H.Res. 239

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 239, I call up the bill (H.R. 1904) to improve the capacity of the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior to plan and conduct hazardous fuels reduction projects on National Forest System lands and Bureau of Land Management lands aimed at protecting communities, watersheds, and certain other at-risk lands from catastrophic wildfire, to enhance efforts to protect watersheds and address threats to forest and rangeland health, including catastrophic wildfire, across the landscape, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 1904, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003. This bipartisan legislation has undergone remarkable scrutiny and in fact is a rather modest response compared to the magnitude of the forest health crisis confronting this Nation. Over 190 million acres of public lands are at risk to damage from insects, disease and catastrophic wildfire. By that we mean if you have forests in your district or your constituents benefit from a forest either by receiving clean water from a forested watershed or they go hiking in a national forest on weekends, you need to support this bipartisan bill.

By catastrophic wildfire, we do not mean natural wildfires that burn across the ground and take out the brush. We mean the kind of fire that consumes the entire forest, shoots flames into the air hundreds of feet and takes out entire, huge trees.

We are proposing to treat less than one in six of the acres on Federal lands using the streamlined procedures authorized in the underlying bill. This is not a massive logging bill. This is perhaps an under action to the magnitude of the problem we have on our public lands.

Why are we doing this? Because these forest health problems are national in scope and because what is at stake here is far more than the loss of wood fiber.

Here is a map showing what is known as ``condition classes'' of forest and rangeland across the United States. As Members can see, while a good portion of the problem is in the western United States, there is also a lot of land in the eastern United States that is at risk to fire, insects and disease. Seventy-five percent of the National Forest land in Alabama is in condition class 2 or 3, the yellow and red we see here. Almost 1 million acres in Arkansas is in condition class 2 or 3; 730,000 acres in Illinois; half a million acres in Indiana; 2.1 million in Michigan; 4.2 million acres, all of this bright red, in Minnesota; 2.3 million in Missouri; nearly half a million in New Hampshire; almost a million in North Carolina; and nearly three- quarters of a million acres in Pennsylvania.

In those States alone, that roughly adds up to almost 12.5 million acres of land in the eastern United States. There are several other States in the East that have problems at least that severe. This bill will allow the Forest Service to reach out and treat only a fraction of this acreage using expedited procedures. I would hope my colleagues in the East would want to support this bill in order to protect their forests.

In addition, I support H.R. 1904 because it takes a comprehensive approach to water quality. If we do not get ahead of these catastrophic fires, this is what we will be left with on millions of acres of precious watersheds. If this hillside had been thinned and a normal healthy forest restored, a creeping fire through here would have done little damage. Instead, a catastrophic fire has created a dead hillside that cannot absorb water.

Here the intense heat of a catastrophic fire effectively turns the topsoil to glass and prevents percolation into the water table. A heavy rain event on a fire site like this will create massive flooding and transport large amounts of ash and soil into nearby streams, contaminating water for wildlife and downstream drinking water supplies.

Some suggest we should not do any hazardous fuels reduction projects outside the wildland-urban interface, that we leave watersheds and recreational lands to whatever situation fate has in store for them. This is the fate that the situation has in store for them; and if this is allowed to occur in the interior of our forests and then approaches the urban interface, nothing that is done will stop this from taking all of that land as well if it is allowed to get to this magnitude as it approaches that barrier. If this stand had been actively managed, a fire here would have done far less damage. That would make it a better place for everyone, better wildlife habitat, better recreation area, better watershed, better air quality and certainly a heck of a lot prettier. Sitting back and hoping for the best is not the way to get healthy forests.

Some have suggested that we spend almost all of our efforts and funds within a few hundred yards of inhabited areas. This is an illusion, and it is irresponsible. We cannot protect communities by doing all of the work near their boundaries. Fires over the last several years have raced miles and leaped as much as 2 miles away from the main fire, crossing huge firebreaks like interstate highways to burn hundreds of homes.

Sitting back, hoping for the best and letting existing bureaucratic processes continue to founder is not fiscally responsible. Last year, the Federal Government spent $1.6 billion fighting catastrophic fires. States spent hundreds of millions as well. We need to recognize that these huge expenditures are a land management problem. While we need to continue fighting fires, we need to be smarter and make investments in active land management in order to ultimately reduce these exorbitant firefighting costs.

We have listened to people from all over the country in putting this bill together. In addition to the remedial hazardous fuels reduction projects, the legislation now contains authorization to assess and attack the problem of major insect infestation that are threatening public and private forestland all over the country. We have added provisions to create cooperative watershed protection programs on private forestlands and a healthy

forest reserve program to ensure continued healthy management of private forestland.

As we came to the floor, we made adjustments in the bill to clarify the modest goals of hazardous fuels reduction. The bill now clarifies that there will be public notice and comment on all projects and, when projects are judicially appealed, the government will carry the burden of proof on the merits of the project. We will now require that all insect assessment projects receive outside peer review. We have clarified that the contentious debates over endangered species, roadless areas and old-growth policy are not a part of this modest bill.

Lastly, I want to point out that there is a truly impressive coalition of groups supporting this legislation. Labor unions, local conservation districts, county governments, professional land managers, volunteer firefighters and State officials have all come out in strong support of the underlying legislation. We have over 130 cosponsors of this bill, and it has been reviewed and overwhelmingly approved by three committees of the House.

As we speak, this year's fire season is getting under way. The experts at the National Interagency Fire Center expect much of the interior West, south/central Alaska, portions of California, western Great Lakes States and northern Maine to experience an above-normal fire season. Please join me and your colleagues from across the country in support of beginning to take steps to protect our natural resources for the benefit of our children and grandchildren who will wonder if we fail to act why we did not take the obvious steps we needed to take to conserve our forests. I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

I want to respond to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall). This bill, far from closing the courthouse door, opens it wide, makes it effective for those who seek redress in the courts to address the issue at hand. Right now, under current procedures, individuals who want no activity to take place in our forests at all will use our judicial system to delay action on our forests for 2, 3 years. If we have a forest that is prime for a forest fire because of the fuel density that is built up in it or because disease or insects have destroyed it, we need to take action promptly. That is what this does.

In no other area of the law that I know of is one allowed on appeal in the judicial process to raise issues that they did not raise at the outset, and that is also done commonly by extreme environmental groups who wait until the end. This cures that. It opens it up. The public is able to participate in the process throughout public comment, in the administrative process and in the appeals process, but it gets it done in a timely fashion.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Burns).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert).

(Mr. BOEHLERT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rehberg).

(Mr. REHBERG asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth).

