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90-767 PS 2004

RECOVERING FROM THE FIRES: 

RESTORING AND PROTECTING 

COMMUNITIES, WATER, WILDLIFE AND FORESTS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND 

FOREST HEALTH

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

Friday, December 5, 2003, in Lake Arrowhead, California

Serial No. 108-80

Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house 

or 

Committee address: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES 

RICHARD W. POMBO, California, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia, Ranking Democrat Member

Don Young, Alaska 

W.J. ‘‘Billy’’ Tauzin, Louisiana 

Jim Saxton, New Jersey 

Elton Gallegly, California 

John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee 

Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland 

Ken Calvert, California 

Scott McInnis, Colorado 

Barbara Cubin, Wyoming 

George Radanovich, California 

Walter B. Jones, Jr., North Carolina 

Chris Cannon, Utah 

John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania 

Jim Gibbons, Nevada, 

Vice Chairman 

Mark E. Souder, Indiana 

Greg Walden, Oregon 

Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado 

J.D. Hayworth, Arizona 

Tom Osborne, Nebraska 

Jeff Flake, Arizona 

Dennis R. Rehberg, Montana 

Rick Renzi, Arizona 

Tom Cole, Oklahoma 

Stevan Pearce, New Mexico 

Rob Bishop, Utah 

Devin Nunes, California 

Randy Neugebauer, Texas 

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan 

Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American Samoa 

Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii 

Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas 

Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey 

Calvin M. Dooley, California 

Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Islands 

Ron Kind, Wisconsin 

Jay Inslee, Washington 

Grace F. Napolitano, California 

Tom Udall, New Mexico 

Mark Udall, Colorado 

Anı ́bal Acevedo-Vila ́, Puerto Rico 

Brad Carson, Oklahoma 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Dennis A. Cardoza, California 

Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam 

George Miller, California 

Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Ciro D. Rodriguez, Texas 

Joe Baca, California 

Betty McCollum, Minnesota

Steven J. Ding, Chief of Staff 

Lisa Pittman, Chief Counsel 

James H. Zoia, Democrat Staff Director 

Jeffrey P. Petrich, Democrat Chief Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND FOREST HEALTH 

SCOTT McINNIS, Colorado, Chairman 

JAY INSLEE, Washington, Ranking Democrat Member

John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee 

Walter B. Jones, Jr., North Carolina 

John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania 

Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado 

J.D. Hayworth, Arizona 

Jeff Flake, Arizona 

Dennis R. Rehberg, Montana 

Rick Renzi, Arizona 

Stevan Pearce, New Mexico 

Richard W. Pombo, California, ex officio 

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan 

Tom Udall, New Mexico 

Mark Udall, Colorado 

Anı ́bal Acevedo-Vila ́, Puerto Rico 

Brad Carson, Oklahoma 

Betty McCollum, Minnesota 

VACANCY 

VACANCY 

Nick J. Rahall II, West Virginia, ex officio 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

Hearing held on Friday, December 5, 2003 ........................................................... 1

Statement of Members: 

Baca, Hon. Joe, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

California ....................................................................................................... 5

Bono, Hon. Mary, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

California ....................................................................................................... 8

Calvert, Hon. Ken, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

California ....................................................................................................... 6

Lewis, Hon. Jerry, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

California ....................................................................................................... 4

Pombo, Hon. Richard W., a Representative in Congress from the State 

of California ................................................................................................... 1

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3 

Radanovich, Hon. George P., a Representative in Congress from the State 

of California ................................................................................................... 7 

Walden, Hon. Greg, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Oregon ............................................................................................................ 7

Statement of Witnesses: 

Barrett, Alan L., Council Member, Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians ....... 65

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 67

Barry, Chips, Director, Denver Water Department ....................................... 36

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 40

Bonnicksen, Thomas, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Forest Science, 

Texas A&M University ................................................................................. 56

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 59

Bosworth, Dale, Chief, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture ..... 9

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 12

Brierty, Peter, Fire Marshal, County of San Bernardino .............................. 42

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 45

Chrisman, Hon. Mike, Secretary-Designate, California Resources Agency . 15

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 18

Grindstaff, P. Joseph, General Manager, Santa Ana Watershed Project 

Authority ....................................................................................................... 75

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 76

Kinsinger, Anne, Regional Biologist, Western Region, U.S. Geological 

Survey ............................................................................................................ 21

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 22

Nenna, Dave, Tribal Administrator, Tule River Tribe .................................. 84

Stephens, Scott, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Fire Science, Department 

of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of 

California, Berkeley ...................................................................................... 68

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 71

Additional materials supplied: 

Dreier, Hon. David, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

California, Statement submitted for the record ......................................... 92

Issa, Hon. Darrell, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

California, Statement submitted for the record ......................................... 93

(1)

OVERSIGHT HEARING ON RECOVERING FROM 

THE FIRES: RESTORING AND PROTECTING 

COMMUNITIES, WATER, WILDLIFE AND FORESTS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 

Friday, December 5, 2003 

U.S. House of Representatives 

Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health 

Committee on Resources 

Lake Arrowhead, California 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 11:13 a.m., in the 

Lake Arrowhead Resort Ballroom, Lake Arrowhead, California, 

Hon. Richard Pombo [Chairman of the Committee on Resources] 

presiding. 

Present: Representatives Pombo, Calvert, Walden, Bono, Lewis, 

Radanovich and Baca. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. RICHARD W. POMBO, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. POMBO. The Committee is meeting today to hear testimony 

on Recovering from the Fires: Restoring and Protecting Communities, Water, Wildlife and Forests in Southern California. 

We all know the horrible details of last summer’s fires here in 

southern California. The statistics speak for themselves—26 people 

killed, 3,361 homes destroyed and 739,000 acres burned. But it 

would be a terrible mistake to think that the damage is over now 

that the fires are out when in fact some of the most severe environmental consequences may well occur in the coming months and 

years. The tremendous loss of vegetation and the cooking of soils 

have exposed the hills to erosion, water runoff may increase and 

sediments may move downstream and damage houses or fill reservoirs putting endangered species and community water supplies 

at heightened risk. 

We have learned from past fires in other states that the costs associated with post-fire rehabilitation and cleanup can be enormous 

and we have learned that minimizing these costs requires speedy 

assessment and action, stabilizing soils and reducing runoff with 

straw bundles, contour-felled trees, grass seeding, tree planting, 

enlarging and armoring culverts, building rock barriers and ditches 

and a number of other treatments. 

Decisions concerning what techniques to apply, if any, depend on 

the characteristics and conditions of each particular site and need 

2

to be made by the specialists of the burned area emergency rehabilitation teams. We will learn today the status of those teams and 

their activities, and in particular, the Committee will want to ensure that the necessary resources—financial, technical and 

human—are available and being employed effectively and efficiently. 

In our hearing last September, in this very room, we heard that 

catastrophic fire in this area was not a question of if, but a question of when. This predictive reality has been known by forest scientists for years, if not decades. Inaction in the face of that reality 

has been tragic. Further inaction will be inexcusable. The conditions that have led to so many of the nation’s uncontrollable fires 

in recent years exists just outside this building—over-dense forests 

of dead and dying trees and excessive accumulation of brush and 

woody debris are a tinderbox waiting for a spark. 

Two days ago, the President signed the Health Forests Restoration Act into law. Congressman Walden, one of the authors of the 

bill, and I have worked with the forestry community for years to 

develop and pass this important legislation and are now poised to 

make sure that it is implemented quickly and correctly. It has provisions that will allow communities to have more say in the management of surrounding forests and will speed up the decisionmaking process so that hazardous materials can be removed faster 

with less red tape and fewer appeals and lawsuits. 

While this landmark legislation will not solve all forestry problems, it is the first pro-forestry bill to be signed into law in decades 

and will make a difference in the management of our forests. I expect our Federal land managers to employ it immediately on the 

forests in this area and am anxious to hear their plans for doing 

so. 

With the Health Forests Restoration Act becoming law, I believe 

that we have finally turned the corner away from the benign neglect of our forests to a thoughtful and scientific management, but 

I am also very much aware that work is left to be done. This law 

will need to be refined as we learn its inadequacies while other 

laws such as the Endangered Species Act still need to be addressed. Bringing communities back into the fold is an important 

first step. Now we must ensure that on-the-ground restoration begins in earnest and on a broad scale. 

To begin to address these important issues, I would like to start 

today by thanking our witnesses and those in the audience for joining us. I would also like to extend my condolences to the families 

of those who lost their lives as a result of the wildfires and to 

thank all of the firefighters who risked their lives to protect homes 

and communities. I would also like to extent my thanks to the 

Chairman of San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, Dennis 

Hansberger, for hosting us once again. Finally, I would like to 

thank the other members of Congress for attending today. In particular, Representative Lewis, for having us back in his district and 

for helping secure millions of dollars of appropriations in support 

of hazardous fuel reduction projects. His direct involvement put 

California at the front of the line for receiving these Federal funds. 

I look forward to his continued support and to working with all of 

you on this important matter. 

3

I would like to recognize Mr. Lewis first for any comments he 

may have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Pombo follows:]

Statement of The Honorable Richard Pombo, Chairman,

Committee on Resources 

We all know the horrible details of last summer’s fires here in Southern California; the statistics speak for themselves: 26 people killed, 3,361 homes destroyed, 

and 739,000 acres burned. But it would be a terrible mistake to think that the damage is over now that the fires are out, when, in fact, some of the most severe environmental consequences may well occur in the coming months and years. The tremendous loss of vegetation and the cooking of soils have exposed the hills to erosion; 

water runoff may increase and cause flooding; sediments may move downstream 

and damage houses or fill reservoirs, putting endangered species and community 

water supplies at heightened risk. 

We’ve learned from past fires in other states that the costs associated with postfire rehabilitation and clean-up can be enormous, and we’ve learned that minimizing 

these costs requires speedy assessment and action; stabilizing soils and reducing 

runoff with straw bundles, contour-felled trees, grass seeding, tree planting, enlarging and armoring culverts, building rock barriers and ditches, and a number of 

other treatments. 

Decisions concerning what techniques to apply, if any, depend on the characteristics and conditions of each particular site and need to be made by the specialists 

of the Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation teams. We’ll learn today the status 

of those teams and their activities and, in particular, the Committee will want to 

insure that the necessary resources—financial, technical and human—are available 

and being employed effectively and efficiently. 

In our hearing last September, in this very room, we heard that catastrophic fire 

in this area was not a question of if, but a question of when. This predictive reality 

has been known by forest scientists for years, if not decades. Inaction in the face 

of that reality has been tragic; further inaction will be inexcusable. The conditions 

that have led to so many of the nation’s uncontrollable fires in recent years exist 

just outside this building; over-dense forests of dead and dying trees, and excessive 

accumulations of brush and woody debris are a tinderbox waiting for a spark. 

Two days ago the President signed the Healthy Forests Restoration Act into law. 

Congressman Walden, one of the authors of the bill, and I have worked with the 

forestry community for years to develop and pass this important legislation and are 

now poised to make sure that it is implemented quickly and correctly. It has provisions that will allow communities to have more say in the management of surrounding forests and will speed up decisionmaking processes so that hazardous fuels 

can be removed faster with less red tape and fewer appeals and lawsuits. While this 

landmark legislation will not solve all forestry problems, it is the first pro-forestry 

bill to be signed into law in decades and will make a difference in the management 

of our forests. I expect our federal land managers to employ it immediately on the 

forests in this area and am anxious to hear their plans for doing so. 

With the Healthy Forests Restoration Act becoming law, I believe that we have 

finally turned the corner away from the benign neglect of our forests towards 

thoughtful and scientific management, but I am also very aware that much work 

is left to be done; this law will need to be refined as we learn it’s inadequacies, 

while other laws, such as the Endangered Species Act, still need to be addressed. 

Bringing communities back into the fold is an important first step, now we must 

insure that on-the-ground restoration begins in earnest and on a broad scale. 

To begin to address these important issues, I would like to start today by thanking our witnesses and those in the audience for joining us. I would also like to extend my condolences to the families of those who lost their lives as a result of the 

wildfires, and thank all the firefighters who risk their lives to protect homes and 

communities. I’d also like to extend my thanks to the Chairman of the San 

Bernardino City Board of Supervisors, Dennis Hansberger, for hosting us once 

again. Finally, I’d like to thank the other members of Congress for attending today, 

in particular, Representative Lewis for having us back to his district and for helping 

secure millions of dollars of appropriations in support of hazardous fuels reduction 

projects. His direct involvement put California at the front of the line for receiving 

these federal funds. I look forward to his continued support and to working with 

all of you on these important issues. 

4

STATEMENT OF JERRY LEWIS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. LEWIS. First, thank you very much, Chairman Pombo, for 

bringing the Committee here and providing this opportunity for the 

community to begin to understand the response of the Congress to 

this tragedy. I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, you were here on 

September 22, just weeks before a tragedy struck, but we all knew 

in the offing was not just this challenge but the reality of a potential disaster. We have experienced a significant piece of that disaster, but I know that your Committee members flew by helicopter 

over the mountains just this morning to look one more time, first 

at the damage, but the remainder only somewhere at a maximum 

10 percent, but more likely five percent of the bark beetle infested 

trees were impacted by this fire, which means that lightning strike 

could lead to an inferno tomorrow. The challenge is still very, very 

much ahead of us. And I do not know how we are going to go about 

eliminating all of those millions of dead trees, but we must do that 

and it is going to take years and millions and millions of dollars 

as well as effort and man-hour support and the like. 

Mr. Chairman, as we came in this morning, I noticed some protesters out front with signs who would suggest that maybe we 

should not cut trees, that maybe there is some way to do this by 

waving a magic wand. I absolutely feel strongly for those who are 

concerned about our environment. You know of my past involvement in air quality questions in California myself. I hold no second 

spot in my mind’s eye to this interest. But to have no habitat at 

all is not acceptable. Today, in my forest, we have eliminated the 

habitat in the form of tens of thousands of acres of species that we 

are very concerned about because of a lack of cooperative venture. 

And perhaps here, starting today, Mr. Chairman, we may have the 

opportunity to begin a base group of people who will start at 

ground zero and work hand in hand to try to figure out how you 

preserve the environment but restore our forests and indeed prevent this tragedy from ever striking this region again, once we 

have come together to find the solutions necessary. 

So thank you very much for being here. I might mention, Mr. 

Chairman, you mentioned dollars. We were successful in getting a 

commitment and appropriation of $500 million in the recent supplemental to respond to this challenge. About half of that money 

has been redirected to the Forest Service so that services can be 

delivered more rapidly and services that are needed immediately 

can begin to take place. The Committee, Mr. Chairman, the Conference Committee, said before God and everybody that day that 

that was only a down-payment. And so indeed, the Federal government is going to be at the plate. But all of us are going to have 

to share in this at the local community, the fire service agencies, 

the State of California, the County of San Bernardino—we are all 

in this together. 

So thank you very much for your courtesy and for being with us. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you. Mr. Baca. 

5

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOE BACA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. BACA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I 

want to thank you and I do not know if I was put on the left side 

because I am the Democrat and everybody else is on the right side, 

but I really want to thank you and welcome you to our district. We 

are here to talk about the tragedy that recently changed our lives. 

And it really has changed our lives. As Congressman Lewis indicated, I believe it is a volcano that is ready to explode at any time 

if we do not deal with the wildfires in the area that destroyed 

many of our homes and businesses and devastated our entire community. 

As indicated, nearly 740,000 acres were burned, over 3,360 

homes were destroyed and 26 people lost their lives. To me, when 

you lose one life, you have lost too many lives. At one point, nearly 

16,000 firefighters risked their safety to help save our forest and 

protect our lives. We owe a great gratitude to a lot of the firefighters. 

If I may have your permission, I would like to have every firefighter that is here from the Forest Service or other, could you 

please stand and let us give them a round of applause. 

[Applause.] 

Mr. BACA. These are the men and women really who courageously saved a lot of what could have happened, it could have 

been worse. 

On Wednesday, President Bush signed the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. I have been consistent in supporting the President in 

this initiative, I am happy that both houses voted on this legislation, though some may see it as a Monday quarterbacking since we 

were warned for years that this was going to happen. I supported 

this bill three different times, I supported it in Committee and I 

supported it on the Floor. Many of us knew that the dead trees left 

out there were simply matches waiting to be ignited or exploding 

as volcanoes. I am unhappy that it took a devastating fire like this 

to pass this law, but now hopefully we have the law in place to 

make sure that something like this never happens again and I 

think that is what we are here to talk about, is to look at how we 

may prevent further damage to our area. 

I commend both Chairman Pombo and Congressman McInnis for 

sending the legislation to the President’s desk. But now the fires 

are over and we need to focus on recovery. 

Water quality has always been a major problem in my district. 

We have consistently had to fight perchlorate contamination and 

drought. The families in my district have been conserving water for 

months and many of them are scared to give their babies water 

from the tap because of the perchlorate. So this is something that 

also affects us. And now with the fires, they have gotten worse. We 

are at the risk of ashes and debris creeping in the water supplies 

in some places like soil which has been scorched that is stopping 

water from soaking into the ground that is going to have a huge 

impact on Rialto and the Colden water basin. 

I am also concerned about the impact that wildfires have had on 

Native American tribes in our area, 10 tribes in southern 

California have suffered damages from the wildfires—San 

6

Pasquale, Dana Mission Indians lost 67 acres of the 68 homes. San 

Manuel lost 98 percent of its vegetation because of the wildfires. 

I hope today we will discuss what Congress can do to help these 

tribes as part of the community to bounce back from the destruction. 

I welcome my colleagues from the Inland Empire and I thank the 

witnesses for being here today and I look forward to hearing answers to some of the questions and I look forward to working in 

a bipartisan way to solve this problem because we have all got to 

come together, this is not a Democratic issue, this is not a Republican issue, this is not an Independent issue, but this is an issue 

that impacts all of us. And together we can make a difference and 

we look forward to solving these problems and hopefully we can 

prevent further damages to our areas and really look at the beautification, because as we flew over the area it was nice to see the 

beauty of the forests the way it is in some of the areas where it 

has not been devastated but in some of the areas when you look 

at it, it was like looking at a dinosaur, empty, shrubs in the area, 

it does not look pretty. 

We are looking forward to restoring that. And when we look at 

this immediate area, we look at the corridor of I-15 that runs right 

through this area. What additional damage could have been done 

to as well because this is where nuclear waste and other transfers 

go from here to Nevada, through that area. Can you imagine if our 

firefighters and others had not done what they had done and if at 

that time there was any transfer of anything, what it could have 

done to this immediate area? It is not only this area but the effects 

it could have had in our whole region. 

I thank you and I look forward to hearing from the witnesses. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you. Mr. Calvert. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. KEN CALVERT, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. CALVERT Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank you 

for having this hearing and I certainly want to thank Congressman 

Lewis for hosting us here in his Congressional District. I will keep 

my remarks extremely brief. 

I know we want to get to our panels. But I as well as all of us 

want to thank the courageous firefighters and the first responders. 

What a fantastic evacuation in the face of a disaster, it could have 

been a lot worse, as we said, but people were successfully able to 

get off the mountain. This could have been much worse. 

I certainly want to thank you for your efforts on the healthy forest initiative, I think that is a step forward. The work that needs 

to be done is enormous. As a native of southern California, we have 

seen these fires which have been a part of our life here in 

California, but of late, they have become more often and more 

fierce. So hopefully, with this legislation, we can take positive 

proactive steps to prevent this from happening. 

Certainly I am concerned about the secondary effects of this. 

Chairing the Water Subcommittee and looking at the precious resource that we have here which is obviously very scarce, as Mr. 

Baca indicates, we are very concerned about water quality and the 

7

effects off mountain that are going to happen because of flood problems and water quality issues. So that will be of interest also. 

But again, thank you for this hearing and look forwards to listening to these panels today. Thank you. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Radanovich. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. GEORGE RADANOVICH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF 

CALIFORNIA 

Mr. RADANOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this 

hearing today, and to you, Jerry, for hosting it. 

I come from the Yosemite part of California and 10 years ago, 

about 10 or 12 years ago, experienced bark beetle devastation, 

nothing to what I have seen on the helicopter tour around here. 

This is amazing. But I think that we have got a valuable tool in 

the healthy forest initiative because my experience has been when 

there was the desire to go in and harvest these trees, that the previous Administration would stall in their efforts to go harvest them 

and there were also lawsuits filed to block the harvesting of this 

kind of timber until it sat dead in the forest for so long that it was 

no longer economically viable. 

I am looking forward to a good discussion with this panel and 

others about how that might be avoided this time around, because 

that is an awful fire danger out there. 

I look forward to the testimony and appreciate the hearing being 

here. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Walden. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. GREG WALDEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the only non-Californian here on the panel, I appreciate the opportunity to come back. 

I was here with you September 22. I want to thank Congressman 

Lewis and you for having this hearing on this very important issue. 

I think we learned on September 22 what to anticipate in case of 

fire. We have seen that come into reality. 

What we have to do now is evaluate what happens after a fire, 

because sometimes the consequences are even worse after a fire 

than before, when you begin to look at water quality issues, habitat 

issues, flood issues, sediment issues as well as setting up for the 

next monster fire. That I think is probably my biggest concern, is 

what do we do now after a fire. The smoke has cleared, the problem may have gotten worse, not better. As I understand it, there 

is a very small percentage of the diseased trees that actually 

burned, something less than 10 percent, which means the problem 

we so identified last fall in September remains and with the other 

stresses now in the forest, the other burn material that is out 

there, the fire danger may actually be greater and now you also 

face the terrible environmental potential of mudslides, sediment 

and other pollution. 

So, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your great leadership on this. 

We saw flying up today the result of a no-action alternative. A noaction alternative means you do not do anything, and for many 

years, many people thought doing nothing in the forest might be 

8

the best thing for the forest. Most of us recognize that was not 

true. We have a picture now in our minds of the effect of no-action 

alternatives—this enormous fire, monster fire, catastrophic damage. We cannot just walk away from these forests, these chaparral 

areas, and expect them to survive unless you want monster fire 

and great destruction and devastation. And I for one do not want 

that. 

So, Mr. Chairman, thank you for this. I look forward to our witnesses and I look forward to future legislative initiatives to do postfire what we are now doing with the Healthy Forest Restoration 

Act for pre-fire activity. 

Mr. POMBO. Ms. Bono. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. MARY BONO, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Ms. BONO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here 

with all of you. I do not sit on the Resources Committee, I am on 

the Energy and Commerce Committee, but I represent an area that 

is very similar to this area and that would be Idyllwild, and I know 

that the photos we are seeing today and much of the discussion 

will not be focused on Idyllwild, but I would like to remind all of 

you to think of Idyllwild as we make this discussion. 

I would also like to thank Chairman Lewis, who we have worked 

together so closely on this issue. We flew the area a year ago at 

least and looked for some solutions and ideas that were really outof-the-box type of thinking and I commend the Chairman—even 

though he called Chairman Pombo, Chairman Bono—he probably 

does not know he did that, but I appreciate the raise in stature 

over there. 

[Laughter.] 

Ms. BONO. It is really Jerry’s leadership that has been unbelievable as always. 

This area, Congressman Lewis, has been near and dear to my 

heart for my entire life. I grew up in southern California and my 

first ski run was actually at what used to be called Goldmine, for 

all of you old timers up here, you remember Goldmine, it was a 

long time ago, and I really believe the forests are such a critical 

and essential part of southern California lifestyle and would hate 

to think of them being gone 1 day, but that reality is here. 

Like Congressman Calvert said, I would also like to commend 

the community for evacuating 58,000 people without a single incident is really something that is amazing to have witnessed, but 

knowing that that came from within the community as we face this 

crisis here and in Idyllwild, people have been addressing what can 

be done from the community’s point of view and things like evacuation routes were high on the priority list and you were quite successful at that. And like Congressman Calvert said, I applaud you 

for that. 

But the different twist for me, I am in sort of the way of thinking 

here that we are still waiting for the other shoe to drop. We had 

no catastrophic fires over in Idyllwild, but we are still waiting, as 

are all of you up here. We are waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

My questions, truly for policymakers in Washington as well as in 

Sacramento, are how are we best equipped to deal with this, and 

9

Congressman Lewis and I sat with FEMA and asked them for their 

help a long time ago and tried to press the case that this was a 

crisis that had already occurred and that FEMA needed to come in 

and help with this. Unfortunately, on the day of October 24, FEMA 

came out and said they would not be able to help us and I was a 

little bit frustrated by the timing, but southern California was 

ablaze and that FEMA made that statement. 

The truth of the matter really is we do need to discuss the roles 

that both FEMA and OES play in this situation, because we do not 

want to dilute their responsibilities as they are faced with homeland security and other pressing issues, but how can we best address removing these trees and getting the job done. And I think 

that is a discussion that we should have perhaps today and certainly back in Washington and Sacramento. 

I would also like to add, as we are frustrated perhaps by protesters, I would like to say that I believe multiple voices can be 

added to this debate. We had very successful legislation that we 

wrote in the previously 44th District of California when we established the Santa Rosa/San Jacinto National Monument, when we 

brought together all interested parties—the environmental community sat down with our builders and we came up with wonderful 

legislation that to this day everybody is very happy with. And I believe if we address this in the same spirit where we come together 

and have discussions and truly do what is best to move this forward, we can be quite successful and I hope we use the National 

Monument Act as an example of that spirit. 

So I want to again thank you, Mr. Chairman Pombo, for having 

me here today. Thank you and I yield back. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you. I would like to introduce our first panel 

of witnesses. We have Chief of the Forest Service Dale Bosworth 

who is accompanied by Mr. Jack Blackwell and Mr. Gene Zimmerman; the Honorable Mike Chrisman, Secretary-Designate, 

California Resource Agency; and Ms. Anne Kinsinger, Regional Biologist, Western Region, USGS, accompanied by Mr. Jon Keely, Research Scientist, Western Ecological Research Center. 

Before we begin, I would like to ask you to stand. It is customary 

in the Resources Committee to swear in all of our witnesses, so if 

you would stand and raise your right hand. 

[Witnesses sworn.] 

Mr. POMBO. Let the record show they answered in the affirmative. 

Let me remind the witnesses that under Committee rules, you 

must limit your oral statements to five minutes, but your entire 

written testimony will appear in the record. 

I now recognize Chief Bosworth for his statement. 

STATEMENT OF DALE BOSWORTH, CHIEF, U.S. FOREST SERVICE, ACCOMPANIED BY JACK BLACKWELL, REGIONAL FORESTER, PACIFIC SW REGION, U.S. FOREST SERVICE and 

GENE ZIMMERMAN, FOREST SUPERVISOR, U.S. FOREST 

SERVICE 

Mr. BOSWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I really appreciate the invitation to be here today and to talk about some of the 

10

efforts that we have underway for restoring and protecting the natural resources that were affected by these devastating fires. 

I also want to thank you for your leadership in helping to get us 

the Healthy Forest Restoration Act that was signed into law, as 

you said, on Wednesday, and thank the rest of the members of the 

Committee for that help too. It is going to make a big difference. 

It was a very good day for the Forest Service last Wednesday when 

the President signed that. So thank you for that. 

Now as we concentrate our efforts on some of these National Forest System lands in trying to do this restoration work, I want to 

also make sure that we all recognize that there were some equally 

devastating effects of these fires on some of the local people and 

local communities and we just feel very bad for those people and 

we want to do all the things that we can in the Forest Service to 

try to help them. 

My statement will focus on the work of my agency, but again, we 

all know that there has been a tremendous amount and continues 

to be a tremendous amount of cooperation among all agencies. And 

as I say, while my statement focuses on the Forest Service, there 

is lots of other things going on that we recognize. Cooperation 

began long before the fires and I am very proud of Forest Supervisor Gene Zimmerman here, and his folks for the role that they 

played in helping the communities become prepared for this situation long before it happened. And I also think it is incredible that 

58,000 people were evacuated from the mountain, some of them in 

the middle of the night without electricity, and that there were no 

incidents. And that is because of good planning and good leadership. And all the people involved in that should feel very proud as 

an example for the rest of the country. 

There are many examples of heroic work that took place during 

these fires. They saved homes, they saved lives. But you know, I 

do not think we ought to be putting our firefighters in a situation 

where they have to be heroes day after day after day. There is a 

better way. And that way is restoring these fire dependent ecosystems to a healthy condition. 

Our focus at the moment is going to be on restoring and protecting the natural resources after these fires. The work that we 

are doing here I think may be the most challenging stabilization 

effort that we have ever been involved in in the Forest Service. We 

have our very best expertise here available to help, to do what they 

can. 

The chaparral areas where most of the fire occurred is different 

than the forest types and they require different treatments for both 

the rehabilitation as well as for risk reduction. So we have always 

got to be careful that we do not try to think of a one size fits all 

solution to any of these problems, but we look at the habitat type 

and the forest types that we are trying to deal with in each area. 

The risk remains high in these bark beetle killed areas as we 

saw on our helicopter trip, because there is so much of that that 

remains out there and so many more trees that continue to die. 

Before these fires were controlled though, while they were still 

burning, we had teams that were onsite that were evaluating and 

assessing the work that needed to be done in terms of rehabilitation and restoration. We activated four large burned area 

11

emergency rehabilitation teams, we call them BAER teams. These 

BAER teams assess and they map the damage that has been 

caused by these fires and they design and implement rehabilitation 

plans to help protect life and property and reduce further damage 

from these fires. 

As a result of the fires, ground cover has been burned away, exposing the soil to erosion hazards. This increased hazard exposes 

homes then that may not have previously been in the pathway of 

floods or susceptible to flood damage, but may be now. We are stabilizing slopes by spreading thousands of tons of straw mulch, we 

are digging catchment basins to slow down water, reshaping roads. 

We are clearing ditches, installing culverts to ensure adequate 

drainage systems. As you know, more water will run off now because we do not have the ground cover to catch it and so the existing culverts may not be large enough to carry that water, so we 

need to replace them with larger culverts. To date, we have approved $9 million toward this effort and we have spent over $2.5 million at this point. Some examples of places 

that we are doing work—Silverwood Lake is a big concern, it is a 

major supplier of drinking water to over 12 million people, if I understand that correctly. Much of the forest around the lake was 

burned in the old fire. We are placing rice straw on hundreds of 

acres of burned areas there to slow or reduce the ash and the debris movement to the lake. 

The Sespe Oil Fields on the Los Padres National Forest is another area where we are concerned. Floods or debris could cut oil 

and gas transmission lines, and the road system there provides access to feed California condors by the Fish and Wildlife Service on 

a daily basis. We are stabilizing the road system to reduce the risk 

to the pipeline and also to assure access to these condors. 

So this BAER work is ongoing. We expect to be done generally 

by mid-December. 

I want to say something about the Forest Service’s Research and 

Development Branch. We have what I believe is the best natural 

resource, and it is the largest natural resource research and development organization in the world. This group is bringing their expertise to southern California to aid in the recovery efforts by assisting the BAER teams in assessing the situation and providing 

advice. The Pacific Southwest Research Station has laboratories all 

over California is one of the best in the country. They have some 

of the brightest scientists there that are here to help and they will 

do everything they can. 

We are also addressing issues of advanced technologies for fire 

resistant housing, for biomass removal and techniques that homeowners can implement to reduce their risk of wildland fire damage. 

There will also be some things that our scientists are doing to 

try to make sure that we are designing follow up studies so that 

we can fill in the gaps of knowledge in the science of fire recovery, 

so we can learn from what happens and what takes place from 

these efforts. 

I do want to point out that emergency stabilization, this BAER 

work, is focused on short-term actions—short-term actions—to get 

burned areas through one or two seasons. This work is funded 

through our fire suppression funds because it is emergency. Now 

12

more rehabilitation work may be necessary over the next several 

years to ensure that watershed work is maintained, that invasive 

weeds do not spread, that land is vegetated and key transportation 

routes and facilities are available. That work is funded through our 

regular national forest system appropriations. 

Now this is important work and we are going to have to set priorities in this work in light of our responsibilities to sustain all of 

our other Forest Service programs, because we will have to take 

dollars from other programs to do this longer term restoration work 

here. 

Even after these fires though, we are going to continue to face 

serious forest and rangeland health issues here and around the 

rest of the country. Restoring and rehabilitating our fire adapted 

ecosystems I believe is the most important task that our agency is 

going to undertake over at least the next decade. And again, the 

way that we are going to deal with these fires in the long term is 

by dealing with the forest. It is a forest management problem, not 

a fire problem. 

We have made a commitment to move aggressively in accelerating vegetative treatments that will improve the fire condition 

class at the landscape level. We will be moving forward in the implementation of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act rapidly so that 

we can get on the ground and get more of the dollars to the ground 

to get this work done. We will be working closer with people, closer 

with the communities in implementing that healthy forest legislation, and that is critical that we have the people with us, that we 

work together across the landscape, not looking simply at one ownership or another, but looking at it as a landscape and working together to solve the problem. And we will be doing that. 

I must say though I was a little disappointed the day after the 

Healthy Forest Restoration Act was passed when I was looking 

through some web pages on the computer and saw a couple of environmental web pages that already had documents on how we can 

litigate and stop any of the projects under the healthy forest legislation. It is disappointing to me because I did not see anything that 

said how we can maybe make the projects better. Because that is 

what we ought to all be working at, how can we make the projects 

better than immediately jumping to how can we stop the projects. 

I hope that through effective public participation, effective public 

involvement, we will be able to bring all of these groups into the 

fold in how we manage at least the national forests. 

