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WASHINGTON – A few months after a wildfire destroyed Los Angeles County, California, Sen. Alex Padilla hopes it could be the first bipartisan action President Trump will sign.
“I don’t think anything can completely prevent wildfires, but this effort was worth it if we could prevent the work from experiencing the heartbreak felt by Santa Rosa, Paradise and the Pacific’s Pallisad and Altadena families,” Padilla said Thursday.
Padilla, who chairs the Senate’s Wildfire Caucus, has joined a bipartisan group of Western Senators (John Curtis), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) and Tim Sheehee (R Mont).
According to Congress Research Services, the Fix Our Forests Act wipes out how the federal government controls the land. Create wildfire intelligence centres to centralize federal administration, requiring assessments of burned areas and streamline ways communities can reduce the risk of wildfires. It will also strengthen research into wildfire mitigation techniques and modify some forest treatments.
The House of Representatives passed the measures affordably, but was not entirely welcomed by environmental groups. Dozens have written letters denounced measures to roll back protections for endangered species species and remove accountability for the “extraction industry.”
“Stopping the community’s input on wildlife conservation and the management of our public lands has never made forests healthier or reduced the risk of wildfires and will not change under this law,” said Ashley Nunes, Public Land Policy Specialist at the Center for Biodiversity, on Thursday. “If this becomes law, one community will not be safe from a wildfire.”
Padilla argued that the bill was improved in issues raised by these groups, including adding stipulated burn provisions.
The Senate version has also redefine projects that are eligible for grants “to ensure that LA is currently eligible.”
“Frankly, I think the only thing we can get to the president’s desk here is to have a bill that allows him to sign the law, one of the most comprehensive rewrites of federal wildfire policy in decades,” Weiner said. “In the midst of all the chaos, there’s an opportunity here to do something truly meaningful in a bipartisan way.”
The law began with a plane conversation between Democrat Scott Peters of San Diego and his Republican colleague, Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas. As the two were traveling together on an international congressional trip, Westerman sat beside Peters and asked if he could talk about California’s Sequoia.
“He couldn’t get away,” Westerman said with a laugh. As a licensed forester, Westerman wanted to overhaul federal forest management. Peters, an environmental lawyer for trade, came to Congress to promote climate solutions, but “it’s interesting because it’s California.”
“The people who created the environmental laws of the 1970s met the challenges of that time,” Peters said in January. “Time is our enemy. …The longer we wait, the more devastating fires will occur, and I don’t think the environmental groups have caught up with it.”
Previous versions of the bill passed the House but were not voted in the Senate. Westerman and Peters hoped they could reintroduce it in January with La Fires heels and get the attention of their colleagues.
“The great thing about this bill is that it allows us to do something outside of disaster,” Westerman said at the time. “This is to prevent future disasters.”
California leaders — including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Cal Fire Chief Joe Tyler — praised the Senate version of the bill. Newsom pointed to his own efforts to temporarily lift state restrictions in order to accelerate reconstruction in the wake of LA Fires.
“The amendments to our forest law are a step forward built on this advancement, allowing good projects to happen faster on federal lands,” Newsom said in a statement.
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