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S. HRG. 107–706

WILDLAND FIRE PREPAREDNESS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

TO REVIEW THE OUTLOOK FOR THIS YEAR’S WILDLAND FIRE SEASON

AS WELL AS TO ASSESS THE FEDERAL LAND MANAGEMENT AGENCIES’ STATE OF READINESS AND PREPAREDNESS FOR THE WILDLAND

FIRE SEASON

MAY 7, 2002

(

Printed for the use of the

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

(II)

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES

JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico, Chairman

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii

BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota

BOB GRAHAM, Florida

RON WYDEN, Oregon

TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana

EVAN BAYH, Indiana

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York

MARIA CANTWELL, Washington

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware

FRANK H. MURKOWSKI, Alaska

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico

DON NICKLES, Oklahoma

LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho

BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL, Colorado

CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming

RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama

CONRAD BURNS, Montana

JON KYL, Arizona

CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska

GORDON SMITH, Oregon

ROBERT M. SIMON, Staff Director

SAM E. FOWLER, Chief Counsel

BRIAN P. MALNAK, Republican Staff Director

JAMES P. BEIRNE, Republican Chief Counsel

KIRA FINKLER, Counsel

FRANK GLADICS, Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

STATEMENTS

Page

Bingaman, Hon. Jeff, U.S. Senator from New Mexico .......................................... 1

Burns, Hon. Conrad, U.S. Senator from Montana ................................................ 8

Cantwell, Hon. Maria, U.S. Senator from Washington ........................................ 29

Craig, Hon. Larry E., U.S. Senator from Idaho .................................................... 28

Domenici, Hon. Pete V., U.S. Senator from New Mexico ..................................... 10

Holtrop, Joel, Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry, U.S. Forest Service; accompanied by Jerry Williams, Director, Fire and Aviation Management, USFS; Tim Hartzell, Director, Office of Wildland Fire Coordination,

Department of the Interior; and William Maxon, Executive Director, Southwest Strategy Coordination Council ................................................................... 12

Johnson, Hon. Tim, U.S. Senator from South Dakota .......................................... 7

Kyl, Hon. Jon, U.S. Senator from Arizona ............................................................ 32

Murkowski, Hon. Frank H., U.S. Senator from Alaska ....................................... 20

Smith, Hon. Gordon H., U.S. Senator from Oregon .............................................. 35

Thomas, Hon. Craig, U.S. Senator from Wyoming ............................................... 10

Wyden, Hon. Ron, U.S. Senator from Oregon ....................................................... 9

APPENDIX

Responses to additional questions .......................................................................... 41

(1)

WILDLAND FIRE PREPAREDNESS

TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2002

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES, Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m. in room

SD–366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Jeff Bingaman,

chairman, presiding.

STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF BINGAMAN, U.S. SENATOR

FROM NEW MEXICO

The CHAIRMAN. Let me call the hearing to order. Before I start

in on the short statement that I have prepared and then defer to

my colleague here for his statement related to the subject of this

hearing, let me just say a couple of words about this issue that is

prominently featured in today’s news, and that is the FERC released yesterday some important information on price manipulation in Western electricity markets by Enron. Those documents

provided by the new management at Enron are part of the FERC

investigation that resulted from this committee’s hearing on January 29. That hearing focused on the effect of Enron’s collapse on

energy markets. At that time Chairman Wood agreed to begin an

investigation at the request of Senators Feinstein, Wyden, and

Cantwell.

As we digest this information, I am going to be consulting with

my colleagues on the appropriate next steps that Congress and particularly this committee should take to ensure that the price manipulation and lack of transparency in energy markets is effectively

exposed and remedied. We obviously do not want to interfere with

the ongoing investigation of FERC, but we will try to ensure that

as we move forward in conference on our larger energy bill we remain alert to problems in the effective functioning of these markets. We may need to have an additional hearing here in this committee on this general subject as we proceed.

This morning the committee will hear from the Forest Service

and from the Department of the Interior regarding the outlook for

this year’s wildland fire season, as well as the agencies’ state of

readiness and preparedness for the fires that have already begun

in many parts of the West.

I want to thank all the witnesses for coming this morning. I especially want to recognize Bill Maxon. He is with the Fish and

Wildlife Service. He is the executive director of the Southwest

Strategy in Albuquerque. It provides an important forum for FedVerDate 11-SEP-98 14:26 Oct 03, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 J:\DOCS\82-000 SENERGY3 PsN: SENERGY3
2

eral agencies trying to coordinate and cooperate with each other on

tribal, State, and local government issues in the Southwest.

Unfortunately for some of the committee members, this fire season is well under way in their States. This certainly includes my

State of New Mexico, where the Pen ̃ asco fire in the southern part

of New Mexico forced several residents to evacuate as it burned

more than 15,000 acres. Yesterday we had a new fire break out

near Pecos, New Mexico. That has now grown to nearly a thousand

acres.

Many of my constituents, as well as the diverse array of interest

groups, all make the same point to me, that over the long haul in

order to decrease the number of catastrophic wildland fires we

need to restore our national forests and public lands through hazardous fuels reduction and other measures. Obviously, the costs involved in this restoration are significant, but over the long term it

is much less expensive to do this than it is to fight the fires. Restoring our lands is the preferred alternative for the environment

as well because important species’ habitats burn right along with

the forests during these extremely hot fires that we have seen.

Given this principle, it is unclear during the past two budget cycles why we have not had the administration requesting the funds

that were contemplated under the national fire plan. We need to

sustain the commitment to this national fire plan over a long period of time. I know Senators on both sides of the aisle have made

that point repeatedly. This means at a minimum sustaining fiscal

year 2001 funding levels for all components of the National Fire

Plan.

Recently the Western Governors Association sent a letter to Congress urging full funding for the National Fire Plan at the fiscal

2001 funding levels. Unfortunately, the important programs that

are part of that plan, including economic action programs, community and private land fire assistance, and burned area restoration

and rehabilitation, have been proposed for drastic cuts. In some instances they have actually been zeroed out in the administration

request.

I am troubled that this 2003 budget eliminates the economic action program entirely. I think we need to understand the thinking

of the administration on that. It is troubling that the Forest Service, after borrowing millions of dollars from its hazardous fuels reduction account to pay for emergency firefighting, is as I understand it not returning the funds to that account after being reimbursed by Congress for the emergency firefighting expenses. We

need to explore that.

I think some agencies disagree with the concept of prioritizing

hazardous fuels reduction in the wildland-urban interface. They

are disregarding clear congressional direction because in fiscal year

2000 Congress intentionally focused the additional hazardous fuels

reduction funds on the wildland-urban interface because the General Accounting Office and other studies found that the agencies

did not consider protecting communities their number one priority

for the hazardous fuels reduction program.

Again, we need to be sure we understand the administration’s

view on this, because it is still my view that the protection of communities needs to be given top priority.

3

Overall, I would say it is unclear to me why the Forest Service

fiscal year 2003 budget requests $39 million less for fire preparedness as compared to last year’s enacted level. This has been a bipartisan concern of this committee and members of this committee

for several years. I think it is clearly a major concern right now because of the drought that we are facing through much of the West.

I can see on the map which I know the witnesses are getting ready

to refer to the drought conditions that we are faced with throughout the Southwest and many other parts of the country.

I hope we can get good information from the administration

about how to proceed and hope we can find ways to proceed jointly.

Let me defer to whichever of my colleagues would like to make

an opening statement and then we will go to the witnesses.

[A prepared statement from Senator Johnson follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. TIM JOHNSON, U.S. SENATOR

FROM SOUTH DAKOTA

Thank you, Mr. Chairman for holding this hearing to assess the Federal land

management agencies state of readiness and preparedness for the wildland fire season. With the outbreak of a 400 acre wildfire that has caused the evacuation of over

2,400 people twenty-five miles west of Denver, Colorado, today’s hearing is a critically important examination of the National Fire Plan. I appreciate the willingness

of officials from the Office of Wildland Fire Coordination, as well as officials from

the State and Private Forestry and Fire and Aviation Management agencies within

the U.S. Forest Service to take the time to be with us this morning. I am keenly

interested in hearing from the Forest Service and the Office of Wildland Fire Coordination on the progress made to enhance interagency cooperation and improve

coordination and resource utilization by Federal and state land management agencies.

As you may know, Mr. Chairman, the vast majority of the 1.2 million acre Black

Hills National Forest (BHNF) sits squarely in South Dakota. The BHNF is a biologically distinct ecosystem that is supported by a diversity of plant and animal

communities. With 300,000 acres of private and state lands sprinkled throughout

the Black Hills, the Forest Service has traditionally administrated BHNF for multiple uses, including timber, grazing, watershed, and wildlife conservation. The

management plan of the BHNF along with significant human development has created a wildland-urban interface where fire suppression goes hand in glove with public safety and forest health.

The BHNF has experienced three severe forest fires in the last two years. These

three fires burned over 100,000 acres of land combined. The Forest Service is now

engaged in the critical work of ensuring that these lands are effectively rehabilitated. Specifically, the Forest Service must remove hazardous trees, seed burned

areas with grasses, prevent an invasion of noxious weeds, and fence aspen shoots.

The Black Hills is a unique area with rugged gulches and stands of ponderosa

pine melting into a prairie ecosystem. Unlike large tracks of uninhibited forest land,

the Black Hills is also a major commercial hub with 100,000 people scattered along

communities in the shadow of the Hills. The threat of wildland fire encroaching on

municipal watersheds, communities, and personal property poses a real risk. To the

communities of the Hills, effective fire suppression techniques and forest stewardship is the key to ensuring public safety, protecting private property, and sustaining

ecological diversity.

With a patchwork of state, tribal, and federal lands, improving coordination is

crucial to maximizing resources and facilitating the exchange of information to curtail needless and costly delays. The Forest Service manages 192 million acres and

has budgetary authority over a ballooning fire suppression account. I am interested

in hearing from today’s witnesses on the steps taken toward improving the coordination and communication of resources and information of the National Fire Plan.

Fireland management is crucial to ensuring the public safety of the communities

of my state and preserving the beauty and health of the Black Hills for the hundreds of thousands of visitors who traverse the Hills. Thank you, again, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing and I look forward to exploring these issues further

with our witnesses.

4

STATEMENT OF HON. CONRAD BURNS, U.S. SENATOR

FROM MONTANA

Senator BURNS. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I have another appointment here at 10 o’clock that is kind of important and

I just want to make a statement and bring it back to real world.

First of all, thank you for this hearing. In light of what has happened in the ag bill that we will go to conference and we will vote

on probably tomorrow and how they treated the Forest Service and

some of the programs that we have in the Forest Service, it is less

than desirable. These hearings are very, very important and very,

very timely.

A couple of issues. I do not know, it was last week some time or

other, I cannot remember the date, but the New York Times had

a picture of dirt blowing in Montana. We are going into our fifth

year of drought. It showed an old breaking plow that had not been

used probably in the last 20 years, an old moldboard plow. Some

of you probably know what those are. There may be some in this

room that probably do not. But it was about half covered up in dirt,

because dirt is starting to move in Montana.

Now, we have conflicting cultures here where now they want to

list the prairie dog as endangered and they want him to prosper

out through the land, but you have got to remember he eats everything in those towns. There is no cover, there is no plant cover.

That dirt is starting to move.

A good friend of mine—and now that dirt is starting to move and

we are losing our topsoil in Montana. I would say if you look at

our State we are very, very dry in the eastern plains, and of course

we have not had a great year of snowpack. It is better than usual.

We are getting it. We have more water than we have had in the

last 4 years, I would say, but it did not extend eastward onto the

plains.

So we will definitely have range fires this year, because it has

always been a fire year in Montana the last 5 years. We have made

headlines everywhere.

But I wanted to bring that up because—and what has happened

in the farm bill, that these hearings are timely and fire control is

again going to be a situation in my State of Montana, as it is in

the chairman’s State, and the devastation that they have encountered down there, and I am very sensitive to that situation down

there.

But remember that some of the things that we are doing to prevent fires is absolutely, and also to hold soil, hold topsoil, is running counter to any kind of sound conservation practice as far as

agriculture is concerned or what is happening to our land in general.

So I just want to submit a little statement here. Thank you for

holding these hearings because they are very important. I am

sorry, I just will not be here to listen to the testimony, and I would

rather hear them than go where I am going, but I ain’t got a lot

of choice. So I thank you for that.

But I want everybody to just be aware of some of the conservation practices that we are using now is running counter to what

some folks who do not live on the land, do not understand the relationship of sun, soil, and water and good conservation practices.

5

So I thank you very much for this time, and I thank the witnesses for coming today. It is very, very important.

