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March 23, 2018
On Friday, March 23, President Trump signed the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending package that funds the government through the remainder of FY2018. Although the President’s FY2018 and 2019 budget requests have called for draconian cuts to environmental and clean energy programs at EPA, the Department of Energy and elsewhere, funding levels for these programs were by in large preserved by Congressional appropriators. Importantly, the bill contains one long-sought major bipartisan victory for forest health – a solution to the disastrous effects of ‘fire borrowing’ on American forests.
Fire borrowing is the practice of transferring funds at the U.S. Forest Service mid-year from other programs to deal with wildfire fighting costs. In the last two decades, fire suppression has ballooned from approximately 15 percent of the Forest Service’s budget to more than 50 percent of the overall budget. And the problem is only getting worse. It is projected that without addressing fire borrowing, wildfire suppression would cost over 60 percent of the Forest Service’s budget in the next decade.
At the conclusion of the 2017 wildfire season, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced the Forest Service had spent over $2.5 billion in wildfire suppression costs on 2.2 million acres of National Forest land and deployed over 28,000 Forest Service personnel over the Western region to deal with wildfires -- breaking all previous records. Homes and lives were lost and residents all over the region dealt with ash, haze and lung-burning smoke. Unhealthy air alerts were issued many days in several Western states.
Wildfire severity and incidence have increased due to three primary factors: forest fires have been suppressed for so long that federal forests are severely overstocked and fire-prone; climate change is causing hotter and drier conditions; more people living in the wildland-urban interface means more fires have to be suppressed. The result is overstocked forests that are literal tinderboxes. Because of this, wildfire seasons have been worsening overall for the past decade, but until now, with only stop-gap measures to address budgetary shortfalls.
The comprehensive wildfire funding fix achieved in the omnibus will implement a separate disaster cap at the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and the Interior to be tapped when the regular wildfire budget is zeroed out. The funds will begin in FY2020 at $2.25 billion, and the amount of funding available in the cap will steadily increase to $2.95 billion in 2027. The net result is an additional $20 billion set-aside over the next 10 years to end the practice of fire borrowing. The current funding mechanism is based on a rolling ten year average, but with wildfire costs ballooning over the past several years, it has been difficult if not impossible to make sure the wildfire budget doesn’t run out before the end of the wildfire season.
Congressional leaders from Western states most directly affected by the practice of fire borrowing have led the charge to change the practice, including Senators Wyden (D-OR), Cantwell (D-WA), and Crapo (R-ID) as well as Representatives Simpson (R-ID) and McMorris Rodgers (R-WA). On the wildfire funding fix, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) said in a statement, “This long-overdue, bipartisan solution to the madness of ‘fire borrowing’ will at least treat these infernos like the natural disasters they are, with the benefit that millions of dollars will now be liberated each year for essential wildfire prevention.”
While the wildfire funding fix had broad bipartisan support, its passage was continually dogged by a small group of GOP lawmakers who wanted further repeals to other aspects of the way the Forest Service manages forests, including faster environmental reviews. However, support for that approach appears to have waned over the past several months, particularly among GOP leadership, thanks to continued work from lawmakers and stakeholders who want to free up the Forest Service to do its essential work of managing forests, not just fighting fires.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. Indeed, Representative Simpson commented that passage of a comprehensive wildfire funding fix is one of his most significant achievements over his two-decade career in Congress, stating, “It is long past due that wildfires in the West receive equal treatment with other natural disasters, and this bill delivers the necessary budget changes to stop the dangerous practice of fire borrowing that has led to catastrophic wildfires in Idaho and throughout the West.”
Hopefully, with funding issues resolved around wildfires, the U.S. Forest Service, States and localities can focus more directly on forest health and restoration instead of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
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