Rep. Peters Urges Colleagues to Pass His Wildfire Prevention Bill

Washington, D.C. - Today, Representative Scott Peters (CA-50) took to the House Floor to urge his colleagues to vote for the Fix Our Forests Act authored by Chairman Bruce Westerman (AR-4) and Peters. This comprehensive bipartisan legislation will restore forest health, reduce catastrophic wildfires that contribute to pollution and climate change, and protect communities from fire threats.

Representative Peters began his remarks by stating, "This year wildfires already have burned over seven million acres of forests and over 1,000 homes and other structures. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate, often with just minutes to pack their most important belongings - not knowing if they will ever return to their homes. Many have done all the right things to protect their property, but because of the magnitude of the wildfire crisis, they cannot insure their homes. Every day of fire season feels like they are gambling with everything they own."

He continued, "After decades of mismanagement and misguided fire suppression tactics, there is a scientific consensus on the solution: active forest management, state-local-federal and tribal collaboration, and continued Research and Development on next-generation technologies and solutions. The problem is forest management projects, like clearing dead trees and dry vegetation that fuel fires, often require multiyear environmental reviews, followed by years of litigation in many cases. While we wait for analysis, forests burn down, air pollution worsens, and the threats posed by climate change to our local communities are exacerbated."

He concluded, "My Fix Our Forests Act with Chair Westerman is a comprehensive bill to simplify and expedite the most critical forest management projects while maintaining strong environmental standards. It will reduce the threat of litigation that delays these projects, and it adds new opportunities for communities to engage early in the process. It also creates new programs to protect homes and communities from fires and makes it easier for them to access federal assistance… Let's get this bill passed and provide some hope for Americans."

The Fix Our Forests Act is supported by: National Congress of American Indians, Bipartisan Policy Center, Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, Western Fire Chiefs Association, Citizens' Climate Lobby, American Property Casualty Insurance Association, Association of California Water Agencies, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the National Association of Counties, MegaFire Action, the Chamber of Commerce, the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), American Forests, the Evangelical Environmental Network, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Sempra, Edison Electric Institute, Pacific Gas & Electric, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, the American Conservation Coalition Action, and the National Wild Turkey Federation.

Rep. Peters and Chair Westerman are also co-authors of the Save our Sequoias Act, a bill to give land managers the tools and funding needed to save California's iconic giant sequoias.

Background:

The Fix Our Forests Act will encourage active forest management and support community resiliency for wildfires by expediting environmental analyses, reducing frivolous lawsuits, and increasing the pace and scale of forest restoration projects.

The bill will:

1. Simplify and expedite environmental reviews for forest management projects in the highest risk areas
2. Promote federal, state, tribal and local collaboration on wildfire mitigation while encouraging engagement with landowners and communities
3. Recognize the role that natural fire plays in healthy ecosystems - which is backed by the best available scientific information - while acknowledging Tribal sovereignty in providing for practices like cultural burning
4. Support wildfire resiliency for local communities by focusing on the built environment, innovative technologies and modernized standards
5. Deter frivolous litigation that delays essential forest management projects
6. Create a framework for interagency collaboration to advance wildfire and land management R&D, provide technical and financial assistance to communities, and support efforts by tribes and other governments to address the effects of wildland fire on communities, including property damages and degraded air and water quality
7. Create a federal-state-tribal framework for prioritizing projects in forests at highest risk of catastrophic wildfire
8. Encourage the adoption of state-of-the-art, science-backed approaches for federal land managers, including innovative methods to sequester carbon dioxide
9. Ensure that utilities are able to better work with federal partners to harden their rights-of-way while mitigating hazards
10. Strengthen tools like Good Neighbor Authority - which presently excludes Tribal Nations - and Stewardship Contracting

Rep. Peters' full remarks can be viewed here.

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