[The prepared statement of Senator Burns follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. CONRAD BURNS, U.S. SENATOR FROM MONTANA

Thank you, Mr. Chairman for holding this hearing, and thank you to the witnesses for appearing today. This is not the first fire hearing we have all attended

and it won’t be the last. We have had forest and wildfires in this country every year

that I remember, and I expect we’ll have them again this year.

We are headed into our fifth year of drought in parts of Montana, and unless

things change quickly, it will be another big fire season for us. It seems like every

year is a bad fire year in Montana anymore.

While fire can be a healthy part of the life cycle of a forest or range, it can also

wreak havoc on the ecosystem if it is too hot, sterilizes the soil, and turns the landscape into something that looks like the surface of the moon.

The hot and dangerously unpredictable fires we often see in forests today happen

because there’s too much undergrowth, and doghair stands of trees will produce

more uncontrollable fires than less dense forests. This isn’t good for the ecosystem,

the fire-fighters, or the American taxpayer.

And when that fire jumps the fence from the National Forest and heads onto private land, we all feel for those who lose their homes, or their pastures and fences.

The uncertainty and hardship fires cause are very damaging to rural America.

A few years back we worked very hard to get enough money together to fund the

National Fire Plan, and we’ll be working on it from an appropriations standpoint

for the next several years. But for all the millions of dollars we have spent, I notice

a big piece missing. Where is the prevention? Where is the forest health? I understand there is an effort to remove some underbrush and smaller fuel—but it seems

to me these projects are much too small, and focused on the urban interface. We

are ignoring the larger issue here if we look at the problem a few acres at a time.

We need to improve forest health across the board. We have to remove some of the

fuel out there, and you can’t do it with a handsaw, you need to do it with a logging

truck.

Fires will happen, and we need a way to get on the ground afterward for restoration work. If you paid attention to the debate over the Bitterroot National Forest

Restoration Plan, you noticed that the Forest Service was in court over it in January. This was a year and a half after the Bitterroot burned, environmental work

had been done, and lawsuits filed.

We need to remember that this story doesn’t end when the fire goes out. In Montana today you’ll find streams full of silt, weakened forests beginning to show the

signs of bug kill.

There should be a quick-response mechanism in place to deal with restoration and

rehabilitation. Right now, the system is broken—and Montanans are the ones suffering because of it.

I look forward to hearing from the witnesses and finding out how we can address

these challenges. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Wyden, did you have any statement

here?

STATEMENT OF HON. RON WYDEN, U.S. SENATOR

FROM OREGON

Senator WYDEN. Just very briefly, Mr. Chairman. First let me

thank you for the opening comments you made with respect to the

Enron situation. As you know, the west coast is a power grid and

so there is a direct connection between what happens in California

and in the Pacific Northwest. I am very pleased that you are going

to continue to monitor this.

I would hope in particular that this would give a new impetus

to the provision that we included in the energy bill to establish a

ratepayer advocate at the Department of Justice, because had that

provision been in place we might have had a person with the power

to blow the whistle early on so as to prevent much of this damage.

6

I am very pleased with the comments that you have made this

morning with respect to Enron.

The only other point that I want to make deals with the matter

of wildland fires. As you know, as chair of the Forests and Public

Land Management Subcommittee we will be working very closely

with you on these issues. My bottom line is there has got to be a

way to get fire-prone materials out of the forests, employ people in

rural communities at family wage-earning jobs, and maintain environmental integrity. I think we can do this consistent with maintaining full funding for firefighting. We will be working with you

closely, Mr. Chairman, on a bipartisan basis, and I thank you for

holding this hearing.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Senator Thomas, did you have any statement that you would like

to make?

STATEMENT OF HON. CRAIG THOMAS, U.S. SENATOR

FROM WYOMING

Senator THOMAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just very briefly, I

am pleased too to have this hearing. We need certainly to talk

about this issue. I think you have mentioned in the last couple of

years, frankly the past administration—it has been a long time

since we have done much with fire protection, and that goes beyond

the current administration, I can tell you.

The national fire plan—2000, for instance, was the most challenging year we have had for a very long time—8.4 million acres

of fire. $6.6 billion over the last 3 fiscal years allocated for the various fire projects. I guess the key points are firefighting, burning

area rehabilitation and restoration, hazardous fuels reduction, community assistance, and accountability. Well, those are good points.

I guess we have to talk a little bit about the priorities in terms of

those things.

Obviously, we are having a great deal of drought in many areas.

I just want to mention that our State in Wyoming has done a good

deal on this. They have purchased Blackhawk water buckets, they

have transportation equipment, and so on and so on. They are

doing quite a few things.

But in any event, I hope that we get our priorities in terms of,

I think some of the things we could do in thinning would be very

effective if we do it earlier, not when you are faced with a fire. The

thinning is not the issue. But that ought to be a longer term priority to try and avoid these fires if we possibly can. Obviously, you

cannot avoid them all.

So I am glad we are here and I want to hear the witnesses.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you.

Senator Domenici.

STATEMENT OF HON. PETE V. DOMENICI, U.S. SENATOR

FROM NEW MEXICO

Senator DOMENICI. Mr. Chairman, I just want to wholeheartedly

thank you for calling this meeting. You know as well as I, in our

State we are going to have another drought. We are in the middle

of it. Everybody predicts it. We cannot hardly live with the water

7

we have got in New Mexico when we have a non-drought year, so

all kinds of problems are going to come up in our State.

With reference to the forests and BLM land—let us just talk

about them together—it is pretty obvious to me that even if we put

a lot of money in, as we did last year, you might recall—we put

in a big chunk of money on the floor, called it Happy Forests. You

helped with it. Each Forest Service and BLM got about $140 million. Then we had a regular appropriation which we loaded up. I

am hopeful that we are going to do better than the President in

this area in our appropriations.

But it is amazing. It is hard to see results. When you look at the

whole picture, what a deplorable state our forests were in in terms

of thickness, in terms of letting trees grow right up along side of

buildings—I cannot really find out where all the money is going,

where it went. But there is an awful lot of it out there. I assume

these two experts will tell us that we are certainly putting more

resources in than we ever have.

I think everybody knows what the policies are. I heard you say,

Mr. Chairman, as you walked in that you remain concerned about

fire damage up alongside of buildings, homes, and other kind of

things. Did I hear you right?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Senator DOMENICI. It is a terrible thing, and we are not making

a lot of headway. We are making some, but it is very slow. As you

know, if you were to take people out to show them you would have

to give them pretty good notice in advance to take you somewhere

that would really be a good picture of success.

Nonetheless, we have to keep on trying our best. I will tell you

and the committee, there is a drought bill in the makings that has

been in the making for about 21⁄2 years as a result of the group of

experts headed by the Secretary of Agriculture that was appointed

under a statute we passed. They have now issued their report and

we will have a draft bill. We will hope that a number of members

of this committee will join it.

What it does is it permits some early funding on preventive

measures when you have a predictable drought, rather than waiting until it happens. It will require that we know a little, that we

rely on our Weather Service people maybe more than their expertise justifies. But unless we do something like that, all we do now

is we have a drought and we go see the Department of Agriculture

and see what kind of programs they have. If they do not have any

that fit it, we do not do anything.

But other kinds of disasters that are not like this—but this is a

disaster. Our State will be in a disaster position in terms of many

of the areas there, just as much as if you were hit by a wind storm

or a hurricane or whatever. It eats away at you very gradually. But

it surely is there.

So thank you so much. It is good to be here this morning. I wanted to ask you, are you doing your exercise, getting ready for the

little tiny marathon we are going to have on the energy bill?

The CHAIRMAN. I thought we just had that.

Senator DOMENICI. Oh, you have not see anything yet.

The CHAIRMAN. I thought we just finished the marathon.

Thank you very much.

8

Let me introduce our witnesses: Tim Hartzell, who is the Director of the Office of Wildland Fire Coordination at the Department

of the Interior, accompanied by Bill Maxon, who is the Executive

Director of Southwest Strategy Coordination Office; and also Joel

Holtrop, who is the Deputy Chief of the State and Private Forestry

in the U.S. Forest Service, accompanied by Jerry Williams, who is

Director of Fire and Aviation Management at the Forest Service.

I understand you have a joint statement and you are going to

split up the responsibility of testifying. So why do you folks not

proceed in whatever order makes sense.

STATEMENT OF JOEL HOLTROP, DEPUTY CHIEF FOR STATE

AND PRIVATE FORESTRY, U.S. FOREST SERVICE; ACCOMPANIED BY JERRY WILLIAMS, DIRECTOR, FIRE AND AVIATION MANAGEMENT, USFS; TIM HARTZELL, DIRECTOR,

OFFICE OF WILDLAND FIRE COORDINATION, DEPARTMENT

OF THE INTERIOR; AND WILLIAM MAXON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SOUTHWEST STRATEGY COORDINATION COUNCIL

Mr. HOLTROP. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee:

Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today. As the

members of the committee indicated, this is an important issue and

we very much appreciate the opportunity to talk about it with you

today.

I am Joel Holtrop, the Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry with the Forest Service. As you mentioned, with me I have

Tim Hartzell, Director of the Office of Wildland Fire Coordination,

Department of Interior; Jerry Williams, Director of Fire and Aviation Management for the Forest Service; and William Maxon, the

Executive Director for the Southwest Strategy.

Since the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service work so closely together in fire management and in the implementation of the national fire plan, it is appropriate that we use one statement to review the outlook for the

fire situation for this year and the Department’s state of record of

decision and preparedness for the fire season, and it is appropriate

that we are here together to appear before you.

At the outset, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I

want to thank you for the support that you have given to the fire

management program and especially to thank you for your support

for the brave young men and women of our firefighting resources

who do an impressive job under very adverse situations, often adverse situations, and they deserve our thanks, our support, and our

admiration.

As we look at the fire situation and the outlook for this fire season, the outlook unfortunately is for a severe fire season, as you

have already indicated. As you know, we are already experiencing

a number of wildland fires across the Nation. The map that you

have up here which describes the drought outlook for the United

States is also very helpful in understanding where we are likely to

have above-normal fire activity. We have a map for the outlook of

fire for the Nation as a whole and it roughly is very similar to the

drought outlook map, so we do not even need to use that.

We have dryer than usual conditions and those conditions are

going to continue to be something that we will be dealing with as

9

the summer and fall progresses as well. The outlook for weather

conditions are for warmer than normal temperatures in the West

and in the Southeast. Rainfall is predicted to be near normal and

as a result in the overall 2002 fire season the greatest potential for

fires is in southern California, the Southwest, the Great Basin, the

Rockies, and the Eastern Seaboard from Florida to Maine.

As we look at the wildland fire preparedness for both the Department of the Interior and Agriculture’s Forest Service, one of the

things that we want to stress is that firefighter safety is our highest priority. Firefighting is a high risk, high consequence activity.

After the unfortunate incident following the Thirty Mile fire last

July in which four firefighters lost their lives, we are redoubling

our efforts, have redoubled our efforts, to ensure firefighter safety.

At your request, we have been briefing this committee on a regular basis on the efforts that we have been making to improve firefighter safety and training. We have identified managing firefighter

fatigue, reinforcing the use of the ten standard firefighter orders,

fire orders, and developing training to avoid entrapment by fire,

among other things. All of these improvements in training and

safety are in place for this fire season and we are committed to

doing everything we can to improve firefighter safety.

In 2001, we made a great start toward increasing our preparedness resources, thanks to the national fire plan funding. We hired

an additional 5400-plus fire employees, bringing our total Federal

wildland fire work force to 17,600 plus employees. We purchased

over 400 additional engines, 56 additional dozers, and we contracted for 31 additional helicopters. Our inter-agency hot shot

crews, we changed the number, we increased the number of interagency hot shot crews between the two Departments from 66 to 87.

Finally, our reliance on the State and local partners; I want to

stress that as well. Often our State and local firefighters are the

first to respond to our fire incidents. We rely heavily on these

crews for support, especially those rural and volunteer fire department crews. With the national fire plan funds, we have been able

to improve the initial attack and abilities with protective gear,

equipment, and training.

I would like to keep my comments brief and ask Mr. Hartzell to

make some summary comments as well and, if it is all right with

you, submit our testimony for the record.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Holtrop follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOEL HOLTROP, DEPUTY CHIEF FOR STATE AND PRIVATE

FORESTRY, U.S. FOREST SERVICE

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to

meet with you today. I am Joel Holtrop, Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry

with the Forest Service. With me is Tim Hartzell, Director of the Office of Wildland

Fire Coordination at the Department of the Interior; Jerry Williams, Director of Fire

and Aviation Management, Forest Service; and William Maxon, a Fish and Wildlife

Service employee and Executive Director of the Southwest Strategy. Since the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture work closely together

in fire management and in implementing the National Fire Plan, it is appropriate

to use one statement to review the outlook for the 2002 wildland fire season and

describe our Departments’ state of readiness and preparedness for the fire season.

