Senators seek more wildland fire

Senators seek more wildland fire funding

June 30, 2013

In the midst of a rapidly intensifying fire season, four U.S. senators on Friday called on the administration to produce a plan for budgeting for wildfires and increasing funding for fire prevention.

For years, the U.S. Forest Service has cut prevention efforts to pay for spiraling fire-fight costs – a strategy that ultimately increases the size of fires, and the cost of fighting them.

In a letter to the White House Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior, Senators Jim Risch, R-Idaho, Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Mark Udall, D-Colo., asked the administration to create an action plan to fully fund prevention efforts such as hazardous fuels reduction, in addition to fire suppression efforts

Currently, the administration takes funds from other non-fire programs to pay for fire suppression costs – a practice called fire borrowing.

The government has cut back on programs to reduce fire risks to communities.

The U.S. Forest Service treated 1.87 million acres of those lands in 2012, but expects to treat only 685,000 acres next year.

“Our understanding is that these cuts were based on OMB’s continued skepticism about the efficacy of hazardous fuels treatments. We whole-heartedly disagree with OMB on this point,” the senators wrote. “When the budgeted amount is insufficient, the agency continues to suppress fires by reallocating funds from other non-fire programs. This approach to paying for firefighting is nonsensical and further increases wildland fire costs.”

At the same time, wildfires continue to spread and their costs steadily rise. Across the country, 65 million acres of national forest — an area bigger than Oregon – are at a high risk for fires, according to a Forest Service report issued last year. In the last ten years, fire suppression costs have increased from 13 percent of the U.S. Forest Service’s budget to 40 percent last year.

In addition, the senators urged the administration to implement the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement (FLAME) Act as Congress intended, which was enacted in 2009 to provide additional suppression funding for emergency wildfires above and beyond the 10-year rolling average.

The bill was intended to end the practice of raiding non-fire accounts – including fire prevention programs – to pay for fire suppression when the agency runs over its firefighting budget. The FLAME Act created a reserve fund for years when costs exceeded the budget, but the administration has failed to enact the law as Congress intended and has continued to disrupt prevention efforts by borrowing from non-fire accounts.

“Despite Congressional intent, OMB has forced the agencies to implement the FLAME Act in a manner that makes it ineffective: instead of funding the FLAME account in addition to the 10-year average cost of suppression, the account is funded as part of the 10-year average cost of suppression,” the senators further wrote.

In the early weeks of this fire season, massive wildfires have already burned more than one million acres and destroyed hundreds of homes in Colorado, California, Arizona and New Mexico.