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Funding bill would treat wildfire as natural disaster |
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September 25, 2017 |
In the wake of historic wildfires in Oregon,
Idaho, California, Washington and across the
West, U.S. Senators Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, Mike
Crapo, R-Idaho, Dianne Feinstein, D-California,
Jim Risch, R-Idaho, Maria Cantwell,
D-Washington, Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Jeff Merkley,
D-Oregon, Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, and Michael
Bennet, D-Colorado, introduced an updated
version of their bipartisan wildfire funding
solution that would protect desperately needed
funding for fire prevention and treat wildfires
as the natural disasters they are.
The Wildfire Disaster Funding Act of 2017 would
end the destructive cycle of borrowing from fire
prevention accounts to put out fires and stop
the erosion of the Forest Service’s budget by
reforming the way the federal government funds
wildfires.
“Oregonians and westerners are battling another
record-breaking fire year. The threat of
catastrophic wildfires is growing, yet the
federal government continues to conduct
‘business as usual’ when it comes to fighting
fires in Oregon and the West,” Wyden said. “More
communities are put in danger and fire
prevention work gets left undone because of a
backwards fire budgeting system. It’s past time
for Congress to make it a top priority to end
fire borrowing, stop the erosion of the Forest
Service becoming the ‘Fire Service’ and start
treating wildfires like the natural disasters
they are.”
"If you live in a community in the western
United States, you do not need to be told that
wildfires are major natural disasters," Crapo
said. "With over eight million acres burned, ten
states choked with smoke, and lives and
structures lost, this year's fire season is a
brutal reminder that we must start treating mega
fires as the disasters that they are. Now is the
time to both recognize that fires are major
disasters and end the destructive cycle of fire
borrowing that only makes the fire situation in
this country worse."
“Wildfires have already burned millions of acres
this year across the West, and the fire season
is far from over. It’s long past time we treat
wildfires like other natural disasters and allow
federal agencies to pay for them like other
natural disasters,” Feinstein said. “Our
bipartisan bill would end the need for so-called
‘fire borrowing,’ where funding for fire
prevention efforts is diverted to fighting
wildfires, delaying or canceling critical
prevention work. We must empower federal
agencies with the tools they need to protect
public safety and get ahead of what could be yet
another catastrophic fire year.”
“The West is on fire, and it’s burning faster
than years prior,” Risch said. “We need every
resource available to prevent and combat the
devastation caused by wildfires. This
legislation would ensure those of us in the West
can count on much-needed disaster funding.”
“Fifty percent more acres have already burned
this year than normal and the trends of the last
few years suggest this will likely be our new
normal,” Cantwell said. “The bill we are
introducing today will stop the fire-borrowing
that is currently crippling the Forest Service.”
"Wildfires continue to decimate Western
communities, ruining sources of drinking water,
destroying property, and even claiming lives.
Wildfires have all the qualities of a natural
disaster, and it's time that the federal
government treat them as such,” Hatch said.
“This critical legislation gives much-needed
relief to the Forest Service by putting an end
to funding requirements that make it all but
impossible for the agency to bear the increased
costs of wildfire suppression. Ultimately, our
bipartisan proposal will leave the Forest
Service better prepared to fight forest fires
and better equipped to prevent them from
happening in the first place. It is imperative
that we to return to a more balanced approach to
forest management, not just fire management. I
am confident that this bill will help foster
safer, healthier forests in Utah and across the
West for years to come.”
“The way we fund wildfire suppression today is
counterproductive and crazy,” Merkley said. “As
this fire season has proven all too vividly,
robbing from forest health and fire prevention
programs to pay for suppression only creates a
vicious cycle of bigger and bigger fires. It’s
time to fix this problem once and for all by
funding fighting the biggest wildfires the way
we do other natural disasters.”
“It may not be getting headlines in the national
news, but wildfires have burned millions of
acres in the West this year and the communities
impacted in Colorado need assistance,” Gardner
said. “I’ve been working to advance this
legislation to stop fire borrowing for several
years, and I appreciate the strong bipartisan
support to ensure the Forest Service has the
funds it needs for clean-up and prevention
efforts while also finally requiring the
government to treat wildfires like it does other
natural disasters.”
“Catastrophic wildfires continue to plague the
West, not only threatening communities and
livelihoods but also draining the Forest Service
budget,” Bennet said. “We need to restructure
the way we pay for fighting catastrophic fires
to mitigate and prevent future wildfires. This
bill would end the practice of fire borrowing—a
necessary step that will enable the Forest
Service to make responsible investments on the
front end to restore our forests and safeguard
our watersheds.”
Unlike for other natural disasters, where
agencies can draw from an emergency fund to pay
for disaster response, the U.S. Forest Service
and Interior Department do not have access to
disaster funds and are forced to “fire borrow” –
or steal money from fire prevention and other
important programs already funded in their
agencies to pay to put out fires.
Currently, federal agencies calculate wildfire
suppression budgets based on the average costs
of wildfire suppression over the past 10 years.
But as fire seasons grow longer and wildfires
have become more expensive to fight, Congress is
forced to appropriate more funding to an
outdated budgeting system that almost always
underestimates the actual cost of fighting
fires.
The updated bipartisan Wildfire Disaster Funding
Act would fund wildfires as natural disasters
and protect the agencies’ fire prevention
budgets by putting a freeze on the rising budget
costs of the 10-year average. It would end “fire
borrowing” by allowing the agencies to fund any
fire suppression spending needed above the
frozen average through disaster funding just
like other agencies can access disaster funding
for tornadoes, hurricanes and floods.
Making disaster funding available after the
appropriated fire suppression funds are spent
would allow the Forest Service to use its fire
prevention funding for its intended purpose –
completing hazardous fuels reduction projects
that have been shown to help break the cycle of
increasingly dangerous and costly fires.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced
last week that this year has been the single
most expensive fire year on record, with fire
suppression activities totaling more than $2
billion. Addressing the current, problematic
system of wildfire funding is part of a larger
need to stabilize and update emergency spending
for all natural disasters.
Earlier this month, Wyden and Crapo, along with
10 other Democratic and Republican senators
urged Senate Leaders Mitch McConnell and Charles
E. Schumer to include a wildfire funding fix in
any future disaster aid legislation that passes
through Congress. |
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