At the outset, Mr. Chairman, we want to thank you for your support of the fire

management program and, most importantly, for your support of the brave young

men and women who make up our firefighting corps. Our firefighters do an impressive job under adverse conditions and they deserve our thanks and admiration.

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Today we will talk about the potentially severe fire season now underway, and

how the five Federal land-managing agencies and our partners are making preparations. While we prepare to fight fire this season as best we can, fighting wildland

fires is only one aspect of the work we must do to protect communities and restore

ecosystems.

THE FIRE SITUATION AND OUTLOOK

The outlook is for a severe fire season this year. As you know, we are already

experiencing a number of wildland fires across the nation. Since 1999, La Nin ̃ a, a

phenomenon characterized by the abnormally cold temperatures in the tropical Pacific, has plagued much of the country with drier than usual weather. The resulting

drought condition in the Southwest, Rockies and East Coast has set the stage for

a potentially active fire season in those areas. Since October, areas receiving below

normal amounts include Southern California, the Southern Great Basin, Southwest,

Rocky Mountains and the Eastern Seaboard. The Northeast experienced the second

driest September-to-February period in the last 107 years.

Analyzing fuel and weather conditions across the country, the areas of greatest

fire potential today include the Southwest, Colorado, Southern California, and the

Southern Great Basin. Also, fire potential is high in Northern Florida, Northwest

Minnesota and the Southeast Alaskan Panhandle.

The weather outlook for later this summer and fall calls for generally warmer

than normal temperatures in the West and Southeast. Rainfall is predicted to be

near normal, except for above normal early rains in the Pacific Northwest along

with late summer/early fall dryness throughout the West. As a result, fire potential

in the Rockies and Eastern Seaboard states is expected to increase this summer and

fall. For the overall 2002 fire season, the greatest potential for fires is in Southern

California, the Southwest, Great Basin, Rockies and the Eastern Seaboard from

Florida to Maine.

WILDLAND FIRE PREPAREDNESS

Each year the five land-managing agencies of the Departments prepare to prevent, detect, and take prompt, effective initial attack suppression action on wildland

fires. In order to do this, we need trained and equipped firefighters and firefighting

equipment. We maintain qualified firefighters through training and apprenticeship

programs, and we have aggressive recruitment and retention programs. We maintain a number of facilities for firefighter housing and equipment storage.

Firefighter safety is our highest priority. Firefighting is a high risk, high consequence activity, and the Forest Service and Interior have always had strong firefighter safety and training programs. This year, however, following the ThirtyMile

Fire tragedy in July 2001, where four firefighters lost their lives, we have redoubled

our efforts. As the Committee requested, the Forest Service has provided regular

briefings on our efforts to improve firefighter safety and training. The ThirtyMile

tragedy prompted an examination of the programs to identify areas needing improvement. The areas identified include managing firefighter fatigue, reinforcing

use of the 10 Standard Fire Orders and the 18 Watch Out situations, and developing training to avoid entrapment by fire. All of these improvements in training and

safety are in place for this fire season. We are committed to doing everything we

can to improve firefighter safety.

We also purchase and maintain firefighter personal protection gear and engines,

other vehicles, and contract for helicopters and airtankers. Preparedness also includes assisting other Federal agencies, Tribes and States with fire training programs, planning assistance, shared equipment use contracts, and support for interagency fire coordination centers.

In 2001, we made a great start toward increasing our preparedness resources,

thanks to the National Fire Plan funding. The Forest Service and the Department

of the Interior treated 2.25 million acres to reduce fuel loads and protect priority

communities at risk. We will continue this success in FY 2002 and collectively plan

to treat 2.4 million acres. Together, we hired an additional 5,474 fire employees, for

a total Federal wildland fire workforce of 17,633. We purchased 406 additional engines, 56 additional dozers, contracted for 31 additional helicopters, and purchased

or contracted for many other pieces of equipment and aircraft. Prior to the National

Fire Plan, Interior sponsored 14 interagency hotshot crews (IHC) and the Forest

Service sponsored 52. With the increase in readiness capability made possible by the

National Fire Plan, DOI added eight additional crews. The Forest Service added 13

crews.

In addition to our Federal firefighting crews, we call upon many other firefighting

forces for assistance. Our working relationship with our State and local partners has

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never been stronger. Often, State and local firefighters are the first to respond to

fire incidents. In severe fire seasons, State, Tribal, military, National Guard, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and local firefighters are instrumental in fighting

wildland fire. We rely heavily on these crews for support, especially the rural and

volunteer fire department crews, which are the first line of initial attack in up to

90% of all wildland fires. With National Fire Plan funds, we were able to improve

rural and volunteer fire departments’ (RFDs) initial attack abilities with personal

protective gear, equipment, and training. In many instances last year, these RFDs

purchased equipment with our grant money, and immediately responded to wildland

fires on Federal land, utilizing the new equipment or protective gear. The DOI assisted 1,445 RFDs last year by providing almost 10 million dollars in grants. The Forest Service provided over $138,000,000 to states, volunteer fire departments, and local communities to assist firefighting activities in 2001. With these

grants our State and local government partners purchased fire equipment for local

fire departments, developed hazard mitigation plans, treated 76,236 acres of hazardous fuels on private lands, accomplished community fire planning, developed market

utilization of small diameter material removed through thinning activities, and conducted fire prevention and fire education training.

Another important point to note is that the five land managing agencies have updated the majority of their fire management plans (FMPs) to be consistent with Federal wildland fire policy, with a goal to have all plans updated in 2004, if not sooner.

The Department of the Interior has completed FMPs covering 92% of its land. The

FMPs are important because they provide the guidance for fire management officers, line management officers and incident commanders to plan for future fire management decisions, and to make quick decisions when a fire incident occurs, as to

the appropriate techniques and tactics for effective wildland fire suppression. Last

year, 3.6 million acres of land nationwide burned, compared to 8.4 million acres in

2000. Fewer acres burned last year, even with heavy fuel loads and severe drought

in many parts of the country. Although we cannot take all the credit—weather was

a significant factor—with the help derived from additional resources and personnel,

we were able to keep more than 95% of the fires under 100 acres.

2002 FIRE SEASON READINESS

With the forecast for a severe wildland fire season, each agency began early and

continues to bring national fire readiness capacity to its highest level. To date, DOI

has 4,845 firefighters and fire support personnel. The Department of Agriculture

has approximately 9,000 firefighters as we are still identifying these resources. Our

combined goal is to have in place a Federal wildland fire workforce of over 17,800

personnel and 1790 engines by mid June. This is an increase of 6,326 personnel and

377 engines from FY 2000. When we realized the severity of the wildland fire outlook, we began to hire seasonal firefighters early and we are working to place firefighting crews and equipment in locations where they can be mobilized quickly and

effectively.

When local areas anticipate or experience above normal fire activity, the Departments have the authority, through what is known as ‘‘severity funding’’, to provide

suppression funds to those units so that they can bring in additional staff and

equipment to improve initial and extended attack response capabilities and increase

prevention activities. Already this year, the Forest Service has approved over $11

million for severity assistance; Interior has approved nearly $3.5 million in severity

assistance. Federal wildland fire agencies have enhanced initial attack capabilities

in Arizona and New Mexico by pre-positioning resources ranging from airtankers,

to hand crews, to engines in strategic locations.

Weather, fuels, and drought conditions all contribute to the number and size of

wildfires. We will never be able to put out every fire every time, but we can reduce

the number and the risk of wildfire over time.

REDUCING FUEL LOADS

Fighting wildland fire is only one part of addressing the long-term buildup of hazardous fuels in our forests and grasslands. Reducing the risks and consequences of

severe wildland fires is a high priority for the Administration and Congress. Bipartisan Congressional support has provided the Forest Service and Interior with the

necessary funding to increase the amount of acreage treated to reduce risks to communities and ecosystems. The importance of reducing fuel loads has been recognized

for some time as an important issue. For example, studies performed in 1994 and

1996 recognized the issue. In 1996, a joint Forest Service and Department of the

Interior wildland firefighter safety awareness study found that nearly 83% of all

wildland firefighters identified fuels reduction as the single, most important factor

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for improving their margin of safety on wildland fires. As we stated earlier, the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior treated 2.25 million acres to reduce

fuel loads and protect priority communities at risk. For the Department of the Interior, this is more than doubling prior accomplishments. We will continue this success in FY 2002 and collectively plan to treat 2.4 million acres. Continued bipartisan

Congressional support for working with communities and interest groups are vital

to firefighter and public safety, reduction of risks to communities, and to the implementation of ecosystem health goals of the National Fire Plan.

This year, the Departments are beginning the development of a common interagency fire budget planning process that will better refine wildland fire management readiness resources. The process will provide all agencies with a uniform, performance-based system for identifying the preparedness resources necessary to deliver a cost effective fire management program. This system will be deployed by the

2004 fire season and will influence readiness decisions for the 2005 fire season.

Some interim components may be online even earlier.

SUMMARY

As stated earlier, the outlook is for a potentially severe fire season this year. The

five federal land-managing agencies and our partners at the State and local level

are doing all that we can to be prepared for the upcoming fire season. We will continue to do everything we can to ensure the safety of firefighters, communities, and

resources. We appreciate continued bipartisan support from the Congress. We will

continue to cooperate and communicate among Federal agencies, States, local governments, Tribes and interested groups and citizens to ensure the long-term safety

and health of communities and resources in our care.

This concludes our statement, Mr. Chairman. We would be happy to answer any

questions you and the members of the committee may have.

The CHAIRMAN. That is fine. Do not let that light cut you short.

If you have anything more to tell us in your opening statement,

please do so.

Mr. Hartzell, go ahead.

Mr. HARTZELL. Thank you, Joel.

Mr. Chairman, I am Tim Hartzell, Wildland Fire Coordinator for

the Department of the Interior. Members of the committee, Mr.

Chairman, as the signals began to come in that this was going to

be a severe fire season, the two Departments began to actively initiate recruitment to bring fire readiness capacity up to its highest

level.

To date, the Department of the Interior has hired more than

4,800 firefighters. The Forest Service has hired nearly 9,000 firefighters, and we are still actively adding to those rolls. Our combined goal is to have nearly 18,000 firefighters available by midJune. This is an increase of over 6,300 personnel and nearly 400

engines from fiscal year 2000.

Let me explain the significance of that just from the Department

of the Interior’s perspective. We have hired 4,845 firefighters to

date. The total number of firefighters we had during the fiscal year

2000 fire season was only in the vicinity of 4700. We have significantly been able to add to our readiness capacity with the moneys

that we have through the National Fire Plan.

Now, this spring our focus has been on coordinating to ensure

that crews and equipment are in place where needed. In situations

such as we are experiencing in the Southwest, when local agencies

anticipate or experience above-normal fire activity, both Departments have the authority to use something called severity funding

to provide suppression funds to those units so they can bring on additional staff or equipment to improve their initial attack and extended attack capability.

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To date the Forest Service has provided nearly $11 million to

States and regions for severity assistance and the Department of

the Interior has provided approximately $3.5 million. What this

has meant in Arizona and New Mexico is that we have been able

to preposition resources such as air tankers or hand crews and engines in strategic locations to be as prepared as we can for a rather

severe situation.

No question, weather, fuels, and prolonged drought all contribute

to the number and size of wildfires. We are never going to be in

a position where we can extinguish all fires every time, but without

a doubt we can reduce the number and risk of wildfires over time

through a coordinated program.

I would like to close by talking briefly about hazardous fuel

loads. Mr. Chairman, your comments were very insightful and

right on target. Firefighting is only part of the equation for addressing the long-term buildup of hazardous fuels in our forests

and grasslands. In fact, because of our effectiveness in suppressing

fires over many decades and our inability to actively manage forests and rangelands, we have added to the problem of fuels buildups and the hazards in our wildlands.

Reducing the risks of the consequences of these severe fires is

without question a high priority for the administration and Congress. We appreciate the bipartisan support you have provided both

the Forest Service and the Interior Department with necessary

funding so that we can increase the amount and acreage treated

to reduce risks to both communities and the environment.

The importance of reducing fuel loads has been recognized by scientists for many years. But to hear it from the folks in the line of

fire is most telling. In 1996 the Department of Agriculture and the

Department of the Interior commissioned a study on wildland firefighter safety. The number one factor that our frontline firefighters—in fact 83 percent of our frontline firefighters—concluded

that the primary factor that was most important for improving

their margin of safety was to increase the management and reduction of hazardous fuels.

As I think Joel had stated earlier, last fiscal year, 2001, the two

Departments treated nearly 2.25 million acres to reduce fuels and

to protect priority communities at risk. Our goal is to continue this

success in fiscal year 2002 and we collectively plan to treat nearly

2.4 million acres.

