[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
RECOVERING FROM THE FIRES: RESTORING AND PROTECTING COMMUNITIES,
WATER, WILDLIFE AND FORESTS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
=======================================================================
OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND
FOREST HEALTH
of the
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
Friday, December 5, 2003, in Lake Arrowhead, California
__________
Serial No. 108-80
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
house
or
Committee address: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov
______
90-767 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 2003
____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800
Fax: (202) 512�092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402�090001
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
RICHARD W. POMBO, California, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia, Ranking Democrat Member
Don Young, Alaska Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
W.J. ``Billy'' Tauzin, Louisiana Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American
Jim Saxton, New Jersey Samoa
Elton Gallegly, California Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas
Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey
Ken Calvert, California Calvin M. Dooley, California
Scott McInnis, Colorado Donna M. Christensen, Virgin
Barbara Cubin, Wyoming Islands
George Radanovich, California Ron Kind, Wisconsin
Walter B. Jones, Jr., North Jay Inslee, Washington
Carolina Grace F. Napolitano, California
Chris Cannon, Utah Tom Udall, New Mexico
John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania Mark Udall, Colorado
Jim Gibbons, Nevada, Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico
Vice Chairman Brad Carson, Oklahoma
Mark E. Souder, Indiana Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Greg Walden, Oregon Dennis A. Cardoza, California
Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam
J.D. Hayworth, Arizona George Miller, California
Tom Osborne, Nebraska Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts
Jeff Flake, Arizona Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
Dennis R. Rehberg, Montana Ciro D. Rodriguez, Texas
Rick Renzi, Arizona Joe Baca, California
Tom Cole, Oklahoma Betty McCollum, Minnesota
Stevan Pearce, New Mexico
Rob Bishop, Utah
Devin Nunes, California
Randy Neugebauer, Texas
Steven J. Ding, Chief of Staff
Lisa Pittman, Chief Counsel
James H. Zoia, Democrat Staff Director
Jeffrey P. Petrich, Democrat Chief Counsel
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND FOREST HEALTH
SCOTT McINNIS, Colorado, Chairman
JAY INSLEE, Washington, Ranking Democrat Member
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
Walter B. Jones, Jr., North Tom Udall, New Mexico
Carolina Mark Udall, Colorado
John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico
Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado Brad Carson, Oklahoma
J.D. Hayworth, Arizona Betty McCollum, Minnesota
Jeff Flake, Arizona VACANCY
Dennis R. Rehberg, Montana VACANCY
Rick Renzi, Arizona Nick J. Rahall II, West Virginia,
Stevan Pearce, New Mexico ex officio
Richard W. Pombo, California, ex
officio
------
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on Friday, December 5, 2003......................... 1
Statement of Members:
Baca, Hon. Joe, a Representative in Congress from the State
of California.............................................. 5
Bono, Hon. Mary, a Representative in Congress from the State
of California.............................................. 8
Calvert, Hon. Ken, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California........................................ 6
Lewis, Hon. Jerry, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California........................................ 4
Pombo, Hon. Richard W., a Representative in Congress from the
State of California........................................ 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Radanovich, Hon. George P., a Representative in Congress from
the State of California.................................... 7
Walden, Hon. Greg, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Oregon............................................ 7
Statement of Witnesses:
Barrett, Alan L., Council Member, Viejas Band of Kumeyaay
Indians.................................................... 65
Prepared statement of.................................... 67
Barry, Chips, Director, Denver Water Department.............. 36
Prepared statement of.................................... 40
Bonnicksen, Thomas, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Forest
Science, Texas A&M University.............................. 56
Prepared statement of.................................... 59
Bosworth, Dale, Chief, Forest Service, U.S. Department of
Agriculture................................................ 9
Prepared statement of.................................... 12
Brierty, Peter, Fire Marshal, County of San Bernardino....... 42
Prepared statement of.................................... 45
Chrisman, Hon. Mike, Secretary-Designate, California
Resources Agency........................................... 15
Prepared statement of.................................... 18
Grindstaff, P. Joseph, General Manager, Santa Ana Watershed
Project Authority.......................................... 75
Prepared statement of.................................... 76
Kinsinger, Anne, Regional Biologist, Western Region, U.S.
Geological Survey.......................................... 21
Prepared statement of.................................... 22
Nenna, Dave, Tribal Administrator, Tule River Tribe.......... 84
Stephens, Scott, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Fire Science,
Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management,
University of California, Berkeley......................... 68
Prepared statement of.................................... 71
Additional materials supplied:
Dreier, Hon. David, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, Statement submitted for the record.... 92
Issa, Hon. Darrell, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, Statement submitted for the record.... 93
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON RECOVERING FROM THE FIRES: RESTORING AND
PROTECTING COMMUNITIES, WATER, WILDLIFE AND FORESTS IN SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
----------
Friday, December 5, 2003
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health
Committee on Resources
Lake Arrowhead, California
----------
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 11:13 a.m., in
the Lake Arrowhead Resort Ballroom, Lake Arrowhead, California,
Hon. Richard Pombo [Chairman of the Committee on Resources]
presiding.
Present: Representatives Pombo, Calvert, Walden, Bono,
Lewis, Radanovich and Baca.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. RICHARD W. POMBO, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. Pombo. The Committee is meeting today to hear testimony
on Recovering from the Fires: Restoring and Protecting
Communities, Water, Wildlife and Forests in Southern
California.
We all know the horrible details of last summer's fires
here in southern California. The statistics speak for
themselves--26 people killed, 3,361 homes destroyed and 739,000
acres burned. But it would be a terrible mistake to think that
the damage is over now that the fires are out when in fact some
of the most severe environmental consequences may well occur in
the coming months and years. The tremendous loss of vegetation
and the cooking of soils have exposed the hills to erosion,
water runoff may increase and sediments may move downstream and
damage houses or fill reservoirs putting endangered species and
community water supplies at heightened risk.
We have learned from past fires in other states that the
costs associated with post-fire rehabilitation and cleanup can
be enormous and we have learned that minimizing these costs
requires speedy assessment and action, stabilizing soils and
reducing runoff with straw bundles, contour-felled trees, grass
seeding, tree planting, enlarging and armoring culverts,
building rock barriers and ditches and a number of other
treatments.
Decisions concerning what techniques to apply, if any,
depend on the characteristics and conditions of each particular
site and need to be made by the specialists of the burned area
emergency rehabilitation teams. We will learn today the status
of those teams and their activities, and in particular, the
Committee will want to ensure that the necessary resources--
financial, technical and human--are available and being
employed effectively and efficiently.
In our hearing last September, in this very room, we heard
that catastrophic fire in this area was not a question of if,
but a question of when. This predictive reality has been known
by forest scientists for years, if not decades. Inaction in the
face of that reality has been tragic. Further inaction will be
inexcusable. The conditions that have led to so many of the
nation's uncontrollable fires in recent years exists just
outside this building--over-dense forests of dead and dying
trees and excessive accumulation of brush and woody debris are
a tinderbox waiting for a spark.
Two days ago, the President signed the Health Forests
Restoration Act into law. Congressman Walden, one of the
authors of the bill, and I have worked with the forestry
community for years to develop and pass this important
legislation and are now poised to make sure that it is
implemented quickly and correctly. It has provisions that will
allow communities to have more say in the management of
surrounding forests and will speed up the decisionmaking
process so that hazardous materials can be removed faster with
less red tape and fewer appeals and lawsuits.
While this landmark legislation will not solve all forestry
problems, it is the first pro-forestry bill to be signed into
law in decades and will make a difference in the management of
our forests. I expect our Federal land managers to employ it
immediately on the forests in this area and am anxious to hear
their plans for doing so.
With the Health Forests Restoration Act becoming law, I
believe that we have finally turned the corner away from the
benign neglect of our forests to a thoughtful and scientific
management, but I am also very much aware that work is left to
be done. This law will need to be refined as we learn its
inadequacies while other laws such as the Endangered Species
Act still need to be addressed. Bringing communities back into
the fold is an important first step. Now we must ensure that
on-the-ground restoration begins in earnest and on a broad
scale.
To begin to address these important issues, I would like to
start today by thanking our witnesses and those in the audience
for joining us. I would also like to extend my condolences to
the families of those who lost their lives as a result of the
wildfires and to thank all of the firefighters who risked their
lives to protect homes and communities. I would also like to
extent my thanks to the Chairman of San Bernardino County Board
of Supervisors, Dennis Hansberger, for hosting us once again.
Finally, I would like to thank the other members of Congress
for attending today. In particular, Representative Lewis, for
having us back in his district and for helping secure millions
of dollars of appropriations in support of hazardous fuel
reduction projects. His direct involvement put California at
the front of the line for receiving these Federal funds. I look
forward to his continued support and to working with all of you
on this important matter.
I would like to recognize Mr. Lewis first for any comments
he may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pombo follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Richard Pombo, Chairman,
Committee on Resources
We all know the horrible details of last summer's fires here in
Southern California; the statistics speak for themselves: 26 people
killed, 3,361 homes destroyed, and 739,000 acres burned. But it would
be a terrible mistake to think that the damage is over now that the
fires are out, when, in fact, some of the most severe environmental
consequences may well occur in the coming months and years. The
tremendous loss of vegetation and the cooking of soils have exposed the
hills to erosion; water runoff may increase and cause flooding;
sediments may move downstream and damage houses or fill reservoirs,
putting endangered species and community water supplies at heightened
risk.
We've learned from past fires in other states that the costs
associated with post-fire rehabilitation and clean-up can be enormous,
and we've learned that minimizing these costs requires speedy
assessment and action; stabilizing soils and reducing runoff with straw
bundles, contour-felled trees, grass seeding, tree planting, enlarging
and armoring culverts, building rock barriers and ditches, and a number
of other treatments.
Decisions concerning what techniques to apply, if any, depend on
the characteristics and conditions of each particular site and need to
be made by the specialists of the Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation
teams. We'll learn today the status of those teams and their activities
and, in particular, the Committee will want to insure that the
necessary resources--financial, technical and human--are available and
being employed effectively and efficiently.
In our hearing last September, in this very room, we heard that
catastrophic fire in this area was not a question of if, but a question
of when. This predictive reality has been known by forest scientists
for years, if not decades. Inaction in the face of that reality has
been tragic; further inaction will be inexcusable. The conditions that
have led to so many of the nation's uncontrollable fires in recent
years exist just outside this building; over-dense forests of dead and
dying trees, and excessive accumulations of brush and woody debris are
a tinderbox waiting for a spark.
Two days ago the President signed the Healthy Forests Restoration
Act into law. Congressman Walden, one of the authors of the bill, and I
have worked with the forestry community for years to develop and pass
this important legislation and are now poised to make sure that it is
implemented quickly and correctly. It has provisions that will allow
communities to have more say in the management of surrounding forests
and will speed up decisionmaking processes so that hazardous fuels can
be removed faster with less red tape and fewer appeals and lawsuits.
While this landmark legislation will not solve all forestry problems,
it is the first pro-forestry bill to be signed into law in decades and
will make a difference in the management of our forests. I expect our
federal land managers to employ it immediately on the forests in this
area and am anxious to hear their plans for doing so.
With the Healthy Forests Restoration Act becoming law, I believe
that we have finally turned the corner away from the benign neglect of
our forests towards thoughtful and scientific management, but I am also
very aware that much work is left to be done; this law will need to be
refined as we learn it's inadequacies, while other laws, such as the
Endangered Species Act, still need to be addressed. Bringing
communities back into the fold is an important first step, now we must
insure that on-the-ground restoration begins in earnest and on a broad
scale.
To begin to address these important issues, I would like to start
today by thanking our witnesses and those in the audience for joining
us. I would also like to extend my condolences to the families of those
who lost their lives as a result of the wildfires, and thank all the
firefighters who risk their lives to protect homes and communities. I'd
also like to extend my thanks to the Chairman of the San Bernardino
City Board of Supervisors, Dennis Hansberger, for hosting us once
again. Finally, I'd like to thank the other members of Congress for
attending today, in particular, Representative Lewis for having us back
to his district and for helping secure millions of dollars of
appropriations in support of hazardous fuels reduction projects. His
direct involvement put California at the front of the line for
receiving these federal funds. I look forward to his continued support
and to working with all of you on these important issues.
______
STATEMENT OF JERRY LEWIS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. Lewis. First, thank you very much, Chairman Pombo, for
bringing the Committee here and providing this opportunity for
the community to begin to understand the response of the
Congress to this tragedy. I would like to say, Mr. Chairman,
you were here on September 22, just weeks before a tragedy
struck, but we all knew in the offing was not just this
challenge but the reality of a potential disaster. We have
experienced a significant piece of that disaster, but I know
that your Committee members flew by helicopter over the
mountains just this morning to look one more time, first at the
damage, but the remainder only somewhere at a maximum 10
percent, but more likely five percent of the bark beetle
infested trees were impacted by this fire, which means that
lightning strike could lead to an inferno tomorrow. The
challenge is still very, very much ahead of us. And I do not
know how we are going to go about eliminating all of those
millions of dead trees, but we must do that and it is going to
take years and millions and millions of dollars as well as
effort and man-hour support and the like.
Mr. Chairman, as we came in this morning, I noticed some
protesters out front with signs who would suggest that maybe we
should not cut trees, that maybe there is some way to do this
by waving a magic wand. I absolutely feel strongly for those
who are concerned about our environment. You know of my past
involvement in air quality questions in California myself. I
hold no second spot in my mind's eye to this interest. But to
have no habitat at all is not acceptable. Today, in my forest,
we have eliminated the habitat in the form of tens of thousands
of acres of species that we are very concerned about because of
a lack of cooperative venture. And perhaps here, starting
today, Mr. Chairman, we may have the opportunity to begin a
base group of people who will start at ground zero and work
hand in hand to try to figure out how you preserve the
environment but restore our forests and indeed prevent this
tragedy from ever striking this region again, once we have come
together to find the solutions necessary.
So thank you very much for being here. I might mention, Mr.
Chairman, you mentioned dollars. We were successful in getting
a commitment and appropriation of $500 million in the recent
supplemental to respond to this challenge. About half of that
money has been redirected to the Forest Service so that
services can be delivered more rapidly and services that are
needed immediately can begin to take place. The Committee, Mr.
Chairman, the Conference Committee, said before God and
everybody that day that that was only a down-payment. And so
indeed, the Federal government is going to be at the plate. But
all of us are going to have to share in this at the local
community, the fire service agencies, the State of California,
the County of San Bernardino--we are all in this together.
So thank you very much for your courtesy and for being with
us.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you. Mr. Baca.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOE BACA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. Baca. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. First of all,
I want to thank you and I do not know if I was put on the left
side because I am the Democrat and everybody else is on the
right side, but I really want to thank you and welcome you to
our district. We are here to talk about the tragedy that
recently changed our lives. And it really has changed our
lives. As Congressman Lewis indicated, I believe it is a
volcano that is ready to explode at any time if we do not deal
with the wildfires in the area that destroyed many of our homes
and businesses and devastated our entire community.
As indicated, nearly 740,000 acres were burned, over 3,360
homes were destroyed and 26 people lost their lives. To me,
when you lose one life, you have lost too many lives. At one
point, nearly 16,000 firefighters risked their safety to help
save our forest and protect our lives. We owe a great gratitude
to a lot of the firefighters.
If I may have your permission, I would like to have every
firefighter that is here from the Forest Service or other,
could you please stand and let us give them a round of
applause.
[Applause.]
Mr. Baca. These are the men and women really who
courageously saved a lot of what could have happened, it could
have been worse.
On Wednesday, President Bush signed the Healthy Forest
Restoration Act. I have been consistent in supporting the
President in this initiative, I am happy that both houses voted
on this legislation, though some may see it as a Monday
quarterbacking since we were warned for years that this was
going to happen. I supported this bill three different times, I
supported it in Committee and I supported it on the Floor. Many
of us knew that the dead trees left out there were simply
matches waiting to be ignited or exploding as volcanoes. I am
unhappy that it took a devastating fire like this to pass this
law, but now hopefully we have the law in place to make sure
that something like this never happens again and I think that
is what we are here to talk about, is to look at how we may
prevent further damage to our area.
I commend both Chairman Pombo and Congressman McInnis for
sending the legislation to the President's desk. But now the
fires are over and we need to focus on recovery.
Water quality has always been a major problem in my
district. We have consistently had to fight perchlorate
contamination and drought. The families in my district have
been conserving water for months and many of them are scared to
give their babies water from the tap because of the
perchlorate. So this is something that also affects us. And now
with the fires, they have gotten worse. We are at the risk of
ashes and debris creeping in the water supplies in some places
like soil which has been scorched that is stopping water from
soaking into the ground that is going to have a huge impact on
Rialto and the Colden water basin.
I am also concerned about the impact that wildfires have
had on Native American tribes in our area, 10 tribes in
southern California have suffered damages from the wildfires--
San Pasquale, Dana Mission Indians lost 67 acres of the 68
homes. San Manuel lost 98 percent of its vegetation because of
the wildfires.
I hope today we will discuss what Congress can do to help
these tribes as part of the community to bounce back from the
destruction.
I welcome my colleagues from the Inland Empire and I thank
the witnesses for being here today and I look forward to
hearing answers to some of the questions and I look forward to
working in a bipartisan way to solve this problem because we
have all got to come together, this is not a Democratic issue,
this is not a Republican issue, this is not an Independent
issue, but this is an issue that impacts all of us. And
together we can make a difference and we look forward to
solving these problems and hopefully we can prevent further
damages to our areas and really look at the beautification,
because as we flew over the area it was nice to see the beauty
of the forests the way it is in some of the areas where it has
not been devastated but in some of the areas when you look at
it, it was like looking at a dinosaur, empty, shrubs in the
area, it does not look pretty.
We are looking forward to restoring that. And when we look
at this immediate area, we look at the corridor of I-15 that
runs right through this area. What additional damage could have
been done to as well because this is where nuclear waste and
other transfers go from here to Nevada, through that area. Can
you imagine if our firefighters and others had not done what
they had done and if at that time there was any transfer of
anything, what it could have done to this immediate area? It is
not only this area but the effects it could have had in our
whole region.
I thank you and I look forward to hearing from the
witnesses. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you. Mr. Calvert.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. KEN CALVERT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. Calvert Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank
you for having this hearing and I certainly want to thank
Congressman Lewis for hosting us here in his Congressional
District. I will keep my remarks extremely brief.
I know we want to get to our panels. But I as well as all
of us want to thank the courageous firefighters and the first
responders. What a fantastic evacuation in the face of a
disaster, it could have been a lot worse, as we said, but
people were successfully able to get off the mountain. This
could have been much worse.
I certainly want to thank you for your efforts on the
healthy forest initiative, I think that is a step forward. The
work that needs to be done is enormous. As a native of southern
California, we have seen these fires which have been a part of
our life here in California, but of late, they have become more
often and more fierce. So hopefully, with this legislation, we
can take positive proactive steps to prevent this from
happening.
Certainly I am concerned about the secondary effects of
this. Chairing the Water Subcommittee and looking at the
precious resource that we have here which is obviously very
scarce, as Mr. Baca indicates, we are very concerned about
water quality and the effects off mountain that are going to
happen because of flood problems and water quality issues. So
that will be of interest also.
But again, thank you for this hearing and look forwards to
listening to these panels today. Thank you.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Radanovich.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. GEORGE RADANOVICH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this
hearing today, and to you, Jerry, for hosting it.
I come from the Yosemite part of California and 10 years
ago, about 10 or 12 years ago, experienced bark beetle
devastation, nothing to what I have seen on the helicopter tour
around here. This is amazing. But I think that we have got a
valuable tool in the healthy forest initiative because my
experience has been when there was the desire to go in and
harvest these trees, that the previous Administration would
stall in their efforts to go harvest them and there were also
lawsuits filed to block the harvesting of this kind of timber
until it sat dead in the forest for so long that it was no
longer economically viable.
I am looking forward to a good discussion with this panel
and others about how that might be avoided this time around,
because that is an awful fire danger out there.
I look forward to the testimony and appreciate the hearing
being here.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Walden.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. GREG WALDEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF OREGON
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the only non-
Californian here on the panel, I appreciate the opportunity to
come back. I was here with you September 22. I want to thank
Congressman Lewis and you for having this hearing on this very
important issue. I think we learned on September 22 what to
anticipate in case of fire. We have seen that come into
reality.
What we have to do now is evaluate what happens after a
fire, because sometimes the consequences are even worse after a
fire than before, when you begin to look at water quality
issues, habitat issues, flood issues, sediment issues as well
as setting up for the next monster fire. That I think is
probably my biggest concern, is what do we do now after a fire.
The smoke has cleared, the problem may have gotten worse, not
better. As I understand it, there is a very small percentage of
the diseased trees that actually burned, something less than 10
percent, which means the problem we so identified last fall in
September remains and with the other stresses now in the
forest, the other burn material that is out there, the fire
danger may actually be greater and now you also face the
terrible environmental potential of mudslides, sediment and
other pollution.
So, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your great leadership on
this. We saw flying up today the result of a no-action
alternative. A no-action alternative means you do not do
anything, and for many years, many people thought doing nothing
in the forest might be the best thing for the forest. Most of
us recognize that was not true. We have a picture now in our
minds of the effect of no-action alternatives--this enormous
fire, monster fire, catastrophic damage. We cannot just walk
away from these forests, these chaparral areas, and expect them
to survive unless you want monster fire and great destruction
and devastation. And I for one do not want that.
So, Mr. Chairman, thank you for this. I look forward to our
witnesses and I look forward to future legislative initiatives
to do post-fire what we are now doing with the Healthy Forest
Restoration Act for pre-fire activity.
Mr. Pombo. Ms. Bono.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. MARY BONO, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Ms. Bono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be
here with all of you. I do not sit on the Resources Committee,
I am on the Energy and Commerce Committee, but I represent an
area that is very similar to this area and that would be
Idyllwild, and I know that the photos we are seeing today and
much of the discussion will not be focused on Idyllwild, but I
would like to remind all of you to think of Idyllwild as we
make this discussion.
I would also like to thank Chairman Lewis, who we have
worked together so closely on this issue. We flew the area a
year ago at least and looked for some solutions and ideas that
were really out-of-the-box type of thinking and I commend the
Chairman--even though he called Chairman Pombo, Chairman Bono--
he probably does not know he did that, but I appreciate the
raise in stature over there.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Bono. It is really Jerry's leadership that has been
unbelievable as always.
This area, Congressman Lewis, has been near and dear to my
heart for my entire life. I grew up in southern California and
my first ski run was actually at what used to be called
Goldmine, for all of you old timers up here, you remember
Goldmine, it was a long time ago, and I really believe the
forests are such a critical and essential part of southern
California lifestyle and would hate to think of them being gone
1 day, but that reality is here.
Like Congressman Calvert said, I would also like to commend
the community for evacuating 58,000 people without a single
incident is really something that is amazing to have witnessed,
but knowing that that came from within the community as we face
this crisis here and in Idyllwild, people have been addressing
what can be done from the community's point of view and things
like evacuation routes were high on the priority list and you
were quite successful at that. And like Congressman Calvert
said, I applaud you for that.
But the different twist for me, I am in sort of the way of
thinking here that we are still waiting for the other shoe to
drop. We had no catastrophic fires over in Idyllwild, but we
are still waiting, as are all of you up here. We are waiting
for the other shoe to drop. My questions, truly for
policymakers in Washington as well as in Sacramento, are how
are we best equipped to deal with this, and Congressman Lewis
and I sat with FEMA and asked them for their help a long time
ago and tried to press the case that this was a crisis that had
already occurred and that FEMA needed to come in and help with
this. Unfortunately, on the day of October 24, FEMA came out
and said they would not be able to help us and I was a little
bit frustrated by the timing, but southern California was
ablaze and that FEMA made that statement.
The truth of the matter really is we do need to discuss the
roles that both FEMA and OES play in this situation, because we
do not want to dilute their responsibilities as they are faced
with homeland security and other pressing issues, but how can
we best address removing these trees and getting the job done.
And I think that is a discussion that we should have perhaps
today and certainly back in Washington and Sacramento.
I would also like to add, as we are frustrated perhaps by
protesters, I would like to say that I believe multiple voices
can be added to this debate. We had very successful legislation
that we wrote in the previously 44th District of California
when we established the Santa Rosa/San Jacinto National
Monument, when we brought together all interested parties--the
environmental community sat down with our builders and we came
up with wonderful legislation that to this day everybody is
very happy with. And I believe if we address this in the same
spirit where we come together and have discussions and truly do
what is best to move this forward, we can be quite successful
and I hope we use the National Monument Act as an example of
that spirit.
So I want to again thank you, Mr. Chairman Pombo, for
having me here today. Thank you and I yield back.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you. I would like to introduce our first
panel of witnesses. We have Chief of the Forest Service Dale
Bosworth who is accompanied by Mr. Jack Blackwell and Mr. Gene
Zimmerman; the Honorable Mike Chrisman, Secretary-Designate,
California Resource Agency; and Ms. Anne Kinsinger, Regional
Biologist, Western Region, USGS, accompanied by Mr. Jon Keely,
Research Scientist, Western Ecological Research Center.
Before we begin, I would like to ask you to stand. It is
customary in the Resources Committee to swear in all of our
witnesses, so if you would stand and raise your right hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Pombo. Let the record show they answered in the
affirmative.
Let me remind the witnesses that under Committee rules, you
must limit your oral statements to five minutes, but your
entire written testimony will appear in the record.
I now recognize Chief Bosworth for his statement.
STATEMENT OF DALE BOSWORTH, CHIEF, U.S. FOREST SERVICE,
ACCOMPANIED BY JACK BLACKWELL, REGIONAL FORESTER, PACIFIC SW
REGION, U.S. FOREST SERVICE and GENE ZIMMERMAN, FOREST
SUPERVISOR, U.S. FOREST SERVICE
Mr. Bosworth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I really
appreciate the invitation to be here today and to talk about
some of the efforts that we have underway for restoring and
protecting the natural resources that were affected by these
devastating fires.
I also want to thank you for your leadership in helping to
get us the Healthy Forest Restoration Act that was signed into
law, as you said, on Wednesday, and thank the rest of the
members of the Committee for that help too. It is going to make
a big difference. It was a very good day for the Forest Service
last Wednesday when the President signed that. So thank you for
that.
Now as we concentrate our efforts on some of these National
Forest System lands in trying to do this restoration work, I
want to also make sure that we all recognize that there were
some equally devastating effects of these fires on some of the
local people and local communities and we just feel very bad
for those people and we want to do all the things that we can
in the Forest Service to try to help them.
My statement will focus on the work of my agency, but
again, we all know that there has been a tremendous amount and
continues to be a tremendous amount of cooperation among all
agencies. And as I say, while my statement focuses on the
Forest Service, there is lots of other things going on that we
recognize. Cooperation began long before the fires and I am
very proud of Forest Supervisor Gene Zimmerman here, and his
folks for the role that they played in helping the communities
become prepared for this situation long before it happened. And
I also think it is incredible that 58,000 people were evacuated
from the mountain, some of them in the middle of the night
without electricity, and that there were no incidents. And that
is because of good planning and good leadership. And all the
people involved in that should feel very proud as an example
for the rest of the country.
There are many examples of heroic work that took place
during these fires. They saved homes, they saved lives. But you
know, I do not think we ought to be putting our firefighters in
a situation where they have to be heroes day after day after
day. There is a better way. And that way is restoring these
fire dependent ecosystems to a healthy condition.
Our focus at the moment is going to be on restoring and
protecting the natural resources after these fires. The work
that we are doing here I think may be the most challenging
stabilization effort that we have ever been involved in in the
Forest Service. We have our very best expertise here available
to help, to do what they can.
The chaparral areas where most of the fire occurred is
different than the forest types and they require different
treatments for both the rehabilitation as well as for risk
reduction. So we have always got to be careful that we do not
try to think of a one size fits all solution to any of these
problems, but we look at the habitat type and the forest types
that we are trying to deal with in each area.
The risk remains high in these bark beetle killed areas as
we saw on our helicopter trip, because there is so much of that
that remains out there and so many more trees that continue to
die.
Before these fires were controlled though, while they were
still burning, we had teams that were onsite that were
evaluating and assessing the work that needed to be done in
terms of rehabilitation and restoration. We activated four
large burned area emergency rehabilitation teams, we call them
BAER teams. These BAER teams assess and they map the damage
that has been caused by these fires and they design and
implement rehabilitation plans to help protect life and
property and reduce further damage from these fires.
As a result of the fires, ground cover has been burned
away, exposing the soil to erosion hazards. This increased
hazard exposes homes then that may not have previously been in
the pathway of floods or susceptible to flood damage, but may
be now. We are stabilizing slopes by spreading thousands of
tons of straw mulch, we are digging catchment basins to slow
down water, reshaping roads. We are clearing ditches,
installing culverts to ensure adequate drainage systems. As you
know, more water will run off now because we do not have the
ground cover to catch it and so the existing culverts may not
be large enough to carry that water, so we need to replace them
with larger culverts.
To date, we have approved $9 million toward this effort and
we have spent over $2.5 million at this point. Some examples of
places that we are doing work--Silverwood Lake is a big
concern, it is a major supplier of drinking water to over 12
million people, if I understand that correctly. Much of the
forest around the lake was burned in the old fire. We are
placing rice straw on hundreds of acres of burned areas there
to slow or reduce the ash and the debris movement to the lake.
The Sespe Oil Fields on the Los Padres National Forest is
another area where we are concerned. Floods or debris could cut
oil and gas transmission lines, and the road system there
provides access to feed California condors by the Fish and
Wildlife Service on a daily basis. We are stabilizing the road
system to reduce the risk to the pipeline and also to assure
access to these condors.
So this BAER work is ongoing. We expect to be done
generally by mid-December.
I want to say something about the Forest Service's Research
and Development Branch. We have what I believe is the best
natural resource, and it is the largest natural resource
research and development organization in the world. This group
is bringing their expertise to southern California to aid in
the recovery efforts by assisting the BAER teams in assessing
the situation and providing advice. The Pacific Southwest
Research Station has laboratories all over California is one of
the best in the country. They have some of the brightest
scientists there that are here to help and they will do
everything they can.
We are also addressing issues of advanced technologies for
fire resistant housing, for biomass removal and techniques that
homeowners can implement to reduce their risk of wildland fire
damage.
There will also be some things that our scientists are
doing to try to make sure that we are designing follow up
studies so that we can fill in the gaps of knowledge in the
science of fire recovery, so we can learn from what happens and
what takes place from these efforts.
I do want to point out that emergency stabilization, this
BAER work, is focused on short-term actions--short-term
actions--to get burned areas through one or two seasons. This
work is funded through our fire suppression funds because it is
emergency. Now more rehabilitation work may be necessary over
the next several years to ensure that watershed work is
maintained, that invasive weeds do not spread, that land is
vegetated and key transportation routes and facilities are
available. That work is funded through our regular national
forest system appropriations.
Now this is important work and we are going to have to set
priorities in this work in light of our responsibilities to
sustain all of our other Forest Service programs, because we
will have to take dollars from other programs to do this longer
term restoration work here.
Even after these fires though, we are going to continue to
face serious forest and rangeland health issues here and around
the rest of the country. Restoring and rehabilitating our fire
adapted ecosystems I believe is the most important task that
our agency is going to undertake over at least the next decade.
And again, the way that we are going to deal with these fires
in the long term is by dealing with the forest. It is a forest
management problem, not a fire problem.
We have made a commitment to move aggressively in
accelerating vegetative treatments that will improve the fire
condition class at the landscape level. We will be moving
forward in the implementation of the Healthy Forest Restoration
Act rapidly so that we can get on the ground and get more of
the dollars to the ground to get this work done. We will be
working closer with people, closer with the communities in
implementing that healthy forest legislation, and that is
critical that we have the people with us, that we work together
across the landscape, not looking simply at one ownership or
another, but looking at it as a landscape and working together
to solve the problem. And we will be doing that.
I must say though I was a little disappointed the day after
the Healthy Forest Restoration Act was passed when I was
looking through some web pages on the computer and saw a couple
of environmental web pages that already had documents on how we
can litigate and stop any of the projects under the healthy
forest legislation. It is disappointing to me because I did not
see anything that said how we can maybe make the projects
better. Because that is what we ought to all be working at, how
can we make the projects better than immediately jumping to how
can we stop the projects.
I hope that through effective public participation,
effective public involvement, we will be able to bring all of
these groups into the fold in how we manage at least the
national forests.