Thanks again for the opportunity to be here and we will be 

happy to answer any questions you might have. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you. Mr. Chrisman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bosworth follows:]

Statement of Dale Bosworth, Chief, U.S. Forest Service,

United States Department of Agriculture 

Introduction 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to discuss with your committee the 

status of our efforts for restoring and protecting the natural resource values that 

were affected by the recent fire events in Southern California. As we concentrate 

our efforts on National Forest System lands affected by the fires, we also recognize 

the equally devastating effects from this disaster on the local population, communities and other land management organizations. The activities now being undertaken by our agency and local, county, state and federal partners may be the most 

13

challenging restoration effort that we have ever encountered. The skill that is needed and the scale of the effort are extraordinary. We are bringing the greatest expertise available to restore the vegetation and soil resources that were affected by the 

fires as quickly as possible. 

Southern California Fire Review 

As you were able to see today, the Southern California fires of 2003 were some 

of the most destructive wildfire events, in terms of structures lost and lives affected, 

in recent history. In three weeks, wildfires burned over 739,000 acres, 22 people lost 

their lives as a result of the fires, and 3,623 homes were destroyed. Thirty-five percent of the burned acreage was on National Forest System lands. Five large fires, 

the Paradise, Piru, Old, Grand Prix and Cedar fires were located on the Angeles, 

San Bernardino, Los Padres and Cleveland National Forests. The Forest Service 

spent over $71 million to suppress these fires. Before the fires were fully controlled, 

we had teams on site evaluating and assessing the work that needed to be done. 

Today, I would like to describe to you the progress of our current efforts and our 

goals for the future. 

Current Emergency Stabilization Efforts 

Emergency stabilization in Southern California is a multi-agency cooperative effort, accomplished across federal, state, private and tribal lands. The Forest Service 

is coordinating with the Natural Resource Conservation Service, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the Department of the Interior and local 

governments to make the emergency stabilization effort as effective and seamless 

as possible. The Forest Service activated four large Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation (BAER-pronounced ‘‘bear’’) Teams, one per National Forest, to implement 

the emergency stabilization work. These teams are the equivalent of twelve normalsized BAER teams which usually have 6 to 8 members per team. BAER teams are 

assembled on fires where resources may be at risk. The teams assess and map the 

damage caused by a fire and design and implement a rehabilitation plan. The goal 

is to protect life and property and reduce further natural and cultural resource damage. 

As a result of the fires, much ground cover has been burned away, exposing the 

soil to the direct impact of rain. In addition, depending on the severity of the fire, 

the soil itself may repel water, rather than absorbing it. Less water soaking into 

the soil makes it difficult for seeds to germinate and for surviving plants to obtain 

water. These conditions may set the stage for soil erosion and for more rapid flooding when rains occur. Homes that were previously considered not in the path of 

flood waters will be susceptible to being damaged or lost to floods. 

We are working to stabilize slopes scoured bare by the fires. On the ground and 

from the air, crews will spread thousands of tons of rice straw. The mulching is designed to help speed the growth of grasses whose roots will help stabilize the soil. 

This effort, however, is not without limitations. Mulching on slopes steeper than 60 

degrees can do more harm than good. The straw washes downhill and clogs culverts 

and storm drains. 

Treatments are designed to reduce flood levels and to direct the flood waters away 

from homes, property and places where people are likely to be. Here in Southern 

California, catchment basins are used to collect and slow water and debris. We are 

reshaping roads, clearing ditches and installing culverts to assure that road systems 

have drainage systems to carry storm water safely and effectively. 

Floods often carry debris and mud with them. These debris torrents can damage 

or destroy critical natural resources, homes and property. Silverwood Lake on the 

San Bernardino National Forest, supplies drinking water to 12 million people. Much 

of the forest surrounding the lake was burned in the 91,000 acre Old Fire. During 

a heavy rain, ash and debris could wash into the lake overloading the filtration and 

sanitation systems. We are placing hundreds of acres of rice straw on the severely 

burned areas to slow or reduce the ash and debris movement into the lake. 

Other values at risk include the Sespe Oil Fields on the Los Padres National Forest. Floods or debris torrents in the oil field could cut through the oil and gas transmission pipes, causing leaks. The road system that accesses the oil fields also provides access to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Condor Wildlife Refuge, 

where the USFWS feeds the condors on a daily basis. If this road system were lost 

to a flood or debris torrent, the condors would be at risk. We are stabilizing the road 

system to reduce the risk to the pipelines and assure access to the condors. 

Approximately $9 million in (BAER) Forest Service funds have been approved for 

work on the Southern California Fires. To implement the emergency work as soon 

as possible, funds are approved incrementally as needs are identified. As of this 

week we have expended $2.5 million in emergency restoration funds. Recent rains 

14

have had a positive effect by encouraging sprouting and regrowth of vegetation. The 

moisture has not been heavy enough to increase the damage in the burned areas. 

We do know that, if heavy winter rains occur, subsequent flooding and mud slides 

will follow. What we are trying to do now is evaluate where the biggest threats are 

and limit the damage as much as possible. The work of the BAER teams is expected 

to be completed by mid-December. 

Science and Technology Transfer 

As community leaders, citizens, land managers and institutions, such as the insurance industry, assess the situation and begin recovery efforts, it is important 

that they have the latest and best scientific expertise and information. Our Forest 

Service Research and Development organization is the largest natural resource research organization in the world. This group is bringing its expertise to Southern 

California recovery efforts by leading a coalition of scientific and technical organizations to assist the BAER teams in assessing the situation and providing advice and 

expertise on recovery efforts. We will also be designing follow-up studies to fill in 

key gaps in the science of fire recovery efforts where we still have information 

needs. The plan of action developed by these scientific specialists will go well beyond 

the initial efforts of recovery and stabilization and address such issues as: (1) advanced technologies in fire resistant housing construction; (2) factors impeding the 

effective implementation of biomass removal; and (3) techniques that homeowners 

can implement to reduce their risk within the wildland urban interface. 

Rehabilitation Efforts 

The emergency stabilization (BAER) work is focused on short-term actions to get 

burned areas through one or two seasons, especially the critical first season. This 

work is expected to be completed within weeks. Additional rehabilitation work will 

take place over the next several years to maintain the watershed work started, minimize the spread of invasive weeds into areas disturbed by the fire, revegetate land 

and keep key transportation routes open. 

In addition to the lands burned in Southern California this year, a total of 1.4 

million acres were burned on National Forest System lands this year with over 

198,000 acres so severely burned that serious erosion hazards were created. The 

total cost of rehabilitation work in FY 2003 was met through appropriations and by 

reprioritizing our program of work. We recognize that these long-term rehabilitation 

needs are important. We will continue to weigh the priorities of this work in light 

of our responsibilities to sustain our other Forest Service programs to protect, manage and restore resource values on National Forest System lands. The rehabilitation 

work includes: reforestation, treatments for noxious weeds, wildlife habitat improvement, follow up on erosion and sedimentation mitigation, and rehabilitation of roads 

and recreation trails. 

10-Year Comprehensive Strategy 

Mr. Chairman, our expenditures on wildland fire suppression doubled in the last 

10 years, illustrating the serious forest and rangeland health problem we face. As 

bad as the fires were, they burned for the most part in chaparral areas and did not 

appreciably change the forest health situation on forested lands in Southern California, particularly on the San Bernardino National Forest which has the most serious situation. In the forested areas, much of the remaining unburned acres are still 

choked with mostly small trees, many of which are dead and dying from drought 

and bark beetle infestations. Much of these forested lands remain at risk. 

In addition we know that brushlands of Southern California are serious fire hazards. We also know that high severity crown fires have been a characteristic of 

chaparral landscapes for thousands of years and will continue to be. Wildland fire 

in Southern California and across much of the United States is an integral part of 

nature. Large chaparral fires tend to burn under very severe drought and high wind 

conditions that make control difficult or impossible. This does not mean that infrastructure damage is inevitable. Because we have communities and homes adjacent 

to, and within, these landscapes, we need to work together to reduce the danger 

through public-private partnerships. Treating vegetation zones around communities, 

roads and other important infrastructure can be effective when combined with programs where communities implement projects to fire-safe their homes and communities. 

We advocate a comprehensive approach to address this and other situations 

across the country. In cooperation with the Western Governors’ Association, our federal, state and tribal partners and interested stakeholders we have developed a 10-

year Comprehensive Strategy and Implementation Plan to reduce wildland fire risks 

to communities and the environment. We are in the second year of implementing 

this strategy that acknowledges fire’s role in the ecosystem. Restoring and 

15

rehabilitating our fire adapted ecosystems may be the most important task that our 

agency undertakes. The Strategy and Implementation Plan provides a road map for 

helping communities to protect themselves from the risk of wildland fire. 

The Comprehensive Strategy recognizes the need to shift our fire management 

emphasis from a reactive to a proactive approach. We are moving from treating 

symptoms towards treating the underlying problems and strategically placing hazardous fuel treatments throughout our nation’s forests and rangelands to change 

large-scale fire behavior. 

On the San Bernardino National Forest, implementing this strategy is underway. 

We have through cooperative efforts, reduced fuels along roadways to provide effective evacuation routes, thinned and removed dead trees, reduced fuel hazards and 

provided fuel breaks all of which were effective during the recent fires. Additional 

work remains, on the National Forests in Southern California as well as other areas 

across the country which are experiencing serious forest health problems. 

On December 3rd, the President signed into law the Healthy Forests Restoration 

Act of 2003, which will give federal agencies needed additional tools to implement 

the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy and Implementation Plan. I want to thank you 

Mr. Chairman for your support and leadership in the development and passage of 

this vitally important legislation. 

The Act authorizes the Forest Service and other federal agencies to work directly 

with communities at risk in the development of community wildfire protection 

plans. The Secretaries of Agriculture and of the Interior will consider the recommendations within these community plans when developing an annual program 

of work. The Act requires the agencies to work collaboratively with local communities and interested parties when developing hazardous fuels reduction projects, 

and reduces the number of alternatives the agencies are required to conduct environmental analyses for proposed projects. The changes described in the Act should 

reduce the time span that occurs prior to management actions taking place. 

Successful integration of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act in the implementation of the Comprehensive Strategy will result in landscape-scale changes that significantly reduce the potential for large, damaging fires. I, along with our Regional 

Foresters, have made a commitment to move forward aggressively in accelerating 

vegetative treatments that improve condition class in fire-adapted ecosystems on 

National Forest System lands. 

I also wish to thank the Congress for providing additional funding in FY 2004 to 

help meet the challenge of reducing fire risk. In California, $15 million in hazardous 

fuel reduction funding and $25 million for state and private funding will help the 

state and local communities reduce wildfire hazards. 

Conclusion 

We will do our best to rehabilitate and restore the resources that were affected 

by these fires. I am confident that we have the right talent and teams in place to 

accomplish this work in cooperation with local and state agencies. At this time, I 

will be pleased to answer any questions that the committee may have. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MIKE CHRISMAN, 

SECRETARY-DESIGNATE, CALIFORNIA RESOURCES AGENCY 

Mr. CHRISMAN. Thank you, Chairman Pombo and members of the 

Committee. It is a pleasure to be here and on behalf of Governor 

Schwarzenegger, I appreciate the opportunity to testify before this 

Committee today to discuss the catastrophic wildfires experienced 

here in California this fall. 

Again, as other speakers have said, I appreciate the great efforts 

of the Chairman and the entire Resources Committee in getting the 

Healthy Forest Act passed—which, as we know, President Bush 

signed earlier this week. 

Recent wildfires here in southern California have caused devastation on a scale that I have not seen in my lifetime. The lost acreage, the tragic loss of lives and, of course, the dollar cost is yet to 

be determined, but it is going to be in the hundreds and hundreds 

of millions of dollars. Beyond that human toll, southern California 

fires, of course, represent a major environmental catastrophe, the 

16

scale of which we are still to determine. These fires destroyed not 

only trees, but watershed and habitat for the flora and fauna. 

Like others, both on the dais as members and here on the witness stand, I would like to take the opportunity to commend the 

thousands of individuals who helped fight the fires, 15,000 people 

contributed to the army of firefighters and medics and logistical 

supporters and volunteers who helped to eventually extinguish 

these fires. In the midst of this widespread destruction it is easy 

to forget the achievements of the Federal, state and other local 

agencies. 

As most of you are aware, former Governor Davis, in consultation 

with then Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, named a Blue 

Ribbon Commission to review the efforts to fight the state’s recent 

wildfires and provide recommendations to prevent destruction from 

future fires. The Commission will present its recommendations in 

March of 2004. Andrea Tuttle the State Forester at the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection here in California, will represent the Resources Agency on that Commission and I urge the 

Committee to include a copy of the Commission’s report and recommendations as a part of the hearing record, if we might, please. 

The State of California with its Federal and local partners has 

made great strides in preparing for large scale wildfires and mobilizing resources to react once a fire begins. There is ample examples down in this part of the world in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties where managing fire emergencies through incident 

command-based, multi-agency organizations have been very successful over time. These organizations, of course, have developed 

and operate with strategic plans to serve as guiding, planning, preparedness, evacuation response and mitigation activities. 

I personally cannot stress enough the importance and strength of 

the inter-agency cooperation we have experienced with our partners in formulating these preparedness plans. Cooperation between 

Regional Forester Jack Blackwell, myself, between Forest Supervisor Gene Zimmerman, CDF Units Tom O’Keefe of San 

Bernardino County and Tom Tisdale of Riverside and between our 

staffs has simply been tremendous. At every step along the way, 

Federal, state and county and special districts work together in 

ways they never experienced before. 

The State of California in preparing for these fires, some of the 

actions that we took: 

The California Department of Forestry took a strong role in 

clearing evacuation routes, reduced the paperwork involved in 

some of the laws that we have to meet. 

The Department of Transportation provided trucks, hauling trees 

and waste. 

The California Integrated Waste Management Board provided 

expanded use of transfer sites. 

The Highway Patrol worked closely with local sheriffs and law 

enforcement agencies. 

And many other examples of excellent cooperation between the 

various agencies. 

Strong inter-agency coordination served California well during 

the recent fires and I pledge to continue efforts under the 

Schwarzenegger Administration. 

17

However, while coordinated planning and effective reaction to 

wildfires is important, this alone does not address the root cause 

of the problem. California forests are in a state of crisis. Policies 

of 100 percent fire suppression and no reasonable thinning have 

left our forests choked full of dead and dying trees, as we have experienced around the Lake Arrowhead area. Some areas around 

this area, tree densities I am told are in the neighborhood of 400 

trees per acre and sometimes more. Scientists estimate historically 

healthy forests in this region would support only 40 to 50 trees per 

acre. With a density 10 times historic levels, trees must compete 

for sunlight and water and as a result more and more trees are 

stressed out and unable to ward off disease or fire. More importantly, the massive increase in forest density creates a virtual tinderbox of forest fuels I think we have all experienced here and 

have seen the result of it. 

Recent drought has, of course, undoubtedly contributed to this 

problem. As any visitor to Lake Arrowhead will tell you, the bark 

beetle infestation has greatly contributed also to the demise of our 

forests and enhanced the tinderbox effect. 

Again, I want to commend the Chairman and the members of the 

Committee for the passage of the Healthy Forest Act. This legislation recognizes that forest management practices need to adapt recent scientific understandings to the causes of wildfire. Under the 

previous Administration here in California, the State of California 

recognized that our forests were in dire need of responsible and active management. The state spent significant resources removing 

dead and dying trees from our forests across the state. Furthermore, following a proclamation from Governor Davis, the California 

Public Utilities Commission has ordered Southern California Edison Company and San Diego Gas & Electric to remove all dead or 

dying trees that could potentially threaten transmission and distribution lines in their service territory. Edison predicts that this 

tree removal will run as high as $400 million and could take several years to complete. 

These efforts and more will be necessary to protect our forests 

and reduce the potential for catastrophic wildfires. This problem 

was not created overnight and will not be solved overnight. It will 

be an expensive endeavor which is especially challenging for a 

state in the midst of fiscal woes. Given the sensitivity to California 

regarding forest management practices, I am convinced that a 

strong stakeholder process in reducing fuels without the help of 

local governments, residents and landowners and interest groups 

simply is not possible. 

I pledge that the Resources Agency will recognize and respect 

differences in geography, habitat and human populations that 

occur in our forests. We will engage stakeholders and look for local 

solutions to managing these forests and reducing the risk of catastrophic fires. 

To meet this challenge, the state must seek innovative solutions 

to forest thinning that both respects our environmental values and 

protects our forests from future fire calamities. One such idea is to 

promote the development of biomass power plants adjacent to our 

forests. Currently most of the dead or diseased trees that are 

18

removed from our forests have little or no commercial value. They 

are often hauled off to municipal dumps or incinerated. 

As we speak, Southern California Edison Company, with the help 

of the California Energy Commission, is pursuing the development 

of multiple biomass plants in areas affected by the bark beetle infestation. By converting wood waste into energy, California can 

protects its forests and provide cleaner, renewable energy to its 

citizens. As Secretary, I will seek to promote biomass power 

sources and other forest management techniques to achieve both 

economic and environmental benefits. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you again for holding this most important 

hearing and as public servants, we know that government is designed to provide basic service and protect its citizens. In the area 

of forest management, oftentimes we are failing at both. The forest 

management policies of the past led to the environmental destruction and the loss of human life and property. If policymakers do not 

rise to this challenge, our forests will continue to burn with the 

massive fires like the ones that ravaged southern California and 

the intermountain west last summer. It is time to start actively 

managing our forests in a way to protect these beautiful resources 

and reduce the risk of these catastrophic fires. 

Thank you very much. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you. 

[Comments from the audience.] 

Mr. POMBO. Before I recognize Ms. Kinsinger, I would just like 

to remind our audience that this is an official Congressional hearing and therefore we are bound by House rules, and as part of the 

House rules, any outbursts from the audience or expressions both 

in favor or opposed to any of the testimony is a violation of House 

rules, so I would like to ask all of you to maintain the decorum that 

is necessary in an official hearing. Thank you. 

Ms. Kinsinger. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Chrisman follows:]

Statement of Mike Chrisman, Secretary, California Resources Agency 

Chairman Pombo and Members of the Committee, on behalf of Governor Arnold 

Schwarzenegger, I appreciate the opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee regarding the catastrophic wildfires that California experienced this fall. I also appreciate the great efforts of the Chairman and the entire Resources Committee in passing the Healthy Forest Act, which President Bush signed earlier this week. 

The recent wildfires in Southern California have caused devastation on a scale not 

seen before in my lifetime. The fires burned 739,597 acres in Southern California. 

At the height of the fires, over 15,000 personnel were actively working to contain 

them. Sadly, 3,631 homes were burned to the ground. Another 36 commercial properties and 1,169 outbuildings were also destroyed. And, most tragically, 22 people 

lost their lives in the fires. The total cost of the recent fires is still unknown, but 

it will surely be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Beyond the human toll, the Southern California fires represent a major environmental catastrophe, the scale of which we cannot yet fully determine. These devastating fires destroyed not only trees but also watersheds and habitat for numerous 

species of flora and fauna. Winter rains will bring further damage, as barren landscapes will lead to widespread erosion, polluting California’s streams, rivers, and 

lakes, and clogging water treatment facilities. 

I want to take this opportunity to commend the thousands of individuals who 

helped fight the fires. As I mentioned earlier, over 15,000 people contributed to the 

army of firefighters, medics, and logistical supporters and volunteers who helped to 

eventually extinguish the fires. In the midst of the widespread destruction, it is easy 

to forget the achievements of Federal, State and local agencies. 

19

As you are aware, former Governor Gray Davis, in consultation with then Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, named a Blue Ribbon Commission to review the 

effort to fight the State’s recent wildfires and provide recommendations to prevent 

destruction from future fires. The Commission will present its recommendations in 

March 2004. Andrea Tuttle, the State Forester at the Department of Forestry and 

Fire Protection, will represent the Resources Agency on the Commission. I urge you 

to include a copy of the Commission’s report and recommendations as part of this 

hearing record. 

State & Local Preparedness 

The State of California, with its Federal and local partners, has made great 

strides in preparing for large-scale wildfires and mobilizing resources to react once 

a fire begins. 

San Bernardino and Riverside Counties manage fire emergencies through an incident command-based, multi-agency organization known as a Mountain Area Safety 

Task Force (MAST). San Diego County created a similar organization called the Forest Area Safety Task Force (FAST). These groups include the county emergency and 

public works organizations, local Fire Safe Councils, the U.S. Forest Service, the 

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF), the Office of Emergency Services, California Highway Patrol, California Department of Transportation, California Department of Fish and Game, and local utility operators. These 

organizations developed and operate from strategic plans that serve to guide planning, preparedness, evacuation response, and mitigation activities. 

I cannot stress enough the importance and the strength of the interagency cooperation we have experienced with our partners in formulating these preparedness 

plans. Cooperation between Regional Forester Jack Blackwell and myself, between 

Forest Supervisor Gene Zimmerman and CDF Unit Chiefs Tom O’Keefe of San 

Bernardino County and Tom Tisdale of Riverside, and between our staffs has been 

tremendous. At every step along the way, the Federal, State, county and special districts worked together in ways they have never experienced before. 

The following is a short summary of the actions taken by the State of California 

in preparation for the recent fires: 

• CDF took a strong role clearing evacuation routes, temporary community shelter sites and fuel breaks utilizing inmate crews. We have reduced the paperwork for cutting trees on private lands, and coordinated implementation of the 

Endangered Species Act with the California Department of Fish and Game, especially with respect to protecting the Southern Rubber Boa snake. 

• The California Department of Transportation provided trucks for hauling tree 

waste to disposal sites, and stockpiled signs, cones and heavy equipment for 

clearing roads in the event of evacuation. 

• The California Integrated Waste Management Board permitted expanded use of 

the transfer sites for the tremendous volumes of wood waste, and the local Air 

Pollution Control District streamlined air quality permits for the air curtain 

burners. Those burners can efficiently dispose of large quantities of forest waste 

at very high temperatures with very little air emission. 

• The California Highway Patrol worked closely with local sheriffs and law enforcement in designing and coordinating evacuation plans to help responders 

get in while getting evacuees out. 

• The Contractors State License Board, in coordination with CDF, is conducting 

field inspections to insure that the public is protected from fraudulent business 

practice. 

• We have participated with all the MAST agencies in San Bernardino County 

in a tabletop exercise to prepare for a wildfire in the Lake Arrowhead area. 

• Every strike team, every firefighter coming into southern California is given a 

copy of this special Red Book, a Structure Protection Pre-Plan and mandatory 

briefing to inform them of the extraordinary fire behavior they may encounter, 

which may exceed anything they have ever experienced before. 

Strong interagency coordination served California well during the recent fires. I 

pledge to continue these efforts under the Schwarzenegger Administration. 

Forest Management is Fire Prevention 

However, while coordinated planning and effective reaction to wildfires is important, this alone does not address the root cause of the problem. California’s forests 

are in a state of crisis. Policies of 100 percent fire suppression and no reasonable 

thinning have left our forests choked full of dead and dying trees. In some areas 

around Lake Arrowhead, tree densities of 400 trees per acre are common. Scientists 

estimate that, historically, a healthy forest in this region would support only 40-50 

trees per acre. With a density ten times historic levels, trees must compete for 

20

1GAO Report 04-52, ‘‘Forest Service: Information on Appeals and Litigation Involving Fuels 

Reduction Activities,’’ October 2003. 

sunlight and water. As a result, more and more trees are stressed out and unable 

to ward off disease or fire. 

More importantly, the massive increase in forest density creates a virtual tinderbox of forest fuels. At one time, naturally occurring fires burned out small trees and 

brush, leaving larger trees unscathed. Today, the vegetation build-up causes fires 

to burn hotter and higher, destroying entire forests in their path. 

Recent drought has undoubtedly contributed to this problem. When trees lack 

adequate water, they are unable to produce the sap that is needed to ward off deadly insects like the bark beetle. As any visitor to Lake Arrowhead can tell you, bark 

beetle infestation has greatly contributed to the demise of our forests and enhanced 

the tinderbox effect. 

Again, I want to commend the Chairman for the passage of the Healthy Forests 

Act. This legislation recognizes that forest management practices need to adapt recent scientific understandings on the causes of wildfires. The U.S. General Accounting Office summarized the problem succinctly in a recent report: 

Human Activities—especially the federal government’s decades-old policy of 

suppressing all wildland fires—have resulted in dangerous accumulations of 

brush, small trees, and other vegetation on federal lands. This vegetation 

has increasingly provided fuel for large, intense wildland fires, particularly 

in the dry, interior western United States. 1

Under the previous Administration, the State of California recognized that our 

forests were in dire need of responsible and active management. The State spent 

significant resources removing dead and dying trees from our forests. Furthermore, 

following a proclamation from Governor Davis, the California Public Utility Commission has ordered Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric to 

remove all dead or dying trees that potentially threaten transmission and distribution lines in their service territory. Edison predicts that tree removal cost will run 

as high as $400 million and could take several years. These efforts, and more, will 

be necessary to protect our forests and reduce the potential for catastrophic 

wildfires. 

But, I want to caution the public. This problem was not created overnight. And, 

it will not be solved overnight. It will be an expensive endeavor, which is especially 

challenging for a State in the midst of fiscal woes. Given the sensitivities in California regarding forest management policies, I am convinced that a strong stakeholder process is essential. The State of California and the U.S. Forest Service are 

not going to be successful in reducing fuels without the help of local governments, 

residents, landowners, and interest groups. I pledge that the Resources Agency will 

recognize and respect differences in geography, habit, and human population that 

occur in our forests. We will engage stakeholders and look for local solutions to 

managing these forests and reducing the risk of catastrophic fire. 

To meet this challenge, the State of California must seek innovative solutions to 

forest thinning that both respects our environmental values and protects our forest 

from future fire calamities. One such idea is to promote the development of biomass 

power plants in or adjacent to our forests. Currently, most of the dead or diseased 

trees that are removed from our forests have little or no commercial value. They 

are often hauled off to municipal dumps or incinerated. In San Bernardino County 

alone, 400-500 tons of wood waste must be disposed of daily. 

As we speak, Southern California Edison, with the help of the California Energy 

Commission, is pursuing the development of multiple biomass plants in areas affected by bark beetle infestation. By converting wood waste into energy, California 

can protect its forests and provide cleaner renewable energy to its citizens. As Secretary, I will seek to promote biomass power sources and other forest management 

techniques that achieve both economic and environmental benefits. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you again for holding this important hearing. As public 

servants, we know that government is designed to provide basic services and protect 

its citizens. In the area of forest management, we are failing on both accounts. The 

forest management policies of the past led to environmental destruction and the loss 

of human life and property. If policymakers do not rise to this challenge, our forests 

will continue to burn in massive fires like the ones that ravaged Southern California 

this fall. It is time to start actively managing our forests in a way that protects 

these beautiful natural resources and reduces the risk of catastrophic fires that 

threaten so many communities in California. 

21

STATEMENT OF ANNE KINSINGER, REGIONAL BIOLOGIST, 

WESTERN REGION, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, ACCOMPANIED BY JON KEELY, RESEARCH SCIENTIST, WESTERN 

ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH CENTER, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 

Ms. KINSINGER. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony. I have with me today Dr. Jon 

Keely and several other USGS scientists, who will be available to 

answer technical questions. Before I begin though, I would like to 

reiterate on behalf of the Department of Interior our gratitude to 

you, Mr. Chairman, and to other members of this Committee for 

the hard work in achieving the passage of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003. As you noted, the President signed that bill 

on Wednesday. The Department is grateful to you for your efforts 

in providing through this legislation additional tools to carry out 

the President’s Healthy Forest Initiative. 

I would also like to extend my sympathies to the local community 

for the losses they suffered during these fires. 

The USGS conducts fire-related research to meet the varied 

needs of the land management community and to understand the 

role of fire on the landscape. This research includes fire management support, studies of post-fire effects and a wide range of studies on fire history and ecology. USGS is an active participant in the 

National Fire Plan and in the DOI and USDA joint fire science program. We are currently working closely with the FEMA-led multiagency support group to respond to these southern California fires 

as well as working with numerous BAER teams. 

My testimony today is going to focus on five aspects of USGS fire 

response—the floods and debris flows, water quality, wildlife effects, invasive species and remote sensing. 

As many of you have already noted, the damage from this year’s 

wildfires in southern California is likely not over. Just as the fires 

were the largest in southern California’s recorded history, the potential for floods and debris flows from the burned areas is great. 

Stormwater runoff in hundreds of very steep drainages with histories of large floods and debris flows will flow into some of the 

most rapidly growing urban areas of California. 

In response, USGS has begun to install rain and stream gauges 

in critical hazard areas. We are meeting with the National Weather Service and flood control agencies to plan expanded flood warning sites. To assess the hazard from debris flows, the USGS has 

begun the modeling necessary to produce debris flow hazard maps 

of some of the most dangerous burn areas. And we do have a handout that we can show you that pinpoints some of the high risk 

areas. We are also working on plans, with the support of FEMA, 

to complete hazard maps for all fire areas. If possible, we will work 

to develop early warning systems both for flash floods and debris 

flows. 

Water quality is also a concern. Fires in southern California have 

produced ash and a variety of chemicals that enter air, soil and 

ground and surface waters. Tracking these chemicals is critical for 

maintaining a healthy water supply and will also provide an understanding for the larger picture of water quality in southern 

California. If possible, the USGS will continue monitoring to deterVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:32 Jun 09, 2004 Jkt 088533 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J:\DOCS\90767.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: KATHY
22

mine the effects of winter floods on sediment and contaminant 

transport in the Santa Ana River Basin. We can also document and 

study the effects of atmospheric fallout and runoff from the fires 

in the San Diego Basin. Both of these basins, as you know, are important water supplies. 

Since the mid-1990s, USGS has been conducting wildlife research in many of the areas impacted by these recent fires, including reptile and amphibian surveys at monitoring stations throughout southern California. We are studying the impact of fire on endangered species and on biodiversity in general and on the recovery 

of vegetation in these ecosystems. Our research has included the 

effectiveness of post-fire treatments, species diversity and abundance, as well as habitat quality assessments and vegetation characteristics. 

The interaction of invasive plants and fire is creating substantial 

challenges also for land managers. Invasive plants can compete 

with native plants, alter wildlife habitat and promote the spread of 

fire. Invasive alien grasses especially benefit from fire. They promote recurrent fire in many cases to the point where native species 

cannot persist and native plant assemblages are converted to annual grasslands. This vegetation type conversion can reduce overall 

biodiversity and increase fire risk. We are continuing our research 

on fire and invasives and the relationship between the two. 

Finally, the USGS is employing this remote sensing expertise to 

the fire aftermath. Fire response requires detailed imagery of the 

burn areas, both for additional research and for on-the-ground response activities. To meet common geographic data needs, the 

USGS is assessing the availability of remotely sensed imagery and 

data from all agency sources. And I would like to take a moment 

to thank the Forest Service in particular for purchasing some of 

this imagery and sharing it among all of the fire response partners. 

In summary, USGS scientists have been studying the natural 

processes in southern California for decades and thus, we have 

some baseline data from which we can understand the long-term 

impacts of these burns. We are moving quickly to provide decisionmakers with the information and tools they need in the aftermath 

of these devastating fires. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks and I would be happy 

to answer any questions you might have. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Kinsinger follows:]

Statement of Anne E. Kinsinger, Western Regional Biologist,

U.S. Geological Survey 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity 

to present this testimony regarding ‘‘Recovering from the Fires: Restoring and Protecting Communities, Water, Wildlife and Forests in Southern California.’’ The 

USGS conducts fire-related research to meet the varied needs of the land management community and to understand the role of fire on the landscape; this research 

includes fire management support, studies of post-fire effects, and a wide range of 

studies on fire history and ecology. USGS is an active participant in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)/Department of the Interior (DOI) National Fire 

Plan, which is a long-term effort focused on helping to protect communities and natural resources. The USGS is also an active participant in the DOI and USDA Joint 

Fire Science Program; a partnership that develops information and tools for managers and specialists who deal with wildland fuels management issues. The Program was authorized and funded by Congress in October 1997. The USGS is using 

23

its unique capabilities to investigate the complex interactions of Earth processes 

with the urban environment in Southern California. 

My statement will describe the role of USGS in post-fire recovery and rehabilitation in Southern California. Before I begin, however, I have been asked to convey 

the gratitude of the Department of the Interior to Chairman Pombo and the other 

members of this Committee for their hard work in achieving the passage of 

H.R. 1904, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003. As you know, the President 

signed that bill on Wednesday. The Department is grateful to you for your efforts 

in providing, through this legislation, the additional tools needed to carry out the 

President’s Healthy Forests Initiative, and the Department looks forward to making 

progress in ongoing efforts to address the problems of wildland fires here in California and elsewhere throughout the Country. 

The recent fires in Ventura, San Bernardino and San Diego counties were devastating in their reach. However, the damage from this year’s wildfires in Southern 

California is likely not complete. Just as the fires were the largest in Southern California’s recorded history, the potential for floods and debris flows from the ravaged 

mountains is great. Storm water run-off in hundreds of drainages in extremely steep 

terrain with histories of large floods and debris flows will flow into some of the most 

rapidly growing urban areas of California. Thousands more homes could potentially 

be destroyed this winter as an indirect impact of the wildfires. Understanding the 

factors controlling the behavior of wildfires and the potential debris flows that are 

the indirect consequence of these fires will lead to improved predictive capabilities, 

helping to plan accurately for and mitigate fire and related hazards in future years 

and for future generations. 

Employing existing data 

We have been studying the natural processes of Southern California, in many 

cases for decades, and thus have baseline data from which we can understand the 

changes brought about by the fires. 

