Romney: Mitigating Wildfires is a “National Priority”
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
- U.S. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) today helped lead a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) hearing focused on preventing, managing, and responding to wildfires in the United States. At the hearing, Senator Romney stated that mitigating wildfires is a national priority and announced forthcoming legislation which he is working on with Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) that will implement recommendations from the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission-a commission of federal and non-federal stakeholders that was formed to study and recommend fire prevention, mitigation, management, and rehabilitation policies for forests and grasslands.
The Commission, first introduced by Senators Romney and Kelly, along with Representative John Curtis (R-UT), in 2021 was enacted after Senator Romney secured its inclusion in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. In February 2023, the Commission submitted its first report to Congress which outlines a strategy to meet aerial firefighting equipment needs through 2030. Last September, the Commission released its second and final report which outlines the urgent need for increased coordination between federal and local wildfire agencies, the importance of beneficial fires-like prescribed burning, and the need for increased investment in proactive pre-fire and post-fire planning and mitigation.
Senator Romney’s opening statement and exchange with the witnesses-including Utah’s Director of Forestry, Fire and State Lands Jamie Barnes-can be found below and video is available here.
Opening Statement:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding this hearing. This is a national priority. It is tragic that we continue to have wildfires of the nature we have. Some have become conflagrations. There's been massive loss of life. And this is a problem from Hawaii to Canada to the southern border-across the country. And more and more states are being affected by wildfires.
It's not just a few states of the American West as we sometimes think is the case. It is a national concern. I particularly want to thank Utah's Director of Forestry, Jamie Barnes, for being here and being willing to share her expertise with this Committee. We have some 800 to 1,000 wildfires per year just in Utah. And when you think about the impact of these fires, I go back to 2018, we had one called the Dollar Ridge Fire. And what was most unusual about that is that it dramatically impacted the watershed going into rivers and streams and lakes, killed wildlife fish, threatened the drinking supply of people in Panguitch, Utah. So, the challenge is not just that we're putting CO2 and smoke in the air and threatening structures and life, but we're also affecting our drinking water and the life of wildlife.
In 2021, the Parleys Canyon Fire forced the evacuation of 8,000 residents along the Wasatch Front for an extended period of time. And I went and met with people there and they were angry, asking why couldn't we do a better job preventing these things from happening? And I didn't have a lot of answers, and we were actually even considering closing down Interstate 80 as a result of that fire.
So back in 2021, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and I introduced the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission Act. It put together, as you know, some 50 individuals-federal, state, local, private sector, public sector, FEMA. This group came together. They have put together a report as of September of last year with some 148 different recommendations. And Senator Kelly and I are working on legislation to take these recommendations and turn them into law.
That's one of the reasons we wanted to have this hearing today, to get your perspectives on what things we might want to turn into law. I appreciate very much the work that you're doing. It is a national priority. I recognize that we can't keep on doing the way we have in the past. We're going to have to have some changes.
It's going to require additional funding. We may need additional fixed wing aircraft, different monitoring systems, different remediation, different forestry management, different prescribed burns processes. There are a lot of things that we are going to have to do differently than we have in the past. So, I look forward to the testimony today, particularly from Director Barnes and the rest of you, and appreciate the willingness of members of our Committee to come together and to focus on this important issue.
Yes need someone like you as president.
I'M just Senator bur have other names of me that are president
Thank you Sir 🙏🏼
Thanks Senator Romney, from Idaho👍🏼✌🏼🤟🏼❤Very sensible points
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has someone perhaps considered increasing our usage of renewable energy by any chance......................
we can't force that adoption. unfortunately, it's a very complicated technology that needs to advance enough for the market to adopt. that's not to say we shouldn't push it, nor does that mean it shouldn't be adopted. But, quite literally and practically, in reality, nothing, even authoritarian legislation, even mandates and government loans will not push renewable energy over the mass adoption threshold unless the technology is considered practical enough. however, we are VERY close, and we should start transitioning bigger cities to renewable energies for sure. in my humble, uninformed, and ignorant opinion, I think we should be giving grants to incentivize renewable energy manufacturing industries, like companies making wind turbines etc, that way we have a reliablne source for making renewable energy sources. the fact is, we need to build from the ground up.
👍
All you gotta do is rake the forest, man. Trump already schooled us man..c’mon
This is wasteful spending.
Billionaires need tax breaks
Hello👋You are right again Sir !!! Sénator Romney run for président,you are better than putin’ s puppet.