From the Sierra Club: Senate Set to Vote on Fire Legislation That Fails to Protect Communities; Western Senators Cut Deal With Bush Administration

Washington DC -- The U.S. Senate is expected to vote as early as this week on a version of the Bush Administration's ill-named "Healthy Forests Initiative" that would do little or nothing to reduce the risk of wildfire to Western communities, remove citizen participation, interfere with the judicial system and increase commercial logging. Several Western Democrats reportedly cut a deal with Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist. The backroom deal, which would still be subject to changes in conference committee, stands in sharp contrast to a proposal by conservation groups that would focus aid on communities at risk from wildfire.

"The Bush Administration's plan would provide more help to timber companies than to fire-threatened and cash-starved communities," said Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director. "The Administration has exploited the public's fear of wildfires while doing little to alleviate these fears and make real progress to protect communities. They insist their plan helps communities, but they refuse to prioritize the funds to do so."

During a recent fund-raising swing through the West, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert boasted that the Healthy Forests Initiative is "an important bill for the forest industry" and called it "a common sense approach to make sure we can build the roads we have to build so this industry can start to come back."

The Forest Service's own fire scientists argue that the best way to protect communities from fire is to reduce fuel loads within 500 yards of where people live, in what some refer to as the Community Protection Zone. That approach also makes sense from a fiscal perspective.

"Even if it were theoretically possible to fireproof a whole forest, the government would break the bank trying," said Pope. "There is a better way to help communities reduce the risk of forest fires."

The bill does not focus scarce federal funding and resources where they would do the most good: in the Community Protection Zone adjacent to at-risk communities. Instead, the bill would continue to allow the Forest Service and Department of Interior to conduct misguided logging projects deep in the backcountry in the name of "fuel reduction," and would allow logging of old-growth forests in roadless areas. An alternative proposal introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) would require that necessary resources are focused on responsible fuel reduction projects immediately around communities.

A GAO report issued in May provided no evidence to support contentions by the Bush Administration and Congressional allies that fuel reduction efforts have been obstructed by conservationists. According to the report, the overwhelming majority of projects -- 95 percent -- go forward in a timely manner, even when questions are raised by citizens, industry, recreation groups, conservations or other interested parties. The GAO found that more than 95 percent of the 762 fuel reduction projects reviewed by the GAO -- covering some 4.7 million acres of federal forest lands -- were ready for implementation within the standard 90-day review period (724 out of 762).

Here's what else the Bush Administration is doing:

BUSH ADMINISTRATION NEARING DEAL TO WEAKEN CLEAN AIR, TOXICS PROTECTIONS FOR COMMUNITIES NEAR FACTORY FARMS

Environmental Groups Seek Records from Bush Administration's Closed-Door Meetings With Agricultural Polluters

Washington, DC- Newly obtained documents from the Environmental Protection Agency reveal that the Bush Administration is formalizing a back-room deal with the livestock and poultry industries that would let giant factory farm polluters off the hook for violations of the Clean Air Act and the Superfund hazardous waste law that have protected communities for decades. With this new incriminating evidence in hand, the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment filed a lawsuit today under the Freedom of Information Act, demanding that the Bush Administration divulge information about its closed negotiations with the meat industry.

"Be it Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force or this back-room deal for the meat and milk industries,the Bush Administration continues to let polluters write the rules while leaving the public out of the process," said Ken Midkiff of the Sierra Club.

In May, environmental groups obtained an industry letter documenting clandestine negotiations with the Bush Administration to shield giant factory farms from the requirements of the Clean Air Act and Superfund hazardous-waste laws. Since then, the Bush Administration has been working on a deal that would allow factory farms to continue polluting without any threat of prosecution.

The Bush Administration has rebuffed environmental groups' requests for information about the closed-door meetings, claiming that it has "not entered into any 'safe harbor' agreement." However, environmental groups recently obtained a copy of the supposedly non-existent agreement. According to that draft, the Administration would allow the meat and milk industries to ignore clean air and hazardous waste laws indefinitely, asking only that industry "monitor" its emissions.

The Bush Administration has persistently refused to address pollution from factory farms, which concentrate thousands of animals in a single location and release enormous quantities of harmful pollutants. And Utah Mike Leavitt, nominated by President Bush to head the Environmental Protection Agency, has a history of favoring polluting agricultural interests; as governor of Utah, Mr. Leavitt helped to pass a law preventing citizens from bringing state suits against agricultural businesses.

"Exempting animal factories from basic environmental laws like the Clean Air Act would put thousands of communities at risk," said Brent Newell of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment. "Instead of protecting those communities, the Bush Administration is working to protect polluters from the laws that safeguard the public welfare."

A copy of the draft agreement, the meat industry's memo proposing the amnesty agreement, the environmental groups request for enforcement actions, as well as other relevant documents can be found at: http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/2003/may/cafo_papers.asp.