Congress deadlocks on solutions to wildfire funding

Every year, the same story plays out somewhere in the West. The Forest Service allocates about 40 percent of its budget to firefighting, but in extreme years, that funding burns up by July or August, a month or more before fire season officially ends. Then the borrowing begins. Staffers call it "fire stealing"taking money to fight fires from research, forest stewardship and recreation. Congress is supposed to return that borrowed money, but even when it does, the work has already been disrupted. Ironically, funding is often yanked from projects that could help reduce the risk and intensity of wildfires. During 2012 and 2013, roughly $1 billion was pilfered, leaving the agency too broke to thin trees in the Verde watershed wildland-urban interface in Arizona or reduce hazardous fuels in California's Tahoe National Forest. Federal and state officials and policymakers agree that the current budgeting model, also used by the Department of Interior, is broken. And firefighting costs keep climbing: Wildfire season is two months longer than it used to be, and since the 1970s, the average acreage burned has increased five-fold. Plus, development keeps encroaching on forests, forcing firefighters to defend homes, an expensive—and dangerous—task. The most promising remedy has stalled out in the House. The bipartisan Wildfire Disaster Funding Act would treat the biggest wildfires like any other natural disaster (the same approach proposed by President Obama's 2015 budget). When firefighting costs exceed 70 percent of the 10-year average, land-management agencies could tap a $2.7 billion federal disaster relief account. That would enable agencies to fully fund existing programs, including those that reduce fire danger. Yet the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act has gone nowhere, apparently due mostly to opposition from two powerful House members: Budget Chair Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Natural Resources Chair Doc Hastings, R-Wash. In July, Ryan sent his colleagues a letter stating that the bill would break the federal budget by increasing spending and deficits. Simpson and Schrader countered that their proposal doesn't change total spending. (The Congressional Budget Office concurs, but notes that the bill could lead to greater spending in future years.) Ryan and Hastings are pushing instead for Senate action on Hastings' Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act, which the House passed last fall. It doesn't address the fire-borrowing problem, but would purportedly reduce fire danger, and hence suppression costs, by expediting projects that remove fuel from forests, including grazing and logging. The Forest Service would have to designate "revenue" areas in national forests, and log at least half of each area. The bill would reduce environmental review and limit public comment on many projects, and make it much harder to file lawsuits. President Obama has said he would veto it...more