Fires might break deadlock over effort to thin forests (SCREW NEW DETAILS, THIS WAS PREVENTABLE!)

Mercury News | 10/28/03 | Jim Puzzanghera

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

WASHINGTON - Legislation to reduce the risk of wildfires -- proposed more than a year ago after earlier Western blazes -- has been stalled in Congress for months because lawmakers have been unable to agree on the details.

Now, the devastating fires raging through Southern California might free that logjam.

``It's time for this body and this Congress to act,'' Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who is pushing compromise legislation, told her fellow senators Monday night.

Widespread support

There is wide agreement that millions of acres of forests need to be thinned to keep them from exploding into deadly wildfires. The dispute in Congress is over where the thinning should take place: near communities to try to stop fires that threaten homes, or deep in the forest to keep small blazes from mushrooming into giant ones.

The Bush administration wants to attack the problem primarily in the forests, and the House of Representatives passed legislation in May that makes it easier to thin underbrush and log larger trees in the deep woods.

Many environmental groups charge that the work needs to be done near communities, not out in so-called old-growth forests that the timber industry covets. With the support of key Senate Democrats, environmentalists have held up the bill in hopes of changing it.

Feinstein and a bipartisan group of senators want to split the difference. They have crafted a compromise that would protect old-growth trees from logging and require at least half of the forest-thinning money be spent near communities. The rest could be spent farther out in the forests.

Mark Rey, an undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Agriculture who oversees the U.S. Forest Service and worked on the compromise, said if Congress would pass it, the president would sign it. ``By next year, in all likelihood, we'd have some areas protected,'' he said.

Stalled for a year

But the Senate compromise is opposed by environmental groups as well as the powerful chairman of the House Resources Committee. So wildfire-reduction legislation remains stalled more than a year after President Bush called for it.

``The forest policy of our government is misguided policy. It doesn't work,'' Bush said in announcing his Healthy Forests Initiative in Oregon in August 2002. ``We need to thin.''

Bush enacted some administrative changes to speed up forest-thinning projects. But the real changes have to come from Congress.

Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Stockton, who chairs the House Resources Committee, championed the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003. The bill, which passed the Republican-controlled House by a 256-170 vote in May, would give federal agencies broader authority, allowing them to study only one alternative to a thinning project instead of the several now required. It would also place time limits on lawsuits and court injunctions and give administration officials the sole discretion to determine the size of trees that could be cut down.

``We've got to get into the old growth and prevent them where they start,'' said Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for Pombo, whose district includes Morgan Hill. ``This isn't about logging. But if somebody can make a buck and help pay for the Forest Service to get in there and clean it out, then why not? That's less of a burden on the taxpayer.''

Point of disagreement

Environmentalists said the Bush plan is simply designed to allow the timber industry to log old-growth forests.

``The main fight here is really not about thinning, it is about paying for thinning by cutting down big trees,'' said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, who faults the Bush administration for failing to spend enough money on forest thinning. ``We're not saying you shouldn't ever thin in the backcountry. We're just saying you should thin around communities first.''

Thinning brush and trees close to communities is the most effective way of protecting them, said Bruce Hartsough, a forest engineer at the University of California-Davis. But he said thinning must take place in the deep forest as well.

Feinstein and nine other senators -- three Democrats and six Republicans -- proposed doing just that earlier this month. They want to authorize $760 million for the removal of the most dangerous brush and trees -- $340 million more than current funding -- and spend at least half within one-half mile to a mile from communities.

Opposition

Pope said that still means half the wildfire-reduction money will be wasted in the deep forest. The Sierra Club and nine other environmental groups oppose the compromise. Pombo also opposes it because the mandated funding ratios prevent local officials from deciding the best approach to reducing wildfire risk in their area, Kennedy said.

But Feinstein said that the compromise is the only legislation that can pass the Senate and is the only hope for wildfire protection.

[evad]

The Sierra Club and nine other environmental groups oppose the compromise.

In light of all the evidence to contradict these wackos, why does anyone listen to them?

I would think even a RAT would want to take proven steps to prevent their state from going up in flames.