WASHINGTON -- Republican lawmakers from fire-ravaged Western states called on their colleagues Thursday to support U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman's forest management legislation.
Confident of passage by the House, they also urged the U.S. Senate to take action.
The Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017, which is sponsored by the Republican from Hot Springs, would speed up the regulatory approval process in many instances and make it harder for environmentalists to derail government forestry plans.
It would also make it easier for the U.S. Forest Service to obtain additional funds when firefighting costs are abnormally high.
Supporters say the legislation will lead to healthier forests and reduce the number of acres blackened by fire.
Opponents say the bill would weaken environmental protections, allow more decisions to be made without public input and undermine Americans' ability to challenge forestry management decisions in the courts.
The House passed an earlier version of Westerman's bill in July 2015, just months after he was first elected to Congress, but it stalled once it reached the Senate after encountering opposition from the administration of President Barack Obama.
This year, the legislation has been given new life. On Wednesday, the House Agriculture Committee backed the bill. The House Natural Resources Committee gave its approval in June.
The cost for federal firefighting hit $2.1 billion in 2015, the highest on record, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Last year, it was $1.98 billion. This year will set a new record, Westerman told reporters.
Thursday's news conference by the Republican lawmakers occurred as firefighters battled eight large blazes: three in California, one in Nevada and four in Oregon.
A congressman whose hometown was recently threatened by a conflagration in September, brought a jar of the ash that carpeted the ground and contaminated the air.
That legislator, U.S. Rep. Greg Walden of Hood River, Ore., said his state has lost 678,000 acres to fire in 2017.
The Eagle Creek Fire east of Portland, which raced through the Columbia River Gorge last month, charred roughly 50,000 acres and closed stretches of Interstate 84, the state's main east-west highway.
Nationwide, 8.4 million acres have been scorched this year.
In parts of the West, fire pollution is all too common.
"Summer after summer our valleys are choked with smoke. Our forests go up in fire. Carbon's emitted into the atmosphere ... and people suffer," Walden, a Republican, said.
The damage, he said, is catastrophic.
"This stuff is every bit as bad for the country as the hurricanes have been, [as] tornadoes are, as floods are," he added.
Money originally budgeted for forest management and fire prevention is now spent on fire suppression, the bill's supporters say.
Westerman portrayed the forest fires as an environmental disaster.
"This is sending millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere and massive smoke plumes that have closed schools, killed livestock and created serious health issues for people living near and far from these fires," he said.
Regulatory hurdles and lawsuits by environmental groups have interfered with proper management of the nation's trees, Westerman said.
"Forests continue to grow. Disease and insect infestations continue to spread. Fuel loads increase. Temperatures rise, humidity drops and fires continue to explode in unmanaged forests," he said. "As a result, the Forest Service is forced to raid its management accounts in order to pay for firefighting costs. ... This leads to less management, which fosters more frequent and intense fires. Simply put, this is unsustainable. It's time for Congress to wake up and address the crisis that continues to burn as we continue to speak."
U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., said it's time to change the way the nation's forests are managed.
"One out of 3 acres within the Forest Service is dead, diseased, bug-infested trees," she said.
When they go up in flames, people in her eastern Washington district suffer, she said.
"This summer, again, people in Spokane were told, 'Don't go outside,' because air quality is so bad," she said. "There's no place to go to get clean air because of the fires that are burning. So we need to take action. It has reached crisis."
During the half-hour long news conference, Republican lawmakers from Idaho, Montana, Arizona, California and Utah all stressed the importance of the bill for the districts they serve.
Thirteen of the bill's 15 co-sponsors are Republicans. Two Democrats from Minnesota have also added their names.
Asked about the dearth of Democratic supporters from Western states, Westerman predicted more Democrats will come on board.
Nineteen House Democrats voted for the previous bill in July 2015.
Westerman's measure faces opposition from environmental activists.
EarthJustice, which describes itself as "the nation's original and largest nonprofit environmental law organization," is urging its supporters to help defeat the measure.
Tracy Coppola, the organization's senior legislative counsel, called it "a devastating piece of legislation."
"While fire is a concern, it's clear that Mr. Westerman and many members are using the existence of wildfires to attack a lot of our bedrock environmental laws," she said.
The legislation, she said, would benefit the timber industry while hamstringing environmentalists and harming the great outdoors.
"These are incredible public lands that a lot of constituents care about -- not just from my organization but nationwide."
U.S Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said opponents need to realize that the current system isn't working.
"I think a lot, on the left, are invested in mistakes that were made 45 years ago that have now led us to this crisis with our national forests," he said. "They simply can't, ideologically, let go of laws ... that have been catastrophically counterproductive to their stated objective."
Business on 10/06/2017