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) for purposes of control.

Mr. Speaker, might I inquire who has the right to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) is quite right. Our forests were mismanaged a century ago. And we have had a great challenge in the last century because people live in and around these forests and we must fight forest fires. But the fact of the matter is if you fight forests fires, you are going to have this density building up. Many of our forests have several times the amount of firewood growing in them than is normal, than is natural. So the fires that occur are not natural forest fires.

I have heard the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) say that we are cutting the heart out of our environmental laws. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is our environmental laws will be retained. This measure is quite modest. It only applies to a little more than 10 percent of the land that is subject to these catastrophic wild fires because of this density of the forests that has built up.

The fact of the matter is, if we do not pass this legislation, the abuse of those environmental laws by extremists will cause us to burn the heart out of our Nation's forests. This is a responsible response to that.

This is something that will allow the people who know how to manage our forests to apply scientific analysis of the forests. And with public comment, with local government input, with an appeals process both administratively and through the courts, we will get a prompt and expeditious response to the problem that we are seeing every year now in our national forests. It will give us the opportunity to begin the process of making those forests safer and healthier for the animals that live in them, for the air that we all breathe, for the streams that we all recreate in and are so important to our communities; and it will give us the opportunity to have a better environmental and economic future for rural America. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I have discussed with Mr. Matheson from Utah the issue of local preference contracting for hazardous fuels reduction projects. I agree with Mr. Matheson that this issue needs to be addressed and I pledge to work with the gentleman from Utah as H.R. 1904 goes to conference.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I submit the following exchange of letters with the respective Committees of jurisdiction with regard to H.R. 1904, the Health Forests Restoration Act of 2003 for printing in the Congressional Record:

U.S. House of Representatives,

Committee on Agriculture,

Washington, DC, May 19, 2003.

Hon. W.J. ``Billy'' Tauzin,

Chairman, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Chairman: I am writing to recognize your

Committee's jurisdictional interest in H.R. 1904, the Healthy

Forests Restoration Act.

I appreciate your recognition of the need to move this

legislation expeditiously. The U.S. Forest Service is

predicting another very dangerous fire season and Congress

needs to get the tools contained in H.R. 1904 implemented for

the Forest Service post haste. I recognize that your decision

not to request a sequential referral of this bill does not

waive, reduce or otherwise affect any jurisdictional interest

the Energy and Commerce Committee may have in the bill.

I will support the appointment of conferees from your

Committee on those sections of the bill the parliamentarians

determine are in the Energy and Commerce Committee's

jurisdiction if a conference is convened.

Thank you again for your cooperation in this matter.

Sincerely,

Bob Goodlatte,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 15 minutes of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), the chairman of the Committee on Resources, and ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to manage that time in opposition.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, last year this Nation lost 6.9 million acres to catastrophic forest fires. That is an area larger than the entire State of Vermont. The Federal Government spent $1.6 billion in a losing effort to save that forestland. The Healthy Forest Restoration Act would expedite hazardous fuels reduction projects on a fraction of the 190 million at-risk acres in our national forests.

The Miller substitute seeks to throw us back into the morass of inaction and delay that is destroying our natural resource base. According to the Chief of the Forest Service, last year the Forest Service spent over $250 million on land management projects. Forty percent of that amount, over $100 million, was wasted on process delays. If we continue to approach catastrophic fire losses like this, we will have lots of lawyers and still lose the forests.

The Miller substitute would reinstate the opportunities for procedural delay and even adds new unnecessary steps. This will drag the system even further into the mire that is exposing forest after forest to catastrophic fire threats.

The substitute forces 85 percent of funding for hazardous fuels reduction to be spent within one-half mile of an at-risk community. This arbitrary standard provides little meaningful protection to towns caught in the path of raging fires, the pictures some of which we have seen already in the debate, that have been observed to leap up to 2 miles past the main fire. By throwing almost all the projects into a narrow useless belt around towns, the substitute ignores the peril to watersheds, wildlife, particularly endangered species, and the forest itself.

The basic approach of the Miller substitute seems to be: If you can't beat it, wreck it. The most puzzling aspect of the substitute is that it totally ignores most of the bill. It does a thorough job of heaping needless process delays on the hazardous fuels reduction projects, but it ignores the threat of insect infestation on public and private lands. In my part of the country, it is the disease and insect infestations that are the greatest threat in the east and the south. The substitute refuses to accept the watersheds protection and healthy forest reserve programs created by H.R. 1904.

The Healthy Forest Restoration Act is a balanced approach to responsible conservation of our public and private forest resources. It addresses forest health problems and promotes good stewardship across the Nation. The Miller substitute is a scheme to undermine fire protection efforts and effectively pretends there are no other forestry problems worth addressing. The labor unions, conservation associations, State and local governments, and professional foresters who support H.R. 1904 disagree.

Mr. Speaker, I urge the defeat of the Miller substitute and the passage of this outstanding bill, a first step to ending the carnage of our Nation's forestlands.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Cannon).

(Mr. CANNON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bonner).

Mr. Speaker, might I inquire of the Chair how much time is remaining and who has the right to close?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rehberg).

(Mr. REHBERG asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hayes).

(Mr. HAYES asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, this is a good bipartisan bill. The gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis), the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross), the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Janklow), the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rehberg), the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson), people from all parts of the country of both parties came together and negotiated carefully a balanced bill that we have before you.

I have heard people talk about big trees and show some pictures of big trees. Let me show you a picture of some big trees, burning up in flames, rising hundreds of feet. That is what happens to big trees if you do not address the problem.

There are two big reasons why people should oppose the Miller substitute. There are a lot of other reasons as well, but the two really big ones are, number one, it ignores the number one problem, and that is the process. That is what is slowing us down. That is what is taking 2 or 3 years of tying our courts into knots, using up all kinds of judicial time, arriving at nowhere.

This simply streamlines the process. It does not exclude public comment, it does not exclude public administration in the administrative process, it does not exclude the right to appeal. It simply makes it more practical and effective.

The second problem is this: it ignores the East and the South. This is a southern pine beetle. What does it do? It devastates the Southeastern part of the United States. Millions of acres of public and private forest lands untreated. This is the woolly adelgid, the Southeast and the Northeast, absolutely destroyed by it.

The result? Here is a forest that has been worked over by the southern pine beetle. No, this is not fall foliage; those are pine trees. That is what you get all across the East. The gentleman ignores that whole aspect of the problem.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the substitute and support the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, I claim time in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), the chairman of the Committee on Resources, who has done an outstanding job leading this legislation to the floor of the House.