Thanks again for the opportunity to be here and we will be
happy to answer any questions you might have.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you. Mr. Chrisman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bosworth follows:]
Statement of Dale Bosworth, Chief, U.S. Forest Service,
United States Department of Agriculture
Introduction
Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to discuss with your
committee the status of our efforts for restoring and protecting the
natural resource values that were affected by the recent fire events in
Southern California. As we concentrate our efforts on National Forest
System lands affected by the fires, we also recognize the equally
devastating effects from this disaster on the local population,
communities and other land management organizations. The activities now
being undertaken by our agency and local, county, state and federal
partners may be the most challenging restoration effort that we have
ever encountered. The skill that is needed and the scale of the effort
are extraordinary. We are bringing the greatest expertise available to
restore the vegetation and soil resources that were affected by the
fires as quickly as possible.
Southern California Fire Review
As you were able to see today, the Southern California fires of
2003 were some of the most destructive wildfire events, in terms of
structures lost and lives affected, in recent history. In three weeks,
wildfires burned over 739,000 acres, 22 people lost their lives as a
result of the fires, and 3,623 homes were destroyed. Thirty-five
percent of the burned acreage was on National Forest System lands. Five
large fires, the Paradise, Piru, Old, Grand Prix and Cedar fires were
located on the Angeles, San Bernardino, Los Padres and Cleveland
National Forests. The Forest Service spent over $71 million to suppress
these fires. Before the fires were fully controlled, we had teams on
site evaluating and assessing the work that needed to be done. Today, I
would like to describe to you the progress of our current efforts and
our goals for the future.
Current Emergency Stabilization Efforts
Emergency stabilization in Southern California is a multi-agency
cooperative effort, accomplished across federal, state, private and
tribal lands. The Forest Service is coordinating with the Natural
Resource Conservation Service, the California Department of Forestry
and Fire Protection, the Department of the Interior and local
governments to make the emergency stabilization effort as effective and
seamless as possible. The Forest Service activated four large Burned
Area Emergency Rehabilitation (BAER-pronounced ``bear'') Teams, one per
National Forest, to implement the emergency stabilization work. These
teams are the equivalent of twelve normal-sized BAER teams which
usually have 6 to 8 members per team. BAER teams are assembled on fires
where resources may be at risk. The teams assess and map the damage
caused by a fire and design and implement a rehabilitation plan. The
goal is to protect life and property and reduce further natural and
cultural resource damage.
As a result of the fires, much ground cover has been burned away,
exposing the soil to the direct impact of rain. In addition, depending
on the severity of the fire, the soil itself may repel water, rather
than absorbing it. Less water soaking into the soil makes it difficult
for seeds to germinate and for surviving plants to obtain water. These
conditions may set the stage for soil erosion and for more rapid
flooding when rains occur. Homes that were previously considered not in
the path of flood waters will be susceptible to being damaged or lost
to floods.
We are working to stabilize slopes scoured bare by the fires. On
the ground and from the air, crews will spread thousands of tons of
rice straw. The mulching is designed to help speed the growth of
grasses whose roots will help stabilize the soil. This effort, however,
is not without limitations. Mulching on slopes steeper than 60 degrees
can do more harm than good. The straw washes downhill and clogs
culverts and storm drains.
Treatments are designed to reduce flood levels and to direct the
flood waters away from homes, property and places where people are
likely to be. Here in Southern California, catchment basins are used to
collect and slow water and debris. We are reshaping roads, clearing
ditches and installing culverts to assure that road systems have
drainage systems to carry storm water safely and effectively.
Floods often carry debris and mud with them. These debris torrents
can damage or destroy critical natural resources, homes and property.
Silverwood Lake on the San Bernardino National Forest, supplies
drinking water to 12 million people. Much of the forest surrounding the
lake was burned in the 91,000 acre Old Fire. During a heavy rain, ash
and debris could wash into the lake overloading the filtration and
sanitation systems. We are placing hundreds of acres of rice straw on
the severely burned areas to slow or reduce the ash and debris movement
into the lake.
Other values at risk include the Sespe Oil Fields on the Los Padres
National Forest. Floods or debris torrents in the oil field could cut
through the oil and gas transmission pipes, causing leaks. The road
system that accesses the oil fields also provides access to the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service National Condor Wildlife Refuge, where the
USFWS feeds the condors on a daily basis. If this road system were lost
to a flood or debris torrent, the condors would be at risk. We are
stabilizing the road system to reduce the risk to the pipelines and
assure access to the condors.
Approximately $9 million in (BAER) Forest Service funds have been
approved for work on the Southern California Fires. To implement the
emergency work as soon as possible, funds are approved incrementally as
needs are identified. As of this week we have expended $2.5 million in
emergency restoration funds. Recent rains have had a positive effect by
encouraging sprouting and regrowth of vegetation. The moisture has not
been heavy enough to increase the damage in the burned areas. We do
know that, if heavy winter rains occur, subsequent flooding and mud
slides will follow. What we are trying to do now is evaluate where the
biggest threats are and limit the damage as much as possible. The work
of the BAER teams is expected to be completed by mid-December.
Science and Technology Transfer
As community leaders, citizens, land managers and institutions,
such as the insurance industry, assess the situation and begin recovery
efforts, it is important that they have the latest and best scientific
expertise and information. Our Forest Service Research and Development
organization is the largest natural resource research organization in
the world. This group is bringing its expertise to Southern California
recovery efforts by leading a coalition of scientific and technical
organizations to assist the BAER teams in assessing the situation and
providing advice and expertise on recovery efforts. We will also be
designing follow-up studies to fill in key gaps in the science of fire
recovery efforts where we still have information needs. The plan of
action developed by these scientific specialists will go well beyond
the initial efforts of recovery and stabilization and address such
issues as: (1) advanced technologies in fire resistant housing
construction; (2) factors impeding the effective implementation of
biomass removal; and (3) techniques that homeowners can implement to
reduce their risk within the wildland urban interface.
Rehabilitation Efforts
The emergency stabilization (BAER) work is focused on short-term
actions to get burned areas through one or two seasons, especially the
critical first season. This work is expected to be completed within
weeks. Additional rehabilitation work will take place over the next
several years to maintain the watershed work started, minimize the
spread of invasive weeds into areas disturbed by the fire, revegetate
land and keep key transportation routes open.
In addition to the lands burned in Southern California this year, a
total of 1.4 million acres were burned on National Forest System lands
this year with over 198,000 acres so severely burned that serious
erosion hazards were created. The total cost of rehabilitation work in
FY 2003 was met through appropriations and by reprioritizing our
program of work. We recognize that these long-term rehabilitation needs
are important. We will continue to weigh the priorities of this work in
light of our responsibilities to sustain our other Forest Service
programs to protect, manage and restore resource values on National
Forest System lands. The rehabilitation work includes: reforestation,
treatments for noxious weeds, wildlife habitat improvement, follow up
on erosion and sedimentation mitigation, and rehabilitation of roads
and recreation trails.
10-Year Comprehensive Strategy
Mr. Chairman, our expenditures on wildland fire suppression doubled
in the last 10 years, illustrating the serious forest and rangeland
health problem we face. As bad as the fires were, they burned for the
most part in chaparral areas and did not appreciably change the forest
health situation on forested lands in Southern California, particularly
on the San Bernardino National Forest which has the most serious
situation. In the forested areas, much of the remaining unburned acres
are still choked with mostly small trees, many of which are dead and
dying from drought and bark beetle infestations. Much of these forested
lands remain at risk.
In addition we know that brushlands of Southern California are
serious fire hazards. We also know that high severity crown fires have
been a characteristic of chaparral landscapes for thousands of years
and will continue to be. Wildland fire in Southern California and
across much of the United States is an integral part of nature. Large
chaparral fires tend to burn under very severe drought and high wind
conditions that make control difficult or impossible. This does not
mean that infrastructure damage is inevitable. Because we have
communities and homes adjacent to, and within, these landscapes, we
need to work together to reduce the danger through public-private
partnerships. Treating vegetation zones around communities, roads and
other important infrastructure can be effective when combined with
programs where communities implement projects to fire-safe their homes
and communities.
We advocate a comprehensive approach to address this and other
situations across the country. In cooperation with the Western
Governors' Association, our federal, state and tribal partners and
interested stakeholders we have developed a 10-year Comprehensive
Strategy and Implementation Plan to reduce wildland fire risks to
communities and the environment. We are in the second year of
implementing this strategy that acknowledges fire's role in the
ecosystem. Restoring and rehabilitating our fire adapted ecosystems may
be the most important task that our agency undertakes. The Strategy and
Implementation Plan provides a road map for helping communities to
protect themselves from the risk of wildland fire.
The Comprehensive Strategy recognizes the need to shift our fire
management emphasis from a reactive to a proactive approach. We are
moving from treating symptoms towards treating the underlying problems
and strategically placing hazardous fuel treatments throughout our
nation's forests and rangelands to change large-scale fire behavior.
On the San Bernardino National Forest, implementing this strategy
is underway. We have through cooperative efforts, reduced fuels along
roadways to provide effective evacuation routes, thinned and removed
dead trees, reduced fuel hazards and provided fuel breaks all of which
were effective during the recent fires. Additional work remains, on the
National Forests in Southern California as well as other areas across
the country which are experiencing serious forest health problems.
On December 3rd, the President signed into law the Healthy Forests
Restoration Act of 2003, which will give federal agencies needed
additional tools to implement the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy and
Implementation Plan. I want to thank you Mr. Chairman for your support
and leadership in the development and passage of this vitally important
legislation.
The Act authorizes the Forest Service and other federal agencies to
work directly with communities at risk in the development of community
wildfire protection plans. The Secretaries of Agriculture and of the
Interior will consider the recommendations within these community plans
when developing an annual program of work. The Act requires the
agencies to work collaboratively with local communities and interested
parties when developing hazardous fuels reduction projects, and reduces
the number of alternatives the agencies are required to conduct
environmental analyses for proposed projects. The changes described in
the Act should reduce the time span that occurs prior to management
actions taking place.
Successful integration of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act in
the implementation of the Comprehensive Strategy will result in
landscape-scale changes that significantly reduce the potential for
large, damaging fires. I, along with our Regional Foresters, have made
a commitment to move forward aggressively in accelerating vegetative
treatments that improve condition class in fire-adapted ecosystems on
National Forest System lands.
I also wish to thank the Congress for providing additional funding
in FY 2004 to help meet the challenge of reducing fire risk. In
California, $15 million in hazardous fuel reduction funding and $25
million for state and private funding will help the state and local
communities reduce wildfire hazards.
Conclusion
We will do our best to rehabilitate and restore the resources that
were affected by these fires. I am confident that we have the right
talent and teams in place to accomplish this work in cooperation with
local and state agencies. At this time, I will be pleased to answer any
questions that the committee may have.
______
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MIKE CHRISMAN, SECRETARY-DESIGNATE,
CALIFORNIA RESOURCES AGENCY
Mr. Chrisman. Thank you, Chairman Pombo and members of the
Committee. It is a pleasure to be here and on behalf of
Governor Schwarzenegger, I appreciate the opportunity to
testify before this Committee today to discuss the catastrophic
wildfires experienced here in California this fall.
Again, as other speakers have said, I appreciate the great
efforts of the Chairman and the entire Resources Committee in
getting the Healthy Forest Act passed--which, as we know,
President Bush signed earlier this week.
Recent wildfires here in southern California have caused
devastation on a scale that I have not seen in my lifetime. The
lost acreage, the tragic loss of lives and, of course, the
dollar cost is yet to be determined, but it is going to be in
the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Beyond that
human toll, southern California fires, of course, represent a
major environmental catastrophe, the scale of which we are
still to determine. These fires destroyed not only trees, but
watershed and habitat for the flora and fauna.
Like others, both on the dais as members and here on the
witness stand, I would like to take the opportunity to commend
the thousands of individuals who helped fight the fires, 15,000
people contributed to the army of firefighters and medics and
logistical supporters and volunteers who helped to eventually
extinguish these fires. In the midst of this widespread
destruction it is easy to forget the achievements of the
Federal, state and other local agencies.
As most of you are aware, former Governor Davis, in
consultation with then Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger,
named a Blue Ribbon Commission to review the efforts to fight
the state's recent wildfires and provide recommendations to
prevent destruction from future fires. The Commission will
present its recommendations in March of 2004. Andrea Tuttle the
State Forester at the Department of Forestry and Fire
Protection here in California, will represent the Resources
Agency on that Commission and I urge the Committee to include a
copy of the Commission's report and recommendations as a part
of the hearing record, if we might, please.
The State of California with its Federal and local partners
has made great strides in preparing for large scale wildfires
and mobilizing resources to react once a fire begins. There is
ample examples down in this part of the world in San Bernardino
and Riverside Counties where managing fire emergencies through
incident command-based, multi-agency organizations have been
very successful over time. These organizations, of course, have
developed and operate with strategic plans to serve as guiding,
planning, preparedness, evacuation response and mitigation
activities.
I personally cannot stress enough the importance and
strength of the inter-agency cooperation we have experienced
with our partners in formulating these preparedness plans.
Cooperation between Regional Forester Jack Blackwell, myself,
between Forest Supervisor Gene Zimmerman, CDF Units Tom O'Keefe
of San Bernardino County and Tom Tisdale of Riverside and
between our staffs has simply been tremendous. At every step
along the way, Federal, state and county and special districts
work together in ways they never experienced before.
The State of California in preparing for these fires, some
of the actions that we took:
The California Department of Forestry took a strong role in
clearing evacuation routes, reduced the paperwork involved in
some of the laws that we have to meet.
The Department of Transportation provided trucks, hauling
trees and waste.
The California Integrated Waste Management Board provided
expanded use of transfer sites.
The Highway Patrol worked closely with local sheriffs and
law enforcement agencies.
And many other examples of excellent cooperation between
the various agencies.
Strong inter-agency coordination served California well
during the recent fires and I pledge to continue efforts under
the Schwarzenegger Administration.
However, while coordinated planning and effective reaction
to wildfires is important, this alone does not address the root
cause of the problem. California forests are in a state of
crisis. Policies of 100 percent fire suppression and no
reasonable thinning have left our forests choked full of dead
and dying trees, as we have experienced around the Lake
Arrowhead area. Some areas around this area, tree densities I
am told are in the neighborhood of 400 trees per acre and
sometimes more. Scientists estimate historically healthy
forests in this region would support only 40 to 50 trees per
acre. With a density 10 times historic levels, trees must
compete for sunlight and water and as a result more and more
trees are stressed out and unable to ward off disease or fire.
More importantly, the massive increase in forest density
creates a virtual tinderbox of forest fuels I think we have all
experienced here and have seen the result of it.
Recent drought has, of course, undoubtedly contributed to
this problem. As any visitor to Lake Arrowhead will tell you,
the bark beetle infestation has greatly contributed also to the
demise of our forests and enhanced the tinderbox effect.
Again, I want to commend the Chairman and the members of
the Committee for the passage of the Healthy Forest Act. This
legislation recognizes that forest management practices need to
adapt recent scientific understandings to the causes of
wildfire. Under the previous Administration here in California,
the State of California recognized that our forests were in
dire need of responsible and active management. The state spent
significant resources removing dead and dying trees from our
forests across the state. Furthermore, following a proclamation
from Governor Davis, the California Public Utilities Commission
has ordered Southern California Edison Company and San Diego
Gas & Electric to remove all dead or dying trees that could
potentially threaten transmission and distribution lines in
their service territory. Edison predicts that this tree removal
will run as high as $400 million and could take several years
to complete.
These efforts and more will be necessary to protect our
forests and reduce the potential for catastrophic wildfires.
This problem was not created overnight and will not be solved
overnight. It will be an expensive endeavor which is especially
challenging for a state in the midst of fiscal woes. Given the
sensitivity to California regarding forest management
practices, I am convinced that a strong stakeholder process in
reducing fuels without the help of local governments, residents
and landowners and interest groups simply is not possible.
I pledge that the Resources Agency will recognize and
respect differences in geography, habitat and human populations
that occur in our forests. We will engage stakeholders and look
for local solutions to managing these forests and reducing the
risk of catastrophic fires.
To meet this challenge, the state must seek innovative
solutions to forest thinning that both respects our
environmental values and protects our forests from future fire
calamities. One such idea is to promote the development of
biomass power plants adjacent to our forests. Currently most of
the dead or diseased trees that are removed from our forests
have little or no commercial value. They are often hauled off
to municipal dumps or incinerated.
As we speak, Southern California Edison Company, with the
help of the California Energy Commission, is pursuing the
development of multiple biomass plants in areas affected by the
bark beetle infestation. By converting wood waste into energy,
California can protects its forests and provide cleaner,
renewable energy to its citizens. As Secretary, I will seek to
promote biomass power sources and other forest management
techniques to achieve both economic and environmental benefits.
Mr. Chairman, thank you again for holding this most
important hearing and as public servants, we know that
government is designed to provide basic service and protect its
citizens. In the area of forest management, oftentimes we are
failing at both. The forest management policies of the past led
to the environmental destruction and the loss of human life and
property. If policymakers do not rise to this challenge, our
forests will continue to burn with the massive fires like the
ones that ravaged southern California and the intermountain
west last summer. It is time to start actively managing our
forests in a way to protect these beautiful resources and
reduce the risk of these catastrophic fires.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you.
[Comments from the audience.]
Mr. Pombo. Before I recognize Ms. Kinsinger, I would just
like to remind our audience that this is an official
Congressional hearing and therefore we are bound by House
rules, and as part of the House rules, any outbursts from the
audience or expressions both in favor or opposed to any of the
testimony is a violation of House rules, so I would like to ask
all of you to maintain the decorum that is necessary in an
official hearing. Thank you.
Ms. Kinsinger.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Chrisman follows:]
Statement of Mike Chrisman, Secretary, California Resources Agency
Chairman Pombo and Members of the Committee, on behalf of Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger, I appreciate the opportunity to testify before
the Subcommittee regarding the catastrophic wildfires that California
experienced this fall. I also appreciate the great efforts of the
Chairman and the entire Resources Committee in passing the Healthy
Forest Act, which President Bush signed earlier this week.
The recent wildfires in Southern California have caused devastation
on a scale not seen before in my lifetime. The fires burned 739,597
acres in Southern California. At the height of the fires, over 15,000
personnel were actively working to contain them. Sadly, 3,631 homes
were burned to the ground. Another 36 commercial properties and 1,169
outbuildings were also destroyed. And, most tragically, 22 people lost
their lives in the fires. The total cost of the recent fires is still
unknown, but it will surely be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Beyond the human toll, the Southern California fires represent a
major environmental catastrophe, the scale of which we cannot yet fully
determine. These devastating fires destroyed not only trees but also
watersheds and habitat for numerous species of flora and fauna. Winter
rains will bring further damage, as barren landscapes will lead to
widespread erosion, polluting California's streams, rivers, and lakes,
and clogging water treatment facilities.
I want to take this opportunity to commend the thousands of
individuals who helped fight the fires. As I mentioned earlier, over
15,000 people contributed to the army of firefighters, medics, and
logistical supporters and volunteers who helped to eventually
extinguish the fires. In the midst of the widespread destruction, it is
easy to forget the achievements of Federal, State and local agencies.
As you are aware, former Governor Gray Davis, in consultation with
then Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, named a Blue Ribbon
Commission to review the effort to fight the State's recent wildfires
and provide recommendations to prevent destruction from future fires.
The Commission will present its recommendations in March 2004. Andrea
Tuttle, the State Forester at the Department of Forestry and Fire
Protection, will represent the Resources Agency on the Commission. I
urge you to include a copy of the Commission's report and
recommendations as part of this hearing record.
State & Local Preparedness
The State of California, with its Federal and local partners, has
made great strides in preparing for large-scale wildfires and
mobilizing resources to react once a fire begins.
San Bernardino and Riverside Counties manage fire emergencies
through an incident command-based, multi-agency organization known as a
Mountain Area Safety Task Force (MAST). San Diego County created a
similar organization called the Forest Area Safety Task Force (FAST).
These groups include the county emergency and public works
organizations, local Fire Safe Councils, the U.S. Forest Service, the
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF), the Office
of Emergency Services, California Highway Patrol, California Department
of Transportation, California Department of Fish and Game, and local
utility operators. These organizations developed and operate from
strategic plans that serve to guide planning, preparedness, evacuation
response, and mitigation activities.
I cannot stress enough the importance and the strength of the
interagency cooperation we have experienced with our partners in
formulating these preparedness plans. Cooperation between Regional
Forester Jack Blackwell and myself, between Forest Supervisor Gene
Zimmerman and CDF Unit Chiefs Tom O'Keefe of San Bernardino County and
Tom Tisdale of Riverside, and between our staffs has been tremendous.
At every step along the way, the Federal, State, county and special
districts worked together in ways they have never experienced before.
The following is a short summary of the actions taken by the State
of California in preparation for the recent fires:
CDF took a strong role clearing evacuation routes,
temporary community shelter sites and fuel breaks utilizing inmate
crews. We have reduced the paperwork for cutting trees on private
lands, and coordinated implementation of the Endangered Species Act
with the California Department of Fish and Game, especially with
respect to protecting the Southern Rubber Boa snake.
The California Department of Transportation provided
trucks for hauling tree waste to disposal sites, and stockpiled signs,
cones and heavy equipment for clearing roads in the event of
evacuation.
The California Integrated Waste Management Board
permitted expanded use of the transfer sites for the tremendous volumes
of wood waste, and the local Air Pollution Control District streamlined
air quality permits for the air curtain burners. Those burners can
efficiently dispose of large quantities of forest waste at very high
temperatures with very little air emission.
The California Highway Patrol worked closely with local
sheriffs and law enforcement in designing and coordinating evacuation
plans to help responders get in while getting evacuees out.
The Contractors State License Board, in coordination with
CDF, is conducting field inspections to insure that the public is
protected from fraudulent business practice.
We have participated with all the MAST agencies in San
Bernardino County in a tabletop exercise to prepare for a wildfire in
the Lake Arrowhead area.
Every strike team, every firefighter coming into southern
California is given a copy of this special Red Book, a Structure
Protection Pre-Plan and mandatory briefing to inform them of the
extraordinary fire behavior they may encounter, which may exceed
anything they have ever experienced before.
Strong interagency coordination served California well during the
recent fires. I pledge to continue these efforts under the
Schwarzenegger Administration.
Forest Management is Fire Prevention
However, while coordinated planning and effective reaction to
wildfires is important, this alone does not address the root cause of
the problem. California's forests are in a state of crisis. Policies of
100 percent fire suppression and no reasonable thinning have left our
forests choked full of dead and dying trees. In some areas around Lake
Arrowhead, tree densities of 400 trees per acre are common. Scientists
estimate that, historically, a healthy forest in this region would
support only 40-50 trees per acre. With a density ten times historic
levels, trees must compete for sunlight and water. As a result, more
and more trees are stressed out and unable to ward off disease or fire.
More importantly, the massive increase in forest density creates a
virtual tinderbox of forest fuels. At one time, naturally occurring
fires burned out small trees and brush, leaving larger trees unscathed.
Today, the vegetation build-up causes fires to burn hotter and higher,
destroying entire forests in their path.
Recent drought has undoubtedly contributed to this problem. When
trees lack adequate water, they are unable to produce the sap that is
needed to ward off deadly insects like the bark beetle. As any visitor
to Lake Arrowhead can tell you, bark beetle infestation has greatly
contributed to the demise of our forests and enhanced the tinderbox
effect.
Again, I want to commend the Chairman for the passage of the
Healthy Forests Act. This legislation recognizes that forest management
practices need to adapt recent scientific understandings on the causes
of wildfires. The U.S. General Accounting Office summarized the problem
succinctly in a recent report:
Human Activities--especially the federal government's decades-
old policy of suppressing all wildland fires--have resulted in
dangerous accumulations of brush, small trees, and other
vegetation on federal lands. This vegetation has increasingly
provided fuel for large, intense wildland fires, particularly
in the dry, interior western United States. 1
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ GAO Report 04-52, ``Forest Service: Information on Appeals and
Litigation Involving Fuels Reduction Activities,'' October 2003.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Under the previous Administration, the State of California
recognized that our forests were in dire need of responsible and active
management. The State spent significant resources removing dead and
dying trees from our forests. Furthermore, following a proclamation
from Governor Davis, the California Public Utility Commission has
ordered Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric to
remove all dead or dying trees that potentially threaten transmission
and distribution lines in their service territory. Edison predicts that
tree removal cost will run as high as $400 million and could take
several years. These efforts, and more, will be necessary to protect
our forests and reduce the potential for catastrophic wildfires.
But, I want to caution the public. This problem was not created
overnight. And, it will not be solved overnight. It will be an
expensive endeavor, which is especially challenging for a State in the
midst of fiscal woes. Given the sensitivities in California regarding
forest management policies, I am convinced that a strong stakeholder
process is essential. The State of California and the U.S. Forest
Service are not going to be successful in reducing fuels without the
help of local governments, residents, landowners, and interest groups.
I pledge that the Resources Agency will recognize and respect
differences in geography, habit, and human population that occur in our
forests. We will engage stakeholders and look for local solutions to
managing these forests and reducing the risk of catastrophic fire.
To meet this challenge, the State of California must seek
innovative solutions to forest thinning that both respects our
environmental values and protects our forest from future fire
calamities. One such idea is to promote the development of biomass
power plants in or adjacent to our forests. Currently, most of the dead
or diseased trees that are removed from our forests have little or no
commercial value. They are often hauled off to municipal dumps or
incinerated. In San Bernardino County alone, 400-500 tons of wood waste
must be disposed of daily.
As we speak, Southern California Edison, with the help of the
California Energy Commission, is pursuing the development of multiple
biomass plants in areas affected by bark beetle infestation. By
converting wood waste into energy, California can protect its forests
and provide cleaner renewable energy to its citizens. As Secretary, I
will seek to promote biomass power sources and other forest management
techniques that achieve both economic and environmental benefits.
Mr. Chairman, thank you again for holding this important hearing.
As public servants, we know that government is designed to provide
basic services and protect its citizens. In the area of forest
management, we are failing on both accounts. The forest management
policies of the past led to environmental destruction and the loss of
human life and property. If policymakers do not rise to this challenge,
our forests will continue to burn in massive fires like the ones that
ravaged Southern California this fall. It is time to start actively
managing our forests in a way that protects these beautiful natural
resources and reduces the risk of catastrophic fires that threaten so
many communities in California.
______
STATEMENT OF ANNE KINSINGER, REGIONAL BIOLOGIST, WESTERN
REGION, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, ACCOMPANIED BY JON KEELY,
RESEARCH SCIENTIST, WESTERN ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH CENTER, U.S.
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Ms. Kinsinger. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the
opportunity to present this testimony. I have with me today Dr.
Jon Keely and several other USGS scientists, who will be
available to answer technical questions. Before I begin though,
I would like to reiterate on behalf of the Department of
Interior our gratitude to you, Mr. Chairman, and to other
members of this Committee for the hard work in achieving the
passage of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003. As you
noted, the President signed that bill on Wednesday. The
Department is grateful to you for your efforts in providing
through this legislation additional tools to carry out the
President's Healthy Forest Initiative.
I would also like to extend my sympathies to the local
community for the losses they suffered during these fires.
The USGS conducts fire-related research to meet the varied
needs of the land management community and to understand the
role of fire on the landscape. This research includes fire
management support, studies of post-fire effects and a wide
range of studies on fire history and ecology. USGS is an active
participant in the National Fire Plan and in the DOI and USDA
joint fire science program. We are currently working closely
with the FEMA-led multi-agency support group to respond to
these southern California fires as well as working with
numerous BAER teams.
My testimony today is going to focus on five aspects of
USGS fire response--the floods and debris flows, water quality,
wildlife effects, invasive species and remote sensing.
As many of you have already noted, the damage from this
year's wildfires in southern California is likely not over.
Just as the fires were the largest in southern California's
recorded history, the potential for floods and debris flows
from the burned areas is great. Stormwater runoff in hundreds
of very steep drainages with histories of large floods and
debris flows will flow into some of the most rapidly growing
urban areas of California.
In response, USGS has begun to install rain and stream
gauges in critical hazard areas. We are meeting with the
National Weather Service and flood control agencies to plan
expanded flood warning sites. To assess the hazard from debris
flows, the USGS has begun the modeling necessary to produce
debris flow hazard maps of some of the most dangerous burn
areas. And we do have a handout that we can show you that
pinpoints some of the high risk areas. We are also working on
plans, with the support of FEMA, to complete hazard maps for
all fire areas. If possible, we will work to develop early
warning systems both for flash floods and debris flows.
Water quality is also a concern. Fires in southern
California have produced ash and a variety of chemicals that
enter air, soil and ground and surface waters. Tracking these
chemicals is critical for maintaining a healthy water supply
and will also provide an understanding for the larger picture
of water quality in southern California. If possible, the USGS
will continue monitoring to determine the effects of winter
floods on sediment and contaminant transport in the Santa Ana
River Basin. We can also document and study the effects of
atmospheric fallout and runoff from the fires in the San Diego
Basin. Both of these basins, as you know, are important water
supplies.
Since the mid-1990s, USGS has been conducting wildlife
research in many of the areas impacted by these recent fires,
including reptile and amphibian surveys at monitoring stations
throughout southern California. We are studying the impact of
fire on endangered species and on biodiversity in general and
on the recovery of vegetation in these ecosystems. Our research
has included the effectiveness of post-fire treatments, species
diversity and abundance, as well as habitat quality assessments
and vegetation characteristics.
The interaction of invasive plants and fire is creating
substantial challenges also for land managers. Invasive plants
can compete with native plants, alter wildlife habitat and
promote the spread of fire. Invasive alien grasses especially
benefit from fire. They promote recurrent fire in many cases to
the point where native species cannot persist and native plant
assemblages are converted to annual grasslands. This vegetation
type conversion can reduce overall biodiversity and increase
fire risk. We are continuing our research on fire and invasives
and the relationship between the two.
Finally, the USGS is employing this remote sensing
expertise to the fire aftermath. Fire response requires
detailed imagery of the burn areas, both for additional
research and for on-the-ground response activities. To meet
common geographic data needs, the USGS is assessing the
availability of remotely sensed imagery and data from all
agency sources. And I would like to take a moment to thank the
Forest Service in particular for purchasing some of this
imagery and sharing it among all of the fire response partners.
In summary, USGS scientists have been studying the natural
processes in southern California for decades and thus, we have
some baseline data from which we can understand the long-term
impacts of these burns. We are moving quickly to provide
decisionmakers with the information and tools they need in the
aftermath of these devastating fires.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks and I would be
happy to answer any questions you might have.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kinsinger follows:]
Statement of Anne E. Kinsinger, Western Regional Biologist,
U.S. Geological Survey
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to present this testimony regarding ``Recovering from the
Fires: Restoring and Protecting Communities, Water, Wildlife and
Forests in Southern California.'' The USGS conducts fire-related
research to meet the varied needs of the land management community and
to understand the role of fire on the landscape; this research includes
fire management support, studies of post-fire effects, and a wide range
of studies on fire history and ecology. USGS is an active participant
in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)/Department of the Interior
(DOI) National Fire Plan, which is a long-term effort focused on
helping to protect communities and natural resources. The USGS is also
an active participant in the DOI and USDA Joint Fire Science Program; a
partnership that develops information and tools for managers and
specialists who deal with wildland fuels management issues. The Program
was authorized and funded by Congress in October 1997. The USGS is
using its unique capabilities to investigate the complex interactions
of Earth processes with the urban environment in Southern California.
My statement will describe the role of USGS in post-fire recovery
and rehabilitation in Southern California. Before I begin, however, I
have been asked to convey the gratitude of the Department of the
Interior to Chairman Pombo and the other members of this Committee for
their hard work in achieving the passage of H.R. 1904, the Healthy
Forests Restoration Act of 2003. As you know, the President signed that
bill on Wednesday. The Department is grateful to you for your efforts
in providing, through this legislation, the additional tools needed to
carry out the President's Healthy Forests Initiative, and the
Department looks forward to making progress in ongoing efforts to
address the problems of wildland fires here in California and elsewhere
throughout the Country.
The recent fires in Ventura, San Bernardino and San Diego counties
were devastating in their reach. However, the damage from this year's
wildfires in Southern California is likely not complete. Just as the
fires were the largest in Southern California's recorded history, the
potential for floods and debris flows from the ravaged mountains is
great. Storm water run-off in hundreds of drainages in extremely steep
terrain with histories of large floods and debris flows will flow into
some of the most rapidly growing urban areas of California. Thousands
more homes could potentially be destroyed this winter as an indirect
impact of the wildfires. Understanding the factors controlling the
behavior of wildfires and the potential debris flows that are the
indirect consequence of these fires will lead to improved predictive
capabilities, helping to plan accurately for and mitigate fire and
related hazards in future years and for future generations.
