Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my strong opposition to H.R. 1904, the poorly-named Healthy Forests Restoration Act.
This bill is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It preys on our legitimate concerns and fears about the impact of deadly forest fires in the upcoming fire season. Indeed, we must acknowledge the destruction that has been caused by poor fire management practices over the past century. But H.R. 1904, the McInnis-Walden bill, is the wrong solution. It is not only inadequate to address these failures, it is deeply harmful to our environment.
Under the guise of helping to protect communities from forest fires, this bill actually undermines critical environmental laws. Even more egregiously, it also violates our core democratic values by restricting the rights of Americans to seek redress in courts for grievances against the Federal Government.
H.R. 1904 should be defeated because it fails to protect our communities from wildfire. It allows the logging of remote backcountry with no requirement that at-risk homes and communities closest to forests are protected first. It does not provide sufficient funding for local fire districts, communities, or tribes for fire prevention.
In addition, this bill undermines existing environmental protections. It provides exemptions from the National Environmental Policy Act, the cornerstone of all environmental legislation. Without these critical NEPA safeguards, this bill will allow commercial logging projects to proceed with minimal environmental analysis or public involvement. As a result, old-growth forests and roadless areas would not be adequately protected.
The Miller substitute is a great improvement over H.R. 1904. While H.R. 1904 in effect would allow logging in remote areas, the Miller substitute explicitly prioritizes thinning projects that are closest and most threatening to at-risk communities and water supplies. The Miller substitute aims to protect our rarest and most precious trees, prohibits new road construction, and limits the total amount of federal land eligible for thinning projects. It requires environmental reviews of forest thinning projects, making exceptions only for projects within half a mile of an at-risk community.
We can all agree that destructive forest fires must be prevented through improvements in our forest management practices. But we must not let our eagerness to avert these tragic fires blind us to the flaws of this bill, which essentially offers a carte blanche for timber companies to log in remote forests. I urge my colleagues to vote for the Miller amendment and to oppose the McInnis bill.