Mr. Speaker, this is a catastrophic wildfire. It is not a natural fire that burns along the ground and takes out the brush. It consumes millions of acres of big, beautiful trees, 6.9 million acres last year, more than the size of the entire State of Vermont.

This is the risk in every part of the country. This is a serious problem in the West, but it is also a serious problem in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New York, and West Virginia, all across the south and Missouri. Every part of this country is impacted, and that is why this is bipartisan legislation crafted by Members of the House of Representatives from all across the country.

The gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert), the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest), the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis), the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson), and the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross) contributed to the effort to make this good, bipartisan legislation.

This is what happens with a catastrophic wildfire. It does not leave a healthy forest. It leaves this kind of devastation subject to erosion. And then it rains. This is what happens when it rains. It washes everything into the rivers and streams. It turns the ground to glass. This water will not go into the ground. The ground will not percolate, these forest fires are so intense.

This is one of the main reservoirs for the city of Denver, Colorado, and this is what was washed into it after a forest fire, damaging the water supply of the community.

This is what happens in the East and Southeast, bugs: pine beetle outbreaks in Georgia and Alabama and Tennessee and the woolly adelgid in Virginia. This picture shows what happens in the eastern part of the United States without this legislation.

What does the motion to recommit do? It takes out a key provision in the bill which is the source of this problem, which is the process. The process takes 2, 3 years. The forest go up in flames from wildfires before we ever get to treat the forests for disease and insects and for buildup of fuel density that causes this kind of fire.

Do not let him take out the key provision of the bill which expedites the process. It still allows for public comment, and it still provides for public input in the administrative proceedings. It still allows for judicial review, but it does it in a fair and timely fashion that recognizes that if we do not make a change in the bureaucratic morass that we are in today, we are going to see this year after year after year until we do not have any forests.

Let us protect our endangered species and our watersheds. Let us protect our citizens from air pollution and our firefighters from dying in these hazardous fires.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to oppose the motion to recommit and support the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), one of the original authors of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis), the subcommittee chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, we do have a problem. And I think that everybody who has come to the floor today to talk about the underlying bill has recognized that we have a serious problem. The gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) talked about 100 years of mismanagement in our forests, and I think it is the only thing that he said that I really did agree with him on, because there has been a hundred years of mismanagement in our forests. We went from what I believe was a point of cutting too many trees, and we had the clear cuts and all of the resulting environmental degradation and the problems that resulted out of that. And as a response to that, we had a number of environmental groups and people that came to this floor over the years that said we cannot continue to treat and manage our forests this way. And the pendulum swung all the way in the other direction. And a lot of folks that over the years have worked on the issue really did believe they were doing the right thing, but they were not.

The problem is they adopted a policy of hands off, keep man out, we do not want to impact the natural state of our forest. But what they forgot was we are part of nature and we are part of the impact on our forests. So when you take man out of it and you control all of the fires that would have burned over the last 30 or 40 years, you ended up with all of this underbrush that grew up in our forests. And our forests today are much more dense than they were naturally. And the underbrush is much more full than it would have been naturally. And we ended up with a situation where a hundred years ago if a small fire had started, it would have burned along the bottom of the forest and that would have been a natural, healthy event. But today that same fire starting in our forest gets into that underbrush, climbs up the trees and gets into the crown of the trees and destroys the forest. It sterilizes the ground. It destroys our watersheds. It destroys the communities that have grown up in these areas.

So we have to do something about that. And what we have tried to do over the last couple of years is negotiate out a way of dealing with the current situation that we have in our forests. And I do give the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) credit because they did negotiate with us. And the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden) and the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) spent literally dozens and dozens of hours working this through and trying to come up with a compromise.

Mr. Speaker, I believe the underlying bill is a compromise. It does not do everything I want. It does not do everything that the people in my communities want. But it does begin to move in the right direction, and that is what we are trying to do.

I listen to the opponents of this legislation. It is as if they dusted off their arguments that they had during the 1970s and rolled them out again. They have absolutely nothing to do with the underlying legislation.

This is a middle-of-the-road moderate compromise to deal with a very real problem that we have today. That is what we are trying to do. You can take an extreme position if you want. You can run out as far to the left as you possibly can and hold up your flag, but that does absolutely nothing to protect the health of our forests today. What we are trying to do is stop the risk or lessen the risk of a catastrophic fire starting in our forests.

The gentleman talked about the provisions that deal with insect infestations. We spent literally hours and hours going over that provision trying to come up with something that would limit the research to a small area and allow the researchers, the biologists, the scientists to come up with a way of stopping these insect infestations from spreading to the forests. That is what we are trying to accomplish with this bill. I would hope that my colleagues would at least try to moderate their rhetoric and join us in supporting this bipartisan compromise.

Today the House of Representatives will consider landmark environmental legislation--the bipartisan Healthy Forests Restoration Act. Mr. Speaker, I'm proud to note that this critical environmental legislation originated in the House Resources Committee earlier this year. Actually, it's the upshot of years of sweat equity on the part of a number of Members, many here and others not, each of whom believed deeply in the importance of restoring our forests to a healthy state.

Since its introduction earlier this year, the bipartisan bill has run the legislative gauntlet through three committees, where it has been discussed, debated and redebated more times than I care to discuss. With another bleak wildfire season bearing down us, clearly there's been more than enough talking. The time for action on the part of the united States House of Representatives is now.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1904, authorized by Representatives McInnis and Walden along with Chairman Goodlatte and myself, is as important as any environmental legislation to pass through this Congress in a long time. And make no mistake about it, this legislation is vital to protecting our natural environment.

With 190 million acres at unnaturally high risk to catastrophic wildfire and massive insect and disease outbreaks, cherished forest ecosystems and all that they sustain are squarely in harm's way. Air quality, water quality, the viability of old growth forests and threatened and endangered species, all are directly threatened by America's forest health crisis. Last summer we experienced these ecological horrors first hand. We all watched the images on TV, and many of us witnessed first hand, as the Nation's forestlands were denuded, air quality was despoiled, and sources of drinking water for millions were devastated. The scope of the destruction was breathtaking .

The good news is that our Federal land managers can slow this destructive environmental march, if only Congress will let them. Currently, it typically takes upwards of several years for forest managers to get a scientifically validated thinning project through the bureaucratic maze of analysis, documentation, appeals and lawsuits. This bureaucratic pace is unacceptable given the size of the environmental destruction that awaits.