Employing existing data
We have been studying the natural processes of Southern California,
in many cases for decades, and thus have baseline data from which we
can understand the changes brought about by the fires.
Currently, extensive baseline data exists for two of the focal fire
areas.
San Diego Basin. The Sweetwater River System in the San
Diego Basin consists of the Sweetwater River itself, and two receiving
reservoirs that are used for drinking water supply (Loveland and
Sweetwater Reservoirs). This system is the primary water supply for one
million people, and has been heavily impacted by the Cedar fire. The
USGS has been conducting atmospheric deposition and dissolved organic
carbon studies on Sweetwater and Loveland Reservoirs for the past five
years, and has also been conducting surface-water/ground-water
interaction studies focused on the impact of pumping on riparian zones
that support endangered species. These studies provide excellent data
on pre-fire baseline conditions. This work will continue to document
and study the effects of atmospheric fallout and runoff from fires on a
water body used for drinking water. It is expected that the fire will
increase levels of dissolved organic carbon, which will, in turn,
increase concentrations of THMs (tri-halomethanes) when that water is
chlorinated for public supply. If chemical indicators of the fire can
be found, they will enable tracking of groundwater recharge from the
fire areas through the alluvial/riparian system, providing accurate
estimates of travel time. This will assist in providing the data
necessary to help insure human health while protecting endangered
species in the watershed.
Santa Ana River Basin. Large parts of the Santa Ana River
Basin were burned by the Old Fire and the Grand Prix Fire. The USGS has
been conducting water-quality studies in the Santa Ana River Basin as
part of the National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) program and
several cooperative studies. These data can be used to assess the
impact of the fires on water quality. Water-quality data are available
from 7 mountain drainages, six of which were extensively burned. The
seventh, the South Fork of the Santa Ana River was not burned and will
serve as a control--although it received large amounts of atmospheric
fallout. Existing data at these sites include general minerals,
nutrients, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and at selected sites, trace
metals, pesticides, and semi-volatile organic carbon compounds. The
NAWQA sites are strategically located to study the effects of the fire.
The data will be collected bimonthly at three of the sites for a
limited suite of constituents. Ten years of water-quality data also are
available for downstream sites along the Santa Ana River where water is
diverted to ponds that recharge aquifers pumped for water supply for
more than 2 million people. Existing data include nutrients, trace
elements, pesticides, and selected volatile organic carbon compounds.
The study is ongoing and three storm flows will be sampled this year
for nutrients, DOC concentrations and extensive characterization of the
DOC using optical properties. Additional analyses are needed to
characterize the effect of the fires. Ash and other material washed
from the basin during storm flow will accumulate in ponds used to
recharge aquifers underlying Orange County.
In addition, since 1995, the USGS has been conducting wildlife
research in many of the areas impacted by the recent fires, including
reptile and amphibian surveys at fixed monitoring stations throughout
Southern California. We knew that it was important to understand the
response of the natural systems in Southern California to urbanization,
and we have learned that Southern California is an ecosystem at great
risk of biodiversity loss. The USGS is studying the impact of fire on
endangered species and biodiversity in general and the recovery of
vegetation in these ecosystems. The USGS research at the various sites
has included species diversity and abundance, as well as habitat
quality assessments and vegetation characteristics. Invasive plants and
fire create substantial challenges for land managers. Invasive plants
can compete with native plants, alter wildlife habitat, and promote the
spread of fire. Invasive alien grasses especially benefit from fire,
promote recurrent fire, in many cases to the point where native species
cannot persist and native plant assemblages are converted to annual
grasslands. This vegetation type-conversion can affect wildlife and
reduce overall biodiversity. The effective management of many wildlife
species depends on the control of invasive plants and the maintenance
of appropriate fire regimes.
Collecting data for future management decisions
In spite of the tragedy of the recent Southern California fires, we
have an unprecedented opportunity to collect data necessary for the
effective mitigation of future events. The information collected in the
burned areas can be transferable to most of the susceptible fire areas
of Southern California. The USGS currently is working with land
management and emergency response agencies to develop plans for
assessment of hazards from floods and debris flows and for monitoring
environmental recovery. This is in addition to mapping the area using
remote sensing data as discussed more fully below.
The USGS is currently moving quickly to collect transitory data
that will be destroyed over the next few weeks and months, including
the effect of the fires on endangered species, the ecosystem causes and
consequences of the fires (effect of fire suppression policies, re-
growth, burn intensity, etc.), ground water and sediment pollution
caused by the fire, the impact of the fires of the adjacent ocean, and
``opportunistic'' data (unique data acquisition opportunities created
by the removal of vegetation, such as unique ``bare earth'' images
along especially hazardous sections of the San Andreas fault). Analysis
of these data will support restoration and mitigation plans of the
burned lands, many of which are Federal lands managed by the Department
of Interior.
This collection of transitory data is accompanied by activities to
address immediate information needs for flood warning. The USGS is
conducting reconnaissance field inspections of burned watersheds and
has begun installation of a limited number of rain and stream gages in
critical hazard areas. The USGS is meeting with the National Weather
Service and Flood Control agencies to plan expanded ALERT flood warning
sites. To assess the hazard from debris flows, the USGS has begun
modeling necessary to produce Debris Flow Hazard maps of the most
dangerous burn areas and is working on plans, with the support of FEMA,
to complete hazard maps for all fire areas. Assessments of debris flow
hazards will be shared with landowners and relevant agencies, including
Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Forest
Service. The USGS is already working with the U.S. Forest Service and
others in advising Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) teams in the
affected area.
As water quality can be diminished by sediment transported from the
burned watersheds, the USGS is working with baseline from past studies
and collecting more data. Recent wildland fires in Southern California
have produced ash and a variety of chemicals that enter the air, soil,
ground-water and surface-water systems. The tracking of these chemicals
through the water system is critical for maintaining a healthy water
system, but it will also provide for understanding the larger picture
of ground-water pollution in Southern California. Specifically, the
USGS will continue with a previously planned monitoring experiment to
determine the effects of winter floods on sediment and contaminant
transport offshore of the mouth of the Santa Ana River.
As noted above, in order to assess the environmental response to
the fires, the USGS is evaluating data from previous studies to
identify useful pre-fire information that will serve as a baseline to
assess fire impacts and monitor post- fire recovery, including species
inventories and habitat quality assessment, water quality assessments,
and vegetation characterization. The USGS has begun field surveys to
assess impacts on endangered species that it already was monitoring.
The USGS is also employing its remote sensing expertise to the fire
aftermath. Fire response has a need for detailed imagery of the burn
areas, both for research and on-the-ground response activities. The
USGS is working with other agencies on the post fire response, and
examples of imagery that would be used include: a) High-resolution
digital topographic mapping; b) Aerial photography; c) Satellite
Synthetic Aperture Radar; and d) Multi- and Hyper-spectral imagery. To
meet common geographic data needs, the USGS is assessing the
availability of relevant remote sensed imagery and data from all agency
sources.
Conclusion
USGS scientists have been studying the natural processes discussed
in my testimony in Southern California for decades, and thus have the
baseline data from which we can understand the changes brought about by
the fires. The USGS has the scientific expertise in wildland fire
research to help in understanding the ecosystems affected by wildfire,
and to assist land managers in post-fire recovery and rehabilitation in
Southern California.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks. I, and my colleague, Dr.
Jon E. Keeley, USGS, Research Scientist, will be pleased to answer any
questions you may have.
______
Mr. Pombo. Thank you very much. I would like to turn to the
Committee for questions and remind the members of the Committee
that we are under the five-minute rule and to limit your
questions to five minutes. We have a number of panels and a
long day ahead of us. So we will start with Mr. Calvert.
Mr. Calvert Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In this region, the last time I think that we had the
potential of as much flood problems as we may have this winter
was back in the El Nino period when we were given reasonable
warning that there may be a potential hazard on its way and as
a matter of fact, the U.S. Geological Survey, along with
others, made that prediction. And we were able to get emergency
declarations in effect to clear out flood control channels,
clean out debris basins. Maybe this is a question also for the
Corps of Engineers and the Fish and Wildlife, but we were able
to be proactive in anticipating a potential disaster. And a
good thing we did. We remember back in those days we were able
to do that, we were able to clean out the Los Angeles River
when a lot of people were screaming and yelling if I remember
in those days, a lot of the debris basins, but we did it. And
when the water did come--and by golly, it sure did come, we
were prepared for it. And the disaster that could have been was
mitigated substantially by the proactive work that took place.
Certainly in the Santa Ana region, Santa Ana River Basin
region today, we are going to have a problem. I do not think it
is if, it is just a matter of when, and when the water comes,
and it will, then we are going to have to anticipate that.
This is a question primarily for U.S. Geological Survey,
but for the entire panel, certainly with our new gentleman from
the California Resources Agency, is what are we doing right now
to make sure that we clear out all the bureaucratic roadblocks
to make sure that we prepare for the inevitable, that we clean
out these flood control channels, that we clean out the debris
basins, that we put the check dams in immediately, that we get
all of the permissions that are necessary today, because this
work should be taking place right now.
So I think I will start with Ms. Kinsinger and then anyone
else that would like to add in.
Ms. Kinsinger. Well, as I noted, we have been working with
this FEMA-led multi-agency group and that has been our primary
vehicle, along with the BAER teams. We have also been working
with a lot of local offices of the emergency services. As you
know, we are providing the scientific information, the tools,
and so we are not involved in the permitting processes per se.
But we have been on the ground already with hydrologists,
geologists and our biologists.
Mr. Calvert You would agree though, for the record, that
these flood control channels, debris basins and the rest should
be cleaned out and be made ready for the coming winter rains.
Ms. Kinsinger. Well, I agree that we need to prepare for
the inevitable floods and debris flows. I might defer to my
colleague Mike Choulters on that. Do you want to comment on
that, Mike?
Mike Choulters is the California Water Resources District
Chief.
Mr. Choulters. Thank you. I think just to add to what Anne
said, the ability of the USGS to get out quickly, which we
have, and add to the alert network both with rain gauges and
with stream gauges--beginning to get stream gauges in, that
takes longer--is the mechanism that we would add to the larger
group in finding ways to know when those disasters are going to
occur and be able to report that quickly.
Mr. Calvert I will ask Mike to add into this too, also.
Mr. Chrisman. Again, our efforts are joint efforts with our
Federal counterparts, flood control agencies through the
California Department of Water Resources. We do a
prioritization on an annual basis of those streams and
watersheds that need to be--where flood protection needs to be
undertaken. Oftentimes we are behind the eight ball for
budgetary problems, many times. But again, it is a very high
priority as we watch weather patterns and try to measure the
potential rainfall coming into California.
Mr. Calvert I would say under budgetary reasons, obviously
it will cost tremendous more dollars----
Mr. Chrisman. I could not agree more.
Mr. Calvert --after the fact than before the fact.
Mr. Chrisman. Absolutely right.
Mr. Calvert Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Baca.
Mr. Baca. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
This question I guess either Jack or Dale can attempt to
answer. The fire not only destroyed structures but burned soil
and created high risk of floods, especially in the foothills.
Weather forecasts to expect drier and warmer weather this year.
How long should we expect the threat of floods?
Mr. Bosworth. You know, that is going to depend a lot on
the kind of weather that we have in the next few years. What we
worry about most, at least in terms of the emergency
rehabilitation work that we do is the first season, the first
rain. And we want to be prepared for that, that is why we want
to have work done by the middle of December.
Then our next step is to make sure at least for the first
couple of years we can make it through those years.
But then there is the longer term kind of rehabilitation
needs that we will have over the next several years. But I do
not think I can give you--maybe Jack or Gene can be more
specific in terms of exact number of years you might have to
worry about flooding, but it is not over after the first year
and it will be a number of years before we really feel like you
are out of the woods. And it depends on how intensive the fires
burn as well. But Gene has a little more experience in this
part of the country than I do, so Gene, do you have anything to
add to that?
Mr. Baca. And can you elaborate in terms of what impact, if
we are not totally prepared for these kinds of floods to this
area?
Mr. Bosworth. Well, when you start getting a lot of water
on these kind of steep slopes under these kind of conditions,
you can have mass soil movement. Of course, you have erosion,
but then you have mass debris movement into the channels. It
can back up when it becomes plugged, culverts can become
plugged with debris, then the road washes out, that pushes more
debris down, you can have mudslides into homes if they are
located in harm's way. There are a number of those kinds of
things that can happen if you have the wrong kinds of events
following these kinds of devastating fires.
Mr. Baca. The next question. I know that workers in San
Bernardino are using bales of hay, sandbags and traffic
dividers to help ward off floods. Will this be sufficient in
high risk areas, is question number one. What else can be done
to minimize the amount of flood damage in these cities?
Mr. Bosworth. Well, again, depending upon what kind of
weather conditions come about here in the future, you can have
situations where nothing that we will do will solve the
problem. So I would not want to make a false promise that
everything that we are doing, at least on the national forest
lands are going to solve the problem under any kind of weather
event. But, for example, the amount of straw, the straw that we
are putting on the ground, the thousands of tons of straw, our
research has shown that that reduces the erosion in some cases
50 to 80, 90 percent. That will make a big difference under
normal kinds of weather conditions.
Mr. Baca. And what is the length of time before it grows
though, the effect if we do not have----
Mr. Zimmerman. The straw that we are putting out does not
have any seed in it. The estimated period for vegetative
recovery, at least for a reasonably good start so the hillsides
have a good semblance of green again, is three to five years.
Mr. Baca. Mr. Chrisman, in your testimony, you stress the
importance of Federal-state partnerships dealing with various
aspects of the forests and fire management. Overall, how would
you rate the partnership in California and in what ways can it
be improved?
Mr. Chrisman. My comments said the partnership is superb, I
mean the planning, the inter-agency planning that goes on on a
regular basis, the mock planning exercises that we go through
on a regular basis across our agencies is superb. As I
indicated in my testimony, I think proof of that was seen in
the early successes in this catastrophic activity here when we
were able to get the residents moved out and all of that. So
again, it is working pretty well here in California.
You know, how can we improve it? I guess my response to
that would be you can always improve upon the response to a
catastrophic event like this. And the post-planning that goes
into this activity, I think hopefully will yield those kinds of
things that we can do better as the inevitable natural event
will occur later.
Mr. Baca. And one final question, and I know my time has
run out, but from what you have seen so far, what threatened or
endangered species were maybe most impacted by the fire?
Ms. Kinsinger. I would like to ask Dr. Robert Fisher to
address that, if he could come up.
While he is coming up, I just wanted to say one thing about
protecting lives in the case of flood and debris flows. And
that is we do have the technology available to deploy early
warning sensors in some of these very high risk areas such as
the ones you are seeing on your map. Now those will not
necessarily reduce property loss, but they can save lives.
Mr. Baca. Hello, and welcome.
Dr. Fisher. On the question of threatened and endangered
species, I want to just add that the Resources Agency through
the Legacy program has recently produced a series of maps that
show which species occur only within the fire zones, being that
the entire distribution of that species globally may have been
affected by the fire. So there is a subset of plants and some
animals that fall into that category. That does not mean that
they are extinct, but it means that their habitat and their
sensitivity might have changed.
For the most part, many endangered species were not greatly
impacted by the fire, but what happens post-fire is what is
really going to be important. And obviously the habitat has
changed and we are right now focusing on trying to understand
post-fire recovery in these species.
And I cannot really name--I would not want to name a couple
of specific species, but we are less concerned about the direct
impact on endangered species from the fire than we are what is
going to happen post-burn in the recovery process.
Mr. Baca. Thank you.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Radanovich.
Mr. Radanovich. Mr. Bosworth, in my opening statement, I
had commented about lawsuits and the ability for the Forest
Service to allow timber cutting both the fire damaged areas but
also in the non-fire damaged areas that were susceptible--or
had problems with bark beetle dead trees. With the advent of
Healthy Forests, can you further elaborate on what you might
see down the line? I know that the legislation has made it a
little easier I think for forest plans to actually be
implemented and eases the burden I think on the NEPA processes
and things like that. Can you give me an oversight as to how
you see it down the line once we try to get these forests into
proper balance, what you might run into as a result of the law?
Mr. Bosworth. Well, I think the law is going to help us.
Like I said earlier, I think it will give us some time to be
more effective in terms of our public participation with
communities. I think it will help us engage communities more
effectively. There are some changes in terms of how you go
about appealing. There is what we call a predecisional protest
approach that we are going to develop as part of the
legislation, that we think will give people a good opportunity
to question our decisions, but will not take up as much time to
do it.
So the whole focus is on being able to get decisions made
quicker with better public participation and get the money and
the work on the ground done quicker, more effectively. So that
is what we will be working toward in the implementation of
this. In the end, what I am hoping it will come to 10 years
from now, 15 years from now, is we will have treated these
forests in a way that will allow fire to still play a role in
the environment. These are fire-adapted ecosystems that we are
dealing with, they evolved with fire and we have to get fire
back into them but it has to be in a way that is not going to
be devastating.
So when you have a situation where there is way too many
trees because we have been suppressing fires over the years,
way too many trees, and then you have a drought situation, you
end up with dead trees and with insect problems and then, of
course, you end up with fire problems. We need to have fewer
trees. We will be leaving the large, big trees, the right
numbers of them, the right species and then getting fire back
into those fire-adapted ecosystems.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you very much. Mr. Chrisman, I have
got a question for you and I do want to congratulate you on
your recent appointment as Resources Secretary for California.
Mr. Chrisman. Thank you, Congressman.
Mr. Radanovich. I noticed on the ride here from the
hospital where the helicopter pad was to the hotel that there
is--and I believe it is being administered by CDF, a program to
go in and pull out a lot of these dead trees due to the bark
beetle.
Mr. Chrisman. Yes.
Mr. Radanovich. In an urban interface area, a place that
may not be national forest, I think it is on private land, but
nevertheless a fire danger. Is the funding--those are expensive
jobs, I mean those trees are hanging over power lines and homes
and everything else. That is no small task and I know that that
kind of stuff is necessary probably all over the state in some
ways.
Mr. Chrisman. It is, and you are right. As I indicated in
my comments, you know, we are in the process of working with
the utilities here in California, the Public Utilities
Commission to get a lot of those trees moved away from the
transmission and distribution lines.
One of the programs that CDF administers here in California
is called the Fire Safe Program, a very effective program,
again in the context, involving stakeholders and individuals
who live in the rural/urban interfaces, which is more and more
the case here in California, all up and down the State of
California where we go in and help--CDF goes in and helps
organize local communities to push vegetation back from their
homes, vegetation back from structures, to recognize that we
have got to manage these forest ecosystems in a way that
prevents these kinds of catastrophic wildfires. We are doing a
lot of that across California and of course, we are going to be
working with our Federal and local counterparts to try to
increase those activities over time.
Mr. Radanovich. So you actually have an operating budget,
you are going to make sure that there are enough funds there to
do all that interface.
Mr. Chrisman. That is exactly right.
Mr. Radanovich. All right, thank you very much.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Walden.
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chief or Gene perhaps, talk to me about the densities that
are here today around Lake Arrowhead, both in the private and
the public lands versus what historically they should be had
fire operated naturally over the last century, or management
had taken place. What do you see in terms of densities today
and what should those densities be?
Mr. Zimmerman. Obviously you realize that density is highly
variable. Having said that, there are places here on the forest
where there is 400 to 500 trees per acre. Typically we would
expect as foresters in land like this in the neighborhood of 30
to 40 to 50 trees per acre, depending upon the carrying
capacity of any particular site.
Mr. Walden. So you are saying it is 10 times?
Mr. Zimmerman. Greatly over-populated with trees, yes.
Mr. Walden. And when we look at a picture like the one over
here to my left showing the dead trees, we flew over areas like
that, if that is your Federal forest land, what kind of time
line are you on to clear that out and is it just the dead trees
that need to be thinned out to rebuild the ecosystem?
Mr. Zimmerman. We have been focusing on the dead trees
because we have been focusing on human life and property issues
like evacuation routes and areas right up against the urban
interface. We need to focus on overall stand density. We need
to take that next step and that is starting to deal with the
densification of the remaining green trees, where they do
remain. We have been reluctant to do that on the national
forests. Initially a year-and-a-half ago when we started fairly
aggressively dealing with this, we took out some green trees
trying to treat a given acre, if you will, with one entry and
get it down to an acceptable stocking. What we found is because
of the high populations of bark beetles, we lost some of the
trees that we left and we ended up with not enough trees. So
right now until the population of beetles drop off, it is our
intent to just deal with the red trees, but be ready to move
aggressively to thin the remaining stands of green trees as
soon as the population of beetles drops off. And we hope that
happens.
Mr. Walden. In his testimony, Dr. Stephens I think it is,
from Berkeley, talks about one of the things that is missing
here is the infrastructure and that what is needed is a local
mill. When was the last time you had a local mill and why do
you not have one now?
Mr. Zimmerman. Before my time. I have been here 11 years,
there has not been a sawmill here in that time. I think
Congressman Lewis probably--excuse me.
Mr. Walden. Is the lack of a sawmill, in your opinion, a
problem for getting these trees out of here?
Mr. Zimmerman It is certainly a part of it. The economics
is driven by a lot of costs, you know, there is the cost of
cutting the trees down, moving them, power lines, houses and
all of that stuff. This is very expensive work. It would be
nice if we did not just have to burn this material up. That too
is expensive.
Mr. Walden. Or putting it in landfills?
Mr. Zimmerman. Grinding it up and putting it in landfills
is expensive. If there was some value, and the way to have
value is to reduce the cost. Part of the cost of taking this
stuff to a sawmill is the transportation cost. I understand it
is about 7 hours one way, so only the very best of the logs are
going to a sawmill, and thereby paying their own way through
this.
Mr. Walden. When was the last time you had a timber sale,
not a hazardous fuels reduction effort, but a timber sale, and
why?
Mr. Zimmerman. About eight or nine years ago, we sold the
last sale, prior to this last year-and-a-half. I essentially
threw in the towel on the timber sale program on this forest,
even though it was a very small program.
Mr. Walden. Why?
Mr. Zimmerman. Because our timber sales were being appealed
and we had lawsuits, we had protests out in front of the ranger
station here at Arrowhead, the district ranger was being hung
in effigy and protesters on weekends protesting those small
timber sales.
Mr. Walden. Then what is it going to take to get this
forest cleaned out and how long is it going to take? This is a
powder keg, both the private lands and the public lands. I
never thought after being here in September and then watching
these fires go that we would ever come back and be in this
building. Three percent burned, is that it, of the bug-infested
timber lands?
Mr. Zimmerman. Three to five percent, somewhere in there.
Mr. Walden. Which means the bulk of them are left still in
this volatile state.
Mr. Zimmerman. Yes, and in fact the areas that burned where
we had big infestations, there are now more dead trees there
because of the fire.
Mr. Walden. So the fire situation is worse for the future?
Mr. Zimmerman. What it is going to take obviously is
infrastructure. You have mentioned part of the infrastructure,
the other part is human infrastructure, licensed contractors,
folks working for the various agencies, staff, to put contracts
together, and money. And Congress is well aware of that.
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Lewis.
Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the audience's
edification, Mary Bono and I are not members of the Committee,
so we have the privilege of being here by way of the courtesy
of Chairman Richard Pombo.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Lewis. And I wanted for the record, for all of those
who were curious to know, that both Richard Pombo and I do know
the difference between us and Mary Bono.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Lewis. But she is sometimes difficult to ignore.
I am very interested, Mr. Bosworth, in pursuing the
question of remaining dead trees and fuel, much of which is on
public lands, but a lot of which is on private land as well.
And as part or a fire on somebody's five acres where that
individual cannot afford--I am not even worried about
responsibility here, but cannot afford to take down those
trees, could be the source of devastation. I would like you to
spend a moment addressing your sense of funding flows that are
beginning to happen, whether there are adequate dollars
beginning to fill in the pipeline and what role will any of
those funds play in terms of dealing with this private land
problem?
Mr. Bosworth. There are two kinds of dollars that we get,
the Forest Service, in terms of what we would be using to help
this situation. There is the money that we get to manage the
national forest system, to deal with the fuels there. And then
through our state and private forestry program, we get dollars
that through grants can go to the counties and those dollars
then can go to help private landowners to do other things
within the county that needs to be done in these areas.
There is a big need out there. And in fact, I might have
Jack Blackwell be specific about the kinds of dollars that he
is getting at this point in terms of state and private dollars,
but you know, I do not expect that we are going to be able to
come up with enough money to take care of all the private land.
What we can do though is we can come up with enough money to
work together, and if we can get some of these other kinds of
infrastructures in place--in other words, if we can find a way
to utilize some of the material that is being removed, that
would significantly or may significantly reduce the cost of
doing some of the work that needs to be done. As long as we are
going to haul it off and recover no value, it is going to be
that much more expensive.
But I am going to ask Jack to be specific about the kinds
of dollars that this area is getting right now from a state/
private forestry standpoint.
Mr. Blackwell. OK. Congress has been very generous this
year and that is due in large part, Mr. Lewis, to some of your
tremendous work. There is $47.7 million that has already
passed, about 50 percent of that is available for state and
private work off the national forests. In addition, as you well
know, there is $50 million pending in a consolidated
appropriations bill, which we are all told has a great chance
of passage. Again, that is a 50/50 split.
So southern California should see $97.7 million in fiscal
2004, the one we are in, and 50 percent of that work will
occur--those funds will go onto the national forests and 50
percent on the state and private lands.
Mr. Lewis. Thank you for that.
Mr. Chrisman, I was especially interested in your comment
about the prospect of biomass sorts of development for energy
production. There are some very interesting things going on
that I have been made aware of in Oregon currently where in the
past they have had a bark beetle problem. They are looking at
the development of methane and other kinds of alternative fuels
from those resources as the trees come down, et cetera. And I
would like to talk with you a lot more about that. I think
there is some tremendous potential there and there could be a
state and Federal partnership developed as well.
Mr. Chrisman. I think the time is right for that,
Congressman.
Mr. Lewis. One more question of Mr. Bosworth, if I could. I
know I am pushing my time here, but as we go forward and take
down trees, saving our forest is much more than just taking
down trees. We want to see those trees appropriately and well
managed come back and have the forest be here for as long as
man may be here. Are there aggressive efforts to not only
collect seeds of indigenous trees to the region, begin nursery
programs and the like to begin actually growing plants that
might well be placed in the forest lands over time here?
Mr. Bosworth. We do have large programs of reforestation,
nurseries where we can grow seedlings and plant seedlings. We
have gotten better and better and better at that over the years
in terms of our ability to do that.
The real question is to get the lands into condition where
those trees can grow, to where we can then, as I said before,
get fire back into these fire-dependent ecosystems in a more
controlled way, and I believe we can have healthy forests in
the future.
Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Pombo. Ms. Bono.
Ms. Bono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am going to ask my first question I believe to Chief
Bosworth, and that is the general thinking I believe among
people who are afraid of healthy forests is that we politicians
have something called a slippery slope theory, that what we
start has great intentions but it ends up being so much more
than it is. And they believe even by thinning the forest here,
that ultimately it is going to mean the entire commercial
exploitation of logging of the forests here. I was wondering if
you could take some time to--I do not believe in the slippery
slope theory, I do believe there are reasonable people in
government and in agencies who are there to prevent slippery
slopes who are actually capable of stopping such things from
happening. But I was wondering if you could take an opportunity
to share your thoughts about this very thing.
Mr. Bosworth. I would be happy to. You know, one time, the
Forest Service, on the national forests, we sold somewhere in
the vicinity of 12 billion board feed a year of timber back in
the mid-1980s. For the past several years, it has been about
1.8 to 2 billion board feet a year. We have not proposed big
increases, we have not proposed any increases since I have been
Chief of the Forest Service. What I am interested in is making
sure that what we do, we do well.
These are battles and fights and fears of the past, in my
opinion. And the threats to our national forests and to our
nation's forests in the future are things like a natural
buildup of fuel and invasive weeds and insects and diseases and
some of those kinds of things. They are not--over-cutting and
timber harvesting is not a battle of today or in the future, in
my opinion.
Ms. Bono. Thank you. I think a prime example, and I will
bring Mike into this debate, is when we talk about biomass or a
local contractor mentioned cogeneration to me up here as well,
which is another idea. But can you explain to me how much fuel
currently exists and once we create biomass, are we then
creating something that we are going to need to perpetuate so
we are effectively continuing to look for further fuel to add
to the biomass or is this something we can do and stop when the
time is right?
Mr. Chrisman. That is an excellent question. It has created
problems in the past as we have tried to encourage, through tax
incentives and other types of programs, these types of biomass
activities. I mean you have got to create enough of an economic
incentive for these kinds of opportunities to be made real and
then to ultimately function in a way that they are continuing.
Here in California, I cannot answer your question about the
total amount of biomass. Clearly the biomass available off a
forest is significant. There are biomass generation plants in
the San Joaquin Valley that are taking biomass from
agricultural products. That industry is on the growth in
California because of the air pollution, air quality issues
that are keeping the burning from happening with a lot of these
facilities.
So again, it seems to me that what we need in this area is
effective public/private partnerships where we have state and
Federal tax structures maybe creating incentives where you can
get capital investment in these kind of activities. What we do
not want to get ourselves into is where we are--as in the
1980s, where we created a situation where we actually went in
and subsidized the price of the output of some of these biomass
plants. Ultimately economically they fail because market forces
are at play and they just do not work. So we have got to create
opportunities where these things do work. I think we are on the
road to doing that.
Ms. Bono. Thank you. I realize my time has just about
expired, so I will yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very
much.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you.
I have a number of questions but I think in the interest of
time, Chief, I will just kind of boil it down to this--we have
had complaints or concerns that have arisen by area residents
about their ability to do things, to get in and clear areas out
and delays because of Forest Service policy. What does Congress
need to do to speed up the process in terms of doing this
recovery? The healthy forest bill is one thing, and that is
something that we need to do proactively to try to lessen the
chance of this happening again, but it happened here. What do
we need to do now? What suggestions can you have for this
Committee and for Congress as to what our next step should be?
Mr. Bosworth. Well, I assume you are talking about the
recovery aspects after the burn.
Mr. Pombo. Yeah.
Mr. Bosworth. And the things that we need to get done now.
What the Forest Service is doing here in California is we are
going to be issuing grants to these counties very quickly. On
occasion we will hear some concerns about our grant process and
whether it is too complicated and whether it is clear enough to
be able to apply for a grant. We believe that we have got it
down to a situation where people can apply for those grants
fairly quickly and fairly easily. And our folks are ready to
help any of them that need help in terms of how to apply for
those grants. I believe a call letter went out around the first
of December to all the counties in the area so that they can
get those grant applications in.
In fact, I think what I will do is let Regional Forester
John Blackwell talk a little more specifically about that
because they have been working real hard at it.
Mr. Blackwell. Well, the Fire Safe Councils, the community
groups that this new legislation promotes, working with them
and through them, I believe are the way we need to go. And that
is the way that we are delivering the funding and trying to put
together these action plans in response to the Healthy Forest
Act.
And so it is as simple as that, I believe.
Mr. Pombo. Let me ask you specifically on one issue that
was brought up to the Committee. And that is that local
citizens have been kept from clearing out dead trees, brush and
dirt piles along recently bulldozed fire breaks because Forest
Service archaeologists and anthropologists must first inventory
arrowheads and pottery shards and botanists must first
inventory all disturbed flora before they can do anything. You
know, it is real easy for us to blame the Forest Service or to
blame you guys, but a lot of this is Federal law. And what I am
looking for is what do we have to do, what can we do to make
the recovery happen faster, to move through the bureaucratic
process faster? Is it a matter, do you need more people or do
you need some kind of a streamline in the law? Is there some
kind of a bureaucratic reduction that we could do that can move
this along faster?
Mr. Blackwell. Well, of course, people and funding always
help. We have got the Antiquities Act, we cannot destroy
priceless antiquities and so we have to survey for them. That
takes time. We have got the Endangered Species Act. We cannot
drive a plant or an animal to extinction through our
activities. And so we have to survey and plan and that takes
coordination.
The people that you are hearing from expressing frustration
is some of the same frustration that we have over the length of
time some of these things take. And they are very frustrating,
but the goals are good. It is next to impossible to shortcut
and not make terrible mistakes. And so we have to jump through
those hoops.
You put your finger on a very tough problem that we wrestle
with. Certainly more people allows us to get the work done
quicker, but we have got to find ways to do it more
efficiently, and we wrestle with that. The streamlined NEPA
that we are working on now should help.
