|
The horrific fires in California have finally prompted the Senate to begin debate on President Bush's "Healthy Forests" bill to curb such conflagrations by actively removing brush and other forest "fuels" from federal land. The House passed the bill five months ago, but the Senate has failed to act, largely because of environmental objections. Rep. Richard Pombo, chairman of the House Resources Committee, now urges the Senate to "wake up and smell the smoke." Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who has brokered a compromise, agrees: "We need to take action now." The debate over "Healthy Forests" will be a good test to see if the environmental lobby can overcome its more extreme members and embrace common-sense reforms. Interviews with officials and residents of California leave no doubt that while "Healthy Forests" won't prevent fires on private land, it may prompt local authorities to alter policies that allow brush to build up and become a fire hazard. Mark Price, the chairman of the planning board in the San Diego suburb of Alpine, which is now in the path of one of the major fires, told me that local regulations often prevent residents from engaging in preventive behavior. "When you block brush-clearing and creation of firebreaks, it can put homes and people on the endangered species list too," he says. "When you do get permission to clear anything, the environmentalists come out and make sure you don't clear one bit more of brush than you're allowed." Ron Nehring, a property owner in nearby Crest, adds, "Our fire policies help create vast fields of high-octane fuel which in San Diego are a recipe for disaster since we've been without rain for 179 days." Authorities say most of the 10 fires in Southern California were started by arsonists, either thrill-seekers or eco-terrorists opposed to new housing developments. Last month, four homes under construction in San Diego are burned down. A banner left at the scene indicated Earth Liberation Front members had set it. The month before, a 206-unit condo project in San Diego was destroyed. ELF members claimed said they had done it.
"I had no expectation of finding anything but smoldering ruins," he says. Instead he was gratified to learn that although the firestorm had come onto his property and obliterated the wooden fence, it did not cross the thick ground cover surrounding his house. It went around his house and destroyed all but three of the homes on his street before running out of fuel. Similar disasters are lurking in the nation's forest land. There environmental groups have used political influence and legal challenges to prevent the clean-up of millions of acres of dead or dying trees. The Bush "Healthy Forests" bill would allow the immediate thinning of the areas at greatest risk and also limit judicial review of projects designed to reduce the fire hazard. Environmental groups oppose the measure because, in the words of a Sierra Club spokesman, it "might open the door to runaway logging" on the U.S. Forest Service's 196 million acres of land. Tom Bray, a columnist for the Detroit News, says the real fear of environmentalists is that successful brush-clearing operations would "bring into question the dogma that the forest primeval should be protected from the contaminating touch of mankind altogether."
As the Senate debates President Bush's modest steps to fix the problem, environmental opponents should be forced to meet some of the people who've lost their homes in California and look them in the eye as they defend the status quo. Mr. Fund is a contributor to OpinionJournal's Political Diary, a premium e-mail service edited by Holman Jenkins. Click |
