Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I have to apologize for this laryngitis I have this evening. I asked myself as I sat here listening to my colleagues from Utah and from Idaho, why am I sitting down here this evening in an empty…
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I have to apologize for this laryngitis I have this evening.
I asked myself as I sat here listening to my colleagues from Utah and from Idaho, why am I sitting down here this evening in an empty Chamber when I could be like everybody else and be someplace else? The fact of the matter is I am here because it is incredibly important that the people of America understand what we are doing to ourselves, because that is what it is. We are on a self-destructive tour that is
really bringing about the death of human beings. All we need is to have one of these fires in the West, like we have had in the last several years.
Now, I live in the State of South Dakota. The State of South Dakota in the year 2000, we had a couple of forest fires that burned 132,000 acres of the 1.2 million acres in the Black Hills National Forest. That is approximately 10 percent of the entire Black Hills burned down in 2000. We had 600 soldiers and airmen on Active Duty. We had all of the South Dakota Highway Patrol there. We had 150 local fire departments, all but one of them volunteer fire departments, from all over South Dakota. In addition to that, I called the Governor of Minnesota, the Governor of Wisconsin, the Governors of Nebraska, Montana, and Wyoming. I told them this was beyond our capability. I asked them for help, and they sent their fire trucks. The inmates in our State prison system put in 43,632 hours fighting these fires.
But I tell my colleagues what is more important. At a time during our Nation's destiny, at a time in our Nation's history when we need funding for schools, we need money for diabetes research and cancer research, we need money for Lou Gehrig disease research and muscular dystrophy, we need money for all kinds of things, we have spent $6 billion, $6 billion, in the last 3 years in this country just fighting the forest fires through the U.S. Forest Service. And that does not count the hundreds of millions and billions that have been spent by local governments, the time for volunteers, or I should say the volunteer farmers and ranchers and citizens who have never booked for their own time, utilizing their own equipment and their own resources to try to put these fires out in the West.
Now, the government, if it wants to, has the right to burn down its forests, but it does not have the right to burn private people's property. It did not have the right to kill 23 firefighters in this country last year. It did not have the right to burn down hundreds of homes, hundreds of homes in this country last year. And it does not have the right to destroy private property like they treat their own.
The reality of the situation is that for decades, every time we had insect infestation, we sprayed them and tried to kill the insects. Every time we had a fire, we tried to put it out. And all we did was allow the forest to do what these gentlemen call building the fuel loading per acre, building what is called the ladder fuels in the forest. The ladder fuels are where we have a fire down on the bed of the forest, but then they get so hot they climb up to the top of the trees where they are called crowning, and then they start racing from treetop to treetop.
We had a fire in the Black Hills in the year 2000, the Jasper fire, moved 10 miles in 1 day. Ten miles in one day. All the firemen could do was run for their lives. I gave an evacuation order for 64 square miles of the Black Hills of South Dakota. I was asked by the forest supervisor to evacuate an area 8 by 8; 64 square miles of people went running for their lives grabbing what they could. You should have seen the panic in their faces as all of a sudden they get the word to run for their lives. They race into their houses, some of them trying to grab papers, some trying to grab the parakeet, the cat or the dog; some frantically looking for their children and family members; all thinking this fire will be upon them in a moment's notice, and we not knowing which direction or where those fires are going to go.
For too long we have made political decisions in these forests. Before our committee came the representative for the Foresters of America. The representative for the Foresters of America testified on behalf of the State foresters, and what did he say? He said he represented every one of the 50 State professional foresters in the country. And every one of them, through their testimony, said they support, they support, this healthy forest initiative.
This initiative guarantees that the public has a right to be heard. As a matter of fact, a substantive decision cannot be made unless the public is given notice and an opportunity to be involved. What it does say is if you do not involve yourself in the decision process, then you cannot involve yourself in the appeal process. That has been the law in the civil jurisdictions of America since almost this country was founded. If you try a case in the civil courts, and you do not raise an issue, you cannot raise it for the first time on appeal. You have to raise it in what they call the trial court to raise it in the appellate court.
Well, we are setting up the same process administratively in this bill. We say if you have a comment, if you have an objection, if you are for it or against it or just want to be interested, you must participate and give your input into the decision, or you cannot be involved in the appellate process.
This comes about as a result of all the Western Governors, all of them, Democrat and Republican alike, standing shoulder to shoulder, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, New Mexico, Colorado, all coming together in a summit saying to the Federal officials, the Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Glickman at the time, and the Secretary of the Interior Mr. Babbitt that there has to be a better way. We all agreed with each other. And out of it came the healthy forest initiative that the Western Governors supported, and from that it moved forward to this legislation.
For too long the decisions have been made by judges. Judges should interpret the law. The decisions need to be made in a democracy by the majority, after consulting, after receiving input, after having suggestions and involvement by the minority. But the majority has to rule.
Mr. Speaker, the most important thing of all is what I have saved until now, and that is that when these forests burn, Mr. Speaker, like the fires from hell as they burn in the West, thousands and thousands of acres, all of that ash material in the air, look how it shortens the lives of people with emphysema. We have no records of how many people have had their life shortened and ended that have emphysema or bronchitis, or suffer from asthma, or suffer from lung cancer or sinus trouble or a whole host of the cardiovascular kinds of problems.
Imagine a little child, the family bringing him home at birth from the hospital, the excitement and the joy as all the extended family and the community gathers together in Rapid City, South Dakota; in Custer, South Dakota; Gillette, Wyoming; Boise, Idaho; Colorado Springs or Pikes Peak. And here you have this tiny child breathing all these contaminants, these carcinogens, these things that will inhibit the development of the lung tissue and affect the ability of this child to live.