That is I guess about as far as I would go right now.
Mr. Bosworth. I would just like to add one thing. When I
came into my job a couple of years ago, we put together a team
to work on what we call the process predicament, and developed
a document to try to identify all the areas where process is a
problem for us. And we have had people working all across the
country in trying to deal with--it is amazing the number of
places where we have brought ourselves to a screeching halt
because of our processes. And so we are trying to pick them up
one at a time. We are working our way through these and my
objective is in the end that we still have good processes, we
still take care of the land the way we need to take care of it,
but that we are effective and efficient and quick and we do it.
And we have not been that way. So that is why we are trying to
fix those processes. And you helped us with the Healthy Forests
legislation.
Mr. Pombo. Well, I will just tell you on behalf of myself
and the other members of the Committee, if you guys come up
with suggestions, things that you need, do not hesitate to let
us know. You know, the Healthy Forests initiative I think was a
good thing and we were able to get that through, but now we are
dealing with the aftermath, and if there is something that we
need to do in order to make that happen, you need to sit down
and tell us what that is.
Mr. Bosworth. We will do that. I appreciate that.
Mr. Pombo. I want to thank this panel for their testimony.
I am going to excuse this panel and call up our second panel.
Mr. Chips Barry, Director, Denver Water Department and Mr.
Peter Brierty, Fire Marshal, County of San Bernardino.
Before you sit down, if you would just raise your right
hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Pombo. Let the record show they both answered in the
affirmative.
We welcome you here today. As with the previous panel, I
would ask you to limit your oral testimony to five minutes.
Your entire written testimony will be included in the record.
Mr. Barry, we are going to begin with you.
STATEMENT OF HAMLET J. BARRY, III, MANAGER,
DENVER WATER, DENVER, COLORADO
Mr. Barry. Thank you, Mr. Pombo. I am pleased to accept
this invitation to be here today. My name is Chips Barry, I am
the Manager of the Denver Water Department.
I think I am here because Denver Water has had some
experiences in the last three or four years that might prove
instructive to people in California. We have had fires and
floods. Presumably we have learned something from that and
maybe it is relevant to California. Although I will say that
the soil conditions, vegetation types, et cetera, are different
and I do not know for sure that everything we did is relevant
here. That decision will need to be made by people as they go
through the experience, but maybe we have learned something and
it is helpful.
Teresa has agreed to show some slides for me. I want to
point out this is my only opportunity to command the Federal
government by asking her to put the slides up and down, so this
is my one opportunity to do that.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Barry. Teresa, you can go to the next one. Just to put
things in context, this tells you what the Denver Water System
looks like. Right there is the city of Denver, the continental
divide runs through here like this, the different colors
represent the different watersheds. The biggest watershed is
the South Platte River Watershed. More than 80 percent of our
water comes from that watershed, either because it comes
through a tunnel from the west slope, Lake Dillon, to that
watershed, or it originates in that watershed itself. So that
gives you that idea.
Let me talk a little bit about the fires we have had in our
system. This is the South Platte Watershed. We had a major fire
called the Buffalo Creek fire in 1996. We had the Hayman fire
in 1992. And from that, we have learned something, and let us
talk a little bit about what we learned. And I will say that
the Buffalo Creek fire is where we first learned our lesson. We
did not anticipate what would happen after we had a 12,000 acre
fire, which is relatively small, even by our standards and
certainly by California standards, if that fire was followed by
a two-inch rain.
Teresa, you can put the next one up, let us see what we
have got here. Well, this shows that we have had seven fires in
this watershed over the last seven years. We can skip right on
to the next one, Teresa, please.
This is the shape of the Buffalo Creek fire, 12,000 acres.
Sixty days after that fire, we got two inches of rain in this
area and we are talking about rain on top of decomposed granite
soil. It is not really soil, it is decomposed granite. I do not
know how it compares to the situation here. But we had in about
four or five hours two inches of rain in this area. That
produced a wall of sediment that came roaring down this creek
and dammed--this is the South Platte River right here. It
dammed the South Platte River for a period of five or six hours
until the river broke through and sent a sea of trash and
sediment down the river into our major reservoir, which is
right down here.
You can show the next picture, which I think will show--
this is an example of 5,000 tons of driftwood sediment, porta
potties, tires, propane tanks and other crap that we got
overnight in this reservoir. This was a significant problem for
us.
Let us look at the next one. This shows what happened to
the water quality overnight. That is ash and sediment. Those
are our intake towers right there.
Go ahead to the next one, Teresa. I will get to this in a
minute. The Buffalo Creek brought us 400,000 cubic yards of
sediment into a reservoir that had received 110,000 yards in
the prior 11 years. We got 400,000 cubic yards in a space of
about 2 days and that equaled what we had seen in prior 12
years. This was a surprise to us and this is the lesson that we
were taught that helped us perhaps a little bit getting ready
for the next fire.
Now this shows you something that is quite relevant to what
the prior panel was talking about. This is the forest in 1900.
This is the way the same ground looks today. It is overgrown,
it is under-managed, it needs to be thinned. It is top heavy
with fuel and it is like it is in California, this is a
disaster waiting to happen. Actually, we have already had this
disaster, we burned this area in the Hayman fire in 1992.
We can go to that next slide. This is the whole Hayman fire
burn area, this is a major reservoir of ours and this is
property that we own. That is 8,000 acres right there, the
total area is 137,000 acres. You can see the severity of the
burn area around our watershed.
Now I will say that based on what we learned at Buffalo
Creek, we began a program of forest treatment and thinning,
much the way that the Chief was talking about. In the areas
that we succeeded in thinning in advance of this fire, not
because we knew the fire was coming but because it was time to
do it. In those areas it either did not burn or it did not burn
severely. And I will say that our facilities--we have a series
of houses and shops and stuff right here. We had done all of
that treatment around that area and it did not burn. We have
become the poster child for forest thinning and forest
treatment to show what happens if you do it and the area then
burns, because where we had done the treatment it did not burn
or it did not burn severely.
We did have opposition when we began that. We had
cooperation from the Forest Service. We had citizens and others
who did not want us to thin and treat the forest the way we
thought was necessary. We did it and we are happy we did it.
But we did not get our 8,000 acres done. You can see, this
8,000 acres, a lot of it burned severely.
Teresa, you can go to the next slide. I think I am going to
begin to show what happened as a result of the fire. Goose
Creek is one of the tributaries that drains into Cheesman
Reservoir. This is what it looks like now, a year after the
fire. You can just go ahead and whip through those and we can
begin to see the stuff that we have done. Goose Creek used to
be about 20 feet wide. It is now 150 feet wide and it has got
three feet of sediment and ash deposited in the bottom of that
drainage.
This is some of the treatment we did in the area that was
burned. We put in straw bales and log sediment dams. We
contoured and did directional felling. We hydro-seeded and
hydro-mulched. We put down polyacrylomides which tend to hold
the soil. We did hydro-axing. I will have to describe for you
what a hydro-ax machine is. It is an amazing item. It is
basically a deck mower--a huge deck mower on the end of a
cherry picker. You put it at the top of a burned dead tree and
it grinds the tree to mulch in about 30 seconds. It is like
putting a tree in a pencil sharpener. And I am sure when you
come up against your next primary opponent or his campaign
manager, you will imagine use of this hydro-ax machine.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Barry. This thing is remarkable. It is like putting a
tree in a pencil sharpener. The last time I checked, we had
hydo-axed 425,000 trees on our 8,000 acres, and that is only
about a quarter of what needs to be done.
So we did timber sale in the salvage area. We have--in
fact, I have this figure somewhere. Ten million board feet of
lumber was salvaged from the area burned in this fire. We had
to pay to have that done, I would say, but we reduced the
amount we had to pay by the salvage value of 10 million board
feet. They did not pay us to get it, but we had to pay less to
have them do it.
Teresa, next slide. This begins to show some of the
technique. We put in--oh, I have a figure here, well, 2,000
sediment dams in gullies like this of straw bales, at least
2,000. I have had a crew of 50 men working on our 8,000 acres
in the Hayman forest every day since the fire 18 months ago.
Forty men every day doing stuff like this. You can just go
through the slides. They will show you the kind of things we
are doing.
I always put this in here to amuse the Chief. Our land
begins here. This is Forest Service land. We have put straw
bale dams all the way down the drainage, all the way down to
the reservoir. I will tell you that we think this helps but we
have not yet seen a two-inch rain on top of this burn area. We
have seen as much--we have seen only about a quarter-of-an-inch
of rain so far. So I can tell you that we need to do everything
we are doing, but I cannot tell you for sure that it will work
absolutely. Mother Nature may win.
Teresa. We have done contour felling. You can see this.
This is standing dead timber, where instead of salvaging the
lumber we put it across the hill as a sediment dam.
Go ahead. Directional felling in drainage bottoms because
you leave it. You do not cut the limbs off and you collect the
sediment. You slow it down that way.
This is part of what this crew of men has been doing. We
have built these little--these trash racks. You can see that
there is sediment collected here. This is the result of a 1/4-
inch rain or less. I was up there 2 weeks ago and many of these
things are now full and they have to be emptied. If you can
empty them. Sometimes you cannot get equipment in, the hill is
too steep, et cetera.
This is an area showing what we would call completed
treatment. Where we have seeded, we have hydro-axed, leaving
the material that the hydro-ax produces from a dead standing
tree, which is mulch. Leaving it on the ground and contour
felling a tree. So that is what a good portion of our burned
area looks like right now, our 8,000 acres.
I will say that--oh, no, one more thing here. My engineers
had a bit of a gulp when I told them we needed to design a
leaky dam, otherwise known as a sediment trap. That is what
this is. The Goose Creek area was heavily burned. You can put
up the next one, too. We built a 40-foot high dam that was
designed to leak. It is supposed to let water through and hold
sediment back. The dam face is down there. We are on the up-
stream side. We know that is working. We are going to have to
go in and clean it out. I suspect it is the Colorado equivalent
of the sediment basins that you have here in the San Gabriel
Mountains. It is smaller, smaller scale, same idea. Trap the
sediment before it can go downhill and do too much damage.
Let me wrap up with just a few conclusions and observations
about what Denver has learned. A great deal of the potential
damage from the forest fir can be eliminated or reduced by
careful deliberate forest management in the years and decades
before. This is what the Chief and others were talking about. I
have seen this firsthand. We have forests that have too much
fuel, too many trees, too much disease and our fire suppression
policy has exacerbated the problem. We have fuel loads that are
indescribably large and they lead to the kind of problems that
we have seen in our watershed.
Our preliminary conclusion is that our sediment control
measures, most of them on a pretty small scale, are going to
help, but I cannot guarantee that they are absolutely going to
work. I am hopeful but not particularly optimistic that we will
succeed in keeping 2 million cubic yards of decomposed granite
sediment from washing downhill into the South Platte River and
into Cheesman Reservoir. I am hopeful but I am not optimistic.
The Federal government agencies, NRCS, Forest Service, BLM
are occasionally helpful and they are always sympathetic;
however, their budgets are limited and the acreage they deal
with is vast compared to our own. Following the fire, we have
outspent the feds ten to one on an acre-per-acre basis in this
burn area. The point is that you cannot depend upon the Federal
government to do a great deal for you. No matter how big your
problem is they have a million problems just like it or bigger.
So Denver has taken it upon ourselves, we are going to do for
our land everything we can do. We do not expect--we would hope,
but we do not expect the feds to be able to do the same thing.
I remain very concerned about overgrowth in the forest in
the so-called red zone, which is the urban wildland interface
not owned by the Federal government and not owned by Denver
Water. It is overgrown as well. This is not part of my
testimony, but listening to earlier testimony, Mr. Pombo, it
seems to me if Congress could be of help here, we need to ask
the insurance industry to require forest treatment on private
land in the red zone, because if you do not treat it, you
either do not get hazard insurance for your house or you pay a
lot more for it. The single most effective thing that could be
done on private land would be to do it through the insurance
industry. Congress should--I know you do not like doing battle
with the insurance industry, and I do not either at least on
the local level. I have tried it and I lost. Not on this issue,
on a different one. But it would make sense to me to have the
private land incentive. The combination of carrot and stick.
There has got to be something out there to get private
landowners to take care of it and it may be that the insurance
industry is a vehicle to make that happen.
Finally, I would simply say that based on our own
experience, we know as much about what to do as the Federal
agencies. They are helpful, but you have to rely on your own
expertise and your own manpower and your own money if you are
really going to get it done. We have done a lot. Denver has
become the poster child for this treatment, but, of course, we
have not had a two-inch rain on top of that fire area. I am
afraid we may become the poster child for the disaster, too.
But at the moment, we are the poster child for what you do
before the fire and what you do after the fire.
Thank you for allowing me to testify.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you.
Mr. Brierty.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Barry follows:]
Statement of Hamlet J. Barry, III, Manager, Denver Water Department
I. Introduction
My name is Chips Barry, and I am Manager of the Denver Water
Department. Denver Water is a municipal corporation that supplies water
to 1.2 million people in and around Denver, Colorado. About one quarter
of the population of Colorado is supplied by water from us. Our water
supply is dependent on water generated in watersheds located primarily
on Forest Service and other public lands west of Denver. We gather
water in three watersheds west of Denver on both sides of the
Continental Divide, and move it by canal and conduit as much as 80
miles to treatment facilities located near the city.
Denver Water has had several large fires in our watershed in the
last seven years. This testimony will describe how Denver Water dealt
with our watershed before, during, and after those fires, and attempt
to distill the lessons we have learned about forest fires, erosion,
sediment control, water quality, and the various levels of governmental
ownership, control, or oversight that influence our action.
I make no claim that our experience is fully relevant to the recent
wild fires here in California. I suspect that differences in vegetation
type, soil conditions, topography, and settlement patterns mean that
the lessons from our experience will be only partially helpful here in
California. Nevertheless, I will try to distill our experience for
whatever it may be worth.
II. Watershed Described
Denver draws water from the Blue River, the Fraser River, and the
Williams Fork River, all of which are tributaries of the Colorado River
west of the Continental Divide. We also draw water from the South
Platte River, on the East Slope of the Continental Divide. Much of the
water on the West Slope is delivered to Denver by tunnel through the
upper reaches of the South Platte. Hence, more than 80% of the water
supplied to Denver is delivered via the South Platte River. Thus, the
South Platte watershed is of vital importance to us. Since 1996, there
have been six forest fires in the upper South Platte watershed. Two of
these have had, or will have, devastating consequences for us. (Insert
Slides 1-4.)
III. Buffalo Creek Fire
The Buffalo Creek Fire began on May 8, 1996. It burned swiftly and
was a very hot fire, burning 12,000 acres in a day. The intensity of
the fire made the underlying soil hydrophobic, meaning it would not
absorb water. While Denver Water knew that a forest fire could create
erosion problems, we had, in fact, no real idea of what would happen.
In July, we had a persistent rainstorm on top of the Buffalo Creek
Area, and received two inches of rain in a short period of time. The
decomposed granite ``soil'' moved like ball bearings when hit with that
volume of water, and this destructive erosion load flowed directly down
Spring Creek and dammed the South Platte River. After a few hours, the
river broke the dam and the resulting mess ended up in our Strontia
Springs Reservoir a mile further downstream. In three hours we received
as much sediment in Strontia Springs Reservoir as had accumulated in
the prior eleven years. We received something like 400,000 cubic yards
of material. We also received fifteen or more surface acres of floating
debris, and 5,000 tons of driftwood, port-a-potties, tires, and other
flotsam brought down by the flood.
Looking back on the Buffalo Creek Fire and Flood, I think it's fair
to say that we did not know how severe the erosion would be if we got a
severe rainstorm on top of the area that had been burned. We did not
anticipate the damage, but with only 60 days between the fire and the
rain, there was little time to do anything had we known.
For this relatively small fire, the water quality and clean-up
costs were nearly a million dollars, and the estimated future cost is
15 to 20 million dollars to dredge our reservoir. We estimate the
aftereffects of erosion will negatively affect water quality, and cost
us $250,000 per year for at least ten years. (Insert Slides 5-7.)
IV. The Hayman Fire
The Hayman Fire began on June 8, 2002. This fire began during times
of drought, and was fueled by an overgrown, under-managed forest, and
high winds. The fire burned for six weeks, and, at the end of it,
138,000 acres of our South Platte watershed had been consumed.
Prior to the fire, based partially on our experience at Buffalo
Creek, we had begun a program of forest thinning and treatment to
reduce the fuel loads in the forest on lands we own. However, Denver
Water owns only 8,000 acres of the 138,000 burned, and even for our
8,000 we had only completed about one quarter of the thinning. The
lesson is that the area that was thinned or treated did not burn or did
not burn severely.
Following the Hayman Fire, and continuing until today, Denver Water
has had a crew of up to 40 people working on our land around Cheesman
Reservoir, in order to prevent or limit the kind of sedimentation seen
after the Buffalo Creek Fire. Fortunately, we have not yet seen the
kind of rainfall over this burned area that was seen in the summer of
1996. However, even a 1/4-inch rain has been sufficient to move tons of
debris down the hill toward the river and our reservoir.
Since July of last year, the following restorative efforts have
taken place at the Cheesman Reservoir property:
Denver Water crews and aerial contractors have applied
more than 210,000 pounds of grass seed over 4,550 acres, and have
sprayed hydromulch over an additional 450 acres;
Nearly 30,000 straw bales have been placed, creating
nearly 2,000 sediment dams in gullies in the burn area in order to slow
the flow of rain runoff;
Crews have cut dead timber on steep slopes in the burn
area using a process called ``contour felling,'' in which trees are cut
and aligned perpendicular to the slopes, again to prevent erosion;
Denver Water also hired contractors with Hydroax machines
to mulch standing dead trees on about 2,100 acres. This process helps
break up the hydrophobic soils, removes the unsightly burned trees from
the landscape, and returns organic materials to the soil, replacing
those that were destroyed in the fire. Much of this was done in areas
that were already seeded, providing mulch over the seed;
Under private contract, 1,700 acres of burned land were
logged by timber salvage companies. About 10 million board feet of
lumber--the equivalent of 22,000 cords of firewood or 2,900 miles of 2-
by-4 studs--were salvaged;
Starting this year, Denver Water planted 25,000 ponderosa
pine seedlings and will continue to do so for the next nine years to
reforest the area with its native pine species;
As a more immediate source of protection for the dam and
the water supply, a 140-foot-long, 40-foot-high rock sediment dam was
constructed to span the Goose Creek inlet, northwest of the dam. The
structure contains about 14,000 tons of rock and is designed to be
water permeable; and
Costs of the Cheesman reclamation have totaled nearly
$5.5 million, with the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service and
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reimbursing Denver Water about
$2.8 million of that amount. Future dredging costs have not been
estimated.
(Go through the sequence of slides from No. 8 through No. 23,
describing the fire, erosion prevention measures, and sediment
problems.)
V. Lessons Learned and Observations.
I do not know whether the experience of Denver Water in the arid
ponderosa pine forest of the foothills of the Rockies is relevant to
the chaparral fires in coastal California. Nevertheless, my
observations and final thoughts are as follows:
1. A great deal of the potential damage from the forest fire can
be eliminated by careful, deliberate forest management in the years and
decades before. We have too much fuel load in our forests, and our fire
suppression policy exacerbates the problem. Our forests need to be
treated and thinned regularly and scientifically. This problem has
nothing to do with favors to the timber industry;
2. Our preliminary conclusion is that our sediment control
measures, most of them on a very small scale, have helped, but they
have not yet been severely tested by a large rain event. I am hopeful,
but not particularly optimistic, that we will succeed in preventing two
million cubic yards of decomposed granite from moving downhill into our
waterways;
3. The Federal Government agencies, namely NRCS, The Forest
Service, and BLM, are occasionally helpful and usually sympathetic.
However, their budgets are limited and the acreage they deal with is
vast compared with our own. Following the fire, we have outspent the
Feds nearly 10 to 1 on an acre-for-acre basis comparing our land to
theirs. The point is that you cannot depend upon the Federal Government
to do a great deal for you. No matter how big your problem is, it is
only one among a million such problems for them;
4. Denver Water remains concerned about overgrown forests in the
``red zone,'' which is the urban/wildland interface west of Denver up
and down the Front Range. We have not yet discovered the right mixture
of carrot and stick that will motivate private landowners to treat and
thin the forest on their property to help avoid catastrophic wildfire;
and
5. I think the above observations lead clearly to the conclusion
that the local agencies know as much or more than anyone about the
problems and what will help to alleviate future water quality,
sediment, and erosion problems. Based on our experience, there is no
guarantee that any of the measures will work, but we need to do what we
can.
______
STATEMENT OF PETER BRIERTY, FIRE MARSHAL,
SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Brierty. Honorable members of the Subcommittee, Mr.
Chair and Congressional guests, on behalf of the citizens of
the County of San Bernardino and the Board of Supervisors of
the County, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to
speak here.
Last month these mountains dodged a bullet. A bullet that
could have taken the life off of, if not out of, these
mountains.
I realize that today across our great nation there are
other forests with as many, possibly more, dead and dying
trees. But those forests are not the most popular, not the most
visited, not the most populated. They do not contain $8 billion
of assessed homes and properties and businesses, the homes of
our citizens.
To manage the bark beetle problem the Board of Supervisors,
over 18 months ago, authorized that the Mountain Area Safety
Task Force, or MAST, be the administrative structure to manage
this multi-jurisdictional emergency. The efforts of MAST paid
great dividends in our response here on the mountain top. With
that in mind, the county's Office of Emergency Services is
reinvesting those benefits of the MAST model and has initiated
an action plan in cooperation with our flood control districts
to mitigate the effects of debris and flood runoff from the
burned areas. There are now 30 miles of burned foothills,
moonscape. This is not only a physical threat of debris and mud
flows to our property owners down stream but it also threatens
the quality of our drinking water, not just in the foothills
and the mountains, but the quality of drinking water for
millions of people in California and also the California water
project.
A year before the fire started MAST was addressing
reforestation. As we speak, the Lake Arrowhead Community
Services District is creating a customer report that provides
citizens with valuable information on erosion control. This is
a companion document to their previous publication providing
information on proper planting of fire resistant and drought
tolerant native plants in the mountains. This week alone
several meetings have been held between agency representatives,
registered professional foresters, arborists, fire safe
councils and the Resource Conservation Service and, of course,
citizens in efforts to coordinate, educate and most importantly
initiate action on the issues of proper replanting, healthy
reforestation and erosion control. The House Resource
Committee's continued support of these community-based
operations are critical to the long-term success of
reforestation on this mountain.
As of November the 1st, the fire siege of California
consumed almost 800,000 acres, but 68 percent of those acres
that burned were private lands, leaving only 32 percent that
were Federal. I would ask that Congress encourage the Forest
Service to utilize the maximum flexibility provided within the
Act to fund efforts to mitigate the fire danger and the threat
on private lands, or as the Act describes as at-risk
communities that are surrounded by a forest boundary. There are
49,000 improved parcels with homes and businesses in this
forest, but only a small minority of those businesses and homes
are actually on Forest Service lands.
I would also ask that the Forest Service make their highest
priority those projects that will protect our communities. They
should endeavor to provide fuels treatments, fire protection
zones, shaded fuel breaks in cooperation with local fire
jurisdictions and create them immediately, but in an
environmentally safe fashion with respect to artifacts of those
who have gone before us adjacent to our communities.
Let us talk about fire safe councils. I would ask that
funding be provided to our fire safe councils, but the grant
approval system that we have today is rather Byzantine. It is
cumbersome, it is time consuming and the folks that are sitting
in this room today that are members of those fire safe councils
are ready to act today, not next year and not years from now
but today. They are here and willing. These citizen-led
organizations have made terrific progress in every single
community across this mountain top. Their tireless efforts to
motivate, educate and organize have paid great dividends to our
mountain communities. Ellen Palima from Latto Creek should get
a medal for what she did over there. Among their successes,
their town hall meetings--constant town hall meetings, standing
room only, filling this room itself to overflow, were clearly
the foundation for success for the sheriff's office safely
evacuating over 58,000 people off this mountain in a few days.
Although it might not have been the largest evacuation in the
state's history, it was certainly the most calm and absolutely
the most polite.
The term tree removal now needs to include the development
of infrastructure to utilize all of those wood products from
the tree and consider them raw materials and not waste. The
county itself has initiated funding actions to begin its own
financial efforts to develop the much-needed wood products
utilizations, wood mills, local mills, portable mills,
cogeneration operations. At our last meeting tree removal
operations were creating 600 tons of wood waste a day. That has
just gone well over 800 and with the work of California
Edison--one of our greatest allies on the mountain top for
removing fuel is California Edison--we well may move over 1,600
tons a day. Now let us put that in perspective with last
January. At this time last year we were handling about five
tons of wood waste a day. We need that infrastructure. Also,
please note that I have quoted only activity on the private
lands. These numbers do not include the trees on Federal lands,
which is roughly a 10 times larger land mass. The solutions
that we need to consider must include the beneficial uses of
all wood products regardless of their origin.
In terms of the fire response, we must also examine the
National Fire Plan and the National Wildland Policy in regard
to how local agencies are reimbursed when wildland fires
threaten structures on private lands. Local governments, whose
citizens all pay Federal taxes, incur great expense in
providing structure protection during these events and do not
have the mechanism or the funding in place, the so-called red
money and green money, to pay for response from threats from
outside their community.
With regard to the President's Healthy Forest Initiative.
In recent days it has been somewhat frustrating to hear that
the President's Healthy Forest Initiative was immaterial to the
fire siege of 2003. Some have observed that the fire was mostly
in chaparral and coastal sage, not the forest. Well I am here
to tell you that our local mountain fire fighters and those
that helped them from all over are not going to allow this fire
to burn into this forest just to make a political point. Some
say it was a little luck, some say it was the weather, but I
say there was a lot of planning done by MAST, there was a lot
of preparation by our fire safe councils and the bottom line,
some incredible fire fighting--nothing less than heroic, at
great risk to themselves--ta kept this fire out of the greater
parts of our mountain communities. The siege of 2003 is now
recognized as possibly the largest fire in California history
with 3,000 homes lost, a tragedy. But the fire fighters kept
this fire from getting into 10 times that many homes.
With regard to the trees that were effected, absolutely
fewer than five percent of the trees were taken. That leaves 95
percent still standing and more dying every day. The threat is
real, the threat is still here and we need your help as much
now as we did before.
Again, I would like to take a moment to thank you for
taking the time out of your busy schedules to meet with us
today. Particularly again I would like to thank Congressman
Lewis for his commitment to our citizens' safety, his tireless
efforts to provide funding where none had existed before. I
believe Senator Feinstein should be recognized for her help and
her efforts to move this along. And I would like to extend a
personal thank you to all of you members to that some day we
can all say that we gave a gift of a healthy forest to our
children--and my children are here today--and that gift can be
given to their children so they can enjoy it.
I would look to thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Brierty follows:]
Statement of Peter Brierty, Fire Marshal,
County of San Bernardino, California
Honorable members of the Subcommittee, Mr. Chair, on behalf of the
citizens of the County of San Bernardino, and the Board of Supervisors,
I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
Last month these mountain residents dodged a bullet. A bullet that
could have taken the life off of, if not the life out of, these
mountains.
I realize that today, across our great nation, there are other
forests with as many or possibly more dead and dying trees. But those
forests are not the most popular; they are not the most visited; they
are not the most populated; they do not contain eight billion dollars
of assessed value of businesses, and homes, the homes of our citizens.
POST-FIRE REHABILITATION
MAST
To manage the bark beetle problem the Board of Supervisors, 18
months ago, authorized that the Mountain Area Safety Taskforce (MAST)
be the administrative structure to manage this multi-jurisdictional
emergency. The efforts of MAST paid great dividends in our response to
the fire here on the mountain. With that in mind, the County's Office
of Emergency Services is reinvesting those benefits of the MAST model
and has initiated an action plan in cooperation with our Flood Control
Districts to mitigate the effects of debris and flood run off from the
burned areas.
There are now 30 miles of burned foothills, moonscape, from La
Verne in L.A. County across the front country to the Seven Oaks Dam
east of Highland. This flood threat is not only a physical threat of
debris and mud flows to property owners downstream but also threatens
the quality of our drinking water, not just in the foothills, but the
quality of the drinking water of millions of Southern Californians.
Under the original construct of MAST, a year before the fire
started, a division was designed to address reforestation. As we speak,
the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District is creating a Customer
Report that provides citizens valuable information on Erosion Control.
This is a companion document to their previous publication providing
information on proper planting and replanting of fire resistant,
drought tolerant plants in the mountain communities. This week alone
several meetings have been held between Agency reps, Registered
Professional Foresters, Arborists, Fire Safe Councils, the Resource
Conservation Service and citizens in efforts to coordinate, educate,
communicate and initiate action on the issues of proper replanting,
healthy reforestation and erosion control.
The House Resources Committee's continued support of these
community-based operations is critical to the long-term success of
these endeavors.
FIRE PREVENTION
PRIVATE SECTOR PROPERTIES
We need to maximize the funding of fire hazard mitigation and dead
tree removal in the private land holdings. As of November 1st the Fire
Siege of California consumed almost 800,000 acres. 68% of what burned
was private lands. Only 32% was Federal Land.
I would ask that Congress encourage the USFS to utilize the maximum
flexibility provided within the Act to fund efforts to mitigate fire
threat on private lands that are surrounded by the forest boundary.
There are 49,000 improved parcels, parcels with homes and businesses on
private lands adjacent to the boundaries of the San Bernardino National
Forest. Only a small minority of our mountain homes are actually on
USFS lands.
I would also ask that the Forest Service make their highest
priority, those projects that will protect our communities. They should
endeavor to provide fuels treatments, fire protection zones or shaded
fuel breaks in cooperation with local fire jurisdictions and create
them immediately adjacent to our communities. I recognize some
controversy in their effectiveness during a Santa Ana condition, but
they are effective at reducing the velocity and momentum of fire and
they do provide a degree of protection to our communities. A degree
that doesn't exist today.
FIRE SAFE COUNCILS
I would ask that funding not only be provided to local agencies to
remove the dead trees but also funding must be provided to our Fire
Safe Councils. The Byzantine grant approval system that is used today
is too cumbersome and time consuming. These folks are ready to act
today. These citizen-led organizations have made terrific progress in
every community across this mountain. Their tireless efforts to
motivate, educate and organize have paid great dividends to our
mountain communities. Among many successes, their town hall meetings,
standing room only, were clearly the ``foundation for success'' of the
Sheriff's Office safely evacuating over 50,000 people off of this
mountain in only a few days. Some have said that it was the largest
evacuation in the State's history. If it wasn't the largest it was the
most calm and the most polite.
SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT
We must reconsider our definition of ``tree removal.'' It is no
longer just felling the tree. Tree removal now needs to include the
development and utilization of infrastructure to utilize all of the
wood products from the tree and consider them raw materials, not waste.
The County has taken actions that are financing initial efforts to
develop much-needed wood products utilization, but much more can be
done with your help. At our last meeting, tree removal operations were
creating 600 tons of wood waste a day, now we have exceeded 800 tons a
day and this is without the Southern California Edison tree removal
operations in full swing. Their participation will likely move us to
1,600 tons a day. To put this in perspective, before the crisis, we
managed five tons a day. Another source to consider is that the figures
I have quoted only include activity on private lands. It does not
include the Federal lands, which is roughly an area 10 times larger.
The solutions that we consider must include beneficial uses for all
wood products regardless of their origin.
FIRE RESPONSE
We must also examine the National Fire Plan and National Wildland
Policy in regard to how local agencies are reimbursed when wildland
fires threaten structures on private lands. Local governments, whose
citizens all pay federal taxes, incur great expense in providing
structure protection during these events and do not have the mechanisms
or funding in place to pay for response to threats from outside their
jurisdictions. With over 350 Counties, Cities and Tribes participating
the specter of uncompensated provision of service is wearing thin the
fabric of the best mutual aid system in the Country.
PRESIDENTS HEALTHY FOREST INITIATIVE
In recent days it has been somewhat frustrating to hear that the
President's Healthy Forest Initiative was immaterial to the California
Fire Siege of 2003. The detractors state that the fire was mostly in
chaparral and coastal sage. I am here to tell you that our local
mountain fire fighters were not going to allow this fire to burn into
this forest just to make a point. Some say it was a little luck, some
say it was the weather, but I will say that there was a lot of planning
from our Mountain Area Safety Task Force, and preparation by our
citizens and, the bottom line, some incredible fire fighting, nothing
less than heroic fire fighting that kept this fire out of the greater
parts of our mountain communities and out of the forest.