In summary, I would like to say that the outlook for the fire season I think is fairly well known. Joel Holtrop has pointed it out

quite vividly. The Federal fire management agencies and our State

and local partners are going to do everything we can to be prepared

for the upcoming fire season. We are going to do everything we can

to assure the safety of our firefighters and communities’ resources.

We appreciate the continued bipartisan support from Congress.

We will continue to cooperate and communicate among the Federal

agencies, our State partners, our local governments, our tribes, our

interested citizens and stakeholders to ensure the long-term stability and safety of our resources and communities.

This concludes our prepared remarks, Mr. Chairman. We would

be happy to answer any questions.

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The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you both very much. Let me start

with a few questions.

One concern that we have is that the information that our committee staff has been given indicates that the agency is borrowing

funds from its hazardous fuels reduction account to pay for emergency firefighting. However, after Congress reimburses you for the

emergency costs it appears that those funds are not going back into

the hazardous fuels reduction account.

For example, in fiscal year 2001 the agency borrowed $37 million

from the hazardous fuels reduction to pay for emergency firefighting and after Congress reimbursed the agencies for the emergency

expenses there were $11 million deposited back in that hazardous

fuels reduction account. The remaining $26 million was put in the

fire preparedness account.

Obviously, this causes a concern long-term as to whether we are

putting the funds where they need to be and whether we are borrowing against the future here. If either of you have a response on

what is going on and what needs to be done, I would be anxious

to hear it.

Mr. HOLTROP. The hazardous fuels program last year did close

the year with approximately $36 million remaining for projects

that were not funded in fiscal year 2001. But when that is contrasted with the fire suppression activities and the costs of the fire

suppression activities in 2001, there was not enough funding available for fire suppression and we needed to make up that funding

for fire suppression both out of some of the remaining money in the

fuel hazard reduction as well as in fire preparedness.

It does indeed bring up concerns in the long term. It is an unfortunate situation that we wish we did not have to be in, but again

we needed to cover our fire suppression costs.

The CHAIRMAN. So can we anticipate that the administration will

be asking for additional funds for the account that we have already

reimbursed you for in order to compensate for what was used for

other purposes? Or how do we get out of this long-term trend here

of sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul?

Mr. HOLTROP. Well, once again, in this fiscal year, with the severe fire season, as we have already documented in our discussions

this morning, projections are that we may again not have sufficient

funding in fire suppression to cover all of our suppression costs. If

that is indeed the case, we will need to look for other ways to cover

those suppression costs over time.

We have a process in place in which we are going to look at—

first of all, we are going to track our suppression costs closely and

we are going to have projected suppression costs and we are going

to know on a regular basis what is the status of the suppression

cost funding for the year.

Secondly, we are going to identify, if we do need to borrow funds,

what are some of the program areas that we can borrow funds and

that do not have a direct impact on resource programs. What are

the things that we can do that has the most opportunity for us to

accomplish our suppression costs with the least impact on organization and programs?

Third, we are identifying those types of funds that have perhaps

large out year expenditures or contract expenditures, things that

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we can borrow funds from that will not have a direct effect on this

year’s resource management activities. At the conclusion, if indeed

we do need to borrow some of those funds, we would seek through

the administration to seek Congress for reimbursement of those

funds, because those are important programs that we do indeed

want to reimburse.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask about burned area restoration and

rehabilitation. This is an issue. University of Arizona Professor of

Fire Ecology Tom Swetnam states that ‘‘Human communities are

as much or more at risk from post-fire damage as from the fire

itself.’’ I guess a recent Department of Agriculture Inspector General report found that the Forest Service used national fire plan rehabilitation and restoration program funds on unrelated projects,

that the agency is not monitoring the use of the burned area restoration and rehabilitation funds.

Let me just read another sentence from that IG report. It says

that ‘‘Since appropriated funds are significantly less than identified

needs, any misuse of these funds will only further reduce the Forest Service’s ability to restore and rehabilitate burned areas.’’

In fiscal year 2001, the first year of the national fire plan, the

Forest Service got $141.6 million for the program. This year the

Forest Service requested $4 million rather than $141 million. What

is there about this part of the national fire plan that is not supported by the administration? Obviously, we have got a disconnect

between what we have in the national fire plan and what you folks

are requesting money to implement. Could you explain what is

going on here?

Mr. HOLTROP. First of all, let me agree with your statement that

the rehabilitation and restoration of burned lands is very important

and we do need to make sure that we focus appropriate attention

on that because there could be catastrophes that follow catastrophes when there is a fire if we do not take appropriate steps to

rehabilitate those areas.

Of course, some of the funding in the 2001 national fire plan was

in direct response to the 2000 fire year and the extraordinary fire

year that we had in 2000, with some extraordinary steps that needed to be taken in response to that. As we put together budgets that

look at what our overall needs are in the national fire plan, some

of the types of things that we need to balance and weigh in the various aspects of all of the important components of the national fire

plan, and those need to be weighed recognizing what has happened

and then projections for what is happening in the coming year as

well.

The CHAIRMAN. So do I understand that, relative to the other priorities you had to request funding for, this was lower down? Is that

what you are saying?

Mr. HOLTROP. Certainly compared to the 2000 fire season and

the types of restoration work that we needed to do in the aftermath

of the 2000 season, that was the determination we needed to make,

yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I have used my time. I will defer to Senator Murkowski if he has questions at this point or an opening statement.

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STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK H. MURKOWSKI, U.S. SENATOR

FROM ALASKA

Senator MURKOWSKI. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I am sorry, but I had a 9 o’clock engagement with some folks that

feel very strongly about CAFE standards, which is far removed

from fire concerns today.

But I recall a hearing that we held out in Montana a couple of

years ago with Senator Burns. It involved the inability of the decision making to take place on the scene. For example, there was one

particular case where a tractor, a cat, was poised to cross a creek

and there was a concern about the effect that it would have in creating turbidity of the water and as a consequence that individual

who was on the scene as the command of the fire did not have the

authority to move that cat across the creek, so as a consequence

the fire moved on and did devastating damage.

Another occasion was an individual who refused to provide access

across his private land and as a consequence the fire moved into

an area where, had they been able to move into the private land

area, why, the individual might have been able to stop that from

the spread.

My concern, Mr. Chairman, is in the interest of combatting these

wildfires you have to make decisions on the spot and there should

be, I think, an authority given to take appropriate action in some

cases, whatever is necessary. Until we reach a point where we feel

comfortable that indeed the decision making process has to be

based on the facts on the scene—and I am sure that we can cite

other areas, and we might even go back to the Los Alamos issue,

as far as decision making.

I am not sure just how we are going to resolve this, but if it is

going to take legislation to give them the authority I am supporting

legislation to give them that authority. We have got some maps

over here that identify the potential exposure associated with the

drought and we have got charts that are prepared by the Department of Agriculture on the amount of land that normally has higher stream flows.

But to a large degree, at least in some cases, it is a lack of decision making by the landowners as to what to do to reduce the hazard. In my State we have the spruce bark beetle and you have got

about three levels of management. You have got the Federal Government, the Forest Service; you have got to a limited degree the

State; in my case you have partial ownership by the Native regional corporations; and then the individuals.

Unfortunately, the Federal Government through the Forest Service seems to be motivated by a consensus. They will hold a public

town hall meeting to try and generate a consensus about what to

do with the spruce bark beetle and the infestation and the realization that you are creating areas where wildfires can be determined,

as opposed to making the decision on what is best for the forest

health. Do you follow me?

As a consequence, they do not get a decision and nothing happens. The State to a lesser degree kind of follows the Federal procedure, and then we have the private landowners, maybe it is the

Native corporations, that are trying to manage their land appropriately. Then the best manager, of course, are the private individVerDate 11-SEP-98 14:26 Oct 03, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J:\DOCS\82-000 SENERGY3 PsN: SENERGY3
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uals, who recognize that the best thing they can probably do is go

in and clear cut the area while there is still enough value in the

timber to move it out and make chips out of it.

Until we address decisions made on best forest management

practices—and maybe I am speaking to the choir here, but we have

to have a basic premise of how we are going to manage this problem, and as a consequence to suggest you are going to get a consensus on decisions when some people say you leave things alone and

others say you take them out—if anyone here, and you have heard

it time and time again, has an illness, you go to the best physician

you can find and you abide by it. I think that is what we have got

to do in the forest.

I would ask the balance of my statement be entered in the

record, and I want to compliment the staffs on the chart. But I did

want to bring up my frustration as former chairman of this committee and one who has taken part in these discussions time and

time again. If we do not have our Federal agencies coordinated to

make decisions based on a criteria that is in the best interest of

the renewability of the resource we are just holding hearings and

wasting our time.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Senator Murkowski follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK H. MURKOWSKI, U.S. SENATOR FROM ALASKA

This hearing is intended to find out how prepared our federal fire fighting agencies are for what looks like another challenging year. As of yesterday almost 471,000

acres of federal land have been burned in this very young fire season. As a comparison 481,000 acres had been consumed by this same date last year and 750,000 acres

in FY 2000, that horrific year when Los Alamos burned. To date we have already

lost more than 50 homes and structures in the first two months of this season.

While we need to know if our federal fire fighting agencies are prepared for this

season, we must all understand that the conditions in the West, both in terms of

drought and the ridiculous fuel loads that we in Congress have allowed to build up

on those lands over the years, will result in conditions that make the situation impossible for our fire fighters.

I know Senator Cantwell is here today to decry the senseless deaths of four fire

fighters in her State last year. And she is right: they were senseless. But we also

have to look ourselves in the mirror and ask what we’ve done to reduce fuel loads

on our federal lands. I hope she will remember the testimony we received last fall

from Mr. Phil Schaenman of the Tridata Corporation. He testified that most of the

fire fighters his organization interviewed in Tridata’s Wildland Firefighters Safety

Awareness Study believe that more harvesting and removal of dense fuels would

make their jobs safer.

Let’s look at the conditions as they now exist. The first map is the National

Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s drought prediction map through

this coming July. Look at the areas of red (high drought)—not an encouraging picture.

The second chart is a more detailed look at stream flows for April of this year

prepared by the Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. The amount of land that has only 50% to 70% of normal stream flow and less

than 50% of normal stream flow (in red). This map is an indication of the fuel moisture we can expect this summer. It is very clear that we are collectively in deep

trouble.

In my own state of Alaska, the collective effects of the recent spruce bark beetle

pandemic are still with us. The Kenai Peninsula has been the hardest hit, but the

problem extends up into the Anchorage bowl and the upper Copper River area, near

Glennallen. While the state and private landowners have made significant efforts

to address fuel loading on their lands, Federal land managers have done little to

correct the problem. Worse, by limiting their response to setting ‘‘controlled burns,’’

they have courted disaster—the glaring example being the Kenai Lake fire set by

the Forest Service last year that burned out of control, threatening homes and communities.

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In closing, Mr. Chairman, let me remind you that more than 40% of the trees on

your National Forests are less than 13 inches in diameter and will need to be

thinned to improve the fire situation on those lands. When we pass laws that discourage the use of Stewardship Contracting, or biomass energy grants we (Congress)

have to take a hard look at ourselves and consider whether we are contributing to

the fire threat. When we ignore the underlying problem of sick and overstocked forests because people in the radical environmental movement tell us that no management is better for the environment—it is Congress that is failing our forests, our

rural communities, and the American public.

I fully expect we will be back here in the fall holding a hearing about yet another

fire tragedy, the loss of more fire fighters and/or another town or two and I expect

some of us will want to ignore the fact that this Congress has continually failed to

address the underlying problem.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Senator Wyden.

Senator WYDEN. Thank you.

Gentlemen, I am troubled by your comments, because it just

seems to me that this is still pretty much business as usual. I want

to be specific about what I am talking about here. If you look at

the cycle in this area, what you have seen historically is that government dawdles on fuels reduction and restoration, then we have

a big fire and we have to go send all these very patriotic firefighters out to play catch-up ball.

As far as I can tell, we have given you several billion dollars to

break this cycle, to come up with a different approach, to put more

focus on prevention, to put more focus on fuels reduction and restoration, and it just seems to me to be pretty much business as

usual.

Let me run through the Oregon numbers on this. In Oregon last year the Forest Service spent about $86 million on wildfire suppression, but only $17.5 million for hazardous fuels reduction. It

seems to me that this is a classic case of the skewed priorities we

are seeing in this area and this is what the Congress wanted to reverse on a bipartisan basis with respect to the fire plan.

So maybe you can share another view on this, but it just seems

to me that in Oregon, for example—and this is going on all over

the country—if you reverse those numbers we would be in a much

stronger position to deal with this very serious problem for the

rural West and specifically have less of a need to send these courageous firefighters out there to deal with yet another conflagration.

