President Obama proposes new funding to fight wildfires
President Obama proposes new funding to fight wildfires
The president unveiled his plan at a meeting with Western governors at the White House, saying it was part of his administration's response to climate change. He said in the budget he’ll send to Congress next week, he’s proposing “fundamentally reforming the way federal governments fund fire suppression and prevention to make it more stable and secure.”
The president isn’t talking about your run of the mill wildfires. The funding plan would be earmarked for the largest and most expensive fires – the 1% of wildfires that consume 30% of the budget.
It costs the federal government about $1.4 billion a year to suppress wildfires – more than Congress has budgeted. To make up the difference, the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service have been moving money around – taking money budgeted for forest management and preparing communities in the wildland/urban interface for future wildfires.
Instead of shifting money away from necessary programs within the Forest Service, the president would tap into a pool of money already set aside for extraordinary disasters. These are defined as fires burning near urban areas or an “abnormally” large number of fires in a season.
http://www.scpr.org/blogs/politics/2014/02/24/15919/president-obama-proposes-new-funding-to-fight-wild/