The Siege of 2003 is now recognized as the largest fire in
California history with over 3 thousand homes lost. These fire fighters
kept this fire from getting into the dead trees and saved ten times
that number of homes. Homes that would have been lost had this fire
gotten into our dead forest.
The fire affected fewer than 5% of the dead trees, 95% still
standing and more dying every day. The threat is real, the treat is
still here, and we need your help as much now as we did before.
Again, I would like to take a moment to thank you for taking time
out of your busy schedules to meet with us today. I would particularly
like to thank Congressman Jerry Lewis, for his commitment to our
citizen's safety and for his tireless efforts to provide funding where
none existed. Senator Feinstein should be recognized for her efforts to
help us. And I would like to extend a personal thank you to all of you
for your commitment to eliminate the fire danger that still exists here
in our mountain communities and that someday, we all can say that we
gave the gift of a healthy forest to our children, a gift that their
children will enjoy. Thank you very much.
______
Mr. Pombo. Thank you and I thank you for your testimony.
[Applause.]
Mr. Pombo. I know, Mr. Brierty, that you had a personal
conflict and when it is necessary for you to leave, feel free
to do so.
Mr. Brierty. Thank you very much. I will be more than happy
to stay and answer questions.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Calvert.
Mr. Calvert Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Barry, I was very interested in your testimony as well
as Mr. Brierty's testimony, but the after-effects of the fire.
In the last panel, you may have heard my questions to our
friends as U.S. Geological Survey, and as I mentioned, Fish and
Wildlife is not here, the Corps is not here. Those are agencies
I am sure you had to deal with in the permitting process which
you had to go through.
The Hayman fire was approximately 140,000 acres. This fire
exceeds that by a factor of two or three, three probably.
Mr. Barry. Six.
Mr. Calvert Six, yeah. There are six million people who
live downstream in the Santa Ana River shed and I can tell you
from flying over in the helicopter today that there is some
work being done, but from your experience with a smaller fire,
you are saying that if we have two inches of rain, if we are
not prepared for this, we could have a disaster that is
multiples of what you experienced in the Denver area, is that
correct?
Mr. Barry. Well, Mr. Calvert, I need to be very careful
about not setting myself up as an expert in the geology, the
soils, the hydrology, et cetera of this area. I certainly
know--I think things are different here, your slopes are
steeper, the soil is different and I do not want to project
what I think will happen here because I have not studied it.
And in fact, probably like many of you, I am a lawyer, not a
scientist. So my word is not particularly valuable on that
point anyway.
I do know that two inches of rain on top of the Hayman fire
area in the next two or three years, any time in the next two
or three years, is going to cause enormous problems for Denver
and that is----
Mr. Calvert. How many people downstream from the Hayman
fire?
Mr. Barry. Well, all the way downstream in the city, you
are talking about two million, but in the area above the
reservoirs that would probably fill up with sediment if
anything happened, there are only a few thousand people. It is
not quite like this area around Lake Arrowhead where it is
heavily urbanized.
The Hayman fire area had probably only 5,000 or 6,000
houses in it total.
Mr. Calvert. I guess I just want to make the point that as
bad as the Hayman fire was and the predicament that you are in
is terrible, this could very well be worse.
Mr. Barry. I think this could be worse, but I want to be
careful about that.
Mr. Calvert. And so it is imperative that the permits are
in place, that the work takes place immediately to make sure
that we mitigate for that. And also on the water quality issue,
which we will probably get into with the next panel, this
obviously has a horrendous effect on water quality; and I know
from my experience in chairing the Water Subcommittee that
Colorado is in a difficult situation anyway with water. So if
you are not able to use your groundwater, you have nowhere else
to go.
Mr. Barry. Well, groundwater is not the problem, it is the
surface water. If that gets full of ash and sediment, then it
is going to cost us more money to treat it.
Mr. Calvert, I had one item. Are you still there? There is
a book, it is 20 years old now, but John McFee's book called
``The Control of Nature'' has three chapters in it, one about
controlling lava by putting fire hose water, one about the
Mississippi River and the Corps of Engineers and the third
chapter is called ``Los Angeles against the mountains'' and it
is the story of debris flow basins and the cycle of fire,
flood, debris, et cetera. And I would urge Committee members to
look at that. It is well written. I have never met John McFee,
I would not know him if he walked in the room.
Mr. Calvert. I did read the book a long time ago, I will
re-read it.
Mr. Barry. But it is superb in talking about the issue of
what happens if.
Mr. Calvert. Great, thank you.
And Mr. Brierty, your comments on fuel reduction, there are
only several things you can do. People talk about fuel
reduction and most people say they are in favor of that, but if
you mention the word logging, you will get a lot of people
upset. But what do you do with it? I mean either you can throw
it away, which a lot of that is taking place today, or you can
use it in some manner, whether it is biofuel or logs or
something, to reduce the cost of removal, because this is going
to be extremely expensive.
Mr. Brierty. Yes. There are several options. Some of them
are long-term, the cogeneration option is an 18-month to 2-year
process. But some of the things we have looked at--the county
just provided a loan to a pallet manufacturer. One of the
situations we have up here is the homes are so close together
you cannot free fall a tree and make regular lumber out of it,
but the person who makes pallet stock, four foot lengths, can
take those four foot, five foot, six foot chunks that have to
be cut down in that fashion and use those as raw materials.
Rather than using the good lumber, the 50-60 foot logs for
pallet stock, let us use the stuff that is made available here,
create market niches that we can make on this mountaintop.
Mr. Calvert. I was raised in this area--this is my last
question, but I cannot remember, maybe Mr. Lewis can remember,
but I remember there used to be a local mill here. I think it
closed in 1978 or the early 1980s.
Mr. Brierty. That is correct.
Mr. Calvert. It was an old family mill, was it not?
Mr. Brierty. Yes, it was about 20 years ago. As early as a
year ago, I had people tell me that there was no way that there
would be another mill created in southern California, and as
soon as we get it open, we are going to invite them to cut the
ribbon with us.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Calvert. Thank you.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Baca.
Mr. Baca. Thank you very much.
Mr. Brierty, the first question is, you know, firefighters
inhale fumes from fires and from everything else from fire
burns. I have introduced a bill that requires health monitoring
and analyzes the firefighters who respond to fires, wildfires
and fire disasters. But besides the treatment, what do you
think can be done through prevention? That is question number
one. Number two, is there any equipment or precaution
firefighters should use to reduce the amount of exposure to
harmful fumes or other hazards?
Mr. Brierty. One of the situations in the forest is that is
just a byproduct, there is no way to get around it. I think
that is where the term ``smoke eaters'' came from. But one of
the things we can do is through proper forestation, through
proper removal of dead materials, we can reduce that fire
hazard and reduce the overall risk to those firefighters. It is
indeed--cancer is presumptive in these folks because they
breathe so much contamination in their jobs. And I applaud you
for your efforts to do that.
Mr. Baca. Thank you. I like the fact that you mention
cancer presumption, because California is the first state to do
that. Hopefully we can do that at the national level. I have
introduced legislation in that area. Thank you for that plug.
Mr. Brierty. Thank you.
Mr. Baca. In reference to another question, do you believe
that there is adequate funding to continue to be ready to fight
any additional fires that may come our way? That is question
number one. Two, is there adequate funding in terms of both
equipment to fight the fires and the ability to protect our
firefighters? Because I noticed that when I was out there
during that period of time with the firefighters and highway
patrol, I saw many of the individuals who were resident
individuals trying to put out the fires themselves. Joe, can
you call a firefighter, can you get them over to my home? I
wish I had a magic wand and I would have just been able to got
a fire truck in that immediate area and got it there. They felt
they would have saved their homes, some of them did and some
others did not. But is there anything that can be done?
Mr. Brierty. Absolutely. All across southern California,
northern California, there are measures going forward to the
voters to try to staff up and properly equip firefighters to do
the job. To give you an example, for the last two years, we
have been asking for assistance prior to the fire starting, and
I was told by the FEMA representatives that as soon as the fire
started, we would have all the resources we need. Now sitting
on Sunday morning on October 26, watching the fire burn toward
Crestline with seven local engines, a strike team from San
Diego and our assistants from the Forest Service and CDF is all
we had that morning on Sunday.
But again, you have to remember that there was tremendous
resources drawn everywhere in southern California. The answer
to your question is no, there is not.
Mr. Baca. Thank you very much.
How much has the lack of infrastructure such as milling,
cogens for electricity cost the County of San Bernardino?
Mr. Brierty. It has cost the county well over $5 million to
this point and it is expected to increase until such time that
we have those infrastructures in place. One of the benefits of
that is once those infrastructures--mills, et cetera--come into
place, it will again reduce the cost of the tree removal to our
citizens and incentivize, absolutely incentivize the removal of
dead trees and help us start the forest regeneration.
Mr. Baca. Thank you.
Mr. Barry, I know that I am running out of time, but my
question pertains to something that you said and I am intrigued
by it because you talked about the insurance industries.
Could you elaborate a little bit more in reference to what
can be done there? Because I sit on the Financial Services
Committee and that has jurisdiction over insurance companies.
Mr. Barry. I did not put anything in my testimony because I
did not think of this in this context until this morning, but
it does seem to me--I do not know how Congress would do it. I
do not want to--I do not know enough about how you would do it,
but it would seem to me that the incentive for a homeowner to
do forest treatment and thinning on land he owns would be
considerable, if the insurance company said either we will not
write insurance or we will increase the price unless you treat
the forest land on your property. It seems to me that may be an
easier mechanism than having the heavy hand of the Federal
government tell a homeowner you must do X and you cannot do Y.
That is always a difficult thing to do, but if there were a way
for the insurance industry to make that as part of a policy or
a requirement of a policy, you would see action.
But I have not begun--and I would be more than happy to
have people from my office and utility and even state work with
you all about that. It is just the beginnings of an idea at
this point.
Mr. Baca. I would like to explore that since I do sit on
that Committee.
But one final question, since my light is on. The city of
Rialto in my district has declared a water shortage emergency
on Tuesday. They have already faced serious quality and
quantity problems due to perchlorate and drought, but the
vegetation that has helped water seep into the ground has been
destroyed. The City believes that they have enough water for
now, but there will be serious problems if the basin does not
soak up the water. The ashes and debris will also cause
problems for water treatment.
How great of an impact do you believe that water shortage
could have on this community or any other communities and what
steps do you believe should be taken to make sure that there is
enough quality water?
Mr. Barry. That is to me?
Mr. Baca. Yes.
Mr. Barry. We have many of the same problems in Colorado,
almost all of our water supply in Denver comes from snowmelt.
We have had several water-short years. We are taking a number
of different steps to increase our water supply, including
increased water conservations, incentives, rebates, et cetera.
We are building a water recycling plant, $110 million worth of
recycled water that will be reused for non-potable purposes.
And we are building small projects, nothing big, but a whole
number of different things to increase supply.
Beyond sort of generic advice, I want to stay away from
telling California agencies how they should do their business,
because it is different than ours.
Mr. Baca. Peter, if you would like----
Mr. Brierty. Congressman Baca, on your question on
insurance, one of the things I am sure mountain residents would
be very concerned about is actually a concern over
cancellation, that the fear may be too great by the insurance
companies, but if you could assist in assuring folks that their
insurance would not be canceled as long as they took prudent
actions, that would be much appreciated.
Mr. Baca. Thank you.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Radanovich.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you. I thought both your testimonies
were very valuable and I appreciate you being here, but I have
no questions.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Walden.
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too appreciate your
testimony.
I wanted to point out, this discussion about biomass and
how we can use that to produce power. Just to remind people
that in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, we put a provision
in there for $10 a green ton to help subsidize it, to help pay
for getting it basically out of the woods down to where it can
be used. People you talk to who are in that business will tell
you that is a pittance compared to what it will take, so we are
not going to artificially subsidize it to the point of not
being economically feasible, it will either make it or not. But
it is a little bit of an incentive I think that will help
develop a market for that renewable resource.
How do you say your last name?
Mr. Brierty. Just like you were to make tea out of briars,
briar-tea.
Mr. Walden. Good, thank you.
Mr. Calvert. Sticky subject.
Mr. Walden. The point I was going to make, when we were
putting together the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, the House
version left open but set priorities where this Act would have
its priority. And we said wildland/urban interface, watersheds,
areas of endangered and threatened specie habitat and
watersheds. When the Senate got done with it, they put an
arbitrary half-mile limit and said half the money has to be
spent within half a mile of a wildland/urban interface. Now in
reality, we spend over 60 percent of the funds there today.
We were trying to leave some flexibility to deal with, if
it is your watershed, the Forest Service says needs it the
most, supply it there, or if it is wildland/urban interface,
you can do it there, but try not to have these arbitrary
limits.
The concern I have is that this Act, as good as it is, and
the reform, as good as it is, only applies to about 11
percent--11 percent--of the lands identified in the forest
system that we know are subject to catastrophic fire, bug
infestation and disease, because there is 190 million acres at
threat. This is limited to 20 million acres. Now that is still
a lot of territory, but it does not apply to timber sales, it
does not go into wilderness areas, it does not go into these
roadless areas. All that stuff is sort of off limits. And so as
I look at the problem we face, this Act will help us in a
limited way, but it seems to me there is a lot more that needs
to be done. And I guess specifically to you, Mr. Barry, in the
watershed environment and in a post-fire environment, what were
you able to do and the timeline you undertook versus those
across the red dotted line you had there, in the Federal lands,
how long has it taken them to do things? And can you compare
the processes? You are an attorney, give us an idea.
Mr. Barry. One, I think one of our concerns with the
Healthy Forest bill is it does not put emphasis on watershed,
and we thought that perhaps that was missing. Congressman
McInnis, who I know well and have for 20 years, we are going to
miss him, did a good job, did very much appreciate all that
work, but if I had any problem with the bill, it did not quite
go enough to identify watersheds as a particular area of
concern.
Mr. Walden. We did highlight it though as one of the top
ones.
Mr. Barry. You did highlight it and I agree with that, and
I think that was helpful. And I know that this is all part of a
larger political process, so I want to use the term log
rolling, but perhaps in this context, that might be a little
bit off.
Mr. Walden. Would not go.
Let us go back to the watershed.
Mr. Barry. What we did in the watershed that we own was far
more than the Forest Service was able to do. I think they were
in full agreement with what we were doing, but they did not
have the manpower or the money to do it. So we spent about 10
times as much money per acre.
Mr. Walden. Right. But what I want to get to is in addition
to money, we know that process differences--you are not bound
by the same sort of NEPA processes, are you?
Mr. Barry. No, we are not.
Mr. Walden. And so how fast could you operate? Can you
compare what you were able to do, to put together your plans
and implement them, compared to what you see happening across
the line that you are concerned about?
Mr. Barry. I thought that after the fire, the Forest
Service did not appear to be hamstrung as they were before the
fire, by excessive rules and regulations and process. I did not
find that their ability to move was particularly hamstrung by
their own regulations and litigation, as it is before the fire.
And we had some experience with that and so did they. I thought
afterwards, they could do almost everything they needed to do.
They just did not have the manpower and the money.
Mr. Walden. We are sure seeing something different in
Oregon, where 400,000 to 500,000 acre perimeter burned in the
Biscuit fire. The counties and private landowners have gone in,
they have gotten out the dead trees, they have replanted, they
are doing a lot of things. The Forest Service is still writing
the plan that they know will take another year to be appealed.
We are going to be three years in, you are not going to end up
with a conifer forest unless you spend a fortune to put it in
there, because the brush is going to come up and overtake it.
Mr. Barry. I guess my experience in Colorado has been a
little bit better than that.
Mr. Walden. Good.
Mr. Barry. But it is either that I am misinformed or not
sufficiently informed or that things are a little bit
different. I cannot tell you which.
Mr. Walden. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Lewis.
Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too would like to say
that the testimony of both of you has been very helpful, a lot
of imagination and stimulated at least me.
Mary Bono mentioned earlier that she and I a long time ago,
with some people with forest expertise spent some time on the
ground but also flying around the forest, her portion of the
San Bernardino National Forest as well as this. Yesterday, I
flew in helicopter from here all the way down through the L.A.
County line to see the huge front that is there. And above that
fire line, of course, the very problems that you have been
discussing--soil erosion, the potential for sediment movement,
what it can do to the people who live in the pathway of that
movement--all of that is of great concern.
But the line I remember from that one trip from these
timber experts was that in the San Bernardino National Forest,
unless we get a handle on these bark beetle trees, if we have
that major fire, that chances are very, very great with the
geology, the steep slopes and otherwise, that erosion could
very well eliminate the ability of those who care to ever bring
back the kind of tall tree, fir forest, that we all love and
know, and perhaps we will be left with scrub oak. The prospect
of that was enough to stimulate me to get involved as early as
possible.
But in the meantime, as you are talking about items--I
never heard of hydro-axing before. I do not know if, Peter, we
have been thinking about that, but this mix of possibilities in
terms of a very rapid action plan over the next 12, 18, 24
months is sure intriguing to me and I do want to follow through
on it. Would you both comment on that scrub oak forest that I
am worried about in this huge front?
Mr. Brierty. The concern I have is exactly that, the
watershed is extremely important to our ability to regenerate
this forest. Personally, I still drink tap water, so the
watershed protection is extremely important to anybody who
lives on this mountain and we need to work on that as fast as
possible.
Mr. Barry. I do not have too much to add other than that
the catastrophe in Colorado appears to me to be less because
there are fewer people living in the area that has burned or
immediately downstream of it. And that our slopes are less
steep and we are talking mostly about ball-bearing size
decomposed granite sediment, not big boulders. When I read John
McFee's book, he talks about Volkswagen sizes boulders crashing
through people's houses. That seems to me to be a bigger
problem. And I agree that unless we get a handle on it and you
see big rainstorms with perhaps change in the meteorological
conditions of the earth, there are some serious problems ahead,
I would guess. But again, I want to be very careful, that I am
not an expert in southern California. Practically the last time
I was here was when I was born here 59 years ago. So I am no
expert.
Mr. Brierty. With the heat that the fire caused as it
burned, many areas that we have are basically moonscape and
somewhat of moon dust on them. It is not an issue of when the
rain comes, the dust storms that we have had, you can see
alluvial deposits coming off the hillsides of the fines, the
things necessary for the small plants to grow that would
encourage the other larger plants. So if we do not move fast--
we do not have to wait for rain here, we have got wind
conditions that will cause the problem to exacerbate.
Mr. Barry. We have seen some success--remember, I talked
about two fires. Buffalo Creek in 1996, our movement after that
fire was not as aggressive, but we have seen reasonably decent
revegetation of grasses, very little of trees. That has helped
slow down erosion in that area, has not stopped it, but it has
helped. It gives me hope that if you can get a reasonable
degree of revegetation, mostly grasses and sedges, brush, not
trees because trees take a long time, in a five to 10 year
period, you may be able to reduce sediment flows by quite a
bit. But as I said, we are the poster boy for what you do, but
it has not rained hard in the drainage yet and after it does,
we may be the poster boy for something else.
Mr. Lewis. Well, we want to keep very close to what you are
about and what does happen. The testimony here on the part of
both of you has been very valuable. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Pombo. Ms. Bono.
Ms. Bono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I actually just want to
compliment both gentlemen on their testimony and say, Mr.
Barry, it certainly does not seem like much stands in your way
and I applaud you for that, because the answers are usually
outside of the box, and I appreciate you way of thinking.
I really just have a quick comment, and that is to Mr.
Brierty, that during the fires, Congressman Calvert and I
toured, along with Secretary Veneman, the California Department
of Forestry's I guess response center in Riverside, or command
center.
Mr. Brierty. Right.
Ms. Bono. And we were very--I believe I speak for Ken as
well, interrupt me if I do not--but we were very impressed with
how the agencies came together. And certainly in this post 9-11
world, where we have heard so much criticism about our agencies
not talking to one another, we were very impressed and
encouraged by your ability to walk in the door, and the famous
line was of course, ``to check their egos at the door'' and
they sat down, rolled up their sleeves and they attacked these
fires extremely successfully and we were encouraged, because we
know that your charge is larger than just this, but heaven
forbid 1 day when we have that large catastrophic earthquake or
terrorist attack, we will be in very much the same situation.
So my hat is off to you for doing such a great job and we
witnessed first-hand how effective you were. So that is not a
question, but sometimes we do not dish out enough compliments
around here, so I hope you will take that instead of a
question.
Mr. Brierty. Thank you very much. And on behalf of the
chiefs that made that happen, there is a lot of vision in Tom
O'Keefe, Gene Zimmerman, Peter Hills, Bill McNall and Bill
Smith from Running Springs, that made those types of things
happen. So thank you very much for that kind compliment.
Ms. Bono. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you.
Mr. Barry, just I guess briefly in your opinion, what were
some of the impediments to the work that you did in terms of
Federal rules, policy, laws that stopped you from being able to
move forward?
Mr. Barry. Let me give you two different answers for the
time period. When we were trying to do forest thinning and
forest treatment before--after the Buffalo Creek fire but
before the Hayman fire, where we wanted to go in and treat,
reduce the density of fuel loads in the forest, we had
cooperation from the Forest Service, but we did get sued, there
was dispute about rewriting the forest management plan. That
process moved more slowly and less completely than we would
have liked. I do not--I did not bone up on all that before I
came out today, so I cannot give you a complete answer, but I
would say there were some impediment, they may have been
citizen initiated and not Forest Service driven, in our ability
to thin and treat the forest as we thought necessary prior to
that fire.
After the fire, I would say we have gotten a great deal of
interest and complete cooperation from all the Federal
agencies. And I do not have any--other than lack of funding and
their need to pay attention to other people's problems
elsewhere in the country, which they need to do--other than
that, I do not have any complaints about how the Forest Service
has handled our situation post-fire.
Mr. Pombo. You said you were sued before the fire started.
You were not sued after the fire?
Mr. Barry. Correct. We were sued before the fire, or the
Forest Service was, I cannot remember which, as we tried to put
in place our plan to thin and treat some of our forested
acreage in the area that later was in fact burned.
Mr. Pombo. So when you had trees alive, you were sued but
after they were all dead, they let you go in and do the work?
Mr. Barry. That is correct.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Brierty, I know this is relatively soon for
you in terms of dealing with the aftermath of this fire, but do
you have suggestions for the Committee for things that we could
do at this point that would make it easier for you to do the
work that you need to do at this point?
Mr. Brierty. In terms of tree removal, fire response?
Mr. Pombo. The after-effects.
Mr. Brierty. After-effects.
Mr. Pombo. Yeah.
Mr. Brierty. The direction that the Committee is going is
very, very helpful. The assistance that Congressman Lewis and
Feinstein's actions have been able to provide. The
incentivization to remove the trees, helping us get the trees
on the ground, helping the citizens who are total victims in
this. They did not do anything wrong here, they have done
nothing wrong, but they are incurring costs of tens of
thousands of dollars, and your assistance and Congress'
assistance to those citizens and to those fire safe councils
would be more than I could ask for.
Mr. Pombo. Well, I want to thank both of you. Your
testimony has proven to be extremely valuable for the
Committee. If there are further questions that the members
have, they will be submitted to you in writing and if you can
answer those in writing for the Committee, it would be
appreciated, so that we could include them as part of the
hearing record.
Mr. Barry. Be pleased to do so.
Mr. Brierty. Thank you very much.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you very much. I am going to excuse this
panel and I would like to call up our third panel.
[Applause.]
Mr. Pombo. We have Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen, Mr. Alan Barrett
accompanied by Dave Nenna; Dr. Scott Stephens and Mr. Joseph
Grindstaff.
Before you get too comfortable, if I could just have you
gentlemen stand and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Pombo. Let the record show they all answered in the
affirmative.
I want to welcome our third panel here. I appreciate your
patience and your perseverance in staying with us. I know that
this has proven to be a long day. We will start with Dr.
Bonnicksen.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS BONNICKSEN, PH.D., PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF
FOREST SCIENCE, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
Dr. Bonnicksen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Dr.
Thomas Bonnicksen, I am Professor of Forest Science at Texas
A&M University. I have spent my entire professional career
studying the history of North America's native forests and ways
to restore them.
I find this to be a sad occasion. I have been working in
these mountains for quite some time. We all know the losses,
the numbers of acres, lives lost and so on. I was here during
the fires as a matter of fact, at the request of this
Committee. But I cannot possibly imagine how the people here
actually felt when these fires occurred. I was an observer, I
did not experience it. I do remember driving into Lake
Arrowhead and Crestline after the evacuation, and to me it was
eery and depressing because there was not a single soul, it was
silent. Things were left behind right where they had been used.
I could imagine barely how people below felt, not knowing if
they would come back to a home and all the things they cared
about.
And then I went into Cedar Glen and then I saw where those
people could not come back to a home. It was gone. This was, to
me, a terrible tragedy and I can barely understand how those
people felt, many of which may very well be in this room.
I will also say that when I drove up Highway 18, it was
clear to me that the firefighters saved Lake Arrowhead. It was
heroic and it was skillful and I was very impressed.
But we have known what to do to prevent this problem for a
very long time. And I think it has gotten to the point now
where the lives and property and our heritage that is being
lost goes beyond arguments. I think it now is at the point
where we as a society have a moral obligation to use what we
know to prevent any further loss of life and property and
natural resources.
I started working in southern California's forests 30 years
ago, in the chaparral. I remember then that we knew what to do,
I remember then people were frustrated because they could not
do it.
Then in 1994, I was asked to come up to Lake Arrowhead and
help a large group of professionals find a way to deal with the
overgrown forest problem, and they drafted a plan that they all
agreed on. Nothing happened. If something had been done, based
on that plan, the beetle outbreak probably would have been
contained and would not have destroyed 474,000 acres of forest,
an entire forest.
Then I was asked to go down into San Diego County and do
the same thing for chaparral in 1995. We had 59 professionals,
all of whom came to agreement on what to do to prevent a next
big fire in San Diego County. Nothing happened.
Then I came here 2 months ago and testified before this
Committee and I was really hopeful. It represented the
Congress' interest in a problem that has been festering for a
century. And there were many solutions suggested. But there was
too little time, nothing could be done between then and the
October fires. So here we are again.
And here, I think things have changed. Not only have you
shown twice that you are committed to solving this problem, but
now things are different too because we have the Healthy Forest
Restoration Act. I was there, as were you, when the President
signed the Act. I was there because I thought it was truly
historic. This is several decades before we have had the
opportunity to do something to solve this problem. And I say
opportunity, the Act is not the solution. The Act makes it
possible for us to solve the problem, but now the test is will
we solve the problem? That is the real test now--do we have the
money, the manpower and the will? And you helped make this
possible, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Walden. And for that I am
grateful and I think our nation is grateful. Thank you.
Now, I think in order to make this work, we have to focus
the resources that the Congress provides where the problem is
most serious. I cannot think, in my understanding of the entire
western United States, a place where this problem is more
serious than it is right here. So rather than sprinkling the
money around to solve problems every place in the west, I think
we ought to focus our attention here where we can make a real
difference. But we are going to have to act quickly.
I think, given the fact that we have 95 percent of this
beetle-killed forest out here, that we have less than 8 months
to make a difference on the ground, to keep Lake Arrowhead,
Crestline, Big Bear, Idyllwild from burning next fall. We just
have 8 months, and that is it. And we had best use our time
wisely.
We have to remove the dead trees and we have to start near
the communities, because that is where it will be most
effective, given the time we have available. Then we have to
work outward, of course, into the forests where the problem is
most severe. But we have to do so in a way that rebuilds the
next forest at the same time and does not just level the forest
that is here. So that means we have to protect the trees that
are still alive, even young trees that are going to be part of
the new forest. We have to leave snags for wildlife, three or
so per acre, we have to leave logs on the ground, five to nine
per acre. We have to do many things to make sure that when we
reduce the fire hazard, we do it in a way that ensures that the
new forest can be rebuilt quickly and effectively so that 50
years from now, our children, my grandchildren, can enjoy this
again.
Now I want to point out that this is not just about
forests. Chaparral is also a big part of our problem and
obviously that is most of the area that was burned. Now in the
case of our forests, fires were light, so we can I think
rebuild a forest where fires would be light again. In the case
of chaparral, fires were hot historically, and they will be hot
from now on.
Even so, the solution is the same. We have to isolate those
parts of the forest that are overgrown, and should be
overgrown. Part of this forest was overgrown historically, but
those are the parts that burned. We have to isolate them from
one another, with the other parts of the forest that do not
burn as hot--younger trees, large trees with nothing
underneath. Chaparral is exactly the same situation. If
chaparral is less than five years old, it will not burn. If it
is 20 to 40 years old, it will not burn very hot unless it is
the most extreme conditions and it is usually a very good fuel
break. After 40 years, it starts to become decadent and by 50
and 60 years, it is explosive. We have to isolate those
explosive parts of the chaparral from one another with the
younger parts that do not burn so hot.
Now an example of this is in the testimony I provided. If
you look at the last figure, Figure 2, you can see in that
figure that--and it was at my request that San Diego County
prepared that map just for this hearing, it shows the areas by
age class that burned in the fire, the Cedar fire and so on.
You can see, with the explanations on the map, that the fire
followed the older age classes. It was suppressed at the
boundaries of recent fires and areas where the chaparral was
younger.
Now if you also look at Figure 1 in my testimony, you will
see the difference between southern California and Baja
California in terms of the size of the fires, and thereby the
size of the older patches of chaparral that burned the hottest.
And it was provided by Dr. Richard Minnick from UC-Riverside.
That is an outstanding map because it shows we have hundred
thousand-plus acre patches of aged and flammable chaparral on
our side of the border and there is a straight line, whereas in
Baja, there are 5,000 acre and smaller patches. Why? Because
they have been burning for this same century we have tried to
stop all the fires, and they have successfully isolated the
older, more flammable patches from one another with the less
flammable younger patches.
And it turns out that what it looks like in Baja California
is the way southern California used to look and did look for
thousands of years. So it is the same problem, same solution,
just a slightly different way of going about it.
But let me conclude by saying there are a couple of lessons
I think we have to learn from this. The first is anywhere that
forests are overgrown could end up like this, either killed by
beetles or destroyed by fire. The Sierra Nevada is, I think, a
prime example of a place where this could happen again. And
where the chaparral is aged, the same thing. In fact, San Diego
County created a map of aged classes of chaparral and all you
have to do is look at that map to see where the next big fire
is going to be or where the next lives are going to be in
jeopardy. The map tells you everything.
So the next lesson? We have to thin our forests and reduce
the density of aged chaparral and we have to make sure--and we
have, I think, a moral obligation that what happened this year
does not happen again.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you. Mr. Barrett.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Bonnicksen follows:]
Statement of Dr. Thomas M. Bonnicksen, Professor, Department of Forest
Science, Texas A&M University, Visiting Scholar and Board Member, The
Forest Foundation, Auburn, California
INTRODUCTION
My name is Dr. Thomas M. Bonnicksen. I am a forest ecologist and
professor in the Department of Forest Science at Texas A&M University.
I am also a visiting scholar and board member of The Forest Foundation
in Auburn, California. I have conducted research on the history and
restoration of America's native forests, especially California's
forests and brushlands, for more than 30 years. I have written over 100
scientific and technical papers and I recently published a book titled
``America's Ancient Forests: From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery''
(Copyright January 2000, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 594 pages). The book
documents the 18,000-year history of North America's native forests.
MORAL IMPERATIVE
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, this is a sad day for all
of us. The Southern California fires of 2003 burned 739,597 acres, took
22 human lives, caused $2.2 billion in losses, and cost taxpayers more
than $250 million to contain. In the San Bernardino Mountains alone,
six people lost their lives, 993 homes and 10 businesses were
destroyed, and over 90,000 acres burned.
Equally important, and often ignored, are the millions of tons of
pollutants generated by these monster fires that fill the air and
impair human health. Furthermore, few people realize that the aftermath
of a fire can be just as devastating as the fire itself. Total runoff
in just this area (the Santa Ana River Watershed) is likely to increase
by more than 10 percent and peak storm flows will increase about five
times the average. Sediment loads carried downstream could be 30 to 50
times normal, and as much as 20,000 tons of nutrients, nitrates, and
phosphorus formerly bound in soil will probably be released and make
its way into groundwater. Uranium and other radioactive materials also
will be transported downstream with toxic organics and carcinogenic
compounds from partial combustion of forest materials. This will
decrease the usability of one of this region's primary water sources.
It is estimated that 1.7 billion cubic yards of rock, sand, and debris
will clog water control structures and dams as well.
