Reduce fuels to keep communities safe

Northern Californians who spent last summer breathing smoke or being forced from their homes by the blazes that tore through our local forests are well aware that wildfire is one of our most pressing threats.

The 2008 fire season saw more than a million acres of our forests burned, the tragic loss of several wildland firefighters, the evacuation of thousands of our fellow citizens and the loss of hundreds of homes and businesses. As we enter our third year of drought and a forest management situation that has yet to improve, this year's fire season could prove to just as devastating as the last, if not worse.

Fire is often characterized as the result of three factors: heat (ignition source), weather, and fuel. Despite the enactment of numerous legislative and administrative actions to address the only factor truly within our control - the fuel - our national forests have become an overgrown mess of small-diameter trees ridden with insects and disease that stand ready to serve as a tinderbox for the next lightning strike or stray spark.

In addition to more recent Congressional initiatives such as the Healthy Forests Restoration Act and Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, Senator Dianne Feinstein and I worked together over a decade ago to pass the Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act, to implement a pilot project developed by local interests to bring about fuels reduction, forest management, and community stability in three of our northern California national forests.

These efforts have hinged on collaboration to conduct science-based forest management, but they have largely been stymied through appeals and litigation led by groups beholden to the misguided notion that forest management and environmental protections are mutually exclusive.

To address this issue I have introduced the "California Catastrophic Wildfire Prevention and Community Protection Act of 2009." This legislation builds on and expands existing authorities and efforts to achieve fuels treatment in our at-risk communities and watersheds to reduce the risk of wildfire through implementation of collaboratively-developed hazardous fuels reduction and forest thinning projects.

The legislation also establishes an emergency process to expedite these projects should the county, in concurrence with the state, declare an emergency due to the threat of wildfire.

Our communities and the well-being of the environment depend on it.