Currently, extensive baseline data exists for two of the focal fire areas. 

• San Diego Basin. The Sweetwater River System in the San Diego Basin consists 

of the Sweetwater River itself, and two receiving reservoirs that are used for 

drinking water supply (Loveland and Sweetwater Reservoirs). This system is 

the primary water supply for one million people, and has been heavily impacted 

by the Cedar fire. The USGS has been conducting atmospheric deposition and 

dissolved organic carbon studies on Sweetwater and Loveland Reservoirs for the 

past five years, and has also been conducting surface-water/ground-water interaction studies focused on the impact of pumping on riparian zones that support 

endangered species. These studies provide excellent data on pre-fire baseline 

conditions. This work will continue to document and study the effects of atmospheric fallout and runoff from fires on a water body used for drinking water. 

It is expected that the fire will increase levels of dissolved organic carbon, which 

will, in turn, increase concentrations of THMs (tri-halomethanes) when that 

water is chlorinated for public supply. If chemical indicators of the fire can be 

found, they will enable tracking of groundwater recharge from the fire areas 

through the alluvial/riparian system, providing accurate estimates of travel 

time. This will assist in providing the data necessary to help insure human 

health while protecting endangered species in the watershed. 

• Santa Ana River Basin. Large parts of the Santa Ana River Basin were burned 

by the Old Fire and the Grand Prix Fire. The USGS has been conducting waterquality studies in the Santa Ana River Basin as part of the National Water 

Quality Assessment (NAWQA) program and several cooperative studies. These 

data can be used to assess the impact of the fires on water quality. Water-quality data are available from 7 mountain drainages, six of which were extensively 

burned. The seventh, the South Fork of the Santa Ana River was not burned 

and will serve as a control—although it received large amounts of atmospheric 

fallout. Existing data at these sites include general minerals, nutrients, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and at selected sites, trace metals, pesticides, and 

semi-volatile organic carbon compounds. The NAWQA sites are strategically located to study the effects of the fire. The data will be collected bimonthly at 

three of the sites for a limited suite of constituents. Ten years of water-quality 

data also are available for downstream sites along the Santa Ana River where 

water is diverted to ponds that recharge aquifers pumped for water supply for 

more than 2 million people. Existing data include nutrients, trace elements, 

pesticides, and selected volatile organic carbon compounds. The study is ongoing 

and three storm flows will be sampled this year for nutrients, DOC concentrations and extensive characterization of the DOC using optical properties. Additional analyses are needed to characterize the effect of the fires. Ash and other 

24

material washed from the basin during storm flow will accumulate in ponds 

used to recharge aquifers underlying Orange County. 

In addition, since 1995, the USGS has been conducting wildlife research in many 

of the areas impacted by the recent fires, including reptile and amphibian surveys 

at fixed monitoring stations throughout Southern California. We knew that it was 

important to understand the response of the natural systems in Southern California 

to urbanization, and we have learned that Southern California is an ecosystem at 

great risk of biodiversity loss. The USGS is studying the impact of fire on endangered species and biodiversity in general and the recovery of vegetation in these ecosystems. The USGS research at the various sites has included species diversity and 

abundance, as well as habitat quality assessments and vegetation characteristics. 

Invasive plants and fire create substantial challenges for land managers. Invasive 

plants can compete with native plants, alter wildlife habitat, and promote the 

spread of fire. Invasive alien grasses especially benefit from fire, promote recurrent 

fire, in many cases to the point where native species cannot persist and native plant 

assemblages are converted to annual grasslands. This vegetation type-conversion 

can affect wildlife and reduce overall biodiversity. The effective management of 

many wildlife species depends on the control of invasive plants and the maintenance 

of appropriate fire regimes. 

Collecting data for future management decisions 

In spite of the tragedy of the recent Southern California fires, we have an unprecedented opportunity to collect data necessary for the effective mitigation of future 

events. The information collected in the burned areas can be transferable to most 

of the susceptible fire areas of Southern California. The USGS currently is working 

with land management and emergency response agencies to develop plans for assessment of hazards from floods and debris flows and for monitoring environmental 

recovery. This is in addition to mapping the area using remote sensing data as discussed more fully below. 

The USGS is currently moving quickly to collect transitory data that will be destroyed over the next few weeks and months, including the effect of the fires on endangered species, the ecosystem causes and consequences of the fires (effect of fire 

suppression policies, re-growth, burn intensity, etc.), ground water and sediment 

pollution caused by the fire, the impact of the fires of the adjacent ocean, and ‘‘opportunistic’’ data (unique data acquisition opportunities created by the removal of 

vegetation, such as unique ‘‘bare earth’’ images along especially hazardous sections 

of the San Andreas fault). Analysis of these data will support restoration and mitigation plans of the burned lands, many of which are Federal lands managed by the 

Department of Interior. 

This collection of transitory data is accompanied by activities to address immediate information needs for flood warning. The USGS is conducting reconnaissance 

field inspections of burned watersheds and has begun installation of a limited number of rain and stream gages in critical hazard areas. The USGS is meeting with 

the National Weather Service and Flood Control agencies to plan expanded ALERT 

flood warning sites. To assess the hazard from debris flows, the USGS has begun 

modeling necessary to produce Debris Flow Hazard maps of the most dangerous 

burn areas and is working on plans, with the support of FEMA, to complete hazard 

maps for all fire areas. Assessments of debris flow hazards will be shared with landowners and relevant agencies, including Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of 

Reclamation and the U.S. Forest Service. The USGS is already working with the 

U.S. Forest Service and others in advising Burned Area Emergency Response 

(BAER) teams in the affected area. 

As water quality can be diminished by sediment transported from the burned watersheds, the USGS is working with baseline from past studies and collecting more 

data. Recent wildland fires in Southern California have produced ash and a variety 

of chemicals that enter the air, soil, ground-water and surface-water systems. The 

tracking of these chemicals through the water system is critical for maintaining a 

healthy water system, but it will also provide for understanding the larger picture 

of ground-water pollution in Southern California. Specifically, the USGS will continue with a previously planned monitoring experiment to determine the effects of 

winter floods on sediment and contaminant transport offshore of the mouth of the 

Santa Ana River. 

As noted above, in order to assess the environmental response to the fires, the 

USGS is evaluating data from previous studies to identify useful pre-fire information that will serve as a baseline to assess fire impacts and monitor post- fire recovery, including species inventories and habitat quality assessment, water quality assessments, and vegetation characterization. The USGS has begun field surveys to 

assess impacts on endangered species that it already was monitoring. 

25

The USGS is also employing its remote sensing expertise to the fire aftermath. 

Fire response has a need for detailed imagery of the burn areas, both for research 

and on-the-ground response activities. The USGS is working with other agencies on 

the post fire response, and examples of imagery that would be used include: a) Highresolution digital topographic mapping; b) Aerial photography; c) Satellite Synthetic 

Aperture Radar; and d) Multi- and Hyper-spectral imagery. To meet common geographic data needs, the USGS is assessing the availability of relevant remote sensed 

imagery and data from all agency sources. 

Conclusion 

USGS scientists have been studying the natural processes discussed in my testimony in Southern California for decades, and thus have the baseline data from 

which we can understand the changes brought about by the fires. The USGS has 

the scientific expertise in wildland fire research to help in understanding the ecosystems affected by wildfire, and to assist land managers in post-fire recovery and 

rehabilitation in Southern California. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks. I, and my colleague, Dr. Jon E. Keeley, 

USGS, Research Scientist, will be pleased to answer any questions you may have. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you very much. I would like to turn to the 

Committee for questions and remind the members of the Committee that we are under the five-minute rule and to limit your 

questions to five minutes. We have a number of panels and a long 

day ahead of us. So we will start with Mr. Calvert. 

Mr. CALVERT Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

In this region, the last time I think that we had the potential of 

as much flood problems as we may have this winter was back in 

the El Nino period when we were given reasonable warning that 

there may be a potential hazard on its way and as a matter of fact, 

the U.S. Geological Survey, along with others, made that prediction. And we were able to get emergency declarations in effect 

to clear out flood control channels, clean out debris basins. Maybe 

this is a question also for the Corps of Engineers and the Fish and 

Wildlife, but we were able to be proactive in anticipating a potential disaster. And a good thing we did. We remember back in those 

days we were able to do that, we were able to clean out the Los 

Angeles River when a lot of people were screaming and yelling if 

I remember in those days, a lot of the debris basins, but we did 

it. And when the water did come—and by golly, it sure did come, 

we were prepared for it. And the disaster that could have been was 

mitigated substantially by the proactive work that took place. 

Certainly in the Santa Ana region, Santa Ana River Basin region 

today, we are going to have a problem. I do not think it is if, it 

is just a matter of when, and when the water comes, and it will, 

then we are going to have to anticipate that. 

This is a question primarily for U.S. Geological Survey, but for 

the entire panel, certainly with our new gentleman from the 

California Resources Agency, is what are we doing right now to 

make sure that we clear out all the bureaucratic roadblocks to 

make sure that we prepare for the inevitable, that we clean out 

these flood control channels, that we clean out the debris basins, 

that we put the check dams in immediately, that we get all of the 

permissions that are necessary today, because this work should be 

taking place right now. 

So I think I will start with Ms. Kinsinger and then anyone else 

that would like to add in. 

26

Ms. KINSINGER. Well, as I noted, we have been working with this 

FEMA-led multi-agency group and that has been our primary vehicle, along with the BAER teams. We have also been working with 

a lot of local offices of the emergency services. As you know, we are 

providing the scientific information, the tools, and so we are not involved in the permitting processes per se. But we have been on the 

ground already with hydrologists, geologists and our biologists. 

Mr. CALVERT You would agree though, for the record, that these 

flood control channels, debris basins and the rest should be cleaned 

out and be made ready for the coming winter rains. 

Ms. KINSINGER. Well, I agree that we need to prepare for the inevitable floods and debris flows. I might defer to my colleague Mike 

Choulters on that. Do you want to comment on that, Mike? 

Mike Choulters is the California Water Resources District Chief. 

Mr. CHOULTERS. Thank you. I think just to add to what Anne 

said, the ability of the USGS to get out quickly, which we have, 

and add to the alert network both with rain gauges and with 

stream gauges—beginning to get stream gauges in, that takes 

longer—is the mechanism that we would add to the larger group 

in finding ways to know when those disasters are going to occur 

and be able to report that quickly. 

Mr. CALVERT I will ask Mike to add into this too, also. 

Mr. CHRISMAN. Again, our efforts are joint efforts with our Federal counterparts, flood control agencies through the California Department of Water Resources. We do a prioritization on an annual 

basis of those streams and watersheds that need to be—where flood 

protection needs to be undertaken. Oftentimes we are behind the 

eight ball for budgetary problems, many times. But again, it is a 

very high priority as we watch weather patterns and try to measure the potential rainfall coming into California. 

Mr. CALVERT I would say under budgetary reasons, obviously it 

will cost tremendous more dollars——

Mr. CHRISMAN. I could not agree more. 

Mr. CALVERT —after the fact than before the fact. 

Mr. CHRISMAN. Absolutely right. 

Mr. CALVERT Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Baca. 

Mr. BACA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

This question I guess either Jack or Dale can attempt to answer. 

The fire not only destroyed structures but burned soil and created 

high risk of floods, especially in the foothills. Weather forecasts to 

expect drier and warmer weather this year. How long should we 

expect the threat of floods? 

Mr. BOSWORTH. You know, that is going to depend a lot on the 

kind of weather that we have in the next few years. What we worry 

about most, at least in terms of the emergency rehabilitation work 

that we do is the first season, the first rain. And we want to be 

prepared for that, that is why we want to have work done by the 

middle of December. 

Then our next step is to make sure at least for the first couple 

of years we can make it through those years. 

But then there is the longer term kind of rehabilitation needs 

that we will have over the next several years. But I do not think 

I can give you—maybe Jack or Gene can be more specific in terms 

27

of exact number of years you might have to worry about flooding, 

but it is not over after the first year and it will be a number of 

years before we really feel like you are out of the woods. And it depends on how intensive the fires burn as well. But Gene has a little 

more experience in this part of the country than I do, so Gene, do 

you have anything to add to that? 

Mr. BACA. And can you elaborate in terms of what impact, if we 

are not totally prepared for these kinds of floods to this area? 

Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, when you start getting a lot of water on 

these kind of steep slopes under these kind of conditions, you can 

have mass soil movement. Of course, you have erosion, but then 

you have mass debris movement into the channels. It can back up 

when it becomes plugged, culverts can become plugged with debris, 

then the road washes out, that pushes more debris down, you can 

have mudslides into homes if they are located in harm’s way. There 

are a number of those kinds of things that can happen if you have 

the wrong kinds of events following these kinds of devastating 

fires. 

Mr. BACA. The next question. I know that workers in San 

Bernardino are using bales of hay, sandbags and traffic dividers to 

help ward off floods. Will this be sufficient in high risk areas, is 

question number one. What else can be done to minimize the 

amount of flood damage in these cities? 

Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, again, depending upon what kind of weather conditions come about here in the future, you can have situations where nothing that we will do will solve the problem. So I 

would not want to make a false promise that everything that we 

are doing, at least on the national forest lands are going to solve 

the problem under any kind of weather event. But, for example, the 

amount of straw, the straw that we are putting on the ground, the 

thousands of tons of straw, our research has shown that that reduces the erosion in some cases 50 to 80, 90 percent. That will 

make a big difference under normal kinds of weather conditions. 

Mr. BACA. And what is the length of time before it grows though, 

the effect if we do not have——

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. The straw that we are putting out does not 

have any seed in it. The estimated period for vegetative recovery, 

at least for a reasonably good start so the hillsides have a good 

semblance of green again, is three to five years. 

Mr. BACA. Mr. Chrisman, in your testimony, you stress the importance of Federal-state partnerships dealing with various aspects 

of the forests and fire management. Overall, how would you rate 

the partnership in California and in what ways can it be improved? 

Mr. CHRISMAN. My comments said the partnership is superb, I 

mean the planning, the inter-agency planning that goes on on a 

regular basis, the mock planning exercises that we go through on 

a regular basis across our agencies is superb. As I indicated in my 

testimony, I think proof of that was seen in the early successes in 

this catastrophic activity here when we were able to get the residents moved out and all of that. So again, it is working pretty well 

here in California. 

You know, how can we improve it? I guess my response to that 

would be you can always improve upon the response to a catastrophic event like this. And the post-planning that goes into this 

28

activity, I think hopefully will yield those kinds of things that we 

can do better as the inevitable natural event will occur later. 

Mr. BACA. And one final question, and I know my time has run 

out, but from what you have seen so far, what threatened or endangered species were maybe most impacted by the fire? 

Ms. KINSINGER. I would like to ask Dr. Robert Fisher to address 

that, if he could come up. 

While he is coming up, I just wanted to say one thing about protecting lives in the case of flood and debris flows. And that is we 

do have the technology available to deploy early warning sensors 

in some of these very high risk areas such as the ones you are seeing on your map. Now those will not necessarily reduce property 

loss, but they can save lives. 

Mr. BACA. Hello, and welcome. 

Dr. FISHER. On the question of threatened and endangered species, I want to just add that the Resources Agency through the Legacy program has recently produced a series of maps that show 

which species occur only within the fire zones, being that the entire 

distribution of that species globally may have been affected by the 

fire. So there is a subset of plants and some animals that fall into 

that category. That does not mean that they are extinct, but it 

means that their habitat and their sensitivity might have changed. 

For the most part, many endangered species were not greatly impacted by the fire, but what happens post-fire is what is really 

going to be important. And obviously the habitat has changed and 

we are right now focusing on trying to understand post-fire recovery in these species. 

And I cannot really name—I would not want to name a couple 

of specific species, but we are less concerned about the direct impact on endangered species from the fire than we are what is going 

to happen post-burn in the recovery process. 

Mr. BACA. Thank you. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Radanovich. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. Mr. Bosworth, in my opening statement, I had 

commented about lawsuits and the ability for the Forest Service to 

allow timber cutting both the fire damaged areas but also in the 

non-fire damaged areas that were susceptible—or had problems 

with bark beetle dead trees. With the advent of Healthy Forests, 

can you further elaborate on what you might see down the line? I 

know that the legislation has made it a little easier I think for forest plans to actually be implemented and eases the burden I think 

on the NEPA processes and things like that. Can you give me an 

oversight as to how you see it down the line once we try to get 

these forests into proper balance, what you might run into as a result of the law? 

Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, I think the law is going to help us. Like 

I said earlier, I think it will give us some time to be more effective 

in terms of our public participation with communities. I think it 

will help us engage communities more effectively. There are some 

changes in terms of how you go about appealing. There is what we 

call a predecisional protest approach that we are going to develop 

as part of the legislation, that we think will give people a good opportunity to question our decisions, but will not take up as much 

time to do it. 

29

So the whole focus is on being able to get decisions made quicker 

with better public participation and get the money and the work 

on the ground done quicker, more effectively. So that is what we 

will be working toward in the implementation of this. In the end, 

what I am hoping it will come to 10 years from now, 15 years from 

now, is we will have treated these forests in a way that will allow 

fire to still play a role in the environment. These are fire-adapted 

ecosystems that we are dealing with, they evolved with fire and we 

have to get fire back into them but it has to be in a way that is 

not going to be devastating. 

So when you have a situation where there is way too many trees 

because we have been suppressing fires over the years, way too 

many trees, and then you have a drought situation, you end up 

with dead trees and with insect problems and then, of course, you 

end up with fire problems. We need to have fewer trees. We will 

be leaving the large, big trees, the right numbers of them, the right 

species and then getting fire back into those fire-adapted ecosystems. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. Thank you very much. Mr. Chrisman, I have 

got a question for you and I do want to congratulate you on your 

recent appointment as Resources Secretary for California. 

Mr. CHRISMAN. Thank you, Congressman. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. I noticed on the ride here from the hospital 

where the helicopter pad was to the hotel that there is—and I believe it is being administered by CDF, a program to go in and pull 

out a lot of these dead trees due to the bark beetle. 

Mr. CHRISMAN. Yes. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. In an urban interface area, a place that may 

not be national forest, I think it is on private land, but nevertheless a fire danger. Is the funding—those are expensive jobs, I mean 

those trees are hanging over power lines and homes and everything 

else. That is no small task and I know that that kind of stuff is 

necessary probably all over the state in some ways. 

Mr. CHRISMAN. It is, and you are right. As I indicated in my comments, you know, we are in the process of working with the utilities here in California, the Public Utilities Commission to get a lot 

of those trees moved away from the transmission and distribution 

lines. 

One of the programs that CDF administers here in California is 

called the Fire Safe Program, a very effective program, again in the 

context, involving stakeholders and individuals who live in the 

rural/urban interfaces, which is more and more the case here in 

California, all up and down the State of California where we go in 

and help—CDF goes in and helps organize local communities to 

push vegetation back from their homes, vegetation back from structures, to recognize that we have got to manage these forest ecosystems in a way that prevents these kinds of catastrophic 

wildfires. We are doing a lot of that across California and of course, 

we are going to be working with our Federal and local counterparts 

to try to increase those activities over time. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. So you actually have an operating budget, you 

are going to make sure that there are enough funds there to do all 

that interface. 

Mr. CHRISMAN. That is exactly right. 

30

Mr. RADANOVICH. All right, thank you very much. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Walden. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chief or Gene perhaps, talk to me about the densities that are 

here today around Lake Arrowhead, both in the private and the 

public lands versus what historically they should be had fire operated naturally over the last century, or management had taken 

place. What do you see in terms of densities today and what should 

those densities be? 

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Obviously you realize that density is highly 

variable. Having said that, there are places here on the forest 

where there is 400 to 500 trees per acre. Typically we would expect 

as foresters in land like this in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 to 50 

trees per acre, depending upon the carrying capacity of any particular site. 

Mr. WALDEN. So you are saying it is 10 times? 

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Greatly over-populated with trees, yes. 

Mr. WALDEN. And when we look at a picture like the one over 

here to my left showing the dead trees, we flew over areas like 

that, if that is your Federal forest land, what kind of time line are 

you on to clear that out and is it just the dead trees that need to 

be thinned out to rebuild the ecosystem? 

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. We have been focusing on the dead trees because we have been focusing on human life and property issues like 

evacuation routes and areas right up against the urban interface. 

We need to focus on overall stand density. We need to take that 

next step and that is starting to deal with the densification of the 

remaining green trees, where they do remain. We have been reluctant to do that on the national forests. Initially a year-and-a-half 

ago when we started fairly aggressively dealing with this, we took 

out some green trees trying to treat a given acre, if you will, with 

one entry and get it down to an acceptable stocking. What we 

found is because of the high populations of bark beetles, we lost 

some of the trees that we left and we ended up with not enough 

trees. So right now until the population of beetles drop off, it is our 

intent to just deal with the red trees, but be ready to move aggressively to thin the remaining stands of green trees as soon as the 

population of beetles drops off. And we hope that happens. 

Mr. WALDEN. In his testimony, Dr. Stephens I think it is, from 

Berkeley, talks about one of the things that is missing here is the 

infrastructure and that what is needed is a local mill. When was 

the last time you had a local mill and why do you not have one 

now? 

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Before my time. I have been here 11 years, 

there has not been a sawmill here in that time. I think Congressman Lewis probably—excuse me. 

Mr. WALDEN. Is the lack of a sawmill, in your opinion, a problem 

for getting these trees out of here? 

Mr. ZIMMERMAN It is certainly a part of it. The economics is driven by a lot of costs, you know, there is the cost of cutting the trees 

down, moving them, power lines, houses and all of that stuff. This 

is very expensive work. It would be nice if we did not just have to 

burn this material up. That too is expensive. 

Mr. WALDEN. Or putting it in landfills? 

31

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Grinding it up and putting it in landfills is expensive. If there was some value, and the way to have value is to 

reduce the cost. Part of the cost of taking this stuff to a sawmill 

is the transportation cost. I understand it is about 7 hours one 

way, so only the very best of the logs are going to a sawmill, and 

thereby paying their own way through this. 

Mr. WALDEN. When was the last time you had a timber sale, not 

a hazardous fuels reduction effort, but a timber sale, and why? 

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. About eight or nine years ago, we sold the last 

sale, prior to this last year-and-a-half. I essentially threw in the 

towel on the timber sale program on this forest, even though it was 

a very small program. 

Mr. WALDEN. Why? 

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Because our timber sales were being appealed 

and we had lawsuits, we had protests out in front of the ranger 

station here at Arrowhead, the district ranger was being hung in 

effigy and protesters on weekends protesting those small timber 

sales. 

Mr. WALDEN. Then what is it going to take to get this forest 

cleaned out and how long is it going to take? This is a powder keg, 

both the private lands and the public lands. I never thought after 

being here in September and then watching these fires go that we 

would ever come back and be in this building. Three percent 

burned, is that it, of the bug-infested timber lands? 

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Three to five percent, somewhere in there. 

Mr. WALDEN. Which means the bulk of them are left still in this 

volatile state. 

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Yes, and in fact the areas that burned where 

we had big infestations, there are now more dead trees there because of the fire. 

Mr. WALDEN. So the fire situation is worse for the future? 

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. What it is going to take obviously is infrastructure. You have mentioned part of the infrastructure, the other part 

is human infrastructure, licensed contractors, folks working for the 

various agencies, staff, to put contracts together, and money. And 

Congress is well aware of that. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Lewis. 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the audience’s edification, Mary Bono and I are not members of the Committee, so we 

have the privilege of being here by way of the courtesy of Chairman Richard Pombo. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. LEWIS. And I wanted for the record, for all of those who were 

curious to know, that both Richard Pombo and I do know the difference between us and Mary Bono. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. LEWIS. But she is sometimes difficult to ignore. 

I am very interested, Mr. Bosworth, in pursuing the question of 

remaining dead trees and fuel, much of which is on public lands, 

but a lot of which is on private land as well. And as part or a fire 

on somebody’s five acres where that individual cannot afford—I am 

not even worried about responsibility here, but cannot afford to 

take down those trees, could be the source of devastation. I would 

32

like you to spend a moment addressing your sense of funding flows 

that are beginning to happen, whether there are adequate dollars 

beginning to fill in the pipeline and what role will any of those 

funds play in terms of dealing with this private land problem? 

Mr. BOSWORTH. There are two kinds of dollars that we get, the 

Forest Service, in terms of what we would be using to help this situation. There is the money that we get to manage the national forest system, to deal with the fuels there. And then through our state 

and private forestry program, we get dollars that through grants 

can go to the counties and those dollars then can go to help private 

landowners to do other things within the county that needs to be 

done in these areas. 

There is a big need out there. And in fact, I might have Jack 

Blackwell be specific about the kinds of dollars that he is getting 

at this point in terms of state and private dollars, but you know, 

I do not expect that we are going to be able to come up with 

enough money to take care of all the private land. What we can do 

though is we can come up with enough money to work together, 

and if we can get some of these other kinds of infrastructures in 

place—in other words, if we can find a way to utilize some of the 

material that is being removed, that would significantly or may significantly reduce the cost of doing some of the work that needs to 

be done. As long as we are going to haul it off and recover no value, 

it is going to be that much more expensive. 

But I am going to ask Jack to be specific about the kinds of dollars that this area is getting right now from a state/private forestry 

standpoint. 

Mr. BLACKWELL. OK. Congress has been very generous this year 

and that is due in large part, Mr. Lewis, to some of your tremendous work. There is $47.7 million that has already passed, about 

50 percent of that is available for state and private work off the 

national forests. In addition, as you well know, there is $50 million 

pending in a consolidated appropriations bill, which we are all told 

has a great chance of passage. Again, that is a 50/50 split. 

So southern California should see $97.7 million in fiscal 2004, 

the one we are in, and 50 percent of that work will occur—those 

funds will go onto the national forests and 50 percent on the state 

and private lands. 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you for that. 

Mr. Chrisman, I was especially interested in your comment about 

the prospect of biomass sorts of development for energy production. 

There are some very interesting things going on that I have been 

made aware of in Oregon currently where in the past they have 

had a bark beetle problem. They are looking at the development of 

methane and other kinds of alternative fuels from those resources 

as the trees come down, et cetera. And I would like to talk with 

you a lot more about that. I think there is some tremendous potential there and there could be a state and Federal partnership developed as well. 

Mr. CHRISMAN. I think the time is right for that, Congressman. 

Mr. LEWIS. One more question of Mr. Bosworth, if I could. I know 

I am pushing my time here, but as we go forward and take down 

trees, saving our forest is much more than just taking down trees. 

We want to see those trees appropriately and well managed come 

33

back and have the forest be here for as long as man may be here. 

Are there aggressive efforts to not only collect seeds of indigenous 

trees to the region, begin nursery programs and the like to begin 

actually growing plants that might well be placed in the forest 

lands over time here? 

Mr. BOSWORTH. We do have large programs of reforestation, 

nurseries where we can grow seedlings and plant seedlings. We 

have gotten better and better and better at that over the years in 

terms of our ability to do that. 

The real question is to get the lands into condition where those 

trees can grow, to where we can then, as I said before, get fire back 

into these fire-dependent ecosystems in a more controlled way, and 

I believe we can have healthy forests in the future. 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. POMBO. Ms. Bono. 

Ms. BONO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am going to ask my first question I believe to Chief Bosworth, 

and that is the general thinking I believe among people who are 

afraid of healthy forests is that we politicians have something 

called a slippery slope theory, that what we start has great intentions but it ends up being so much more than it is. And they believe even by thinning the forest here, that ultimately it is going 

to mean the entire commercial exploitation of logging of the forests 

here. I was wondering if you could take some time to—I do not believe in the slippery slope theory, I do believe there are reasonable 

people in government and in agencies who are there to prevent 

slippery slopes who are actually capable of stopping such things 

from happening. But I was wondering if you could take an opportunity to share your thoughts about this very thing. 

Mr. BOSWORTH. I would be happy to. You know, one time, the 

Forest Service, on the national forests, we sold somewhere in the 

vicinity of 12 billion board feed a year of timber back in the mid1980s. For the past several years, it has been about 1.8 to 2 billion 

board feet a year. We have not proposed big increases, we have not 

proposed any increases since I have been Chief of the Forest Service. What I am interested in is making sure that what we do, we 

do well. 

These are battles and fights and fears of the past, in my opinion. 

And the threats to our national forests and to our nation’s forests 

in the future are things like a natural buildup of fuel and invasive 

weeds and insects and diseases and some of those kinds of things. 

They are not—over-cutting and timber harvesting is not a battle of 

today or in the future, in my opinion. 

Ms. BONO. Thank you. I think a prime example, and I will bring 

Mike into this debate, is when we talk about biomass or a local 

contractor mentioned cogeneration to me up here as well, which is 

another idea. But can you explain to me how much fuel currently 

exists and once we create biomass, are we then creating something 

that we are going to need to perpetuate so we are effectively continuing to look for further fuel to add to the biomass or is this 

something we can do and stop when the time is right? 

Mr. CHRISMAN. That is an excellent question. It has created problems in the past as we have tried to encourage, through tax incentives and other types of programs, these types of biomass activities. 

34

I mean you have got to create enough of an economic incentive for 

these kinds of opportunities to be made real and then to ultimately 

function in a way that they are continuing. Here in California, I 

cannot answer your question about the total amount of biomass. 

Clearly the biomass available off a forest is significant. There are 

biomass generation plants in the San Joaquin Valley that are taking biomass from agricultural products. That industry is on the 

growth in California because of the air pollution, air quality issues 

that are keeping the burning from happening with a lot of these 

facilities. 

So again, it seems to me that what we need in this area is effective public/private partnerships where we have state and Federal 

tax structures maybe creating incentives where you can get capital 

investment in these kind of activities. What we do not want to get 

ourselves into is where we are—as in the 1980s, where we created 

a situation where we actually went in and subsidized the price of 

the output of some of these biomass plants. Ultimately economically they fail because market forces are at play and they just do 

not work. So we have got to create opportunities where these 

things do work. I think we are on the road to doing that. 

Ms. BONO. Thank you. I realize my time has just about expired, 

so I will yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you. 

I have a number of questions but I think in the interest of time, 

Chief, I will just kind of boil it down to this—we have had complaints or concerns that have arisen by area residents about their 

ability to do things, to get in and clear areas out and delays because of Forest Service policy. What does Congress need to do to 

speed up the process in terms of doing this recovery? The healthy 

forest bill is one thing, and that is something that we need to do 

proactively to try to lessen the chance of this happening again, but 

it happened here. What do we need to do now? What suggestions 

can you have for this Committee and for Congress as to what our 

next step should be? 

Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, I assume you are talking about the recovery aspects after the burn. 

Mr. POMBO. Yeah. 

Mr. BOSWORTH. And the things that we need to get done now. 

What the Forest Service is doing here in California is we are going 

to be issuing grants to these counties very quickly. On occasion we 

will hear some concerns about our grant process and whether it is 

too complicated and whether it is clear enough to be able to apply 

for a grant. We believe that we have got it down to a situation 

where people can apply for those grants fairly quickly and fairly 

easily. And our folks are ready to help any of them that need help 

in terms of how to apply for those grants. I believe a call letter 

went out around the first of December to all the counties in the 

area so that they can get those grant applications in. 

In fact, I think what I will do is let Regional Forester John 

Blackwell talk a little more specifically about that because they 

have been working real hard at it. 

Mr. BLACKWELL. Well, the Fire Safe Councils, the community 

groups that this new legislation promotes, working with them and 

through them, I believe are the way we need to go. And that is the 

35

way that we are delivering the funding and trying to put together 

these action plans in response to the Healthy Forest Act. 

And so it is as simple as that, I believe. 

Mr. POMBO. Let me ask you specifically on one issue that was 

brought up to the Committee. And that is that local citizens have 

been kept from clearing out dead trees, brush and dirt piles along 

recently bulldozed fire breaks because Forest Service archaeologists 

and anthropologists must first inventory arrowheads and pottery 

shards and botanists must first inventory all disturbed flora before 

they can do anything. You know, it is real easy for us to blame the 

Forest Service or to blame you guys, but a lot of this is Federal 

law. And what I am looking for is what do we have to do, what 

can we do to make the recovery happen faster, to move through the 

bureaucratic process faster? Is it a matter, do you need more people 

or do you need some kind of a streamline in the law? Is there some 

kind of a bureaucratic reduction that we could do that can move 

this along faster? 

Mr. BLACKWELL. Well, of course, people and funding always help. 

We have got the Antiquities Act, we cannot destroy priceless antiquities and so we have to survey for them. That takes time. We have 

got the Endangered Species Act. We cannot drive a plant or an animal to extinction through our activities. And so we have to survey 

and plan and that takes coordination. 

The people that you are hearing from expressing frustration is 

some of the same frustration that we have over the length of time 

some of these things take. And they are very frustrating, but the 

goals are good. It is next to impossible to shortcut and not make 

terrible mistakes. And so we have to jump through those hoops. 

You put your finger on a very tough problem that we wrestle 

with. Certainly more people allows us to get the work done quicker, 

but we have got to find ways to do it more efficiently, and we wrestle with that. The streamlined NEPA that we are working on now 

should help. 

That is I guess about as far as I would go right now. 

Mr. BOSWORTH. I would just like to add one thing. When I came 

into my job a couple of years ago, we put together a team to work 

on what we call the process predicament, and developed a document to try to identify all the areas where process is a problem for 

us. And we have had people working all across the country in trying to deal with—it is amazing the number of places where we 

have brought ourselves to a screeching halt because of our processes. And so we are trying to pick them up one at a time. We are 

working our way through these and my objective is in the end that 

we still have good processes, we still take care of the land the way 

we need to take care of it, but that we are effective and efficient 

and quick and we do it. And we have not been that way. So that 

is why we are trying to fix those processes. And you helped us with 

the Healthy Forests legislation. 