With this understanding, the legislation's underyling premise is simple and clear: With 190 million acres at unnaturally high risk to catastrophic wildfire, it is indefensible that it takes Federal land managers upwards of several years to maneuver forest health projects

(like thinning and prescribed burns) through sundry procedural requirements. Under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, forest management projects on certain high-risk landscapes would still be subject to rigorous environmental analysis as well as administrative challenges and lawsuits, but these multiple processes would be completed in a matter of months, rather than years as is currently the case.

On one point I want to be particularly clear: This bill goes to unprecedented lengths to ensure that the public has a full and thorough opportunity to participate in the decision-making process. The bill codifies the bipartisan Western Governor Association 10-Year Strategy's robust public input and participation requirements, ensuring that interested persons will have numerous opportunities to engage decision makers during all phases of a project's development and implementation. The WGA strategy was endorsed by numerous government and non-government organizations, including leading environmental groups like the Wilderness Society. The bill also requires an additional public meeting for all projects implemented under this Act--a public meeting over and beyond what is currently required. Finally, the bill locks in place the public notice and comment requirements currently required during the environmental analysis phase for a wildfire mitigation project.

Mr. Speaker, this is a thoughtful and balanced approach to addressing what amounts to a cataclysmic environmental problem. The common-sense nature of this bill is borne out by the overwhelming bipartisan support it has received. At last check, there are nearly 140 cosponsors of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, 16 of whom are Democrats, who hail from all parts of the country and all ideological stripes. It's hard to imagine anything but a common sense legislative package drawing this kind of broad-based support.

I would also note that Congressman Sherwood Boehlert, a Member with whom I have had any disagreements, has been a constructive partner in helping shape this legislation. The self-executing managers amendment makes perfecting amendments to an already outstanding legislative package. Mr. Boehlert deserves high praise for his leadership and goodwill in this process.

Mr. Speaker, the House has a chance today to do something meaningful, important and lasting. Imperiled as they may be, our forests are a great national asset, deserving of the immediate attention and care of this House.

They are an unmistakable part of our heritage. The bipartisan Healthy Forests Restoration Act will ensure that this natural inheritance is healthy, vibrant and thriving into the future.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Radanovich).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, when I look at the Democrat substitute to this bill, I am kind of reminded of the old sign show. They used to say it was a show about nothing. Well, the Democrat substitute is the substitute about nothing.

They come to the floor, and they say all the right words. They talk about how concerned they are about protecting our communities, protecting the health of our forests, stopping the catastrophic fires. The truth is that their substitute leaves all of the problems in existence.

To make matters worse, and this is probably the most difficult part of the Miller substitute, is that by limiting most of your effort to that half mile around our communities, you completely ignore the real problem.

What we have tried to do in the underlying bill is to give the local foresters, the local people the chance to look at their forest and determine the areas that really need to be protected, the areas that they really need to go in and treat. Sometimes if you go up a canyon, that is more important, maybe 2 or 3 or 5 miles away from the community, it may be more important to treat that than a half mile radius around that community.

You heard people testify already today about fires this past year that jumped 3 or 4 miles because of the high winds. Your substitute does nothing to deal with that. You give some false sense of protection to our communities that we are going to treat a half mile radius around the community. That does nothing to protect them.

You talk about how you want the local people to be involved with this; but then you cut them out of the process, and you are going to dictate from Washington exactly what they can and cannot do.

Through this entire last couple of years that we have been negotiating this bill, we have sat down and tried to work this out; and the resulting bill, the underlying bill is an effort of that compromise. We came from over here to compromise in the middle, and now you want us to go over here. Bipartisanship is when we meet somewhere in the middle; it is not when we agree with you.

When we work our way through some difficult issues like this, it is a little give and take. I know there were Members on that side that tried to work with us, and they were unable for one reason or another to come to final agreement on that. But the underlying bill is our best shot at protecting our forests from increased risk of catastrophic fire.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to oppose the Miller substitute and support the underlying bill.

A Blind Eye To Forest Health Crisis Outside the West

Miller-DeFazio totally ignores the forest health crisis in southern, Midwestern and eastern forests. The Miller-DeFazio amendment would transform this national healthy forests legislation into the California and Oregon Healthy Forests Act.

The bill does nothing (zero!) to address the growing epidemic of insect and disease outbreaks. It would strip out all of the provisions that have been included at the urging of so many southern and Midwestern Members of Congress, including a large block of Democrats.

Even the rigid management prescriptions in the bill are based on a grossly false assumption that every acre of national forest has all of the features, attributes and characteristics of western ponderosa pine forests.

This may be news to the authors of this amendment, but the nation's forest health crisis does not end on the western banks of the Mississippi.

Arbitrary Limitations on Community Protection

The bill limits its expedited NEPA analysis procedures to projects within a \1/2\ mile of at risk communities. The \1/2\-mile area is grossly insufficient to protect at-risk communities, especially in the case of hot and fast moving fires in the West where topography and wind speed influence fire movement dramatically.

For example, the Rodeo-Chediski fire jumped as far as 3 miles. A fire in Colorado jumped a river, a railroad track and an interstate in a single bound. Anyone who's seen the breathtaking destruction of a western wildfire knows that a \1/2\-mile buffer is fundamentally inadequate.

This \1/2\-mile limitation won't do much beyond giving folks false comfort. Even my colleague Mark Udall opposes this type of arbitrary limitation. It's too bad Mr. Miller didn't follow his cue on this point.

New Process

The Miller bill would require the production of maps designating so- called condition classes of landscapes. This would extend the time needed to complete a fuels reduction plan, increase costs, and expend unnecessary resources.

Currently, the USFS does not have the ability to meet mapping requirements. They do not expect have this capability until 2006. Unfortunately, no projects could be implemented until that technology comes to fruition. That will be years, according to the agency. We don't have years to wait around.

Any Healthy Forest legislation needs to expedite and streamline the NEPA process--not lengthen it. The current process already takes an average of 3-5 years. While the Miller bill does expedite some procedures, it also creates new procedures and documentation requirements.

Road Construction

The bill under no circumstances allows the constructions of roads. This includes escape routes, fire fighting access, access to prevent fires in communities, etc. This puts communities, wildlife, and fire fighters in grave danger.

Again, who are we to tell a community that it can't build a road in conjunction with a project if that road is needed to treat a high-risk area, or provide an escape route for citizens?

Communities adjacent to habitat for endangered or threatened species or roadless areas would not be eligible for expedited fuels reduction projects. The bill's extraordinary circumstances limitation on hazardous fuel reduction projects is tantamount to saying ``Tough Luck'' to the hundreds, and probably thousands of at-risk communities adjacent to a roadless area or habitat for threatened or endangered species. I bet if Mr. Miller's home was pressed up against a forest that's home to an endangered species, this proposal would look a heck of a lot different.

