A slow wildfire season in the U.S. means the Forest Service won’t have to dip into other parts of its budget to cover firefighting expenses. The federal government’s fiscal year ends Tuesday. It’s the first time in three years the agency’s firefighting allotment will cover actual costs.
The Forest Service exceeded its firefighting budget by $505 million last summer, and $440 million the year before.
Jennifer Jones, a spokesperson with the agency, says the government budgeted $995 million this year on wildfire suppression. It wasn’t immediately clear how far under that figure expenditures actually were.
This year has been an unusually tame fire season. The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise says the number of acres burned in 2014 has been less than halfthe 10-year average.
Since 2002, the Forest Service has had to use other sections of its budget to pay for fighting fires seven times. The supplemental funding has totaled $3.2 billion.
Critics of the way the federal government funds firefighting say the system essentially robs Peter to pay Paul. Programs that aid in forest maintenance, for instance, have seen their budgets cut in busy fire seasons. Those critics say that leads to forests with heavier fuels that once burning, become very expensive to fight.
To end that cycle, Sen. Mike Crapo, R-ID, co-sponsored legislation to overhaul the way the government pays to fight wildfires. The plan would use disaster funds to cover the costs associated with the nation’s catastrophic fires, similar to the way the nation pays for hurricane and flood response.
The legislation has also been introduced in the House. In each chamber of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats from the West support it. President Obama has also endorsed the plan.
But some House Republicans, including budget committee head Paul Ryan, haven’t embraced it. As a result, the legislation has yet to receive serious consideration in Congress.
Crapo on Tuesday acknowledged that a slow fire season won’t speed up the bill’s passage.
“When we face emergencies, it tends to push forward the policy,” he says. “The last time we got a major bill through the Senate that dealt with adjusting our timber policy, it was when there were fires raging in California.”
But Crapo says the data show 2014 has been an aberration and that the overhaul is as necessary as ever.
“I don’t think anyone believes that this year is an indication that we are out of the problem,” he says. “As a matter of fact, the cost of fighting forest fires is continuously going up.”
So what happens to the bill this year?
“Probably nothing now,” says Boise State University political scientist John Freemuth. “But maybe it can be floated next year, because now they’re in the election cycle.”
Crapo says a delay till 2015 is possible, but adds that he thinks there’s “very strong potential” for Congress to take up the measure during the lame duck session in November and December.
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