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Committee hearing spotlights Fix Our Forest Act, permitting delays and NEPA hurdles
Summary
House Natural Resources members and witnesses at a committee hearing debated how permitting delays, NEPA processes and categorical exclusions affect the scale and speed of fuels-reduction projects and landscape restoration, focusing on the bipartisan Fix Our Forest Act as a framework for change.
House Natural Resources members and wildfire experts told a congressional hearing that slow permitting and fragmented decision-making have delayed forest treatments and worsened wildfire risk, and they pointed to the Fix Our Forest Act as a tool to speed work on the ground.
The issue matters because lawmakers and practitioners said the current permitting and environmental compliance timelines can take years, limiting the scale of thinning, prescribed burning and fuel-break projects that reduce wildfire hazard to communities in the wildland-urban interface.
Witnesses and members described cases where multi-year delays meant treatments that might have protected communities were completed only after destructive fires. "If FOFA had been in place in 2020, this project could have taken place under 1 10,000-acre categorical exclusion," a committee member said,…
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