Washington – Months after forest fires ravaged the County of Los Angeles, the Senator of California, Alex Padilla, hopes that his bill to revise forest management and prevent forest fires could be the first bipartite measure for President Trump to sign.
“I do not think that nothing can completely prevent forest fires, but through this work, if we can prevent another community from living the sorrow felt by the families of Santa Rosa or in Paradis or in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, then this effort would have worth it,” said Padilla on Thursday.
Padilla, who presides over the Caucus of the Senate Wildfire, joined a bipartite group of senators from the West – Sens. John Curtis (Rutah), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) And Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.)-To present the Fix Our Forests Act, which reflects a bipartite measure of the same name as the Chamber succeeded in January.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the law of fixing our forests will inaugurate the way in which the federal government manages its land – which constitutes 45% of the uninhabited land and subject to forest fires in California, according to the Congressal Research Service. It would create an intelligence center on forest fires to centralize federal management, would require the evaluations of Fireh areas and rationalize how communities reduce their risk of forest fire. It would also increase research on forest fire attenuation technologies and change certain forest treatments.
Although the house has managed to pass the measure, it was not completely welcome among the environmental groups. Dozens have written a letter denouncing the measurement of the return protection of endangered species and by eliminating responsibility against the “extractive industries”.
“To interrupt him the protections of wildlife and community comments on the management of our public lands have never made the forests healthier or reduced the risk of forest, and that will not change with this legislation,” Ashley Nunes, specialist in public land policies at the Center for Biological Diversity, said on Thursday. “Not a single community will no longer be sure of forest fires if it becomes law.”
Padilla argued that his bill had improved on the problems subject to these groups, in particular by adding a provision for prescribed burns, “relying on the expertise and experience of the Amerindian tribes which implement fires prescribed for generations”.
The Senate version has also redefined projects eligible for subsidies, “to ensure that the LA would be eligible at the moment,” said Matt Weiner, director general and founder of the megafire Action plea organization, who was pressure for the legislation.
“I think it is quite crazy, frankly, that we are about to go to the president’s office here a bill he could sign that would be bipartite and one of the most complete rewritings of federal forest policy for decades,” said Weiner. “In the middle of all chaos, there is an opportunity to do something really significant here in a bipartite way.”
The legislation began with a plane conversation between the Democratic representative Scott Peters of San Diego and his republican colleague Bruce Westerman of Arkansas. The two traveled together on an international congress trip, when Westerman sat next to Peters and asked if he could tell him a story about California’s Sequoias.
“He couldn’t escape,” said Westerman laughing. As an approved forest, Westerman wanted to revise the federal forest management. Peters, an environment lawyer by the trade that came to the congress to push climatic solutions, was “interested because it is California”.
“The inhabitants of the 1970s who developed our environmental laws are raising the challenges of these days,” said Peters in January. “Time is our enemy. … The more we expect, the more we have these catastrophic fires. And I just think that environmental groups have not caught up with some of them.”
A previous version of the bill adopted the Chamber but was not taken for a vote in the Senate. Westerman and Peters reintroduced it in January on the heels of Los Angeles fires, hoping that they could draw the attention of their colleagues.
“The great thing about this bill is that we can do something outside the disaster,” said Westerman at the time. “It is a question of preventing future disasters.”
California leaders – including Governor Gavin Newsom and CAL firefighters Joe Tyler – applauded the Senate of the bill. Newsom highlighted its own efforts by temporarily raising state regulations to accelerate reconstruction as a result of Los Angeles fires.
“The Fix Our Forest Act is a step forward which will be based on this progress – allowing the right projects to occur more quickly on federal land,” said Newsom in a statement.
California Daily Newspapers
