This year’s wildfire season has already claimed 7.5 million acres of land in the western United States. In response, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) organized an official Senate Energy and Natural Resources field hearing in her home state last week to examine the impacts of a “broken wildfire suppression funding system” on state and local communities. Senator Cantwell was joined at the hearing by Republican colleague Senator John Barrasso (R-WY).
Witnesses testified on the impacts of the Budget phenomenon known as “fire-borrowing,” which hampers meaningful forest management activities, and leads to larger, more intense wildfires. Under fire-borrowing, funds are shifted to wildfire suppression activities and away from projects intended for fire prevention and watershed health activities. Solutions such as the RCRC-supported Wildfire Disaster Funding Act (WDFA), and other mechanisms, would allow funding to be set aside to be spent on the largest, costliest fires, thus preserving and protecting funds meant for forest health purposes. All other agencies responsible for responding to other types of natural disasters are saved from spending their baseline Budget or funds meant for disaster prevention or post-disaster mitigation on actual disaster response.
Wildfire suppression funding will be in the spotlight as Congress returns to work next week, but the appropriate mechanism to fix the broken system remains under debate. While Congress was adjourned for their annual August recess, U.S. Forest Service Tom Tidwell ordered account adjustments to cover ongoing suppression costs, and President Obama requested additional emergency funding to cover the costs of projected suppression activities for remainder of the fiscal year.
RCRC remains committed to the elimination of fire borrowing and establishing a new mechanism for funding wildfire disasters, forest management, and post-fire mitigation. We will continue to advocate for the WDFA or similar language throughout the remainder of the Legislative year.