Mr. POMBO. Well, I will just tell you on behalf of myself and the 

other members of the Committee, if you guys come up with suggestions, things that you need, do not hesitate to let us know. You 

know, the Healthy Forests initiative I think was a good thing and 

we were able to get that through, but now we are dealing with the 

aftermath, and if there is something that we need to do in order 

36

to make that happen, you need to sit down and tell us what that 

is. 

Mr. BOSWORTH. We will do that. I appreciate that. 

Mr. POMBO. I want to thank this panel for their testimony. I am 

going to excuse this panel and call up our second panel. Mr. Chips 

Barry, Director, Denver Water Department and Mr. Peter Brierty, 

Fire Marshal, County of San Bernardino. 

Before you sit down, if you would just raise your right hand. 

[Witnesses sworn.] 

Mr. POMBO. Let the record show they both answered in the affirmative. 

We welcome you here today. As with the previous panel, I would 

ask you to limit your oral testimony to five minutes. Your entire 

written testimony will be included in the record. Mr. Barry, we are 

going to begin with you. 

STATEMENT OF HAMLET J. BARRY, III, MANAGER,

DENVER WATER, DENVER, COLORADO 

Mr. BARRY. Thank you, Mr. Pombo. I am pleased to accept this 

invitation to be here today. My name is Chips Barry, I am the 

Manager of the Denver Water Department. 

I think I am here because Denver Water has had some experiences in the last three or four years that might prove instructive 

to people in California. We have had fires and floods. Presumably 

we have learned something from that and maybe it is relevant to 

California. Although I will say that the soil conditions, vegetation 

types, et cetera, are different and I do not know for sure that everything we did is relevant here. That decision will need to be 

made by people as they go through the experience, but maybe we 

have learned something and it is helpful. 

Teresa has agreed to show some slides for me. I want to point 

out this is my only opportunity to command the Federal government by asking her to put the slides up and down, so this is my 

one opportunity to do that. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. BARRY. Teresa, you can go to the next one. Just to put things 

in context, this tells you what the Denver Water System looks like. 

Right there is the city of Denver, the continental divide runs 

through here like this, the different colors represent the different 

watersheds. The biggest watershed is the South Platte River Watershed. More than 80 percent of our water comes from that watershed, either because it comes through a tunnel from the west slope, 

Lake Dillon, to that watershed, or it originates in that watershed 

itself. So that gives you that idea. 

Let me talk a little bit about the fires we have had in our system. This is the South Platte Watershed. We had a major fire 

called the Buffalo Creek fire in 1996. We had the Hayman fire in 

1992. And from that, we have learned something, and let us talk 

a little bit about what we learned. And I will say that the Buffalo 

Creek fire is where we first learned our lesson. We did not anticipate what would happen after we had a 12,000 acre fire, which is 

relatively small, even by our standards and certainly by California 

standards, if that fire was followed by a two-inch rain. 

37

Teresa, you can put the next one up, let us see what we have 

got here. Well, this shows that we have had seven fires in this watershed over the last seven years. We can skip right on to the next 

one, Teresa, please. 

This is the shape of the Buffalo Creek fire, 12,000 acres. Sixty 

days after that fire, we got two inches of rain in this area and we 

are talking about rain on top of decomposed granite soil. It is not 

really soil, it is decomposed granite. I do not know how it compares 

to the situation here. But we had in about four or five hours two 

inches of rain in this area. That produced a wall of sediment that 

came roaring down this creek and dammed—this is the South 

Platte River right here. It dammed the South Platte River for a period of five or six hours until the river broke through and sent a 

sea of trash and sediment down the river into our major reservoir, 

which is right down here. 

You can show the next picture, which I think will show—this is 

an example of 5,000 tons of driftwood sediment, porta potties, tires, 

propane tanks and other crap that we got overnight in this reservoir. This was a significant problem for us. 

Let us look at the next one. This shows what happened to the 

water quality overnight. That is ash and sediment. Those are our 

intake towers right there. 

Go ahead to the next one, Teresa. I will get to this in a minute. 

The Buffalo Creek brought us 400,000 cubic yards of sediment into 

a reservoir that had received 110,000 yards in the prior 11 years. 

We got 400,000 cubic yards in a space of about 2 days and that 

equaled what we had seen in prior 12 years. This was a surprise 

to us and this is the lesson that we were taught that helped us perhaps a little bit getting ready for the next fire. 

Now this shows you something that is quite relevant to what the 

prior panel was talking about. This is the forest in 1900. This is 

the way the same ground looks today. It is overgrown, it is undermanaged, it needs to be thinned. It is top heavy with fuel and it 

is like it is in California, this is a disaster waiting to happen. Actually, we have already had this disaster, we burned this area in the 

Hayman fire in 1992. 

We can go to that next slide. This is the whole Hayman fire burn 

area, this is a major reservoir of ours and this is property that we 

own. That is 8,000 acres right there, the total area is 137,000 

acres. You can see the severity of the burn area around our watershed. 

Now I will say that based on what we learned at Buffalo Creek, 

we began a program of forest treatment and thinning, much the 

way that the Chief was talking about. In the areas that we succeeded in thinning in advance of this fire, not because we knew the 

fire was coming but because it was time to do it. In those areas 

it either did not burn or it did not burn severely. And I will say 

that our facilities—we have a series of houses and shops and stuff 

right here. We had done all of that treatment around that area and 

it did not burn. We have become the poster child for forest thinning 

and forest treatment to show what happens if you do it and the 

area then burns, because where we had done the treatment it did 

not burn or it did not burn severely. 

38

We did have opposition when we began that. We had cooperation 

from the Forest Service. We had citizens and others who did not 

want us to thin and treat the forest the way we thought was necessary. We did it and we are happy we did it. But we did not get 

our 8,000 acres done. You can see, this 8,000 acres, a lot of it 

burned severely. 

Teresa, you can go to the next slide. I think I am going to begin 

to show what happened as a result of the fire. Goose Creek is one 

of the tributaries that drains into Cheesman Reservoir. This is 

what it looks like now, a year after the fire. You can just go ahead 

and whip through those and we can begin to see the stuff that we 

have done. Goose Creek used to be about 20 feet wide. It is now 

150 feet wide and it has got three feet of sediment and ash deposited in the bottom of that drainage. 

This is some of the treatment we did in the area that was 

burned. We put in straw bales and log sediment dams. We 

contoured and did directional felling. We hydro-seeded and hydromulched. We put down polyacrylomides which tend to hold the soil. 

We did hydro-axing. I will have to describe for you what a hydroax machine is. It is an amazing item. It is basically a deck 

mower—a huge deck mower on the end of a cherry picker. You put 

it at the top of a burned dead tree and it grinds the tree to mulch 

in about 30 seconds. It is like putting a tree in a pencil sharpener. 

And I am sure when you come up against your next primary opponent or his campaign manager, you will imagine use of this hydroax machine. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. BARRY. This thing is remarkable. It is like putting a tree in 

a pencil sharpener. The last time I checked, we had hydo-axed 

425,000 trees on our 8,000 acres, and that is only about a quarter 

of what needs to be done. 

So we did timber sale in the salvage area. We have—in fact, I 

have this figure somewhere. Ten million board feet of lumber was 

salvaged from the area burned in this fire. We had to pay to have 

that done, I would say, but we reduced the amount we had to pay 

by the salvage value of 10 million board feet. They did not pay us 

to get it, but we had to pay less to have them do it. 

Teresa, next slide. This begins to show some of the technique. We 

put in—oh, I have a figure here, well, 2,000 sediment dams in gullies like this of straw bales, at least 2,000. I have had a crew of 

50 men working on our 8,000 acres in the Hayman forest every day 

since the fire 18 months ago. Forty men every day doing stuff like 

this. You can just go through the slides. They will show you the 

kind of things we are doing. 

I always put this in here to amuse the Chief. Our land begins 

here. This is Forest Service land. We have put straw bale dams all 

the way down the drainage, all the way down to the reservoir. I 

will tell you that we think this helps but we have not yet seen a 

two-inch rain on top of this burn area. We have seen as much—

we have seen only about a quarter-of-an-inch of rain so far. So I 

can tell you that we need to do everything we are doing, but I cannot tell you for sure that it will work absolutely. Mother Nature 

may win. 

39

Teresa. We have done contour felling. You can see this. This is 

standing dead timber, where instead of salvaging the lumber we 

put it across the hill as a sediment dam. 

Go ahead. Directional felling in drainage bottoms because you 

leave it. You do not cut the limbs off and you collect the sediment. 

You slow it down that way. 

This is part of what this crew of men has been doing. We have 

built these little—these trash racks. You can see that there is sediment collected here. This is the result of a 1/4-inch rain or less. I 

was up there 2 weeks ago and many of these things are now full 

and they have to be emptied. If you can empty them. Sometimes 

you cannot get equipment in, the hill is too steep, et cetera. 

This is an area showing what we would call completed treatment. Where we have seeded, we have hydro-axed, leaving the material that the hydro-ax produces from a dead standing tree, which 

is mulch. Leaving it on the ground and contour felling a tree. So 

that is what a good portion of our burned area looks like right now, 

our 8,000 acres. 

I will say that—oh, no, one more thing here. My engineers had 

a bit of a gulp when I told them we needed to design a leaky dam, 

otherwise known as a sediment trap. That is what this is. The 

Goose Creek area was heavily burned. You can put up the next 

one, too. We built a 40-foot high dam that was designed to leak. 

It is supposed to let water through and hold sediment back. The 

dam face is down there. We are on the up-stream side. We know 

that is working. We are going to have to go in and clean it out. I 

suspect it is the Colorado equivalent of the sediment basins that 

you have here in the San Gabriel Mountains. It is smaller, smaller 

scale, same idea. Trap the sediment before it can go downhill and 

do too much damage. 

Let me wrap up with just a few conclusions and observations 

about what Denver has learned. A great deal of the potential damage from the forest fir can be eliminated or reduced by careful deliberate forest management in the years and decades before. This 

is what the Chief and others were talking about. I have seen this 

firsthand. We have forests that have too much fuel, too many trees, 

too much disease and our fire suppression policy has exacerbated 

the problem. We have fuel loads that are indescribably large and 

they lead to the kind of problems that we have seen in our watershed. 

Our preliminary conclusion is that our sediment control measures, most of them on a pretty small scale, are going to help, but 

I cannot guarantee that they are absolutely going to work. I am 

hopeful but not particularly optimistic that we will succeed in keeping 2 million cubic yards of decomposed granite sediment from 

washing downhill into the South Platte River and into Cheesman 

Reservoir. I am hopeful but I am not optimistic. 

The Federal government agencies, NRCS, Forest Service, BLM 

are occasionally helpful and they are always sympathetic; however, 

their budgets are limited and the acreage they deal with is vast 

compared to our own. Following the fire, we have outspent the feds 

ten to one on an acre-per-acre basis in this burn area. The point 

is that you cannot depend upon the Federal government to do a 

great deal for you. No matter how big your problem is they have 

40

a million problems just like it or bigger. So Denver has taken it 

upon ourselves, we are going to do for our land everything we can 

do. We do not expect—we would hope, but we do not expect the 

feds to be able to do the same thing. 

I remain very concerned about overgrowth in the forest in the socalled red zone, which is the urban wildland interface not owned 

by the Federal government and not owned by Denver Water. It is 

overgrown as well. This is not part of my testimony, but listening 

to earlier testimony, Mr. Pombo, it seems to me if Congress could 

be of help here, we need to ask the insurance industry to require 

forest treatment on private land in the red zone, because if you do 

not treat it, you either do not get hazard insurance for your house 

or you pay a lot more for it. The single most effective thing that 

could be done on private land would be to do it through the insurance industry. Congress should—I know you do not like doing battle with the insurance industry, and I do not either at least on the 

local level. I have tried it and I lost. Not on this issue, on a different one. But it would make sense to me to have the private land 

incentive. The combination of carrot and stick. There has got to be 

something out there to get private landowners to take care of it 

and it may be that the insurance industry is a vehicle to make that 

happen. 

Finally, I would simply say that based on our own experience, we 

know as much about what to do as the Federal agencies. They are 

helpful, but you have to rely on your own expertise and your own 

manpower and your own money if you are really going to get it 

done. We have done a lot. Denver has become the poster child for 

this treatment, but, of course, we have not had a two-inch rain on 

top of that fire area. I am afraid we may become the poster child 

for the disaster, too. But at the moment, we are the poster child 

for what you do before the fire and what you do after the fire. 

Thank you for allowing me to testify. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you. 

Mr. Brierty. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Barry follows:]

Statement of Hamlet J. Barry, III, Manager, Denver Water Department 

I. Introduction 

My name is Chips Barry, and I am Manager of the Denver Water Department. 

Denver Water is a municipal corporation that supplies water to 1.2 million people 

in and around Denver, Colorado. About one quarter of the population of Colorado 

is supplied by water from us. Our water supply is dependent on water generated 

in watersheds located primarily on Forest Service and other public lands west of 

Denver. We gather water in three watersheds west of Denver on both sides of the 

Continental Divide, and move it by canal and conduit as much as 80 miles to treatment facilities located near the city. 

Denver Water has had several large fires in our watershed in the last seven 

years. This testimony will describe how Denver Water dealt with our watershed before, during, and after those fires, and attempt to distill the lessons we have learned 

about forest fires, erosion, sediment control, water quality, and the various levels 

of governmental ownership, control, or oversight that influence our action. 

I make no claim that our experience is fully relevant to the recent wild fires here 

in California. I suspect that differences in vegetation type, soil conditions, topography, and settlement patterns mean that the lessons from our experience will be 

only partially helpful here in California. Nevertheless, I will try to distill our experience for whatever it may be worth. 

41

II. Watershed Described 

Denver draws water from the Blue River, the Fraser River, and the Williams Fork 

River, all of which are tributaries of the Colorado River west of the Continental Divide. We also draw water from the South Platte River, on the East Slope of the Continental Divide. Much of the water on the West Slope is delivered to Denver by tunnel through the upper reaches of the South Platte. Hence, more than 80% of the 

water supplied to Denver is delivered via the South Platte River. Thus, the South 

Platte watershed is of vital importance to us. Since 1996, there have been six forest 

fires in the upper South Platte watershed. Two of these have had, or will have, devastating consequences for us. (Insert Slides 1-4.) 

III. Buffalo Creek Fire 

The Buffalo Creek Fire began on May 8, 1996. It burned swiftly and was a very 

hot fire, burning 12,000 acres in a day. The intensity of the fire made the underlying soil hydrophobic, meaning it would not absorb water. While Denver Water 

knew that a forest fire could create erosion problems, we had, in fact, no real idea 

of what would happen. In July, we had a persistent rainstorm on top of the Buffalo 

Creek Area, and received two inches of rain in a short period of time. The decomposed granite ‘‘soil’’ moved like ball bearings when hit with that volume of water, 

and this destructive erosion load flowed directly down Spring Creek and dammed 

the South Platte River. After a few hours, the river broke the dam and the resulting 

mess ended up in our Strontia Springs Reservoir a mile further downstream. In 

three hours we received as much sediment in Strontia Springs Reservoir as had accumulated in the prior eleven years. We received something like 400,000 cubic yards 

of material. We also received fifteen or more surface acres of floating debris, and 

5,000 tons of driftwood, port-a-potties, tires, and other flotsam brought down by the 

flood. 

Looking back on the Buffalo Creek Fire and Flood, I think it’s fair to say that 

we did not know how severe the erosion would be if we got a severe rainstorm on 

top of the area that had been burned. We did not anticipate the damage, but with 

only 60 days between the fire and the rain, there was little time to do anything had 

we known. 

For this relatively small fire, the water quality and clean-up costs were nearly a 

million dollars, and the estimated future cost is 15 to 20 million dollars to dredge 

our reservoir. We estimate the aftereffects of erosion will negatively affect water 

quality, and cost us $250,000 per year for at least ten years. (Insert Slides 5-7.) 

IV. The Hayman Fire 

The Hayman Fire began on June 8, 2002. This fire began during times of drought, 

and was fueled by an overgrown, under-managed forest, and high winds. The fire 

burned for six weeks, and, at the end of it, 138,000 acres of our South Platte watershed had been consumed. 

Prior to the fire, based partially on our experience at Buffalo Creek, we had begun 

a program of forest thinning and treatment to reduce the fuel loads in the forest 

on lands we own. However, Denver Water owns only 8,000 acres of the 138,000 

burned, and even for our 8,000 we had only completed about one quarter of the 

thinning. The lesson is that the area that was thinned or treated did not burn or 

did not burn severely. 

Following the Hayman Fire, and continuing until today, Denver Water has had 

a crew of up to 40 people working on our land around Cheesman Reservoir, in order 

to prevent or limit the kind of sedimentation seen after the Buffalo Creek Fire. Fortunately, we have not yet seen the kind of rainfall over this burned area that was 

seen in the summer of 1996. However, even a 1/4-inch rain has been sufficient to 

move tons of debris down the hill toward the river and our reservoir. 

Since July of last year, the following restorative efforts have taken place at the 

Cheesman Reservoir property: 

• Denver Water crews and aerial contractors have applied more than 210,000 

pounds of grass seed over 4,550 acres, and have sprayed hydromulch over an 

additional 450 acres; 

• Nearly 30,000 straw bales have been placed, creating nearly 2,000 sediment 

dams in gullies in the burn area in order to slow the flow of rain runoff; 

• Crews have cut dead timber on steep slopes in the burn area using a process 

called ‘‘contour felling,’’ in which trees are cut and aligned perpendicular to the 

slopes, again to prevent erosion; 

• Denver Water also hired contractors with Hydroax machines to mulch standing 

dead trees on about 2,100 acres. This process helps break up the hydrophobic 

soils, removes the unsightly burned trees from the landscape, and returns organic materials to the soil, replacing those that were destroyed in the fire. 

42

Much of this was done in areas that were already seeded, providing mulch over 

the seed; • Under private contract, 1,700 acres of burned land were logged by timber salvage companies. About 10 million board feet of lumber—the equivalent of 

22,000 cords of firewood or 2,900 miles of 2-by-4 studs—were salvaged; • Starting this year, Denver Water planted 25,000 ponderosa pine seedlings and 

will continue to do so for the next nine years to reforest the area with its native 

pine species; • As a more immediate source of protection for the dam and the water supply, 

a 140-foot-long, 40-foot-high rock sediment dam was constructed to span the 

Goose Creek inlet, northwest of the dam. The structure contains about 14,000 

tons of rock and is designed to be water permeable; and • Costs of the Cheesman reclamation have totaled nearly $5.5 million, with the 

U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reimbursing Denver Water about $2.8 million of that amount. 

Future dredging costs have not been estimated. 

(Go through the sequence of slides from No. 8 through No. 23, describing the fire, 

erosion prevention measures, and sediment problems.) 

V. Lessons Learned and Observations. 

I do not know whether the experience of Denver Water in the arid ponderosa pine 

forest of the foothills of the Rockies is relevant to the chaparral fires in coastal California. Nevertheless, my observations and final thoughts are as follows: 

1. A great deal of the potential damage from the forest fire can be eliminated by 

careful, deliberate forest management in the years and decades before. We 

have too much fuel load in our forests, and our fire suppression policy exacerbates the problem. Our forests need to be treated and thinned regularly and 

scientifically. This problem has nothing to do with favors to the timber industry; 

2. Our preliminary conclusion is that our sediment control measures, most of 

them on a very small scale, have helped, but they have not yet been severely 

tested by a large rain event. I am hopeful, but not particularly optimistic, that 

we will succeed in preventing two million cubic yards of decomposed granite 

from moving downhill into our waterways; 

3. The Federal Government agencies, namely NRCS, The Forest Service, and 

BLM, are occasionally helpful and usually sympathetic. However, their budgets 

are limited and the acreage they deal with is vast compared with our own. Following the fire, we have outspent the Feds nearly 10 to 1 on an acre-for-acre 

basis comparing our land to theirs. The point is that you cannot depend upon 

the Federal Government to do a great deal for you. No matter how big your 

problem is, it is only one among a million such problems for them; 

4. Denver Water remains concerned about overgrown forests in the ‘‘red zone,’’ 

which is the urban/wildland interface west of Denver up and down the Front 

Range. We have not yet discovered the right mixture of carrot and stick that 

will motivate private landowners to treat and thin the forest on their property 

to help avoid catastrophic wildfire; and 

5. I think the above observations lead clearly to the conclusion that the local 

agencies know as much or more than anyone about the problems and what will 

help to alleviate future water quality, sediment, and erosion problems. Based 

on our experience, there is no guarantee that any of the measures will work, 

but we need to do what we can. 

STATEMENT OF PETER BRIERTY, FIRE MARSHAL,

SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA 

Mr. BRIERTY. Honorable members of the Subcommittee, Mr. 

Chair and Congressional guests, on behalf of the citizens of the 

County of San Bernardino and the Board of Supervisors of the 

County, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak 

here. 

Last month these mountains dodged a bullet. A bullet that could 

have taken the life off of, if not out of, these mountains. 

I realize that today across our great nation there are other forests with as many, possibly more, dead and dying trees. But those 

forests are not the most popular, not the most visited, not the most 

43

populated. They do not contain $8 billion of assessed homes and 

properties and businesses, the homes of our citizens. 

To manage the bark beetle problem the Board of Supervisors, 

over 18 months ago, authorized that the Mountain Area Safety 

Task Force, or MAST, be the administrative structure to manage 

this multi-jurisdictional emergency. The efforts of MAST paid great 

dividends in our response here on the mountain top. With that in 

mind, the county’s Office of Emergency Services is reinvesting 

those benefits of the MAST model and has initiated an action plan 

in cooperation with our flood control districts to mitigate the effects 

of debris and flood runoff from the burned areas. There are now 30 

miles of burned foothills, moonscape. This is not only a physical 

threat of debris and mud flows to our property owners down 

stream but it also threatens the quality of our drinking water, not 

just in the foothills and the mountains, but the quality of drinking 

water for millions of people in California and also the California 

water project. 

A year before the fire started MAST was addressing reforestation. As we speak, the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District is creating a customer report that provides citizens with valuable information on erosion control. This is a companion document 

to their previous publication providing information on proper planting of fire resistant and drought tolerant native plants in the 

mountains. This week alone several meetings have been held between agency representatives, registered professional foresters, 

arborists, fire safe councils and the Resource Conservation Service 

and, of course, citizens in efforts to coordinate, educate and most 

importantly initiate action on the issues of proper replanting, 

healthy reforestation and erosion control. The House Resource 

Committee’s continued support of these community-based operations are critical to the long-term success of reforestation on this 

mountain. 

As of November the 1st, the fire siege of California consumed almost 800,000 acres, but 68 percent of those acres that burned were 

private lands, leaving only 32 percent that were Federal. I would 

ask that Congress encourage the Forest Service to utilize the maximum flexibility provided within the Act to fund efforts to mitigate 

the fire danger and the threat on private lands, or as the Act describes as at-risk communities that are surrounded by a forest 

boundary. There are 49,000 improved parcels with homes and businesses in this forest, but only a small minority of those businesses 

and homes are actually on Forest Service lands. 

I would also ask that the Forest Service make their highest priority those projects that will protect our communities. They should 

endeavor to provide fuels treatments, fire protection zones, shaded 

fuel breaks in cooperation with local fire jurisdictions and create 

them immediately, but in an environmentally safe fashion with respect to artifacts of those who have gone before us adjacent to our 

communities. 

Let us talk about fire safe councils. I would ask that funding be 

provided to our fire safe councils, but the grant approval system 

that we have today is rather Byzantine. It is cumbersome, it is 

time consuming and the folks that are sitting in this room today 

that are members of those fire safe councils are ready to act today, 

44

not next year and not years from now but today. They are here and 

willing. These citizen-led organizations have made terrific progress 

in every single community across this mountain top. Their tireless 

efforts to motivate, educate and organize have paid great dividends 

to our mountain communities. Ellen Palima from Latto Creek 

should get a medal for what she did over there. Among their successes, their town hall meetings—constant town hall meetings, 

standing room only, filling this room itself to overflow, were clearly 

the foundation for success for the sheriff’s office safely evacuating 

over 58,000 people off this mountain in a few days. Although it 

might not have been the largest evacuation in the state’s history, 

it was certainly the most calm and absolutely the most polite. 

The term tree removal now needs to include the development of 

infrastructure to utilize all of those wood products from the tree 

and consider them raw materials and not waste. The county itself 

has initiated funding actions to begin its own financial efforts to 

develop the much-needed wood products utilizations, wood mills, 

local mills, portable mills, cogeneration operations. At our last 

meeting tree removal operations were creating 600 tons of wood 

waste a day. That has just gone well over 800 and with the work 

of California Edison—one of our greatest allies on the mountain top 

for removing fuel is California Edison—we well may move over 

1,600 tons a day. Now let us put that in perspective with last January. At this time last year we were handling about five tons of 

wood waste a day. We need that infrastructure. Also, please note 

that I have quoted only activity on the private lands. These numbers do not include the trees on Federal lands, which is roughly a 

10 times larger land mass. The solutions that we need to consider 

must include the beneficial uses of all wood products regardless of 

their origin. 

In terms of the fire response, we must also examine the National 

Fire Plan and the National Wildland Policy in regard to how local 

agencies are reimbursed when wildland fires threaten structures 

on private lands. Local governments, whose citizens all pay Federal 

taxes, incur great expense in providing structure protection during 

these events and do not have the mechanism or the funding in 

place, the so-called red money and green money, to pay for response from threats from outside their community. 

With regard to the President’s Healthy Forest Initiative. In recent days it has been somewhat frustrating to hear that the President’s Healthy Forest Initiative was immaterial to the fire siege of 

2003. Some have observed that the fire was mostly in chaparral 

and coastal sage, not the forest. Well I am here to tell you that our 

local mountain fire fighters and those that helped them from all 

over are not going to allow this fire to burn into this forest just to 

make a political point. Some say it was a little luck, some say it 

was the weather, but I say there was a lot of planning done by 

MAST, there was a lot of preparation by our fire safe councils and 

the bottom line, some incredible fire fighting—nothing less than heroic, at great risk to themselves—ta kept this fire out of the greater 

parts of our mountain communities. The siege of 2003 is now recognized as possibly the largest fire in California history with 3,000 

homes lost, a tragedy. But the fire fighters kept this fire from getting into 10 times that many homes. 

45

With regard to the trees that were effected, absolutely fewer 

than five percent of the trees were taken. That leaves 95 percent 

still standing and more dying every day. The threat is real, the 

threat is still here and we need your help as much now as we did 

before. 

Again, I would like to take a moment to thank you for taking the 

time out of your busy schedules to meet with us today. Particularly 

again I would like to thank Congressman Lewis for his commitment to our citizens’ safety, his tireless efforts to provide funding 

where none had existed before. I believe Senator Feinstein should 

be recognized for her help and her efforts to move this along. And 

I would like to extend a personal thank you to all of you members 

to that some day we can all say that we gave a gift of a healthy 

forest to our children—and my children are here today—and that 

gift can be given to their children so they can enjoy it. 

I would look to thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Brierty follows:]

Statement of Peter Brierty, Fire Marshal,

County of San Bernardino, California 

Honorable members of the Subcommittee, Mr. Chair, on behalf of the citizens of 

the County of San Bernardino, and the Board of Supervisors, I would like to thank 

you for the opportunity to speak to you today. 

Last month these mountain residents dodged a bullet. A bullet that could have 

taken the life off of, if not the life out of, these mountains. 

I realize that today, across our great nation, there are other forests with as many 

or possibly more dead and dying trees. But those forests are not the most popular; 

they are not the most visited; they are not the most populated; they do not contain 

eight billion dollars of assessed value of businesses, and homes, the homes of our 

citizens. 

POST-FIRE REHABILITATION 

MAST 

To manage the bark beetle problem the Board of Supervisors, 18 months ago, authorized that the Mountain Area Safety Taskforce (MAST) be the administrative 

structure to manage this multi-jurisdictional emergency. The efforts of MAST paid 

great dividends in our response to the fire here on the mountain. With that in mind, 

the County’s Office of Emergency Services is reinvesting those benefits of the MAST 

model and has initiated an action plan in cooperation with our Flood Control Districts to mitigate the effects of debris and flood run off from the burned areas. 

There are now 30 miles of burned foothills, moonscape, from La Verne in L.A. 

County across the front country to the Seven Oaks Dam east of Highland. This flood 

threat is not only a physical threat of debris and mud flows to property owners 

downstream but also threatens the quality of our drinking water, not just in the 

foothills, but the quality of the drinking water of millions of Southern Californians. 

Under the original construct of MAST, a year before the fire started, a division 

was designed to address reforestation. As we speak, the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District is creating a Customer Report that provides citizens valuable 

information on Erosion Control. This is a companion document to their previous 

publication providing information on proper planting and replanting of fire resistant, drought tolerant plants in the mountain communities. This week alone several 

meetings have been held between Agency reps, Registered Professional Foresters, 

Arborists, Fire Safe Councils, the Resource Conservation Service and citizens in efforts to coordinate, educate, communicate and initiate action on the issues of proper 

replanting, healthy reforestation and erosion control. 

The House Resources Committee’s continued support of these community-based 

operations is critical to the long-term success of these endeavors. 

FIRE PREVENTION 

PRIVATE SECTOR PROPERTIES 

We need to maximize the funding of fire hazard mitigation and dead tree removal 

in the private land holdings. As of November 1st the Fire Siege of California 

46

consumed almost 800,000 acres. 68% of what burned was private lands. Only 32% 

was Federal Land. 

I would ask that Congress encourage the USFS to utilize the maximum flexibility 

provided within the Act to fund efforts to mitigate fire threat on private lands that 

are surrounded by the forest boundary. There are 49,000 improved parcels, parcels 

with homes and businesses on private lands adjacent to the boundaries of the San 

Bernardino National Forest. Only a small minority of our mountain homes are actually on USFS lands. 

I would also ask that the Forest Service make their highest priority, those 

projects that will protect our communities. They should endeavor to provide fuels 

treatments, fire protection zones or shaded fuel breaks in cooperation with local fire 

jurisdictions and create them immediately adjacent to our communities. I recognize 

some controversy in their effectiveness during a Santa Ana condition, but they are 

effective at reducing the velocity and momentum of fire and they do provide a degree of protection to our communities. A degree that doesn’t exist today. 

FIRE SAFE COUNCILS 

I would ask that funding not only be provided to local agencies to remove the dead 

trees but also funding must be provided to our Fire Safe Councils. The Byzantine 

grant approval system that is used today is too cumbersome and time consuming. 

These folks are ready to act today. These citizen-led organizations have made terrific progress in every community across this mountain. Their tireless efforts to motivate, educate and organize have paid great dividends to our mountain communities. Among many successes, their town hall meetings, standing room only, were 

clearly the ‘‘foundation for success’’ of the Sheriff’s Office safely evacuating over 

50,000 people off of this mountain in only a few days. Some have said that it was 

the largest evacuation in the State’s history. If it wasn’t the largest it was the most 

calm and the most polite. 

SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT 

We must reconsider our definition of ‘‘tree removal.’’ It is no longer just felling 

the tree. Tree removal now needs to include the development and utilization of infrastructure to utilize all of the wood products from the tree and consider them raw 

materials, not waste. The County has taken actions that are financing initial efforts 

to develop much-needed wood products utilization, but much more can be done with 

your help. At our last meeting, tree removal operations were creating 600 tons of 

wood waste a day, now we have exceeded 800 tons a day and this is without the 

Southern California Edison tree removal operations in full swing. Their participation will likely move us to 1,600 tons a day. To put this in perspective, before the 

crisis, we managed five tons a day. Another source to consider is that the figures 

I have quoted only include activity on private lands. It does not include the Federal 

lands, which is roughly an area 10 times larger. The solutions that we consider 

must include beneficial uses for all wood products regardless of their origin. 

FIRE RESPONSE 

We must also examine the National Fire Plan and National Wildland Policy in 

regard to how local agencies are reimbursed when wildland fires threaten structures 

on private lands. Local governments, whose citizens all pay federal taxes, incur 

great expense in providing structure protection during these events and do not have 

the mechanisms or funding in place to pay for response to threats from outside their 

jurisdictions. With over 350 Counties, Cities and Tribes participating the specter of 

uncompensated provision of service is wearing thin the fabric of the best mutual aid 

system in the Country. 

PRESIDENTS HEALTHY FOREST INITIATIVE 

In recent days it has been somewhat frustrating to hear that the President’s 

Healthy Forest Initiative was immaterial to the California Fire Siege of 2003. The 

detractors state that the fire was mostly in chaparral and coastal sage. I am here 

to tell you that our local mountain fire fighters were not going to allow this fire to 

burn into this forest just to make a point. Some say it was a little luck, some say 

it was the weather, but I will say that there was a lot of planning from our Mountain Area Safety Task Force, and preparation by our citizens and, the bottom line, 

some incredible fire fighting, nothing less than heroic fire fighting that kept this fire 

out of the greater parts of our mountain communities and out of the forest. 

The Siege of 2003 is now recognized as the largest fire in California history with 

over 3 thousand homes lost. These fire fighters kept this fire from getting into the 

dead trees and saved ten times that number of homes. Homes that would have been 

lost had this fire gotten into our dead forest. 

47

The fire affected fewer than 5% of the dead trees, 95% still standing and more 

dying every day. The threat is real, the treat is still here, and we need your help 

as much now as we did before. 

