On Wednesday, the secretary of the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, renewed his call for legislation freeing disaster aid to pay for the most destructive and expensive wildfires, reducing the strain on the Forest Service.
“We’re at a tipping point and it’s time for Congress to provide more certainty in the Forest Service budget,” Tom Vilsack said in a phone interview Wednesday with the Yakima Herald-Republic.
“If we keep re-directing the budget, we’re not going to be able to do that work that makes our forest more resilient. We won’t be taking care of our natural treasure for the next generations,” he said.
The bill would end the practice of forcing the Forest Service and other federal firefighting agencies to take money from their other programs to cover the difference. Instead, the federal disaster funding account, which is typically used for hurricanes and earthquakes, would be tapped to pay firefighting costs that exceed 70 percent of the 10-year average and leave each agency’s budget intact.
Vilsack said these fires should be considered natural disasters because they are often sparked by lightning and driven by hot, dry winds.
The bill, known as the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, has bipartisan support in the House and the Senate, but neither has voted on it yet.
U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, and Washington’s nine other representatives have signed on to support the House version of the bill, while Sen. Maria Cantwell is a co-sponsor of the Senate bill.
The idea behind the bill is that most wildfires are relatively affordable, but a few catastrophic, expensive fires can easily break budgets.
In the last 20 years, firefighting costs rose from just 16 percent of the Forest Service’s budget to more than half. A new report released Wednesday by the Forest Service estimates that in 10 years those costs will take up two-thirds of the agency’s entire budget.
In 2012, the Forest Service’s 10-year average of suppression costs was $1 billion. By 2026, it’s expected to be $1.8 billion, leaving the agency with $700 million less for other work, according to the report.
A broad coalition is backing the bill, including environmental groups and the timber industry.
“We’re going to fight these fires and pay for them one way or another, but this sets up a more rational way of funding that doesn’t impact other programs,” said Cathy Baker, governmental relations director for The Nature Conservancy in Washington. “We’re really pleased with the strong bipartisan support for solving this. They just haven’t gotten there yet.”
Vilsack said that by maintaining the current funding system, Congress is “essentially putting the security of people and property at risk.”
On Wednesday, state and federal firefighters were battling growing fires in difficult terrain along Lake Chelan, in dense timber in the northeast corner of the state, and a fast-moving grass fire in the Columbia Gorge on Tuesday night that threatened hundreds of homes.
There’s not yet an estimate for this year’s firefighting costs, but last summer’s record-breaking fire season illustrates the budget problems that mega-fires create.
In 2014, 98 large wildfires in Washington and Oregon burned 1.3 million acres and cost $461 million to fight. The largest was $78 million, 400-square mile Carlton Complex fire in north-central Washington.
That’s up from an average of 640,000 acres and $165 million in costs the previous four years, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center. Its reports include costs to state and federal firefighting agencies.
Personnel, equipment and supply costs can add up fast. In 2014, almost $2 million worth of flame retardant was dropped on fires in Oregon and Washington, at more than $5,000 per load.
Fire severity and spending are on the rise because of climate change, the unhealthy conditions of forests from insect damage and drought, and growing numbers of people moving into fire-prone forests, Vilsack said.
More than 70,000 communities across the country are currently at risk to wildfires. Fewer than 2 percent of these communities have adopted strategies to resist fires, such as metal roofing and clearing space around homes, said Ray Rasker, who specializes in wildfire economics for Headwaters Economics, a Bozeman, Mont.-based nonprofit group that researches community development and land management issues.
“Firefighters are dying for this private property,” Rasker said. “We’re sending young men and women to defend homes the taxpayers are protecting. One of the solutions is better land-use planning.”
Rasker said if the Forest Service can solve its fire budget problem, the agency could use some money to help adjacent communities become more resistant to wildfires resulting in significant savings in the long run.
But as fire costs have grown, there’s less money and personnel for anything else.
Since 1998, the Forest Service has lost 39 percent of its employees assigned to land management, restoration and recreation, while it had to more than double its hiring of firefighting personnel, according to the report.
Fire-prone forests, like those in Eastern Washington, are seeing more severe wildfires and higher costs — and the toll is hitting federal lands across the country. Road work, facilities maintenance, habitat work and recreational services all have been cut between 15 and 68 percent.
On the east slopes of the Cascades, there’s a desperate need for restoration work to thin out forests — improving health of remaining trees and reducing future fire severity — but right now there’s not enough money to do the work, Vilsack said.
“The Forest Service is interested in doing more work to make the forests healthy and more resilient, and there are mills across the country that would be appreciative of that effect. But we can’t do it without the budget or the workforce,” Vilsack said. “The sad reality is, the less of that work we do, the greater the fire costs will be.”
Other legislation aims to address forest health needs by requiring more logging and restoration, but Vilsack said those proposals just won’t work until the budget problems are solved and the agency can put more emphasis on managing its lands.
“If this continues, the Forest Service is just going to be a massive fire department,” he said.
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