Stewardship Contracting

The bill takes away the authority of the Federal land management agencies to use the Stewardship contracting authority that was just granted as part of the Fiscal Year 2003 Omnibus Appropriations Act. Congress just approved this authority, a key part of the President's Healthy Forests Initiative, so the agencies could reduce wildfire risks while supporting local economies and defraying taxpayer costs.

Judicial Review

Finally, the bill does nothing to hasten the Federal judiciary's consideration of lawsuits against wildfire mitigation projects, even projects in the highest priority areas. In my view, this element of the ``analysis paralysis'' simply cannot be ignored, even if it makes some constituencies uncomfortable.

Again, last year Mr. Miller appeared prepared to support legislation hastening the Court's consideration of high priority projects.

In that sense, like so many others, the Miller Amendment represents a real step backward from where we were just last year.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I tell my colleagues that this is another attempt, again another attempt to protect the status quo.

We all come down on the floor and we talk about how important it is to protect the health of our forests from the risk of catastrophic fire, but my friends on the left have continually, throughout the day, argued to protect the law exactly the way it is and to not make the necessary changes that we have to make in order to move this forward.

The provisions that we talk about in the motion to recommit are the result of negotiations between both bodies, between the minority and the majority; and it was a compromise that was reached. Granted, it is not where we started. It is not the language that I would have used to deal with this specific problem. But it was a compromise, and it was something that we all agreed on.

I would remind my colleagues that the underlying bill is an attempt to step into our national forests, areas that have been mismanaged for over 100 years, to step in and try to bring some balance, to bring local control, to bring local input and some balance into the decisions that are being made to protect those forests. That is the attempt that we are trying to make.

I am not interested in protecting the status quo. I am not interested in protecting the bureaucracy in Washington. I am interested in protecting the health of our forests and reducing the risk of catastrophic fire.

Mr. Speaker, I want to personally thank the chairman for all the efforts he has put in regarding the infestation we have had, regarding the forest fires, and the gentleman's focus in this committee to get this piece of legislation out before the fire season besets us.

I also want to thank the chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte). He has gone way out of his way to help move this bill forward. It is a very, very important bill.

I need to clarify a couple points here. I say to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), I know what his ethics are like. His ethics are, in my book, of a very high standard.

What I would do is to say to the gentleman that Glenwood Springs, which the gentleman quoted from the letter from the mayor, is my hometown. I grew up at the bottom of Storm King Mountain, where I, with 12 others, took 15 firefighters, deceased firefighters, off it.

I know something about fire, I know something about this bill, and I know something about the gentleman's ethics. The gentleman would be well advised to disassociate himself from the letter that he quoted in his comments, which was obtained through very deceitful means, as has been acknowledged this morning by the City of Glenwood Springs.

So I do not think the gentleman is aware of that. I just want the gentleman to be aware of how that letter was obtained.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I am talking specifically about a letter. I am not saying that the signature is inaccurate, that it is a fraud. I am saying that the way it was obtained was very, very deceitful. I would be happy to talk to the gentleman after we are finished here about that.

In regard to the comments of the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Baldwin), I am not sure she has read the bill, with all due respect. It does not cut out public input. It does not stop the judiciary process. I have not seen the gentlewoman at one meeting, I have not seen her at one negotiating session where we discussed the details of that.

Frankly, I consider it a cheap shot when one of my colleagues stands up here in front the American public and talks about a bill that we so firmly believe in on a bipartisan basis to stop and help us do something about these fires and bugs, and the gentlewoman stands up and acts like we are shortcutting the judiciary process, like we are cutting out the public input. Sure, I take insult with those kinds of remarks, and I do wonder whether or not the bill was read before staff or somebody drafted those comments for the gentlewoman.

Let me talk in regard to the comments of the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall). His comments about the bugs and the Miller substitute, if we look at the substance of the Miller substitute, unless it has been changed in the last 15 minutes, it contains nothing of substance within the four corners of that. I am talking about the substance part of the bill with regard to bug infestation.

We have to do something to help our people in the South. These bugs are throughout the country, but that is their biggest focus right now.

This bill is about between what we call the green hats and the black hats. Let me read the Oregonian Newspaper out of Oregon in the district of the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

By the way, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), we did not have an agreement. We came this close to an agreement, and you and the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) negotiated in absolute good faith. Unfortunately, we could not get there; but we did not have an agreement. I wish we would have inked an agreement. I wish we would have had it because it would have been signed in by now.

I do acknowledge, by the way, although they are strongly opposed to what we have today, which is not different than what we had yesterday, I do acknowledge the good-faith efforts of the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Let me quote the newspaper in Oregon: ``By its words and actions, the Sierra Club has shown what it wants. It wants the status quo, no logging, only a handful of small thinning projects and more devastating fires like those that swept Oregon and the rest of the west this summer. On the issue of forest thinning for which national polls have found overwhelming support, the real extremists include the Sierra Club.''

This is a good bill. It has got good merit, and it deserves your support.

Today the House will consider among the most important pieces of environmental legislation in a generation. The bipartisan Healthy Forests Restoration Act is focused on addressing the single largest, most complex and destructive challenge facing the management of our Federal lands--catastrophic wildfire and exploding epidemics of insect and disease outbreaks. Mr. Speaker, these are the destructive symptoms of America's forest health crisis.

During the last Congress, as most of us remember, my colleagues George Miller, Greg Walden and Peter DeFazio were nano-inches from reaching a bipartisan agreement for the ages. But ultimately, because of the invidious attacks of certain special interest groups, and because of the late stage in which those talks began, we were unable to cement a deal. Let me note that I have immeasurable respect for Mr. Miller and Mr. DeFazio for enduring unwarranted ostracism from the national environmental movement throughout that process. That community, in my opinion, showed its radical colors when they attacked these two icons and champions of the environmental cause. So I admire these two statesmen and deeply hope that we can continue to work together as this bill moves through the process.

Colleagues, I believe this bill enjoys strong bipartisan support because of emerging areas of solid agreement. It's my hope and expectation that these areas of agreement will provide the foundation on which a Congressional majority can arise.

As I see it, the pillars of agreement are these:

First, America is facing a forest health crisis of colossal proportions. a century of wholesale fire exclusion has been proven by the years to be a foolhardy pursuit--catastrophically so. Fire is part of nature's way--it replenishes, it rejuvenates, it restores. Shunned for a century, however, wildfire has returned to the landscape with a searing vengeance, burning bigger, hotter, and with a runaway ferocity than nature never intended. At the same time, unnatural forest stand densities have left our forests in a weakened state; their defenses susceptible to insect and disease epidemics.