Again, I would like to take a moment to thank you for taking time out of your 

busy schedules to meet with us today. I would particularly like to thank Congressman Jerry Lewis, for his commitment to our citizen’s safety and for his tireless efforts to provide funding where none existed. Senator Feinstein should be recognized 

for her efforts to help us. And I would like to extend a personal thank you to all 

of you for your commitment to eliminate the fire danger that still exists here in our 

mountain communities and that someday, we all can say that we gave the gift of 

a healthy forest to our children, a gift that their children will enjoy. Thank you very 

much. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you and I thank you for your testimony. 

[Applause.] 

Mr. POMBO. I know, Mr. Brierty, that you had a personal conflict 

and when it is necessary for you to leave, feel free to do so. 

Mr. BRIERTY. Thank you very much. I will be more than happy 

to stay and answer questions. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Calvert. 

Mr. CALVERT Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Barry, I was very interested in your testimony as well as Mr. 

Brierty’s testimony, but the after-effects of the fire. In the last 

panel, you may have heard my questions to our friends as U.S. Geological Survey, and as I mentioned, Fish and Wildlife is not here, 

the Corps is not here. Those are agencies I am sure you had to deal 

with in the permitting process which you had to go through. 

The Hayman fire was approximately 140,000 acres. This fire exceeds that by a factor of two or three, three probably. 

Mr. BARRY. Six. 

Mr. CALVERT Six, yeah. There are six million people who live 

downstream in the Santa Ana River shed and I can tell you from 

flying over in the helicopter today that there is some work being 

done, but from your experience with a smaller fire, you are saying 

that if we have two inches of rain, if we are not prepared for this, 

we could have a disaster that is multiples of what you experienced 

in the Denver area, is that correct? 

Mr. BARRY. Well, Mr. Calvert, I need to be very careful about not 

setting myself up as an expert in the geology, the soils, the hydrology, et cetera of this area. I certainly know—I think things are different here, your slopes are steeper, the soil is different and I do 

not want to project what I think will happen here because I have 

not studied it. And in fact, probably like many of you, I am a lawyer, not a scientist. So my word is not particularly valuable on that 

point anyway. 

I do know that two inches of rain on top of the Hayman fire area 

in the next two or three years, any time in the next two or three 

years, is going to cause enormous problems for Denver and that 

is——

Mr. CALVERT. How many people downstream from the Hayman 

fire? 

Mr. BARRY. Well, all the way downstream in the city, you are 

talking about two million, but in the area above the reservoirs that 

would probably fill up with sediment if anything happened, there 

are only a few thousand people. It is not quite like this area around 

Lake Arrowhead where it is heavily urbanized. 

48

The Hayman fire area had probably only 5,000 or 6,000 houses 

in it total. 

Mr. CALVERT. I guess I just want to make the point that as bad 

as the Hayman fire was and the predicament that you are in is terrible, this could very well be worse. 

Mr. BARRY. I think this could be worse, but I want to be careful 

about that. 

Mr. CALVERT. And so it is imperative that the permits are in 

place, that the work takes place immediately to make sure that we 

mitigate for that. And also on the water quality issue, which we 

will probably get into with the next panel, this obviously has a horrendous effect on water quality; and I know from my experience in 

chairing the Water Subcommittee that Colorado is in a difficult situation anyway with water. So if you are not able to use your 

groundwater, you have nowhere else to go. 

Mr. BARRY. Well, groundwater is not the problem, it is the surface water. If that gets full of ash and sediment, then it is going 

to cost us more money to treat it. 

Mr. Calvert, I had one item. Are you still there? There is a book, 

it is 20 years old now, but John McFee’s book called ‘‘The Control 

of Nature’’ has three chapters in it, one about controlling lava by 

putting fire hose water, one about the Mississippi River and the 

Corps of Engineers and the third chapter is called ‘‘Los Angeles 

against the mountains’’ and it is the story of debris flow basins and 

the cycle of fire, flood, debris, et cetera. And I would urge Committee members to look at that. It is well written. I have never met 

John McFee, I would not know him if he walked in the room. 

Mr. CALVERT. I did read the book a long time ago, I will re-read 

it. 

Mr. BARRY. But it is superb in talking about the issue of what 

happens if. 

Mr. CALVERT. Great, thank you. 

And Mr. Brierty, your comments on fuel reduction, there are only 

several things you can do. People talk about fuel reduction and 

most people say they are in favor of that, but if you mention the 

word logging, you will get a lot of people upset. But what do you 

do with it? I mean either you can throw it away, which a lot of that 

is taking place today, or you can use it in some manner, whether 

it is biofuel or logs or something, to reduce the cost of removal, because this is going to be extremely expensive. 

Mr. BRIERTY. Yes. There are several options. Some of them are 

long-term, the cogeneration option is an 18-month to 2-year process. But some of the things we have looked at—the county just provided a loan to a pallet manufacturer. One of the situations we 

have up here is the homes are so close together you cannot free fall 

a tree and make regular lumber out of it, but the person who 

makes pallet stock, four foot lengths, can take those four foot, five 

foot, six foot chunks that have to be cut down in that fashion and 

use those as raw materials. Rather than using the good lumber, the 

50-60 foot logs for pallet stock, let us use the stuff that is made 

available here, create market niches that we can make on this 

mountaintop. 

Mr. CALVERT. I was raised in this area—this is my last question, 

but I cannot remember, maybe Mr. Lewis can remember, but I 

49

remember there used to be a local mill here. I think it closed in 

1978 or the early 1980s. 

Mr. BRIERTY. That is correct. 

Mr. CALVERT. It was an old family mill, was it not? 

Mr. BRIERTY. Yes, it was about 20 years ago. As early as a year 

ago, I had people tell me that there was no way that there would 

be another mill created in southern California, and as soon as we 

get it open, we are going to invite them to cut the ribbon with us. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. CALVERT. Thank you. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Baca. 

Mr. BACA. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Brierty, the first question is, you know, firefighters inhale 

fumes from fires and from everything else from fire burns. I have 

introduced a bill that requires health monitoring and analyzes the 

firefighters who respond to fires, wildfires and fire disasters. But 

besides the treatment, what do you think can be done through prevention? That is question number one. Number two, is there any 

equipment or precaution firefighters should use to reduce the 

amount of exposure to harmful fumes or other hazards? 

Mr. BRIERTY. One of the situations in the forest is that is just 

a byproduct, there is no way to get around it. I think that is where 

the term ‘‘smoke eaters’’ came from. But one of the things we can 

do is through proper forestation, through proper removal of dead 

materials, we can reduce that fire hazard and reduce the overall 

risk to those firefighters. It is indeed—cancer is presumptive in 

these folks because they breathe so much contamination in their 

jobs. And I applaud you for your efforts to do that. 

Mr. BACA. Thank you. I like the fact that you mention cancer 

presumption, because California is the first state to do that. Hopefully we can do that at the national level. I have introduced legislation in that area. Thank you for that plug. 

Mr. BRIERTY. Thank you. 

Mr. BACA. In reference to another question, do you believe that 

there is adequate funding to continue to be ready to fight any additional fires that may come our way? That is question number one. 

Two, is there adequate funding in terms of both equipment to fight 

the fires and the ability to protect our firefighters? Because I noticed that when I was out there during that period of time with the 

firefighters and highway patrol, I saw many of the individuals who 

were resident individuals trying to put out the fires themselves. 

Joe, can you call a firefighter, can you get them over to my home? 

I wish I had a magic wand and I would have just been able to got 

a fire truck in that immediate area and got it there. They felt they 

would have saved their homes, some of them did and some others 

did not. But is there anything that can be done? 

Mr. BRIERTY. Absolutely. All across southern California, northern 

California, there are measures going forward to the voters to try 

to staff up and properly equip firefighters to do the job. To give you 

an example, for the last two years, we have been asking for assistance prior to the fire starting, and I was told by the FEMA representatives that as soon as the fire started, we would have all the 

resources we need. Now sitting on Sunday morning on October 26, 

watching the fire burn toward Crestline with seven local engines, 

50

a strike team from San Diego and our assistants from the Forest 

Service and CDF is all we had that morning on Sunday. 

But again, you have to remember that there was tremendous resources drawn everywhere in southern California. The answer to 

your question is no, there is not. 

Mr. BACA. Thank you very much. 

How much has the lack of infrastructure such as milling, cogens 

for electricity cost the County of San Bernardino? 

Mr. BRIERTY. It has cost the county well over $5 million to this 

point and it is expected to increase until such time that we have 

those infrastructures in place. One of the benefits of that is once 

those infrastructures—mills, et cetera—come into place, it will 

again reduce the cost of the tree removal to our citizens and 

incentivize, absolutely incentivize the removal of dead trees and 

help us start the forest regeneration. 

Mr. BACA. Thank you. 

Mr. Barry, I know that I am running out of time, but my question pertains to something that you said and I am intrigued by it 

because you talked about the insurance industries. 

Could you elaborate a little bit more in reference to what can be 

done there? Because I sit on the Financial Services Committee and 

that has jurisdiction over insurance companies. 

Mr. BARRY. I did not put anything in my testimony because I did 

not think of this in this context until this morning, but it does 

seem to me—I do not know how Congress would do it. I do not 

want to—I do not know enough about how you would do it, but it 

would seem to me that the incentive for a homeowner to do forest 

treatment and thinning on land he owns would be considerable, if 

the insurance company said either we will not write insurance or 

we will increase the price unless you treat the forest land on your 

property. It seems to me that may be an easier mechanism than 

having the heavy hand of the Federal government tell a homeowner you must do X and you cannot do Y. That is always a difficult thing to do, but if there were a way for the insurance industry to make that as part of a policy or a requirement of a policy, 

you would see action. 

But I have not begun—and I would be more than happy to have 

people from my office and utility and even state work with you all 

about that. It is just the beginnings of an idea at this point. 

Mr. BACA. I would like to explore that since I do sit on that Committee. 

But one final question, since my light is on. The city of Rialto in 

my district has declared a water shortage emergency on Tuesday. 

They have already faced serious quality and quantity problems due 

to perchlorate and drought, but the vegetation that has helped 

water seep into the ground has been destroyed. The City believes 

that they have enough water for now, but there will be serious 

problems if the basin does not soak up the water. The ashes and 

debris will also cause problems for water treatment. 

How great of an impact do you believe that water shortage could 

have on this community or any other communities and what steps 

do you believe should be taken to make sure that there is enough 

quality water? 

Mr. BARRY. That is to me? 

51

Mr. BACA. Yes. 

Mr. BARRY. We have many of the same problems in Colorado, almost all of our water supply in Denver comes from snowmelt. We 

have had several water-short years. We are taking a number of different steps to increase our water supply, including increased 

water conservations, incentives, rebates, et cetera. We are building 

a water recycling plant, $110 million worth of recycled water that 

will be reused for non-potable purposes. And we are building small 

projects, nothing big, but a whole number of different things to increase supply. 

Beyond sort of generic advice, I want to stay away from telling 

California agencies how they should do their business, because it 

is different than ours. 

Mr. BACA. Peter, if you would like——

Mr. BRIERTY. Congressman Baca, on your question on insurance, 

one of the things I am sure mountain residents would be very concerned about is actually a concern over cancellation, that the fear 

may be too great by the insurance companies, but if you could assist in assuring folks that their insurance would not be canceled as 

long as they took prudent actions, that would be much appreciated. 

Mr. BACA. Thank you. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Radanovich. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. Thank you. I thought both your testimonies 

were very valuable and I appreciate you being here, but I have no 

questions. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Walden. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too appreciate your 

testimony. 

I wanted to point out, this discussion about biomass and how we 

can use that to produce power. Just to remind people that in the 

Healthy Forests Restoration Act, we put a provision in there for 

$10 a green ton to help subsidize it, to help pay for getting it basically out of the woods down to where it can be used. People you 

talk to who are in that business will tell you that is a pittance compared to what it will take, so we are not going to artificially subsidize it to the point of not being economically feasible, it will either make it or not. But it is a little bit of an incentive I think that 

will help develop a market for that renewable resource. 

How do you say your last name? 

Mr. BRIERTY. Just like you were to make tea out of briars, briartea. 

Mr. WALDEN. Good, thank you. 

Mr. CALVERT. Sticky subject. 

Mr. WALDEN. The point I was going to make, when we were putting together the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, the House 

version left open but set priorities where this Act would have its 

priority. And we said wildland/urban interface, watersheds, areas 

of endangered and threatened specie habitat and watersheds. 

When the Senate got done with it, they put an arbitrary half-mile 

limit and said half the money has to be spent within half a mile 

of a wildland/urban interface. Now in reality, we spend over 60 percent of the funds there today. 

We were trying to leave some flexibility to deal with, if it is your 

watershed, the Forest Service says needs it the most, supply it 

52

there, or if it is wildland/urban interface, you can do it there, but 

try not to have these arbitrary limits. 

The concern I have is that this Act, as good as it is, and the reform, as good as it is, only applies to about 11 percent—11 percent—of the lands identified in the forest system that we know are 

subject to catastrophic fire, bug infestation and disease, because 

there is 190 million acres at threat. This is limited to 20 million 

acres. Now that is still a lot of territory, but it does not apply to 

timber sales, it does not go into wilderness areas, it does not go 

into these roadless areas. All that stuff is sort of off limits. And so 

as I look at the problem we face, this Act will help us in a limited 

way, but it seems to me there is a lot more that needs to be done. 

And I guess specifically to you, Mr. Barry, in the watershed environment and in a post-fire environment, what were you able to do 

and the timeline you undertook versus those across the red dotted 

line you had there, in the Federal lands, how long has it taken 

them to do things? And can you compare the processes? You are 

an attorney, give us an idea. 

Mr. BARRY. One, I think one of our concerns with the Healthy 

Forest bill is it does not put emphasis on watershed, and we 

thought that perhaps that was missing. Congressman McInnis, 

who I know well and have for 20 years, we are going to miss him, 

did a good job, did very much appreciate all that work, but if I had 

any problem with the bill, it did not quite go enough to identify watersheds as a particular area of concern. 

Mr. WALDEN. We did highlight it though as one of the top ones. 

Mr. BARRY. You did highlight it and I agree with that, and I 

think that was helpful. And I know that this is all part of a larger 

political process, so I want to use the term log rolling, but perhaps 

in this context, that might be a little bit off. 

Mr. WALDEN. Would not go. 

Let us go back to the watershed. 

Mr. BARRY. What we did in the watershed that we own was far 

more than the Forest Service was able to do. I think they were in 

full agreement with what we were doing, but they did not have the 

manpower or the money to do it. So we spent about 10 times as 

much money per acre. 

Mr. WALDEN. Right. But what I want to get to is in addition to 

money, we know that process differences—you are not bound by 

the same sort of NEPA processes, are you? 

Mr. BARRY. No, we are not. 

Mr. WALDEN. And so how fast could you operate? Can you compare what you were able to do, to put together your plans and implement them, compared to what you see happening across the line 

that you are concerned about? 

Mr. BARRY. I thought that after the fire, the Forest Service did 

not appear to be hamstrung as they were before the fire, by excessive rules and regulations and process. I did not find that their 

ability to move was particularly hamstrung by their own regulations and litigation, as it is before the fire. And we had some experience with that and so did they. I thought afterwards, they could 

do almost everything they needed to do. They just did not have the 

manpower and the money. 

53

Mr. WALDEN. We are sure seeing something different in Oregon, 

where 400,000 to 500,000 acre perimeter burned in the Biscuit fire. 

The counties and private landowners have gone in, they have gotten out the dead trees, they have replanted, they are doing a lot 

of things. The Forest Service is still writing the plan that they 

know will take another year to be appealed. We are going to be 

three years in, you are not going to end up with a conifer forest 

unless you spend a fortune to put it in there, because the brush 

is going to come up and overtake it. 

Mr. BARRY. I guess my experience in Colorado has been a little 

bit better than that. 

Mr. WALDEN. Good. 

Mr. BARRY. But it is either that I am misinformed or not sufficiently informed or that things are a little bit different. I cannot 

tell you which. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Lewis. 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too would like to say 

that the testimony of both of you has been very helpful, a lot of 

imagination and stimulated at least me. 

Mary Bono mentioned earlier that she and I a long time ago, 

with some people with forest expertise spent some time on the 

ground but also flying around the forest, her portion of the San 

Bernardino National Forest as well as this. Yesterday, I flew in 

helicopter from here all the way down through the L.A. County line 

to see the huge front that is there. And above that fire line, of 

course, the very problems that you have been discussing—soil erosion, the potential for sediment movement, what it can do to the 

people who live in the pathway of that movement—all of that is of 

great concern. 

But the line I remember from that one trip from these timber experts was that in the San Bernardino National Forest, unless we 

get a handle on these bark beetle trees, if we have that major fire, 

that chances are very, very great with the geology, the steep slopes 

and otherwise, that erosion could very well eliminate the ability of 

those who care to ever bring back the kind of tall tree, fir forest, 

that we all love and know, and perhaps we will be left with scrub 

oak. The prospect of that was enough to stimulate me to get involved as early as possible. 

But in the meantime, as you are talking about items—I never 

heard of hydro-axing before. I do not know if, Peter, we have been 

thinking about that, but this mix of possibilities in terms of a very 

rapid action plan over the next 12, 18, 24 months is sure intriguing 

to me and I do want to follow through on it. Would you both comment on that scrub oak forest that I am worried about in this huge 

front? 

Mr. BRIERTY. The concern I have is exactly that, the watershed 

is extremely important to our ability to regenerate this forest. Personally, I still drink tap water, so the watershed protection is extremely important to anybody who lives on this mountain and we 

need to work on that as fast as possible. 

Mr. BARRY. I do not have too much to add other than that the 

catastrophe in Colorado appears to me to be less because there are 

fewer people living in the area that has burned or immediately 

54

downstream of it. And that our slopes are less steep and we are 

talking mostly about ball-bearing size decomposed granite sediment, not big boulders. When I read John McFee’s book, he talks 

about Volkswagen sizes boulders crashing through people’s houses. 

That seems to me to be a bigger problem. And I agree that unless 

we get a handle on it and you see big rainstorms with perhaps 

change in the meteorological conditions of the earth, there are 

some serious problems ahead, I would guess. But again, I want to 

be very careful, that I am not an expert in southern California. 

Practically the last time I was here was when I was born here 59 

years ago. So I am no expert. 

Mr. BRIERTY. With the heat that the fire caused as it burned, 

many areas that we have are basically moonscape and somewhat 

of moon dust on them. It is not an issue of when the rain comes, 

the dust storms that we have had, you can see alluvial deposits 

coming off the hillsides of the fines, the things necessary for the 

small plants to grow that would encourage the other larger plants. 

So if we do not move fast—we do not have to wait for rain here, 

we have got wind conditions that will cause the problem to exacerbate. 

Mr. BARRY. We have seen some success—remember, I talked 

about two fires. Buffalo Creek in 1996, our movement after that 

fire was not as aggressive, but we have seen reasonably decent revegetation of grasses, very little of trees. That has helped slow 

down erosion in that area, has not stopped it, but it has helped. 

It gives me hope that if you can get a reasonable degree of revegetation, mostly grasses and sedges, brush, not trees because trees 

take a long time, in a five to 10 year period, you may be able to 

reduce sediment flows by quite a bit. But as I said, we are the poster boy for what you do, but it has not rained hard in the drainage 

yet and after it does, we may be the poster boy for something else. 

Mr. LEWIS. Well, we want to keep very close to what you are 

about and what does happen. The testimony here on the part of 

both of you has been very valuable. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. POMBO. Ms. Bono. 

Ms. BONO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I actually just want to 

compliment both gentlemen on their testimony and say, Mr. Barry, 

it certainly does not seem like much stands in your way and I applaud you for that, because the answers are usually outside of the 

box, and I appreciate you way of thinking. 

I really just have a quick comment, and that is to Mr. Brierty, 

that during the fires, Congressman Calvert and I toured, along 

with Secretary Veneman, the California Department of Forestry’s 

I guess response center in Riverside, or command center. 

Mr. BRIERTY. Right. 

Ms. BONO. And we were very—I believe I speak for Ken as well, 

interrupt me if I do not—but we were very impressed with how the 

agencies came together. And certainly in this post 9-11 world, 

where we have heard so much criticism about our agencies not 

talking to one another, we were very impressed and encouraged by 

your ability to walk in the door, and the famous line was of course, 

‘‘to check their egos at the door’’ and they sat down, rolled up their 

sleeves and they attacked these fires extremely successfully and we 

were encouraged, because we know that your charge is larger than 

55

just this, but heaven forbid 1 day when we have that large catastrophic earthquake or terrorist attack, we will be in very much the 

same situation. So my hat is off to you for doing such a great job 

and we witnessed first-hand how effective you were. So that is not 

a question, but sometimes we do not dish out enough compliments 

around here, so I hope you will take that instead of a question. 

Mr. BRIERTY. Thank you very much. And on behalf of the chiefs 

that made that happen, there is a lot of vision in Tom O’Keefe, 

Gene Zimmerman, Peter Hills, Bill McNall and Bill Smith from 

Running Springs, that made those types of things happen. So 

thank you very much for that kind compliment. 

Ms. BONO. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you. 

Mr. Barry, just I guess briefly in your opinion, what were some 

of the impediments to the work that you did in terms of Federal 

rules, policy, laws that stopped you from being able to move forward? 

Mr. BARRY. Let me give you two different answers for the time 

period. When we were trying to do forest thinning and forest treatment before—after the Buffalo Creek fire but before the Hayman 

fire, where we wanted to go in and treat, reduce the density of fuel 

loads in the forest, we had cooperation from the Forest Service, but 

we did get sued, there was dispute about rewriting the forest management plan. That process moved more slowly and less completely 

than we would have liked. I do not—I did not bone up on all that 

before I came out today, so I cannot give you a complete answer, 

but I would say there were some impediment, they may have been 

citizen initiated and not Forest Service driven, in our ability to thin 

and treat the forest as we thought necessary prior to that fire. 

After the fire, I would say we have gotten a great deal of interest 

and complete cooperation from all the Federal agencies. And I do 

not have any—other than lack of funding and their need to pay attention to other people’s problems elsewhere in the country, which 

they need to do—other than that, I do not have any complaints 

about how the Forest Service has handled our situation post-fire. 

Mr. POMBO. You said you were sued before the fire started. You 

were not sued after the fire? 

Mr. BARRY. Correct. We were sued before the fire, or the Forest 

Service was, I cannot remember which, as we tried to put in place 

our plan to thin and treat some of our forested acreage in the area 

that later was in fact burned. 

Mr. POMBO. So when you had trees alive, you were sued but after 

they were all dead, they let you go in and do the work? 

Mr. BARRY. That is correct. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Brierty, I know this is relatively soon for you in 

terms of dealing with the aftermath of this fire, but do you have 

suggestions for the Committee for things that we could do at this 

point that would make it easier for you to do the work that you 

need to do at this point? 

Mr. BRIERTY. In terms of tree removal, fire response? 

Mr. POMBO. The after-effects. 

Mr. BRIERTY. After-effects. 

Mr. POMBO. Yeah. 

56

Mr. BRIERTY. The direction that the Committee is going is very, 

very helpful. The assistance that Congressman Lewis and Feinstein’s actions have been able to provide. The incentivization to remove the trees, helping us get the trees on the ground, helping the 

citizens who are total victims in this. They did not do anything 

wrong here, they have done nothing wrong, but they are incurring 

costs of tens of thousands of dollars, and your assistance and Congress’ assistance to those citizens and to those fire safe councils 

would be more than I could ask for. 

Mr. POMBO. Well, I want to thank both of you. Your testimony 

has proven to be extremely valuable for the Committee. If there are 

further questions that the members have, they will be submitted 

to you in writing and if you can answer those in writing for the 

Committee, it would be appreciated, so that we could include them 

as part of the hearing record. 

Mr. BARRY. Be pleased to do so. 

Mr. BRIERTY. Thank you very much. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you very much. I am going to excuse this 

panel and I would like to call up our third panel. 

[Applause.] 

Mr. POMBO. We have Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen, Mr. Alan Barrett 

accompanied by Dave Nenna; Dr. Scott Stephens and Mr. Joseph 

Grindstaff. 

Before you get too comfortable, if I could just have you gentlemen 

stand and raise your right hands. 

[Witnesses sworn.] 

Mr. POMBO. Let the record show they all answered in the affirmative. 

I want to welcome our third panel here. I appreciate your patience and your perseverance in staying with us. I know that this 

has proven to be a long day. We will start with Dr. Bonnicksen. 

STATEMENT OF THOMAS BONNICKSEN, PH.D., PROFESSOR, 

DEPARTMENT OF FOREST SCIENCE, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY 

Dr. BONNICKSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Dr. 

Thomas Bonnicksen, I am Professor of Forest Science at Texas 

A&M University. I have spent my entire professional career studying the history of North America’s native forests and ways to restore them. 

I find this to be a sad occasion. I have been working in these 

mountains for quite some time. We all know the losses, the numbers of acres, lives lost and so on. I was here during the fires as 

a matter of fact, at the request of this Committee. But I cannot 

possibly imagine how the people here actually felt when these fires 

occurred. I was an observer, I did not experience it. I do remember 

driving into Lake Arrowhead and Crestline after the evacuation, 

and to me it was eery and depressing because there was not a single soul, it was silent. Things were left behind right where they 

had been used. I could imagine barely how people below felt, not 

knowing if they would come back to a home and all the things they 

cared about. 

And then I went into Cedar Glen and then I saw where those 

people could not come back to a home. It was gone. This was, to 

57

me, a terrible tragedy and I can barely understand how those people felt, many of which may very well be in this room. 

I will also say that when I drove up Highway 18, it was clear 

to me that the firefighters saved Lake Arrowhead. It was heroic 

and it was skillful and I was very impressed. 

But we have known what to do to prevent this problem for a very 

long time. And I think it has gotten to the point now where the 

lives and property and our heritage that is being lost goes beyond 

arguments. I think it now is at the point where we as a society 

have a moral obligation to use what we know to prevent any further loss of life and property and natural resources. 

I started working in southern California’s forests 30 years ago, 

in the chaparral. I remember then that we knew what to do, I remember then people were frustrated because they could not do it. 

Then in 1994, I was asked to come up to Lake Arrowhead and 

help a large group of professionals find a way to deal with the overgrown forest problem, and they drafted a plan that they all agreed 

on. Nothing happened. If something had been done, based on that 

plan, the beetle outbreak probably would have been contained and 

would not have destroyed 474,000 acres of forest, an entire forest. 

Then I was asked to go down into San Diego County and do the 

same thing for chaparral in 1995. We had 59 professionals, all of 

whom came to agreement on what to do to prevent a next big fire 

in San Diego County. Nothing happened. 

Then I came here 2 months ago and testified before this Committee and I was really hopeful. It represented the Congress’ interest in a problem that has been festering for a century. And there 

were many solutions suggested. But there was too little time, nothing could be done between then and the October fires. So here we 

are again. 

And here, I think things have changed. Not only have you shown 

twice that you are committed to solving this problem, but now 

things are different too because we have the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. I was there, as were you, when the President signed 

the Act. I was there because I thought it was truly historic. This 

is several decades before we have had the opportunity to do something to solve this problem. And I say opportunity, the Act is not 

the solution. The Act makes it possible for us to solve the problem, 

but now the test is will we solve the problem? That is the real test 

now—do we have the money, the manpower and the will? And you 

helped make this possible, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Walden. And for 

that I am grateful and I think our nation is grateful. Thank you. 

Now, I think in order to make this work, we have to focus the 

resources that the Congress provides where the problem is most serious. I cannot think, in my understanding of the entire western 

United States, a place where this problem is more serious than it 

is right here. So rather than sprinkling the money around to solve 

problems every place in the west, I think we ought to focus our attention here where we can make a real difference. But we are going 

to have to act quickly. 

I think, given the fact that we have 95 percent of this beetlekilled forest out here, that we have less than 8 months to make a 

difference on the ground, to keep Lake Arrowhead, Crestline, Big 

58

Bear, Idyllwild from burning next fall. We just have 8 months, and 

that is it. And we had best use our time wisely. 

We have to remove the dead trees and we have to start near the 

communities, because that is where it will be most effective, given 

the time we have available. Then we have to work outward, of 

course, into the forests where the problem is most severe. But we 

have to do so in a way that rebuilds the next forest at the same 

time and does not just level the forest that is here. So that means 

we have to protect the trees that are still alive, even young trees 

that are going to be part of the new forest. We have to leave snags 

for wildlife, three or so per acre, we have to leave logs on the 

ground, five to nine per acre. We have to do many things to make 

sure that when we reduce the fire hazard, we do it in a way that 

ensures that the new forest can be rebuilt quickly and effectively 

so that 50 years from now, our children, my grandchildren, can 

enjoy this again. 

Now I want to point out that this is not just about forests. Chaparral is also a big part of our problem and obviously that is most 

of the area that was burned. Now in the case of our forests, fires 

were light, so we can I think rebuild a forest where fires would be 

light again. In the case of chaparral, fires were hot historically, and 

they will be hot from now on. 

Even so, the solution is the same. We have to isolate those parts 

of the forest that are overgrown, and should be overgrown. Part of 

this forest was overgrown historically, but those are the parts that 

burned. We have to isolate them from one another, with the other 

parts of the forest that do not burn as hot—younger trees, large 

trees with nothing underneath. Chaparral is exactly the same situation. If chaparral is less than five years old, it will not burn. If 

it is 20 to 40 years old, it will not burn very hot unless it is the 

most extreme conditions and it is usually a very good fuel break. 

After 40 years, it starts to become decadent and by 50 and 60 

years, it is explosive. We have to isolate those explosive parts of 

the chaparral from one another with the younger parts that do not 

burn so hot. 

Now an example of this is in the testimony I provided. If you 

look at the last figure, Figure 2, you can see in that figure that—

and it was at my request that San Diego County prepared that 

map just for this hearing, it shows the areas by age class that 

burned in the fire, the Cedar fire and so on. You can see, with the 

explanations on the map, that the fire followed the older age classes. It was suppressed at the boundaries of recent fires and areas 

where the chaparral was younger. 

Now if you also look at Figure 1 in my testimony, you will see 

the difference between southern California and Baja California in 

terms of the size of the fires, and thereby the size of the older 

patches of chaparral that burned the hottest. And it was provided 

by Dr. Richard Minnick from UC-Riverside. That is an outstanding 

map because it shows we have hundred thousand-plus acre patches 

of aged and flammable chaparral on our side of the border and 

there is a straight line, whereas in Baja, there are 5,000 acre and 

smaller patches. Why? Because they have been burning for this 

same century we have tried to stop all the fires, and they have sucVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:32 Jun 09, 2004 Jkt 088533 PO 00000 Frm 00062 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J:\DOCS\90767.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: KATHY
59

cessfully isolated the older, more flammable patches from one another with the less flammable younger patches. 

And it turns out that what it looks like in Baja California is the 

way southern California used to look and did look for thousands of 

years. So it is the same problem, same solution, just a slightly different way of going about it. 

But let me conclude by saying there are a couple of lessons I 

think we have to learn from this. The first is anywhere that forests 

are overgrown could end up like this, either killed by beetles or destroyed by fire. The Sierra Nevada is, I think, a prime example of 

a place where this could happen again. And where the chaparral 

is aged, the same thing. In fact, San Diego County created a map 

of aged classes of chaparral and all you have to do is look at that 

map to see where the next big fire is going to be or where the next 

lives are going to be in jeopardy. The map tells you everything. 

So the next lesson? We have to thin our forests and reduce the 

density of aged chaparral and we have to make sure—and we have, 

I think, a moral obligation that what happened this year does not 

happen again. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you. Mr. Barrett. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Bonnicksen follows:]

Statement of Dr. Thomas M. Bonnicksen, Professor, Department of Forest 

Science, Texas A&M University, Visiting Scholar and Board Member, The 

Forest Foundation, Auburn, California 

INTRODUCTION 

My name is Dr. Thomas M. Bonnicksen. I am a forest ecologist and professor in 

the Department of Forest Science at Texas A&M University. I am also a visiting 

scholar and board member of The Forest Foundation in Auburn, California. I have 

conducted research on the history and restoration of America’s native forests, especially California’s forests and brushlands, for more than 30 years. I have written 

over 100 scientific and technical papers and I recently published a book titled 

‘‘America’s Ancient Forests: From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery’’ (Copyright 

January 2000, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 594 pages). The book documents the 18,000-

year history of North America’s native forests. 

MORAL IMPERATIVE 

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, this is a sad day for all of us. The 

Southern California fires of 2003 burned 739,597 acres, took 22 human lives, caused 

$2.2 billion in losses, and cost taxpayers more than $250 million to contain. In the 

San Bernardino Mountains alone, six people lost their lives, 993 homes and 10 businesses were destroyed, and over 90,000 acres burned. 

Equally important, and often ignored, are the millions of tons of pollutants generated by these monster fires that fill the air and impair human health. Furthermore, few people realize that the aftermath of a fire can be just as devastating as 

the fire itself. Total runoff in just this area (the Santa Ana River Watershed) is likely to increase by more than 10 percent and peak storm flows will increase about 

five times the average. Sediment loads carried downstream could be 30 to 50 times 

normal, and as much as 20,000 tons of nutrients, nitrates, and phosphorus formerly 

bound in soil will probably be released and make its way into groundwater. Uranium and other radioactive materials also will be transported downstream with 

toxic organics and carcinogenic compounds from partial combustion of forest materials. This will decrease the usability of one of this region’s primary water sources. 

