Printer Friendly Version

House, Senate negotiators accept Senate forest compromise
as basis for wildfire bill
Wyden-brokered bill will protect communities from catastrophic forest fires, restore unhealthy forests, preserve old growth forests and public involvement

November 19, 2003

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) today announced that House and Senate negotiators have agreed to use a compromise on healthy forests legislation brokered by Wyden and U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Larry Craig (R-Idaho), and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) as the basis for a final wildfire bill. The final House-Senate compromise on the bill’s main – and most controversial -- title (Title I) will make only minor changes to the Senate-passed version.

“Today, House and Senate members from both sides of the aisle have chosen negotiation over partisanship, compromise over gridlock, and balance over ideology,” Wyden said. “When this bill becomes law, we will prove that you can restore forests, protect the environment, and put people back to work in rural communities. These are not mutually exclusive goals.”

After helping to broker and lead Senate passage of the wildfire bill by a vote of 80-14 on Oct. 30, Wyden worked to break the impasse in Congress between the Senate and House versions of wildfire bills. On November 5, Wyden and Feinstein proposed a solution to the partisan gridlock threatening the final passage of wildfire legislation in a letter to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), House Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), and House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo (R-Calif.). In the letter, Wyden and Feinstein proposed informal meetings to reconcile the differences in the two bills. Led by Chairman Pombo, all of the relevant chairmen in both the House and Senate eventually accepted their offer and held a series of negotiations culminating today. The agreement they reached will allow a formal conference to be held on all titles to the bill except for Title I (the title containing changes intended to streamline forest health activities). All parties agreed that, once appointed, the formal conferees would not make any changes to their negotiated settlement of Title I.

“Senators Feinstein, Craig, and Cochran, and Congressmen Pombo, Walden, McInnis, and Goodlatte deserve a lot of credit for meeting us in the middle on this wildfire bill,” Wyden said. “I am deeply appreciative of their efforts.”

Changes that were made to the Wyden-brokered Senate compromise include:

· Inside the wildland urban interface defined as 1.5 miles from the community boundary, the agency is only required to analyze one action alternative under NEPA;

· Within the area identified for protection as the wildland urban interface under a community fire plan, the agency is not required to analyze the “no action” alternative under NEPA, but is required to analyze two action alternatives;

· limiting the treatment of diseased forests to those with epidemics and to those forests immediately adjacent within the zone of the epidemic; and

· requiring people who administratively appeal projects to have submitted substantive comments during the public comment period.

Wyden and other Senate negotiators prevailed in keeping the Senate protection of the funding requirements and levels, preserving the Senate changes to judicial review, preserving the Senate NEPA language on at-risk lands outside the wildland urban interface; preserving the Senate old growth protection, and preserving the Senate “pre-decisional review” administrative appeals process.

The Senate-passed legislation, now agreed to by the House negotiators, will do the following:

· Preserve 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).

· Provide 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 under these new authorities.

· 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 by mandating 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.

· Restores balance to healthy forests legislation

· The compromise authorizes $760 million annually for these projects. This is 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.

Additionally, the agreement locates a forest health research center in Prineville, Oregon at the headquarters of the Ochoco National Forest. The Prineville center, adopted from Wyden’s initial healthy forests legislation, will complement an East Coast research center created under the House-passed legislation that will be located in Mississippi. Finally, Wyden and Walden are working to include the Wyden-Smith bill regarding the Bend Pine Nursery—which sets the sale price for the nursery at $3.5 million, saving local taxpayers $2.3 million versus the Forest Service’s demand for $5.8 million—in the final wildfire bill.

Conferees will now be appointed and a conference will now be held to formally endorse the agreement on Title I and resolve the other titles. It is anticipated that the other titles will be resolved quickly and that the final form of this legislation will now be voted on in both houses of Congress before moving to the President’s desk for his signature.

# # #