How Do We Stay Safe From Wildfire?
Congressional Fire Bills present several ideas, but not all of them are good.
In Congress, several bills have been introduced to respond to the current fires burning in the West. Below is a summary of four bills that KS Wild is currently tracking:
S. 2882 The Wildfire Defense Act
Senator Kamala Harris introduced the Wildfire Defense Act to ensure that local communities are able to defend themselves from the growing danger of wildfires. The act will invest $1 billion per year to establish guidelines on creating Community Wildfire Defense Plans. These plans will focus on: improving emergency response systems, hardening critical infrastructure and homes, defensible space, implementing land use planning and community education.
KS Wild supports this bill because it focuses on a critical need: preparing communities for wildfire. By improving our evacuation and emergency response systems and by making our homes more resistant to fire our communities have a greater chance of surviving a wildfire.
S.4625 National Prescribed Fire Act
Senators Ron Wyden, Joe Manchin and Maria Cantwell have introduced the National Prescribed Fire Act. This act Provides $300 million to the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to increase the number of acres treated with controlled burns on federal, state and private lands and requires state air quality agencies to give states more flexibility in burning during winter months. The act also establishes a workforce development program for both agencies to develop, train, and hire prescribed fire practitioners, and establishes employment programs for Tribes, veterans, women, and those formerly incarcerated.
KS Wild supports this bill because it incorporates diversity, equity and inclusion into the hiring process and supports more prescribed burning on both federal and state lands.
S. 3684 21st Century CCC Bill
From 1933-1942, the Civilian Conservation Corps. was formed to provide employment, much of which was geared towards enhancing infrastructure and management on the nation’s parks and forests. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden introduced the 21st Century Conservation Corps for Our Health and our Jobs Act. This act would provide $5.5 billion to the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to increase the pace and scale of fuels reduction and thinning projects. Establishes a $9 billion fund for qualified land and conservation corps to increase job training and hiring specifically for jobs in the woods. Additional funding will be for USFS capital improvements and maintenance, landscape restoration projects including FireWise, and farm water conservation and habitat improvement projects.
KS Wild supports certain aspects of this bill including workforce training for jobs in the woods. While we support fuels reduction, this bill has few sideboards and we are worried funds could be used to support questionable industrial logging activities.
S. 4431 Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act
Senators Steve Daines and Dianne Feinstein introduced the Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act.
This bill promotes logging national forests many miles from communities as a solution and ignores the fact that removing our most fire resilient trees and creating vast landscapes of dense timber plantations has helped set up the fires we’re getting today. The bill gives “emergency” legal authority to bypass public review and undermines the National Forest Management and Endangered Species Acts. There is no focus on protecting homes and communities from wildfire.