Cantwell Requests Emergency Funds for Firefighting
WASHINGTON, DC - In a letter to OMB Director Mitch Daniels, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) joined a bipartisan group of seven Senators in calling for full support of the National Fire Plan at the fiscal year 2001 levels. The Senators also requested additional emergency firefighting funds for the already costly 2002 fire season. Millions of dollars will be spent fighting forest fires throughout summer; the United States Forest Service firefighting budget is insufficient to cover all firefighting costs.
Letter is as follows:
Mr. Mitchell Daniels, Jr. Director Office of Management and Budge 725 17th Street, NW Washington, DC 20503
Dear Director Daniels:
We are writing to inquire about your plans to request additional, emergency funds for both wildland firefighting and forest restoration. This year’s fire season is severe, twice as many acres have burned this year than at the same point in time during the 2000 fire season. With respect to firefighting, it seems clear that at current costs of $10 million per day you are rapidly depleting your available funds of $382 million. Reports indicate that the Forest Service has now exhausted its firefighting funds and is beginning to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from other accounts to pay for firefighting. The Department of the Interior likely is not far behind. This is unacceptable.
We are strongly opposed to the business-as-usual practice of borrowing from other agency accounts to pay for firefighting for two reasons. First, the Forest Service has a poor track record with respect to repaying accounts. For example, during a recent Energy and Natural Resources Committee oversight hearing, we learned that the Forest Service, after borrowing millions of dollars from its hazardous fuels reduction account to pay for emergency firefighting, is not returning the funds to that account after being reimbursed by Congress for the emergency firefighting expenses. Similarly, in 1996 the General Accounting Office reported that the Forest Service had borrowed $420 million from the Knutson-Vandenberg Trust Fund (a restoration and reforestation account) to pay for emergency firefighting over a three-year period beginning in 1990; however, no request for a supplemental appropriation to restore this account had been submitted to Congress.
Second, we believe that the accounts that you are borrowing from are just as important to addressing the continuing risk of catastrophic wildfires as is firefighting. In order to decrease the number of catastrophic wildland fires, we need to restore our national forests and public lands through environmentally sound strategies such as forest thinning and hazardous fuels reduction. We also need to protect communities by assisting private landowners in creating defensible space around their homes adjoining national forest and public lands. Over the long term, restoration and thinning to protect homes is much less expensive than fighting fires. Restoring our lands is the preferred alternative for the environment as well because, unfortunately, important species habitat burns right along with the forests during a fire.
The Western Governors’ Association agrees with our assessment and recently sent a letter to Congress urging full funding of all components of the National Fire Plan at fiscal year 2001 levels. Regardless of the overwhelming support for the National Fire Plan, the Administration has drastically cut critical components of the Plan including research, burned area restoration and rehabilitation, and community assistance.
The fiscal year 2002 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill currently moving through the Congressional process provides an excellent opportunity to obtain these critical funds. When we request additional funding, we expect your cooperation to meet firefighting and restoration needs in a way that ensures that the agencies will be accountable. Given the significance of this issue, we request a response from you by Friday, June 28, 2002.
Sincerely,
_____________________ _____________________
Jon Kyl Jeff Bingaman
U.S. Senator U.S. Senator
_____________________ _____________________
Pete Domenici Max Baucus
U.S. Senator U.S. Senator
_____________________ _____________________
Tim Johnson Maria Cantwell
U.S. Senator U.S. Senator
_____________________ _____________________
Ben Nighthorse Campbell Barbara Boxer
U.S. Senator U.S. Senator
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