Forest Funding

FOREST FUNDING

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss an issue that has enormous importance for the West and other parts of the country, and that is the funding, critically needed funding, to protect our forests.

I believe we are going to have an extraordinarily difficult time in the next few months coping with these forest fires that are causing such devastation in the West. I was part of a coalition, a member of the Budget Committee which saw the Senate accept unanimously by voice vote a measure that would fully fund essentially what we were trying to do, again on a bipartisan basis, in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.

I come today because I have heard unofficially that possibly the amendment I authored and which was accepted unanimously in this Chamber is not going to make it out of the budget conference. I think this would be a grievous mistake given the reports we are getting now about the prospect of an extraordinarily difficult fire season.

The amendment I authored would increase the budget authority to boost investments in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act to benefit our national forests, the environment, local communities, and local economies. My amendment would add $343 million to last year's $417 million for hazardous fuel reduction so as to be able to reach the $716 million authorization in title I of the Healthy Forests legislation.

Now, we have talked a lot during this session about the importance of hazardous fire reduction projects. We have talked about it in the Budget and Appropriations Committees, in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, and my colleagues have heard me repeatedly talk about how important this funding would be. But every year these hazardous fuels projects go underfunded or unfunded, and that means another year with little or no warning thousands of people in fire-prone communities end up tossing everything they can into their cars and fleeing their homes without knowing if anything is going to remain when they return.

The Forest Service's inability to do all of the hazardous fuels reduction projects that needs to get done leads to real-life danger on the ground in these small western communities.

It leads to danger in the backyards of our citizens, in their recreation areas, and the places they gather in their communities.

Two years ago, in July of 2002, the Associated Press reported that 17,000 people faced evacuation in Oregon. Here is just a bit of this report:

Firefighters went door-to-door deciding which homes they could save (in Cave Junction, Oregon) as an explosive 68,000-acre wildfire nearby fed off heat, wind and timber.

These folks were evacuated, and a month later they were still evacuated. Another article from one of our publications, the Medford Mail Tribune, noted the very personal nature of the disruption. It said the Josephine County Sheriff's Office was beginning to reunite an estimated 400 evacuated animals, including livestock and even family pets, with evacuated owners.

The Associated Press, that same news outlet, reported just yesterday that an early fire season is expected in eastern Oregon. We are hearing about this all over the West. There are going to be lots of fires. They are going to be very early. They, in my view, are going to cause enormous pain and hardship for our communities.

I implore my colleagues, both in the Senate and in the other body, to protect what we have been able to do in a bipartisan kind of fashion, and that is to properly and fully fund this critical aspect of the Healthy Forests legislation.

For years there has been this budgetary sleight of hand with respect to forest fires, where the Forest Service takes from one account and goes to another. When it is all done, it is clear there are not enough resources, and that is what I tried to change in the Healthy Forests legislation. We had bipartisan support. Senator Domenici, for example, has done yeoman's work on this for years and years. Senator Crapo, another colleague in this body, has been so supportive of this effort.

I will take a few minutes to talk about what I think is ahead and why I hope that if the conference has not fully acted that we can protect that amendment to fully fund the effort to deal with this huge fire risk that we are facing.

Just yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported:

California's fire season, off to an ominously early start, could be exacerbated by increasing numbers of dead trees, frozen funding for fuel-reduction projects and the implacable expansion of the suburbs into wildlands. Federal officials moved Wednesday to address one of those concerns, freeing $240 million for removal of dead trees in San Diego, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, after Senator Feinstein complained about restrictions on the funds. Still, State and national officials say the trend in recent years of extremely destructive wildfires in California and throughout the West is likely to continue this season.

From the CBS Associated Press story entitled "Early Start For California Fires," which came from Corona, CA, on May 5, just days ago:

As acrid smoke for more than 18,000 acres of charred brush curled skyward, California officials feared the earlier-than-usual start of the summer wildfires season could make it the most dangerous ever. Just months after the most devastating wildfires in State history . . . thousands of acres from San Diego to Santa Barbara are ablaze. Thousands of firefighters are on the line, and once again residents are fleeing advancing flames.

The same day, the Associated Press said:

It's like gasoline. More than 1,000 people were evacuated in the northeastern Lake Elsinore area as the Cerrito Fire was whipped up by winds.

Tuesday, the Los Angeles Daily News:

It was the explosive end to the State's worst fire season, from which the region still hasn't recovered. And this year, authorities say, could be worse. Much, much worse.

To those thousands of folks across the country, particularly those whom I represent in Oregon who have been pounded by these devastating fires year after year, the bickering and the back and forth in Congress on fully funding forest health, this is not a theoretical thing to those Oregonians. It is not some kind of policy discussion. It is a danger to their families, a danger to their communities, every single day.

By working in a bipartisan fashion, after more than 25 years the Congress came together, passed a landmark piece of wildfire legislation, which was signed into law by the President on December 3 of last year. It is going to protect communities from catastrophic forest fires, preserve old-growth trees, restore unhealthy forests, and protect the involvement of our communities in discussing these issues.

I was very pleased that because of the bipartisan cooperation, we were able to get the Senate to pass a balanced practical approach to Healthy Forests legislation, and it authorized the $760 million that is essential for hazardous fuels reduction projects, and it made possible my budget amendment that would have provided the funding room necessary for the landmark legislation.

Without the help of the budget amendment that was adopted earlier, the issue that is now being debated in Congress, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act is not going to be able to live up to the full promise that folks in Cave Junction, OR, or Corona, CA, are counting on. The amendment in the budget resolution will take us a step closer to fulfilling the vision that people have in the rural West of this law. They deserve an approach and critical response from the Federal Government, starting now with the prospect of a devastating fire season.

This body agreed that hazardous fuels reduction projects, the National Fire Plan, and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act should be given complete and bipartisan support. I am hopeful that the budget conferees will see the importance of keeping intact the unanimously accepted Senate position to fight these fires with the resources necessary.

It is critical that we not disappoint people in these small rural communities across the West. They are counting on the Congress to ensure that they have the resources that are going to be essential to save their homes and safeguard their lives.

I do not want to see these families evacuated again this year and next year because the Congress did not do its job.

I urge our colleagues, at a time when we are about to go to the budget conference, to support the effort to fully fund forest fires, to promote the healthy forest effort that we enacted on a bipartisan basis.

I yield the floor.