House GOP hits Senate on wildfire bill delay

Natural Resources Republicans want the Senate to take up the "Fix Our Forests Act" — and make it look more like the House version.

House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman is knocking the Senate for dropping electric utility line protections from a forest management bill that he’s worked to negotiate with colleagues across the Capitol.

At a subcommittee hearing Thursday on preventing wildfire damage to the power grid and water supplies, the Arkansas Republican lamented that Senate sponsors of the “Fix Our Forests Act” didn’t include a provision from his previously introduced bill that would have streamlined forest thinning around utility lines.

Instead, Senate sponsors included provisions that appear to seek a similar goal through different wording.

Westerman’s provision — which he said would provide for a categorical exclusion from reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act — ought to be restored before a final version comes before lawmakers, the chair said at the hearing of the Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries.

To amplify his point, Westerman noted that the section in question was the work of the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), who died unexpectedly this week, and the chair prodded a utility company witness at the hearing to explain why the provision should be included.

“He was passionate about these issues,” Westerman said, before turning to the witness, Randy Howard, chair of the Northern California Power Agency based in Roseville, California.

“I hope it does come back in,” Howard said. Forests have so much dead vegetation that utilities don’t have the luxury of using the normal permitting process to remove it, he added.

“We think it’s a critical component, and we appreciate the House putting it in,” Howard said.

The House version, H.R. 471, passed last year with bipartisan support. The Senate's S. 1462 passed the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee last October, also with some support from Democrats, and is awaiting floor action.

The Senate version would allow officials to approve the removal of vegetation “within striking distance” of electric lines without going through a separate timber sale. And it would direct the administration to craft a new categorical exclusion from NEPA for removal of “hazard trees” on up to 6,000 acres.

Those provisions reflect the same intent as in the House version, according to Megafire Action, an outside organization that’s supported both bills.

Both bills borrow language from another piece of legislation called the "Fire Safe Electrical Corridors Act," which allows for removal of vegetation near electrical lines without separate timber sales and without addressing the issue of NEPA exclusions.

The four Senate offices involved in writing the "Fix Our Forests Act" decided that was the best way to provide certainty to power companies seeking to remove trees along rights-of-way, according to the office of Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), one of the sponsors.

Crafting a bill in the Senate, with its 60-vote threshold for legislation and a Democratic minority defensive of NEPA, proved slower than in the House.

Wildfires pose a danger to the electric grid and to forest watersheds that provide much of the nation’s water for drinking and irrigation, particularly in the West. But fires alone aren’t the crisis — it’s postfire recovery, too, Howard said, because utility companies need to rebuild what’s burned in places still prone to fire.

Postfire work should be allowed with less environmental review as well, Howard said.

“Many times we have to build it back exactly the way it was, where it’s going to be at a high cost to our ratepayers, and it’s just going to burn down next time the wildfire comes through.”

Republicans on the panel returned repeatedly to the Senate’s sluggishness to pass the legislation. Rep. Cliff Bentz (R-Ore.) said the point of the hearing was to poke the Senate into action. “That’s really what we’re trying to do,” he said.

Thursday’s hearing featured little of the partisan jockeying that often accompanies forest policy debates, mainly around climate change.

The full committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jared Huffman of California, said “we do have to be clear-eyed about how we got here,” and cautioned against an overemphasis on logging.

Subcommittee Chair Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) cited decades of total fire suppression and other management missteps for creating an abundance of wildfire fuel in national forests.

She also criticized the 2001 roadless-area conservation rule that restricts logging on tens of millions of acres of national forest and which the Trump administration is seeking to roll back.

“It has been an absolute disaster for this country,” Hageman said.

By:  Marc Heller
Source: E&E Daily

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