For too long, we have played politics with our natural resources. For too long we have played politics with our, and I use the word, national resources. And for too long we have played politics with the lives of our elderly, our working people, and our children. So I have a great deal of pride to say that I come here to support this legislation. It is good legislation.
Mr. Speaker, let me also say that when it came out of our committee, when it passed out of the Committee on Agriculture, it was by a voice vote, a strong, strong bipartisan vote. Democrats and Republicans stood together from all over this country on that committee, and a significant majority of them voted ``aye'' when asked if they supported this legislation. So I am excited about this legislation. It is going to finally turn the corner. We have, the testimony was, 120 million acres. If you can imagine the size of that, the State of South Dakota is 80 million acres. So it is something that is almost twice the size of the State of South Dakota that is in danger of fires. And 70 million of those acres of forests throughout America, only the national forests, 70 million of them are in extreme danger of fire. This is wrong. This is unconscionable. This is immoral. This is something we can fix.
And so I ask you, Mr. Speaker, and I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of this Congress, support this bill. Vote to save our natural resources and our national resources. Vote to extend the lives of our people. Vote to stop spending all the money that we have to spend on these unhealthy forests. Vote to stop spending all the money that we waste on fires, and let us invest it in the children of America, the sick of America, the problems of America.
Yes, sir.
Sir, the fires in Idaho stink up the air and plug up the lungs in South Dakota and Minnesota.
And places east. All the way across the country. It affects the sunlight. It affects the haze that we get, the smell that we get. But more importantly, that haze is what we are breathing into the lungs of our sick people and our healthy people.
And our little children.
I think they care. I do not think they think about it. Because sometimes, especially in this country, we all get so driven that we are going to accomplish our objective our way that we ignore the needs of other people. It is the old expression, and in my State we say, those are the kind of people that say, it's my way or the highway. That is what we are dealing with. These are not crazy people. These are not screwballs. They are very bright people, but it is their way or no way.
Sir, all I want to do is save them. I am for saving the forests. I am 63 years old. I am out of here soon. But I have got grandchildren. I have got five grandchildren. These forests belong to them. Those forests are their heritage, and they are entitled to see them and not breathe them.
Sir, the forest fire in Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, you pick your State, Washington, Oregon, California, South Dakota, the forest fires there in the last several years, each of the years, those fires, it will take over 100 years to sequester the carbon back into the soil. Everybody knows that carbon dioxide, everybody knows the release of that carbon contributes to global warming. We hear that all the time with respect to smokestack industries and burning of coal and burning of petrochemicals. The fires in the West release a year's supply of automobiles. But the sequestration to get them back in the soil will take a century.
You not only get more mercury but now you have destroyed the watershed. You have destroyed the things in the hills that contribute to clean and healthy waters running into the streams. In Lead, South Dakota, in Deadwood, the home of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, Deadwood, the home of the largest gold mine in the western hemisphere, the old Homestake gold mine, the community of Deadwood had the Grisly Gulch fire that burned about 12,000 acres and only by the reason of the volunteer firemen and women because the Forest Service only sent three fire trucks for a fire that was racing into the communities of Lead and Deadwood. These fires were stopped by the volunteers. Then a couple of weeks later, 2 inches of rain came one evening and a river of muck came roaring down the hills, doing millions of dollars worth of damage with this muck and ash that was 2, 3, 4 feet deep in some spots.
But just as importantly, it now cleared away the hillside, so every time it rains, for dozens of years, every time it rains, you are going to have these waters racing down the hills into the valleys. But in addition to that, when you mix water with these ashes, you get lye. You get lye. When you take these little baby fish and these little fry, you kill them with lye. Lye is not good for human beings when they drink it. It is not a healthy substance. There are carcinogens in that. We have Federal laws that will put you in jail if you give cancer-causing ingredients to people. Yet no one seems to be bothered by giving cancer-causing ingredients to people as a result of forest fires. We cannot stop forest fires, but we can stop these kinds of forest fires by good forestry.
All I am asking for is best science. That is all I am asking for is best science.
I will not attack the environmental groups. I am an environmentalist.
My grandchildren drink the water. They bathe in it. Their food is cooked in it. I want it to be nothing but healthy. But the worst environment in the world, a lousy environment, is when you are cold and you are hungry and you are unemployed. That is a bad environment. That is what the West being burned up is doing to people.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to be extremely brief. This healthy forest initiative is an initiative that is incredibly important. It is not very often that we deal with things of that much substance. This is one of those opportunities. For too long we have made the forests into political issues where people fight with each other. The reality of the situation is every time we get that strong of emotions on all sides, usually we end up with a bad result. That is what we have here.
There is no one, there is no one, who says these forests are healthy, and when I say forests, I am talking about a couple hundred million acres of land in America, virtually the entire part of many of our States. In my State it is the Black Hills, which is the westernmost portion of the State. But there is no one who says these forests are being properly managed. There is no one who says we have been doing the right thing.
The arguments are what do we do to fix the problem, or do we just let God burn them down? It is okay to let God burn them down, but we are burning up people in the process. We are burning up people's homes in the process. We are destroying people's lives. We are shortening the lives of people. We are making it incredibly unhealthy for human beings. We are contributing to the wiping out of endangered species, be they plant life or be they animal life. So what we need to do is something different.
This is a reasonable approach that involves input from all corners of the philosophies. It preserves the right of anybody who does not like the decision to go to court, but more than anything else, it starts us on another track away from the track that we all agree has not worked.
For the sake of this country, for the sake of its resources, for the sake of our families, for the sake of endangered species, for the sake of our economy, and for the sake of our health, we need to pass this initiative.