The second principle of agreement is this: The primary symptom of America's forest health crisis, catastrophic wildfire, has done shocking harm to our environment. The summer of 2002 provided too many horror stories of wholesale environmental destruction to discuss in this one setting--stories of our air and water fouled, of old growth forest ecosystems left barren and black, of threatened and endangered species dealt irreversible ecological impacts.

One has to wonder about the sanity of a person who would chain themselves to tree-tops in an effort to ``Save the Forests'' while watching silently; seemingly unconcerned, as environmental calamities like the Hayman, Biscuit and Rodeo fires destroy some of America's most biologically rich forest ecosystems.

The third area of agreement is that the bureaucratic status quo on our Federal forests and rangelands is not working. Most reasonable people would agree that if shouldn't take upwards of several years to get a thinning project near a community through the Federal maze of analysis, appeals and lawsuits, but that is exactly what the status quo has brought us.

Witness what took place over the course of the last several years on the Black Hills National Forest. Most of us remember these rather notorious projects--they are the Wildland Urban Interface projects that South Dakota's senior Senator rescued from a bureaucratic swamp with some legislative language in an emergency spending bill last Congress. Senator Daschle, apparently tired of the viscous cycle of analysis, appeals and lawsuits tormenting these projects, took matters into his own hands and legislated these projects into forward movement.

But for those of us who aren't the Majority Leader of the Senate, and for those of us who don't face a pliant environmental community when we start tinkering with environmental laws, extravagant bureaucracy and delay is what we're up against.

That brings us to the final point of agreement--reasoned and prudent steps must be taken by Congress to make sense of this process gone mad. But as we alter the manifestly broken status quo, certain priorities must

be rigorously adhered to. Foremost, the public must be given an expansive opportunity to engage decision-makers at all stages of project development and implementation. That cannot change. Meaningful public participation is an imperative. The real success of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, in my opinion, is that it streamlines bureaucratic process in a way that honors the fundamental role that public participation plays in informed decision making. Anyone who argues that this bill provides anything other than a thorough, overlapping and robust opportunity for public participation is being disingenuous--or maybe they just inhaled too much carbon and mercury from one of last summer's big fires.

This brings me to the bill, Mr. Speaker, which proposes to address the root causes of this analysis paralysis. I will briefly describe it.

The Healthy Forests Restoration Act establishes streamlined procedures to expeditiously implement hazardous fuels reduction projects on Forest Service and BLM lands (1) near communities in the wildland urban interface, (2) on high risk lands in the proximity of municipal water sources, (3) on high risk lands that encompass habitat for threatened and endangered species where Federal wildlife officials have identified catastrophic wildfire as a threat to the viability of the species, and (4) on high risk landscapes particularly susceptible to disease or bug infestation. No wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, national parks, national monuments, other special congressional designations would be eligible under the bill's expedited procedures. The bill prohibits permanent road building in Inventoried Roadless Areas.

The bill codifies the bipartisan WGA 10-Year Strategy's robust public input and participation requirements. The WGA strategy was endorsed by numerous government and non-government organizations, including leading environmental groups like the Wilderness Society. The bill also requires an additional public meeting for all projects implemented under this Act over-and-beyond that which is required under current law.

In codifying the WGA framework, the bill also cements the bipartisan plan's express priority on focusing management actions on lands near communities and on at-risk lands in proximity to sources of municipal water.

The WGA plan is widely regarded as the holy grail of wildfire policy. This bill gives that bipartisan plan the status of Federal law.

The expedited procedures outlined in the bill are these. First, the legislation would give the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) discretionary authority to limit analysis during the NEPA phase to the proposed action only, meaning the agencies would not be required to analyze and describe a number of different alternatives to the preferred course. While expediting the analysis phase, this procedure ensures that all projects will receive an exhaustive analysis of all potential environmental effects.

Next, the bill would provide a limited waiver of the Appeals Reform Act for forest health projects implemented under the Act, instead directing the establishment of an alternative review process under which persons could seek administrative redress against forest restoration projects. The Forest Service is the only Federal land management agency with an administrative appeals process memorialized in statute--a 1992 Appropriation Rider called the Appeals Reform Act. In practice, this means that a forest restoration project implemented on at-risk lands on the White River National Forest (or any other forest) faces a significantly higher administrative appeals bar than the exact same project would encounter if implemented in Yellowstone National Park or the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument (BLM). With the National Fire Plan's emphasis on interagency cooperation, this makes little sense. This bill would put the Forest Service on more even footing with its sister agencies.

With regard to judicial review, the bill would require the Federal courts to reconsider and reauthorize any preliminary injunctions on a 45-day interval, while requiring the courts to more fully weigh the long-term environmental risks associated with management inaction. The 45-day preliminary injunction language is modeled on a proposal first offered by Senator Feinstein last summer, who I hasten to add, has been a real leader on this issue in her own right.

Additional provisions of the bill (1) facilitate the utilization of the otherwise valueless wood, brush, and slash removed in conjunction with the forest health project in the production of biomass energy, (2) authorize Federal programs to support community-based watershed forestry partnerships, (3) direct additional research focused on the early detection and containment of insect and disease infestations that have reached epidemic proportions, and (4) establish a private forestland easement program, supported by groups like Environmental Defense, focused on recovering forest ecosystem types in decline.

These provisions were included in this bill in recognition of the fact that America's forest health is not just a western wildfire issue. In particular, rampant insect and disease infestations should be in the front and center of any discussion about forest health legislation. This bill places them there.

I would also note that in the self-executing manager's amendment, the terms of a compromise between myself and Mr. Boehlert were incorporated into this legislation. Mr. Boehlert and his staff showed tremendous good faith in helping us improve and clarify an already outstanding piece of legislation. I commend him for his good faith and leadership.

It is with that, Mr. Speaker, that I urge the House to adopt this landmark environmental legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) be removed as a sponsor of the bill. He was put on there through staff error. I want to make sure I am appropriate procedural-wise to get the name off before we get locked into it.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, keep in mind, Mr. Miller, that the national fire plan has hundreds of millions of dollars in there. This big tree argument is nonsense. We are not going out there and saying, gosh, we have got to go to the redwoods or the sequoias and cut down all this beautiful stuff. That is an emotional argument that is used for one purpose and that is to divert from the science.

