Crooked River Ranch Fire Protection Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2075) to adjust the eastern boundary of the Deschutes Canyon-Steelhead Falls Wilderness Study Area in the State of Oregon to facilitate fire prevention and response activities in order to protect adjacent private property, and for other purposes, as amended.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Speaker, Crooked River Ranch is a residential community that is home to approximately 5,500 people. It is located between the Deschutes and Crooked Rivers in Jefferson County, Oregon. Because of this geography, there is only one all-weather road in and out of Crooked River Ranch.

Now, right next to this community, along the Deschutes River, is a roughly 3,200-acre Deschutes Canyon-Steelhead Falls Wilderness Study Area, which is managed--or, more accurately, is mismanaged--by the Bureau of Land Management. This BLM property is thick with vegetation, which poses a very real risk for catastrophic wildfires, in large part because the wilderness study area regulations greatly restrict essential measures for both fire mitigation and firefighting.

For example, in a wilderness or wilderness study area, you can't use mechanized or motorized equipment or transport. This includes chainsaws as well as electrical generators, trucks, and larger equipment essential to fuels management. You can't even use this equipment to cut fire breaks. You can't build fire roads. You can't do mechanical thinning of vegetation. Even the hand thinning that is allowed in such areas is very limited.

Absent a waiver from the Secretary of the Interior, firefighters can't drop fire retardant or use bulldozers to cut fire breaks in the wilderness study area during a fire. Tragically, the benign neglect mandated by these requirements has made all wilderness areas firetraps just waiting for a lighting flash or a careless match.

H.R. 2075, authored by Congressman Greg Walden, with the support of the local community, would slightly modify the eastern boundary of the Deschutes Canyon-Steelhead Falls Wilderness Study Area, making it possible to manage the land properly to reduce fuel loads that threaten the neighborhoods in Crooked River Ranch.

The boundary change will reduce the WSA by about 830 acres, but this small change will promote public safety, allow for more efficient fuels treatments on the lands immediately adjacent to Crooked River Ranch, and give critically important flexibility to local firefighters should fire break out in that area.

This is an issue of public safety, and this bill will clearly help protect the lives and property of the thousands of Crooked River Ranch residents from wildfire.

I commend Congressman Walden for his work to provide a commonsense solution to a very real public safety concern.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the more than 5,000 residents of the Crooked River Ranch and in the name of common sense, I ask for passage of this vital public safety measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source