Rep. Calvert Blasts Democrat Sham Wildfire and Drought Legislation

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman Ken Calvert (CA-42) voted against H.R. 5118, the Wildfire Response and Drought Resiliency Act:

"As House Democrats grasp at straws to boost their electoral fortunes ahead of a November election, they put a bill on the House floor that is more likely to increase the frequency and intensity of catastrophic wildfire while doing nothing to alleviate California's historic drought. This legislation would be more aptly titled the More Fires, Less Water Act.

The bill doubles down on the California Coastal Commission's authority to baselessly deny environmentally friendly desalination projects, forces the Forest Service to lay off over 610 wildland firefighters, fails to protect California's iconic giant sequoia groves, and doubles down on the West's regulatory-induced wildfire crisis in the middle of fire season. I offered six amendments to this legislation that would undo just a few of the detrimental policies this bill proposed, but Democrats blocked any of them from so much as an up or down vote on the floor. This legislation is an unserious solution to some of the West's most serious problems. When Congress legislates on existential issues like fire and drought, we need a bipartisan approach that gives Members a seat at the table."

Wildfire Response and Drought Resiliency Act Background
(Courtesy of the House Natural Resources Committee Republicans)

Fails to Include a Host of Critical Wildfire and Long-Term Forest Health Solutions

• No new authorities or tools for land management agencies to address the wildfire crisis. Instead, the bill creates duplicative work, endless red tape, and new requirements on existing agency work.
• No streamlining provisions that address the root cause of the catastrophic wildfire crisis: bureaucratic red tape, analysis paralysis, and a failure to implement scientific forest management on the landscape. Failing to address the weaponization of environmental statutes such as NEPA and ESA will prevent forest health treatments at the pace and scale needed to fully address this issue.
• Nothing to protect Giant Sequoias even after the U.S. has lost 20% of this iconic species in only two years.
• Nothing to address frivolous litigation, which is allowing rogue environmental groups to tie up critical forest management projects across the country that are vital to preventing wildfires.
• Nothing to address the infrastructure needs of rural Western communities caused by the closures and curtailment of sawmilling capacity. These closures have not only made our forests more fire-prone but have also resulted in the collapse of rural communities and caused lumber prices to skyrocket.
• Zero mentions of mechanical thinning in more than 500 pages of legislative text, despite the fact this is one of the primary tools, along with prescribed burning, to treat overgrown and fire-prone lands.

The bill would:

• Make wildfires more likely and severe by locking up more than 58 million acres in roadless areas. Studies have found that the largest fires that burned on National Forest System land in recent years began in roadless areas.
• Give zero wildland firefighters a pay raise, as all currently make above $20 per hour. In the long-term, this would result in layoffs of more than 610 wildland firefighters, a critical blow to workforce morale and fire preparedness.
• Exclude roughly 10,000 brave men and women putting their lives on the line to fight fires from receiving the new benefits promised to firefighters in the bill. This is nearly 40 percent of the federal wildland firefighting workforce.
• Create a new 10-year strategy to confront the wildfire crisis, only six months after the Forest Service published the current 10-year strategy. Having the agency complete another 10-year strategy is mindless bureaucratic nonsense that will divert agency attention away from actual management work that needs to get done now.
• Dilute the 10-year strategy with a progressive wish list of priorities like protecting old growth areas and managing for wilderness that has nothing to do with preventing wildfire or improving forest health.
• Give $50 million in grants for disadvantaged communities for activities that do nothing to prevent wildfire or prevent forest health, like "environmental education" and "volunteerism opportunities."

Fails to Address the Drought Crisis

• No reauthorization of the bipartisan, no-cost and all-of-the-above water strategy embodied in Subtitle J of the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act.
• No reinstation of commonsense ESA reforms the Biden administration continues to eliminate.
• No cutting red tape, time delays and increased project costs caused by duplicative requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.

The bill would:

• Pick winners and losers when it comes to water supplies while ignoring the long-term need for enhanced water storage infrastructure.
• Authorize more than $4 billion in new federal funding, channeling money toward unnecessary research, studies and environmental restoration projects that don't deliver water to communities now.
• Implement a spending-centric approach devoid of regulatory reforms and streamlining of federal statutes and regulations that could provide water to farmers, ranchers and communities immediately.
• Result in more land fallowing at a time of food supply chain shortages and ballooning inflation.

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