cope while using less water. 
Authorities feel they are in a position, or are forced into a position, 
to have to make seemingly impossible choices about where to dedicate 
increasingly scarce resources. All of these rural communities have to 
face challenges that are heightened by drought--particularly the threat 
of wildfires.
  Drought conditions mean that western forests and grasslands are 
especially likely to go up in flames. It means that more acres will 
burn, more people and more structures will be at risk, and more funds 
are going to be needed to put the fires out.
  Fire season this year has started earlier than normal. In fact, I 
received a fire briefing at home this March. That is the earliest I 
have had a fire briefing in all of my time in Congress. It certainly 
bodes badly for the extra costs that we are likely to see. I recently 
got a letter from the Forest Service with the estimate of anticipated 
wildfire suppression costs for fiscal year 2015. The middle-of-the-road 
estimate for how much it will cost to fight wildfires is nearly $1.25 
billion. On the high end, it could cost more than $1.6 billion. But the 
funding, however, that has been dedicated to fighting fires does not 
come close--not close--to covering those costs. The appropriated amount 
is $200 million less than even the most conservative median forecast. 
Wishful thinking in the budget is not going to be very useful in 
putting the fires out. Fighting fires costs money, and it can't be 
punted into the future like some minor budget line item. Once again, 
then, we are looking at the prospect of the Forest Service having to 
raid other accounts in order to put out the blazes.
  According to the Forest Service, in 2013, $40 million was essentially 
stolen from the National Forest Fund, which would pay for the 
stewardship and management of the 193 million acres of national forests 
and grasslands. And $30 million was stolen from the account that funds 
the disposal of brush and other debris from timber operations. This 
brush and debris is essentially fuel for future fires.
  Those figures represent the stark reality that the broken funding 
system

[[Page 8066]]

in place is shortchanging the resources needed for sensibly fighting 
wildfires. The cycle of stealing money from prevention accounts to pay 
for suppression of forest fires just repeats itself again and again 
without end, and it will continue until this funding problem is finally 
fixed.
  Senator Crapo, our colleague from Idaho, and I have been working on a 
bipartisan basis to fix this flawed policy for quite some time now. He 
and I introduced the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act to end this damaging 
cycle, which I have described and which in the West we call fire 
borrowing. Our bill would raise the Federal disaster cap to allow the 
agencies to treat wildfire-fighting efforts like other natural 
disasters because wildfires are natural disasters, destructive and 
costly, no different than hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes.
  When our governmental agencies are forced to borrow from other 
accounts to fight fires that have bankrupted these accounts for fire 
suppression, they rob from the funds that are needed to reduce 
hazardous fuels in the forests, which leads to even more choked and 
overstocked forests ripe for future fires.
  In effect, what happens is the prevention funds--the funds for 
thinning, cleaning out all of that debris--get shorted. So then you 
might have a lightning strike or something in our part of the world and 
you have an inferno on your hands. The government, in effect, borrows 
from the prevention fund to put the fire out, and the problem just gets 
worse and worse. It is that problem that Senator Crapo and I are trying 
to fix.
  On a bipartisan basis, we seek to give the agencies the tools they 
need to support the courageous firefighters on the ground, men and 
women who put their lives at risk to ensure that Americans, their homes 
and communities are protected from destructive wildfires.
  I know there are other Members of the Senate who are very interested 
in solving the fire-borrowing problem. I encourage all those Members to 
work with me, Senator Crapo, and our staff to find a solution that is 
acceptable to Congress and can be passed soon.
  This is an urgent matter. This is not something you can sort of let 
go and offer the amendment to the amendment to the amendment, the kind 
of thing that happens here, and it just gets shunted off for years on 
end. This is urgent business because the West has to be in a position 
to clear these hazardous fuels and get out in front of these 
increasingly dangerous and ominous fires. We have to end--we have to 
end this cycle of catastrophic wildfires in the West. It is long past 
time for action. I urge colleagues to join Senator Crapo and I to work 
with us and our staff so this body moves, and moves quickly, to fix 
this problem.
  There is an awful lot of uncertainty when it comes to calculating the 
Federal budget. But what we know for sure--for sure--is that this 
problem of wildfires in the West is getting increasingly serious. The 
fires are bigger, the fires are hotter, and they last longer. It is 
time to budget for reducing this problem in a sensible way.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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