It is estimated that 1.7 billion cubic yards of rock, sand, and debris will clog water 

control structures and dams as well. 

These horrific fires are a warning. We can anticipate similar catastrophes in overgrown forests throughout the West if we do not change our ways. We have already 

seen this happen in Arizona and Colorado. The Sierra Nevada may be next. 

Nothing done by management to the environment would come close to the ecological and social costs of monster fires. There is no argument, no matter how compelling or well-meaning, that justifies allowing uncontrolled and unnatural wildfires to 

60

kill human beings, destroy homes, forests, and the habitat of millions of animals, 

pollute the air and water, and strip irreplaceable soil from the land. We know how 

to prevent these catastrophic fires and we have a moral obligation to prevent them 

in the future. 

IMPRESSIONS OF DISASTER 

I have been working on restoring beetle-killed forests in these mountains with 

Forest Service professionals almost continuously for most of this year, and I had 

warned of a possible tragedy as early as 1994. I know many of the people who live 

here. That makes this tragedy even more personal. Under the auspices of this Committee, I was able to see the devastation firsthand while the fires were still burning. 

I will never forget what I saw, experienced, and felt at the time. 

Shortly after passing through the police roadblock, I could not believe how barren 

the soils were as I drove up Waterman Canyon. Nothing remained except smoldering embers and a smell like burned newspaper. The only life I saw was a single 

yellow jacket. The fire was so hot that rocks exploded and flames left behind only 

stubs of the thickest branches on the shrubs. There is no doubt; soil erosion must 

be addressed because it could be severe. 

I also remember driving up this same road through Waterman Canyon many 

times this year talking with Jon Regelbrugge, Doug Pumphrey, and other Forest 

Service professionals about the need to use prescribed burning to break up the overgrown brushlands below Lake Arrowhead. They were frustrated by a lack of resources that made it difficult to protect Lake Arrowhead and Running Springs from 

a fire that came up the canyon. We know all too well the consequences of not having 

adequate means to take preventative action. 

My second impression was how well firefighters planned their defense of Lake Arrowhead. They used backing fires from Highway 18 to deprive the fire coming up 

Waterman Canyon of fuel. There is no doubt that their actions saved Lake Arrowhead. I only saw the smoldering ruins of one home on that ridge; the rest of Lake 

Arrowhead was spared, except for Cedar Glen. 

I had seen Cedar Glen before it burned. I knew that the people living there were 

in serious trouble. They lived in a narrow canyon, thickly overgrown with trees of 

all sizes, and surrounded on the ridges above with a half-dead forest. 

Tragically, the fires this fall looped around the East side of the firefighter’s defensive line and swooped across the half-dead forest into Cedar Glen. I saw the homes 

that it destroyed, still smoking in the aftermath of the fire. It was a terrible sight. 

I will never forget seeing a garden hose laid across a railing where the owner had 

left it after trying to protect their home and then fleeing before a wall of flames. 

Nearby, a child’s wooden swing set stood untouched by the fire while the house lay 

in ruins 50 feet away. 

The fire passed through the Los Angeles Council of Boy Scouts Camp before 

reaching Cedar Glen. I saw half the forest on their lands destroyed and still smoking. The western pine beetle had killed thousands of the trees before the fire. The 

trees were still draped with dead pine needles when the fire reached them, so they 

burned with extreme heat, and many were reduced to charred spikes. Not even a 

branch was left on many of the burned trees, and the ground was barren underneath. 

I had warned a Boy Scout leader at the camp, and officials in Los Angeles, that 

this could happen when I was there in late summer. However, they had too little 

time to take action to prevent it. The pool where Boy Scouts were swimming this 

summer was untouched, but everything else was gone. Their headquarters lay in 

ruins, and a barracks was reduced to a chimney and the twisted metal wreckage 

of bunk beds where Boy Scouts had slept just a month earlier. What saved them 

was the time of year when the fire passed through their camp. They were safely 

at home in October. 

My final impression was of the depressing emptiness of Crestline and Lake Arrowhead. Where before I saw a forest community full of people going about their 

daily lives, now, there was nothing but silence. People left in haste and could take 

only one car, so other cars were parked as if someone was home. Empty chairs were 

sitting by tables with drinks still on them. Occasionally, I would hear a hungry 

stray dog barking abandoned in the rush to safety. People who left their homes behind had no idea if they would ever see the things they cared about again. We cannot imagine how they must have felt. I only know that we should have acted sooner 

to help prevent these people from experiencing such trauma. 

TRAGEDY FORETOLD 

I, and several other panelists, appeared before the House Resources Committee 

in this very place about two months ago to help prevent the tragic fires that today’s 

61

hearing is addressing. I said then that history will judge us by how we respond to 

the crisis caused by overgrown and beetle-ravaged forests. I should have added our 

overgrown and aged chaparral. History really means that our children and our 

grandchildren will judge us. Did we take the action needed to protect the lives and 

homes of their parents, them as children, and their children? Did we protect the forests that we enjoyed, so that they could share our experiences and receive their forest heritage unimpaired? 

The answer is no, at least so far. We did not act swiftly enough to prevent the 

loss of an entire forest—474,000 acres—in the San Bernardino and San Jacinto 

Mountains to the ravages of the western pine beetle, or the wildfires that followed 

in October of 2003. We also failed to prevent the chaparral fires that took so many 

lives and destroyed so many homes in San Diego County and elsewhere in Southern 

California. 

I was honored to be invited to witness President Bush signing the Healthy Forest 

Restoration Act of 2003 this past Wednesday in Washington, D.C. This historic Act 

will help prevent future disasters, but it came too late to prevent the fires this year. 

I have been working in the San Bernardino Mountains with Forest Service professionals almost continuously this year. We knew that we faced a crisis and that dramatic action was needed to prevent a disaster. Not only were beetle-killed trees 

about to fall on people, houses, powerlines, and cars, but a catastrophic fire could 

sweep into communities from any direction at any time. Something had to be done. 

However, the Forest Service was hampered in its efforts to prevent a disaster. They 

had too few people and too little money, and they faced too many restrictions to reduce fuels over a large enough area to decrease the fire threat significantly. 

Sadly, the insect infestations and wildfires were predictable and preventable. We 

did not look after our forests. Meanwhile, trees grew and forests became overgrown 

and unhealthy. 

I conducted a workshop in 1994 in which 27 specialists representing many interests and agencies came together in Lake Arrowhead to do something about the unnaturally thick forests in the San Bernardino Mountains that led to this disaster. 

We knew that communities like Lake Arrowhead, Big Bear, Crestline, Idyllwild, and 

Wrightwood were in imminent danger from wildfire. The workshop produced a report charting a course to improve the safety and health of forests surrounding these 

communities. Unfortunately, bark beetles got there before anyone took action to thin 

the forest and make it more resistant to bark beetles and fires. 

The highest priority recommendation in the 1994 report for the San Bernardino 

Mountains called for developing ‘‘a comprehensive and integrated fire protection program consisting of’’: • A fuels management program (mechanical removal and prescribed fire); • Strategically located park-like fuel breaks; • A public information and education program dealing with structural (residential 

and business) modifications and landscape design; and 

• Effective enforcement. 

In addition, the report emphasized ‘‘private sector and government partnerships 

to carry out this alternative, including funding, because government agencies alone 

cannot solve wildfire problems.’’ Subsequent recommendations elaborated and expanded these ideas. 

Brushlands in Southern California face the same problem as forests. They have 

grown old and thick. Hundreds of thousands of acres of brush are ready to burn. 

We know where the next big fires will be due to the age of the chaparral, but we 

have done almost nothing to prevent them. We also know how to break up the fuels 

and save lives and property, but we seem incapable of taking action. As a result, 

we have lost many lives this year, thousands of homes, and hundreds of thousands 

of acres of forest and brushland. 

Again, I wrote a report in 1995 documenting the severe fire hazard in the 

brushlands of San Diego County. A total of 59 specialists representing many interests and agencies participated in preparing the recommendations. Like the San 

Bernardino Mountains report, we had a plan for preventing catastrophic wildfires. 

Unfortunately, we failed to act, and that is where most of the lives and property 

were lost this year. 

Selected recommendations in the 1995 report include: 

• Design a prescribed burn pattern or mosaic based on vegetation and wildlife 

surveys, fire history, and public outreach programs; 

• Encourage the construction of community fuel breaks; 

• Conduct public meetings with private and public landowners and solicit information on their needs and opinions regarding wildfire control and prescribed 

burning; 

• Conduct education programs to reduce the public’s risk from wildfires; and 

62

• Encourage the public to assume greater responsibility for self-protection from 

wildfires. 

There is no doubt that the recommendations in the 1994 and 1995 reports, if implemented when proposed, would have dramatically reduced the death and destruction caused by the horrific fires of 2003. 

PAY NOW OR PAY MORE LATER 

It is prophetic that the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003 requires weighing 

the risk of action against the risk of inaction when making management decisions. 

Think of the terrible human, financial, and ecological losses suffered in Southern 

California this year and weigh them against the minor risks of having used scientific management to prevent them. 

We cannot put a price on lives lost and human suffering, which, by itself, justifies 

fire prevention. In addition, economic losses could be higher than $2.2 billion in just 

Southern California. Using the most comprehensive and expensive methods, that is 

enough money to restore over seven million acres of chaparral to a more fire-resistant and natural condition, which is far more than is needed. Similarly, that money 

could pay to remove most of the beetle-killed trees in Southern California and rebuild new fire-resistant forests that are more natural and sustainable than those 

that were lost. 

Here in the San Bernardino Mountains, we can restore about half the 474,000 

acres of forest devastated by the western pine beetle, perhaps more. The remainder 

is inaccessible because of steep slopes and the lack of roads. It is tragic to know 

that we cannot restore so much of this forest. Especially since most of the historic 

pine and mixed-conifer forests will convert to unnatural oak-shrub forests. Wildlife 

will suffer as well, and an endless cycle of severe and unnatural wildfires is likely. 

It is even questionable if we can restore much of the accessible forest because of 

the high cost. I estimate that it will take as much as $1 billion to do the job right 

on 237,000 acres. Probably less, as we become more efficient. That means providing 

immediate fire protection and rebuilding the new forest. 

This is far more money than taxpayers will bear. However, if private companies 

could harvest and thin only the trees required to restore and sustain a healthy, fireresistant forest, it could be done. In exchange, companies would sell the wood and, 

thereby, significantly reduce public expenditures. 

The problem is finding someone to buy the wood. There is no biomass or wood 

processing facility nearby. That means the initial public expenditure will have to include providing subsidies to build the infrastructure needed to make the restoration 

of fire-resistant forests financially feasible. 

The inescapable truth is that we will pay now for prevention, or we will pay far 

more later to deal with disaster and its aftermath. On average, it costs only oneseventh as much to prevent a catastrophic wildfire than it does to fight it, mitigate 

the damage, and pay to replace what is lost. This does not include the loss of forests, wildlife habitat, soil, and the degradation of our precious supplies of water. 

CLEAR CHOICES FOR THE FUTURE 

There are two choices for the future of Southern California’s forests and 

brushlands, and no middle ground for debate. First, leave them alone, or the 

‘‘hands-off’’ option. This means dooming hundreds of thousands of acres of beetlekilled forests. No longer will people in this region enjoy shady forests of huge pines 

and firs. Instead, they will see thickets of oak and brush, and many animals will 

disappear. Not only that, but this option will pass to future generations an unending 

cycle of death and destruction from fire and insects, as well as accelerating costs 

for firefighting, and rehabilitating forests, brushlands, and communities. 

Our second option is to restore the natural fire- and insect-resistant forests, and 

diverse natural brushlands, through active management. This would enhance watersheds and water quality, improve habitat for a diverse range of native wildlife, and 

expand scenic and recreational opportunities. Most importantly, it would secure a 

safe future for the people of Southern California by protecting communities and 

breaking the cycle of monster fires. 

Both options cost money. However, the ‘‘hands-off’’ option will cost taxpayers at 

least seven times as much as the ‘‘management’’ option, not including the cost in 

lives and destruction of public and private property. The ratio in favor of management could be even higher when subtracting the economic value that might be derived from selling wood products and clean biomass energy. 

There is no question. Active management is essential if we are to secure a safe 

and sustainable future for our forests and brushlands, and the people who depend 

on them. 

63

WHAT WE NEED TO DO 

Active management means using the history of a forest or brushland as a model 

for its future. That does not involve a futile effort to duplicate the past. It means 

learning from the past. The most important lesson we can learn is that historic forests and brushlands were sustainable, diverse, and far less susceptible to the monster fires we see today. 

Historically, most of California’s forests were open because Native American and 

lightning fires burned regularly. These gentle fires stayed on the ground as they 

wandered around under trees. You could walk over the flames without burning your 

legs even though they occasionally flared up and killed patches of trees. Such scattered hot spots kept forests diverse by creating openings where young trees and 

shrubs could grow. 

Brushlands like chaparral and coastal sage burned hotter. These hot fires often 

swept over thousands of acres. They were stand-replacing fires that renewed the 

brush on about a 40-year cycle. Even so, they were much smaller than today’s brush 

fires. They usually burned patches of a few thousand acres, sometimes larger, but 

seldom, if ever, hundreds of thousands of acres as we see today. 

The patchiness of historic forests and brushlands is the key to their restoration 

and the solution to the wildfire problem. They consisted of mosaics of patches. Some 

patches were freshly burned, others were young or old, depending on how many 

years passed since fire created a new opening where plants could grow. 

The variety of patches in historic forests and brushlands helped to contain hot 

fires. Freshly burned areas, patches of young trees or shrubs, and patches of old 

trees with little underneath, did not burn well and served as fuelbreaks. In chaparral, patches five years old or younger will not carry a fire, and patches 20 years 

old or younger are effective fuelbreaks. These less flammable patches isolated more 

flammable older or denser patches of trees or shrubs, so that hot fires could not 

spread over vast areas. Thus, nature developed an ingenious pattern of natural 

fuelbreaks that kept most historic forests and brushlands immune from monster 

fires. 

Today, the patchiness of our forests and brushlands is gone, so they have lost 

their immunity to monster fires. Fires now spread across landscapes because we let 

most patches grow old and thick, and there are few less-flammable patches left to 

slow the flames. 

Some people believe that horrific brushland fires are wind-driven events. They are 

wrong. Science and nearly a century of professional experience shows that they are 

fuel-driven events. Wind contributes to the intensity of a fire, but no fire can burn 

without adequate fuel, no matter how strong the wind. Wind, topography, and 

drought play an important role in fire behavior, but continuous heavy fuels are the 

fundamental cause for the outbreak of monster fires plaguing the West, especially 

California. 

This is even more serious because monster fires create even bigger monsters. 

Huge blocks of seedlings that grow on burned areas become older and thicker at the 

same time. When it burns again, fire spreads farther and creates an even bigger 

block of fuel for the next fire. This cycle of monster fires has begun. Today, the average fire is nearly double the size it was in the last two decades, and it may double 

again. 

We can see this in Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1, created by Dr. Richard Minnich, 

from UC Riverside, in 1971, shows the difference in the size of fires in Southern 

California and Baja California. The difference is striking because of the political border that separates the two countries. There is no ecological reason for this dramatic 

difference. On the Mexican side, patches are very small, a few thousand acres, because fires burn as they did when Native Americans lived there. Farmers set fires 

regularly to maintain the mosaic of small patches that provide habitat for game and 

livestock, and keep fires small and safe. They also let lightning fires burn because 

less flammable patches easily contain them. 

In contrast, we have been putting out fires for over a century in Southern California. Even longer if one considers the proclamation by Don Jose Joaquin de 

Arrillaga, Captain of Cavalry, Interim Governor and Inspector Comandante of 

Upper and Lower California, in 1793, which was strictly enforced in Alta California. 

He said, ‘‘With attention to the widespread damage which results...I see myself required to have the foresight to prohibit...all kinds of burning, not only in the vicinity 

of the towns, but even at the most remote distances...’’ It only takes 30-40 years 

for chaparral to grow old enough to create large areas of highly flammable fuel. 

Even though ranchers changed burning practices when California became a state, 

this simple proclamation helped start the cycle of monster fires long before some 

people believe that fire control became effective. 

64

More than two centuries of efforts to control fires increased the size of chaparral 

patches in Southern California. They grew to more than 10 times the size of patches 

in Baja California where fire controls were not enforced. It is not surprising that 

our fires are also more than 10 times the size of those in Mexico. This year our fires 

are becoming even larger because we know that monster fires create bigger monsters. 

Figure 2, which was graciously created at my request by San Diego County for 

this Congressional hearing, shows that the October fires of 2003 were concentrated 

in older brushlands. As expected, firefighters also found it easier to stop the fires 

at the boundaries of younger less-flammable patches of chaparral, even in Santa 

Anna winds. 

The evidence is clear. We cannot blame people for living in fire-prone rural areas 

because they want a more enjoyable lifestyle for their families. Fires may be inevitable, but not the monster fires that we created by failing to be good stewards of 

our forests and brushlands. 

We must restore our forests and brushlands to a more fire-resistant condition by 

recreating the historic mosaic of patches. The less-flammable younger patches will 

contain hot fires and make them easier to extinguish. This, in combination with 

modern and effective firefighting organizations and less flammable structures, will 

break the cycle of monster fires. Consequently, the lives and property of the people 

of Southern California will be protected as well. 

GETTING TO WORK 

Addressing the wildfire problem in Southern California brushlands is obvious and 

relatively simple. Science shows that brushlands are resilient, no matter how often 

fires burn, or how hot the fire. They recover fully and in the same way. That is, 

the same plant species will grow after a fire in the same order that they grew before. All that we need to do to restore diversity and naturalness to brushlands is 

to create the more fire-resistant historic mosaic. This will solve the fire problem if 

communities and individuals also assume their responsibility for providing defensible space and less flammable structures. 

The problem is more difficult in San Bernardino Mountain forests. The scope and 

magnitude of devastation from the bark beetle outbreak is unprecedented in recorded history. We have lost an entire forest because there are simply too many 

trees. Drought has contributed to the crisis, but it is not the underlying cause. Forest density is 10 times what is natural—200 to 500 large trees stand on an acre 

where 50 would be natural and sustainable. 

The fires of 2003 did little to reduce the number of trees or remove dead trees 

killed by bark beetles. About 85-90 percent of the forest was untouched by the fires 

and is ready to fuel the next one. At least 60 percent of the trees are dead in this 

forest, and as many as 90 percent of the trees will be dead by next year when the 

bark beetle epidemic slows down for lack of food. 

We must remove the dead and dying trees and restore the forest in strategic areas 

during the next eight months. Otherwise, the enormous amount of fuel that remains 

in these forests will likely generate fires next year that are far worse than this year. 

The desired future condition is a native mixed-conifer forest that approximates 

the historic range of variation characteristic of this forest type. The desired restored 

forest will provide opportunities for economically sustaining the forest and all of its 

values. 

The long-term restoration goal should be to develop a patchy forest mosaic consistent with the open historical forest. That means a patch size of one acre, a smallest patch size of 0.2 acres, and at least 68 percent of patches less than 1.8 acres. 

In addition, approximately 42 percent of the mosaic should consist of patches of mature and large mature trees of which no more than 47 percent should contain a 

multi-layered understory. 

Mechanical methods are the most important tools we have to restore this forest 

and reduce fire hazards. Mechanical methods followed by prescribed fire may also 

be effective when used together, but safety and air quality restrictions are major 

constraints. Prescribed fire alone will not be effective because it is too unpredictable 

and dangerous in overgrown forests. 

The approach for restoring San Bernardino Mountain forests involves cutting the 

dead and dying trees in a way that minimizes damage to live trees and other vegetation desired to meet the long-term restoration and protection goals. Then, remove, 

or chip the slash to reduce fuels, and leave enough snags and logs for wildlife. That 

means approximately 2-3 snags per acre in groups and 5-9 logs 24 inches or larger 

oriented across slope so that they also control soil erosion. The surviving trees must 

be thinned as well so that they grow quickly and to protect them from fire because 

they will become the oldest trees in the future forest. 

65

Next, begin rebuilding the forest by planting native trees in gaps left by beetlekilled trees. Additional gaps will have to be opened and planted at different times 

and places to ensure that the restored forest has groups of trees of different ages. 

This will take five or more decades. By then seeds from adjacent trees will fill new 

gaps and the forest will look relatively natural since some sites will grow trees 120 

feet tall in 50 years. 

When complete, and even during the early phases of restoration, the restored forest will reduce threats to local communities from wildfire by providing a system of 

fire-resistant patches that act as fuelbreaks strategically dispersed throughout the 

forest mosaic. In short, the restored forest will look and behave in much the same 

way as historic forests. It also will be healthy, diverse, sustainable, attractive, resistant to insects and drought, and nearly immune from monster fires. 

STATEMENT OF ALAN L. BARRETT, COUNCIL MEMBER, VIEJAS 

BAND OF KUMEYAAY INDIANS, ACCOMPANIED BY DAVE 

NENNA, TRIBAL ADMINISTRATOR, TULE RIVER TRIBE 

Mr. BARRETT. Chairman Pombo, distinguished guests, thank you 

for allowing me to speak today. My name is Alan Barrett, I am an 

elected official of the Viejas Tribal Government. The Viejas Band 

of Kumeyaay Indians is located in Alpine, California, in San Diego 

County. The Viejas Reservation is bordered by Cleveland National 

Forest, BLM land and within a corridor of state and county parklands. 

Our neighbors include a number of unincorporated suburban and 

rural communities. In late October, the Cedar fire destroyed entire 

communities, thousands of acres of park and woodlands, burning 

more than 280,000 acres and 2,320 homes, at the cost of 12 lives. 

Eleven were civilians and one was a firefighter. The price to extinguish the fire was $27 million. 

As you may have read, the fire also devastated tribal reservations. San Diego County has 18 reservations, located in rural unincorporated areas of northern and eastern San Diego County. Many 

are adjacent to the Cleveland National Forest. Eleven reservations 

were evacuated due to the proximity of the fire and immediate danger. Four reservations suffered 75 to 100 percent damage to land, 

structures and hundred of homes. 

I am shortening up my testimony here so I can get down the hill 

and get back to my family. 

Mr. LEWIS. Good for you. 

Mr. BARRETT. That is a priority. 

We are able to show our gratitude and assist in fire management 

efforts to provide food, water, generators and other necessities to 

operate in camps which housed more than 100 units of Federal, 

state and local firefighters. 

The Viejas Band also shares our original reservation—Capital 

Grande—with the Barona Band. The Barona Reservation lost 37 

homes and both of us lost our entire 17,000 acres of Capitan 

Grande. This is a great loss to both tribes and the county, as the 

land was a prime undeveloped wildlife habitat. It serves as a natural conservation corridor between El Capitan Dam, the San Diego 

River, the Cleveland National Forest and the Laguna and 

Cuyamaca Mountain Ranges. Plus it is also home and burial 

grounds of our ancestors. 

Today, we have major concerns about replanting. We worry about 

infestation of invasive species and non-indigenous growth attacking 

and altering the terrain of this beautiful natural resource. We face 

66

major problems with erosion on roads, hillsides, wells and waterways. 

And we have been warned the fire danger is not past. Large 

tracts of Federal and state forest lands, disease infested and 

drought weakened, are now littered with burnt trees and charred 

ground cover, are ripe kindling for yet more fires. 

I want to thank you for this hearing and all of the distinguished 

speakers, for the sincere interest in recovery of the aftermath of 

the terrible disaster. Recovery is urgent, lagging, and going to be 

expensive. 

But today, I would like to take a few minutes to discuss future 

prevention. 

The one thing that we have learned from this tragic fire in San 

Diego County is the importance of prevention. Nothing does more 

for prevention of wild fires than the Health Forest Restoration Act, 

recently signed by President Bush. I congratulate you, Chairman 

Pombo, on the bill and your sponsorship. 

Today I would like to ask you to apply the key provisions to tribal trust lands. You can do this by adding the Tribal Forest Asset 

Protection Amendment to H.R. 1904. 

We need a tribal amendment to H.R. 1904. Very little has been 

done on Federal lands to clear dead excessive overgrowth and reduce threats that disease infested vegetation pose to our borders. 

We can help the Federal government manage these lands if allowed. In San Diego County, tribal governments are one of the 

largest owners of undeveloped land. We are also located in rural 

areas where fire protection is an expensive luxury and clearing is 

non-existent. 

This amendment to the Healthy Forest Restoration Act will assure tribes that we can take actions necessary to help the U.S. 

safeguard tribal trust forests and woodlands. 

I can only hope that the recent devastation to tribes in San Diego 

County will create a sense of urgency about this issue. The reservation is our home and it represents who we are and have been as 

Indian people. We cannot just pick up and move because it is too 

expensive to rebuild, the insurance cost is too high. 

Help us help ourselves. Preventing wildfire is critical to our lives 

and our existence. 

I not only speak for California tribes, but also for the White 

Mountain Apache, for the Crow, the Oneida, the Lumini Nations 

and tribal nations throughout the United States. Tribes must be 

given the opportunity to participate in managing Federal lands so 

that the next year another Congressional Committee will not have 

to face a daunting economic and ecological challenge we face today. 

We stand ready to assist you in support of the Tribal Forest 

Asset Protection Amendment. I brought copies of our local newspaper for you to read when you have a few extra minutes of time. 

Thank you for chairing this hearing and again allowing me to address the Committee. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you. 

Dr. Stephens. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Barrett follows:]

67

Statement of Alan L. Barrett, Councilmember,

Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians 

Chairman Pombo and distinguished guests. 

Thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Alan L. Barrett. I’m an 

elected official of the Viejas Tribal Government. The Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians is located in Alpine, California, in San Diego County. The Viejas Reservation 

is bordered by the Cleveland National Forest, BLM land, and within a corridor of 

state parklands. 

Our neighbors include a number of unincorporated suburban and rural communities. In late October, Cedar Fire destroyed entire communities of homes, thousands of acres of park and woodlands, burning more than 280,000 acres and 2,320 

homes. The cost was 12 fatalities, 11 were civilians and one was a firefighter. The 

cost to extinguish the fire was $27 million. 

As you may have read, the fire also devastated tribal reservations. San Diego has 

18 reservations, located in rural unincorporated areas of North and East San Diego 

County. Many are adjacent to the Cleveland National Forest. Eleven reservations 

were evacuated due to the proximity to the fire and immediate danger. Four reservations suffered 75 percent to 100 percent damage to land and structures, including hundreds of homes. Even though the fire roared through the Viejas reservation, 

we were fortunate. We were able to defend our homes and managed to protect other 

structures, including our businesses. We own and operate a casino, retail outlet center, and bank. All were evacuated safely, but were closed for a week, due to the fact 

we had no electricity or power, other than generators. 

We were also fortunate in that we had time to prepare, as we were alerted to the 

progress of the fire. Other reservations and homeowners, who were caught by surprise, had only minutes to get to safety. Many did not make it. 

Fire crews from Northern California arrived at the same time as the 200-foot wall 

of flame, clouds of black smoke and swirling debris, hit our reservation. Additionally, we are grateful we had the resources to house the U.S. Forest Service and California Department of Forestry Cedar East Fire Camp and heliport on our reservation. 

We were able to show our gratitude and assist in the fire management efforts by 

providing food, water, generators and other necessities to the operation and camp, 

which housed more than 100 units of federal, state and local fire crews. 

The Viejas Band shares our original reservation—Capitan Grande—with the 

Barona Band. The Barona Reservation lost 37 homes, and we both lost the entire 

16,000 acres of Capitan Grande. This is a great loss to both tribes and the county, 

as this land was a prime and undeveloped wildlife and species habitat. 

It serves as a natural corridor between El Capitan Dam, the San Diego River, the 

Cleveland National Forest, and the Laguna and Cuyamaca Mountain Ranges. Plus, 

it’s the home and burial ground of our ancestors. 

Today, we have major concerns about replanting. We worry about invasive species 

and non-indigenous growth, attacking and altering the terrain of this beautiful, natural resource. We face major problems with erosion on roads, hillsides, wells and 

waterways. 

And, we have been warned the fire danger is not past. Large tracts of federal and 

state forest lands, disease infested and drought weakened, and now littered dead 

and burned trees and charred ground cover, are ripe kindling for yet more fires. 

Like my father and uncles, I have been employed as a fireman. I know wildfires, 

and have seen many, including the Viejas Fire, which burned an area of our reservation and neighboring communities in 2001. But, I have never seen, heard or felt 

anything as truly frightening as this fire. The Santana winds drove it. The dead and 

drought-weakened trees, thousands of acres infested with beetle disease, fueled it. 

Woodlands and forests suffocating with dead and dry groundcover, which have never 

been cleared or removed, continued to feed it for weeks. 

I want to thank you for this hearing and all of your distinguished speakers for 

the sincere interest in recovery in the aftermath of this terrible disaster. Recovery 

is urgent, lagging, and going to be expensive. 

But, today, I would like to take a few minutes of your time to discuss future prevention. 

The one thing we learned from this tragic fire in San Diego County is the importance of prevention. Nothing does more for prevention of wild fires than the Healthy 

Forrest Restoration Act, recently signed by President Bush. I congratulate you, 

Chairman Pombo, on this bill and your sponsorship. 

Today, I would like to ask you to apply its key provisions to tribal trust lands. 

You can do this by adding the Tribal Forest Asset Protection Amendment to 

H.R. 1904. 

68

In Southern California, our lands are a tribe’s most important asset, and until 

gaming for some, our only asset. Because most of our reservations are small, every 

acre is precious. The Healthy Forest Restoration Act was written to assist private 

property owners and unincorporated communities protect their assets, yet tribal 

governments, with assets held in trust by the Federal Government, were not included in the bill. 

We need a tribal amendment to H.R. 1904. Very little has been done on federal 

lands to correct the fire, disease of infestation threats these lands pose to our borders. We can help the federal government manage these lands if we are allowed to 

do so. In San Diego County, tribal governments are one of the largest owners of undeveloped land, we are also located in rural areas, where fire protection is an expensive luxury and clearing is non-existent. 

We can provide firebreaks to protect our lands and federal lands from fires and 

spreading to our neighboring communities. Or, we can continue to provide fuel for 

wild fires. 

This amendment to the Healthy Forest Restoration Act will assure tribes that we 

can take the actions necessary to help the U.S. safeguard tribal trust forests and 

woodlands. 

Could the Cedar Fire have been prevented? Maybe not. But the damage could 

have been reduced or contained by taking actions to reduce fuel and establish buffer 

zones of Forest Service or BLM land and keeping adjacent forests and woodlands 

healthy. These are key features of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. These are 

the key features of the Tribal Forest Asset Protection Amendment. 

I speak not just for California tribes, but also for the White Mountain Apache, 

the Crow, the Oneida, the Lummi Nation and tribal nations throughout the United 

States. Tribes must be given the opportunity to participate in managing federal 

lands so that next year another Congressional committee will not to have to face 

the daunting economic and ecological challenge we face today. 

We stand ready to assist you in support of the Tribal Forest Asset Protection 

Amendment. 

Thank you for chairing this hearing, and again for allowing me to address the 

Subcommittee. 

STATEMENT OF SCOTT STEPHENS, PH.D., ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF FIRE SCIENCE, DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, POLICY AND MANAGEMENT, UNIVERSITY 

OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 

Dr. STEPHENS. Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee 

and other Representatives, I am privileged to be here today. 

The 2003 wildfires in southern California were tragic in many respects. We have heard about it from further testimony—losses of 

life, impacts to communities, negative impacts to forests and ecosystems. 

In the future, an idea that I might have is it would be nice to 

have a hearing such as this to actually talk about some successes 

relative to wildland fire. I think a lot of hearings occur when we 

have tragedies with fire, and they are very real, but there actually 

are some times when we have successes and it would be nice to 

have a forum for them some day. 

I want to give a brief discussion about chaparral forests in southern California, ideas on how you might be able to mitigate hazard, 

mitigate some of the post-fire outcomes and also a real brief discussion on urban interface. 

Chaparral and coastal state scrub was the majority of the fire 

area. We know, we have heard this from several speakers. Some 

people estimate 70 percent of the area, some 80 percent, forests 

maybe five percent. We also have heard from the Fire Marshal of 

San Bernardino County that there was a heroic effort to stop the 

fire on the ridge, there is no doubt about that. 

69

But when you look at the fire in these two communities, you 

have to really look at them because they are fundamentally absolutely different. If you look at fire in chaparral, as Dr. Bonnicksen 

has said this is a crown fire adapted ecosystem, it is just that simple. This system burns on slopes, under high winds and under 

drought and you produce flame lengths 60, 80 feet, and fires move 

up canyons at incredible rates of spread. I have done actually 22 

prescribed fires in chaparral in the last seven years in northern 

California actually. We burn this stuff under prescription and we 

get flame lengths of 60, 70 feet in our research. So this is a very 

volatile fuel type and it actually does burn and regenerates well 

after a high severity fire. 

If you look at the erosion off these systems, it absolutely is a concern for management because erosion is downhill and we have communities, but erosion is actually part of the natural system, just as 

the fire is unfortunately. This means that living near chaparral is 

an absolute challenge because you have erosion and you have fire 

hazard that are really part of the ecosystem. They can be mitigated 

to some point. 

I think in response to fire in these areas, we started to do things 

like annual rye grass seeding and other methods back in the 1930s 

and 1940s. Some research has been done right here, several research scientists for the Forest Service and USGS looked at some 

of the effectiveness of this and it has been shown to be fairly ineffective unless you have rain that comes in very slowly, comes in 

and wets the grown, gets the seedlings established, and that maybe 

can help a little bit, but also has some negative impacts for displacing native flora and impacting biodiversity. There is also a 

problem if we get grasses in these systems and they keep in here, 

that we cannot increase fire frequency to the point where we can 

take the scrub out and then create a grassland. And that actually 

can make more problems for slopes because of higher erosion. 

