Date: 2003-05-20
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up on what the gentleman from Washington said here. because it is a part of the bill that is in fact a subterfuge in the underlying bill of the committee. and that is that they are not prepared to authorize money to be expended for this purpose. so they are going to rely on forest stewardship contracts. We have already been put on notice by the people In the Forest Service In California that they are going to need to log the large trees around Lake Tahoe in Northern California to go down and to do treatments in forests in Southern California where there are no big trees. It will not pay for it. They cannot cut enough trees to pay for it. It costs about $1.500 to $1.800 an acre to treat these lands. and yet there is no money in this. So they rely on forest stewardship. They have got to go out. and they have got to cut the big trees. If the communities do not have the big trees. then they are not going to be in the priority because they have got to pay for the projects. That is why we put up real money in the authorization for this purpose so those communities could be treated and they can cut any size tree they want. There is no limitation on this. and they just balance out the books. Forest stewardship is not about balancing the books. It is about balancing the watersheds. It is about balancing the ecology of the area. It is about balancing the soils. It is about balancing the growth rate. It is about balancing the infestation. It is all of that in determining the health of those forests. But what we have suggested is they just create an accounting system. They have got to treat 1.000 acres. Then they have got. to go cut enough big trees somewhere to pay for the treatment of that 1.000 acres. That is not the proper way to do this. There is a public cost to this. and it ought to be authorized. If they are going to spend all the money on infestation. then where are they going to get the money to do the fire treatment that is necessary in forests where fire is the major threat. not necessarily infestation? So that is the weakness in the underlying bill. If we want to deal with the problem that was agreed upon. that there was this area around the cities. around these communities that needed to be treated because that is where the catastrophic fires could break out. that is where the danger was posed. and to protect those watersheds. that is where we were prior to the election. Now that it is decided. they have got those votes. they are going to open the door. and the fact of the matter is we now have a bill with no discipline. There are no priorities. and they simply must pay for it by cutting down late successional old forests or the largest trees they can find in the area. Because if one could make money outside of chipping them. people would take the small trees. They would be happy to have them. But we know that that is not going to happen. and when we look at the budget submissions of this administration. they are planning on treating less land this year than they did the year before. So we have got kind of a cataclysmic event taking place here between the needs of the forest. what many are projecting to be a dramatic fire year. maybe more so than the past year. no budget money. which then pushes them into large forests where the fire treatment in many cases is less needed than around the communities. That is the irrational part of the Republican bill.