These horrific fires are a warning. We can anticipate similar
catastrophes in overgrown forests throughout the West if we do not
change our ways. We have already seen this happen in Arizona and
Colorado. The Sierra Nevada may be next.
Nothing done by management to the environment would come close to
the ecological and social costs of monster fires. There is no argument,
no matter how compelling or well-meaning, that justifies allowing
uncontrolled and unnatural wildfires to kill human beings, destroy
homes, forests, and the habitat of millions of animals, pollute the air
and water, and strip irreplaceable soil from the land. We know how to
prevent these catastrophic fires and we have a moral obligation to
prevent them in the future.
IMPRESSIONS OF DISASTER
I have been working on restoring beetle-killed forests in these
mountains with Forest Service professionals almost continuously for
most of this year, and I had warned of a possible tragedy as early as
1994. I know many of the people who live here. That makes this tragedy
even more personal. Under the auspices of this Committee, I was able to
see the devastation firsthand while the fires were still burning. I
will never forget what I saw, experienced, and felt at the time.
Shortly after passing through the police roadblock, I could not
believe how barren the soils were as I drove up Waterman Canyon.
Nothing remained except smoldering embers and a smell like burned
newspaper. The only life I saw was a single yellow jacket. The fire was
so hot that rocks exploded and flames left behind only stubs of the
thickest branches on the shrubs. There is no doubt; soil erosion must
be addressed because it could be severe.
I also remember driving up this same road through Waterman Canyon
many times this year talking with Jon Regelbrugge, Doug Pumphrey, and
other Forest Service professionals about the need to use prescribed
burning to break up the overgrown brushlands below Lake Arrowhead. They
were frustrated by a lack of resources that made it difficult to
protect Lake Arrowhead and Running Springs from a fire that came up the
canyon. We know all too well the consequences of not having adequate
means to take preventative action.
My second impression was how well firefighters planned their
defense of Lake Arrowhead. They used backing fires from Highway 18 to
deprive the fire coming up Waterman Canyon of fuel. There is no doubt
that their actions saved Lake Arrowhead. I only saw the smoldering
ruins of one home on that ridge; the rest of Lake Arrowhead was spared,
except for Cedar Glen.
I had seen Cedar Glen before it burned. I knew that the people
living there were in serious trouble. They lived in a narrow canyon,
thickly overgrown with trees of all sizes, and surrounded on the ridges
above with a half-dead forest.
Tragically, the fires this fall looped around the East side of the
firefighter's defensive line and swooped across the half-dead forest
into Cedar Glen. I saw the homes that it destroyed, still smoking in
the aftermath of the fire. It was a terrible sight. I will never forget
seeing a garden hose laid across a railing where the owner had left it
after trying to protect their home and then fleeing before a wall of
flames. Nearby, a child's wooden swing set stood untouched by the fire
while the house lay in ruins 50 feet away.
The fire passed through the Los Angeles Council of Boy Scouts Camp
before reaching Cedar Glen. I saw half the forest on their lands
destroyed and still smoking. The western pine beetle had killed
thousands of the trees before the fire. The trees were still draped
with dead pine needles when the fire reached them, so they burned with
extreme heat, and many were reduced to charred spikes. Not even a
branch was left on many of the burned trees, and the ground was barren
underneath.
I had warned a Boy Scout leader at the camp, and officials in Los
Angeles, that this could happen when I was there in late summer.
However, they had too little time to take action to prevent it. The
pool where Boy Scouts were swimming this summer was untouched, but
everything else was gone. Their headquarters lay in ruins, and a
barracks was reduced to a chimney and the twisted metal wreckage of
bunk beds where Boy Scouts had slept just a month earlier. What saved
them was the time of year when the fire passed through their camp. They
were safely at home in October.
My final impression was of the depressing emptiness of Crestline
and Lake Arrowhead. Where before I saw a forest community full of
people going about their daily lives, now, there was nothing but
silence. People left in haste and could take only one car, so other
cars were parked as if someone was home. Empty chairs were sitting by
tables with drinks still on them. Occasionally, I would hear a hungry
stray dog barking abandoned in the rush to safety. People who left
their homes behind had no idea if they would ever see the things they
cared about again. We cannot imagine how they must have felt. I only
know that we should have acted sooner to help prevent these people from
experiencing such trauma.
TRAGEDY FORETOLD
I, and several other panelists, appeared before the House Resources
Committee in this very place about two months ago to help prevent the
tragic fires that today's hearing is addressing. I said then that
history will judge us by how we respond to the crisis caused by
overgrown and beetle-ravaged forests. I should have added our overgrown
and aged chaparral. History really means that our children and our
grandchildren will judge us. Did we take the action needed to protect
the lives and homes of their parents, them as children, and their
children? Did we protect the forests that we enjoyed, so that they
could share our experiences and receive their forest heritage
unimpaired?
The answer is no, at least so far. We did not act swiftly enough to
prevent the loss of an entire forest--474,000 acres--in the San
Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains to the ravages of the western pine
beetle, or the wildfires that followed in October of 2003. We also
failed to prevent the chaparral fires that took so many lives and
destroyed so many homes in San Diego County and elsewhere in Southern
California.
I was honored to be invited to witness President Bush signing the
Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003 this past Wednesday in
Washington, D.C. This historic Act will help prevent future disasters,
but it came too late to prevent the fires this year.
I have been working in the San Bernardino Mountains with Forest
Service professionals almost continuously this year. We knew that we
faced a crisis and that dramatic action was needed to prevent a
disaster. Not only were beetle-killed trees about to fall on people,
houses, powerlines, and cars, but a catastrophic fire could sweep into
communities from any direction at any time. Something had to be done.
However, the Forest Service was hampered in its efforts to prevent a
disaster. They had too few people and too little money, and they faced
too many restrictions to reduce fuels over a large enough area to
decrease the fire threat significantly.
Sadly, the insect infestations and wildfires were predictable and
preventable. We did not look after our forests. Meanwhile, trees grew
and forests became overgrown and unhealthy.
I conducted a workshop in 1994 in which 27 specialists representing
many interests and agencies came together in Lake Arrowhead to do
something about the unnaturally thick forests in the San Bernardino
Mountains that led to this disaster. We knew that communities like Lake
Arrowhead, Big Bear, Crestline, Idyllwild, and Wrightwood were in
imminent danger from wildfire. The workshop produced a report charting
a course to improve the safety and health of forests surrounding these
communities. Unfortunately, bark beetles got there before anyone took
action to thin the forest and make it more resistant to bark beetles
and fires.
The highest priority recommendation in the 1994 report for the San
Bernardino Mountains called for developing ``a comprehensive and
integrated fire protection program consisting of'':
A fuels management program (mechanical removal and
prescribed fire);
Strategically located park-like fuel breaks;
A public information and education program dealing with
structural (residential and business) modifications and landscape
design; and
Effective enforcement.
In addition, the report emphasized ``private sector and government
partnerships to carry out this alternative, including funding, because
government agencies alone cannot solve wildfire problems.'' Subsequent
recommendations elaborated and expanded these ideas.
Brushlands in Southern California face the same problem as forests.
They have grown old and thick. Hundreds of thousands of acres of brush
are ready to burn. We know where the next big fires will be due to the
age of the chaparral, but we have done almost nothing to prevent them.
We also know how to break up the fuels and save lives and property, but
we seem incapable of taking action. As a result, we have lost many
lives this year, thousands of homes, and hundreds of thousands of acres
of forest and brushland.
Again, I wrote a report in 1995 documenting the severe fire hazard
in the brushlands of San Diego County. A total of 59 specialists
representing many interests and agencies participated in preparing the
recommendations. Like the San Bernardino Mountains report, we had a
plan for preventing catastrophic wildfires. Unfortunately, we failed to
act, and that is where most of the lives and property were lost this
year.
Selected recommendations in the 1995 report include:
Design a prescribed burn pattern or mosaic based on
vegetation and wildlife surveys, fire history, and public outreach
programs;
Encourage the construction of community fuel breaks;
Conduct public meetings with private and public
landowners and solicit information on their needs and opinions
regarding wildfire control and prescribed burning;
Conduct education programs to reduce the public's risk
from wildfires; and
Encourage the public to assume greater responsibility for
self-protection from wildfires.
There is no doubt that the recommendations in the 1994 and 1995
reports, if implemented when proposed, would have dramatically reduced
the death and destruction caused by the horrific fires of 2003.
PAY NOW OR PAY MORE LATER
It is prophetic that the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003
requires weighing the risk of action against the risk of inaction when
making management decisions. Think of the terrible human, financial,
and ecological losses suffered in Southern California this year and
weigh them against the minor risks of having used scientific management
to prevent them.
We cannot put a price on lives lost and human suffering, which, by
itself, justifies fire prevention. In addition, economic losses could
be higher than $2.2 billion in just Southern California. Using the most
comprehensive and expensive methods, that is enough money to restore
over seven million acres of chaparral to a more fire-resistant and
natural condition, which is far more than is needed. Similarly, that
money could pay to remove most of the beetle-killed trees in Southern
California and rebuild new fire-resistant forests that are more natural
and sustainable than those that were lost.
Here in the San Bernardino Mountains, we can restore about half the
474,000 acres of forest devastated by the western pine beetle, perhaps
more. The remainder is inaccessible because of steep slopes and the
lack of roads. It is tragic to know that we cannot restore so much of
this forest. Especially since most of the historic pine and mixed-
conifer forests will convert to unnatural oak-shrub forests. Wildlife
will suffer as well, and an endless cycle of severe and unnatural
wildfires is likely.
It is even questionable if we can restore much of the accessible
forest because of the high cost. I estimate that it will take as much
as $1 billion to do the job right on 237,000 acres. Probably less, as
we become more efficient. That means providing immediate fire
protection and rebuilding the new forest.
This is far more money than taxpayers will bear. However, if
private companies could harvest and thin only the trees required to
restore and sustain a healthy, fire-resistant forest, it could be done.
In exchange, companies would sell the wood and, thereby, significantly
reduce public expenditures.
The problem is finding someone to buy the wood. There is no biomass
or wood processing facility nearby. That means the initial public
expenditure will have to include providing subsidies to build the
infrastructure needed to make the restoration of fire-resistant forests
financially feasible.
The inescapable truth is that we will pay now for prevention, or we
will pay far more later to deal with disaster and its aftermath. On
average, it costs only one-seventh as much to prevent a catastrophic
wildfire than it does to fight it, mitigate the damage, and pay to
replace what is lost. This does not include the loss of forests,
wildlife habitat, soil, and the degradation of our precious supplies of
water.
CLEAR CHOICES FOR THE FUTURE
There are two choices for the future of Southern California's
forests and brushlands, and no middle ground for debate. First, leave
them alone, or the ``hands-off'' option. This means dooming hundreds of
thousands of acres of beetle-killed forests. No longer will people in
this region enjoy shady forests of huge pines and firs. Instead, they
will see thickets of oak and brush, and many animals will disappear.
Not only that, but this option will pass to future generations an
unending cycle of death and destruction from fire and insects, as well
as accelerating costs for firefighting, and rehabilitating forests,
brushlands, and communities.
Our second option is to restore the natural fire- and insect-
resistant forests, and diverse natural brushlands, through active
management. This would enhance watersheds and water quality, improve
habitat for a diverse range of native wildlife, and expand scenic and
recreational opportunities. Most importantly, it would secure a safe
future for the people of Southern California by protecting communities
and breaking the cycle of monster fires.
Both options cost money. However, the ``hands-off'' option will
cost taxpayers at least seven times as much as the ``management''
option, not including the cost in lives and destruction of public and
private property. The ratio in favor of management could be even higher
when subtracting the economic value that might be derived from selling
wood products and clean biomass energy.
There is no question. Active management is essential if we are to
secure a safe and sustainable future for our forests and brushlands,
and the people who depend on them.
WHAT WE NEED TO DO
Active management means using the history of a forest or brushland
as a model for its future. That does not involve a futile effort to
duplicate the past. It means learning from the past. The most important
lesson we can learn is that historic forests and brushlands were
sustainable, diverse, and far less susceptible to the monster fires we
see today.
Historically, most of California's forests were open because Native
American and lightning fires burned regularly. These gentle fires
stayed on the ground as they wandered around under trees. You could
walk over the flames without burning your legs even though they
occasionally flared up and killed patches of trees. Such scattered hot
spots kept forests diverse by creating openings where young trees and
shrubs could grow.
Brushlands like chaparral and coastal sage burned hotter. These hot
fires often swept over thousands of acres. They were stand-replacing
fires that renewed the brush on about a 40-year cycle. Even so, they
were much smaller than today's brush fires. They usually burned patches
of a few thousand acres, sometimes larger, but seldom, if ever,
hundreds of thousands of acres as we see today.
The patchiness of historic forests and brushlands is the key to
their restoration and the solution to the wildfire problem. They
consisted of mosaics of patches. Some patches were freshly burned,
others were young or old, depending on how many years passed since fire
created a new opening where plants could grow.
The variety of patches in historic forests and brushlands helped to
contain hot fires. Freshly burned areas, patches of young trees or
shrubs, and patches of old trees with little underneath, did not burn
well and served as fuelbreaks. In chaparral, patches five years old or
younger will not carry a fire, and patches 20 years old or younger are
effective fuelbreaks. These less flammable patches isolated more
flammable older or denser patches of trees or shrubs, so that hot fires
could not spread over vast areas. Thus, nature developed an ingenious
pattern of natural fuelbreaks that kept most historic forests and
brushlands immune from monster fires.
Today, the patchiness of our forests and brushlands is gone, so
they have lost their immunity to monster fires. Fires now spread across
landscapes because we let most patches grow old and thick, and there
are few less-flammable patches left to slow the flames.
Some people believe that horrific brushland fires are wind-driven
events. They are wrong. Science and nearly a century of professional
experience shows that they are fuel-driven events. Wind contributes to
the intensity of a fire, but no fire can burn without adequate fuel, no
matter how strong the wind. Wind, topography, and drought play an
important role in fire behavior, but continuous heavy fuels are the
fundamental cause for the outbreak of monster fires plaguing the West,
especially California.
This is even more serious because monster fires create even bigger
monsters. Huge blocks of seedlings that grow on burned areas become
older and thicker at the same time. When it burns again, fire spreads
farther and creates an even bigger block of fuel for the next fire.
This cycle of monster fires has begun. Today, the average fire is
nearly double the size it was in the last two decades, and it may
double again.
We can see this in Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1, created by Dr.
Richard Minnich, from UC Riverside, in 1971, shows the difference in
the size of fires in Southern California and Baja California. The
difference is striking because of the political border that separates
the two countries. There is no ecological reason for this dramatic
difference. On the Mexican side, patches are very small, a few thousand
acres, because fires burn as they did when Native Americans lived
there. Farmers set fires regularly to maintain the mosaic of small
patches that provide habitat for game and livestock, and keep fires
small and safe. They also let lightning fires burn because less
flammable patches easily contain them.
In contrast, we have been putting out fires for over a century in
Southern California. Even longer if one considers the proclamation by
Don Jose Joaquin de Arrillaga, Captain of Cavalry, Interim Governor and
Inspector Comandante of Upper and Lower California, in 1793, which was
strictly enforced in Alta California. He said, ``With attention to the
widespread damage which results...I see myself required to have the
foresight to prohibit...all kinds of burning, not only in the vicinity
of the towns, but even at the most remote distances...'' It only takes
30-40 years for chaparral to grow old enough to create large areas of
highly flammable fuel. Even though ranchers changed burning practices
when California became a state, this simple proclamation helped start
the cycle of monster fires long before some people believe that fire
control became effective.
More than two centuries of efforts to control fires increased the
size of chaparral patches in Southern California. They grew to more
than 10 times the size of patches in Baja California where fire
controls were not enforced. It is not surprising that our fires are
also more than 10 times the size of those in Mexico. This year our
fires are becoming even larger because we know that monster fires
create bigger monsters.
Figure 2, which was graciously created at my request by San Diego
County for this Congressional hearing, shows that the October fires of
2003 were concentrated in older brushlands. As expected, firefighters
also found it easier to stop the fires at the boundaries of younger
less-flammable patches of chaparral, even in Santa Anna winds.
The evidence is clear. We cannot blame people for living in fire-
prone rural areas because they want a more enjoyable lifestyle for
their families. Fires may be inevitable, but not the monster fires that
we created by failing to be good stewards of our forests and
brushlands.
We must restore our forests and brushlands to a more fire-resistant
condition by recreating the historic mosaic of patches. The less-
flammable younger patches will contain hot fires and make them easier
to extinguish. This, in combination with modern and effective
firefighting organizations and less flammable structures, will break
the cycle of monster fires. Consequently, the lives and property of the
people of Southern California will be protected as well.
GETTING TO WORK
Addressing the wildfire problem in Southern California brushlands
is obvious and relatively simple. Science shows that brushlands are
resilient, no matter how often fires burn, or how hot the fire. They
recover fully and in the same way. That is, the same plant species will
grow after a fire in the same order that they grew before. All that we
need to do to restore diversity and naturalness to brushlands is to
create the more fire-resistant historic mosaic. This will solve the
fire problem if communities and individuals also assume their
responsibility for providing defensible space and less flammable
structures.
The problem is more difficult in San Bernardino Mountain forests.
The scope and magnitude of devastation from the bark beetle outbreak is
unprecedented in recorded history. We have lost an entire forest
because there are simply too many trees. Drought has contributed to the
crisis, but it is not the underlying cause. Forest density is 10 times
what is natural--200 to 500 large trees stand on an acre where 50 would
be natural and sustainable.
The fires of 2003 did little to reduce the number of trees or
remove dead trees killed by bark beetles. About 85-90 percent of the
forest was untouched by the fires and is ready to fuel the next one. At
least 60 percent of the trees are dead in this forest, and as many as
90 percent of the trees will be dead by next year when the bark beetle
epidemic slows down for lack of food.
We must remove the dead and dying trees and restore the forest in
strategic areas during the next eight months. Otherwise, the enormous
amount of fuel that remains in these forests will likely generate fires
next year that are far worse than this year.
The desired future condition is a native mixed-conifer forest that
approximates the historic range of variation characteristic of this
forest type. The desired restored forest will provide opportunities for
economically sustaining the forest and all of its values.
The long-term restoration goal should be to develop a patchy forest
mosaic consistent with the open historical forest. That means a patch
size of one acre, a smallest patch size of 0.2 acres, and at least 68
percent of patches less than 1.8 acres. In addition, approximately 42
percent of the mosaic should consist of patches of mature and large
mature trees of which no more than 47 percent should contain a multi-
layered understory.
Mechanical methods are the most important tools we have to restore
this forest and reduce fire hazards. Mechanical methods followed by
prescribed fire may also be effective when used together, but safety
and air quality restrictions are major constraints. Prescribed fire
alone will not be effective because it is too unpredictable and
dangerous in overgrown forests.
The approach for restoring San Bernardino Mountain forests involves
cutting the dead and dying trees in a way that minimizes damage to live
trees and other vegetation desired to meet the long-term restoration
and protection goals. Then, remove, or chip the slash to reduce fuels,
and leave enough snags and logs for wildlife. That means approximately
2-3 snags per acre in groups and 5-9 logs 24 inches or larger oriented
across slope so that they also control soil erosion. The surviving
trees must be thinned as well so that they grow quickly and to protect
them from fire because they will become the oldest trees in the future
forest.
Next, begin rebuilding the forest by planting native trees in gaps
left by beetle-killed trees. Additional gaps will have to be opened and
planted at different times and places to ensure that the restored
forest has groups of trees of different ages. This will take five or
more decades. By then seeds from adjacent trees will fill new gaps and
the forest will look relatively natural since some sites will grow
trees 120 feet tall in 50 years.
When complete, and even during the early phases of restoration, the
restored forest will reduce threats to local communities from wildfire
by providing a system of fire-resistant patches that act as fuelbreaks
strategically dispersed throughout the forest mosaic. In short, the
restored forest will look and behave in much the same way as historic
forests. It also will be healthy, diverse, sustainable, attractive,
resistant to insects and drought, and nearly immune from monster fires.
______
STATEMENT OF ALAN L. BARRETT, COUNCIL MEMBER, VIEJAS BAND OF
KUMEYAAY INDIANS, ACCOMPANIED BY DAVE NENNA, TRIBAL
ADMINISTRATOR, TULE RIVER TRIBE
Mr. Barrett. Chairman Pombo, distinguished guests, thank
you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Alan Barrett, I
am an elected official of the Viejas Tribal Government. The
Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians is located in Alpine,
California, in San Diego County. The Viejas Reservation is
bordered by Cleveland National Forest, BLM land and within a
corridor of state and county parklands.
Our neighbors include a number of unincorporated suburban
and rural communities. In late October, the Cedar fire
destroyed entire communities, thousands of acres of park and
woodlands, burning more than 280,000 acres and 2,320 homes, at
the cost of 12 lives. Eleven were civilians and one was a
firefighter. The price to extinguish the fire was $27 million.
As you may have read, the fire also devastated tribal
reservations. San Diego County has 18 reservations, located in
rural unincorporated areas of northern and eastern San Diego
County. Many are adjacent to the Cleveland National Forest.
Eleven reservations were evacuated due to the proximity of the
fire and immediate danger. Four reservations suffered 75 to 100
percent damage to land, structures and hundred of homes.
I am shortening up my testimony here so I can get down the
hill and get back to my family.
Mr. Lewis. Good for you.
Mr. Barrett. That is a priority.
We are able to show our gratitude and assist in fire
management efforts to provide food, water, generators and other
necessities to operate in camps which housed more than 100
units of Federal, state and local firefighters.
The Viejas Band also shares our original reservation--
Capital Grande--with the Barona Band. The Barona Reservation
lost 37 homes and both of us lost our entire 17,000 acres of
Capitan Grande. This is a great loss to both tribes and the
county, as the land was a prime undeveloped wildlife habitat.
It serves as a natural conservation corridor between El Capitan
Dam, the San Diego River, the Cleveland National Forest and the
Laguna and Cuyamaca Mountain Ranges. Plus it is also home and
burial grounds of our ancestors.
Today, we have major concerns about replanting. We worry
about infestation of invasive species and non-indigenous growth
attacking and altering the terrain of this beautiful natural
resource. We face major problems with erosion on roads,
hillsides, wells and waterways.
And we have been warned the fire danger is not past. Large
tracts of Federal and state forest lands, disease infested and
drought weakened, are now littered with burnt trees and charred
ground cover, are ripe kindling for yet more fires.
I want to thank you for this hearing and all of the
distinguished speakers, for the sincere interest in recovery of
the aftermath of the terrible disaster. Recovery is urgent,
lagging, and going to be expensive.
But today, I would like to take a few minutes to discuss
future prevention.
The one thing that we have learned from this tragic fire in
San Diego County is the importance of prevention. Nothing does
more for prevention of wild fires than the Health Forest
Restoration Act, recently signed by President Bush. I
congratulate you, Chairman Pombo, on the bill and your
sponsorship.
Today I would like to ask you to apply the key provisions
to tribal trust lands. You can do this by adding the Tribal
Forest Asset Protection Amendment to H.R. 1904.
We need a tribal amendment to H.R. 1904. Very little has
been done on Federal lands to clear dead excessive overgrowth
and reduce threats that disease infested vegetation pose to our
borders. We can help the Federal government manage these lands
if allowed. In San Diego County, tribal governments are one of
the largest owners of undeveloped land. We are also located in
rural areas where fire protection is an expensive luxury and
clearing is non-existent.
This amendment to the Healthy Forest Restoration Act will
assure tribes that we can take actions necessary to help the
U.S. safeguard tribal trust forests and woodlands.
I can only hope that the recent devastation to tribes in
San Diego County will create a sense of urgency about this
issue. The reservation is our home and it represents who we are
and have been as Indian people. We cannot just pick up and move
because it is too expensive to rebuild, the insurance cost is
too high.
Help us help ourselves. Preventing wildfire is critical to
our lives and our existence.
I not only speak for California tribes, but also for the
White Mountain Apache, for the Crow, the Oneida, the Lumini
Nations and tribal nations throughout the United States. Tribes
must be given the opportunity to participate in managing
Federal lands so that the next year another Congressional
Committee will not have to face a daunting economic and
ecological challenge we face today.
We stand ready to assist you in support of the Tribal
Forest Asset Protection Amendment. I brought copies of our
local newspaper for you to read when you have a few extra
minutes of time.
Thank you for chairing this hearing and again allowing me
to address the Committee.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you.
Dr. Stephens.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Barrett follows:]
Statement of Alan L. Barrett, Councilmember,
Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians
Chairman Pombo and distinguished guests.
Thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Alan L.
Barrett. I'm an elected official of the Viejas Tribal Government. The
Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians is located in Alpine, California, in
San Diego County. The Viejas Reservation is bordered by the Cleveland
National Forest, BLM land, and within a corridor of state parklands.
Our neighbors include a number of unincorporated suburban and rural
communities. In late October, Cedar Fire destroyed entire communities
of homes, thousands of acres of park and woodlands, burning more than
280,000 acres and 2,320 homes. The cost was 12 fatalities, 11 were
civilians and one was a firefighter. The cost to extinguish the fire
was $27 million.
As you may have read, the fire also devastated tribal reservations.
San Diego has 18 reservations, located in rural unincorporated areas of
North and East San Diego County. Many are adjacent to the Cleveland
National Forest. Eleven reservations were evacuated due to the
proximity to the fire and immediate danger. Four reservations suffered
75 percent to 100 percent damage to land and structures, including
hundreds of homes. Even though the fire roared through the Viejas
reservation, we were fortunate. We were able to defend our homes and
managed to protect other structures, including our businesses. We own
and operate a casino, retail outlet center, and bank. All were
evacuated safely, but were closed for a week, due to the fact we had no
electricity or power, other than generators.
We were also fortunate in that we had time to prepare, as we were
alerted to the progress of the fire. Other reservations and homeowners,
who were caught by surprise, had only minutes to get to safety. Many
did not make it.
Fire crews from Northern California arrived at the same time as the
200-foot wall of flame, clouds of black smoke and swirling debris, hit
our reservation. Additionally, we are grateful we had the resources to
house the U.S. Forest Service and California Department of Forestry
Cedar East Fire Camp and heliport on our reservation.
We were able to show our gratitude and assist in the fire
management efforts by providing food, water, generators and other
necessities to the operation and camp, which housed more than 100 units
of federal, state and local fire crews.
The Viejas Band shares our original reservation--Capitan Grande--
with the Barona Band. The Barona Reservation lost 37 homes, and we both
lost the entire 16,000 acres of Capitan Grande. This is a great loss to
both tribes and the county, as this land was a prime and undeveloped
wildlife and species habitat.
It serves as a natural corridor between El Capitan Dam, the San
Diego River, the Cleveland National Forest, and the Laguna and Cuyamaca
Mountain Ranges. Plus, it's the home and burial ground of our
ancestors.
Today, we have major concerns about replanting. We worry about
invasive species and non-indigenous growth, attacking and altering the
terrain of this beautiful, natural resource. We face major problems
with erosion on roads, hillsides, wells and waterways.
And, we have been warned the fire danger is not past. Large tracts
of federal and state forest lands, disease infested and drought
weakened, and now littered dead and burned trees and charred ground
cover, are ripe kindling for yet more fires.
Like my father and uncles, I have been employed as a fireman. I
know wildfires, and have seen many, including the Viejas Fire, which
burned an area of our reservation and neighboring communities in 2001.
But, I have never seen, heard or felt anything as truly frightening as
this fire. The Santana winds drove it. The dead and drought-weakened
trees, thousands of acres infested with beetle disease, fueled it.
Woodlands and forests suffocating with dead and dry groundcover, which
have never been cleared or removed, continued to feed it for weeks.
I want to thank you for this hearing and all of your distinguished
speakers for the sincere interest in recovery in the aftermath of this
terrible disaster. Recovery is urgent, lagging, and going to be
expensive.
But, today, I would like to take a few minutes of your time to
discuss future prevention.
The one thing we learned from this tragic fire in San Diego County
is the importance of prevention. Nothing does more for prevention of
wild fires than the Healthy Forrest Restoration Act, recently signed by
President Bush. I congratulate you, Chairman Pombo, on this bill and
your sponsorship.
Today, I would like to ask you to apply its key provisions to
tribal trust lands.
You can do this by adding the Tribal Forest Asset Protection
Amendment to H.R. 1904.
In Southern California, our lands are a tribe's most important
asset, and until gaming for some, our only asset. Because most of our
reservations are small, every acre is precious. The Healthy Forest
Restoration Act was written to assist private property owners and
unincorporated communities protect their assets, yet tribal
governments, with assets held in trust by the Federal Government, were
not included in the bill.
We need a tribal amendment to H.R. 1904. Very little has been done
on federal lands to correct the fire, disease of infestation threats
these lands pose to our borders. We can help the federal government
manage these lands if we are allowed to do so. In San Diego County,
tribal governments are one of the largest owners of undeveloped land,
we are also located in rural areas, where fire protection is an
expensive luxury and clearing is non-existent.
We can provide firebreaks to protect our lands and federal lands
from fires and spreading to our neighboring communities. Or, we can
continue to provide fuel for wild fires.
This amendment to the Healthy Forest Restoration Act will assure
tribes that we can take the actions necessary to help the U.S.
safeguard tribal trust forests and woodlands.
Could the Cedar Fire have been prevented? Maybe not. But the damage
could have been reduced or contained by taking actions to reduce fuel
and establish buffer zones of Forest Service or BLM land and keeping
adjacent forests and woodlands healthy. These are key features of the
Healthy Forest Restoration Act. These are the key features of the
Tribal Forest Asset Protection Amendment.
I speak not just for California tribes, but also for the White
Mountain Apache, the Crow, the Oneida, the Lummi Nation and tribal
nations throughout the United States. Tribes must be given the
opportunity to participate in managing federal lands so that next year
another Congressional committee will not to have to face the daunting
economic and ecological challenge we face today.
We stand ready to assist you in support of the Tribal Forest Asset
Protection Amendment.
Thank you for chairing this hearing, and again for allowing me to
address the Subcommittee.
______
STATEMENT OF SCOTT STEPHENS, PH.D., ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF FIRE
SCIENCE, DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, POLICY AND
MANAGEMENT, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
Dr. Stephens. Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee and
other Representatives, I am privileged to be here today.
The 2003 wildfires in southern California were tragic in
many respects. We have heard about it from further testimony--
losses of life, impacts to communities, negative impacts to
forests and ecosystems.
In the future, an idea that I might have is it would be
nice to have a hearing such as this to actually talk about some
successes relative to wildland fire. I think a lot of hearings
occur when we have tragedies with fire, and they are very real,
but there actually are some times when we have successes and it
would be nice to have a forum for them some day.
I want to give a brief discussion about chaparral forests
in southern California, ideas on how you might be able to
mitigate hazard, mitigate some of the post-fire outcomes and
also a real brief discussion on urban interface.
Chaparral and coastal state scrub was the majority of the
fire area. We know, we have heard this from several speakers.
Some people estimate 70 percent of the area, some 80 percent,
forests maybe five percent. We also have heard from the Fire
Marshal of San Bernardino County that there was a heroic effort
to stop the fire on the ridge, there is no doubt about that.
But when you look at the fire in these two communities, you
have to really look at them because they are fundamentally
absolutely different. If you look at fire in chaparral, as Dr.
Bonnicksen has said this is a crown fire adapted ecosystem, it
is just that simple. This system burns on slopes, under high
winds and under drought and you produce flame lengths 60, 80
feet, and fires move up canyons at incredible rates of spread.
I have done actually 22 prescribed fires in chaparral in the
last seven years in northern California actually. We burn this
stuff under prescription and we get flame lengths of 60, 70
feet in our research. So this is a very volatile fuel type and
it actually does burn and regenerates well after a high
severity fire.
If you look at the erosion off these systems, it absolutely
is a concern for management because erosion is downhill and we
have communities, but erosion is actually part of the natural
system, just as the fire is unfortunately. This means that
living near chaparral is an absolute challenge because you have
erosion and you have fire hazard that are really part of the
ecosystem. They can be mitigated to some point.
I think in response to fire in these areas, we started to
do things like annual rye grass seeding and other methods back
in the 1930s and 1940s. Some research has been done right here,
several research scientists for the Forest Service and USGS
looked at some of the effectiveness of this and it has been
shown to be fairly ineffective unless you have rain that comes
in very slowly, comes in and wets the grown, gets the seedlings
established, and that maybe can help a little bit, but also has
some negative impacts for displacing native flora and impacting
biodiversity. There is also a problem if we get grasses in
these systems and they keep in here, that we cannot increase
fire frequency to the point where we can take the scrub out and
then create a grassland. And that actually can make more
problems for slopes because of higher erosion.
