Before passing farm bill, Congress has a big fight over wildfires to get through

A fight over Republican-backed measures to mitigate wildfires is contributing to a delay in passage of the 2018 farm bill.

Democrats and Republicans are haggling over who to blame for Congress missing a deadline to reauthorize the farm bill, which primarily sets and funds agriculture and food policy, as they seek an agreement on a long-term deal rather than a short extension.

Disagreement over food stamps is the main issue dividing the House and Senate, but an unresolved dispute over forest management projects for wildfires is also disrupting the process.

Authorization for farm programs ended on Sept. 30. While most programs are funded into December, the uncertainty hurts the nation's agriculture sector.

“There is a lot more that needs to be done to make our forests more healthy and resilient, and the Forest Service needs tools to do that,” Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “Democrats have proposed nothing on forest management. The farmers and people in my district would like to have something pass so they can know what the rules are going forward so they can plan for what they are going to, but Democrats are delaying that happening.”

Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, pointed his finger the other way.

“Republicans are holding the bill hostage to their unreasonable demands on forestry policy,” Grijalva’s office said in a statement to the press earlier this month.

The House-passed version of the farm bill, which advanced 213-211 without a Democratic vote, contains provisions to expand the pace and scale of forest management projects through the removal of overgrowth and dead trees, which fuel wildfires.

Republicans also want to making it easier to do prescribed burns, in which officials intentionally set fires to take away ignitable material like brush off the forest floor and give trees more space to breathe.

But Democrats and conservationists say these measures go too far in removing environmental reviews.

They argue that Republican solutions to combat worsening wildfires cannot be taken seriously if GOP lawmakers, and the Trump administration, don’t also acknowledge the role of hotter and drier weather caused by climate change for making fires more destructive, and fire seasons longer lasting.

“If you don’t understand that climate change is real and we’re making it worse, you don’t get to lecture anyone on forest management or wildfire policy,” Grijalva said in a Oct. 5 statement.

In California, which has seen the worst of wildfires this summer, 14 of the 20 largest wildfires on record have occurred over the past 15 years, coinciding with some of the warmest years documented in the U.S.

Nationally, this year is on pace to surpass 2017 as the most expensive firefighting season ever.

The Senate-passed farm bill does not contain forest management provisions, and it passed by a bipartisan margin.

The two chambers must reconcile their differences to reach a final agreement that President Trump would sign.

“From the start, the Senate has recognized the importance of passing a Farm Bill on time, which is why the Senate bill moved quickly and passed on a historic bipartisan vote,” Jess McCarron, a spokesperson for the Senate Agriculture Committee’s top Democrat, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, told the Washington Examiner. “The Senate leaders are working tirelessly on a bipartisan basis to reach a final agreement. If House Republicans are serious about getting this done, they should put politics aside and focus on working towards a compromise.”

Democrats also say the farm bill’s forest management provisions are unnecessary because Congress recently passed a bill making those projects easier.

The omnibus spending bill Congress approved in March, signed by Trump, contained $1.95 billion for fiscal 2018 fire suppression and prevention across the Forest Service and Interior Department.

The bill also allowed the Forest Service to do more prescribed burns or forest thinning with less rigorous environmental reviews, including the authority to use what is known as a categorical exclusion to expedite fuel-clearing projects under certain conditions to prevent wildfires.

Grijalva says the Forest Service has been slow to implement these tools, claiming there is “no evidence that the agency has used its new categorical exclusion authority to complete a single wildfire prevention project since it was created.”

Forestry experts, however, say those projects take a long time to review and implement.

A Forest Service spokesperson said the agency is currently undertaking 15 projects with the new categorical exclusion authority, which are in various stages of planning.

“We’re thankful for the wildfire resilience categorical exclusion provided in the omnibus bill and we are incorporating its use into our program of work,” the spokesperson, Babete Anderson, told the Washington Examiner.

Westerman and his Republican colleagues, including Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, want to expand the application of categorical exclusions to even more projects.

Provisions favored by Westerman that made it into the House farm bill would limit environmental reviews on forest management projects as large as 6,000 acres and make it easier for states and counties to assist when the projects that straddle federal and state lines.

Those provisions are favored by the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, a coalition of forest products companies, conservation groups, and county governments.

“The House has passed extensive forest management reforms, including new categorical exclusions, multiple times and with bipartisan support, usually from members who have National Forests in their district,” Bill Imbergamo, the group’s executive director, told the Washington Examiner. “They know how dire the situation is on the ground, and they are willing to push the Forest Service to do more.”

Other forestry experts, however, note the Forest Service already faces a backlog of forest management projects, as federal and state agencies have used more of their budgets responding to wildfires, rather than preventing them.

For years, the Forest Service has taken money from other preventative accounts to make up for shortfalls in firefighting funding.

Congress’s omnibus spending bill also addressed the “fire borrowing” problem by establishing an emergency account for use in bad fire years.

“The marginal benefits of giving the Forest Service more authority for projects won’t make that big of a difference,” Robert Bonnie, the Department of Agriculture's undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment in the Obama administration, told the Washington Examiner. “If Bishop and Westerman are serious about getting work done in national forests, they need to be talking with appropriators and not messing with the Farm Bill,” added Bonnie, who oversaw the Forest Service. “The omnibus stopped the bleeding. But this is fundamentally a money problem.”

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