Gentlemen, what is your reaction to this?

Mr. HARTZELL. Senator, I think our progress last year indicates

a significant shift in our thinking. We on the Interior side nearly

doubled our production in the hazardous fuels program. We used

the $10 million that the Congress provided to us in the Rural Fire

Assistance program to target rural fire departments, over 1400 of

them, so that they could improve their capacity for preparedness

and educate their publics about prevention.

We put a significant amount of our funding into the Firewise and

the community education program so that we could increase the capacity of local communities to break the fire cycle and take corrective action to reduce fuels and public hazards. I think our record

shows that in fiscal year 2002 we are again committed to increasing the level of hazardous fuels treatment.

I think the way we have gone about the program is worthy of

mention. We have a requirement that in each of our States that the

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fuels hazard reduction program not be conducted in a vacuum, but

that we need to try to work in a seamless fashion among all the

Federal agencies across all lands, with our State foresters and with

other partners, and that fuel treatments are developed at the State

and local level consistent with national priorities, and that there be

a great deal of collaboration as to finding what the highest priorities are for fuels treatment.

Senator WYDEN. Why do we not hear from the Forest Service.

Mr. HOLTROP. Senator, I would like to ask Jerry Williams, our

Director for Fire and Aviation Management, to help address this

question.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you.

I agree with you, this issue is really about breaking the cycle. I

would come back, though, to the condition of the forest. The accumulated fuels that we are seeing out there have severely diminished our decision space. The onset of drought, for instance, in New

Mexico this year virtually precluded many treatment options that

would use or rely on prescribed fire. As a matter of fact, it was only

a few days ago that the Southwest in New Mexico suspended prescribed burning, given the severity of the situation.

What I am telling you is that they are pushing the risk to the

limit in an effort to reduce fuels. I would like to put this in context

a little bit. In New Mexico many of the dry forest types that we

are fighting fire on right now, at the turn of the century those were

dominated by only about 50 trees per acre. That same site today

will often carry approaching 1,500 trees per acre. The biomass

alone is a significant fuels problem.

But another dimension of this problem is the transpiration that

is going on. As those trees move water out of the soil, they are almost inducing drought. Mechanical thinning, stewardship contracting, electric cogen, anything that we can do to accelerate the rate

of fuels treatment is clearly what we need.

Many people will say that we need to continue to rely on prescribed burning. In my view we are at the very limits of risk with

most prescribed burning in most dry forest types across the country, and particularly in the West.

Senator WYDEN. Again, you are making the case for a change in

priorities, but I want you both to know that in my State the numbers do not back up what you are saying. I cited the numbers for

the Forest Service. The Department of the Interior, the numbers

are even worse. We basically have $8.5 million spent on fuels reduction, $36 million spent on fire suppression.

You all are talking one game and you are doing something else.

I think that is unfortunate. We are not going to be able to break

this cycle with this skewed set of priorities you have got. I think

what you have said sounds very good, but you are not backing it

up with the specific numbers. The specific numbers make the case

that the Federal policy after a bipartisan fire plan where Senator

Bingaman and Senator Domenici and others did a lot of good work,

the numbers show that it has still been business as usual.

My time has expired. Hopefully we will get another round, but

I thank you for this important hearing, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Thomas.

Senator THOMAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

20

What are the criteria and priorities for fuel reduction? What do

you use for a criteria as to where you can best spend your money?

Mr. HOLTROP. Well, Senator, there are a lot of criteria that we

use to determine where we should best spend our hazardous fuels

reduction money. Obviously, one of those criteria that we are going

to use is where there are communities at risk and that is one of

the places that we are going to focus our attention on.

There are also criteria that have to do with other resource values

that might be at risk, such as watersheds that provide domestic

water supplies and those types of things, are also going to be areas

that we are going to focus our attention on. We are going to also

make sure that, as Tim Hartzell described, we are going to make

sure that as we determine where those areas are that we are going

to do so in as seamless a fashion as possible with other Federal

partners, with our State partners, and our local government partners as we identify where it is that we need to be focused.

Senator THOMAS. Do the various forest units have a list of priorities?

Mr. HOLTROP. Yes, we do.

Senator THOMAS. You could produce the priorities on the Medicine Bow in Wyoming?

Mr. WILLIAMS. I believe we could. Most of the geographic areas

across the country have developed out year plans where they are

directing fuels treatment work. This is—I am afraid that many

times fuels dollars are directed where there is also a willing community. We have several cases across the country, especially where

mechanical thinning is involved, where communities, even in the

face of very recent devastating wildfires——

Senator THOMAS. Like Teton County, Wyoming?

Mr. WILLIAMS [continuing]. They do not want it, they do not

want hazardous fuels reduction activities occurring if it involves

mechanical thinning treatments.

Senator THOMAS. Do they want to fight the fire when there is

one?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Pardon?

Senator THOMAS. Do they want to fight the fire, though, when

there is one?

Mr. WILLIAMS. I do not think they want that, either, Senator.

Senator THOMAS. Oh, come on. We had one there, they were

going to burn the houses down if it goes more. They have to fight

the fire, you know that. Yet there is resistance to doing thinning.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Exactly.

Senator THOMAS. I think that you are going to have to make a

decision on that.

There are 17,000 firefighters. Is that full-time employment?

Mr. WILLIAMS. That includes full-time and temporary employees.

Senator THOMAS. How many are full-time? What does a firefighter do year-round?

Mr. WILLIAMS. In many parts of the country, they are mobilized

across the country. We have people that are in the northern States

right now in New Mexico fighting fire. The fire season the last few

years has been virtually year round. Someplace in the country,

something is on fire.

21

Senator THOMAS. Yes, but that really is not, not much. There is

a season, a fire season, pretty much, is there not?

Mr. HOLTROP. Those numbers also include others, fire management personnel that are also responsible for planning, both planning for our preparedness and planning our fire management plans

on the individual units.

Senator THOMAS. It is a tough thing to be economically feasible

to have firefighters on all the time, is it not? You have to have

them, but it is a pretty tough deal.

Mr. HOLTROP. That is why many of the firefighters are not permanent, year-round employees.

Senator THOMAS. I see. What about the opportunity for private

foresters, forest people, to cut the timber in a private situation and

make some money maybe, and then it will not cost you anything?

There is resistance often to letting those private people come on the

land.

Mr. HOLTROP. Are you referring to—well, whether you are referring to those that are coming on the public lands or on the private

lands, we do recognize that an important part of getting on top of

this issue, as Jerry Williams stated a few minutes ago, that when

you look at the magnitude of the biomass, the hazardous fuels

buildup that we have, we need to use whatever rules we can at our

disposal in order to accomplish the work that needs to be done.

Senator THOMAS. I understand that, but it is my impression from

what I have heard that you are reluctant to let private timber harvesters go on and do it. If you had the way to control your contracts, it would seem to me that would be the most economical way

for you to——

Mr. HOLTROP. In many cases it is the most economical way for

us to accomplish some of this work. We also find that some of the

hazardous fuels reduction work that we need to do over time also

includes that we need to focus on some of the size of material that

is not as economically desirable in some of those areas.

Senator THOMAS. I understand. I suggest to you that where there

is an opportunity and where it is economically feasible that you do

some contracting in the private sector, which not only is less expensive, but also can be done in more magnitude at the same time. I

hear a lot of resistance to that from the Forest Service.

Thank you.

Senator MURKOWSKI [presiding]. Whoever is next is next.

Senator DOMENICI. I will try to be quick, Senator.

First, do you have now a policy with reference to post-burn activities? We are still beset by people complaining as they drive by

a forest that was burned 18 months ago with the dried trees standing. The fire has burned out the underbrush. We even have viewed

that in some areas of New Mexico where there was a lumber mill

not too far away that is about to close up shop and it looks like

these trees could be used, and month after month after month—

now some of them are up to 24 months and pretty soon they will

not be good for anything.

Is there a policy or are we being ordered around by courts and

lawsuits with reference to it? Could you tell us briefly, please?

Mr. HOLTROP. Again, our intentions following a fire are to do

whatever rehab and restoration is desirable and appropriate for us

22

to do in those cases. There are times in which the salvage of the

dead material is an economically viable way to go about doing some

of the restoration, as well as providing opportunities in the local

communities. All of those types of activities require us to go

through the various processes that we need to in terms of environmental analysis and working with the community.

Senator DOMENICI. Yes, I understand. But let me ask you, what

you are saying is that you do not have one set pattern for each

burn in terms of what you will do. But is there a policy on either

of our Departments against cutting the trees and using them? Either of you? Tim?

Mr. HARTZELL. No, there is no policy against cutting trees. The

Department of the Interior policy is to first immediately stabilize

the site so that we do not destroy watersheds, we do not put silt

in a stream that is a municipal watershed, and we prevent erosion

to keep the soil off of roads.

Our second priority after immediate stabilization then would be

to begin to rehab the site and to initiate long-term restoration of

that ecosystem, for a whole variety of reasons, to maybe begin reforestation, to get productive range forage, to preclude the spread

of noxious and invasive species.

Those decisions are made at the local level. They use the NEPA

process Mr. Holtrop was talking about, and there are no sideboards

on the types of stabilization or rehab activities that the field offices

cannot consider. It has to be done in an open process and utilize

the NEPA.

Senator DOMENICI. Do you as the chief executives in this area,

do any of you have a philosophical approach that says we do not

cut trees after a burnout just as a matter of management? Do any

of you have that philosophy?

Mr. HOLTROP. No, sir.

Senator DOMENICI. How about you, Mr. Hartzell?

Mr. HARTZELL. I have not heard that expression from any of my

colleagues, certainly not me.

Senator DOMENICI. I did not ask you that. You are the boss.

Mr. HARTZELL. No, not me.

Senator DOMENICI. How about you?

Mr. HOLTROP. No, I do not.

Senator DOMENICI. You do not have a philosophy that you must

leave the trees there for the wild animals rather removing them?

Mr. HOLTROP. No, sir.

Senator DOMENICI. Somebody asked a question about how do you

select priorities. When we prepared the legislation that started on

the Senate floor, when it went to conference and got the acceptance

of the administration, one of the sticking points was a provision

that required the Forest Service to go through its forests and determine where buildings and/or improvements were vulnerable to a

forest fire, and you had to list them all.

I understand that has been done. If it has not been done, I wonder why. If it is done, do you use it?

Mr. WILLIAMS. If you are talking about the communities at risk

list——

Senator DOMENICI. That is correct.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes.

23

Senator DOMENICI. That is finished?

Mr. WILLIAMS. It is pretty well complete, as I understand.

Senator DOMENICI. Mr. Hartzell.

Mr. HARTZELL. Senator Domenici, it is complete, but it is a work

in process. We work with the local communities and the State foresters. That list is continually reviewed. Projects are judged

against it and if a community was fortunate enough to have all the

necessary work done around it to make it safe and mitigate the

hazard, it would come off the list and another community would replace it.

Senator DOMENICI. Somebody alluded to a priority should be watershed. We have the city of Santa Fe. Did you say anything about

that, Senator Bingaman?

The CHAIRMAN. Not specifically, no.

Senator DOMENICI. Let us just take it for a minute. Just yesterday a fire started up on the way to Las Vegas, which is 9 miles

direct from the Santa Fe forest, where I am from, which feeds the

small lake that is at the end of an arroyo with a dam on it. That

is a substantial portion of the city’s water supply.

We have all concluded that if that forest burns that water supply

will be ruined because there is no way currently to retain the aftermath of the fire. It will all go down into the water and the water

will change, obviously, from excellent drinking water to something

nobody would drink or be able to.

Is this forest something you have on a priority list? If so, are my

figures correct that what we are doing now will take us 15 years

to finish at the pace we are on now and the dollars we are spending now?

Mr. WILLIAMS. I believe that that project is on the region’s priority list. This is an area a lot of us are familiar with. I have been

in this watershed. One of the things that we are concerned about

is some of the prioritization criteria with the fuels money, should

that be directed exclusively to the interface? I am very concerned

about many of the attributes that these communities depend on,

watersheds being one very important example.

Senator DOMENICI. Well, listen. I know this is far more complicated than I could understand, but I would just like to ask you,

would you take a look at the current plan to rehabilitate that forest

and tell the committee how long it is going to take to fix that watershed so that you will not have the possibility of a fire resulting

in the destruction of that water supply? Could you do that within

a reasonable time so we might share it with our people?

Mr. HOLTROP. Yes.

Senator DOMENICI. And include in it how much you are spending

and whether you are going to up that to get this done quicker. I

think my arithmetic is just straight line, if you spend what you are

spending now it will take 15 years. But I am not sure that that

kind of arithmetic is appropriate. Maybe you were going to do

something different, but I think we ought to know. It is a very serious problem and we would appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HOLTROP. Senator, we will be happy to do that for you. I

would also say, like Jerry just said, that we do recognize that as

24

one of the highest priority watersheds that we need to be paying

attention to.