I think if we were going to look at the southern California
example, I would say that the best place to put most of the
efforts are right on the urban interface, and I think we have
heard this from the other speakers. I would say that these are
the places where you will probably get the biggest bang for
your investment, trying to create some more defensible space in
these areas. The large lands, certain chaparral in this area,
trying to put fire on the ground for huge areas is an absolute
challenge. I am a very big fire proponent, but I also know it
is very challenging to put fire on the ground and try to get
these systems to work.
Now I want to shift over to the ponderosa pine, mixed
conifer and the forests up here on top of the mountain. These
systems are not adapted to high severity fire whatsoever, at
least at scales that are large. These are systems that are
adapted to high severity fire maybe the size of half an acre.
Regeneration in the past has been in these clumps and there is
no doubt that these systems have changed.
I have done some research down in northern Mexico, Sierra
San Pedro Martir. If we could jump in an airplane and went 300
miles south, we would actually end up at the end of this
peninsula mountain range and that is actually the Sierra San
Pedro Martir Mountains. The place never had fire suppression
until 1970, it has also never been harvested. Today the average
tree per acre down there is six feet above one inch diameter,
ranges from about 20 to 125, incredible spatial heterogeneity
in that system. Fires still occur down there and the outcomes
of these fires generally retain most of the forest overstory.
It is just that simple. It is must more resilient and it is
really a desired condition for many areas, it is not a complete
surrogate for this place by any means, but it is an amazing
place in terms of what the forest structure is.
So we have changed these systems. We know that tree
mortality in this area is nothing less than extraordinary. When
I come up here, we have got a research study here, Rick
Everett, a person working in my lab at Berkeley, is doing a
study here and it is extraordinary. What needs to be done is
really restoration.
If we look at fuels, I would just like to say a couple of
things about fuels. You have got four different fuel systems
that you really look at--ground fuels, surface fuels, ladder
fuels and crown fuels.
Ground fuels are the litter and dust layer right on the
surface of the soil. Surface fuels are the dead and down
material on the forest floor, and also small shrubs. Ladder
fuels, small trees and taller shrubs provide continuity, many
of you have heard this. And the crown fuels are the things
above our heads.
If you look at the systems that used to burn frequently,
like most of the systems here, most of the hazard is in the
surface fuel area. The second most one in my opinion is the
ladder fuels, the third most is the crown fuels. This means if
we want to do some work to really do some restoration which is
critically needed, we have to really evaluate surface fuels,
how we are going to treat them, what are we going to do with
them, and it is an absolute priority.
The great challenges around here is the infrastructure. One
of the real problems with infrastructure is, as we have talked
about, there is very little biomass utilization capacity here.
You heard some comments earlier about maybe more biomass mills
being put here, potentially a small sawmill. I actually think
that is a great idea because I think you need more options to
do work here that needs to be done.
If you just do biomassing and chipping onsite, you are
going to have a terribly expensive operation and also probably
very limited capacity.
I think the forest management needs to be flexible, very
flexible, because the systems on the ground are so variable.
Flexibility unfortunately takes trust in the agency and the
Chief talked about that a little bit that there is some sort of
disconnect there a little bit. One way that I think you could
actually move forward on this is a system of adaptive
management large scale, so you can learn from adaptive
management, put this on the ground, learn from it, go forward
as a collaborative with all sorts of people engaged. I think
this could happen in many scales.
If you look today in the national forest system, we really
never had a priority for fuels management for national forest
system, it did not occur until about 1995 when Federal wildland
policy changed. You have done work on this to amend this
through the other legislative acts. I would not say it became a
priority until 1997, which simply means there are no places we
can go that have large landscape level areas that have had fire
management as a priority--simply does not exist. We could point
to some national parks where maybe that has been occurring for
30 years. Without having that place to learn and to have a
discourse in, it causes I think a lot of uncertainty and I
think you could learn a lot from actually trying to do adaptive
management.
There is a new bill in Congress that I have become aware
of, H.R. 2696, the Fire Institute bill. This bill is basically
written to promote the use of adaptive ecosystem management to
reduce the risk of wildfires and improve forest health. I think
it is absolutely a powerful idea, a great idea, I fully support
it. I am actually a little concerned that it only has three
states involved and California is not one of them. There is no
state in this nation that has got a bigger fire issue than this
state. I am biased, I am a Californian, but when you look at
vegetation here, you look at the number of people, the number
of wildland interfaces, you have to a problem that is
extraordinary.
Urban/wildland interface, just quickly I will sum up, I am
over time a little bit. I think that urban interface is a huge
issue across the west. I also would say that we need to do more
in the urban interface for the large landowner to reduce
hazards, absolutely critical. Equally, we need to do as much on
the private side. If we take fire resilient landscape on the
urban interface, large landowner--BLM, Forest Service, Park
Service--and a fire still comes up through there, which they
are going to do and they lob embers into the communities, fire
does not discriminate, fire takes the thing that is going to
burn the easiest and burns it up. If it turns out to be a
house, it turns out to be a house. You have got to do more on
the private side. That is a collaborative effort. Actually my
dad lives in the woods and we are constantly facing this
challenge, so I would just say that yes, we need to do urban
interface on the wildland side on the big landowner, but it has
to go along with the private side. The private side is probably
more of a state issue and a county issue. But it is paramount.
Mr. Calvert. I thank the gentleman for his testimony.
Mr. Grindstaff.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Stephens follows:]
Statement of Dr. Scott L. Stephens, Assistant Professor of Fire
Science, Division of Ecosystem Science, Department of Environmental
Science, Policy, and Management, College of Natural Resources,
University of California, Berkeley
Chairman McInnis, distinguished members of the Committee, it is a
privilege to have the opportunity to present my testimony to you today.
The 2003 wildfires in Southern California were tragic in respect to
losses of life, their impacts on communities, and how they affected the
forested ecosystems in this region.
In the future, I look forward to the day when a hearing such as
this can be held to discuss successes relative to wildland fire and
ecosystem restoration. Certainly, more work must be done in this area,
but it would be useful to have a forum where positive aspects of
wildland fire could be presented.
I will present a discussion of wildland fire in chaparral, coastal
sage scrub, and forests in the southern California region. This will
include the benefits and risks associated with the different methods
used to reduce fire hazards and the effectiveness of post-wildfire
mitigation methods. I finish with a discussion on the urban-wildland
intermix.
Chaparral and Coastal Sage Scrub
Chaparral and coastal sage scrub are the vegetation types that were
most affected by the 2003 southern California wildfires. Approximately
90-95 percent of the area burned was in these two shrubland vegetation
types. The remaining area was in coniferous forests.
It is important to distinguish between shrublands and forests in
regard to the 2003 wildfires. Chaparral and coastal sage scrub are
vegetation types that are adapted to high intensity crown fires at
intervals of approximately 25-50 years. They produce extensive live
fuel beds as they develop and almost always burn as high intensity
crown fires when successfully ignited. Under extreme fire weather, such
as when the Santa Ana winds occur, the resulting fire behavior is
phenomenal with flame lengths over 75 feet and rates of spread greater
than 6 feet/second. This type of fire behavior is not uncharacteristic
or uncommon, it is simply how these vegetation types burn under extreme
weather conditions. After such fires, native vegetation will recover
relatively quickly by resprouting and from the germination of a soil-
stored seed bank. I have conducted 22 research chaparral prescribed
fires in northern California since 1995 and the vegetation in the areas
burned 7-8 years ago is approximately one-half to two-thirds of what it
was before burning. These ecosystems can respond quickly after high
severity wildfires.
After wildfire, there is a real management concern concerning
erosion impacts. Erosion is a natural part of this ecosystem, just as
fire is. Immediately after fire, dry ravel erosion increases greatly as
surface barriers to soil movement are removed. Dry ravel moves
downslope under gravity and fills in stream channels. Early post-fire
rains can promote on-slope rill networks, enabling large amounts of
water and soil to move rapidly off of steep burned slopes.
Erosion tends to be high for the first few years after fire, and
then gradually decreased with time, normally returning to prefire
levels in 5-10 years as the increases in plant cover and root biomass
help stabilize surface material.
In response to the need to protect downstream structures and
resources after fire, managers began to explore ways of establishing
rapid vegetation cover on burned hill slopes. Starting in the 1930's,
Los Angeles County foresters first tried to seed native shrubs, then
later experimented with herbaceous species such as mustards and
grasses. By the 1940's, managers were routinely using annual ryegrass
(Lolium multiforum) in an attempt to stabilize slopes after fire.
Evaluation of seeding effectiveness was based primarily on the
level of grass cover established, with little attention given to any
effects on native vegetation recovery. At this time, little or no
attempts to quantify the success of this practice at reducing erosion
were attempted.
Questions about the impact of seeding with annual grasses on
natural vegetation recovery in chaparral and coastal sage scrub have
been raised for years. Some research has observed a negative
relationship between ryegrass cover and native herb cover. Lower
species richness has been reported for ryegrass seeded plots. Reseeding
of non-native species after fire in chaparral does not affect the long-
term, post-fire recovery of native shrubs.
Seeding also has the potential to increase fire frequency in
chaparral and coastal sage scrub as flammable, exotic grasses provide a
continuous fuel structure in a very short time period. If these systems
burn frequently, a vegetation type conversion from shrublands to
grasslands can occur and this can further exacerbate erosion problems
because grasses provide little soil stabilization on steep slopes.
The most likely scenario for maximum effectiveness of post-fire
seeding at reducing erosion would be one where rainfall is of low
intensity and regularly spaced in the fall and early winter, allowing
good grass cover to establish before heavy rains. However, this weather
pattern does not appear to be a reliable or frequently occurring
scenario on southern California chaparral sites.
In years of even moderately favorable weather conditions, seeded
grasses appear to compete with the natural post-fire herbaceous flora
rather than enhancing total plant cover. This competition decreases
both species richness and percent cover of the native, herbaceous
species. Research on the long-term effects of reseeding on the
chaparral seed banks continues but it seems seed banks are also
affected by introduced annuals.
New methods to reduce erosion, such as aerial straw mulching,
polyacrylamide, and aerial mulching, have never been rigorously field
tested. The lack of information argues for a standardized program of
treatment effectiveness monitoring, as pointed out in a recent General
Accounting Office report on this subject.
Today, even though the best scientific information on the effects
of post-fire seeding of exotic grasses tells us there are few or no
positive affects, some agencies continue to promote the practice in
southern California. This is slowly changing.
I believe federal and state managers should focus chaparral fuel
treatments in the urban-wildland intermix. These treatments have been
proven to be effective during wildfires in southern California. An
example is the 1995 West Ridge prescribed fire in the San Bernardino
National Forest. This chaparral prescribed fire was done below the town
of Idyllwild. Two years later, the Bee wildfire burned uphill towards
Idyllwild and was successfully suppressed because of the impacts of the
previous burning.
Mixed Conifer, Ponderosa and Jeffrey Pine Forests
The ponderosa pine, mixed conifer, and Jeffrey pine forests that
burned in 2003 are not adapted to large, high intensity fires. Most of
these forests, area denser and more spatially uniform, have many more
small trees and fewer large trees, and have much greater quantities of
surface fuels than did their pre-settlement counterparts. Causes
include fire suppression, past livestock grazing and timber harvests,
and possibly changes in climate. The results include a general
deterioration in forest ecosystem integrity and an increased
probability of large, high-severity wildfires. Such conditions are
prevalent nationally, especially in forests that once experienced
short-interval (<15 years), low to moderate-severity fire regimes.
The tree mortality that occurred in many forested areas prior to
the southern California wildfires is extraordinary. I visited this
region several times before the 2003 fires and in some areas, the
mortality was the most severe that I have ever witnessed. The mortality
is the result of several factors, including past management activities,
that allowed more trees to become established over the last 100 years,
a multi-year drought, stress from smog that is transported to this area
from the Los Angeles basin, and the impacts of native bark beetles.
Past management actions set the stage for a dramatic change in this
forested ecosystem. I should note that the past drought has been severe
and trees have died at the lower forest-shrub ecotone, and this has not
been witnessed in the last 70-100 years. Still, droughts are part of
the natural ecosystem stresses that have and will continue to affect
California. I think one of the central messages that should be learned
from the forests of southern California is an active management
philosophy is needed in these forested ecosystems.
Before beginning my discussion of the different methods that can be
used to reduce fire hazards in these forests, I want to spend a moment
on what I believe is the critical issue, the definition of desired
future conditions for our diverse ecosystems. Once this is done we can
then decide what management tools are appropriate to achieve and
maintain the desired conditions. I believe the debate on whether we
should use silviculture to manage our national forests is unproductive,
the real issue is the definition of desired future conditions, and how
are we going to get there, and once there, how they will be maintained.
When discussing fuel hazards in coniferous forests we must examine
four different fuel systems:
1) Ground fuels (leaf litter and decomposed organic materials on
the soil surface);
2) Surface fuels (dead and down woody materials, herbaceous fuels,
live shrubs);
3) Ladder fuels (small trees and shrubs that can provide vertical
continuity to move a fire into tree crowns); and
4) Crown fuels (vertical and horizontal distribution of tree
crowns).
Each area of the country is unique but in most forest types that
historically had frequent, low-moderate intensity fire regimes, such as
most of those in the mountains of southern California, the most
critical fuel complex from a fire hazard standpoint is the surface
fuels, followed by the ladder fuels, and then the crown fuels. Ground
fuels are relatively compact (low surface area to volume ratio) and
contribute little to flaming combustion or fireline intensity.
If one is designing a fuels treatment strategy it must focus on
surface fuels. Commercial and pre-commercial thinning operations can
reduce ladder fuels and crown fuels but without combining these
treatments with surface fuel reductions, the overall program will not
reduce potential fire behavior. In fact, operations that lop and
scatter the slash fuels produced after thinning operations will
increase fire hazards for a decade or more until decomposition reduces
fuel loads. Mechanical removal of ladder and crown fuels will reduce
the probability of crown fires in an area, but if surface fuels are not
reduced, a high severity surface fire can be produced, and it will kill
the majority of the remaining trees by scorching (production of lethal
thermal injuries to all exposed leaf and meristem tissues). Only when
these treatments are coupled with a surface fuel treatment will this
result in a reduction in potential fire behavior. One of the most
effective surface fuel treatments is prescribed burning which can be
used with or without prior mechanical treatments to produce the overall
objective. A limitation of mechanical treatments is the need of road
networks which are not available in all areas, especially in the
mountains of southern California. Whatever treatment is selected, it
must target the surface fuel layer, followed by ladder fuels, and then
the crown fuels. Surface fuel reduction cannot be an afterthought of
fuel treatments in these forests, it must be the central objective.
One of the great challenges of producing a fire hazard reduction
program for the forests in southern California is the lack of
infrastructure in this area. The closest sawmill to this area is in the
southern Sierra Nevada. This is outside the economic range of most
materials that should be removed to reduce fire hazards in this region.
Presently, the National Forests in this area are chipping dead trees on
site and dispersing the chips locally over the forest floor. This is an
improvement in terms of fire hazard reduction but it is a very slow,
expensive alternative. The large chipper that worked in the forest
around Lake Arrowhead this summer cost $580/hour to operate. In
addition to this machine and its operator, tree fallers and skidder
operators were needed to move the dead materials to the large chipper.
I watched this machine operate this summer and it could only chip
approximately 1-2 acres per day in areas where tree mortality was
heavy. There is a real need to have a local mill in this region that
could efficiently process materials removed to improve forest health.
Another critical question is the definition of desired future
conditions for the forests in this region. One forested ecosystem
exists that can be compared to those found in southern California, this
is the Sierra San Pedro Martir (SSPM) in northwestern Mexico. This
forest is composed of mixed conifer forests and shrublands of the
Californian floristic province that occur nowhere else in Mexico. The
SSPM is unique within the California floristic province in that its
forests were never harvested and a policy of large-scale fire
suppression did not begin until 1970. I have been conducting research
in this area since 1998 and it can provide information that can assist
in the production of desired future conditions in the forests of
southern California. There is a great amount of spatial heterogeneity
in the forests of the SSPM. Average surface fuel loads are small (6
tons/acre). Over the last four years, the forests of the SSPM have
experienced a similar drought to that experienced in the forests of
southern California. I have a set of forest inventory plots in this
region and snag density increased from 1.7/acre to 2.6/acre over the
last three years. This is a large mortality event for this region but
is orders of magnitude smaller than what occurred in southern
California. One of the goals of forest management should be to produce
resilient forest structures that can incorporate natural disturbances
such as fire, insects, diseases, and drought without catastrophe (tree
mortality outside desired conditions). Forest management plans should
be flexible to allow managers enough space to propose creative field-
based solutions to address our current fire problems. There is
presently mistrust in many sectors of federal forest management and
this has impeded the ability to allow flexibility. A vigorous system of
adaptive management at large spatial scales would reduce these
barriers.
California has huge challenges to overcome in terms of wildland
fire. The state has a Mediterranean climate (dry hot summers) and
almost all of its vegetation is fire adapted. The exclusion of fire and
past management practices has produced ecosystems that are not
sustainable. California also has the largest population in the nation
and the number of people moving into the urban-wildland intermix is
increasing. The USFS has been attempting to produce a plan to manage
the National Forests of the Sierra Nevada since 1990 and wildland fire
has been one of the central issues. After 13 years of debate, we still
don't have a final plan. The ecosystems in southern and northeastern
California have similar management challenges.
Since fire hazard reduction has never been the main objective of
USFS land management, we have no large-scale research to support such a
management philosophy. There simply are no places to go in California
to get information on the trade-offs (economic, social, ecological) of
large-scale management treatments designed to reduce fire hazards and
improve forest health. I have become aware of a new bill in Congress,
H.R. 2696 (Fire Institute Bill), that attempts to fill this need. It
proposes 3 new Fire Institutes that would ``promote the use of adaptive
ecosystem management to reduce the risk of wildfires and improve forest
health.'' The new institutes would be funded for five years and would
be created with the consultation of the Secretary of Agriculture. I
fully support this idea because of the real need for increased
information but am distressed that California is not one of the states
that would receive such an institute. There is no state in our nation
that has more complex fire and forest health issues than California.
Urban-Wildland Intermix
Land management agencies throughout the country are increasingly
aware of the difficulties of managing in the urban-wildland intermix.
This is a very complicated landscape with homes, subdivisions, and
towns all mixed into or adjoining wildland areas. The number of people
who choose to live in this area continues to increase and many wildland
fire agencies, such as the California Department of Forestry and Fire
Protection, believe this is the area where their fuels treatments
should be focused.
I believe this area requires partnerships between home owners and
the public or private organizations that have responsibility for the
adjoining wildlands. Strategic fuel reduction zones can be created in
the urban wildland intermix to allow for more effective and safe
suppression activities when wildfires are moving from the wildlands
toward homes or from the homes into the wildlands.
Private home owners share responsibility in this area. Homes must
be built with combustion-resistant roofs and siding materials.
Defensible space must be created around each structure to increase the
probability that it will survive a wildfire. Fine fuels and needles
must be removed annually from roofs and around houses to reduce the
chance of spot fire ignition during wildfires. To reduce losses in this
area, a shared partnership must occur between the private landowner and
the manager of the adjoining wildlands. Currently, most of the debate
is focusing on what large land managers must do to reduce risk, but an
equal amount of responsibility rests on the private side of the
intermix. Counties and states must take action to ensure that
individual home owners reduce their potential for catastrophic fire.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
______
STATEMENT OF P. JOSEPH GRINDSTAFF, GENERAL MANAGER, SANTA ANA
WATERSHED PROJECT AUTHORITY
Mr. Grindstaff. Thank you very much. I appreciate the
opportunity to be here. You have a copy of my testimony and
copy of the burn report here. I think I will answer a couple of
questions that I have heard asked here specifically about the
impacts to this watershed.
Two major fires impacted the Santa Ana River Watershed. The
Old fire and the Grand Prix fire. An example, the Old fire, we
are expecting that that will generate 300,000 acre feet of
debris. Now those of you that know what an acre foot is, that
is a lot of debris. So will there be a problem? Yes, there will
be a major problem over the next probably four or five years.
Most of this fire--about 80 percent of the fire was on very
steep slopes. So mulching, doing anything like that is
impossible. We have very, very steep slopes. We are going to
have a lot of that debris come down and there is not much we
can do about it except enlarge the debris basins down at the
bottom of the hill, try and empty them out every time they get
full and be prepared to evacuate people if in fact we have
problems.
I know that is hard to say. But the day when the BAER team
came together we were sitting in this room, the incident
command center, and Ken Miller, who is the flood control
director for San Bernardino County, was sitting there and we
asked the question what level of storm is going to cause a
problem for you. He said one inch will cause problems in this
watershed today. I am hoping that as time goes by and we get
more things in place that number will go up, but it is a
significant, significant problem. You are talking about an
order of magnitude change after a fire. So the flows that you
might expect from a one-inch storm will in fact be 10 times
higher. The peak flows will be 10 times higher than what you
would get in a normal one-inch storm. So that carries a lot
more debris with it. If you will remember about a week or 2
weeks ago there was a big storm down in Los Angeles. If that
storm cell had hit one of the burn areas we would have had a
massive problem in this region.
So fire has very real costs. It will probably cost just for
the debris problem we believe on the order of $190 million in
this watershed. So when we talk about the costs of thinning and
managing the forests well, there are very real reasons why we
should do that.
Let us talk about water supply. In this watershed we
estimate because of this fire we are going to lose
approximately 60,000 acre feet of water per year for the next
few years. That is a significant amount of water that we will
be importing because we are not able to capture it and use it
locally. So we have had a long-term program here to try and
reduce the amount of imports for the watershed that is 5.5
million people. Over the next few years we are actually going
to be increasing the amount of water we import because we are
not going to be able to capture it all. There are impacts to
small agencies that have a treatment plant, whether it is
Cucamonga County Water District that cannot take water through
their treatment plant now because there is too much sediment,
too much ash there. That ranges all the way across the whole
part of the mountains, this whole part of the watershed.
Water quality. I am going to give another example that is
probably different, of a potential kind of problem we have. The
largest constructed wetlands in the western United States are
located on the Santa Ana River. They were built by the Orange
County Water District as treatment wetlands, and half of the
flow of the Santa Ana River goes through those wetlands. If we
get indeed the sediment that we are expecting to get, we are
going to fill them all up. So the water quality benefits, the
habitat benefits that we get from those--and the principal
reason for them was to reduce nitrate in the water--that is
gone and they have to go in and rebuild them essentially after
the event is over. So that is an example of the kinds of
impacts, and they are going to happen. I hope that over the
next 8 months we can do something that prevents fires--further
fires in this watershed. But now that San Jacinto and Idyllwild
are also a part of this watershed, I am not hopeful honestly.
As a planner--somebody that has to lay out what might happen--I
am not hopeful that we are really going to prevent the kinds of
fires that certainly look likely today next year. So that is--
and we will have similar kinds of impacts when that happens.
Probably one of the things that I understand more now than
I ever understood before--and I have managed water agencies for
most of my career--managing the forest has a real financial
impact in ways that we do not normally think about, that we
have not normally cataloged as we as water agencies move ahead.
I am sure that is true in many other areas. That, I think, just
increases the urgency for us to find ways to manage those
forests properly.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Grindstaff follows:]
Statement of P. Joseph Grindstaff, General Manager,
Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority
Chairman Pombo and members of the Committee on Resources, thank you
for providing me this opportunity to address the significant impacts to
our water supply and quality throughout the Santa Ana Watershed from
the October wildfires in the San Bernardino, San Gorgonio and San
Jacinto Mountains.
Also, I thank you for addressing the needs of the watersheds in
California. The forests provide significant groundwater recharge for
our region and their health is important to millions. Federal funding
for fire impacts will significantly reduce the ``urban drought'' that
is likely to follow the recent fires.
SAWPA was honored to be asked by Tom O'Keefe and Gene Zimmerman to
participate in the Burn Area Emergency Response (BAER) team. We were
impressed by the individuals and teamwork of the group to assess the
devastation. In parallel, we developed the report we have provided to
you. Our staff worked with dozens of the nearly 100 agencies in the
watershed to integrate the broad needs resulting from the recent fires.
These needed improvements range from flood control enhancements and
habitat restoration to salt removal from groundwater. This
collaboration enabled us to quickly assemble this information and bring
a large portion of the effected agencies up to speed.
These efforts follow the model that Santa Ana Watershed Project
Authority (SAWPA) created for the Integrated Watershed Program (IWP).
The IWP has been very successful in collectively working with all
agencies in the watershed to drought proof the Santa Ana Watershed.
Through this program, the region will not require imported water during
drought years. With help from funding in Proposition 13, the program is
creating almost 300,000 acre feet of new water at an average cost to
the state taxpayer of less than $100 per acre foot. The $235 million is
being matched with local funding to build almost $800 million in
infrastructure. Additionally, it will improve and protect almost 10,000
acres of river habitat and wetlands.
We believe the IWP is a model that will work for regions throughout
the state and will likely be a model to mitigate water quality impacts
associated with fire. This model will address flood control problems,
and enhance the environment through desalting, groundwater cleanup,
improve water supply storage, storm and flood control management, water
recycling, environmental and habitat restoration and conservation
measures.
From our information, this same scenario is likely to be repeated
throughout the state in the foothills and forest of the Sierras in
California. Action is needed to prevent these disasters from repeating
throughout the state.
Background
The Santa Ana Watershed provides a majority of the drinking water
for over 5 million residents from the rainfall in and around the San
Bernardino, San Gorgonio and San Jacinto Mountains' forest areas.
Rainfall in these mountainous areas provides surface water flows and
groundwater recharge throughout the region via the Santa Ana River and
its tributaries.
Recent fires in these areas were large and difficult to contain.
The aftermath of these fire events have resulted in extraordinary
impacts on the forests and the watershed. The recent Grand Prix, Old
and Padua Fires burned over 120,000 acres (more than 185 square miles)
in the Santa Ana Watershed of wildland habitat, primarily in the San
Bernardino National Forest.
These fires will have significant impacts on the Santa Ana River
and its associated water quality for an extended period and these
impacts will occur in areas far from the burned sites. While the fires
were confined to the top of the watershed, virtually the entire
watershed is impacted by the fires, or will be impacted. It is
estimated that the fires' effects will impact an additional 430 square
miles beyond the burn area for a total impact to over one-quarter of
the watershed. Without intervention, most of the associated costs will
be borne by local government.
The area burned will significantly complicate our efforts to
drought-proof the watershed. As presented above to prepare for greater
water demands that are projected to increase nearly 30% within 20 years
and seeking to drought proof the region so that no imported water would
be required during drought years, SAWPA developed a 10-year IWP to
address the water needs of the region. Over 200 water resource-related
projects were identified as part of this program to date. Three billion
dollars was initially estimated to implement the 10-year IWP. In 2000,
SAWPA successfully contracted with the State Water Resources Control
Board to use $235 million in Proposition 13 Water Bond funds to begin
construction of over $800 million in projects that directly support the
IWP. Costs borne by local agencies in responding to problems arising
from recent fire events will significantly impact the ability of the
agencies cooperating in implementing the SAWPA IWP to reduce the
region's dependence on imported water and, therefore, will have a
lasting impact on water supplies statewide.
Water Supply and Quality, Habitat, and Flood Control Impacts
An ``urban drought,'' caused by the inability of the forests to
capture and percolate water into the ground and water basins, will
likely damage water supply and quality. Significant conservation
efforts are needed now. Federal and state funding are also needed to
avert the disaster after the disaster.
The following areas of risk have been identified:
Future Fires: Less than 5% of the trees with drought-
induced severe mortality have burned in the recent fires, which leaves
more than 150,000 acres unburned. More fires are likely, further
exacerbating the impacts;
Flooding and Debris: In the Old Fire alone about 300,000
acre feet (AF) of mud, rock and water are anticipated to fill streams,
basins, and flood facilities. Removal of sediment and facilities
improvements to mitigate flood impacts could cost $190 million;
Mud and Rock Flows: From even a moderate (10-year storm),
mud and rock flows would cause 100 sub-watersheds to produce 4,500
cubic feet per second or more of runoff, well over ten times the
average year flows;
Threatened and Endangered Species: Threatened and
endangered species are negatively impacted not just in the burned area,
but by sediment, and pollutants that occur for years after the burn in
areas throughout the watershed;
Groundwater: Seventy percent of the water used by its 5
million residents in the watershed is groundwater; much of this is
percolated rain water in the forest, or within approximately five miles
of the forest;
Percolation: More than 70 groundwater percolation basins
will likely be impacted by mud and rock reducing recharge;
Ash Impacts: As much as ten million cubic yards of ash
are expected to be washed into creeks, streams, rivers and percolation
basins as far as Orange County and eventually the ocean;
Water Loss: With these basins out of commission, as much
as 60,000 AF of water will be lost to the ocean each year, instead of
percolated and used for drinking water. The cost of replacement water,
if it is available, could be $15 million per year;
Contaminants: Runoff water will likely bring
contaminants--manganese, lead, phosphorus, mercury nitrates, total
organic carbon, and uranium requiring treatment and removal before use;
and
Stress on State Water Supplies: Without mitigation from
the fires' impact, the region will become more dependent on imported
water from the Colorado River and the Bay-Delta, rather than less as is
planned through the IWP. The impacts of the fires will be felt
statewide.
For additional information, please reference a report entitled,
Old, Grand Prix, and Padua Fires (October, 2003) Burn Impacts to Water
Systems and Resources dated December, 2003, prepared by SAWPA in
support for the United States Forest Services Burn Area Response Team
working in the area. This report has been prepared to inform and aid
decisionmakers and other interested parties throughout the watershed.
Fire Impact Cost Estimates
Costs of mitigating the effects of recent fires within the
watershed are estimated to be nearly $450 million, and are summarized
below:
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0767.001
In addition, local water agencies have expressed concern over
direct damage to infrastructure such as wells and access roads
resulting from increased debris and sediment flow from storm events
following fires.
Although the fires did not burn all of the areas anticipated in
earlier calculations, these impacts are likely to be severe over the
next five or more years, depending on rainfall and storm intensity.
In addition, as much of the unburned area is still at extreme risk
of a catastrophic fire, costs are likely to be higher than those
projected from the recent fire events.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0767.002
Requested Actions/Funding Recommendations
We urge the Committee to:
Continue to fund the restoration of the forest as it is
the top of the watershed and from where the highest quality drinking
water in the watershed comes;
Continue to support sustainable land use in the forest
and the watershed;
Provide funding and support for immediate flood and
debris measures to protect the area from additional disasters at the
first heavy rains; and
Understand the close connection that exists between the
forest and the watershed below and provide support and funding for the
mitigation of the fire impacts on the groundwater basins of the
watershed.
The following table summarizes specific watershed improvements to
mitigate the effects of the recent fires. These improvements are
individually identified, as well as their benefits.
______
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0767.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0767.004
Mr. Calvert. Thank you, Mr. Grindstaff, for your testimony.
This entire panel is extremely interesting. I want to get
into this issue of prescription burns. I was also intrigued by
our friends from the Native American community, because Native
Americans have a history of managing property through the
history of their residency here in America, especially the
Plains Indians where we have historical data of the Plains
Indians setting fire to their property on the plains in order
to bring grasses back for their buffalo population.
But on the issue of prescriptive burns, our friend from
Texas, welcome to California. How difficult is it here in
California to get a permit for a prescriptive burn? Are you
familiar with that?
Dr. Bonnicksen. Are you asking me?
Mr. Calvert. Yes, sir.
Dr. Bonnicksen. How difficult----
Mr. Calvert. You can use that mike.
Dr. Bonnicksen. Oh, I am sorry.
How difficult is it to get a prescription to burn? To tell
you the truth, I probably do not--I do not know, but I think
Scott may have some idea.
Mr. Calvert. Well, I will ask Scott.
Dr. Stephens. Yes, we have done quite a bit of burning.
Actually it is a--I call it almost a Master's thesis. It is
probably about the scale of document of about 40 pages or so.
You have a smoke management plan that actually is written and
then put to the agency that has air shed quality control over
the area. It has to be approved by the smoke management plan.
Then you also have a prescribed fire plan that actually is
submitted to the fire agency that has jurisdiction over your
area. If it is the Forest Service, you send it to them. If it
is BLM, you do it with them. If it is CDF--the whole thing
turns out to be probably on the scale of maybe about 45 or 50
pages. The first one is really a challenge. The second and
third gets a little easier. But there is no doubt it is an
effort--it is an effort and it has gone up quite a bit. My
predecessor at Berkeley, Bob Martin, used to have a prescribed
burn plan that was on two pages of paper. It has gone up
substantially.
