Senate Panel Pushes for Forest Bill as Fires Rage
Date: 27-Jun-03
Country: USA
Author: Christopher Doering
Democrats and environmental groups oppose the plan, which they say would curtail public input, shift fire resources away from residential areas, and give the timber industry a free hand to harvest trees with less environmental review.
"We need to get (the bill to the floor) as soon as possible," Sen. Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican said at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing. "This is a matter of some urgency."
The U.S. Forest Service is part of the Agriculture Department.
In Arizona, firefighters are battling a wildfire that has destroyed hundreds of homes and 25,000 acres of ponderosa pine and conifers during the past week. Smaller blazes also are burning across drought-stricken parts of New Mexico and Alaska.
The Senate bill is similar to one that cleared the House last month. It would ease procedural requirements needed to remove small underbrush and trees on 20 million acres of forest land.
The legislation also would force federal courts to move quickly on requests for preliminary injunctions, often used to delay thinning projects, and to balance the long-term impact to a forest before renewing injunctions.
It remains unclear how soon the legislation might go before the full Senate.
Democrats Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico earlier this week proposed a Senate bill that directed 70 percent of its funding go to hazardous fuel projects close to communities and municipal watersheds.
Bush administration officials told the Senate committee that efforts to prevent the blaze in Arizona by thinning brush and trees near residential areas failed.
"Everybody (but the federal government) already knows how to treat fires," said Mark Rey, undersecretary of natural resources with the USDA. "The federal government is the slowest in responding to these types of issues," he said.
President Bush ordered federal agencies in Aug. 2002 to develop new administrative steps to allow them to improve the health of forests on federal lands.
Last year was one of the most catastrophic fire seasons in history, destroying more than 7 million acres of U.S. forest land.
