U.S. House passes major wildfire and drought package
The U.S. House approved, 218-199, on Friday a massive package of bills to address the growing threat of wildfire and drought in the West.
The measure includes 49 standalone
bills from both Democrats and Republicans. It includes provisions to
make permanent an increase in wildland firefighter pay, lift a cap on
the federal cost share for post-fire recovery funding and authorize more
than $1.5 billion for water infrastructure to help manage drought
conditions.
Republicans said the spending would
not meaningfully improve fire prevention and called for allowing more
logging to thin forests.
There were 217 Democrats who voted in favor of the bill, and one Republican. One Democrat was opposed and 198 Republicans.
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The package’s future is unclear. The
White House issued a statement that fell short of full support and
members of the Senate have not indicated they would take up the
legislation.
Colorado Democrat Joe Neguse, the
chairman of a House subcommittee on public lands and forestry, sponsored
the omnibus measure and led debate on the floor Friday.
In the last two years, three
catastrophic wildfires have devastated parts Neguse’s Boulder-area
district, he said on the House floor Friday. Responding to such events
now takes up much of his and other congressional offices’ time.
“We have a duty to provide our
constituents with the support that they need to rebuild and to recover,”
Neguse said. “The reality is that we are living with a new normal as
climate change results in a hotter, drier planet where historic drought
and record setting wildfires are not merely a possibility, but an
inevitability.”
Wildfires have devastated New Mexico as well this year, with the Forest Service blamed for the largest wildfire in the state’s recorded history.
Firefighter pay
Neguse highlighted the firefighter
pay measure, which would indefinitely extend a raise to a minimum of $20
per hour enacted in last year’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure
law. Without congressional action, the raise would expire at the end of
September 2023.
The package also includes a Neguse
bill to allow the Federal Emergency Management Agency to lift the cap on
the federal share of fire assistance grants. The cap is currently 75%,
but the bill would direct FEMA to determine circumstances when the
federal share could be higher.
The measure would ratify a 10-year plan
for the U.S. Forest Service, authorizing $1.5 billion per year for the
next decade for fire-related programs. It would also authorize spending
on large scale forest projects the administration has already
identified.Related
Those projects include the Four
Forest Restoration Initiative, known as 4FRI, and Greater Prescott Area
Wildlife Protection and Restoration in Arizona, the Colorado Front
Range, Southwest Idaho, the Kootenai Complex in Montana, the Enchanted
Circle in New Mexico and Central Oregon.
The package also includes several water bills, including a measure to provide $1 billion for tribal water infrastructure grants.
The bill would authorize $700 million more for a water-recycling project created in the infrastructure law.
New Mexico Democrat Melanie Stansbury
sponsored three water bills, including bills to authorize $500 million
to help keep Colorado River Basin reservoirs from declining to critical
levels and to establish a management plan for the Rio Grande Basin.
“We must pass this legislation so
that our communities have the tools and the resources that they need to
remain resilient,” Stansbury said.
The package would also establish a
National Disaster Safety Board to collect data on natural disasters and
provide recommendations to prevent future loss of life. It would create
another board to study wildfire impacts and the effects of climate
change on fires.
White House lukewarm
The Biden administration offered
qualified support for House passage of the bill in a July 26 statement
from the Office of Management and Budget.
“The Administration appreciates the
interest of Congress in the Administration’s efforts to address climate
change and its effects on wildfires and drought,” the statement said.
“The Administration would like to work with the Congress to ensure the
many provisions in the Act avoid duplication with existing authorities
and Administration efforts.”
Republicans raised a host of
objections to the bill, including that it did not meaningfully update
federal forest management practices to allow for more logging and that
they were excluded from contributing at the committee level.
Logging helps keep forests from becoming overgrown with brush that can make fires more intense and spread faster, they said.
“Excess timber will always come out
of the forest,” U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican, said.
“Either we will carry it out, or nature will burn it out. When we
carried it out by logging, we enjoyed healthy forests and a thriving
economy … Our forests are now morbidly overgrown and nature is again
burning out the excess.
“This bill does nothing to reform the
laws that have made active forest management impossible, and instead it
consigns us to fight a losing battle.”
House Natural Resources ranking
Republican Bruce Westerman of Arkansas also said one of the bill’s most
central features — the raise in firefighter pay — was more style than
substance, as it would only extend a current policy. Because
infrastructure law already set firefighter pay at $20 per hour, Friday’s
bill did nothing, he said.
“You should never confuse motion with
action, which is exactly what the legislation before us today does,” he
said on the House floor. “This bill is more than 550 pages that does
absolutely nothing to prevent wildfires or significantly improve our
resiliency to drought.”
Permanent pay raise
Neguse took issue with Westerman’s
description, noting that the pay raise in the infrastructure bill was
set to expire next year. The House bill would make the raise permanent.
Additionally, Westerman said the U.S.
Forest Service has told Republicans on the committee that without
additional appropriations, the pay raise would require layoffs of
hundreds of firefighters.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer
said that was the nature of Congress, where bills authorizing federal
funding levels are typically passed separately from those that actually
appropriate the spending.
“Some say this is an authorizing
bill,” Hoyer said. “It is an authorizing bill. That’s regular order. It
will be our responsibility, then, to appropriate the funds that are
necessary to carry out the objectives of this bill, and I hope we can do
so in a bipartisan way.”
The Senate has not scheduled any consideration of the measure.
A spokesman for the Senate Energy and
Natural Resources Committee, which would have jurisdiction over most of
the package, declined to comment Friday.
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