Two Western senators have proposed a change to federal wildfire funding they say could end a cycle of borrowing to battle catastrophic blazes.
Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, in a meeting at The Argus Observer office Friday, touted a bipartisan amendment he and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, presented to the U.S. Senate Tuesday. The senators proposed changing an energy bill currently on the floor to allow the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund the nation’s worst firefighting disasters.
Crapo said Friday the amendment is aimed not at all fires but at the 1 percent of truly catastrophic fires that ravage the country each year. Those blazes are natural disasters, and therefore it makes sense for the country’s disaster response agency to foot some of the bill, he said. Under the current system, the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management blow through their fire budgets too early in the season, which forces the federal agencies to borrow money to pay for the cost of the conflagrations that come later, he said. That short-changes other areas, including the agencies’ budgets for land management.