Thursday, September 15th 2016
The Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday approved a bill aimed at helping the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) deal with its increasing expensive fire-fighting efforts and to improve forest management activities. Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said his Emergency Wildfire and Forest Management Act is similar to a stand-alone measure that passed the House in July 2015. Both bills seek to address the rising cost of wildfire suppression. The Senate bill was approved on a party-line 11-9 vote with Democrats objecting. Just about everyone agrees that something must be done to help USFS deal with forest fires. In 2015, the agency spent more than $1.7 billion fighting fires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center which says federal spending overall topped $2.1 billion. On the current course, by 2025, officials say two thirds of the Forest Service budget could be spent on firefighting, up from about one-sixth 20 years ago. The bill, for example, would create “categorical exclusions” to the environmental review process for some forest management projects, aiming to get the projects done more quickly and at less cost. These provisions have drawn complaints from the White House and some Democrats who say they would undermine environmental protections. The American Farm Bureau Federation applauded the Agriculture Committee's action.