Fire Improvement and Reforming Exceptional Events Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6387 to ensure States are not unjustly penalized under the Clean Air Act for engaging in responsible, proactive wildfire mitigation activities.

Mr. Speaker, wildfires are, unfortunately, all too common in my home State of Wyoming and across the intermountain West.

According to the Office of State Lands and Investments, approximately 250,000 acres of land in Wyoming were burned in 2025 due to more than 1,600 wildfires. The numbers were even worse in 2024, with around 850,000 acres burned through more than 2,000 fires. With just one fire, it burned 25,000 acres in 3 hours, giving an indication of the fuel load in the Bighorn National Forest.

Wildfires have profound effects on all of my constituents, including threatening the livelihoods of our farmers and ranchers, endangering our courageous first responders, and causing serious respiratory and other health complications for Wyoming families.

Given these life-altering consequences, we must use every tool at our disposal, including responsible forest management--which has historically been hampered by bad policies coming out of Washington, D.C.--to minimize the scale and damage caused by these destructive forces of nature.

Active forest management through prescribed burns and mechanical thinning is essential to supporting healthy ecosystems, preventing catastrophic wildfires, and improving the long-term air quality.

Unfortunately, as it currently stands under the Clean Air Act, the use of these individual wildfire mitigation measures can create uncertainty, discouraging their use out of concern that doing so would lead to noncompliance with National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

Failure to meet these standards can result in nonattainment designations, which can come with a host of immediate and downstream challenges, including excessive fees and sanctions, delayed infrastructure projects, and slowed economic growth, all of which can lead to immeasurable harm for smaller Wyoming communities.

By reforming the Clean Air Act to ensure these wildfire mitigation activities are appropriately treated as exceptional events, we are incentivizing their use and putting a stop to unfair and counterproductive regulatory punishments.

I thank Representative Evans and Chairman Guthrie for their steadfast leadership on this legislation and urge all of my colleagues to support H.R. 6387.

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