I think if we were going to look at the southern California example, I would say that the best place to put most of the efforts are 

right on the urban interface, and I think we have heard this from 

the other speakers. I would say that these are the places where you 

will probably get the biggest bang for your investment, trying to 

create some more defensible space in these areas. The large lands, 

certain chaparral in this area, trying to put fire on the ground for 

huge areas is an absolute challenge. I am a very big fire proponent, 

but I also know it is very challenging to put fire on the ground and 

try to get these systems to work. 

Now I want to shift over to the ponderosa pine, mixed conifer 

and the forests up here on top of the mountain. These systems are 

not adapted to high severity fire whatsoever, at least at scales that 

are large. These are systems that are adapted to high severity fire 

maybe the size of half an acre. Regeneration in the past has been 

in these clumps and there is no doubt that these systems have 

changed. 

I have done some research down in northern Mexico, Sierra San 

Pedro Martir. If we could jump in an airplane and went 300 miles 

south, we would actually end up at the end of this peninsula mountain range and that is actually the Sierra San Pedro Martir Mountains. The place never had fire suppression until 1970, it has also 

70

never been harvested. Today the average tree per acre down there 

is six feet above one inch diameter, ranges from about 20 to 125, 

incredible spatial heterogeneity in that system. Fires still occur 

down there and the outcomes of these fires generally retain most 

of the forest overstory. It is just that simple. It is must more resilient and it is really a desired condition for many areas, it is not 

a complete surrogate for this place by any means, but it is an 

amazing place in terms of what the forest structure is. 

So we have changed these systems. We know that tree mortality 

in this area is nothing less than extraordinary. When I come up 

here, we have got a research study here, Rick Everett, a person 

working in my lab at Berkeley, is doing a study here and it is extraordinary. What needs to be done is really restoration. 

If we look at fuels, I would just like to say a couple of things 

about fuels. You have got four different fuel systems that you really 

look at—ground fuels, surface fuels, ladder fuels and crown fuels. 

Ground fuels are the litter and dust layer right on the surface 

of the soil. Surface fuels are the dead and down material on the 

forest floor, and also small shrubs. Ladder fuels, small trees and 

taller shrubs provide continuity, many of you have heard this. And 

the crown fuels are the things above our heads. 

If you look at the systems that used to burn frequently, like most 

of the systems here, most of the hazard is in the surface fuel area. 

The second most one in my opinion is the ladder fuels, the third 

most is the crown fuels. This means if we want to do some work 

to really do some restoration which is critically needed, we have to 

really evaluate surface fuels, how we are going to treat them, what 

are we going to do with them, and it is an absolute priority. 

The great challenges around here is the infrastructure. One of 

the real problems with infrastructure is, as we have talked about, 

there is very little biomass utilization capacity here. You heard 

some comments earlier about maybe more biomass mills being put 

here, potentially a small sawmill. I actually think that is a great 

idea because I think you need more options to do work here that 

needs to be done. 

If you just do biomassing and chipping onsite, you are going to 

have a terribly expensive operation and also probably very limited 

capacity. 

I think the forest management needs to be flexible, very flexible, 

because the systems on the ground are so variable. Flexibility unfortunately takes trust in the agency and the Chief talked about 

that a little bit that there is some sort of disconnect there a little 

bit. One way that I think you could actually move forward on this 

is a system of adaptive management large scale, so you can learn 

from adaptive management, put this on the ground, learn from it, 

go forward as a collaborative with all sorts of people engaged. I 

think this could happen in many scales. 

If you look today in the national forest system, we really never 

had a priority for fuels management for national forest system, it 

did not occur until about 1995 when Federal wildland policy 

changed. You have done work on this to amend this through the 

other legislative acts. I would not say it became a priority until 

1997, which simply means there are no places we can go that have 

large landscape level areas that have had fire management as a 

71

priority—simply does not exist. We could point to some national 

parks where maybe that has been occurring for 30 years. Without 

having that place to learn and to have a discourse in, it causes I 

think a lot of uncertainty and I think you could learn a lot from 

actually trying to do adaptive management. 

There is a new bill in Congress that I have become aware of, 

H.R. 2696, the Fire Institute bill. This bill is basically written to 

promote the use of adaptive ecosystem management to reduce the 

risk of wildfires and improve forest health. I think it is absolutely 

a powerful idea, a great idea, I fully support it. I am actually a little concerned that it only has three states involved and California 

is not one of them. There is no state in this nation that has got 

a bigger fire issue than this state. I am biased, I am a Californian, 

but when you look at vegetation here, you look at the number of 

people, the number of wildland interfaces, you have to a problem 

that is extraordinary. 

Urban/wildland interface, just quickly I will sum up, I am over 

time a little bit. I think that urban interface is a huge issue across 

the west. I also would say that we need to do more in the urban 

interface for the large landowner to reduce hazards, absolutely critical. Equally, we need to do as much on the private side. If we take 

fire resilient landscape on the urban interface, large landowner—

BLM, Forest Service, Park Service—and a fire still comes up 

through there, which they are going to do and they lob embers into 

the communities, fire does not discriminate, fire takes the thing 

that is going to burn the easiest and burns it up. If it turns out 

to be a house, it turns out to be a house. You have got to do more 

on the private side. That is a collaborative effort. Actually my dad 

lives in the woods and we are constantly facing this challenge, so 

I would just say that yes, we need to do urban interface on the 

wildland side on the big landowner, but it has to go along with the 

private side. The private side is probably more of a state issue and 

a county issue. But it is paramount. 

Mr. CALVERT. I thank the gentleman for his testimony. 

Mr. Grindstaff. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Stephens follows:]

Statement of Dr. Scott L. Stephens, Assistant Professor of Fire Science, 

Division of Ecosystem Science, Department of Environmental Science, 

Policy, and Management, College of Natural Resources, University of 

California, Berkeley 

Chairman McInnis, distinguished members of the Committee, it is a privilege to 

have the opportunity to present my testimony to you today. 

The 2003 wildfires in Southern California were tragic in respect to losses of life, 

their impacts on communities, and how they affected the forested ecosystems in this 

region. 

In the future, I look forward to the day when a hearing such as this can be held 

to discuss successes relative to wildland fire and ecosystem restoration. Certainly, 

more work must be done in this area, but it would be useful to have a forum where 

positive aspects of wildland fire could be presented. 

I will present a discussion of wildland fire in chaparral, coastal sage scrub, and 

forests in the southern California region. This will include the benefits and risks 

associated with the different methods used to reduce fire hazards and the effectiveness of post-wildfire mitigation methods. I finish with a discussion on the urbanwildland intermix. 

72

Chaparral and Coastal Sage Scrub 

Chaparral and coastal sage scrub are the vegetation types that were most affected 

by the 2003 southern California wildfires. Approximately 90-95 percent of the area 

burned was in these two shrubland vegetation types. The remaining area was in coniferous forests. 

It is important to distinguish between shrublands and forests in regard to the 

2003 wildfires. Chaparral and coastal sage scrub are vegetation types that are 

adapted to high intensity crown fires at intervals of approximately 25-50 years. 

They produce extensive live fuel beds as they develop and almost always burn as 

high intensity crown fires when successfully ignited. Under extreme fire weather, 

such as when the Santa Ana winds occur, the resulting fire behavior is phenomenal 

with flame lengths over 75 feet and rates of spread greater than 6 feet/second. This 

type of fire behavior is not uncharacteristic or uncommon, it is simply how these 

vegetation types burn under extreme weather conditions. After such fires, native 

vegetation will recover relatively quickly by resprouting and from the germination 

of a soil-stored seed bank. I have conducted 22 research chaparral prescribed fires 

in northern California since 1995 and the vegetation in the areas burned 7-8 years 

ago is approximately one-half to two-thirds of what it was before burning. These 

ecosystems can respond quickly after high severity wildfires. 

After wildfire, there is a real management concern concerning erosion impacts. 

Erosion is a natural part of this ecosystem, just as fire is. Immediately after fire, 

dry ravel erosion increases greatly as surface barriers to soil movement are removed. Dry ravel moves downslope under gravity and fills in stream channels. Early 

post-fire rains can promote on-slope rill networks, enabling large amounts of water 

and soil to move rapidly off of steep burned slopes. 

Erosion tends to be high for the first few years after fire, and then gradually decreased with time, normally returning to prefire levels in 5-10 years as the increases 

in plant cover and root biomass help stabilize surface material. 

In response to the need to protect downstream structures and resources after fire, 

managers began to explore ways of establishing rapid vegetation cover on burned 

hill slopes. Starting in the 1930’s, Los Angeles County foresters first tried to seed 

native shrubs, then later experimented with herbaceous species such as mustards 

and grasses. By the 1940’s, managers were routinely using annual ryegrass (Lolium 

multiforum) in an attempt to stabilize slopes after fire. 

Evaluation of seeding effectiveness was based primarily on the level of grass cover 

established, with little attention given to any effects on native vegetation recovery. 

At this time, little or no attempts to quantify the success of this practice at reducing 

erosion were attempted. 

Questions about the impact of seeding with annual grasses on natural vegetation 

recovery in chaparral and coastal sage scrub have been raised for years. Some research has observed a negative relationship between ryegrass cover and native herb 

cover. Lower species richness has been reported for ryegrass seeded plots. Reseeding 

of non-native species after fire in chaparral does not affect the long-term, post-fire 

recovery of native shrubs. 

Seeding also has the potential to increase fire frequency in chaparral and coastal 

sage scrub as flammable, exotic grasses provide a continuous fuel structure in a 

very short time period. If these systems burn frequently, a vegetation type conversion from shrublands to grasslands can occur and this can further exacerbate erosion problems because grasses provide little soil stabilization on steep slopes. 

The most likely scenario for maximum effectiveness of post-fire seeding at reducing erosion would be one where rainfall is of low intensity and regularly spaced in 

the fall and early winter, allowing good grass cover to establish before heavy rains. 

However, this weather pattern does not appear to be a reliable or frequently occurring scenario on southern California chaparral sites. 

In years of even moderately favorable weather conditions, seeded grasses appear 

to compete with the natural post-fire herbaceous flora rather than enhancing total 

plant cover. This competition decreases both species richness and percent cover of 

the native, herbaceous species. Research on the long-term effects of reseeding on the 

chaparral seed banks continues but it seems seed banks are also affected by introduced annuals. 

New methods to reduce erosion, such as aerial straw mulching, polyacrylamide, 

and aerial mulching, have never been rigorously field tested. The lack of information 

argues for a standardized program of treatment effectiveness monitoring, as pointed 

out in a recent General Accounting Office report on this subject. 

Today, even though the best scientific information on the effects of post-fire seeding of exotic grasses tells us there are few or no positive affects, some agencies continue to promote the practice in southern California. This is slowly changing. 

73

I believe federal and state managers should focus chaparral fuel treatments in the 

urban-wildland intermix. These treatments have been proven to be effective during 

wildfires in southern California. An example is the 1995 West Ridge prescribed fire 

in the San Bernardino National Forest. This chaparral prescribed fire was done 

below the town of Idyllwild. Two years later, the Bee wildfire burned uphill towards 

Idyllwild and was successfully suppressed because of the impacts of the previous 

burning. 

Mixed Conifer, Ponderosa and Jeffrey Pine Forests 

The ponderosa pine, mixed conifer, and Jeffrey pine forests that burned in 2003 

are not adapted to large, high intensity fires. Most of these forests, area denser and 

more spatially uniform, have many more small trees and fewer large trees, and have 

much greater quantities of surface fuels than did their pre-settlement counterparts. 

Causes include fire suppression, past livestock grazing and timber harvests, and 

possibly changes in climate. The results include a general deterioration in forest ecosystem integrity and an increased probability of large, high-severity wildfires. Such 

conditions are prevalent nationally, especially in forests that once experienced shortinterval (<15 years), low to moderate-severity fire regimes. 

The tree mortality that occurred in many forested areas prior to the southern 

California wildfires is extraordinary. I visited this region several times before the 

2003 fires and in some areas, the mortality was the most severe that I have ever 

witnessed. The mortality is the result of several factors, including past management 

activities, that allowed more trees to become established over the last 100 years, a 

multi-year drought, stress from smog that is transported to this area from the Los 

Angeles basin, and the impacts of native bark beetles. Past management actions set 

the stage for a dramatic change in this forested ecosystem. I should note that the 

past drought has been severe and trees have died at the lower forest-shrub ecotone, 

and this has not been witnessed in the last 70-100 years. Still, droughts are part 

of the natural ecosystem stresses that have and will continue to affect California. 

I think one of the central messages that should be learned from the forests of southern California is an active management philosophy is needed in these forested ecosystems. 

Before beginning my discussion of the different methods that can be used to reduce fire hazards in these forests, I want to spend a moment on what I believe is 

the critical issue, the definition of desired future conditions for our diverse ecosystems. Once this is done we can then decide what management tools are appropriate to achieve and maintain the desired conditions. I believe the debate on 

whether we should use silviculture to manage our national forests is unproductive, 

the real issue is the definition of desired future conditions, and how are we going 

to get there, and once there, how they will be maintained. 

When discussing fuel hazards in coniferous forests we must examine four different 

fuel systems: 

1) Ground fuels (leaf litter and decomposed organic materials on the soil surface); 

2) Surface fuels (dead and down woody materials, herbaceous fuels, live shrubs); 

3) Ladder fuels (small trees and shrubs that can provide vertical continuity to 

move a fire into tree crowns); and 

4) Crown fuels (vertical and horizontal distribution of tree crowns). 

Each area of the country is unique but in most forest types that historically had 

frequent, low-moderate intensity fire regimes, such as most of those in the mountains of southern California, the most critical fuel complex from a fire hazard standpoint is the surface fuels, followed by the ladder fuels, and then the crown fuels. 

Ground fuels are relatively compact (low surface area to volume ratio) and contribute little to flaming combustion or fireline intensity. 

If one is designing a fuels treatment strategy it must focus on surface fuels. Commercial and pre-commercial thinning operations can reduce ladder fuels and crown 

fuels but without combining these treatments with surface fuel reductions, the overall program will not reduce potential fire behavior. In fact, operations that lop and 

scatter the slash fuels produced after thinning operations will increase fire hazards 

for a decade or more until decomposition reduces fuel loads. Mechanical removal of 

ladder and crown fuels will reduce the probability of crown fires in an area, but if 

surface fuels are not reduced, a high severity surface fire can be produced, and it 

will kill the majority of the remaining trees by scorching (production of lethal thermal injuries to all exposed leaf and meristem tissues). Only when these treatments 

are coupled with a surface fuel treatment will this result in a reduction in potential 

fire behavior. One of the most effective surface fuel treatments is prescribed burning 

which can be used with or without prior mechanical treatments to produce the overall objective. A limitation of mechanical treatments is the need of road networks 

which are not available in all areas, especially in the mountains of southern 

74

California. Whatever treatment is selected, it must target the surface fuel layer, followed by ladder fuels, and then the crown fuels. Surface fuel reduction cannot be 

an afterthought of fuel treatments in these forests, it must be the central objective. 

One of the great challenges of producing a fire hazard reduction program for the 

forests in southern California is the lack of infrastructure in this area. The closest 

sawmill to this area is in the southern Sierra Nevada. This is outside the economic 

range of most materials that should be removed to reduce fire hazards in this region. Presently, the National Forests in this area are chipping dead trees on site 

and dispersing the chips locally over the forest floor. This is an improvement in 

terms of fire hazard reduction but it is a very slow, expensive alternative. The large 

chipper that worked in the forest around Lake Arrowhead this summer cost $580/

hour to operate. In addition to this machine and its operator, tree fallers and skidder operators were needed to move the dead materials to the large chipper. I 

watched this machine operate this summer and it could only chip approximately 1-

2 acres per day in areas where tree mortality was heavy. There is a real need to 

have a local mill in this region that could efficiently process materials removed to 

improve forest health. 

Another critical question is the definition of desired future conditions for the forests in this region. One forested ecosystem exists that can be compared to those 

found in southern California, this is the Sierra San Pedro Martir (SSPM) in northwestern Mexico. This forest is composed of mixed conifer forests and shrublands of 

the Californian floristic province that occur nowhere else in Mexico. The SSPM is 

unique within the California floristic province in that its forests were never harvested and a policy of large-scale fire suppression did not begin until 1970. I have 

been conducting research in this area since 1998 and it can provide information that 

can assist in the production of desired future conditions in the forests of southern 

California. There is a great amount of spatial heterogeneity in the forests of the 

SSPM. Average surface fuel loads are small (6 tons/acre). Over the last four years, 

the forests of the SSPM have experienced a similar drought to that experienced in 

the forests of southern California. I have a set of forest inventory plots in this region 

and snag density increased from 1.7/acre to 2.6/acre over the last three years. This 

is a large mortality event for this region but is orders of magnitude smaller than 

what occurred in southern California. One of the goals of forest management should 

be to produce resilient forest structures that can incorporate natural disturbances 

such as fire, insects, diseases, and drought without catastrophe (tree mortality outside desired conditions). Forest management plans should be flexible to allow managers enough space to propose creative field-based solutions to address our current 

fire problems. There is presently mistrust in many sectors of federal forest management and this has impeded the ability to allow flexibility. A vigorous system of 

adaptive management at large spatial scales would reduce these barriers. 

California has huge challenges to overcome in terms of wildland fire. The state 

has a Mediterranean climate (dry hot summers) and almost all of its vegetation is 

fire adapted. The exclusion of fire and past management practices has produced ecosystems that are not sustainable. California also has the largest population in the 

nation and the number of people moving into the urban-wildland intermix is increasing. The USFS has been attempting to produce a plan to manage the National 

Forests of the Sierra Nevada since 1990 and wildland fire has been one of the central issues. After 13 years of debate, we still don’t have a final plan. The ecosystems 

in southern and northeastern California have similar management challenges. 

Since fire hazard reduction has never been the main objective of USFS land management, we have no large-scale research to support such a management philosophy. There simply are no places to go in California to get information on the tradeoffs (economic, social, ecological) of large-scale management treatments designed to 

reduce fire hazards and improve forest health. I have become aware of a new bill 

in Congress, H.R. 2696 (Fire Institute Bill), that attempts to fill this need. It proposes 3 new Fire Institutes that would ‘‘promote the use of adaptive ecosystem management to reduce the risk of wildfires and improve forest health.’’ The new institutes would be funded for five years and would be created with the consultation of 

the Secretary of Agriculture. I fully support this idea because of the real need for 

increased information but am distressed that California is not one of the states that 

would receive such an institute. There is no state in our nation that has more complex fire and forest health issues than California. 

Urban-Wildland Intermix 

Land management agencies throughout the country are increasingly aware of the 

difficulties of managing in the urban-wildland intermix. This is a very complicated 

landscape with homes, subdivisions, and towns all mixed into or adjoining wildland 

areas. The number of people who choose to live in this area continues to increase 

75

and many wildland fire agencies, such as the California Department of Forestry and 

Fire Protection, believe this is the area where their fuels treatments should be focused. 

I believe this area requires partnerships between home owners and the public or 

private organizations that have responsibility for the adjoining wildlands. Strategic 

fuel reduction zones can be created in the urban wildland intermix to allow for more 

effective and safe suppression activities when wildfires are moving from the 

wildlands toward homes or from the homes into the wildlands. 

Private home owners share responsibility in this area. Homes must be built with 

combustion-resistant roofs and siding materials. Defensible space must be created 

around each structure to increase the probability that it will survive a wildfire. Fine 

fuels and needles must be removed annually from roofs and around houses to reduce 

the chance of spot fire ignition during wildfires. To reduce losses in this area, a 

shared partnership must occur between the private landowner and the manager of 

the adjoining wildlands. Currently, most of the debate is focusing on what large 

land managers must do to reduce risk, but an equal amount of responsibility rests 

on the private side of the intermix. Counties and states must take action to ensure 

that individual home owners reduce their potential for catastrophic fire. 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. 

STATEMENT OF P. JOSEPH GRINDSTAFF, GENERAL MANAGER, 

SANTA ANA WATERSHED PROJECT AUTHORITY 

Mr. GRINDSTAFF. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. You have a copy of my testimony and copy of the 

burn report here. I think I will answer a couple of questions that 

I have heard asked here specifically about the impacts to this watershed. 

Two major fires impacted the Santa Ana River Watershed. The 

Old fire and the Grand Prix fire. An example, the Old fire, we are 

expecting that that will generate 300,000 acre feet of debris. Now 

those of you that know what an acre foot is, that is a lot of debris. 

So will there be a problem? Yes, there will be a major problem over 

the next probably four or five years. Most of this fire—about 80 

percent of the fire was on very steep slopes. So mulching, doing 

anything like that is impossible. We have very, very steep slopes. 

We are going to have a lot of that debris come down and there is 

not much we can do about it except enlarge the debris basins down 

at the bottom of the hill, try and empty them out every time they 

get full and be prepared to evacuate people if in fact we have problems. 

I know that is hard to say. But the day when the BAER team 

came together we were sitting in this room, the incident command 

center, and Ken Miller, who is the flood control director for San 

Bernardino County, was sitting there and we asked the question 

what level of storm is going to cause a problem for you. He said 

one inch will cause problems in this watershed today. I am hoping 

that as time goes by and we get more things in place that number 

will go up, but it is a significant, significant problem. You are talking about an order of magnitude change after a fire. So the flows 

that you might expect from a one-inch storm will in fact be 10 

times higher. The peak flows will be 10 times higher than what 

you would get in a normal one-inch storm. So that carries a lot 

more debris with it. If you will remember about a week or 2 weeks 

ago there was a big storm down in Los Angeles. If that storm cell 

had hit one of the burn areas we would have had a massive problem in this region. 

76

So fire has very real costs. It will probably cost just for the debris 

problem we believe on the order of $190 million in this watershed. 

So when we talk about the costs of thinning and managing the forests well, there are very real reasons why we should do that. 

Let us talk about water supply. In this watershed we estimate 

because of this fire we are going to lose approximately 60,000 acre 

feet of water per year for the next few years. That is a significant 

amount of water that we will be importing because we are not able 

to capture it and use it locally. So we have had a long-term program here to try and reduce the amount of imports for the watershed that is 5.5 million people. Over the next few years we are actually going to be increasing the amount of water we import because we are not going to be able to capture it all. There are impacts to small agencies that have a treatment plant, whether it is 

Cucamonga County Water District that cannot take water through 

their treatment plant now because there is too much sediment, too 

much ash there. That ranges all the way across the whole part of 

the mountains, this whole part of the watershed. 

Water quality. I am going to give another example that is probably different, of a potential kind of problem we have. The largest 

constructed wetlands in the western United States are located on 

the Santa Ana River. They were built by the Orange County Water 

District as treatment wetlands, and half of the flow of the Santa 

Ana River goes through those wetlands. If we get indeed the sediment that we are expecting to get, we are going to fill them all up. 

So the water quality benefits, the habitat benefits that we get from 

those—and the principal reason for them was to reduce nitrate in 

the water—that is gone and they have to go in and rebuild them 

essentially after the event is over. So that is an example of the 

kinds of impacts, and they are going to happen. I hope that over 

the next 8 months we can do something that prevents fires—further fires in this watershed. But now that San Jacinto and 

Idyllwild are also a part of this watershed, I am not hopeful honestly. As a planner—somebody that has to lay out what might 

happen—I am not hopeful that we are really going to prevent the 

kinds of fires that certainly look likely today next year. So that is—

and we will have similar kinds of impacts when that happens. 

Probably one of the things that I understand more now than I 

ever understood before—and I have managed water agencies for 

most of my career—managing the forest has a real financial impact 

in ways that we do not normally think about, that we have not normally cataloged as we as water agencies move ahead. I am sure 

that is true in many other areas. That, I think, just increases the 

urgency for us to find ways to manage those forests properly. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Grindstaff follows:]

Statement of P. Joseph Grindstaff, General Manager,

Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority 

Chairman Pombo and members of the Committee on Resources, thank you for providing me this opportunity to address the significant impacts to our water supply 

and quality throughout the Santa Ana Watershed from the October wildfires in the 

San Bernardino, San Gorgonio and San Jacinto Mountains. 

Also, I thank you for addressing the needs of the watersheds in California. The 

forests provide significant groundwater recharge for our region and their health is 

77

important to millions. Federal funding for fire impacts will significantly reduce the 

‘‘urban drought’’ that is likely to follow the recent fires. 

SAWPA was honored to be asked by Tom O’Keefe and Gene Zimmerman to participate in the Burn Area Emergency Response (BAER) team. We were impressed 

by the individuals and teamwork of the group to assess the devastation. In parallel, 

we developed the report we have provided to you. Our staff worked with dozens of 

the nearly 100 agencies in the watershed to integrate the broad needs resulting 

from the recent fires. These needed improvements range from flood control enhancements and habitat restoration to salt removal from groundwater. This collaboration 

enabled us to quickly assemble this information and bring a large portion of the effected agencies up to speed. 

These efforts follow the model that Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority 

(SAWPA) created for the Integrated Watershed Program (IWP). The IWP has been 

very successful in collectively working with all agencies in the watershed to drought 

proof the Santa Ana Watershed. Through this program, the region will not require 

imported water during drought years. With help from funding in Proposition 13, the 

program is creating almost 300,000 acre feet of new water at an average cost to the 

state taxpayer of less than $100 per acre foot. The $235 million is being matched 

with local funding to build almost $800 million in infrastructure. Additionally, it 

will improve and protect almost 10,000 acres of river habitat and wetlands. 

We believe the IWP is a model that will work for regions throughout the state 

and will likely be a model to mitigate water quality impacts associated with fire. 

This model will address flood control problems, and enhance the environment 

through desalting, groundwater cleanup, improve water supply storage, storm and 

flood control management, water recycling, environmental and habitat restoration 

and conservation measures. 

From our information, this same scenario is likely to be repeated throughout the 

state in the foothills and forest of the Sierras in California. Action is needed to prevent these disasters from repeating throughout the state. 

Background 

The Santa Ana Watershed provides a majority of the drinking water for over 5 

million residents from the rainfall in and around the San Bernardino, San Gorgonio 

and San Jacinto Mountains’ forest areas. Rainfall in these mountainous areas provides surface water flows and groundwater recharge throughout the region via the 

Santa Ana River and its tributaries. 

Recent fires in these areas were large and difficult to contain. The aftermath of 

these fire events have resulted in extraordinary impacts on the forests and the watershed. The recent Grand Prix, Old and Padua Fires burned over 120,000 acres 

(more than 185 square miles) in the Santa Ana Watershed of wildland habitat, primarily in the San Bernardino National Forest. 

These fires will have significant impacts on the Santa Ana River and its associated water quality for an extended period and these impacts will occur in areas far 

from the burned sites. While the fires were confined to the top of the watershed, 

virtually the entire watershed is impacted by the fires, or will be impacted. It is 

estimated that the fires’ effects will impact an additional 430 square miles beyond 

the burn area for a total impact to over one-quarter of the watershed. Without intervention, most of the associated costs will be borne by local government. 

The area burned will significantly complicate our efforts to drought-proof the watershed. As presented above to prepare for greater water demands that are projected 

to increase nearly 30% within 20 years and seeking to drought proof the region so 

that no imported water would be required during drought years, SAWPA developed 

a 10-year IWP to address the water needs of the region. Over 200 water resourcerelated projects were identified as part of this program to date. Three billion dollars 

was initially estimated to implement the 10-year IWP. In 2000, SAWPA successfully 

contracted with the State Water Resources Control Board to use $235 million in 

Proposition 13 Water Bond funds to begin construction of over $800 million in 

projects that directly support the IWP. Costs borne by local agencies in responding 

to problems arising from recent fire events will significantly impact the ability of 

the agencies cooperating in implementing the SAWPA IWP to reduce the region’s 

dependence on imported water and, therefore, will have a lasting impact on water 

supplies statewide. 

Water Supply and Quality, Habitat, and Flood Control Impacts 

An ‘‘urban drought,’’ caused by the inability of the forests to capture and percolate 

water into the ground and water basins, will likely damage water supply and quality. Significant conservation efforts are needed now. Federal and state funding are 

also needed to avert the disaster after the disaster. 

78

The following areas of risk have been identified: 

• Future Fires: Less than 5% of the trees with drought-induced severe mortality 

have burned in the recent fires, which leaves more than 150,000 acres unburned. More fires are likely, further exacerbating the impacts; 

• Flooding and Debris: In the Old Fire alone about 300,000 acre feet (AF) of mud, 

rock and water are anticipated to fill streams, basins, and flood facilities. Removal of sediment and facilities improvements to mitigate flood impacts could 

cost $190 million; 

• Mud and Rock Flows: From even a moderate (10-year storm), mud and rock 

flows would cause 100 sub-watersheds to produce 4,500 cubic feet per second 

or more of runoff, well over ten times the average year flows; 

• Threatened and Endangered Species: Threatened and endangered species are 

negatively impacted not just in the burned area, but by sediment, and pollutants that occur for years after the burn in areas throughout the watershed; 

• Groundwater: Seventy percent of the water used by its 5 million residents in 

the watershed is groundwater; much of this is percolated rain water in the forest, or within approximately five miles of the forest; 

• Percolation: More than 70 groundwater percolation basins will likely be impacted by mud and rock reducing recharge; 

• Ash Impacts: As much as ten million cubic yards of ash are expected to be 

washed into creeks, streams, rivers and percolation basins as far as Orange 

County and eventually the ocean; 

• Water Loss: With these basins out of commission, as much as 60,000 AF of 

water will be lost to the ocean each year, instead of percolated and used for 

drinking water. The cost of replacement water, if it is available, could be $15 

million per year; 

• Contaminants: Runoff water will likely bring contaminants—manganese, lead, 

phosphorus, mercury nitrates, total organic carbon, and uranium requiring 

treatment and removal before use; and 

• Stress on State Water Supplies: Without mitigation from the fires’ impact, the 

region will become more dependent on imported water from the Colorado River 

and the Bay-Delta, rather than less as is planned through the IWP. The impacts of the fires will be felt statewide. 

For additional information, please reference a report entitled, Old, Grand Prix, 

and Padua Fires (October, 2003) Burn Impacts to Water Systems and Resources 

dated December, 2003, prepared by SAWPA in support for the United States Forest 

Services Burn Area Response Team working in the area. This report has been prepared to inform and aid decisionmakers and other interested parties throughout the 

watershed. 

Fire Impact Cost Estimates 

Costs of mitigating the effects of recent fires within the watershed are estimated 

to be nearly $450 million, and are summarized below:

In addition, local water agencies have expressed concern over direct damage to infrastructure such as wells and access roads resulting from increased debris and 

sediment flow from storm events following fires. 


90767.001
79

Although the fires did not burn all of the areas anticipated in earlier calculations, 

these impacts are likely to be severe over the next five or more years, depending 

on rainfall and storm intensity. 

In addition, as much of the unburned area is still at extreme risk of a catastrophic 

fire, costs are likely to be higher than those projected from the recent fire events.

Requested Actions/Funding Recommendations 

We urge the Committee to: 

• Continue to fund the restoration of the forest as it is the top of the watershed 

and from where the highest quality drinking water in the watershed comes; 

• Continue to support sustainable land use in the forest and the watershed; 

• Provide funding and support for immediate flood and debris measures to protect 

the area from additional disasters at the first heavy rains; and 

• Understand the close connection that exists between the forest and the watershed below and provide support and funding for the mitigation of the fire impacts on the groundwater basins of the watershed. 

The following table summarizes specific watershed improvements to mitigate the 

effects of the recent fires. These improvements are individually identified, as well 

as their benefits. 


90767.002
80


90767.003
81

Mr. CALVERT. Thank you, Mr. Grindstaff, for your testimony. 

This entire panel is extremely interesting. I want to get into this 

issue of prescription burns. I was also intrigued by our friends from 

the Native American community, because Native Americans have 

a history of managing property through the history of their residency here in America, especially the Plains Indians where we 

have historical data of the Plains Indians setting fire to their property on the plains in order to bring grasses back for their buffalo 

population. 

But on the issue of prescriptive burns, our friend from Texas, 

welcome to California. How difficult is it here in California to get 

a permit for a prescriptive burn? Are you familiar with that? 

Dr. BONNICKSEN. Are you asking me? 

Mr. CALVERT. Yes, sir. 

Dr. BONNICKSEN. How difficult——

Mr. CALVERT. You can use that mike. 

Dr. BONNICKSEN. Oh, I am sorry. 

How difficult is it to get a prescription to burn? To tell you the 

truth, I probably do not—I do not know, but I think Scott may have 

some idea. 


90767.004
82

Mr. CALVERT. Well, I will ask Scott. 

Dr. STEPHENS. Yes, we have done quite a bit of burning. Actually 

it is a—I call it almost a Master’s thesis. It is probably about the 

scale of document of about 40 pages or so. You have a smoke management plan that actually is written and then put to the agency 

that has air shed quality control over the area. It has to be approved by the smoke management plan. Then you also have a prescribed fire plan that actually is submitted to the fire agency that 

has jurisdiction over your area. If it is the Forest Service, you send 

it to them. If it is BLM, you do it with them. If it is CDF—the 

whole thing turns out to be probably on the scale of maybe about 

45 or 50 pages. The first one is really a challenge. The second and 

third gets a little easier. But there is no doubt it is an effort—it 

is an effort and it has gone up quite a bit. My predecessor at 

Berkeley, Bob Martin, used to have a prescribed burn plan that 

was on two pages of paper. It has gone up substantially. 

