Senators reach agreement on wildfire legislation
Bill would protect communities from
catastrophic forest fires, restore unhealthy forests, and preserve
old growth forests and public involvement
October 1, 2003
Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden
(D-OR) today announced the details of a balanced, bipartisan
compromise on healthy forests legislation that will streamline
restorative forestry in at-risk and unhealthy forests while
preserving public input, protecting old growth, and reining
in provisions of wildfire legislation approved earlier by the
U.S. House of Representatives.
“This agreement provides for the first ever
statutory protection of old growth, preserves the public’s
right to participate, and streamlines the appeals process to
eliminate some of its worst abuses,” Wyden said. “Perhaps
most importantly, our work over the last week rejects the notion
that we can protect communities from catastrophic fires solely
by relying on commercial sales to fund that important work.”
The agreement is very similar to the tentative
wildfire agreement reported widely in the media last week; however,
today’s compromise differs in two significant aspects:
1. The agreement recognizes the need to fund the protection
of public and private forest lands and does not rely primarily
on commercial sales to accomplish needed fire reduction work.
Instead it adopts the funding provision contained in earlier
Wyden-Feinstein legislation by authorizing $760 million annually
for hazardous fuel reduction projects, a $340 million increase
over the currently appropriated level of funding.
2. The agreement locates a forest health research center in
Prineville, Oregon at the headquarters of the Ochoco National
Forest. The Prineville center, adopted from the Wyden-Feinstein
legislation, will complement an East Coast research center created
under the House-passed legislation that will be located in Starkville,
Mississippi.
Specifically, the compromise agreement
announced today:
Provides the first-ever statutory recognition
and meaningful protection of old growth forests
• Never before has Congress recognized by statute the
importance of maintaining old growth stands. Under the compromise,
the Forest Service must protect these trees by preventing the
agency from logging the most fire-resilient trees under the
guise of fuels reduction.
• Where old growth stands are healthy, as they are throughout
much of the forest on the west side of the Cascade Ridge in
Oregon, the compromise requires that they be “fully maintained.”
• The compromise makes it less likely that old growth
will be harvested under current law by mandating the retention
of large trees and focusing the hazardous fuels reduction projects
authorized by this bill on thinning small diameter trees.
• The compromise makes it less likely that old growth
will be harvested in the future bymandating that older forest
plans be revised to protect old growth before the agencies can
use the new authorities created by this bill to reduce hazardous
fuels in the forests.
• The compromise provides no new authority to log old
growth, and avoids exempting any environmental law. Preserves
all current opportunities for public input and appeal, while
streamlining the appeals process and eliminating some of its
worst abuses
• The compromise will require the Forest Service to rewrite
their appeals process using the pre-decisional appeals and comment
process that has been used by the Bureau of Land Management
since 1984. It works by encouraging the public to engage in
a collaborative process with the agency to improve projects
before final decisions have been rendered upon them by the agency.
This model places a premium on constructive public input and
collaboration, and less emphasis on the litigation and confrontation
of the post-decisional appeals process currently used by the
Forest Service.
• Not one current opportunity for public comment would
be lost under the compromise.
• The compromise is designed to move from the current
model of confrontation, litigation and delay to one which places
a premium on constructive, good faith public input. Whereas
in the past, parties could “sandbag” the appeals
process by not raising salient points in hopes of later derailing
the entire proposed action in the courts, parties would not
be allowed to litigate on issues they had failed to raise in
the comment or appeal period unless those issues arose after
the close of the appeals process (as a result of the revised
agency decision).
Restores balance to healthy forests legislation
• The compromise rejects an attempt to create an unlevel
playing field for the Bush administration in the courtroom by
eliminating a House provision that gave “weight to a finding
by the Secretary concerned in the administrative record of the
agency action concerning the short-term and long-term effects
of undertaking the agency action, unless the court finds that
the finding was arbitrary and capricious.”
• The compromise rejects an attempt to rely primarily
on commercial sales to finance restorative forestry by authorizing
increased federal funding for these projects from $0 in the
House to $760 million annually. This would mean a $340 million
authorized increase over the currently appropriated level of
$420 million for hazardous fuel reduction projects.
• The compromise adds a requirement that at least 50 percent
of funds spent on restorative projects to be spent to safeguard
communities which face the greatest risks from fire. H.R. 1904
included no requirement that funds would be dedicated to the
wildland urban interface areas.
• The compromise rejects an attempt to eliminate opportunities
for public input by modifying provisions which did not allow
any real NEPA analysis of projects, thereby curtailing public
input. The House required analysis on the no-action alternative
and the proposed alternative only; the Senate version requires
one additional alternative to be analyzed under NEPA when called
for by the public. This approach provides a real incentive for
good faith public involvement in designing hazardous fuel reduction
projects.
The wildfire legislation agreement was reached
among U.S. Senators Thad Cochran (R-MS), Wyden, Dianne Feinstein
(D-CA), Larry Craig (R-ID), John McCain (R-AZ), Max Baucus (D-MT),
Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Pete Domenici (R-NM)
and Mike Crapo (R-ID).
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