Aerial Fire Retardant to Protect Human Life

Floor Speech

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me say that I associate myself with the remarks from the gentleman from Arizona and hope that many people listen to his important messages that he provides for us.

Mr. Speaker, standing here in front of, what some would say, a beautiful picture, this is a photo of a fire that occurred near Grand Coulee Dam in my district about 1\1/2\ years ago to help depict something that I want to bring some attention to this evening in this Special Order.

My friend from Montana, Mr. Rosendale, and I, and several others, will be talking about something that is critical to the people in the Western United States. The communities across this country who will be absolutely devastated if a radical environmental group gets its way in a courtroom in the State of Montana.

Now, for those of you who may be unfamiliar with the Western part of the United States, let me just tell you a couple things.

In many parts of the West, it gets very, very dry. And in the summertime, that dryness is coupled with extreme heat. And this can-- although it makes for some gorgeous, beautiful days, but you may have heard it often leads to catastrophic wildfires that devastate forests, lives, property, and even full communities.

Now, fire in the forest is a natural occurrence and it is an important part of that forest's lifecycle. But as many of us have been saying for many years, and many of you know, much of our forest has been poorly managed, if managed at all. There are decades of buildup of dead trees, and brush, that are on our forest floors so that fires in recent years have been truly catastrophic, leaving swaths of our National Forest, nothing but ash, dead trees, blackened trees laying all over the Earth, scorched Earth that cannot produce another crop of trees.

In my district, in Okanogan County, the Whitmore fire back in 2021, burned through almost 60,000 acres destroying several structures on the Colville Indian Reservation and had as many as 500 residences under level 2 evacuations. It was devastating.

But through the hard, backbreaking work of firefighters doing everything that they absolutely could do to protect those communities, I am happy to say that no lives were lost and it was successfully contained.

I think I can say that everyone in this room agrees that we have to do something about these catastrophic fires. And also, I think I can say that when faced by fire, we can all agree that we must utilize every tool in our toolbox to help prevent those fires from endangering human lives.

I cannot say the same about a group that calls themselves the FSEEE. For some reason, this organization, the FSEEE, have decided to use a provision of the Waters of the United States Rules, or WOTUS, and put the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, at risk by removing one of the most important tools that we have to fight fires in the West, and that is, aerial fire retardant.

For those who don't know, aerial fire retardant is dropped around a wildfire's edges in an effort to contain its spread and allow ground crews, those that are fighting fires by hand, the time that they need to help extinguish the blaze. Firefighters calls this painting the box, and use the respite that the retardant line gives them to safely build a defensible line to hold the fire.

Aerial fire retardant is generally considered non-toxic but the Forest Service prohibits placing these fire retardants directly into water bodies or into buffer zones that surround water bodies with one allowed exception: to protect human life and safety.

Between 2012 and 2019, less than 1 percent of Forest Service retardant drops were made into water that was allowed under this exception.

According to the FSEEE, by protecting human life and safety, the Forest Service has violated the Clean Water Act for discharging aerial fire retardant into navigable waters without an NPDES, or a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit.

Even though the regulations for administering the NPDES system specifically state that fire control is exempted and communications from EPA dating back all the way to 1993 indicate a permit was not required for firefighting efforts.

Now, if this group wins this case or even receives an injunction, the Forest Service and other firefighting organizations would be prevented from aerially dropping fire retardant nationwide during the coming 2023 fire season, and even beyond, until they acquire this permit, the NPDES permit, which as many of you know, can literally take years to secure.

Now, if you haven't already connected the dots, this would be catastrophic for Western communities who routinely experience wildfires.

The 2023 fire season, if you didn't know, has already started in the drier parts of the country. It has already burned through over 11,000 acres this month, January, alone. The FSEEE claims to be doing this for environmental reasons. I asked them:

How environmentally friendly is it to release millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when these fires can't be controlled?

How environmentally friendly is it to have burned soil, ash choke our rivers and our streams?

How environmentally friendly is it to wipe out entire ecosystems, plant life, wildlife, the trees, the birds, the wild animals?

And even if the FSEEE were able to prove me wrong on every single one of these points, is all this worth the cost of human life?

Firefighters risk their lives to protect our communities, other people, and our forests, and we should listen to them when they tell us that fire retardant makes their job safer, and it truly is an essential tool to protect lives.

Mr. Speaker, I stand here today in truly utter disbelief that I even have to make this statement. That, no, the value of a human life is far beyond that of some possible incidental disruption to aquatic ecosystems that would be equally, or more accurately, more damaged by the toxic runoff of ash following a wildfire.

We did ensure that fire retardant remains available to our firefighters for this 2023 fire season and beyond.

Mr. Speaker, I turn to my friend from Montana, Mr. Rosendale, who is co-leading this Special Order with me, for his comments from his great State.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Rosendale, I appreciate that, especially coming from the State of Montana. Your State, just like mine, has seen record catastrophic fires over the last several years.

Thousands of acres have been destroyed throughout the Western United States, millions of dollars of damage, lives lost, and communities that have been totally destroyed. Untold numbers of wildlife have been lost. These fires have literally changed the landscape of our national forests for generations.

The carbon dioxide being emitted from these devastating fires surpasses the auto emissions in just 1 year. The smoke from these fires has even recently come as far as Washington, D.C. I had hoped that that would get people's attention.

We are dealing with that on a regular basis all summer long in the communities that I represent and that Mr. Rosendale represents, causing health issues and tainting agricultural crops. It truly is an issue that is hurting our quality of life.

If this court case is lost, the situation is going to get much worse. We cannot let this happen.

To help tell the story that we are facing in the Western United States, another Western Caucus member from the great State of Idaho, the Gem State, Mr. Russ Fulcher, is here.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Fulcher, thanks for relating your experiences in the great State of Idaho.

Mr. Speaker, fires are a huge problem in this country. We have been working hard over the time I have been here in Washington, D.C., to make this problem better.

This action, if this court decision moves forward, as we think it might, is going to take us back years. It is going to make the problem considerably worse. We must not let this happen.

I thank Mr. Rosendale from Montana for helping lead this Special Order and Mr. Fulcher from Idaho for sharing with us his thoughts from his home State. I thank members of the Western Caucus, almost a hundred of us strong in this Congress, for focusing on this issue and bringing to the attention of the American people how important this court decision could be for the future of our national forests.

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