Mr. CALVERT. You burn up a lot of trees to get a permit. As I 

understand it, I spent some time with some fire marshals and some 

firefighters and they told me it is virtually impossible—as a matter 

of fact, some of the areas that burned in this most recent fire, that 

they had put some applications in for some controlled fires and 

they could not get permission to do so. In fact, all of that area now 

is gone, of course, and the habitat that they were trying to protect 

is gone with it, as I understand it. So I just want to put that on 

the record. 

The other issue, of course, is the water supply. Mr. Grindstaff, 

I was interested when you said 60,000 acre feet of water. To put 

that in perspective for the audience, 60,000 acre feet of water is 20 

percent of the water supply for the entire State of Nevada, which 

is lost because it is—because of the problems in this watershed. I 

know my friend from Oregon will tell you we go into great battles 

and wars in the Congress over less water than that. So it is going 

to be lost. If you take that 60,000 a year for at least five years, that 

is a lot of water. 

Mr. GRINDSTAFF. Yes, that is a lot of water. We are fortunate 

that we have some alternate sources. I do not imagine that the people in northern California would think that we are fortunate that 

we have that alternate source to take water from. 

Mr. CALVERT. And for our friends from—I know that the San 

Diego fires were devastating. Our friend and colleague that lives in 

your area, Alpine, Duncan Hunter, lost his home. As a matter of 

fact, he told me the fire was so hot because the growth and the 

thickness and the way the fire burned, that his pot-bellied stove actually melted, everything was gone. That is how devastating and 

hot that fire was. 

Maybe for testimony, do you remember the last time they did a 

control burn to manage—like our friends in Mexico are apparently 

doing—but to manage old growth, which is done naturally in history, but apparently we have not been able to do it. Can you remember the last time they did such a thing in the San Diego area? 

Mr. BARRETT. I know that the National Forest Service in Cleveland National Forest last spring was doing controlled burns in the 

Laguna Mountains area. Part of the Cedar fire had burned back 

around on itself and burned east and when it hit that prescribed 

83

burn area it stopped at that point and then continued to burn 

north, which was into the Julian area where they had made a big 

stand up there and saved the town up there. That is where the one 

firefighter was killed, up in that area. 

Mr. CALVERT. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Baca. 

Mr. BACA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Grindstaff, you mentioned—and I am trying to imagine 300 

acres of debris. And as I look at the watershed and I look at the 

Santa Ana winds in the area, and you mentioned the cost. What 

effects then will the Santa Ana winds do as well, because that has 

to be taken into account as we look at the debris and the ashes. 

I know every time I leave my window open there in Rialto I see 

a lot of the ashes just coming right into the house, draining into 

the water as well. Have you taken into consideration the Santa 

Ana winds that will be picking up between now and then based on 

this fire and the cost it is going to be to us as we look at not only 

the quality of water and the quantity of water as well? 

Mr. GRINDSTAFF. I cannot tell you a specific number but I can 

tell you anecdotally that in fact the Santa Ana winds have already 

scoured a lot of the ash off of the upper parts of the slopes and 

moved it down. In fact, it is in the water. I can tell you that in fact 

ash is in the water in Orange County, the water that they are percolating into the ground. So it has already made its way down 

river—downstream and has impacts. 

Mr. BACA. And this probably has impact not only on Arrowhead 

drinking water that comes from here too as well, or Bear water as 

well. 

Mr. GRINDSTAFF. Lake Silverwood is a major supply source for 

the east branch of the state water project and that is impacted by 

the Old fire. It is a major source of supply for southern California, 

and certainly the ash, they are trying to protect and stop it from 

getting in there. But we expect some will get in there and there 

will be some treatment problems with that. 

Mr. BACA. One of the other areas—it is safe to say that the 

wildfires greatly affected tribes in southern California. We all realize that. In our area, San Manuel Reservation lost about 98 percent 

of its vegetation. Without the vegetation all that is left is the bare 

soil where the chances for flooding are greatly increased. What is 

being done on the reservations to provide—provided by the local, 

state and Federal government to help prepare for any flooding such 

as the result of wildfire? Does anyone know? And what is being 

done in terms of fostering thinning near reservations and what 

more can be done? 

Mr. BARRETT. We had several Federal agencies, FEMA BAER 

Team—we had the U.S. Forest Service BAER Team and also—actually we had two BAER teams working on the reservations in San 

Diego County. The problem with the two agencies is they did not 

communicate with each other. They stayed in the same hotel but 

they did not communicate. They have two different BAER reports 

and both of them are doing different things on Federal lands. 

Mr. BACA. And I noticed that during the wildfires we did not see 

very much coverage of the effects that wildfires had on our local 

Indian reservations. From your experience, do you believe that 

84

your tribes had adequate access to government relief services? That 

is question number one. And to your knowledge, do you know of 

any Native Americans who were turned away from relief centers? 

In the Cavazon Newsletter they stated that tribal members in San 

Diego County were being turned down for help by relief centers in 

Riverside County. They thought that the Red Cross was insufficient in providing immediate services. Can you share your experiences? Either one of you. You, too, as well, David. 

STATEMENT OF DAVE NENNA, TRIBAL ADMINISTRATOR,

TULE RIVER TRIBE 

Mr. NENNA. I would love to. If I could go ahead and provide my 

testimony with the rest of the panel. 

First off, thank you, Mr. Chairman and honorable members for 

allowing me to give testimony on behalf of my tribal government. 

The Tule River Indian Reservation was created by executive 

order in 1873 and the land base consists of 55,341 acres which is 

located in the Sierra Nevada foothills and the mountains of central 

California and Tulare County. The Tule River Tribe is the second 

largest timber tribe in the State of California. We are surrounded 

on three sides by the newly designated Giant Sequoia National 

Monument administered by the Department of Agriculture. The 

Forest Service classifies this Federal lands along our common 

boundaries very high fire hazard and risk index. 

The tribe has over 17,000 acres of productive forest land including five groves of giant sequoyas, and 30,000 acres of native oak 

woodlands. Three of these groves cross administrative boundaries 

with U.S. Forest Service. There are 253 homes and over 1,000 residents within the reservation boundaries that are located within our 

wildland and urban interface. 

The tribe has an established natural resource and forestry program, along with a forest management plan in place and approved 

by the Department of Interior. The tribe manages its own wildland 

fire department and has cooperative agreements in place with the 

U.S. Forest Service, the California Department of Forestry and 

Tulare County Fire Departments and also the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The tribe also has a fire management plan awaiting final approval. 

The tribe has taken a very proactive management approach in 

trying to protect and enhance its forest assets and natural resources. This will not be enough. The tribe has always had grave 

concerns about continuous fuel loads along the reservation boundaries. We keep our fingers crossed year after year that we are not 

the victims of catastrophic fire. We were extremely fortunate last 

year during the course of the 150,000 acre plus McNalley fire 

which burned on adjacent forest lands. The fire came within two 

miles of our reservation boundaries. The potential of losing such 

great national treasures as the giant Sequoias looms daily. The 

tribe’s concern has not changed over the years. The fuel problem 

still exists. Until the issue of fuels are addressed and the risk of 

large stand replacing fire will remain. The tribe is open to alternatives such as joint management, stewardship or some plan or 

course of action that would help us address the fuel and the fuel 

hazards on Federal lands. 

85

During the 2003 fire season we suffered through another year 

with minimal rainfall. When conifer trees are weakened from 

drought and overcrowding, they become susceptible to insect infestation. Without timely action the fuel problem magnifies. Any potential timber recovery from dead and dying trees is lost. This past 

season the tribe completed a salvage timber harvesting effort to address an abundance of dying trees due to bark beetle attack. Trying 

to remedy our forests health and fire concerns does not do much 

good if the same effort to reduce similar hazards does not happen 

on the national monument side. We pray for some type of relief, 

that we do not have to wait for the inevitable to happen before any 

action occurs. The problems have been identified on numerous occasions and now it has to be addressed. 

Along with these same concerns, as the honorable councilman 

had mentioned, of having something to address or amendment to 

the Healthy Forest Initiative that would help address this with 

tribes that are heavily forested. I would also like to submit as part 

of my testimony a letter from the Council on Energy Resource 

Tribes which represents 53 tribes throughout the Nation supporting some type of amendment to the Healthy Forest Initiative 

to address these so we can work in a cooperative effort to address 

the heavy fuel loadings for those of us that are surrounded by other 

Federal lands where these fuel loads are not being addressed at the 

present time. 

I would like to thank you very much for allowing me to offer my 

testimony, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

Mr. BACA. Mr. Chairman, if I may reclaim my time? 

Mr. POMBO. Absolutely. 

Mr. BACA. Alan, would you like to answer the question? 

Mr. BARRETT. I cannot speak for other tribes because I did not 

participate in their meetings with the BAER committees that came 

on. But for us, we did have adequate resources. At Viejas we had 

a strike team from northern California, which mostly consisted of 

San Jose area Fire Departments that came in right when the fire 

got to our reservation. We did work very closely with the Red 

Cross. We had—two days after the fire, we did sit down with the 

Red Cross and start discussing avenues and ways to get resources 

to actually the entire San Diego—the community of San Diego. 

Mr. BACA. Would you want to add anything else, David? If not, 

I have another question. 

Mr. NENNA. I will wait for your next question, Congressman. 

Mr. BACA. Thank you. Just one final question to both of the tribal members. You have painted a clear picture of just how at risk 

Indian tribes are and what we have had to deal with this fire season. America’s reservations are the repositories of countless archeological and cultural and historical sites and artifacts. Could you 

discuss the seriousness of the permanent loss of these national resources to wildfires, and do we even have an adequate inventory 

of such sites? 

Mr. NENNA. I would like to say on behalf of my tribe and several 

tribes up through the foothills, most tribe do catalog a lot of their 

cultural and archeological resources. Sometimes these resources 

are exposed that we are not aware of. During the McNalley fire 

and the Manteur fire the previous year there was sites that were 

86

heavily saturated in archeological findings that are now being cataloged. But we—with the limited resources on our reservation and 

the limited personnel to do this that are trained in this field, we 

have only been able to catalog about 50,000 acres of our reservation 

and know all of our archeological sites. They are very susceptible 

to damage and destruction depending on the intensity of the fire. 

Like I mentioned on some of the treasures, irreplaceable things 

that we could never recover are the 2,000- and 3,000-year-old giant 

Sequoia groves that we have. Also our commercial timber, it is replaceable but not in our lifetime. It will take many generations to 

regrow a lot of these natural beauties that we have. 

And destruction of—the possibility of our river. I keep hearing 

water. I was very interested in the one gentleman’s comments on 

what had happened, because our only water source or domestic 

water supply is a single river where all the watersheds are created 

on the reservation. So it would take many, many years, if ever, in 

generations to recover from a catastrophic fire. 

Mr. BACA. Thank you. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Radanovich. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I was intrigued by the information on chaparral and the age of 

chaparral and the age depending on its susceptibility to fire and 

the difference between the way it is managed between California 

and Mexico. Dr. Bonnicksen, can you tell me, is it because of controlled burning that is allowed in Mexico that is not here? You 

mentioned in California and the United States it was just complete 

fire suppression. But how did they get the nice mosaic that you are 

wanting to achieve there? Is it just by nature or what? 

Dr. BONNICKSEN. No. It was a combination of active burning by 

small farmers to provide room for livestock grazing and habitat for 

game. Also, they do not put out wildfires, lightning fires. So that 

combination over many decades has allowed the chaparral to retain 

its mosaic and fire-resistant structure and this makes it a relatively safe place for people to live. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. I know in southern California, as well as my 

part of the state in the Central Valley, which is soon to be one of 

the most—will probably overcome the Los Angeles basin for bad air 

quality. The idea of burning which—you know, I am in favor of 

burning for forest management except for when it is used to exclude logging as well. But do you think that the amount of fire necessary to create this mosaic in California would significantly impact the air quality in the basin? 

Dr. BONNICKSEN. First of all, the amount of pollutants that go 

into the air from prescribed burning would be small doses, whereas 

a wildfire would give you all of those small doses at once. We seem 

to be better at tolerating the big dose than we are, you know, enduring some hazy skies on a regular basis. So I do think it is a 

problem. It is one of the constraints—major constraints to solving 

the problem. Frankly—I mean we either deal with the chaparral by 

burning it in a way that restores the historic mosaic and fire resistance of that vegetation or we find in addition to that economic uses 

of it, perhaps biomass energy, perhaps the fiber itself could be used 

for certain products to defray the cost and reduce the amount of 

87

burning. I think the point is though, we have got to stop saying we 

cannot and we have to start saying we will and we will find a way. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. Thank you. 

Dr. Stephens, you have mentioned as well the conifer aspect of 

that in Mexico. Now what are they doing to get a good mosaic? You 

mentioned that, but I was not sure if it was by natural burning or 

what. 

Dr. STEPHENS. This area of northwestern Mexico did not have a 

road built until 1970. So before that there really was no management up there except for livestock grazing which has been there for 

200 years. So the fire regime by lightning was uninterrupted until 

1970. So it really was functionally complete. In 1970, actually they 

began to use fire suppression. You go up there today and there are 

two pickups with two four-person hand crews and they are putting 

out fires and they are pretty good at it because the fuel loads are 

so low. It is a lot like we did in 1905. A lot of us are talking about 

this as maybe not a great idea. But theirs is actually a lightninginduced fire regime. Native Americans actually live on this side as 

well. We do not have as much information about their burning 

practices but they very well could have been part of the regime as 

well. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. And it is possible—and you can both speak to 

that if you want to—to achieve that kind of mosaic pattern, which 

is desirable because it does not—fires when they start do not 

spread over a massive area. They somewhat contain themselves because of the fuel load restrictions. It is possible to achieve that, I 

think, in conifer forests as well as chaparral through either burning or logging frankly, right? 

Dr. BONNICKSEN. In conifer forests in California, especially the 

short return interval fire forests, I think they have gotten to the 

point where they are so overgrown that fire is not really our option 

as a way to thin these forests. It is beyond that. We have to use 

mechanical means supplemented with fire. Fire does play a very 

important role ecologically in these forests. But there, too, I seriously doubt even after we use mechanical methods that we will be 

able to use fire on a scale that will maintain the forest and we will 

have to continue to use mechanical methods as well. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. I agree. But mechanical methods can achieve 

the same thing, right? 

Dr. BONNICKSEN. They can achieve almost all the same things 

structurally in terms of the forest itself, but fire supplements that 

because there are some plants that actually are regenerated by fire 

that would be important as well. So light prescribed fires as a supplement to the thinning effort would, I think, help to keep the entire ecological system functioning. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. Thank you. 

I have another quick question, if I may. Mr. Nenna, welcome to 

the Committee. I remember not fondly—I remember the McNalley 

fire a couple of years ago and how there was concern about that 

moving into your tribe. Can you describe for me the management 

of your tribal forests compared to the management of what is now 

the monument which surrounds your reservation as far as it relates to forest health? For example, how do you take care of your 

tribal lands? Do you think that they are better managed and less 

88

resistant to fire once it starts because of your management practices? Do you notice a difference between the two forests? 

Mr. NENNA. Very much so, Congressman. There is a very, very 

distinct difference when you drive up to where the boundary is separated between the Forest lands and the reservation lands. We are 

very aggressive in doing fuels reductions. We want to introduce fire 

back in, but it is extremely difficult because of the fuel loads on the 

Giant Sequoia National Monument side. That was our fear because 

of the heavy fuel loads. We did what we could to attempt to do a 

shaded fuel break on our side on the reservation land and protect 

what little assets we do have. But even that is going to be impossible should catastrophic fire or should the McNalley fire have 

burned even closer. Then it would have—we would have been looking at the destruction of not just the five groves of giant Sequoias 

on the reservation, but many of the groves of the giant Sequoias 

which are irreplaceable. 

But the introduction of fire, this is one of the things—it is funny 

that we should hear this. Fire is needed for the natural generation 

of the giant Sequoia trees. That is what cracks open the cones and 

allows the seed to fall on the ground and germinate. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. But as of now, there is so much fuel buildup 

that you cannot even think of using fire as a management tool, at 

least on public lands, Federal lands. 

Mr. NENNA. No, sir. Year after year the tribe has had the same 

concern. Working with the Forest Service they were limited in 

funding or limited in personnel and at times we have went over 

and done joint projects and thinning projects when we could. But 

they are very sporadic and extremely sparse. It is not doing 

enough. A lot more needs to be done to reduce that fuel load. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. You say thinning, but you also log as well, do 

you not? 

Mr. NENNA. On the reservation many, many years ago the tribe 

logged for substance. That is the only source of revenue the tribe 

had. But for many years since, we have been very fortunate, the 

only thing we do is, we go in—and it is for forest health—so we 

do select harvest. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. It is OK to use the logging word, too. 

Mr. NENNA. Thank you. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. RADANOVICH. That is OK. 

Thank you for the time. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Walden. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I was intrigued by somebody’s comment here about the forest in 

Mexico and that grazing was—cattle grazing there 200 years, I 

think, livestock grazing? 

Dr. STEPHENS. Yes, that is correct. They came in there with the 

Jesuit missions were actually created there, just like in coastal 

California. So they started grazing about 200 years ago. 

Mr. WALDEN. And what effect did that have on the health of that 

forest? 

Dr. STEPHENS. That is a great question. We think it actually has 

degraded some of the meadows because they have not really reformed the grazing. At least in my view it is still overgrazed meadVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:32 Jun 09, 2004 Jkt 088533 PO 00000 Frm 00092 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J:\DOCS\90767.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: KATHY
89

ows. But the forests looks like possibly some fine fuel has been removed but not a lot. We think that the forest still has effective regeneration and other aspects that seem to be quite sustainable. It 

is actually an area of research that we are working on right now, 

so I have not got the conclusive answer. But they have been there 

for a couple of hundred years. 

Mr. WALDEN. OK. Dr. Bonnicksen, I am really concerned. I get 

what we need to do. All you have got to do is look at this picture 

and it is pretty obvious. I do not know why it takes eight, 10, 20 

years for government to move, or whoever to move, to get rid of 

dead trees. It is what we do after the fires now that I want to get 

focused on. Have you read the Sessions Report out of Oregon State 

University on the Biscuit fire? 

Dr. BONNICKSEN. I have read some papers on the Biscuit fire. 

Mr. WALDEN. And part of what that report found was that if we 

do not get in and replant conifer forests we will get hardwood forests. That is what will naturally come back first. You will get the 

brush and the alder and such, and that it will be a cycle of a couple 

of hundred years before you get conifer forests back. I am concerned about areas like this, if they burn—if we do not get in and 

replant quickly what kind of forest we get back. In these northwest 

forests they basically say there is a clear line of demarcation, private and Federal, and private replants quicker and you have gorgeous big evergreen trees growing, and at the Federal line they are 

still debating what to do and we have brush and it is going to burn 

again. I am not picking on the Forest Service and its laws, rules 

and regulations. It is two or three years in appeals. But I want to 

figure out what we do to fix that. What happens in these forests 

if you do not replant? 

Dr. BONNICKSEN. Well when I was up here during the fire, I 

went to the Boy Scout camp, the UCLA—the U.C.—I mean the L.A. 

Council of Boys Scouts Camp, because I had been concerned about 

that and I wanted to see what happened. Sure enough, half the 

Boy Scout camp was burned. That is where some of the fires were 

the hottest, and that is where the fire came from that went down 

into Cedar Glen. In that case, in part of that forest where the trees 

had been killed by the beetles, those trees obviously had exploded 

in the fire because all they were were charred spikes, no branches. 

In a case like that, and over a large area, there are no seed trees, 

so what is going to come back is brush around the standing dead 

trees. Now if that happens on a large scale—the kind of scale we 

see up here in this poster—where we have no seed trees nearby 

and all we have is brush and oak coming up underneath the snags 

that were killed, what we are doing is setting ourselves up for what 

we call a reburn. Which in about 15 years, when the snags start 

tumbling into the brush, you know, stacking up like jackstraws and 

the brush is five feet tall, that is a prime candidate for another fire 

that could be worse than the original fire or equally bad. If that 

happens, all you have done is convert a forest into a brush field, 

and it would take human intervention to turn it back into a forest. 

Mr. WALDEN. Part of the issue on the Biscuit fire in southern Oregon—this is the one that two years ago burned 400,000 acres. It 

burned something on the order of 80,000 acres of endangered spotted owl habitat. If we do not get in and replant that in conifer and 

90

you get a hardwood forest, it is not spotted owl habitat. I am curious, in these fires, what kind of habitat has been eliminated and 

what do you anticipate comes back and what happens to those species? 

Dr. BONNICKSEN. Well in the case of the spotted owl, we know 

all of the structural characteristics of the stands that are appropriate as nesting habitat for spotted owls. Basically there will be 

no nesting habitat. And one of the things that concerns me is the 

community of Big Bear. That community is at great risk from a fire 

coming from—I think it is the southeast side. That is spotted owl 

habitat. If a fire gets in there, it could destroy the community of 

Big Bear, along with the spotted owl habitat and you cannot do 

anything about the problem because the spotted owls are there. 

But they will not be there in a year or so anyway because the beetles will have taken care of their habitat for us. 

Mr. WALDEN. This gets to my own bias and frustration. The 

same people who do not want us to do anything out in the woods 

are the ones who are saying we cannot do anything because we 

have got to protect this habitat for whatever. The mere action of 

taking no action has a consequence that can do more to damage the 

habitat and the communities and the forests that some claim they 

are trying to protect that anything else we do. 

[Applause.] 

Mr. WALDEN. I am trying to figure out how post-fire we get in 

and do the right thing for the community, the right thing for the 

environment, the right thing for those of us who actually love forests that are healthy. At some point we need to figure out that one 

in a responsible way. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Lewis. 

VOICE. What classification does human species fall under? 

Mr. LEWIS. I appreciate the rhetorical question. I think there is 

a good deal of empathy in the audience regarding the question and 

the answer. 

Mr. Chairman, I want to say for all of those who spent much 

time with us today, the citizens, especially from my own district in 

the mountains, I very much appreciate the attention that the 

United States Congress’ Interior Committee has paid to the challenges that we have here. It is a reflection of a national challenge 

and responsibility, but we are a case study that was not—it was 

at one time looking for somewhere to happen and it has happened 

now and provides fodder for lots of thought in the months and the 

years ahead. 

Dr. Bonnicksen, I remember your last time with us and your testimony then, and very much appreciate your sense of frustration 

about the reality of what we are dealing with. 

The gentlemen from the tribes who are with us are expressing 

a view and interest that is so fundamental to our nature that it is 

very important that you be with us. Mr. Nenna, I was asking about 

your formal testimony and some way or another, I think maybe my 

own staff thought that the two of you were going to share testimony or something, so please do not have the Tule River Tribe suggest that we were really suggesting Mr. Barrett could speak for everybody. 

91

Dr. Stephens, thank you very much for your help and appreciation. And the same with you, Mr. Grindstaff. 

Mr. Chairman, the only closing comment I would make is that 

we have experienced tragedy here and all of us have raised this 

concern and question and the need for long-term action as the 

highest priority. I think we should all remember that America by 

its nature it seems is a crisis-oriented society and out of sight out 

of mind. And as time goes forward, unless we continue to keep the 

pressure on and insist that these voices continue to be heard, these 

fires will have had little long-term effect in terms of our changing 

and implementing further national policy. So your personal attention to this is very much appreciated, and I suggest to all of my 

friends in the audience that we ought to help keep that pressure 

on. 

Thank you very much, sir. 

Mr. POMBO. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. 

I will tell the panel that your testimony was very much appreciated and very helpful to the Committee. 

Dr. Bonnicksen, I want to personally thank you for the work that 

you have done over the years in providing information to this Committee. Both your testimony before this Committee before the fire 

happened. You have been extremely helpful in that regard. During 

the fire, at the Committee’s request, you monitored the fire, you 

provided us with information that was very valuable to us, and we 

look forward to continuing to work with you in both dealing with 

the forest that is still there and the issues that we have to deal 

with, as well as in the recovery stages. I appreciate a great deal 

the work that you have done on our behalf over the years. 

Dr. BONNICKSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Barrett, both you and Mr. Nenna, as you both 

know, I supported the provisions that would have included the tribal governments as part of the Healthy Forest Bill. Unfortunately 

the way things unfolded as we were moving forward with that bill, 

we were not able to get that done. I will tell you that one way or 

another we will get it done, whether it is with a stand-alone bill 

or whether we are able to include that as part of other legislation 

that will be moving. We will get that done. 

I would point out to you and to everyone else there was a very 

interesting article that ran December 2nd in the Arizona Republic 

talking about how work that was done on tribal lands saved three 

communities in Arizona because of thinning and work that they did 

on those lands, and the people in those communities are forever in 

the debt of that particular tribe for the work that they did because 

they were able to stop a fire when it hit the tribal lands. When it 

went across Forest Service lands it got out of control and there was 

no way they were going to stop it before it burned those communities. 

Obviously when you look at the landscape of the west, tribal 

lands are extremely important in terms of maintaining an environment and they have to be included in anything that we do. There 

is no way around it. It is a major part of the environment in the 

west and we have to recognize that. We will continue to work with 

both of you gentlemen to make sure that that happens. 

92

Before I excuse this panel, I will just say that, you know, it is 

nice to be in Lake Arrowhead. I have always loved coming up here, 

but I wish it was under different circumstances. The last time that 

we were here, just a couple of short months ago, it was with the 

hope of passing the Healthy Forest bill and being able to do something before these lands burned. Coming back here after a fire was 

not what any of us had in mind, but I think it was important that 

we do it. It was important that the members of the Committee 

have an opportunity to listen to you, to listen to the testimony that 

we had today, but I think just as importantly to see for themselves 

what happened in these fires and to fly over and actually look at 

the fire patterns and the impact that they had. That will help us 

do a better job in the future in terms of drafting legislation. 

I will tell the members of the panel that if there are things that 

we need to do—the Federal government needs to do to change policy, to change rules, regulations, to work with the bureaucracy, let 

us know. Let us know what those changes are and how we can do 

a better job of managing the public trust, the public lands that are 

out there and to help private property owners in dealing with the 

challenges that they have. Because that is something that we have 

as a responsibility on this Committee and as members of Congress 

that we do. 

I will say that for those of you that stuck with us all day in the 

audience, I appreciate your willingness to be here, your willingness 

to participate in this hearing. We are going to hold the Congressional record open, the Committee record open for 10 days so that 

if members of the audience wish to submit testimony to be included 

in the record, we will give you the opportunity to do that. It can 

be submitted to the House Resources Committee. That record will 

be held open. 

I want to thank Mr Lewis again for hosting us in his district. I 

wish it was not in your district, Jerry, but——

Mr. LEWIS. But it is. 

Mr. POMBO. —it is. And it is greatly appreciated, the hospitality 

that we always have had up here. So I thank you for doing that. 

Is there any further business to come before the Committee? 

[No response.] 

Mr. POMBO. Hearing none, we are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:41 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional material submitted for the record follows:]

[A statement submitted for the record by Congressman Dreier 

follows:]

Statement of The Honorable David Dreier, a Representative in Congress 

from the State of California 

Chairman McInnis, thank you for holding this field hearing on fire recovery. I also 

want to thank Chairman Richard Pombo and all my colleagues on the House Resources Committee for coming to Southern California to discuss this timely and critical issue of recovery from the recent California wildfires. 

These fires devastated Southern California in October, including parts of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura, and San Diego counties. We are already 

working toward rebuilding, mitigating for potential mud slides and erosion during 

the rainy season, and looking at every opportunity to prevent another disaster of 

this magnitude. 

93

Federal agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, 

and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service 

are working with local and state agencies on fire recovery efforts. 

With this many agencies involved, it is absolutely critical that response at all levels be seamless and without regulatory burden for fire victims. Working cooperatively rather than shirking jurisdictional responsibility by citing obscure technicalities is the last thing we need in this crucial period. Fire victims still have debris 

in their yards and homes. Before the rainy season begins, we must do all we can 

to expedite the delivery of federal disaster assistance dollars, to coordinate with federal, state, and local agencies to assist in the recovery effort, and, most importantly, 

to engage in preventing further damage from potentially damaging winter storms. 

In addition to the hands-on recovery work that is currently underway and must 

continue, we must also take a hard look at our preventative policies in mitigating 

for disease-infested trees and managing our forests. One major step in improving 

these policies was spearheaded by this Committee with the enactment of the 

Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA). With President Bush signing this landmark legislation this week, we can finally move toward sensible management of our 

national forests as one component of preventing the catastrophic wildfires that just 

swept through our region. 

Our past failure to maintain the forests has had dangerous and devastating consequences. The uncontrolled growth, left by years of neglect, chokes off nutrients 

from trees and provides a breeding ground for insects and disease. Only in the aftermath of the Southern California fires was Congress able to reach a bipartisan agreement to deal with what had obviously become a serious problem. 

The primary focus of the HFRA is to streamline the decisionmaking process inside 

the U.S. Forest Service. A major factor in the widespread destruction caused by 

wildfires has been the Forest Service’s inability to take action that might have made 

fires more manageable. The National Association of Public Administration found 

that the Forest Service spends 40 percent of its manpower and 20 percent of its 

funding on planning and process activities. Some of this inaction is due to bureaucratic requirements the HFRA was designed to reduce. Some of it is also attributable to what some would say is the wrong approach to forestry management. 

Without a doubt, freeing up some of the resources expended on such bureaucracy 

will only help the Forest Service reorganize and become more effective in its mission. 

Bureaucracy does not ensure public input, and it most certainly does not ensure 

success. But, as many in our area know, managing forests can have a significant 

effect on a community. Because of this fact, the HFRA creates unprecedented processes for public input. The legislation includes a ten year strategy for public involvement outlined by the Western Governors Association and endorsed by environmental groups such as the Wilderness Society. It also makes permanent the public 

notice and comment requirements currently required during the environmental 

analysis phase for a wildlife mitigation project. 

Mr. Chairman, by holding this hearing today, you are providing a valuable forum 

for oversight of the fire recovery process. Thank you. 

[A statement submitted for the record by Congressman Issa 

follows:]

Statement of The Honorable Darrell Issa, a Representative in Congress 

from the State of California 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this important hearing today in Lake Arrowhead, California, on ‘‘Recovering From the Fires: Restoring and Protecting Communities, Water, and Wildlife and Forests in Southern California.’’ I hope that after 

we hear from the witnesses, we can learn from this devastating experience and minimize the loss of damage of possible future fires. 

I would like to thank Chairman Jerry Lewis for his leadership in attaining muchneeded emergency funding to assist in the recovery efforts. I also want to thank all 

the firefighters and every entity, including local, state and federal agencies that coordinated efforts to suppress the fires, save lives, and limit the damage caused to 

structures and other personal property. Finally, I want to thank the witnesses here 

today for taking time out of their busy schedules to testify for this hearing, so that 

we may better-educate ourselves in preventing the type of catastrophe we witnessed 

a few short weeks ago. 

94

As a child, I remember my parents providing me with some very sound advice, 

‘‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’’ This is precisely the mind-set 

that Resource Chairman Richard Pombo and Subcommittee Chairman Scott 

McInnis (R-Colo.) had when they drafted the ‘‘Healthy Forest Restoration Act’’ in 

order to prevent catastrophic wildfires. Last Wednesday, President George W. Bush 

signed this bill into law. 

This year, California was the victim of horrific wildfires. Arizona was victimized 

last year. A major reason for the extensive fire damage in both California and Arizona was limited preventative maintenance on federal lands. ‘‘The Healthy Forest 

Restoration Act’’ will provide the means with which to thin out the forests on federal 

lands that are at the highest risk of wildfires. 

The numerical data released by the United States Forest Service regarding the 

total destruction caused by the Southern California wildfires is staggering. The fire 

left approximately 740,000 acres of national forests, tribal lands, state forests and 

private lands charred, 4,676 structures (3,661 homes) destroyed, and 22 people 

killed, including a firefighter. In San Diego County alone, three fires burned 383,284 

acres and caused $28 million in agricultural crop losses. I surveyed the damage in 

my district and visited three of the Indian Reservations in my district that were 

most impacted by the fires. The San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians lost close to 

80% of the homes on their reservation. It comes as no surprise that this was the 

most destructive and costly wildfire to ever impact California, with the damage certain to exceed $2 billion. 

The impacts of the fire extend beyond the individuals and families who lost physical property in the fire. The fires in Southern California caused irreversible environmental damage. The fires have impacted air quality, water quality, soil erosion, 

sensitive habitat, and endangered species. San Diego County was one of the hardest 

hit of all the fire-ravaged counties. Dry and strong Santa Ana winds and the low 

humidity are part of the explanation for the severity of the fires, as they fueled and 

exacerbated the burning of dried shrubs and chaparral. These, however, are annual 

conditions that were not unexpected. In the future, once the vegetation grows back, 

we will again be caught in a similar dilemma if we do nothing to prevent future 

wildfires. 

Implementing the ‘‘Healthy Forest Restoration Act’’ will be one part of the solution in protecting communities and businesses from future conflagrations. Streamlining the administrative offices and giving forest managers the tools they need to 

maintain a healthy environment are just two examples of the important programs 

in this act. Working with environmental groups and resource agencies, we can begin 

to restore much of the burned areas. Never again should California, or anywhere 

else in the United States, be subjected to the kinds of wildfires that raged in Southern California this year. 

Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to speak at this field hearing, and I look forward to hearing the testimony from the panel of witnesses.

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