Mr. Calvert. You burn up a lot of trees to get a permit. As
I understand it, I spent some time with some fire marshals and
some firefighters and they told me it is virtually impossible--
as a matter of fact, some of the areas that burned in this most
recent fire, that they had put some applications in for some
controlled fires and they could not get permission to do so. In
fact, all of that area now is gone, of course, and the habitat
that they were trying to protect is gone with it, as I
understand it. So I just want to put that on the record.
The other issue, of course, is the water supply. Mr.
Grindstaff, I was interested when you said 60,000 acre feet of
water. To put that in perspective for the audience, 60,000 acre
feet of water is 20 percent of the water supply for the entire
State of Nevada, which is lost because it is--because of the
problems in this watershed. I know my friend from Oregon will
tell you we go into great battles and wars in the Congress over
less water than that. So it is going to be lost. If you take
that 60,000 a year for at least five years, that is a lot of
water.
Mr. Grindstaff. Yes, that is a lot of water. We are
fortunate that we have some alternate sources. I do not imagine
that the people in northern California would think that we are
fortunate that we have that alternate source to take water
from.
Mr. Calvert. And for our friends from--I know that the San
Diego fires were devastating. Our friend and colleague that
lives in your area, Alpine, Duncan Hunter, lost his home. As a
matter of fact, he told me the fire was so hot because the
growth and the thickness and the way the fire burned, that his
pot-bellied stove actually melted, everything was gone. That is
how devastating and hot that fire was.
Maybe for testimony, do you remember the last time they did
a control burn to manage--like our friends in Mexico are
apparently doing--but to manage old growth, which is done
naturally in history, but apparently we have not been able to
do it. Can you remember the last time they did such a thing in
the San Diego area?
Mr. Barrett. I know that the National Forest Service in
Cleveland National Forest last spring was doing controlled
burns in the Laguna Mountains area. Part of the Cedar fire had
burned back around on itself and burned east and when it hit
that prescribed burn area it stopped at that point and then
continued to burn north, which was into the Julian area where
they had made a big stand up there and saved the town up there.
That is where the one firefighter was killed, up in that area.
Mr. Calvert. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Baca.
Mr. Baca. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Grindstaff, you mentioned--and I am trying to imagine
300 acres of debris. And as I look at the watershed and I look
at the Santa Ana winds in the area, and you mentioned the cost.
What effects then will the Santa Ana winds do as well, because
that has to be taken into account as we look at the debris and
the ashes. I know every time I leave my window open there in
Rialto I see a lot of the ashes just coming right into the
house, draining into the water as well. Have you taken into
consideration the Santa Ana winds that will be picking up
between now and then based on this fire and the cost it is
going to be to us as we look at not only the quality of water
and the quantity of water as well?
Mr. Grindstaff. I cannot tell you a specific number but I
can tell you anecdotally that in fact the Santa Ana winds have
already scoured a lot of the ash off of the upper parts of the
slopes and moved it down. In fact, it is in the water. I can
tell you that in fact ash is in the water in Orange County, the
water that they are percolating into the ground. So it has
already made its way down river--downstream and has impacts.
Mr. Baca. And this probably has impact not only on
Arrowhead drinking water that comes from here too as well, or
Bear water as well.
Mr. Grindstaff. Lake Silverwood is a major supply source
for the east branch of the state water project and that is
impacted by the Old fire. It is a major source of supply for
southern California, and certainly the ash, they are trying to
protect and stop it from getting in there. But we expect some
will get in there and there will be some treatment problems
with that.
Mr. Baca. One of the other areas--it is safe to say that
the wildfires greatly affected tribes in southern California.
We all realize that. In our area, San Manuel Reservation lost
about 98 percent of its vegetation. Without the vegetation all
that is left is the bare soil where the chances for flooding
are greatly increased. What is being done on the reservations
to provide--provided by the local, state and Federal government
to help prepare for any flooding such as the result of
wildfire? Does anyone know? And what is being done in terms of
fostering thinning near reservations and what more can be done?
Mr. Barrett. We had several Federal agencies, FEMA BAER
Team--we had the U.S. Forest Service BAER Team and also--
actually we had two BAER teams working on the reservations in
San Diego County. The problem with the two agencies is they did
not communicate with each other. They stayed in the same hotel
but they did not communicate. They have two different BAER
reports and both of them are doing different things on Federal
lands.
Mr. Baca. And I noticed that during the wildfires we did
not see very much coverage of the effects that wildfires had on
our local Indian reservations. From your experience, do you
believe that your tribes had adequate access to government
relief services? That is question number one. And to your
knowledge, do you know of any Native Americans who were turned
away from relief centers? In the Cavazon Newsletter they stated
that tribal members in San Diego County were being turned down
for help by relief centers in Riverside County. They thought
that the Red Cross was insufficient in providing immediate
services. Can you share your experiences? Either one of you.
You, too, as well, David.
STATEMENT OF DAVE NENNA, TRIBAL ADMINISTRATOR,
TULE RIVER TRIBE
Mr. Nenna. I would love to. If I could go ahead and provide
my testimony with the rest of the panel.
First off, thank you, Mr. Chairman and honorable members
for allowing me to give testimony on behalf of my tribal
government.
The Tule River Indian Reservation was created by executive
order in 1873 and the land base consists of 55,341 acres which
is located in the Sierra Nevada foothills and the mountains of
central California and Tulare County. The Tule River Tribe is
the second largest timber tribe in the State of California. We
are surrounded on three sides by the newly designated Giant
Sequoia National Monument administered by the Department of
Agriculture. The Forest Service classifies this Federal lands
along our common boundaries very high fire hazard and risk
index.
The tribe has over 17,000 acres of productive forest land
including five groves of giant sequoyas, and 30,000 acres of
native oak woodlands. Three of these groves cross
administrative boundaries with U.S. Forest Service. There are
253 homes and over 1,000 residents within the reservation
boundaries that are located within our wildland and urban
interface.
The tribe has an established natural resource and forestry
program, along with a forest management plan in place and
approved by the Department of Interior. The tribe manages its
own wildland fire department and has cooperative agreements in
place with the U.S. Forest Service, the California Department
of Forestry and Tulare County Fire Departments and also the
Bureau of Indian Affairs. The tribe also has a fire management
plan awaiting final approval.
The tribe has taken a very proactive management approach in
trying to protect and enhance its forest assets and natural
resources. This will not be enough. The tribe has always had
grave concerns about continuous fuel loads along the
reservation boundaries. We keep our fingers crossed year after
year that we are not the victims of catastrophic fire. We were
extremely fortunate last year during the course of the 150,000
acre plus McNalley fire which burned on adjacent forest lands.
The fire came within two miles of our reservation boundaries.
The potential of losing such great national treasures as the
giant Sequoias looms daily. The tribe's concern has not changed
over the years. The fuel problem still exists. Until the issue
of fuels are addressed and the risk of large stand replacing
fire will remain. The tribe is open to alternatives such as
joint management, stewardship or some plan or course of action
that would help us address the fuel and the fuel hazards on
Federal lands.
During the 2003 fire season we suffered through another
year with minimal rainfall. When conifer trees are weakened
from drought and overcrowding, they become susceptible to
insect infestation. Without timely action the fuel problem
magnifies. Any potential timber recovery from dead and dying
trees is lost. This past season the tribe completed a salvage
timber harvesting effort to address an abundance of dying trees
due to bark beetle attack. Trying to remedy our forests health
and fire concerns does not do much good if the same effort to
reduce similar hazards does not happen on the national monument
side. We pray for some type of relief, that we do not have to
wait for the inevitable to happen before any action occurs. The
problems have been identified on numerous occasions and now it
has to be addressed.
Along with these same concerns, as the honorable councilman
had mentioned, of having something to address or amendment to
the Healthy Forest Initiative that would help address this with
tribes that are heavily forested. I would also like to submit
as part of my testimony a letter from the Council on Energy
Resource Tribes which represents 53 tribes throughout the
Nation supporting some type of amendment to the Healthy Forest
Initiative to address these so we can work in a cooperative
effort to address the heavy fuel loadings for those of us that
are surrounded by other Federal lands where these fuel loads
are not being addressed at the present time.
I would like to thank you very much for allowing me to
offer my testimony, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Baca. Mr. Chairman, if I may reclaim my time?
Mr. Pombo. Absolutely.
Mr. Baca. Alan, would you like to answer the question?
Mr. Barrett. I cannot speak for other tribes because I did
not participate in their meetings with the BAER committees that
came on. But for us, we did have adequate resources. At Viejas
we had a strike team from northern California, which mostly
consisted of San Jose area Fire Departments that came in right
when the fire got to our reservation. We did work very closely
with the Red Cross. We had--two days after the fire, we did sit
down with the Red Cross and start discussing avenues and ways
to get resources to actually the entire San Diego--the
community of San Diego.
Mr. Baca. Would you want to add anything else, David? If
not, I have another question.
Mr. Nenna. I will wait for your next question, Congressman.
Mr. Baca. Thank you. Just one final question to both of the
tribal members. You have painted a clear picture of just how at
risk Indian tribes are and what we have had to deal with this
fire season. America's reservations are the repositories of
countless archeological and cultural and historical sites and
artifacts. Could you discuss the seriousness of the permanent
loss of these national resources to wildfires, and do we even
have an adequate inventory of such sites?
Mr. Nenna. I would like to say on behalf of my tribe and
several tribes up through the foothills, most tribe do catalog
a lot of their cultural and archeological resources. Sometimes
these resources are exposed that we are not aware of. During
the McNalley fire and the Manteur fire the previous year there
was sites that were heavily saturated in archeological findings
that are now being cataloged. But we--with the limited
resources on our reservation and the limited personnel to do
this that are trained in this field, we have only been able to
catalog about 50,000 acres of our reservation and know all of
our archeological sites. They are very susceptible to damage
and destruction depending on the intensity of the fire.
Like I mentioned on some of the treasures, irreplaceable
things that we could never recover are the 2,000- and 3,000-
year-old giant Sequoia groves that we have. Also our commercial
timber, it is replaceable but not in our lifetime. It will take
many generations to regrow a lot of these natural beauties that
we have.
And destruction of--the possibility of our river. I keep
hearing water. I was very interested in the one gentleman's
comments on what had happened, because our only water source or
domestic water supply is a single river where all the
watersheds are created on the reservation. So it would take
many, many years, if ever, in generations to recover from a
catastrophic fire.
Mr. Baca. Thank you.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Radanovich.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I was intrigued by the information on chaparral and the age
of chaparral and the age depending on its susceptibility to
fire and the difference between the way it is managed between
California and Mexico. Dr. Bonnicksen, can you tell me, is it
because of controlled burning that is allowed in Mexico that is
not here? You mentioned in California and the United States it
was just complete fire suppression. But how did they get the
nice mosaic that you are wanting to achieve there? Is it just
by nature or what?
Dr. Bonnicksen. No. It was a combination of active burning
by small farmers to provide room for livestock grazing and
habitat for game. Also, they do not put out wildfires,
lightning fires. So that combination over many decades has
allowed the chaparral to retain its mosaic and fire-resistant
structure and this makes it a relatively safe place for people
to live.
Mr. Radanovich. I know in southern California, as well as
my part of the state in the Central Valley, which is soon to be
one of the most--will probably overcome the Los Angeles basin
for bad air quality. The idea of burning which--you know, I am
in favor of burning for forest management except for when it is
used to exclude logging as well. But do you think that the
amount of fire necessary to create this mosaic in California
would significantly impact the air quality in the basin?
Dr. Bonnicksen. First of all, the amount of pollutants that
go into the air from prescribed burning would be small doses,
whereas a wildfire would give you all of those small doses at
once. We seem to be better at tolerating the big dose than we
are, you know, enduring some hazy skies on a regular basis. So
I do think it is a problem. It is one of the constraints--major
constraints to solving the problem. Frankly--I mean we either
deal with the chaparral by burning it in a way that restores
the historic mosaic and fire resistance of that vegetation or
we find in addition to that economic uses of it, perhaps
biomass energy, perhaps the fiber itself could be used for
certain products to defray the cost and reduce the amount of
burning. I think the point is though, we have got to stop
saying we cannot and we have to start saying we will and we
will find a way.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you.
Dr. Stephens, you have mentioned as well the conifer aspect
of that in Mexico. Now what are they doing to get a good
mosaic? You mentioned that, but I was not sure if it was by
natural burning or what.
Dr. Stephens. This area of northwestern Mexico did not have
a road built until 1970. So before that there really was no
management up there except for livestock grazing which has been
there for 200 years. So the fire regime by lightning was
uninterrupted until 1970. So it really was functionally
complete. In 1970, actually they began to use fire suppression.
You go up there today and there are two pickups with two four-
person hand crews and they are putting out fires and they are
pretty good at it because the fuel loads are so low. It is a
lot like we did in 1905. A lot of us are talking about this as
maybe not a great idea. But theirs is actually a lightning-
induced fire regime. Native Americans actually live on this
side as well. We do not have as much information about their
burning practices but they very well could have been part of
the regime as well.
Mr. Radanovich. And it is possible--and you can both speak
to that if you want to--to achieve that kind of mosaic pattern,
which is desirable because it does not--fires when they start
do not spread over a massive area. They somewhat contain
themselves because of the fuel load restrictions. It is
possible to achieve that, I think, in conifer forests as well
as chaparral through either burning or logging frankly, right?
Dr. Bonnicksen. In conifer forests in California,
especially the short return interval fire forests, I think they
have gotten to the point where they are so overgrown that fire
is not really our option as a way to thin these forests. It is
beyond that. We have to use mechanical means supplemented with
fire. Fire does play a very important role ecologically in
these forests. But there, too, I seriously doubt even after we
use mechanical methods that we will be able to use fire on a
scale that will maintain the forest and we will have to
continue to use mechanical methods as well.
Mr. Radanovich. I agree. But mechanical methods can achieve
the same thing, right?
Dr. Bonnicksen. They can achieve almost all the same things
structurally in terms of the forest itself, but fire
supplements that because there are some plants that actually
are regenerated by fire that would be important as well. So
light prescribed fires as a supplement to the thinning effort
would, I think, help to keep the entire ecological system
functioning.
Mr. Radanovich. Thank you.
I have another quick question, if I may. Mr. Nenna, welcome
to the Committee. I remember not fondly--I remember the
McNalley fire a couple of years ago and how there was concern
about that moving into your tribe. Can you describe for me the
management of your tribal forests compared to the management of
what is now the monument which surrounds your reservation as
far as it relates to forest health? For example, how do you
take care of your tribal lands? Do you think that they are
better managed and less resistant to fire once it starts
because of your management practices? Do you notice a
difference between the two forests?
Mr. Nenna. Very much so, Congressman. There is a very, very
distinct difference when you drive up to where the boundary is
separated between the Forest lands and the reservation lands.
We are very aggressive in doing fuels reductions. We want to
introduce fire back in, but it is extremely difficult because
of the fuel loads on the Giant Sequoia National Monument side.
That was our fear because of the heavy fuel loads. We did what
we could to attempt to do a shaded fuel break on our side on
the reservation land and protect what little assets we do have.
But even that is going to be impossible should catastrophic
fire or should the McNalley fire have burned even closer. Then
it would have--we would have been looking at the destruction of
not just the five groves of giant Sequoias on the reservation,
but many of the groves of the giant Sequoias which are
irreplaceable.
But the introduction of fire, this is one of the things--it
is funny that we should hear this. Fire is needed for the
natural generation of the giant Sequoia trees. That is what
cracks open the cones and allows the seed to fall on the ground
and germinate.
Mr. Radanovich. But as of now, there is so much fuel
buildup that you cannot even think of using fire as a
management tool, at least on public lands, Federal lands.
Mr. Nenna. No, sir. Year after year the tribe has had the
same concern. Working with the Forest Service they were limited
in funding or limited in personnel and at times we have went
over and done joint projects and thinning projects when we
could. But they are very sporadic and extremely sparse. It is
not doing enough. A lot more needs to be done to reduce that
fuel load.
Mr. Radanovich. You say thinning, but you also log as well,
do you not?
Mr. Nenna. On the reservation many, many years ago the
tribe logged for substance. That is the only source of revenue
the tribe had. But for many years since, we have been very
fortunate, the only thing we do is, we go in--and it is for
forest health--so we do select harvest.
Mr. Radanovich. It is OK to use the logging word, too.
Mr. Nenna. Thank you.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Radanovich. That is OK.
Thank you for the time.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Walden.
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I was intrigued by somebody's comment here about the forest
in Mexico and that grazing was--cattle grazing there 200 years,
I think, livestock grazing?
Dr. Stephens. Yes, that is correct. They came in there with
the Jesuit missions were actually created there, just like in
coastal California. So they started grazing about 200 years
ago.
Mr. Walden. And what effect did that have on the health of
that forest?
Dr. Stephens. That is a great question. We think it
actually has degraded some of the meadows because they have not
really reformed the grazing. At least in my view it is still
overgrazed meadows. But the forests looks like possibly some
fine fuel has been removed but not a lot. We think that the
forest still has effective regeneration and other aspects that
seem to be quite sustainable. It is actually an area of
research that we are working on right now, so I have not got
the conclusive answer. But they have been there for a couple of
hundred years.
Mr. Walden. OK. Dr. Bonnicksen, I am really concerned. I
get what we need to do. All you have got to do is look at this
picture and it is pretty obvious. I do not know why it takes
eight, 10, 20 years for government to move, or whoever to move,
to get rid of dead trees. It is what we do after the fires now
that I want to get focused on. Have you read the Sessions
Report out of Oregon State University on the Biscuit fire?
Dr. Bonnicksen. I have read some papers on the Biscuit
fire.
Mr. Walden. And part of what that report found was that if
we do not get in and replant conifer forests we will get
hardwood forests. That is what will naturally come back first.
You will get the brush and the alder and such, and that it will
be a cycle of a couple of hundred years before you get conifer
forests back. I am concerned about areas like this, if they
burn--if we do not get in and replant quickly what kind of
forest we get back. In these northwest forests they basically
say there is a clear line of demarcation, private and Federal,
and private replants quicker and you have gorgeous big
evergreen trees growing, and at the Federal line they are still
debating what to do and we have brush and it is going to burn
again. I am not picking on the Forest Service and its laws,
rules and regulations. It is two or three years in appeals. But
I want to figure out what we do to fix that. What happens in
these forests if you do not replant?
Dr. Bonnicksen. Well when I was up here during the fire, I
went to the Boy Scout camp, the UCLA--the U.C.--I mean the L.A.
Council of Boys Scouts Camp, because I had been concerned about
that and I wanted to see what happened. Sure enough, half the
Boy Scout camp was burned. That is where some of the fires were
the hottest, and that is where the fire came from that went
down into Cedar Glen. In that case, in part of that forest
where the trees had been killed by the beetles, those trees
obviously had exploded in the fire because all they were were
charred spikes, no branches. In a case like that, and over a
large area, there are no seed trees, so what is going to come
back is brush around the standing dead trees. Now if that
happens on a large scale--the kind of scale we see up here in
this poster--where we have no seed trees nearby and all we have
is brush and oak coming up underneath the snags that were
killed, what we are doing is setting ourselves up for what we
call a reburn. Which in about 15 years, when the snags start
tumbling into the brush, you know, stacking up like jackstraws
and the brush is five feet tall, that is a prime candidate for
another fire that could be worse than the original fire or
equally bad. If that happens, all you have done is convert a
forest into a brush field, and it would take human intervention
to turn it back into a forest.
Mr. Walden. Part of the issue on the Biscuit fire in
southern Oregon--this is the one that two years ago burned
400,000 acres. It burned something on the order of 80,000 acres
of endangered spotted owl habitat. If we do not get in and
replant that in conifer and you get a hardwood forest, it is
not spotted owl habitat. I am curious, in these fires, what
kind of habitat has been eliminated and what do you anticipate
comes back and what happens to those species?
Dr. Bonnicksen. Well in the case of the spotted owl, we
know all of the structural characteristics of the stands that
are appropriate as nesting habitat for spotted owls. Basically
there will be no nesting habitat. And one of the things that
concerns me is the community of Big Bear. That community is at
great risk from a fire coming from--I think it is the southeast
side. That is spotted owl habitat. If a fire gets in there, it
could destroy the community of Big Bear, along with the spotted
owl habitat and you cannot do anything about the problem
because the spotted owls are there. But they will not be there
in a year or so anyway because the beetles will have taken care
of their habitat for us.
Mr. Walden. This gets to my own bias and frustration. The
same people who do not want us to do anything out in the woods
are the ones who are saying we cannot do anything because we
have got to protect this habitat for whatever. The mere action
of taking no action has a consequence that can do more to
damage the habitat and the communities and the forests that
some claim they are trying to protect that anything else we do.
[Applause.]
Mr. Walden. I am trying to figure out how post-fire we get
in and do the right thing for the community, the right thing
for the environment, the right thing for those of us who
actually love forests that are healthy. At some point we need
to figure out that one in a responsible way.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Lewis.
Voice. What classification does human species fall under?
Mr. Lewis. I appreciate the rhetorical question. I think
there is a good deal of empathy in the audience regarding the
question and the answer.
Mr. Chairman, I want to say for all of those who spent much
time with us today, the citizens, especially from my own
district in the mountains, I very much appreciate the attention
that the United States Congress' Interior Committee has paid to
the challenges that we have here. It is a reflection of a
national challenge and responsibility, but we are a case study
that was not--it was at one time looking for somewhere to
happen and it has happened now and provides fodder for lots of
thought in the months and the years ahead.
Dr. Bonnicksen, I remember your last time with us and your
testimony then, and very much appreciate your sense of
frustration about the reality of what we are dealing with.
The gentlemen from the tribes who are with us are
expressing a view and interest that is so fundamental to our
nature that it is very important that you be with us. Mr.
Nenna, I was asking about your formal testimony and some way or
another, I think maybe my own staff thought that the two of you
were going to share testimony or something, so please do not
have the Tule River Tribe suggest that we were really
suggesting Mr. Barrett could speak for everybody.
Dr. Stephens, thank you very much for your help and
appreciation. And the same with you, Mr. Grindstaff.
Mr. Chairman, the only closing comment I would make is that
we have experienced tragedy here and all of us have raised this
concern and question and the need for long-term action as the
highest priority. I think we should all remember that America
by its nature it seems is a crisis-oriented society and out of
sight out of mind. And as time goes forward, unless we continue
to keep the pressure on and insist that these voices continue
to be heard, these fires will have had little long-term effect
in terms of our changing and implementing further national
policy. So your personal attention to this is very much
appreciated, and I suggest to all of my friends in the audience
that we ought to help keep that pressure on.
Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Pombo. Thank you, Mr. Lewis.
I will tell the panel that your testimony was very much
appreciated and very helpful to the Committee.
Dr. Bonnicksen, I want to personally thank you for the work
that you have done over the years in providing information to
this Committee. Both your testimony before this Committee
before the fire happened. You have been extremely helpful in
that regard. During the fire, at the Committee's request, you
monitored the fire, you provided us with information that was
very valuable to us, and we look forward to continuing to work
with you in both dealing with the forest that is still there
and the issues that we have to deal with, as well as in the
recovery stages. I appreciate a great deal the work that you
have done on our behalf over the years.
Dr. Bonnicksen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Pombo. Mr. Barrett, both you and Mr. Nenna, as you both
know, I supported the provisions that would have included the
tribal governments as part of the Healthy Forest Bill.
Unfortunately the way things unfolded as we were moving forward
with that bill, we were not able to get that done. I will tell
you that one way or another we will get it done, whether it is
with a stand-alone bill or whether we are able to include that
as part of other legislation that will be moving. We will get
that done.
I would point out to you and to everyone else there was a
very interesting article that ran December 2nd in the Arizona
Republic talking about how work that was done on tribal lands
saved three communities in Arizona because of thinning and work
that they did on those lands, and the people in those
communities are forever in the debt of that particular tribe
for the work that they did because they were able to stop a
fire when it hit the tribal lands. When it went across Forest
Service lands it got out of control and there was no way they
were going to stop it before it burned those communities.
Obviously when you look at the landscape of the west,
tribal lands are extremely important in terms of maintaining an
environment and they have to be included in anything that we
do. There is no way around it. It is a major part of the
environment in the west and we have to recognize that. We will
continue to work with both of you gentlemen to make sure that
that happens.
Before I excuse this panel, I will just say that, you know,
it is nice to be in Lake Arrowhead. I have always loved coming
up here, but I wish it was under different circumstances. The
last time that we were here, just a couple of short months ago,
it was with the hope of passing the Healthy Forest bill and
being able to do something before these lands burned. Coming
back here after a fire was not what any of us had in mind, but
I think it was important that we do it. It was important that
the members of the Committee have an opportunity to listen to
you, to listen to the testimony that we had today, but I think
just as importantly to see for themselves what happened in
these fires and to fly over and actually look at the fire
patterns and the impact that they had. That will help us do a
better job in the future in terms of drafting legislation.
I will tell the members of the panel that if there are
things that we need to do--the Federal government needs to do
to change policy, to change rules, regulations, to work with
the bureaucracy, let us know. Let us know what those changes
are and how we can do a better job of managing the public
trust, the public lands that are out there and to help private
property owners in dealing with the challenges that they have.
Because that is something that we have as a responsibility on
this Committee and as members of Congress that we do.
I will say that for those of you that stuck with us all day
in the audience, I appreciate your willingness to be here, your
willingness to participate in this hearing. We are going to
hold the Congressional record open, the Committee record open
for 10 days so that if members of the audience wish to submit
testimony to be included in the record, we will give you the
opportunity to do that. It can be submitted to the House
Resources Committee. That record will be held open.
I want to thank Mr Lewis again for hosting us in his
district. I wish it was not in your district, Jerry, but----
Mr. Lewis. But it is.
Mr. Pombo. --it is. And it is greatly appreciated, the
hospitality that we always have had up here. So I thank you for
doing that.
Is there any further business to come before the Committee?
[No response.]
Mr. Pombo. Hearing none, we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:41 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional material submitted for the record follows:]
[A statement submitted for the record by Congressman Dreier
follows:]
Statement of The Honorable David Dreier, a Representative in Congress
from the State of California
Chairman McInnis, thank you for holding this field hearing on fire
recovery. I also want to thank Chairman Richard Pombo and all my
colleagues on the House Resources Committee for coming to Southern
California to discuss this timely and critical issue of recovery from
the recent California wildfires.
These fires devastated Southern California in October, including
parts of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura, and San Diego
counties. We are already working toward rebuilding, mitigating for
potential mud slides and erosion during the rainy season, and looking
at every opportunity to prevent another disaster of this magnitude.
Federal agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, the Small Business Administration, the
Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's
Natural Resources Conservation Service are working with local and state
agencies on fire recovery efforts.
With this many agencies involved, it is absolutely critical that
response at all levels be seamless and without regulatory burden for
fire victims. Working cooperatively rather than shirking jurisdictional
responsibility by citing obscure technicalities is the last thing we
need in this crucial period. Fire victims still have debris in their
yards and homes. Before the rainy season begins, we must do all we can
to expedite the delivery of federal disaster assistance dollars, to
coordinate with federal, state, and local agencies to assist in the
recovery effort, and, most importantly, to engage in preventing further
damage from potentially damaging winter storms.
In addition to the hands-on recovery work that is currently
underway and must continue, we must also take a hard look at our
preventative policies in mitigating for disease-infested trees and
managing our forests. One major step in improving these policies was
spearheaded by this Committee with the enactment of the Healthy Forests
Restoration Act (HFRA). With President Bush signing this landmark
legislation this week, we can finally move toward sensible management
of our national forests as one component of preventing the catastrophic
wildfires that just swept through our region.
Our past failure to maintain the forests has had dangerous and
devastating consequences. The uncontrolled growth, left by years of
neglect, chokes off nutrients from trees and provides a breeding ground
for insects and disease. Only in the aftermath of the Southern
California fires was Congress able to reach a bipartisan agreement to
deal with what had obviously become a serious problem.
The primary focus of the HFRA is to streamline the decisionmaking
process inside the U.S. Forest Service. A major factor in the
widespread destruction caused by wildfires has been the Forest
Service's inability to take action that might have made fires more
manageable. The National Association of Public Administration found
that the Forest Service spends 40 percent of its manpower and 20
percent of its funding on planning and process activities. Some of this
inaction is due to bureaucratic requirements the HFRA was designed to
reduce. Some of it is also attributable to what some would say is the
wrong approach to forestry management. Without a doubt, freeing up some
of the resources expended on such bureaucracy will only help the Forest
Service reorganize and become more effective in its mission.
Bureaucracy does not ensure public input, and it most certainly
does not ensure success. But, as many in our area know, managing
forests can have a significant effect on a community. Because of this
fact, the HFRA creates unprecedented processes for public input. The
legislation includes a ten year strategy for public involvement
outlined by the Western Governors Association and endorsed by
environmental groups such as the Wilderness Society. It also makes
permanent the public notice and comment requirements currently required
during the environmental analysis phase for a wildlife mitigation
project.
Mr. Chairman, by holding this hearing today, you are providing a
valuable forum for oversight of the fire recovery process. Thank you.
______
[A statement submitted for the record by Congressman Issa
follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Darrell Issa, a Representative in Congress
from the State of California
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this important hearing today in
Lake Arrowhead, California, on ``Recovering From the Fires: Restoring
and Protecting Communities, Water, and Wildlife and Forests in Southern
California.'' I hope that after we hear from the witnesses, we can
learn from this devastating experience and minimize the loss of damage
of possible future fires.
I would like to thank Chairman Jerry Lewis for his leadership in
attaining much-needed emergency funding to assist in the recovery
efforts. I also want to thank all the firefighters and every entity,
including local, state and federal agencies that coordinated efforts to
suppress the fires, save lives, and limit the damage caused to
structures and other personal property. Finally, I want to thank the
witnesses here today for taking time out of their busy schedules to
testify for this hearing, so that we may better-educate ourselves in
preventing the type of catastrophe we witnessed a few short weeks ago.
As a child, I remember my parents providing me with some very sound
advice, ``an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.'' This is
precisely the mind-set that Resource Chairman Richard Pombo and
Subcommittee Chairman Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) had when they drafted the
``Healthy Forest Restoration Act'' in order to prevent catastrophic
wildfires. Last Wednesday, President George W. Bush signed this bill
into law.
This year, California was the victim of horrific wildfires. Arizona
was victimized last year. A major reason for the extensive fire damage
in both California and Arizona was limited preventative maintenance on
federal lands. ``The Healthy Forest Restoration Act'' will provide the
means with which to thin out the forests on federal lands that are at
the highest risk of wildfires.
The numerical data released by the United States Forest Service
regarding the total destruction caused by the Southern California
wildfires is staggering. The fire left approximately 740,000 acres of
national forests, tribal lands, state forests and private lands
charred, 4,676 structures (3,661 homes) destroyed, and 22 people
killed, including a firefighter. In San Diego County alone, three fires
burned 383,284 acres and caused $28 million in agricultural crop
losses. I surveyed the damage in my district and visited three of the
Indian Reservations in my district that were most impacted by the
fires. The San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians lost close to 80% of the
homes on their reservation. It comes as no surprise that this was the
most destructive and costly wildfire to ever impact California, with
the damage certain to exceed $2 billion.
The impacts of the fire extend beyond the individuals and families
who lost physical property in the fire. The fires in Southern
California caused irreversible environmental damage. The fires have
impacted air quality, water quality, soil erosion, sensitive habitat,
and endangered species. San Diego County was one of the hardest hit of
all the fire-ravaged counties. Dry and strong Santa Ana winds and the
low humidity are part of the explanation for the severity of the fires,
as they fueled and exacerbated the burning of dried shrubs and
chaparral. These, however, are annual conditions that were not
unexpected. In the future, once the vegetation grows back, we will
again be caught in a similar dilemma if we do nothing to prevent future
wildfires.
Implementing the ``Healthy Forest Restoration Act'' will be one
part of the solution in protecting communities and businesses from
future conflagrations. Streamlining the administrative offices and
giving forest managers the tools they need to maintain a healthy
environment are just two examples of the important programs in this
act. Working with environmental groups and resource agencies, we can
begin to restore much of the burned areas. Never again should
California, or anywhere else in the United States, be subjected to the
kinds of wildfires that raged in Southern California this year.
Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to speak at this
field hearing, and I look forward to hearing the testimony from the
panel of witnesses.