I do not mind the gentleman making that comment. The fact is it is not accurate, Mr. Miller, and you know it is not accurate. We are not going out there saying let us pick the most beautiful big tree we can find and cut it down. That is exactly the kind of picture you want to portray to the general public out there so you can divert from the fact that we have reached this status quo on trying to fight these forest fires, on trying to protect our wildlife habitat, on trying to protect our watersheds.

The gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) gets up here, my colleague. She starts lecturing the Republicans. I want you to know the partisan portion here is the Democratic substitute. You have no Republicans on your substitute.

My bill, the underlying bill, is a bipartisan bill. It has heavy Democrat support. Mr. Miller, what do you do for the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross)? What do you do for the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Barry)? What do you do for the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop)? What do you do for the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm)? You take out all the bugs and the infestation problems.

Folks, we have got problems out there. We have got fire problems, and we have got bug problems. And the courts do not wear green hats. They are not forest rangers. They are not going to get this resolved. We cannot afford one more fire season sitting on our haunches, twiddling our thumbs and pretending these horrible fires are not occurring.

Let me mention Mr. Udall. Mr. Udall says our language guts the injunctive relief. Mr. Udall, for your information, that language is called the Feinstein language. Why do you not take this issue up with Senator Feinstein?

Let us go on here a little. When we talk about what we are attempting to do, look at the substance of the bill.

Mr. Udall from Colorado, it is never good enough for you. At some point we have to say, enough is enough. Let our forest people go back to managing the forests. Let the forests be managed by science, not by emotion; and the way you drive emotion is to stand up here on this House floor and talk about how we are going to cut down the big trees, that in order to pay for this we are going to take the big trees and take them out.

Not at all. The fact is, we need to manage our forests. We cannot take the position of the radical environmental organizations like Earth First and the Sierra Club. We can take the position of a bipartisan group on this floor, Democrats and Republicans, and that position is represented by the underlying bill.

I urge a no vote on the Democrat non-Republican partisan substitute, and I urge support for the underlying bill that is bipartisan, has heavy Democrat and Republican support.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Already today we have heard a lot of heated exchange on the subject of fire policy. Our Republican colleagues will make impassioned speeches about the need to pass this legislation to protect communities. The President has implored the Congress to act. And without question Democrats and Republicans agree that this is a critically important issue to so many of our western communities, to the health of our forests, to the safety of those communities and to those who are engaged in firefighting during the fire year in the western United States.

But there is a big difference between these pieces of legislation. There is a big difference between talking about catastrophic wildfires and really helping communities that are at risk. There is a world of difference between wildfire legislation put forth by my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle and the alternative that we are proposing on this side of the aisle. That really comes down to an issue about the priorities of these communities.

Yes, we have drawn an area around these communities of a half mile which we have slated for fire treatment; and if we treated all those communities we would use up all of the money that is in the budget for the treatment of those fires, those where we engage in catastrophic fires, not necessarily the largest fires that take place in the western United States or in the United States, including Alaska, where huge fires rage very far from communities, far from where people live. Those are destructive fires in many ways, but they are not the catastrophic fires where we engage in the intensity of firefighting, the risk of human life, and the risk to property.

So we think in our legislation that we have made a decision that we will concentrate the resources on that, we will do it in a bill that is essentially noncontroversial, that addresses the problem, that can go to work right away, can create the jobs in the community that are necessary to provide for the health of our forests and the safety of our communities.

It is very clear, I think, when we look at both bills. Westerners understand the difference between smoke and fire, and I would suggest that the Republican bill is a lot of smoke if we are talking about protecting those communities. I think it is important to understand what are the distinctions in the bill. We provide direct aid to local communities to treat private lands and public lands because they are intermingled. To suggest you are going to do one without the other is to put the other at risk.

In fact, we find that there is not the aid to local communities in the Republican bill. Our provisions are noncontroversial and will speed up the thinning projects. I think when my colleagues read the legislation presented by the committees, they will see, as we have already heard comments from so many organizations that are deeply concerned about the due process provisions of this law, that will make it much more difficult, certainly delay its consideration in the Senate.

We create the new jobs quickly, providing that aid for the treatment on public and private lands, and we target the resources to those communities that are at risk and to the watersheds in those communities that are at risk. That is what we should be doing. That is what we should be doing. And we should especially be doing that when we consider the budget requests of this administration, which requested less money in this budget for hazardous fuel treatment than in the previous year.

The Department of the Interior requested stable funding in this year. The fact of the matter is, in total, what we see is there is less money to treat fewer acres. That is why we had to set some priorities.

Yes, we would like to think that we could second-guess nature, that we could go out to where lightning is going to strike, treat that area this year, and we would not have a fire there next year. But the fact of the matter is, in the urban-suburban interface, where communities have moved into the forest, where there is a risk, where there is a different urgency about fighting a fire because of properties and threats to communities where we put people most at risk in fighting those fires, that is where we ought to have the priority.

That is really what this legislation does. It makes a decision that the Congress, living within the budget constraints, and I hope the Committee on Appropriations will add additional money to this, but living within those constraints, let us treat those lands where we have the most critical need on this.

The suggestion in the Republican bill is that if we just cut down enough big trees, enough big valuable trees that are not the problem with fire, therefore we can pay for the treatment of more lands. In California, it is suggested that we could cut down many of the areas of the giant sequoia monuments, where we are preserving some of the oldest trees on the face of the earth, that we could cut down these trees and pay for treatment in Southern California or Northern California. That is a Faustian bargain the public does not want.

We have heard much discussion here about how fires used to creep along the forestlands. The suggestion we have to cut down the biggest trees so fires will once again creep along the forestlands is a mistake. What we need in many instances, and what many communities can do on a priority basis, is mechanical treatment and controlled burns to get rid of that understudy of brush that then allows those fires to jump into the crowns. But that is not what the Republican legislation does. It does not put the priority in the protection of those communities.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Udall).

(Mr. UDALL of Colorado asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall).

(Mr. UDALL of New Mexico asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), a member of the committee.

(Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on what the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) 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.

But it also happens to be accurate.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would just say that I think that this process that we have seen with this bill is indicative. It gives us warning about the Forest Service process. Here we see this bill being rammed through the House of Representatives, no amendments being offered, on a day when we do not have a full schedule; but the intent and the purpose is to ram it through without the full participation and the deliberations of this body.

It is reflective of what is in this bill. It is an effort to ram through these treatment programs, the cutting programs, the logging programs, the fire treatment programs, and limit the public participation to the greatest extent possible. That is what is wrong with this legislation.

