Raúl Grijalva: “You know, this legislation, with a few modifications, could help prevent the 0.03 percent of wildfires that are caused…”

“You know, this legislation, with a few modifications, could help prevent the 0.03 percent of wildfires that are caused by electricity infrastructure, but the majority refused to work with us on those modifications. Most importantly, the failure to make vegetation management plans for utility rights-of-way mandatory negates any positive impact this bill might have had. As we have heard from Forest Service and industry at a hearing on similar legislation last Congress, voluntary vegetation management is already allowed and is quite common. This includes the ability for rights-of-way holders to access these areas and conduct vegetation management without notifying Federal land managers until after the fact. This is current law. The majority claims we need this bill to address delays caused by the approval of unplanned work and delays associated with removing dead trees on public lands outside of rights- of-way. Without an up-front planning requirement, I can see authorizing limited activity for utility companies to do targeted vegetation management adjacent to rights-of-way. But instead of offering the commonsense trade off, the bill before us today simply cuts Federal agencies out of the process of managing the American people's land by requiring the Forest Service and BLM to approve plans with no option to modify or reject them if the plans are inadequate.…”