Senator DOMENICI. Fine. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Senator Cantwell.

Senator MURKOWSKI. May I just ask that a statement by Senator

Craig be entered in the record. And I am going to submit questions,

written questions to the witnesses, and I would ask them to respond as they see fit.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Senator Craig follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. LARRY E. CRAIG, U.S. SENATOR FROM IDAHO

Chairman Bingaman, I want to thank you for holding this hearing and I want

to thank each witness from the Administration who has come here today to help

us assess our readiness for what looks like what could be yet one more in a series

of disastrous fire seasons.

Given Senator Murkowski’s opening statement, I am not going to dwell on the

drought and fuel conditions that we face. I expect we will get plenty of understanding from the fire experts who will testify today.

What I want to focus on is a blind spot in our perception. A blind spot that we

in Congress have when it comes to the health and vitality of our federal forests.

Over the last several months this blind spot has become painfully apparent. During

both the Farm Bill debate and then again in the debate on the Energy Bill we

adopted forestry language that failed to take advantage of opportunities to improve

the health and condition of our federal forests.

In the Energy Bill we had to craft last minute language to correct definitions of

biomass in the Renewable Energy Portfolio. Fortunately, we largely corrected the

language which would have limited to use of renewable energy portfolio programs

on federal forests. I appreciate the work that the Chairman’s staff undertook to help

correct these mistakes.

In the Farm Bill conference Senate Democrats rejected our own Senate passed

version of Stewardship language because the House negotiators wanted a compromise. Thus, the much needed authorization for additional Stewardship Contracting authority and a Farm Bill biomass grant program were lost. The Senate Democrat’s hard line approach to these issues resulted in at least a dozen other important

forestry related provisions being lost. Including: State Forest Stewardship Coordinating Committees, Adaptive Ecosystem Restoration programs, parts of the Chesapeake Bay Program, an Office of Tribal Relations for the Forest Service and perhaps

the most troubling, a program to deal with Sudden Oak Death Syndrome which

threatens California’s magnificent Oak Forest savannas.

Mr. Chairman, over the last five years we have burned more that 30.3 million

acres, approximately equal to one-half of the area the Clinton Administration attempted to set-aside in its Roadless Policy to ‘‘protect ecosystem health and wildlife

values’’. So far this year we have already burned 470,000 acres and the maps we

will see today tell us we are in for perhaps the worst fire season we have seen in

the last 50 years.

Mr. Chairman, I don’t think many of my fellow Senators know this, but fully 80%

of the citizens in our western States are very concerned or somewhat concerned

about wildland fires. What we in Congress better learn quickly is that the two leading concerns we are facing are the loss of wildlife habitat and the loss of homes and

property. For those of my friends that keep saying we have to put all our efforts

into the wildland/urban interface, I am here to tell you we are missing the point.

With an accumulation of low water years and a looming drought, fire is a natural

topic for all of us to think about. With the combination of drought and increased

fuel loads, once again our public lands are an easy target for catastrophic fires.

Fire is a natural part of any ecosystem. It stimulates growth, maintains the understory, and creates diversity. All of these aspects are healthy characteristics of a

thriving forest. However, when fire is suppressed and active management activities

(thinning, prescribed burns, etc.) that mimic fire behavior are ignored, this is a prescription for disaster. The neglectful management practices of the past will continue

to plague our public lands unless we pursue active management practices that result in a balanced ecosystem.

25

I will work with the Bush Administration to help provide funding for the fire

budgets of both the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. In order to

prevent devastating fires, the agencies need the resources and flexibility to make

management decisions that maintain our public lands. The spiraling circle of increased fuel loads create catastrophic fires, contribute to declining watersheds, increase sedimentation and decrease water quality, and add to the demise of fisheries

must be stopped.

I am also happy to see this Administration worked so hard with our Western Governors to develop their Memorandum of Understanding and their Ten Years Strategy for dealing with the 70 million acres of western forests that are at high risk

to catastrophic fires and insects and disease. To that end, today, Senator Feinstein

and I have introduced a Senate Concurrent Resolution to the House of Representative’s concurrent resolutions Number 352. When local, State, and Federal Agencies

work to develop joint plans to deal with problems, I believe we in Congress should

recognize those efforts and do everything we can to assist.

The point is, Mr. Chairman, we cannot save all of the wonderful forest attributes

by building defensible space around our communities and towns. We in Congress

need to rethink our strategy and start treating the entire ecosystem, not just those

parts we think the environmental hardliners are willing to allow us to work in.

When it comes to federal forests, our experience in the Farm Bill and the Energy

Bill are but a sign our tunnel vision on these problems. We are failing the American

Public, our forests, and our communities.

STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL, U.S. SENATOR

FROM WASHINGTON

Senator CANTWELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I get to

the specific focus of this morning’s hearing, I want to thank you for

mentioning the Washington Post article this morning. The paper,

the headline paper, shows that ‘‘Enron Manipulated California Crisis.’’ Mr. Chairman, I can guarantee you the State of Washington

suffered from that same crisis and possible manipulation of prices.

We have asked for a FERC investigation of that.

This has caused great damage in the Northwest, where we have

seen everywhere from 85 percent increases in electric rates and

contracts that were signed with Enron for 8 and 9 years. So the

Northwest is definitely suffering from this potential manipulation.

I applaud you for suggesting this morning that this committee

may hold further hearings on this. I think this is a critically important issue for my State, and I thank you for mentioning it, and for

the further oversight of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, this hearing I believe is very important in discussing the preparedness of the Forest Service and Department of

Interior for the 2002 fire season. But I think it is important that

we take a step back because last year was a particularly devastating season for us in Washington State. On July 10, near a town

called Winthrop, in the midst of the worst drought on record in our

State, the Thirty Mile fire burned out of control and four young

firefighters were killed.

Sadly, these young men and women did not have to die. In the

words of the Forest Service in its own report, ‘‘The tragedy could

have been prevented.’’ We know that the firefighting business is

dangerous, but despite its inherent dangers we seem to think that

the Thirty Mile fire is something that can be responded to in pushing memos and papers around.

It is very important, I believe, in the reports that were issued

that, first, we have accountability of the firefighters on the line all

the way up to the chief; second, that training of the firefighters

puts safety first; and third, that we have an independent and conVerDate 11-SEP-98 14:26 Oct 03, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J:\DOCS\82-000 SENERGY3 PsN: SENERGY3
26

sistent review of the incidents in which those safety rules have

been broken and whether or not they have resulted in these fatalities and what we are going to do to fix them.

These are the conclusions that were reinforced in an OSHA investigation released in February that found the Forest Service had

committed two serious and three willful violations of employee

safety during the Thirty Mile fire, even stronger citations than

those handed down after the Storm King fire in 1994, in which 14

Federal firefighters died.

To me, this indicates that we have taken a step backwards since

Storm King and obviously what we have done since the Thirty Mile

fire to implement or change the culture of the Forest Service as it

relates to these very important issues. So first I guess my question

is, this committee and the Senate took action in putting language

into the Agriculture bill that said that the Forest Service investigations of these fires should be done by an independent investigator

under the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That passed out, with

the favor of this committee, passed out of the Senate, and was

killed in conference.

So first and foremost I want to know, does the U.S. Forest Service support that language of an independent investigation in the

Department of Agriculture?

Mr. HOLTROP. The Department did not object to the review by

the Inspector Generals in the farm bill.

Senator CANTWELL. So you will be supportive of legislation that

I introduce separately?

Mr. HOLTROP. Since we did not object to that in the farm bill,

if it is similar language, obviously I cannot take a position for the

Department on a bill that is not introduced yet, but we do not object to the oversight.

Senator CANTWELL. Well, we are going to get this introduced,

and it is a great mystery to the public, to people in my State, and

I think in other places why this language did not go through.

Somewhere, somebody behind the scenes was objecting. I hope it

was not the Forest Service.

Mr. HOLTROP. It was not.

Senator CANTWELL. I hope that we can bring light to this issue

in separate legislation. I know that my colleague Congressman Doc

Hastings is going to introduce similar language in the House and

we are going to have a bipartisan effort to draw attention to this

issue, because accountability starts first.

Second, I am interested in understanding as we approach this

fire season and preparedness, in looking at the report that you

have given to Congress on the implementation of the recommendations since the Thirty Mile fire, they look very similar to the Storm

King recommendations. I have a feeling that we are pushing paper

around at a time when people have lost their lives.

How are you going to assure people that these are real management and cultural changes and not just a memo or a directive that

was sent to individual employees within the Forest Service?

Mr. HOLTROP. Senator, I very much appreciate that question,

and I appreciate your ongoing interest in this subject. We are also

concerned that we do not just take steps that are just pushing

paper around, that are saying safety is first, but without demVerDate 11-SEP-98 14:26 Oct 03, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J:\DOCS\82-000 SENERGY3 PsN: SENERGY3
27

onstrating that safety is the most important aspect of firefighting

from our perspective as well. Some of the types of things that we

are doing to help ensure that it is more than just words is that we

are making sure that our administrators at every level of the organization are hearing this message and are being told that it is our

expectation that our district rangers, that our forest supervisors,

are talking to and spending time with their incident commanders,

both that are assigned to their units on a regular basis or are assigned to their unit during an incident, that they continue to have

interaction with them and are asking and focusing on what are the

safety concerns and are the safety concerns being taken care of.

Every meeting that we have with our firefighting personnel, we

are stressing this. I have been at several meetings myself personally in which I have talked to our lead agency administrators at

the field level and had discussions with them about asking them

and insisting that they take personal attention and accountability

for making sure that that is being paid attention to.

I know that Mr. Williams has had similar conversations with the

incident commanders. The Chief of the Forest Service has met with

all of our incident command team leaders, talking to them about

the importance of this. It is our intention to have this be something

that we are focusing on, more than just words.

Senator CANTWELL. What if the rules are broken? Is someone

going to lose their job? People lost their lives here. Yet no one loses

their job over the fact that these rules are not implemented, and

they are the same recommendations after Storm King. So now I am

supposed to go home and tell the families of Tom Cravens, 30 years

old, Karen Fitzpatrick, 18 years old, Jessica Johnson, 19, and

Devon Weaver, 21, I am supposed to go home and tell those families: Well, here is what has happened so far; a bunch of memos

have been written and the language that would have given us direct oversight got killed in the House by we do not know who.

So they want to know that these same recommendations—I know

my time is up, Mr. Chairman, but this is a critically, I believe, important issue, given the droughts that are happening in the West,

the likelihood that it is going to be a tumultuous season, the fact

that these safety rules and implementation I believe need to be a

cultural change with accountability where people are going to lose

their jobs if they are not implemented. Otherwise, other people are

going to lose their lives.

Mr. HOLTROP. Senator, there is an administrative review that is

nearing conclusion, that is looking at the events of the Thirty Mile

fire. I would also like to just mention that the oversight by an Inspector General, whether there is legislation passed or not, that is

something that is always an option that we can choose to use if

there is a situation that we think that that is an appropriate thing.

Perhaps we need to work with you and others to determine

whether that is an incident where we might want to ask for an Inspector General oversight on a specific incident.

Jerry, do you have some additional things?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Just a couple of comments. On the issue of accountability, the Chief of the Forest Service has made clear with

all of us that he expects accountability to occur on the fire line as

safe practices rules are violated, before somebody gets hurt. We are

28

putting all of that in motion this year and have been working on

that the last several months.

Two areas that we are focusing a lot of attention on right now

besides the meetings, besides the backup to crews directly: one has

to do with establishing fire danger risk thresholds for every unit

across the United States, and that is Forest Service and DOI working together. That puts in place the mechanisms for managers to

beef up oversight when fire danger escalates.

The other area we are putting a lot of energy in right now, and

we will be sharing the details with committee staff this Friday, has

to do with firefighting safety compliance models. We are borrowing

models from the aviation industry that will get at some of the behavioral issues that we are trying to overcome here.

Senator CANTWELL. Well, Mr. Chairman, I know my time is up,

but hopefully we will either have another round or—I am glad to

see you are looking at the private sector. OSHA regulates the private sector on safety issues. You could enter a partnership with

OSHA to make sure that there is additional oversight. I do not

know if you are going to agree to do that as well or whether you

believe OSHA should have mandatory oversight, because I guarantee you then these safety implementations would be made, just as

the private sector has had to be accountable.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Senator Kyl.

STATEMENT OF HON. JON KYL, U.S. SENATOR FROM ARIZONA

Senator KYL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think, gentlemen, you can see there is a fair degree of frustration over a variety of different problems here. The problems that

Senator Domenici and Senator Cantwell discussed were different

from those that were discussed earlier by Senator Wyden, and I

think the chairman also had some comments on that and I will.