The suggestion that somehow we are going to unilaterally turn over the decision on whether or not to protect old forests, or protect old growth, to protect large trees, to mark gray unilaterally without review, is like turning the banking system over to Bonnie and Clyde. It just does not make any sense in terms of the well-being of these forests, in the long-term, multiple use of these forests.

If you are just out there hunting for large trees to cut and you need a rationale to cut them, then this bill will give you the ability to do that, because it throws open the doors to logging of those large trees that matter the most to the communities in the West, matter to the citizens that we represent, matter to the citizens sense in our State; and that is what this bill does.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I recently met with tribal chairmen/representatives from the tribes in Arizona with timber interests, the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona. They had come to thank me for cosponsoring the Healthy Forests Act and to let me know that they supported the legislation and hoped for its passage. Unfortunately, for several of these tribes, they are already facing the devastating impacts of forest fires and insect infestation, two results that the Healthy Forests Initiative is meant to help prevent.

The chairman of the White Mountain Apaches recounted for me the mass destruction that the Rodeo-Chedeski Fire of 2002 had on the forest resources of the Fort Apache Indian reservation. This fire raged across the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and the Fort Apache Indian reservation, burning some 469,000 acres. It grew to 15 acres in the first 13 minutes of its life and continued to expand at a rate of 1\1/ 4\ acres a minute.

Timber harvesting and processing was the main industry of the White Mountain Apache tribe, and it will be years before the jobs and income generated by that industry will be seen again. Even their burial grounds and the graves of their ancestors are in danger as a result of the environmental damage from the Rodeo-Chedeski Fire.

The bark beetle has decimated the forest resources of several of the other tribes, with the San Carlos Apache tribe having lost 40 percent of their forest due to the damage of this pest.

The question before us today is whether we are willing to learn from our mistaken belief that the best way to protect our forests is to leave them alone.

We made a decision a long time ago to manage our forests. Having made that decision, we now have a responsibility to manage them using the best science we have available.

Well-managed forests can withstand fire. In fact, forests that have been preventively treated to reduce hazardous fuel loads can benefit from periodic fires. These fires create forest openings for new growth, provide a variety of wildlife habitat and reduce fuel buildup.

The bill before us today will help us improve management of our forests in several important ways. The bill authorizes expedited approval of forest thinning and cleanup projects on 20 million acres of Federal lands. It authorizes applied silvicultural assessments on 1,000-acre plots to test treatments for insect and disease infestations. It provides grants for biomass energy production from the debris produced by the projects. And it establishes a new conservation easement system to protect ecologically important forests on private lands.

The cumulative effect of these changes will be healthier forests that are less likely to produce the catastrophic wildfires that have destroyed millions of acres of private and public forests in recent years. These catastrophic fires burn hotter, spread faster, and cause long-term, severe environmental damage, sometimes even sterilizing the soil.

Last year, 23 firefighters lost their lives fighting wildfires; and taxpayers spent about $1.5 billion to contain record-setting fires. In the rural communities nearest to forests, tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes, thousands of structures were destroyed, and tourist-dependent economies suffered significant financial losses.

Let us untie the hands of our forest managers and let them begin using the management practices that are best suited to prevent the wildfires that have already taken so much from us. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 1904 and oppose the substitute.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Bishop).

Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, in the distribution of time, I heard that, I believe, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, yielded his time for management to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte).

Did anyone claim the time on the Democratic side for the Committee on the Judiciary?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to the charge that the Healthy Forests Restoration Act cuts the heart out of the National Environmental Policy Act.

The fact is, this bill requires the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to conduct environmental reviews of forest thinning projects in accordance with NEPA. The most important element of NEPA is the environmental review of the proposed project, the project that is to be implemented; and that review is retained under the bill.

The bill also gives agencies discretion to limit environmental review to the proposed project only, which means an agency would not have to consider multiple alternative project options that are not likely to be implemented as is currently required under NEPA. Under current law, land management agencies are required to analyze multiple alternatives, devoting scarce resources to hypothetical projects instead of to developing additional projects in other vulnerable areas of our forests.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we keep hearing that the Healthy Forest Restoration Act increases protection for communities from wildfires by speeding up the implementation of forest thinning projects. That is true. That is why we keep hearing it.

To my friend, the gentleman from Washington, and his response, that little, bitty red dot, many of us who have spent considerable amount of time studying this problem believe that by reallocation of current forest services we can deal with this. It does not require all of the new money that some propose if we in fact readjust the manner in which we regulate the forests of our country.

Even the critics of this bill acknowledge, as the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Udall) states in his dissenting remarks to the Committee on Agriculture report, that streamlining of the administrative appeals process would be appropriate for high-priority fuel reduction projects.

In a Dear Colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) argues that his substitute provides for expedited treatment of Federal lands that pose a risk of wildfire to local communities. Under the bill, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management would have to conduct a full environmental analysis of each proposed thinning project, but the agencies would not have to analyze a full range of alternatives to the proposal, as current law requires.

The bill would set a 15-day time limit for filing lawsuits challenging the fuel reduction project once the agency has formally announced a final decision and would urge the courts to the maximum extent possible to rule from within 100 days from when the suit was filed.

Critics of the bill seem to want it both ways. First, they argue that the bill does not do enough to implement these projects. Then they argue in favor of continuing the unnecessary and time-consuming analysis of alternative projects under NEPA and against reasonable time limitations on legal challenges.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I quarrel not with the intentions of anyone who has spoken here today. I am proud to be a co-sponsor of this legislation because I believe it does what needs to be done in order to break an impasse on how we deal with our Nation's forests.

We have heard the arguments against for year after year after year. The bottom line is the situation is not getting better. It is getting worse. I have read carefully this legislation, the specific points that seem to be coming under the most attack, and I do share the belief of my colleagues on this side of the aisle that it does all of the bad things that they allege it does.

Is it perfect legislation? Probably not. But I have traveled and visited some of our forestry areas, and I have seen the results of good management and sound science. Some of those, not my colleagues, but some of those organizations who oppose time and time again legislation like we have on the floor today, oppose it not from the sound science and good management but from a deep visceral feeling of how our Nation's natural resources ought to

be cared for; and I respect that, but I differ very strongly with that because I do not believe that we can do those things necessary to maintain and improve our Nation's forests without applying sound science and good management.

The public should not be left out, and the public is not left out. But those who have learned to use the law in ways that keep things from happening by constantly and consistently going to the courts are not doing our Nation the service that they allege that they are doing.

I urge support of the basic bill. I urge opposition to the amendment. Let us give those in charge of our Nation's forests a chance to do a better job than what is done under current law.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.