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Senate hearing spotlights Fix Our Forest Act, debates NEPA changes and a national fireshed center
Summary
A Senate Agriculture subcommittee hearing brought bipartisan support for HR 471 (the Fix Our Forest Act) and detailed proposals to expand categorical exclusions, create a fireshed center and spur wildfire technology — while senators and witnesses warned the bill must preserve community input and legal review.
Chairman Marshall opened a Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry hearing to consider HR 471, the Fix Our Forest Act, saying the House passed the measure earlier this year and calling wildfire risk a national priority.
The bill would expand categorical exclusions for fuels-reduction projects, create a national fireshed center to coordinate risk assessment and technology deployment, strengthen Good Neighbor Authority, and adopt litigation and permitting reforms aimed at speeding treatments on the ground. “MegaFire is solvable, and therefore policymakers have an obligation to do more to solve it,” Matt Weiner, founder and CEO of the nonprofit MegaFire Action, told the committee.
Why it matters: witnesses and senators said catastrophic wildfires increasingly threaten communities, water supplies and infrastructure across regions from the West to the Southeast. Supporters argued the bill targets limited resources to the highest-risk landscapes and would help scale up treatments and new technologies; skeptics cautioned the changes could weaken community input and environmental review if not carefully tailored.
Provisions described at the hearing included increasing categorical exclusions from current limits to as much as 10,000 acres for specified fuels-reduction projects, a statutory fix to address litigation stemming from the Ninth Circuit’s Cottonwood decision, creation of a fireshed center to integrate real-time intelligence and predictive modeling, and expanded tribal and Good Neighbor Authority tools.
Proponents said the package could speed landscape-scale work. Weiner cited recent examples, saying expedited reviews helped speed treatments around the Lake Tahoe Basin and after heavy sequoia losses: “The bipartisan effort led by Chairman Westerman and Representative Peters has produced a solid product,” he said.
But several witnesses and senators urged caution. County Commissioner Jonathan Haug of Gunnison County, Colorado, and Frank Bim of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees both warned that reduced Forest Service staffing and recent personnel actions are undermining the agency’s ability to implement projects the bill would authorize. Haug said Gunnison County depends on federal lands for water and economy and stressed that communities need a meaningful seat at the table in prioritizing projects. “We depend on NEPA to guarantee that our community has a seat at the table to work in an informed and cooperative manner with the Forest Service,” Haug said.
Other witnesses highlighted complementary approaches in the bill. Robert Gordon, senior vice president for policy research at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, argued the measure’s coordination, resilience-building and building-code provisions would reduce future insurer and taxpayer losses, pointing to recent catastrophic wildfire losses in California.
Committee leaders closed the hearing saying the record would remain open for additional materials and emphasizing bipartisan interest in advancing legislation. Chairman Marshall said the measure is a priority and expressed optimism about seeing it through the Congress.