But it is getting to the point where members of the committee

are finding it frustrating to the point that we are going to have to

legislate separate solutions to these problems, which is not the way

it ought to be done. It ought to come from the administration. It

ought to be in the budget.

If you look at that area up there, you know the drought conditions, you know the conditions in my State. We started our fire season in March this year. We have had over 50,000 acres already

burn on Federal land in Arizona, at least 81 fires on Federal land.

It is the dryest winter in 104 years in Arizona. We have virtually

no runoff. Our mountains are extraordinarily dry. The fuel loads

are extraordinary, as, Jerry Williams, you pointed out. That 50 versus 1,500 trees is the rule in the ponderosa forests in Arizona and

New Mexico.

There is no plan as far as I can see to deal with this on a landscape or large area treatment basis. Or if there is a plan, it does

not have the support of the administration. I find this odd because

last August the Secretary of the Interior and Director Bosworth

came to Arizona—is there anybody here that does not know Dr.

Wally Covington?

[No response.]

29

Senator KYL. You all know him. Is there anybody at the table

who does not think that he has good ideas about what needs to be

done? I mean, they are basically the underpinning of what you are

trying to do.

So we went out with Wally and Secretary Norton and Director

Bosworth, and they all agreed that we needed to convert the demonstration research that he was doing near Flagstaff to large area

treatment. The following week the President was—there were pictures taken up in, I believe, Idaho. I am not sure, but he had a

saw. He was sawing a branch off. The point was that we need mechanical thinning because the prescribed burning, as you pointed

out, Mr. Williams, it is almost to the point of too risky to do in

many cases. But there are still areas where it can be done, especially after mechanical thinning.

Now, the GAO 3 years ago put out a report, and I do not have

the exact statistics in front of me, but I think they said we had

something like 35 million acres to treat and we had no more than

20 to 25 years to do it before it would all be diseased or burned

up. I do not know what the ratio is between number of acres

burned versus number of acres treated, but I will just bet you that

it is on the order of ten to one burned. So we do not have that 35

or 36 million acres to treat any more. It is down now to about 30

or 31, because most of them have burned.

Can you tell me, anybody, off the top of your head how many

acres have been treated with mechanical thinning last year on our

Federal lands, order of magnitude?

Mr. WILLIAMS. I cannot give you a firm accurate answer, but it

is only a fraction of the total treatments.

Senator KYL. Right. What I would like to know is, just give me

two numbers here within the next few days: the number that were

planned to be treated and the number that were actually treated

last year? And what is on your plan for treatment this year? If you

could just do it in two tranches, on the national land generally and

then if you would also give me the figure for the New Mexico-Arizona ponderosa pine forest. I would appreciate that.

We are getting nowhere fast, is the bottom line. Does anybody

disagree with that?

Mr. WILLIAMS. I would point out, though, that mostly with the

support of this committee and others, funding for the national fire

plan has helped us tremendously. We are treating more acres than

we are losing to wildfires in the last couple of years, but the rate

of treatment is still far short of where it needs to be.

Senator KYL. Why eliminate the funding, just $1.6 million for the

Rocky Mountain research work at Northern Arizona University?

Mr. HOLTROP. The Department outlined in the budget justification the funding needed for fiscal year 2003. We are focusing the

agency’s budget on results and we are moving toward consolidating

and coordinating research projects.

Senator KYL. Okay, so did you recommend that?

Mr. HOLTROP. Decisions have not been made yet as to what actual programs——

Senator KYL. The budget that came up from the administration,

this program was not in there. Was that a decision by Director

Bosworth or was that a decision by OMB?

30

Mr. HOLTROP. There has not been a decision yet as to what specific programs. We are waiting on whatever action comes out of the

appropriation language for 2003 before decisions are made as to

what specific programs.

Senator KYL. Just as of right now that $1.67 million, would you

support keeping that in the budget?

Mr. HOLTROP. We would look at that in conjunction with all the

other research needs and all the other proposals that we have and

make sure that we are focusing on the important things.

Senator KYL. Will you tell me what the recommendation is at the

time that it goes up the chain to Director Bosworth and on to the

OMB?

Mr. HOLTROP. Will I tell you what that recommendation is?

Senator KYL. Yes, what your recommendation is.

Mr. HOLTROP. To the degree that I get involved in that level of

detail in it, certainly.

Senator KYL. Well, see, the problem is we cannot figure out

where these decisions do not get made. And the problem is it was

not in the budget this last year. Everybody recognizes the work is

very important and nobody can figure out how to get it back in

there. We can do that through earmarks through the appropriation

process, but there is a finite amount of money involved in the appropriation process. Somebody in the administration has to fight

for what you say you believe in.

Let me ask you this. Do any of you disagree with this proposition, that there are two main reasons this is not getting done: A,

not enough money; and B, too many environmental lawsuits or too

much environmental opposition. Does anybody disagree with that

proposition?

Mr. HOLTROP. Well, certainly when you look at the magnitude of

the issue before us, the amount of money that is needed in order

to do so is tremendous and we do need to continue to focus on that

as well. Also, we recognize that there are several steps that need

to be gone through before we are able to accomplish some of the

projects that we want to have. Chief Bosworth has been talking

about some of those concerns over some of the types of process

problems that we have.

Senator KYL. We know that there are steps and we know that

he is talking about it. I am trying to get down to specifics. As an

order of magnitude, how much more money would have to be in the

budget to realistically accomplish this within an appropriate time

frame?

Mr. HARTZELL. Senator, I have not seen an analysis of that.

Senator KYL. Well, whose job is it to figure out how much it

would cost?

[No response.]

Senator KYL. Do you know who in the Federal Government has

the responsibility for carrying out the plan, which is to engage in

this large-scale restoration in a time frame that beats the fire or

the bugs?

Mr. HOLTROP. Senator, we are currently, the Department of the

Interior and the Forest Service, are currently working on a cohesive strategy for fuel hazard reduction work which identifies what

31

are some of the long-term needs that we need to do to help us get

on top of the hazardous fuels reduction program.

Senator KYL. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest we are going to

have to do it. If they are just now working on a plan to try to figure

out what is going to be necessary when it has been evident—I have

been working on this since 1994 and every year I try to get more

money, and I have talked to you, Mr. Chairman, about it. Everybody recognizes what has to be done, but nobody can figure out

how to get it done. Nobody knows who is in charge. Everybody is

afraid to fight the environmentalists. Nobody is willing, I think, to

take it up the chain.

If OMB is the problem, then we can deal with OMB. But we have

got to have people who understand the issues, as the three of you

gentlemen do, to lay it out so that we can have a coherent plan we

can take to the administration and get done.

I am very, very disappointed in your testimony, I have to say.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Smith.

STATEMENT OF HON. GORDON H. SMITH, U.S. SENATOR

FROM OREGON

Senator SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would ask that my

opening statement be included in the record.

The CHAIRMAN. It will be included.

[The prepared statement of Senator Smith follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. GORDON H. SMITH, U.S. SENATOR FROM OREGON

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding today’s hearing on the National Fire Plan

and our nation’s preparedness for wildfire. I continue to believe that attentiveness

to this subject is one of the most important tasks of this Committee, lest we forget

that on the ground there are thousands of brave men and women putting their lives

on the line to defend society’s values against the increasingly destructive forces of

mismanaged forests.

Unfortunately, the past Administration was in a total state of denial over the cumulative effects of non-management on the health of our forests. They believed that

if you wrapped enough red tape around a forest, fire and disease would be held at

bay. After eight years, however, the ‘‘gag rule’’ in the Executive Branch has finally

been lifted. There is now an open and honest acknowledgment of the need for regulatory and administrative reform-breaking what Chief Bosworth calls ‘‘analysis paralysis.’’

Unfortunately, that recognition has yet to sink in with this Congress. The Farm

Bill contained several provisions in the Forestry Title—such as the ‘‘hazardous fuels

to energy’’ grants program that were absolutely vital to making tangible forest

health progress. Yet these provisions, and nearly all others in that Title, were eliminated from the bill. I hope that this Committee is prepared to take up where the

Farm Bill left off with respect to biomass and stewardship contracting authority.

In a time when mills continue to close in my state, and timber offered on public

lands is virtually non-existent, we should at least attempt to demonstrate that the

government values living and sustainable forests and healthy riparian areas more

than charred wood, burnt homes and scorched earth. As a Senator from a state

whose fire season is already well underway, I hope that commitment comes sooner

rather than later.

Again Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding today’s hearing.

Senator SMITH. Gentlemen, one of the comments I hear with

some urgency is from private landowners in my State of Oregon

whose land borders forest land and the health of which is I think

in question, and the fear is that because there is such a heavy fuel

load that it is ripe for catastrophic fire that clearly does not have

a boundary when it comes into private land.

Is there a focus on that now? Can you describe that focus, if any?

32

Mr. HARTZELL. Senator Smith, I can tell you on the Interior side,

specifically in the Pacific Northwest, the agencies are running a

pretty seamless program where they are providing fuels treatment

funds to adjacent private landowners so that they can treat fuels

adjacent to Federal lands so that it can benefit the overall landscape or watershed.

I am not prepared to give you the specific amount of funds that

we have used to accomplish that. I would certainly be happy to follow up on it. I can assure you that we are collaborating with private landowners in trying to get funds in their hands so they can

treat on private lands to benefit all lands.

Mr. HOLTROP. That is true with the Forest Service as well. It is

a component part of our national fire plan strategy.

Senator SMITH. I think I am glad to hear that you all recognize

that as a real urgent problem, because no one knows exactly what

the fire season is going to be like this year, but some evidence that

it is already beginning and we may not be as optimistic as we perhaps were earlier in the spring when there was a lot of rainfall.

But there is an active program. Are you hearing from neighbors

that they are reaching out to you, they are getting the resources

they need?

Mr. HARTZELL. Again, I go back to the Pacific Northwest. It is

an area that we talk about being a model for cooperation. It is a

good example of an area where local governments and homeowners

associations are coming to the Federal agencies and saying: What

can we do to help in the overall effort? How can you help us, train

us so that we can talk to our citizens about reducing fire risks in

their communities? There seems to be a great deal of interaction

in that area.

Senator SMITH. Well, the reason for it is simply that what little

active forest management is going on is happening on private lands

and there is obviously an awful lot of economic value there they

want to protect, and they are concerned that we are not getting to

you the budgets, you are not asking for the budgets, to do the

thinning, improve the forest health in a way that can protect them

and the public resource of our forests against catastrophic fires.

So I would echo what Senator Kyl was saying only in that we

really need to make this the highest priority. Mr. Chairman, for

that reason I thank you for holding this hearing because I think

it does put the focus where it needs to be.

So anything and everything you can do, know that you are going

to have a lot of people anxious to be helpful to you here, because

nothing is served, the environment is not served, the economy is

not served, and property rights are violated by catastrophic fire

that does not know the boundary between public and private lands.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Let me ask about two other issues. One, Mr. Hartzell, I could ask

you. In the year 2000 Congress required you to publish a list of

these wildland-urban interface communities within the vicinity of

Federal lands that are at high risk for wildfire. In January 2002

the General Accounting Office report notes that, because you did

not establish well-defined criteria, you determined that over half of

the high-risk communities are in three States, in Georgia, North

33

Carolina, and Tennessee, and these are States that are not prone

to severe wildland fires.

Is this being reprioritized? Obviously, I think my interest, perhaps a parochial one, but my interest was to see that the communities in the areas of the country where the fire risk was greatest

would be on this list, and that did not seem to happen. We had a

few communities in New Mexico that were identified, but very few.

Did you have an insight into what has happened there or what

is happening, what is planned?

Mr. HARTZELL. Yes, Senator. I think much has been taken out

of context in that list of communities. Here is what I mean by that

comment. The initial list of communities was established in January 2001. There were roughly 4,000 communities on that list. We

tried to work with the State foresters to establish that list. What

we heard was: We need more time, we need another opportunity

to evaluate communities at risk; you came at us quickly; this is

going to take some time.

We published another Federal Register notice sometime in the

summer of 2001 and the list of communities was expanded from

roughly 4,000 to somewhere in the vicinity of 11,000 communities

at risk. It was up to the State foresters to identify those communities. Of the roughly 11,000 communities within the vicinity of

Federal lands, roughly 9,000 of those are within the vicinity of

lands administered by the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service.

Then the State foresters said: But that does not reflect the pure

magnitude of the problem. There is another 11,000 communities in

this country that are at risk. They are not within the vicinity of

Federal lands. So the State foresters are maintaining a list that

has over 22,000 communities at risk.

The issue about so many communities being identified in Georgia

and that vicinity I think has gotten blown out of proportion, in our

opinion, by the General Accounting Office. When you look at where

the fuels treatment dollars are targeted, 94 percent of them are

west of the Mississippi, where some of the most hazardous fuels

conditions exist.

The other thing, Mr. Chairman, I would like to mention, we did

provide some uniform national criteria for the State foresters to use

when they prioritized communities. We said as a minimum they

had to look at fire behavior, they had to look at the infrastructure

that was in place, they had to look at the values at risk, and they

had to determine the willingness of the community to participate.

You mentioned the State of New Mexico with 20 communities on

a list. That is a good example of collaboration between the Federal

agencies and the State forester. That is a very well-defined list of

communities and the State forester and the two Departments are

working hard to try to address fuels conditions around the communities on that list.

The CHAIRMAN. The concern I have is that there was a group of

highest risk communities. It is a group of 545 and of that group—

and I gather this must have been decided by the Department of the

Interior or somebody at the national level, because obviously each

State wants to have its communities on the highest list. But there

34

was a highest risk list and of the 545, 278 out of that or a majority

are in those three States.

So why—I can understand why State foresters would say we

have got all these communities and they are all high priority. But

when it comes to the Department of the Interior and the Forest

Service making up the list of highest risk communities, why would

we be putting such priority in these three States that do not seem

to have a real fire hazard problem. At least it does not seem comparable to what we are faced with in the West.

Mr. HARTZELL. Well, again, Senator, we are not placing a high

priority on the communities in those States. Again, 94 percent of

our planned fuels program last fiscal year was west of the Mississippi.

Senator, just for a point of clarification, we have told all of our

States to go back to their State foresters and continually work with

State foresters and collaborative working groups in every State to

make sure that those lists are up to date and that we are feeding

the fuels treatment program with the highest priority projects.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask about one other issue and then I will

defer to Senator Cantwell and she can ask her questions and close

the hearing.

Categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy

Act allow the Forest Service to expeditiously review whole categories of actions that do not have a significant effect on the environment. About 21⁄2 years ago a Federal district court invalidated

the Forest Service’s categorical exclusion of timber sales and salvage harvests. The court left room for the Forest Service to reinstate categorical exclusions for small timber and salvage sales that

the agency can demonstrate will collectively lack these significant

environmental effects.

It has been 21⁄2 years. The problem I am trying to address here

is that some of the fires we have had in the last couple of years

in New Mexico, they have had an enormous delay after the fire in

trying to determine whether they could do salvage sales. It takes

more than a year to make a determination as to whether some salvage sale is possible and by then at least in the view of some is

that the timber has been rendered useless and nobody bids on the

salvage sale.

So why is it taking so long, more than this 21⁄2 years, to complete

work on this categorical exclusion? Is this something, do you have

a draft policy for the categorical exclusion of salvage timber sales

that we can expect soon, or what is happening on that?

Mr. HOLTROP. We are currently working with CEQ on categorical

exclusion authorities. We have, I believe, a couple of our employees

working full-time with CEQ in their offices to work on that issue

and other issues to try to get at what are the types of things that

we need to do to help improve our ability to streamline our environmental analysis processes, such as expanded use of categorical

exclusion authority.

The CHAIRMAN. Can you give us an estimate as to when this

might come out? It has been a long time.

Mr. HOLTROP. I am not prepared to give you an estimate, other

than knowing that we have been working with CEQ over the last

several months, the last few months, where we have increased our

35

level of involvement with them by bringing those couple of folks

over to there from our agency.

There are some procedural things that are beyond—I do not understand how long it is going to take, but I know we are hoping

to be able to accomplish some of this type of work in the next several months, next year, or something like that.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to ask you to look at some of the

fires, like we just got control of this Pen ̃ asco fire in southern New

Mexico. There is great concern that it is going to be over a year

before a decision can be made on whether or not to have any kind

of salvage sale down there. It is not nearly as large as the Scott

Abel fire of a couple of years ago, but still significant.

Could you perhaps look into that and get back to us as to how

quickly you think a decision can be made?

Mr. HOLTROP. Yes, Mr. Chairman, we can do that. Again, let me

express that while we are continuing to work with CEQ on some

of the administrative steps that need to be taken, that does not

mean that while we are waiting on that, that we will not be continuing to work in as expedited a way as possible at looking at

what are the appropriate responses to a fire such as the Piniasco

fire.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Let me defer to Senator Cantwell and ask her to conclude the

hearing.

Senator CANTWELL [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to follow up if I could, Mr. Williams, on the OSHA

question. I got a lot of nods at the table and I am not sure exactly

what that meant. Have you reached an agreement with OSHA on

how to pursue a partnership?

Mr. WILLIAMS. We have not. The Forest Service, though, is in

partnership with OSHA in several other areas and we are looking

at it and we continue to talk to them about it.

Senator CANTWELL. So should I view that as a commitment or an

exploration? I am very interested in getting a specific answer.

Mr. WILLIAMS. We are anxious to do anything we can to improve

firefighter safety, including partnerships with OSHA.

Senator CANTWELL. So are you going to pursue one in this case?

Mr. WILLIAMS. We are working with the region, the region is

working with the local region of OSHA, and I believe that they are

pursuing this. I would be glad to look into it further and get back

with you.

Senator CANTWELL. I would like that. I would like an answer on

whether the Forest Service is going to enter into a partnership

with OSHA, given that they have a great deal of expertise here

pointing out in some independence the problems with the implementation that have occurred in the past, the fact that we have

had the Storm King recommendations that mirror the Thirty Mile

fire and yet were never implemented—I think that they have a

great deal of expertise that could be beneficial to the Forest Service.

I have a question about the budget. We had a hearing in February where Senator Bingaman asked questions and at the time we

raised the question that, while the Forest Service has repeatedly

assured that safety is a key priority, the budget actually cut $39

36

million from the fire preparedness account which funds firefighting

training and activities. At the time, Under Secretary Ray was

present and said that he would get back to us on exactly how this

would pencil out and what exactly this would mean.

To date I do not think we have seen any figures from the agency

on this, nor have we seen any projected figures for fiscal year 2003.

So my question is, if safety is such an important issue—I am not

even sure if you keep track of how money is spent. We were led

to believe that you kept track of money that was spent on safety

and preparedness. So my question is, is that the case? Are you

looking at a decrease? If that is the case, how can we assure people

that safety and preparedness is a priority?

Mr. HOLTROP. We do track the preparedness curves. We do not

track specifically yet how much we invest in safety per se. We are

able to get at that figure, but we do not have a database that does

that specifically. We are developing one that will do that. I am

afraid I do not have the figures in front of me that thoroughly answer the question you are asking, but we can get back to you on

that question.

Senator CANTWELL. Preparedness curve, you are just saying

what you spend every year that is in a large bucket that comes

under the category of preparedness?

Mr. WILLIAMS. No, it is what the preparedness budget is for

every year. It has been trending upward. I am not sure what the

2003 program is, but I know that for instance this year we will

have hired approximately 1,000 firefighters more than we had the

year previous. That is a reflection of the preparedness budget that

you folks have helped get.

Senator CANTWELL. Well, we were told by Under Secretary Ray

that we would get this information and that we would see that

there is actually an investment being made here. We have not seen

those figures. Now today you are saying you have to go back and

get those figures. So I think this is a very important issue, firefighting safety and training specifically. We want to know how

much money is being spent on it and whether you are decreasing

that or increasing that in this for 2003. And exactly—again, it is

hard to imagine if you are not keeping track of the specific numbers how effective some of those programs are.

Mr. WILLIAMS. We will get back.

Mr. HOLTROP. We have some information on tracking of firefighter training and safety costs combined, but we do not have

those penciled out as Under Secretary Ray indicated yet for 2003.

We will get those for you.

Senator CANTWELL. Thank you.

That is all the questions I have, but I think we will be submitting some. So if not, this hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:18 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

(37)

APPENDIX

RESPONSES TO ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES,

Washington, DC, May 10, 2002.

TIM HARTZELL,

Director, Office of Wildland Fire Coordination, U.S. Department of the Interior,

Washington, DC.

DEAR MR. HARTZELL: I would like to thank you for appearing before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on May 7th. As a follow-up to our hearing,

we have received extra questions to be submitted for the record.

The attached questions have been submitted by my office and the office of Senator

Jon Kyl. I would appreciate it if you would review the questions and return your

answers to us by May 24th so that they may be added to the record. If no reply

arrives by this time, we will print the hearing record and note that the answers to

the additional questions were not supplied at the time of printing.

Due to the current delay in receiving mail, please provide us with your answers

by faxing them to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Democratic

Staff at (202) 224-9026 or (202) 224-4340. Should you have any questions, please

contact Kira Finkler (202) 224-8164 or Shelley Brown (202) 224-5915 of the Committee Staff.

Sincerely, JEFF BINGAMAN,

Chairman.

[Responses to the following questions from Senator Kyl were not

received at the time this hearing went to press.]

Question 1. How many acres were mechanically thinned in 2001 in Arizona:

A. by the Forest Service?

B. by BLM?

Question 2. How many acres do the Forest Service and Department of the Interior

plan for mechanical thinning in 2002?

Question 3. What is the ratio of treated acres to burned acres in Arizona for 2000

and 2001? Were more acres burned than were treated in 2001?

Question 4. What is the Forest Service doing to implement treatment on a landscape scale?

Question 5. How much money is needed to complete landscape treatment in Arizona and New Mexico?

Question 6. I note that the Forest Service plans to terminate the wildland-urban

interface research program at the Rocky Mountain Research facility in Flagstaff.

This program is a leading center to help us understand how to better manage the

small stem material that chokes our federal forests in Arizona and New Mexico.

Please explain the recommendation to terminate this important program? Where

this work will be carried out in the absence of this center?

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES,

Washington, DC, May 10, 2002.

JOEL HOLTROP,

Deputy Chief, State and Private Forestry, U.S. Forest Service, Washington, DC.

DEAR MR. HOLTROP: I would like to thank you for appearing before the Committee

on Energy and Natural Resources on May 7th. As a follow-up to our hearing, we

have received extra questions to be submitted for the record.

38

The attached questions have been submitted by my office and the offices of Senators Ben Campbell and Jon Kyl. I would appreciate it if you would review the questions and return your answers to us by May 24th so that they may be added to the

record. If no reply arrives by this time, we will print the hearing record and note

that the answers to the additional questions were not supplied at the time of printing.

Due to the current delay in receiving mail, please provide us with your answers

by faxing them to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Democratic

Staff at (202) 224-9026 or (202) 224-4340. Should you have any questions, please

contact Kira Finkler (202) 224-8164 or Shelley Brown (202) 224-5915 of the Committee Staff.

JEFF BINGAMAN,

Chairman.

[Responses to the following questions from Senator Campbell and

Senator Kyl were not received at the time this hearing went to

press.]

QUESTIONS FROM SENATOR CAMPBELL

On cost-benefit issues related to wildfires and forest management:

Question 1. In a perfect world, are we better off to work to modify stand density

through timber harvesting and thinnings, or pay for fire suppression and then rehabilitation? What are the resource values that are lost when we have catastrophic

fires?

Question 2. In the NEPA analysis that the Forest Service does on its multipleuse projects do you assess the risk of catastrophic fires? Do you consider the cost

of fighting the fire and then performing the rehabilitation work that these fires

cause and contrast that against the cost of thinning or harvesting?

On fighting fire:

Question 1. In practically every firefighting scenario, the initial attack is carried

out by local communities, oftentimes by volunteer and rural fire departments. How

are initial attack firefighters considered or included in preparedness response?

On the National Fire Plan:

Question 1. I am interested in learning a little more about complexities concerning

the forest and urban interface. As we are witnessing in Colorado, fires can begin

far from urban areas and then rage in toward populated areas. Current fire mitigation practices focus on a space in a subdivision, for example. Yet, wildfires can overcome that initial area. What mitigation resources are available to reduce fuel build

up to the land adjacent to the subdivision?

QUESTIONS FROM SENATOR KYL

Question 1. How many acres were mechanically thinned in 2001 in Arizona:

A. by the Forest Service?

B. by BLM?

Question 2. How many acres do the Forest Service and Department of the Interior

plan for mechanical thinning in 2002?

Question 3. What is the ratio of treated acres to burned acres in Arizona for 2000

and 2001? Were more acres burned than were treated in 2001?

Question 4. What is the forest service doing to implement treatment on a landscape scale?

Question 5. How much money is needed to complete landscape treatment in Arizona and New Mexico?

Question 6. I note that the Forest Service plans to terminate the wildland-urban

interface research program at the Rocky Mountain Research facility in Flagstaff.

This program is a leading center to help us understand how to better manage the

small stem material that chokes our federal forests in Arizona and New Mexico.

Please explain the recommendation to terminate this important program? Where

this work will be carried out in the absence of this center?

Æ